It’s new-issue Monday, and there is nothing as exciting or scary as setting your work of the previous month before a jury of 65,000 peers. We tend to get feedback of three kinds. First, there are complimentary emails from readers who like what they read, and these are the ones we read repeatedly, we print … Read more
A man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost. —Henry Thoreau Man will never find the end of the trail. —Robert Hofstadter Probe and rummage and ruminate all we want –through, past, back, forward, beyond, up, out, now— we can’t see through any of it, … Read more
Everybody, from the coaching staff to the fans in the chat rooms, has been hard on Luis Rivas the last couple years. Most of the criticism directed at Rivas has been justified. The guy had obviously developed some bad work habits that were showing up on the field with a glaring regularity. At times –most … Read more
Back in my drinking days my stomach would for damn sure be a lousy mess, and my liver would feel like a fat wad of pate throbbing behind my ribs. I couldn’t sleep for shit and I’d be up and down prowling the drafty house all night in the dark, handling the various little talismans … Read more
At the risk of getting too self referential here, I’m going to recommend Brad Zellar’s blog entry from yesterday. It’s about why his blog is the antithesis of this one. The editor and I are often fairly earnest here…in a Buck Turgidson sort of way. Brad, though, has defined his take perfectly. He’s disgusted, or … Read more
We may have gotten a little carried away yesterday, a little intemperate. After all, we love Frank Rich. His far-ranging free association is often a delight to read (but like his neo-con complement, David Brooks, his conclusions are sometimes a little thin). Rich was merely the cart onto which we loaded our rotten apples—it’s nothing … Read more
That, of course, was purportedly legendary whack-job Joaquin Andujar’s favorite word, and it should be the mantra of every fan at this time of the year, when it’s easy to get carried away with the first optimistic rush of spring training. It’s hard, though, not to get carried away. The day pitchers and catchers report … Read more
I don’t know, to be quite honest with you. There does, though, seem to be some confusion on that question, if the handful of puzzled emails I’ve received in the last week are any indication. I’m still trying to get a handle on who stumbles in here, into The Rake‘s little sidecar in cyberspace. I’m … Read more
The Koufax awards were announced today, and you will be forgiven for having no idea what they are. They are the blogging world’s equivalent of the Oscars or the Grammys. And now it can be admitted that there is an award for every channel of human industry ever conceived and exercised. Can there be any … Read more
Waking, by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, and dry brains, is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men. —Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy All he could do was transcribe the interminable babbling voice of the night, the insinuating perverse voice of the demons. —Pietro Citati, Kafka One time I was in south … Read more