When you get obsessed with place-based poetry, something I was calling topoetics for a minute, the appearance of a place-name in the title of a poem or a collection becomes gilded in salience. Maybe so with any research project, that things possibly relevant to your query shimmer a little. Baseball games are all place-names, and when they are your place, they all shimmer. Another reason why a move to Fremont or San Jose for the A's would just kill me. It doesn't even matter if we hit like little leaguers half of the time. We's still our little leaguers.
But I bet you thought I was going to go on and say how every game is a poem, or how poetic the sport itself is. I think the Berrigan-Schiff book, Yo-Yo's With Money, that Bill put up on oakdish has it right: every baseball game is a potentially poetic conversation, while only some baseball games are themselves poetic (some are so bad, even heckling is beyond their due). Friday's game was like the latter, while Saturday's was mostly the former until the very last play, when Kennedy (possibly on 3rd base-coach Mike Gallego's advice) took off from second on a Suzuki line drive and never looked back until a mercenary slide took out Alexis Avilla at the plate. That was a for a 3-2 win, in a game where Oakland stranded more than 7 batters, four of them left at third plate. That's great baseball, and that's terrible baseball. But at this point in a three-season slump, I'm not sure how to even relate to great baseball. Sunday's game was a romp (9-4 Oakland, with two homers from Cust), but I wasn't even listening to the radio, as we had a party to celebrate our completed backyard (completed is a word I rarely get to use in conjunction with any project I'm involved, so it was worth a party).
There was great baseball conversation, which I'm afraid may have ruined the workshop for those who thought it was going to be quiet and observant or in any way scholarly or even much about writing. Gender roles at a baseball game are so easy to walk into, you can go a half-season or more without realizing you're acting like a Neanderthal. Maybe Alli or Samantha want to weigh in at some point on how the boys were behaving. The 1970's trivia was getting entirely too deep for me as well, between Douglas, Bill and Joshua (all of whom know admirably too much about baseball in general). I think if Walter Lew were there, this kind of inside-of-the-insider chatter could have elevated to the level of poetry, as he often remarks about the on-line fan boards of his Oriole's: there is a completely unique prosody that is waiting to be tapped for writing in the quieter dialogue of the analytic fan. On a cue from Bill's sheet of prompts, I had my head more in the macro-fan level of things shouted at the field or across the stands, which are really two completely different phenomenon. In the macro-world of baseball, every play is a complete and total surprise, a constant dumb-founding followed by occasional serendipity. In the micro-world of analysis, there are forms of strategy, in play for decades or even a century, which are being executed either brilliantly or badly, and appreciation of these events unfolding is closer to appreciation of gymnastics than a cock-fight. I was in a cock-fighting mood, part of the reason why I still have no vocal chords to speak of on Monday morning (which, thanks to the dysfunction of the construction project I'm on, is a surprise day off!):
we shout "Let's Go ______ "
we fill it in "Oooak-land." "Hairston." "Aaa-dam(Kenndey)."
or even "Ack-Mack"
we shout "come on, Blue!"
"Buuuullll-shiiiii(t). Buuuullll-shiiiii(t)."
we chant "M-A. M-A-R. M-A-R-K, Ellis!" (repeat).
digital cues interrupt us, instruct us in rhythms to ape, sentiments to embody.
At this volume, there is no room for dissent, subtlety or any recognition of the fact that your boys may not be entirely virtuous, or even talented. Though lately, in losing games, chants of "Geren sucks!" have echoed from the Left Field Bleachers. And then there is the dispute over the wave in the bleachers, with most of the season-ticket holders claiming it's imminent bad luck. How to have these disputes with drunken body language and shouting across rows of seats is a problem of comedy more than poetry. Attempts at macro-poetry were tried.
-I told Bill to send one of his baseball short poems via text message to the Gobotron (rejected from publication, no doubt by Verizon VP's of marketing).
- Douglas shouting to Leyland during batting practice: "Hey Leyland, I love what you did with Pittsburgh" (Leyland was not amused).
- There were covert across-the-park signaling attempts, first by Douglas, then by Buuck. They produced no runs.
- I think I made a "your mother" reference in the general direction of Raeburn (or was it Granderson?). I'm sure whoever it was heard me.
- Chevron sponsored the "Remembering Woodstock" fireworks extravaganza afterwards. Sometimes the fruit is hanging so low, it hurts your back to pick it.
I did not have the patience to do the score cards, with or without animal pseudonyms recommended by the syllabus, but then I never have. I should instead sharpen my memory to where I don't need to cards to recall a game. I think I would become an alcoholic in the process. Though on the wagon Saturday, I think I drank 8 oz of straight JD on Friday. The problem with bootlegging into a ballgame is you can't employ mixers (my wife tried that once and got caught- on my birthday!). I forgot any kind of sweater and it did get a little chilly down on the field, but then there was the exhilaration of walking on the bluegrass and seeing the crowds who remained in their seats. I'm like Charles Legere, who once commented to me that even after his thirtieth birthday, he still has fantasies of becoming a walk-on ringer at spring camps and pitching a major league game. I think the longer you can suspend idiocy like that, the greater your fidelity to the game:
i don't know what I need emotions for
when i've got statistics
the newspaper gives a .438 chance
i'm all in
for an irrational win!
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