bjj-sportliterate

Mad Dog Goes Yard

by Tom McGohey

The Tigers’ Bill Madlock was an unlikely candidate to become the 12^th Major Leaguer to hit four home runs in one game, joining the likes of Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt (Gehrig and Schmidt in consecutive at-bats). He was a four-time National League batting champ, but in his 15-year career he hit a modest 163 homers, with a career-high of 19 in 1982. Though he had “some pop,” as announcers like to say about players with middling power, he was not the kind of belter that made opposing teams pitch around him.

But against the Orioles on June 28, 1987, “Mad Dog,” as he was known for a rabid temper that was as much bite as bark, was lofting home runs into the left field seats at Tiger Stadium like he was playing “HORSE” using paper wads and a wastebasket. A power surge all the more shocking considering that when the Dodgers, his fifth team in 14 seasons, released him on May 29, he was batting an embarrassing .180 and had played in only 21 games. It seemed the Mad Dog, 36, had become a toothless, mangy mutt only four months in baseball-years short of euthanasia. But Tigers’ manager Sparky Anderson, remembering Madlock’s smart approach to batting from his days running the Cincinnati Reds, embraced GM Bill Lajoie’s plan to add a veteran right-handed bat to a team that was sputtering along at two games over .500, 5 ½ games behind the Yankees in the American League East Division. And though the core of the 1984 World Series Champs was still in place, the odds of reprising that brilliant season were looking murkier than stale water in the concession hot dog steamers.

Twenty-five years earlier, when I was 10, my father took my brother and me to our first major league baseball game, Tigers vs. White Sox. The Tigers won on an RBI double by Jake Wood, (a once promising infielder who slipped into mediocrity and out of baseball after a half dozen seasons, his career preserved only in the franchise stat books and the memory of a fan prone to nostalgia even at the age of ten.) It was a hot, humid day, and I ate so much peanuts, Cracker Jacks, cotton candy, hotdogs, and soft-serve ice cream that after the game I threw up on the sidewalk of what is now Kaline Drive. (My apologies, Al.)

Now I was returning the favor, treating the old man to what I anticipated at the time could possibly be our final outing at the old ball park at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. In a few weeks, I was moving to North Carolina to attend graduate school, and my father, widowed the previous year by my mother’s death from cancer, had recently announced his engagement to a lady from Toronto, a recent widow herself, and that they would be starting their new life together by resettling in a place new for both of them.

At the time, Madlock’s signing did not inspire much excitement in me. That old guy? I thought. What’s he got left? But as the stand-in for the quiet, polite Jake Wood in this reprise father-son ritual, Mad Dog and his reputation for fisticuffs — he was known to punch his own teammates, as well as opponents who crossed him — did lend an air of celebrity scandal to his arrival.

Nonetheless, his former All-Star fielding skills diminished by age and portly physique, Madlock still had potential as a part-time DH on a team looking to jump-start a lineup still loaded with talented if slumping hitters, and he rewarded their faith immediately with eight hits, including a homer, in a four-game series with Boston, and with four hits in a game against Milwaukee. Explaining this torrid resurgence, Madlock said at the time, “They seem to throw more breaking balls for strikes over here [in the American League]. And when you make a mistake with a breaking ball, it’s usually up. In the National League, they throw more forkballs and a mistake with a forkball is usually in the dirt. And batting average doesn’t mean as much over here. Here, we’re talking home runs and RBIs. I’ve messed myself up a few times already, swinging for the fences. I’ve been up and down because of it.”

A down streak included an 0-21 slump that got him benched for two games before returning to the lineup against the Orioles June 28, as the DH, batting second. Why Sparky decided to reinsert Madlock for this particular game, who knows? Maybe just a gut move based on experience: .304 career-hitters generally figure things out on their own.

Whatever the reason, the move paid off in the 1^st inning, with Madlock hitting a two-run homer to left, which probably surprised Orioles’ starter Eric Bell as much as it revived the Sunday afternoon crowd of 31,606 fans, who didn’t have to wait long to recover from the three-run homer by O’s Fred Lynn, off Jeff Robinson, in the top half of the inning. Unfortunately, Madlock’s quick-strike counter blow didn’t do much for Robinson’s stuff; he gave up three more earned runs in the 4^th inning, when he was relieved by Mark Thurmond, who promptly gave up another run, in the 5^th, leaving the Tigers in a five-run hole. Madlock, as if deciding it was up to him to keep the Tigers from getting blown out, responded with another homer, a solo shot off Jeff Habyn, again to left, in the bottom of the inning. The Tigers added a run in the 8^th on a Chet Lemon single, scoring Kirk Gibson from second base. In the meantime, Eric King, the Tigers’ third pitcher, had shut down the O’s through the 9^th, and the Tigers came to bat still trailing by three.

Fanatical numerologists with a spiritual bent might have ascribed the Tigers’ ninth to a miraculous trinity of divine power: a three-run deficit erased by three consecutive homers, the first by pinch-hitter Johnny Grubb, a former All-Star limping through a final season that would end with anemic stat line of 2/13/.202; the second by catcher Matt Nokes, who would finish the season with a career-high 32 homers; and the third, by our snarling hero, Mad Dog, the crowning blow of a hat trick that even the most faithful of sporting prophets or statisticians never would have bet on. (Alas, for stat-heads seeking record confluences of streaks, no matter how arcane, Madlock’s tercet did not come in consecutive at-bats: he flied out to short stop in the 2^nd.) So improbable was this power surge for a hitter better-known for stinging singles and frozen-rope doubles that my father and I could only shake our heads and laugh in wonderment at what we had just witnessed.

No matter the outcome, I was gratified that this game, more than likely our final one together at Tiger Stadium, had provided so much drama in such an unexpected fashion. Of course, I wanted the Tigers to win, but to expect more seemed almost greedy. What could possibly top that 9^th inning?  Certainly Madlock had used up his allotment of swan-song heroics usually reserved for Hall of Famers like Ted Williams. That he had granted my father and me extra innings in a farewell outing 25 years after our first game at Tiger Stadium should have been more than any grateful son could expect. But I was greedy. You always want more — more thrills, more odds-defying feats from aging players summoning powers unimagined even in their prime — even when a part of you recognizes that such unrealistic thinking more often than not leads to bitter disappointment.

At that point, I was just hoping Madlock would get another at-bat. The odds of that happening looked bad in the top of 10^th when the Orioles put men on first and third with two outs, Cal Ripken at the plate. The future Hall-of-Famer was having another All-Star season, with 17 homers and 51 RBI by midseason. And worse, after four innings of shut-out relief, the O’s appeared to be catching up to Eric King’s fastball. The unpredictable skills that had produced a 4.02 ERA, lamentable for a part-time starter, depressing for a reliever, were resurfacing. I think everyone in the stands, myself included, expected Ripken to do something dramatic. He struck out.

The Tigers, facing Doug Corbett, went down in order in their half of the 10^th. Still, regardless of what Orioles did next inning, Madlock would get to bat in the Tigers’ half. Willie Hernandez, MVP and Cy Young winner from the 1984 championship season, faced three potentially tough outs in Eddie Murray, Fred Lynn, and Ray Knight, and put them away in order, but not before a couple of fly balls by Murray and Lynn made me squirm more than they should have. Even in a proverbial bandbox like Tiger Stadium, they were not close to clearing the fences.

Nokes led off the bottom of 11^th with a single. That brought Madlock to the plate. Of course, everyone in the stadium, myself included, was hoping for a fourth homer, and chants of “Maad- daawg, maad-daawg,” like cheers for a rabid pit bull in an illegal dog fight, swelled and circled the stands. I wasn’t a chanter, too shy and reserved for that, especially in front of my father, but as each refrain grew louder, my heart rate pumped faster. Who wouldn’t want him to swing for the fences in that spot?  My father, that’s who. He was old-school, as they say, grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and valued good old-fashioned, conventional wisdom-percentage baseball strategy. And the conventional wisdom here was obvious: move the runner over. Beneath the cheering, more like a high-pitched ecstatic pleading, and the chanting, and the simultaneous slapping of plastic seats, I could hear my father mutter in a dry, sarcastic tone, as if he were a crusty old manager with decades of experience and dismissive of the fans’ emotional demands, “Move the runner over.”

And of course, that was the smart call. Put the runner into scoring position, and a single brings him home. Walk-off homers were for perennial bombers like Gehrig, Mays, and Schmidt; they were for majestic mastiffs, not for scrappy, rabid — figurative or real, and the verdict in this case was 50/50 — Mad Dogs. After all, what were the odds of Madlock hitting a fourth homer? Sabermetric gurus filling front offices today would scoff at the possibility. Future generations of fans looking up such a stat and finding Madlock’s name would, with good reason, think it was a misprint. Or at best, the name might register with the same blankness that I felt when seeing names of batting champs from the 1880s. Walk-off singles — does the term even exist? — just doesn’t ring like walk-off homer. Moving the runner over required one thing from Madlock: a sacrifice bunt. Could he make the mental downshift from adrenaline-fueled aggression of swinging for the fences to the cool calculations of laying down a good bunt? Remember that Madlock himself, recognizing the difference between small-ball and long-ball approaches to batting in the Senior and Junior loops, had confessed that he had “messed myself up” trying to hit homers when he returned to the American League.  Keep in mind also that Sparky Anderson, despite winning two World Series with a Cincinnati lineup that featured some legitimate bashers like Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and George Foster, had acquired his managerial chops in a small-ball league that disdained adopting the DH, and played percentages so faithfully that he earned the nickname “Captain Hook” for changing pitchers at the first sign of trouble.

Sparky liked to talk. Sparky loved to talk. Talking was like breathing for him, and he never required a respirator to support his entertaining if inflated soliloquies with reporters. With so much verbiage on the record, he was bound to contradict himself now and then. For example, he once said that “Players have two things to do. Play and keep their mouths shut.” But in Cincinnati, he was also known for having two sets of rules for stars and role players. Madlock may have been the star this day, but as part-time DH at the end of his career, he had a clearly defined role: shut up and follow orders.

Would Sparky give Madlock the green light to swing for immortality or make the conventional call for a bunt? You’d have to be a naïve romantic to hope for the former. The pragmatist in me accepted that Madlock would be bunting; the romantic was silently begging for him to hit a homer. Such an improbable ending would elevate what had already been a memorable game to the status of an immortal one. If this did prove to be the last game my father and I attended, I could not imagine a better ending to a shared passion that had started 25 years earlier with my first sighting of the luminous lime green grass of the playing field at Tiger Stadium, and other images that for some odd reason became indelible in the memory of a 10-year-old kid: Rocky Colavito’s five o’clock shadow, already a dark blue-gray for a Sunday matinee game, and the chaw-stuffed cheek of White Sox veteran Nellie Fox, which seemed to swell with each swing in the batting cage.

So it came down to this — would the Mad Dog defy his master and attempt to go yard, knowing that if he failed he’d likely be sentenced to Sparky’s dog house for eternity (which would end with his being waived), or would one of the game’s most volatile yappers shut up and follow orders? For me, it came down to another question: should I honor my father’s time-honored wisdom and stale if savvy percentage-based practicality by issuing vibes to chill any impetuous cravings for immortality twitching in the Mad Dog’s feverish brain and calloused hands, or assert my own independence by openly joining the rest of the chanting mob around us in howling for the intoxicating reward of a risky, selfish act that was more likely to end in failure, and possibly defeat for the greater good of the team?

Madlock ended the suspense on the first pitch, laying down a bunt on the third base line. A charging Ray Knight fielded the ball cleanly, but not in time to make a play on Nokes at second. Madlock was thrown out easily, but he had done his job. He moved the runner into scoring position. As he trotted back to the dugout, the crowd reacted with cheers just a shade deflated by disappointment at being denied a fourth homer.

Or maybe I’m imagining that, projecting my own mixed feelings. In my mind the perfect scenario would have had him swinging away until he either connected or got two strikes, ratcheting up the suspense and stoking the crowd to a hysterical pitch, and then laying down the perfect bunt. But that would have been a foolish strategy, if not outright stupid. He might have struck out or, worse, hit into a double-play, leaving the Tigers with two outs and no men on base. He did the right thing, whether on Sparky’s orders or not, and clearly he’d been following orders. And I suspect that even if he’d been given the green light, a fantastical possibility, Madlock still would have been bunting all the way. He may have had a volatile temperament, but he was still a pro, an aging veteran who understood that a greater, if unspoken and lesser celebrated, glory came with doing the simple, fundamental things in the game correctly. That appeared to be my father’s reaction, anyway. He just looked at me, smiled, and nodded his head.

The next batter, Kirk Gibson, was intentionally walked, bringing Alan Trammell to the plate. He hit a single up the middle, scoring Nokes. Game over. Tigers won 8-7.

 

After acquiring Madlock, the Tigers played .649 ball, going 71-39. They entered the final week of the regular season trailing Toronto by 3 ½ games, and swept the Blue Jays in a four-game series at Tiger Stadium, clinching the Divisional title on the last day of the season on a home run by Larry Herndon. (Emotionally spent after that tense finish, they lost the ALCS to the Twins in five games.) By that point, though, I had moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, for graduate school, where I watched that miraculous sweep in a local laundromat-bar called “Suds and Duds,” wearing my newly purchased Tigers’ North Star starter’s jacket, despite the 90-degree-plus degree weather.

Shortstop Alan Trammell was the star of that team, hitting a career-best .343, 28 homers, 105 RBIs and placing second in AL MVP vote. In what proved to be his final season, Madlock contributed a solid but underestimated stat line of .279 / 14 homers / 50 RBI, all the more impressive considering that he appeared in only 87 games. In one of those endless musing of ‘what if” scenarios so popular in sports, especially baseball, I liked to think that extra-inning win over the O’s three months earlier was the difference in the Tigers winning the division and going home. There was no Wild Card in those days. What if Madlock hadn’t laid down that lovely bunt? What if, following my impetuous yearning for the splashy, history-making play instead of my father’s calm, rational demand for the smart play, he’d swung for the fences and missed?

It turns out that game was the final time my father and I sat in the stands at Tiger Stadium. He’s 90 now, and still a rabid sports fan, still rooting for the Dodgers — the “Doyers,” as he calls them, in some strange patois of Brooklynese he’s never explained — partly out of loyalty to octogenarian announcer Vin Scully, more so out of loyalty to the National League for disdaining the DH, a stubborn refusal that, so the argument goes, allows managers to show off their strategy and guts by lifting a dominating pitcher for a pinch-hitter. The latter issue is an ongoing point of contention when we get together during summer visits. He ended up leaving Michigan the same year I did, relocating to North Carolina, as fate would have it, with his new wife (a Canadian born and raised in England who couldn’t tell the difference between a Blue Jay and an Oriole, but otherwise a lovely lady), a three-hour drive away.

We still watch games together during those visits, but only on TV, as his wobbly gait can no longer carry him up the grandstand steps, which now would appear to him like one of Escher’s endlessly looping mazes. But his memory is still sharp. When he starts carping about how the DH has corrupted the game, I remind him that it was a DH who provided the dramatics of our final game at Tiger Stadium. He responds with a disdainful grunt betrayed by a flicker of a smile fighting suppression. Sometimes the joy of such personal memories trumps the purity of national pastimes.

I’ve seen some dramatic homers with my father at Tiger Stadium: Reggie Jackson’s Homeric blast in the 1971 All-Star Game, a liner that pierced the fading evening summer sky like a mythic hero on the way to carving its own constellation, was still rising when it hit the metal stanchions of the lights in left-center field.

A no-doubt mortar shot by Lance Parrish in the 7^th inning of the Tigers’ clinching Game 5 victory of the 1984 World Series against the Padres. It landed a few rows behind and to the left of our second-row seats in the left-field stands, close enough that I stretched my arm high overhead, hoping the sonic force of cheering would bend the ball’s trajectory into my mitt. It did not. Succumbing to such naïve optimism was still a thrill.

But the best homer I ever saw at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull was the one that never was.

They say a walk is as good as a hit. Sometimes a bunt is as good as a homer. And sometimes a nod is as loud as a cheer of thousands. Sometimes louder.

Tom McGohey taught composition at Wake Forest University for 20 years. He has published essays in Fourth Genre and Thread.  His essay, “Friday Night Fights with Mom,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2006.

Life After Death in Golf

by Randy Steinberg

If you’re an elite professional golfer, you will most likely, when your playing days are done, be enshrined at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida. This is the case for the top stars in most major sports. From halls of fame to retired numbers in the rafters to naming streets and stadiums after players, if you’re good enough your namesake will endure in a public place of honor. If you were a pro player but not good enough to make the Hall of Fame or have an avenue named after you, you’ll still be replayed and re-streamed in perpetuity, and thus millions of people will know about your accomplishments.

Going down a rung from the professional ranks, if you are a member of a swanky golf club, you might be lucky enough to have your framed photo on the wall of the main dining room. You’re smiling in tie and jacket. You are remembered in a highly personal way.

But what about the public course hacker, which is most of us after all? What is life after death in golf like for we common folk? Remarkably, your legacy might endure in a very visible way, too. You will not receive Hall of Fame, Golf Channel, or Country Club level attention. No rafters, TV replays, or dining room adornment for you. You’ll certainly have no face. Your name and dates might be displayed but not on a wall or in any place of prominence. Rather, your memorial is more likely to be a plaque or a marker on a bench by the 14^th tee, a rock by the 7^th green, the base of a tree along hole #2, or even a ball washer on, well, any tee box. You will live forever beneath a clump of windswept pine needles or buttressing someone’s rear end as they wait for the foursome in front of them to clear. Your name will be splashed with sudsy water every time a player cleans his ball.

Because golf is my passion perhaps I’ve only noticed this tradition on the golf course, but in my four decades I’ve played many sports, and I cannot recall seeing a memorial plaque to anyone on a tennis changeover bench or a ball return slot on a bowling lane. Are pick-up basketball men remembered with signage beneath the hoop at the town courts? Are softball players given markers on the trash cans where all the post-game beer cans are tossed?

Lest anyone think I’m putting down the practice of remembering a friend or loved one on the golf course, let me dispel that notion. Though I sometimes think it a peculiar tribute, it speaks to the uniqueness of golf — especially the way it honors its amateur and very average players. Cooperstown celebrates baseball greats, but are amateur baseballers accorded any status on town and city diamonds? Canton is a sacred space for the legends of the grid-iron, but are touch football men similarly remembered at the local playground?

I’m sure, in response to this essay, I’ll be corrected. Friends of Jim, who loved ultimate Frisbee, will tell me they honored his memory with a Frisbee-shaped escutcheon by the side of his favorite proving ground. Susie was remembered with a marker at mile 11 on her favorite biking trail, her survivors will state. It does happen in other sports and athletic endeavors, I’ll be told!

Though it might not relate to their hobbies or avocations, others may point out that crosses by the side of the road, where an accident occurred, are common ways to remember someone who has died other than at a gravesite or in a hall of honor. However, it would be an imperfect (if not inapt) comparison because I’m unaware of any golf course memorial that notes a golfer died on the exact spot where it is affixed. That might make some morbid sense if it indeed was practiced in such a fashion. Ralph had a heart attack walking up the slope toward the 15^th green and fell 30 yards short of the fringe: let’s put the plaque on that spot, with of course a free drop to anyone landing on it. I doubt any greens keeper would be amenable to this, but in an eerie way it would be fitting.

All kidding aside, what does the practice of memorializing people on the golf course say about the sport? Why does golf seem to treat death differently than other hobbies and pass-times, even down to its most unheralded practitioners?

***

One possible answer could be in the way golf is defined, which is the subject of much debate. Is it a sport or a game?

This question has been asked ad nauseum, and if any sports radio hosts are silly enough to pose it anymore, they can be assured of a precipitous ratings drop. But when discussing the way golf treats death, it might be worth revisiting.

Years ago, I might have sided with the “game” proponents. In as much as Nicklaus, Watson, Snead, Jones, Hogan, Player, and Trevino were great golfers they didn’t look like much. They didn’t have the appearance of a modern-day (even latter day) athlete. Flab and pudge abounded. I’m sure most of them smoked cigarettes and drank. Indeed, golf is the only sport in recent memory where a professional player can actively be seen smoking (a cigar) during a round. There are certain major league pitchers who appear wide in the mid-section, but can you imagine any one of them with a Camel in the corner of his mouth as he winds up for a pitch?

This is not to say the golf legends I mentioned did not have great hand-eye coordination, superior concentration, and nerves of steel. Of course, to a man, they did, but compare them to golfers of the present day. There are exceptions, naturally. There are overweight golfers (John Daly and Brandon de Jonge immediately spring to mind) and averaged-sized men on the pro tours, but the rule is a tall, lean, toned, intimidating figure. Tiger Woods may have ushered in the modern player and made what was once a game, a sport, but the ground he broke is now worn over on the men’s and women’s tours. A 300-yard drive 30, 40, and 50 years ago was seen as near-miraculous. Now it is routine, with drives of 350 yards or more not too jaw dropping.

Pro golfers are muscled and physically prepared in ways their forbearers would not have thought about. Technologically, golf is cutting edge and it, along with most of the other “sports,” has its own 24-hour television network. Bridge and golf were games in the 1950s, but cards remain a game in the 21^st century while golf, the arriviste, has gone athletically mainstream.

Thus, if we see golf as a sport, the urge to memorialize its participants on the field of battle, so to speak, is more understandable. A plaque by the dartboard or the poker table doesn’t feel appropriate because the players just lounged and gabbed and drank. But on the golf course, where the mighty strode and struck — just like the heroes of the Iliad — an impermeable tribute is fitting.

Given that I’ve noticed the phenomenon of on-course tributes to everyday players is a more recent one perhaps there is something to the notion that golf as “sport-over-game” has taken hold — and thus the impulse to memorialize amateur players in the same manner as professional golf heroes makes a lot more sense.

But if this analysis feels incomplete, there’s more that lends golf uniquely to the on-course tribute.

In the famed golf movie Caddyshack, Rodney Dangerfield’s character Al Czervik quips, “…country clubs and cemeteries, biggest waste of prime real estate.” Why did he pair the two together? Both can be places of calm and rest and contemplation. If you are alone on the golf course, things can be as quiet as the grave, and you might stop a moment to reflect — or view someone’s memorial.

One could say the same about skiing, whether downhill or cross country, but skiing is a sport of constant motion, and even if you do stop it’s probably 20 degrees out and you’re unlikely to ruminate for long. And let’s face it, there’s not much to ponder on a hard-top tennis court or the town hockey rink. If you’ve seen one court or rink, you’ve seen them all, but even not too well tended public golf courses have their own charm and individuality. These sui generis attributes bind course to player, and after the player is gone those left behind understand how much the course meant to that person. Thus, they wish to mark forever the synergy of environment and man.

What’s more, golf courses and graveyards are both enjoyed best in perfect weather, if the latter can even be enjoyed, though many a golfer might wish he was dead after a blow-up round. Both settings have exquisitely tended grounds and invite tranquility. A rower, skimming along his favorite river on a calm evening might be similar, but he can’t stop the boat to view a marker (if it could be placed anywhere). On the golf course, you can pause your round to view a plaque in bucolic settings. I’m not sure if those who set up memorials for friends and loved ones on golf courses consciously understand that, but I don’t think it can be coincidence.

Lastly, golf is a sport that reveres tradition and history. Naturally, other sports do as well, but I don’t think to the extent golf does. Golf predates most other modern sports, and what other contemporary athletic endeavor has more picayune rules and devotion to etiquette than golf?

No one would think it odd if a baseball player was ejected from a game for corking his bat, but should a player be disqualified from a tournament for kneeling on a towel? The latter example did indeed happen when a professional golfer (Craig Stadler) had to hit a shot from a kneeling position. He didn’t want to muddy his pants so used a towel, not in any way to aide his shot, but simply to keep his trousers clean. No matter to the rules committee: he was tossed from the tournament.

Pickup basketball is a far rougher experience than a refereed game. What constitutes a foul in the NBA would be considered patty-cake on the playground court. But amateur golf can be just as serious as the top ranks. Go to a public course and try stepping in someone’s putting line or talking during a backswing. You will find little tolerance for such a breach of etiquette no matter what level of golf. Some golfers naturally — unfortunately — cheat, but gaining an edge by getting away with a rule breach, which is seen in most other sports as admirable, is frowned upon in golf. Golfers are famous for turning themselves if an infraction occurs. You’ll never see an NFL defensive back admit he held the jersey of a wide receiver, and you’ll never see a major leaguer on second base cop to stealing signs from the opposing team’s catcher. But in golf, if a player accidentally moves a ball he is addressing, more often than not, he will announce the violation.

How does this relate to life after death in golf? Most athletes, no matter what sport they play, see themselves as part of a brotherhood, but I believe fraternity in golf is stronger than all others. Thus, we take our golf identity with us to the grave, and it is no surprise that those who survive us seek to keep the fires burning brightly for the fallen. And they do it on the golf course, which bonds the quick and the dead to its terrain, its traditions, and its etiquette in a far more palpable way than can any other sport.

***

My grandfather passed away in 2007 in Florida. My grandmother moved closer to us after that (to Massachusetts), and she died in 2015. They were both lifelong golfers, avid fans of the sport and most anything related to it. Combined, they easily played the sport more than 100 years. When my grandmother passed, we had my grandfather’s remains brought to Massachusetts so they could be buried together.

At the funeral service for my grandmother, everyone was encouraged — per Jewish custom — to throw a handful of dirt on the casket. I opted for a sprinkling of golf tees. I recall, before I made the offering, looking to the Rabbi for any signs of disapproval. A more orthodox interpreter of the faith, he did not have a problem with this gesture. There was a smattering more controversy when my mother inquired as to what kind of headstone she could fashion for her parents. She wanted it to be in the shape of a golf green or something to that effect. The rules regarding what kinds of symbols and insignia can be used in a Jewish cemetery are rigid, but it seems my mother’s idea did not violate any Hebraic, death tenet.

I have not been to too many cemeteries, but I can’t say I recall any gravestones that display golf symbols. Again, I’m sure someone will point out where I am wrong on this, but whether or not the practice is common, perhaps this is the better way to honor the passing of a golfer.

As for me — and I’m speaking to my heirs — I would prefer to forego an on-the-course tribute. I understand the impulse, but to me it’s close to a backhanded compliment. Perhaps if you were to emblazon my name on the 18th green of a course I frequented, where it could never be missed, I might agree to the gesture. Every golfer who played the course, each round, would have to see my name and even perhaps aim for it depending on pin placement. But on a bench, beneath a tree, fastened to a ball washer. No thanks. Bury my heart in the graveyard and adorn my resting place there with golf imagery, but don’t remember me with signage on a rock besides the 13^th tee.

I wouldn’t go so far as to incorporate these wishes into my last will and testament, but if this essay could be considered, in the least, legally binding, I hope my successors will heed it.

Again, I beg pardon to those who have paid tribute to a loved one with this kind of memorial. My thoughts on their efforts to remember a father or a husband may seem condescending and rude, but from an eschatological point of view I wonder if any of it matters.

When the sun burns out in another five billion years and flares in its own death throes, the planet earth will most likely be engulfed and incinerated. When this happens, if humanity is even around and still playing golf, all the courses and the Golf Hall of Fame and all of our memories and tributes and everything else will be gone.

What of life after death in golf then? Will any of this matter — this essay included — when the solar system is gone, and there is no one to remember the memories of anything, let alone golfers?

Whether you prefer plaques on the golf course over golf imagery on a cemetery headstone, or vice versa, your best hope is that God or the supreme being or whomever is a golfer. For one thing, it would make all those golf jokes in which God or Jesus figure that much more appropriate. More importantly, all the ball washer and bench markers (and graveyard ones too) will most assuredly matter, for God will have taken note. People might not remember the tribute on the rock or the tree or the headstone, but the Lord will. This may not be much comfort to the atheist-golfer, but for all the praying golfers out there it will be sweet redemption.

As for me, I prefer to remain agnostic about golf, religion, and golf-course memorials. Though I might not want an on course tribute for myself, it’s a testament I’m proud to say is unique to golf. You might not have played to the level of Arnold Palmer or Jason Day, and you may have not been a country club patrician, but you can be remembered in a way that weekend warriors in other sports wouldn’t even contemplate.

 

Randy Steinberg has a master’s degree in film/screenwriting from Boston University. He taught screenwriting at BU from 1999-2010. Since 2011, he has reviewed films, television shows, DVDs, and books for Blast Magazine.com. He has published essays, articles, and short stories in Boston Magazine, The Good Men Project, and The Heat City Literary Review. This is his second Sport Literate essay. He lives in the Greater Boston area.

by John Gifford

It was the final day of the 1989 Tour de France, and French rider and race leader, Laurent Fignon, sat in the start house at the head of the course, straddling his Raleigh, preparing himself for the 24-kilometer (15-mile) time trial that would take him from Versailles to Paris: his hometown, and, on this hot July day, the sporting capital of the world. Dropping his gaze, strands of his long, blond hair fell from his head, radiating out like spokes from a hub and shielding his face from the reporters’ cameras. After three weeks and over 2,000 miles, it had come down to this final stage. The race was Fignon’s to win or lose. What was he thinking? Was he contemplating his strategy? The painful saddle sore he’d acquired in the Alps just a few days earlier? The 50-second advantage he held over American Greg LeMond, whom had just departed the start house ahead of him? Perhaps he was imagining the taste of the champagne he’d sip later that evening, after claiming his third Tour de France victory.

As the Tour’s leader, Fignon had the privilege of starting last and he’d elected to have time splits relayed to him during the race to keep him apprised of his performance. And in what would prove to be perhaps the most momentous decision of his career, the Frenchman declined to have his bike outfitted with aerodynamic handlebars, which LeMond was using today, just as he had a couple weeks earlier, when he’d won the Stage 5 individual time trial. Nor, for that matter, did he elect to wear a helmet, as LeMond and many of the other riders had — a choice less about practicality, perhaps, than vanity. Fignon had a blond ponytail which would flap in the breeze as he made his way onto the Champs Elysees in front of, not only tens of thousands of spectators lining the Paris streets, but also three billion television viewers around the world who were watching what had turned out to be the most exciting Tour de France in recent memory, and, one that, in less than 30 short minutes, would deliver the closest finish in its long history.

At last, Fignon sat up in the saddle and clipped his shoes into the pedals. Now clutching the handlebars, he took a deep breath and exhaled, listening as the official counted down the final five seconds. Cinq! Quatre! Trois! Deux! Un! Then the clock beeped and the crowd roared as Fignon — already a two-time Tour de France champion and the country’s greatest hope to win the 1989 event — rolled out of the start house wearing the maillot jaune of the race leader, his brown legs turning a massive gear, his blond ponytail flapping in the wind as he made his way through the frenetic streets of Versailles, toward Paris, and history.

At the 5-kilometer mark Fignon’s longtime coach, Cyrille Guimard, told his star rider that he’d lost 10 seconds to LeMond. Fignon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Mild panic set in. He pedaled faster.

***

I stood among a small crowd that day, watching the race from inside a sporting goods store in a Carlsbad, California shopping mall. I was 19 years old and a passionate cyclist who hoped to one day turn professional and ride in the Tour de France. Six years earlier, I’d watched Fignon win the 1983 Tour and I was thrilled to see him competing for a third title today after winning the Giro d’Italia (Tour of Italy) only the month before. Like my father, I was heavily involved in bicycle racing. But whereas his favorite rider was Bernard Hinault, the famous Frenchman and five-time Tour de France champion, who was nicknamed “The Badger” for his unrelenting tenacity, Fignon was my hero and I cheered for him now, even as the others rooted for LeMond, America’s best rider. It was easy to understand why. LeMond was a nice guy. He was always smiling and willing to talk to the press. The French loved him because he was fluent in their language. Fans around the world admired him because he gave them hope. After surviving a hunting accident only a few years earlier, and now vying for the Tour de France title, with residual shotgun pellets still imbedded in his body, he seemed to suggest that anything was possible. Watching him sail along the streets at 34 miles-per-hour, hunched over the aerodynamic handlebars in an efficient, wind-cheating posture, he reminded me of Superman.

Fignon exuded a different kind of charisma. With his wire-rimmed spectacles and thin, blond hair, he was the most unique and interesting rider in the peloton, as far as I was concerned. The other riders had nicknamed him “The Professor,” not only for the eyeglasses he wore, but also for the fact that Fignon was one of the few riders in the peloton to have completed his baccalaureate exams. After winning the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984, he was one of cycling’s biggest stars, and yet he shunned reporters and cameras. When he did give an interview, he appeared guarded and mysterious. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and he gave the impression he didn’t want you to know. He was aloof. He was distant. His responses to questions were often witty quips. I liked that. He had an appetite for Stephen King novels. I liked that, too.

What many reporters and fans disliked about him was his arrogance. After his 1983 Tour victory, Fignon traded his Renault for a Ferrari. “Everyone drives one of these!” he said with a sniff, much to the dismay of the French who were discovering that, in Fignon, they had a hero they could not afford, nor tolerate. He threw water bottles at reporters, spat at cameras, and generally allowed the world to see him at his absolute worst. Still, I liked him. Fignon seemed to go at his pace and do things his way, something I’ve always tried to do.

Mostly, I admired Fignon for his ability on the bike, and for his graceful, flowing style, which, unfortunately, wasn’t apparent on the final day of the 1989 Tour de France. I assumed the saddle sores were tormenting him. Still, he was a brilliant tactician and I had confidence he could hold on to the lead, especially given the final stage’s short, 15-mile course. Having begun the day with a 50-second advantage over LeMond, it seemed reasonable that he would win, even if the American turned in a brilliant performance. I think everyone expected this, because when the Frenchman crossed the finish line that day, collapsing and falling to the ground, reeling in the reality of his defeat, the cameramen mobbed him while the television announcers exclaimed — never mind that Greg LeMond had just made what may have been the greatest comeback in sports history — “Laurent Fignon has lost the Tour de France!”

The loss would haunt him the rest of his life.

***

It was a crash that heralded the end of my cycling career. While out on a training ride one day I overlapped another rider’s back wheel. I remember looking down at my front wheel veering into the other wheel and knowing I was going to go down. A moment later I was sliding across the highway, feeling the pavement peeling away the skin on my knees and elbows, and burning a hole into my chin. Fortunately, I’d been wearing a helmet, though the crash had still knocked me out for an instant. I don’t remember falling or hitting the ground; I only remember overlapping the other wheel, and the sight of a distant car approaching as I slid across the highway on the side of my face.

I was out of commission for several days. I couldn’t walk or drive my car. I didn’t ride my bike again for weeks, and when I finally did, I began to realize I was never going to become a professional road racer. Whereas I’d once been fearless on my bike, now, riding at high speeds unnerved me and I was afraid of crashing. I might have overcome this setback — rather quickly, even — but my day job prevented me from spending more time in the saddle. Time I needed to reacquaint myself with high speeds, and to put in many miles on the road. Time I didn’t have. Time I spent, instead, at the office.

It simply wasn’t going to happen for me, and as frustrating as this was, I had to accept it.

Eventually, I sold my bike and took up running. It was a sport I loved, and still do, for its inherent simplicity. Not only this, but running shoes are much less expensive than a racing bicycle. And I can get a great workout in 45 minutes — the same amount of time it used to take me to warm up before a long bike ride.

***

Fignon always considered himself a winner. And he was. In addition to his two Tour de France victories, he won the French National Championship in 1984, the Giro d’Italia in 1989 — after losing this same race on the very last stage only five years before — and was twice winner of the Milan-San Remo classic (1988 and 1989), to name a few of his accomplishments. As his team’s leader — Fignon rode for the Renault, Système U, Super U, and Castorama cycling teams before spending the final two years of his career as co-captain and mentor to the rising Italian star, Gianni Bugno, on the Gatorade-Chateau d’Ax squad — he was often expected to allow his teammates to win smaller, less prestigious races. Instead, especially during his prime years in the mid- to late-1980s, Fignon rode in these races to win, preferring to bask in the glory himself.

When his teammates complained that he was too quiet, that he never discussed his personal life with anyone, Fignon said, “They are paid to ride for me, not be my friends.” He once commented that his combative nature was essential to him being able to compete at such a high level, an attitude reflected, perhaps, in the Federation of International Cycling Professionals (FICP) rankings. In 1989, the year he lost the Tour de France by eight seconds to Greg LeMond, the year the press awarded him the Prix Citron (Lemon Prize) for his rudeness during the Tour, Fignon was the world’s No. 1 rider.

By virtue of his previous Tour de France wins, and all-around talent, he was a star and allowed to do things his way. Things like climbing off his bike, ducking into the team car and abandoning a race if he started poorly or if the weather conditions were not to his liking. Others might criticize him, but Fignon always found a way to come back and contend for another victory. As a professional, he knew the exact conditions necessary for him to have the best chance of winning, and, in the absence of such criteria, he had no problem waiting for the next race, and favorable conditions.

This attitude helped teach me the importance of listening to my own body, that I didn’t have to train if I felt tired, that it was okay if I didn’t want to run in cold weather. While I haven’t always enjoyed the luxury of deciding when and how I’ll train, now that I do, I’m reminded that a champion knows when to compete and when to rest.

In my own athletic endeavors, from racing bikes to running, I have always remembered Fignon, his temperamental personality and the competitiveness he displayed throughout his career. While serving in the Marine Corps, I ran 20 miles or more every week. As enthusiastic as I was about competition, I entered races and sometimes won them. Much of my semiannual performance reviews were based on my Physical Fitness Tests (PFTs), which consisted of a 3-mile run, 20 pull-ups, and 80 sit-ups within a two-minute period. These reviews were actually competitions, with accolades and bragging rights going to the winner. I trained for them like someone obsessed, usually finishing at or near the top of my company. Everyone who knew me regarded me as a model Marine, both for my work ethic and for my physical fitness — qualities I’ve tried to carry into civilian life and middle age.

I still run, primarily for enjoyment, but also for the health and psychological benefits it brings. Going out on a hot summer day and putting in five miles is one of the most invigorating and cleansing things I know of. Often, I’ll think of Fignon and what others must have thought at seeing him ride by, his blond ponytail streaming out behind him, so cultured and debonair, and yet always willing to attack and compete for the win. When I see another runner up ahead, something in me changes and I find myself turning the situation into a race. Maybe it’s a way of briefly reliving my athletic prime, or perhaps it’s only a test to find out how much gas I’ve left in the tank. Regardless, I give it everything I have to catch and pass the other runner. Even more motivating is spotting another runner behind me. This forces me to push myself, to increase my speed and focus on my form to ensure he doesn’t catch me — because I tell myself that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. This is as much a mental challenge as a physical one, and it’s a game I recall playing during my cycling days, when I would put my head down and push a big gear, trying to establish a steady rhythm to put as much distance as possible between myself and my nearest competitor. As I pedaled, I would try to emulate Fignon, even his facial gestures. I grimaced. I squinted. I even forced myself to smile while ascending steep hills. Though my legs and lungs were burning, I persevered, knowing it would certainly demoralize my opponents to see me smiling while they, too, were suffering.

***

In the years since the 1989 Tour de France, it’s been proposed time and time again that, had Fignon simply used aerodynamic handlebars that day, as LeMond did, he would have won the race. Granted, at the time, these strange triathlon handlebars were still a novelty in the European peloton. And because of the obvious aerodynamic — and time saving — advantages they afforded, they were also controversial. But they worked for LeMond, who demonstrated just how much more efficient they were than Fignon’s handlebars, which forced him to scoop air like a sail, slowing him, costing him the race.

It has also been proposed that, had Fignon worn an aerodynamic helmet, as LeMond did, he would have won the Tour de France.

Some have dared to suggest that Fignon could have won the Tour simply by cutting off his wind-catching ponytail. But of all three scenarios, this was certainly the least likely. After all, if there is anything the French expect of their champions, it is panache, the concept of verve, style, flamboyance. When one wears the maillot jaune, they believe, this person, above all others, must ride with panache. For the French, it’s a matter of style and pride. And dignity. Fignon understood this, perhaps better than any other rider in the 1989 Tour de France. And he upheld this concept to the best of his considerable abilities, which led to his defeat.

The French never forgave him for it.

***

Part of what intrigued me about Fignon was the Tour de France, itself: the world’s largest annual sporting event and, arguably, the greatest, covering over 2,000 miles in three weeks, attracting more than 10 million spectators along its route, fans who come out to see some of the most elite athletes in all of sports — athletes who race 100 miles or more during a single stage, burning up to 10,000 calories a day — push their bodies to limits humans were not designed to reach. The event is so arduous and demanding that teams groom their young riders, limiting their involvement to a select number of stages, sometimes for several years, before allowing them to complete an entire Tour. Which makes Fignon’s 1983 victory even more remarkable. It was his first time competing in the event and, at 22, he became the youngest rider in half a century to win it.

***

In 1987, after Greg LeMond’s near-fatal hunting accident, Fignon was the only European rider, outside LeMond’s own team, to send the American a get-well note.

***

Over the years, I lost track of Fignon. After I took up running, I no longer subscribed to the cycling papers which had once kept me informed about the sport, and I found myself less interested in following the Tour de France, probably because I no longer recognized any of the riders.

To my great surprise, however, some years ago, during graduate school, one of the students I tutored brought his physiology textbook into the writing lab one day. On the book’s cover was Fignon, a photo from his racing days. He sat on a treadmill in what looked like some kind of medical laboratory, his long, blond hair falling onto his bare chest, to which was connected all sorts of electronic devices to monitor his heart and lungs. There was even a tube fitted into his mouth to measure his maximum rate of oxygen consumption. Elite cyclists have always astounded scientists for their seemingly superhuman endurance capacities, and I suppose Fignon was at the top of this list for not only for his athletic abilities, but also his colorful character. He made you want to look at him and listen to what he might say next. And, like him or not, you respected him for what he could do on a bicycle.

By now (2010) we were well into the Internet age and Fignon had long since retired from professional cycling. Occasionally, something would remind me of him and one day it occurred to me that I could search the Web to find out what The Professor had been up to in recent years. I was elated to discover that he’d written an autobiography, We Were Young and Carefree, which had just been published in English and which I wasted no time in ordering. I was also shocked to learn that he had just died of cancer at the young age of 50.

It took several weeks to receive the book, which shipped from England. When it arrived, I read it in a few short days, fascinated by Fignon’s account of his life — before, during, and after his cycling career. But I was saddened by the pain he surely carried around with him in the years since the 1989 Tour de France. For the opening chapter of his book, which is entitled, “Eight Seconds,” begins with an epigraph:

“Ah. I remember you: you’re the guy who lost the Tour de France by eight seconds!”

“No, monsieur. I’m the guy who won the Tour twice.”

 

John Gifford is the author of the story collections, Wish You Were Here (Big Table, 2016) and Freeze Warning, which was named a finalist for the 2015 Press 53 Short Fiction Award. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Saturday Evening Post, Southwest Review, U.S. News and World Report, and elsewhere. He lives in Oklahoma.

Poetry talk and poems from Charles W. Brice

by Nicholas Reading

Charles W. Brice’s poems root us. They root us in the Wort Hotel, Jackson Hole, Wyoming while the speaker witnesses his parents’ violent argument. They root us in PGE Park for a triple A game between the Portland Beavers and the Tacoma Rainiers while a father and son, for five dollars a piece, reinforce bonds in a way that seems possible only at a baseball game. They root us in Walloon Lake and the Odawa Casino while three friends find a meal after a long hike. And through these places and events, Brice roots us in reflection, nostalgia, the importance of being still and listening. Family, friends, nuns and pitchers populate his poems and his subjects are brought to life and treated with compassion. His echoes range from Nietzsche to Robin Williams, from Elvis to Yeats. Brice’s new collection Flashcuts Out of Chaos (WordTech Editions, 2016) is an impressive and fresh look at the natural world around us and the world we inhabit naturally. The poems are finely crafted and provide a measured and valuable glimpse into the complexity of the human condition.

Brice was kind enough to take time out of a busy summer to field SL inquires. We cover his inspiration, love of sports, and Mario Lemieux’s broken puck. Warning, there are frightening, though heartfelt, accounts of nuns.

Nicholas Reading: What does poetry mean to you?
Charles W. Brice: Poetry names the unnameable. When I was in practice as a psychoanalyst, I often recommended poems to my patients when we, the patient and I, were having trouble articulating what he/she was going through. “Margaret Are You Grieving,” by Hopkins and “It May Not Always Be So; And I say,” by Cummings, were favorites. They both named the tremendously complicated field of loss that reduction to a few psychological shibboleths just wouldn’t cover.

NR: What does sport mean to you?
CWB: To me, sport is something, along with poetry, music, dance, that makes life worth living. The Penguins just won the Stanley Cup and all of Pittsburgh came together to celebrate. Sport is a way of connecting to people, something precious we have in common. Of course, my great friend, Jim Hutt is a big Sharks fan, so it can also be a means of lording a win over a good friend from now until eternity!

NR: Is the intersection between poetry and sports a natural one for you?
CWB: Absolutely. Especially when it comes to baseball. Everything about the game is poetic, from the way the pitcher addresses the mound to the “psychology” that goes on when there’s two out in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded.

NR: Was a love of sports a common denominator in your house?
CWB: I lived the first 18 years of my life in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My dad was a great baseball fan. He drank too much and wasn’t exactly talkative, but we had good times watching the Game of the Week with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reece. I used to love listening to Diz ruin the English language. In our house in Pittsburgh — when Ari was five, I responded to a flyer asking if I’d like our son to be in an under 6-year-old soccer league. I checked the “yes” box and the box that said I would volunteer to help the organization (which was just getting underway). I included a note that I didn’t know the difference between a golf ball and a soccer ball, but would be happy to answer the telephone, stuff envelops, etc… . I went on vacation and came back and got a call from my “assistant coach.” Thank god, my so called “assistant,” Bill Modoono, played soccer in college and knew the game. I was a coach for five years, until Ari became good enough to be on an all-star team. I loved every minute of it. So yes, sports have always been a big deal in the Brice family. Oh, one more thing: when Ari was 10 we got his mom, my wife, Judy, a present for Mother’s Day: a Spalding infielder’s mitt! Now, as I wrote in my poem, “The Game,” Judy thinks that a baseball game should last as long as it takes her to eat some ballpark food. So she is no great fan, but she was a terrific sport. We spent a good part of Mother’s Day playing catch!

The Game

Twenty-one years of Ariel beam
from under a baseball cap. “We’re going
to the game tonight,” he says,
“The Portland Beavers Vs. The Tacoma Rainiers.”
He knows that I’ll love it
and apologizes to his mother
who thinks baseball should last
as long as it takes to eat a foot-long and fries.
Five dollars a piece that night to sit
behind home plate. It turns out that
the difference between triple A baseball
and the major leagues is 25 bucks a seat.
The scoreboard is hand operated:
no hits, no runs, and a bald head
where the errors should be.
It’s hair cut night! Ten barbers
stationed in PGE Park give fans
their choice of haircuts. A radio
announcer sits in the 20^th row,
swinging his arms over his head,
doing a Harry Caray imitation
during the 7^th inning stretch.
Arms around each other Ari and I sing,
“Take me out to the ball game.”
“I love you, dad,” he says.
I kiss his cheek, laugh out loud;
slap him on the back. I really
don’t care if I ever get back.

NR: Your poem, “The Game,” has so many interesting layers. On one level it seems to act as a metaphor for the current American consciousness. Triple A vs MLB. The haves and have-nots. And ultimately it is a poem about family and love. Can you speak to the ways in which sports unite us? About their importance to our communities? To us personally?
CWB: Sport ties us all together and makes for memories that will outlive all of us. The first time I took our son to a hockey game, he was five years old. In those days (31 years ago), I got tickets in the first row at the old Igloo for $20 apiece. At some point, Mario Lemieux scored his 17^th goal of the season. He broke the puck in the process. Yes, broke it! The ref took a look at Ari and me, skated over, and flipped that puck over the plexiglass and gave it to us. Ari still has that puck. At baseball games, no matter what age he was, Ari would talk and talk to me. We could talk about anything at a game. This is still true. He’ll tell his grandchildren about some of those games.

NR: In your house, what is it like when your team loses? When your team wins?
CWB: Big celebrations with wins, philosophical statements about another day when we lose.

NR: What opportunities do you see in using sport as the poem’s subject?
CWB: Sports just lend themselves to poetry. Anytime I can, I use sport as a subject. In the poems I’ve sent you, “Safe at Home” is about McCutchen and what a terrific athlete he is, but also about the fact that young African American males are in grave danger in our present society. “Blatherskites,” addresses identity, baseball, and the hypocrisy and confusion of modern psychoanalysis. All kinds of subjects are kicked off by contemplating the deeper meanings of sports.

NR: Your poem, “Three Blatherskites and You’re Out,” is a wonderful read. You write:

“So many struggle all their lives
to find themselves;
create and sustain
an identity.”

And the poem is introduced by a quote from Charlie Morton that reads, “…I’ve get to get my bread and butter back. That slider is what I am.” It would seem that your identities are intertwined. Can you talk about that poem a bit more and where you found the inspiration?
CWB: Ha! You are analyzing the analyst! I’d never noticed the fact that Charlie and I have the same first name! You have made me read my own poem differently now. I’d go with Charlie Morton’s assessment that his being is in his slider. You may have noticed from my other poems that I’m a Sartrean at heart (even though I make fun of him—I make fun of everyone and everything). I would go with CM’s feeling that he is what he does, or what he throws, in his case. We humans are never static or positional unless we are dead. We are always there, always throwing, always out ahead of ourselves. I am a poet so long as I write poems. Charlie is his slider until he throws a curve ball!

NR: Your poem, “My First Poetry Teacher,” which follows, is especially intriguing. The layers go from Cheyenne to Longfellow to . . . martyr? What did this first poetry teacher mean to you?

My First Poetry Teacher

If she liked you, Sister Humbert would
pull out her pen and draw a red check
mark on your cheek, grab that cheek
between thumb and forefinger, and
shake it back and forth until you screamed.

When you angered her she’d wrap fifteen
decades of rosary around your throat and tug,
or cold-cock you as she did Ronnie Davis
one frigid Cheyenne morning when he
pushed through a crowd of girls to get into our
classroom and its promised warmth.

She knocked Ronnie on his ass with a hard right
to the nose. People crossed themselves while
Ronnie rose up like some sixth grade god and
landed one to her gut. She fell like a huge
cottonwood strewn with Halloween toilet tissue.
The clangor of rosary beads when she hit the tile
made Hector’s fallen armor sound silent and inglorious.

She made us memorize poems that year.
Mine was Longfellow’s, “Excelsior!”
Some young Alpine buck climbed a
mountain pass even though a wise old
peasant warned him not to, and a maiden
offered him her breasts for a pillow, an
image that electrified my eleven year
mind. People crossed themselves, but they
found him dead in the snow the next day:
“There in the twilight, cold and gray,
lifeless but beautiful he lay,” was Longfellow’s
description, which also described Sister
Humbert’s Dominican habit, with its black
grotto hood and white scapular, and Ronnie’s
face as she led him away from us forever.

CWB: “My First Poetry Teacher” is a completely true story. Sr. Mary Humbert, OP, was my sixth grade teacher. I didn’t know it then, of course, but I’ve come to see her, and the vast majority of her colleagues (Dominican nuns), as some of the most disturbed, sadistic, and cruel people I’ve ever met. Clinically, she was a sadist through and through. She was also very stupid, as were most of the nuns that taught me. Stupid and mean: a horrible combination (cf. George W. Bush). I went on a road trip about 10 years ago with a friend of mine, Jim Hutt, who was also taught by Dominican nuns and who is also a psychologist. He felt, and I concurred, that we had been psychologically abused by those nuns. In my poem, “Burnt Offering,” I relate another true story of a nun, Sr. Silvester, slapping my friend Bill who, she was convinced, was smirking at her. He had been badly burned in the face over the summer and what she took as a smirk was his attempt to smile through scars. I have another poem, “Follow Me,” just accepted by Borfski Press, that recounts how, in second grade, our nun decided to dress a little boy named Pat in a girl’s pink dress, shoes, with a pink bow in his hair and force him to go out for recess where grades 1 through 5 had a wonderful time shaming him. This was for the sin of being talkative (what today we’d call ADD). You know, in Ireland, the priest molestation scandal metastasized to include nuns who had horribly mistreated mostly young pregnant women. I sometimes wish that some of these people could be held accountable in this country, but mostly I want to let it go. Sr. Humbert would mark us with pens, grab our cheeks and aggressively shake our mouths around. I’m sure now, clinically speaking, that she was getting sexual thrills by doing so. Not all the nuns were like that. There’s a poem in Flashcuts about Sr. Johanna who, along with Sr. Marie (both English teachers), inspired me to read good literature and to think. Sadly, these were the only two who were encouraging. In his heartfelt elegy, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” W. H. Auden wrote, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” I can say that these mad nuns hurt me into poetry, and for that I’m grateful. They may have been sadistic dolts, but they were terrific muses!

NR: Spirituality, as it relates to the natural world, seems central to your sensibility. “Walking Townsend Road, Petoskey, Michigan,” is a good example. It is a poem that is driven by Buddhist tenants and also a Midwestern appreciation of nature. How did you find that intersection? And I dare ask, what is the importance of spirituality to the poet?

 

Walking Townsend Road, Petoskey, Michigan

One day it’s the red-twigged dogwoods
ringed by rag weed yellows and
chicory blues that clarify mind
and confirm insignificance.

Another day it’s the garter snake
whose crushed head reassures
and saddens, the long green body
pocked with purple checks
stretched out on the southbound lane,
the sheen of life still coats its skin,
its breath, now, of the expired world
where there is only awe.

Today, like Buddahs at sunset,
three sand hill cranes stand
on Billeau’s farm facing West,
enacting contrariness. Rusty
feathers hug their shoulders
like prayer robes,
as maples and ashes
ablaze in crimson and orange,
conduct cornstalk symphonies
in the dying autumn sun.

Against sunset’s gleam
it’s hard to tell, at first,
whether those cranes are deer
or birds or monks.
Their hunched silhouettes mark
the force of sun over meadow,
breeze over grass: a tyranny of calm
in this bloody, battle-fed, world.

CWB:  It’s wonderful that you picked up on the “spirituality” as it refers to the natural world in my poetry. That combination comes from the influence of Jim Harrison on my writing. I was lucky enough to know Jim and spend some time with him. He was a totally original American character. We once spent 15 minutes on the phone trying to understand what a dog’s thinking process was. We were especially intrigued by how smell was represented in the dog brain. Anyway, it was his fascination with the natural world and his respect for Native American spirituality that rubbed off on me. I am an atheist, so the spirituality to which I refer has to do with what Nietzsche or Sartre meant when they spoke of the human spirit. Nature presents us with something that is strictly beyond us. We are part of nature, but we’ll never capture its essence. Every time I walk down Townsend Road (which is near a cottage we have on Walloon Lake in Petoskey), I experience something new, something completely beyond me. It reminds me of one of Jim’s favorite sayings, “You can’t step in the same river even once.” On the other hand, I’m a big fan of Buddhism (there is no god in Buddhism—you can have one if you want, but in terms of the dogma, a god is not there). The idea that all we are is what we are in the moment makes us appreciate the moment. My idea in this poem was to capture a moment that I was present to, that lifted me out of myself.

NR: I’d love to hear about how you came to the title of your collection, Flashcuts Out of Chaos. Could you talk about how you transition between poems, subjects, and “scenes instantaneously, with no time for fade-in or fade-outs.”
CWB: So neat that you asked about the title. I had a number of titles before settling on Flashcuts: The Inverted World, and Chaosed in Love’s Love. The title comes from the last couple lines of my poem, “Fall, Up North.” I’d had another ending to that poem for months that was weak. I just didn’t like it, so I let the poem sit around for another few months. In the meantime I was writing a screenplay with my friend Ivan Rami and, of course, I was involved with all the screenwriting lingo. In our screenplay I wrote several scenes that were Fade Ins, Fade Outs, and several that were Flashcuts. A Flashcut is an instantaneous switching of one scene to another. I realized, when I went back to “Fall, Up North,” that much of life is an instantaneous switch from one event to the next, and that this walk that we were on was a flashcut out of the chaos of our lives. How many times in life are we involved in one thing, only to have something else completely take us into another realm—whether that be illness, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the publication of a book, or even a gorgeous sunset? Life is chaotic. For me it has no ultimate meaning. We must make meaning where we live: in the tiny scenes of our lives, that’s where we find the beauty, the splendor of existence.

Fall, Up North

Everything dying up here
is so alive. We walk
through a maple leaf blast,
the deep red explosion
coating us in color, anointing

our entry into gamboge
birch and aspen—
leaves lit as if from within.
No wonder our dog, Mugsi,
thinks they’re as energized

and happy as her tail.
Our neighbor, Jim, on
this morning walk with us,
points to a patch of myrtle
he’s planted that will creep,
if we live long enough,
towards our property.
Judy sits on a step

at the public access park,
and for the trillionth time
is flummoxed by the sun
beads bouncing across
Walloon Lake, its blue
liquid canvas conducting
the daytime lightshow.
We watch in reverence.

On the way back Judy
wants to turn right when
I know we should turn
left. Jim knows it, too,
and we watch as Judy
finally reads the road sign,
sighs, and says we should turn
left. Never undone, she declares
that Jim is right while I am wrong
(that’s forty years of marriage
in a song). Hungry,
at walk’s end, we decide on lunch
at the Odawa Casino. They
once owned all we just saw:
their leaves a bed for spring trillium,
their eyes the hues of autumn
identical to the land we love. Now

their ears the mind-numbing
clang of slot machines, their eyes
every color not known to nature.
We get the senior buffet special,
all you can eat for seven bucks apiece.
They’ve done a fine job with the casino,
the food is spectacular, Judy and Jim
eat the fish while I enjoy a steaming
bowl of bean and ham soup. Mugsi

waits asleep in the car. She dreams
of leaves that fly away from her
like the moths and butterflies
she loves to chase. I dream
that we four will take this walk
again, this flashcut out of chaos,
this path with all the right turns.

NR: SL is a journal devoted to “honest reflections on life’s leisurely diversions.” Many of your poems embody this philosophy. A walk through the woods and you consider mortality. These moments demand meaningful perspective. Can you speak to how those walks, those moments, influence your writing? Your life?
CWB: Poetry, like sport, lives in the details and awareness of the details makes life more worthwhile. A walk down Townsend Road in Michigan is enhanced because you start to notice all the details. The same happens when you notice how Melencon dances on both feet before going into his windup, or how Stargell pumped his bat before waiting for the pitch. If you pay attention to these details, the world is a brighter more vibrant place.

NR: Do you see any parallels between preparing for a game and preparing to write?
CWB: This is a great question! I’ve never thought about it. I guess the parallel for me is the anticipation: when I sit down to write a poem I really don’t know how it will end. Often the endings are very surprising. Sometimes the poem I thought I was writing is really about something else. The same happens when getting ready to watch a game, or even play a game: part of the excitement is not knowing how it’s going to end.

NR: Your collection, Flashcuts Out of Chaos, deals with family and relationships, politics and sports, the liminal and the metaphysical. Can you speak to the unique opportunities that poetry offers the author, and the reader, to communicate in new and authentic ways?
CWB: Poetry is a succinct form. Done correctly, it gathers vast amounts of experience, expression, and feeling into a very small space. Poetry is the only art form where each line, each word, becomes tremendously important and where stanza breaks become critical. Because of this, the communication value of poetry is tremendous. It packs a punch in each line, each stanza. This allows a tremendous amount of information to be communicated and allows the listener/reader to interact with the poem. Each poem becomes the reader’s poem.

NR: In the end, what value have sports brought to your life? To your writing?
CWB: I am who I am because I write and because I love sports. The bonds brought by both interests are tremendous. I don’t particularly care for football, but every season I, and three of my cronies, get together and go to a sports bar in the Burgh and watch the Stillers (yes, that’s how you must spell it). A friend’s daughter made us red baseball hats that read: Stiller Scholars. Of course, we hardly watch the game. We gab about our children and our careers and complain about our spouses, you know, the usual. I’ve already touched upon the wonderful memories and connections sport has brought between Judy, Ari, and me.

NR: This last question is broad, I know, but I expect your answer to be illuminating. What brought you to poetry? As a reader? As a writer?
CWB: What brought me to poetry? When I was 16, my mother bought me a portable Royal typewriter. For some reason I immediately began to write poems on it. I didn’t save any of them, but I enjoyed the writing. At that time, however, I was a drummer in a rock band, and later in a soul band, and my world was music. In senior year of high school we were allowed to bring in the poems of a writer we admired. This was in Sr. Marie’s English class. I have no memories of what poet I found, but one of the other students, a girl named Bonnie, brought in e. e. cummings. I was blown away and became a huge fan. The first poem I ever memorized was, “It May Not Always Be So; and I Say.” I wrote poems all through college, but stopped when I met my wife to be, Judith Alexander Brice. I read her poems, which were terrific, and decided that I had no talent. Judy, by the way, published a splendid book of poetry three years ago entitled, Renditions in a Palette (David Robert Books). So I didn’t write poems for 20 years. About 16 years ago I talked Judy into going to a writer’s conference in Michigan, the Walloon Writers’ Retreat. I wanted to be a novelist and short story writer. Again, the faculty there seemed to be much more interested in Judy’s poetry than my fiction. I met some incredible poets there: Maria Maziotti Gillan, Marie Howe, Dorianne Laux, Robert Fanning, M. L. Liebler, Tomas Lux, and others. In a workshop with Maria Gillan I wrote a poem, “The Game,” about going to a minor league baseball game with our son, Ariel. I just sort of tossed it off. I had sent a short story to the journal, “Barbaric Yawp,” and they turned it down. So, just for fun, I sent them “The Game.” They accepted it right away! While I kept writing stories, I started writing poetry in earnest. I have had tremendous success as a poet. My poetry has appeared in over 45 publications. I write poetry every day. It’s like breathing to me now.

Charles W. Brice is a recovering psychoanalyst. His first poetry collection, Flashcuts Out of Chaos, was published by WordTech Editions in June 2016. His poetry has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Avalon Literary Journal, The Paterson Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Spitball, VerseWrights, The Writing Disorder, and elsewhere. He is an International Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review’s Poetry 2015 International Poetry Competition, and his poem, “Wild Pitch,” was named one of the 75 best poems in Spitball magazine.

Nicholas Reading is the poetry editor of Sport Literate. He is the author of the chapbook The Party In Question (Burnside Review Press, 2007) and Love & Sundries (SplitLip Press, 2014). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bat City Review, jubilat, Nimrod, Painted Bride Quarterly, and San Pedro River Review.

Elegy for Ebbets

by Michael Steinberg

2002: Two years ago last spring I was in Minneapolis on a Saturday night, looking for something to do. It was early April, a cold, drizzly evening. The writing conference was over, and my plane didn’t take off until the next morning.

“Let’s go see the Twins and the Orioles,” my colleague, Tom Romano, says. “Ripkin’s only three away from his three thousandth. Maybe it’ll happen tonight.”

“Are you kidding?” I say. It’s 35 degrees out there.”

Tom reminds me that the Metrodome’s an indoor stadium. This perks me up a bit. As a kid I used to haunt major league ball parks. When I was 13, my dad and I visited every National League stadium, beginning with the three in New York and ending up in St. Louis. Back then, there were only eight teams in each league.
So it’s not unusual that I lost some passion for baseball when all the domed, Astro turf stadiums were built. Tonight, in fact, will be the first time I’ve ever been inside one.

***

I grew up in New York in the 1950s, an era, according to Roger Kahn, “when the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants ruled the world.” Hyperbole aside, baseball may not have ruled the world, but it surely was a city-wide religion. And its three ball parks were our houses of worship.

Each of the three — Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field were shoe-horned into surrounding neighborhoods. And each had its own idiosyncratic character. The left and right field foul lines at the Stadium were less than 300 feet from home plate, while the left center and right field powers alleys were over 400 feet away. The Polo Grounds was shaped like a horseshoe and had even shorter foul lines — 279 down the left field line, and 257 in right field — while the clubhouse in dead center was almost 500 feet from the plate. Both parks had seating capacities of over 50,000.

But to me, Ebbets was the most alluring of the three. A 32,000-seat bandbox of a park set in the heart of Flatbush, it radiated a cozy intimacy and a quirky ambiance that the others lacked. From the center field bleachers, you could hear left fielder “Shotgun” Shuba yell to center fielder Duke Snider, “I got it, Duke;” and from the upper deck behind first, you could see the grimace on Jackie Robinson’s face as he went head-to-head with umpire Jocko Conlon.

At Ebbets the double-decker grandstand in center field dramatically jutted away to a 40-foot high black concrete scoreboard that extends to a 10-foot vertical screen. Our right fielder, Carl Furillo, “the Reading Rifle,” knew how to play every carom off that wall. Then there was the (seeming) ease with which Duke Snider could crank rainbow home runs over the huge scoreboard.

***

Our cab approaches the Metrodome. Through the mist the stadium looks like a gigantic parachute. Like most domed parks, it’s a generic, multi-purpose structure that houses college and professional football, as well as basketball and rock concerts. Still, I feel a twinge of anticipation when I step up to the outside ticket kiosk and ask for the two best field boxes between home and first. It kicks me back in time to the moment when I bought my first set of tickets at Ebbets Field.

***

My throat tightens with anticipation when the five of us approach the rotunda entrance to the old gray concrete and steel park at 55 Sullivan Place, on the corner of Franklin Avenue. “I’ll get the tickets” I said to my pals. I felt so grown-up, so important, when I stepped up to the General Admission window and squinted through the wire mesh screen where the chubby, bald-headed ticket seller perched. He was wearing a green see thru visor and puffing on a stinky cigar.

Knowing the other guys were watching, I barked out “Gimme your five best general admissions, upper deck between third and home. And not behind a post, okay?”

The guy blows stale cigar smoke in my face, and without looking up he fanned the orange tickets like a deck of cards and pulls four from the middle. “That’ll be six and a quarter, Jack. Step up, pal, who’s next?” he barked, as he slid a small white envelope beneath the wire screen. For a buck and a quarter apiece, we got four upper deck seats, third row, right between third and home.

“These are fantastic. How’d you get ‘em?” asked Heshie.
“Man, I told you I know how to handle ticket guys” I said.

I was 12 when I saw Ebbets Field for the first time. When my four friends, Heshie, Kenny, Sugar, Billy and I passed through the third base portal, I surveyed the field for a long moment, entranced by what I saw: emerald green, manicured grass surrounding a smooth, tan/brown infield; powdered sugar foul lines and chalky, white-wash bases; the imposing right field scoreboard; and multi-colored outfield billboards advertising “Abe Stark: Hit This Sign and Win a Suit,” and “Fill ‘er up with Tydol, ‘Flying ’A.” It was as if I’d stepped through the Looking Glass.

As Ebbets filled up, you could hear the lazy hum and buzz of the pre-game crowd, smell the pungent odor of Schaefer beer, munch on a brown bag of Planter’s salted peanuts, and witness the counter man casually tossing Harry M. Stevens’ hot dogs into a huge bubbling vat.

Then I’d watch, transfixed, as the Dodgers played “pepper” and took pre-game batting practice. From any section of the stands, you’d hear a solid “thwack” as wooden bats connected with horsehide baseballs. The echo reverberated throughout the canyons of the slowly filling ball park. While outside on Bedford Avenue, scruffy neighborhood kids with old leather mitts, camped under the scoreboard, waiting to scramble for batting practice “dingers.”

Throughout pre-game warm-ups, the five of us kept up a steady stream of chatter: quoting stats, playing baseball initials, arguing with neighboring fans about the new pennant race, and reliving “classic” Dodger games from the past. Heshie mentioned Bobby Thomson’s homer. It jump-started me back to that early October afternoon last fall. I was at Hebrew School recess when I heard the news. For the rest of the lesson, I sat under a tree and cried. Even my teacher, Arthur Hoffman, couldn’t coax me inside.

While the others swapped stories, I was remembering an early June afternoon when my dad picked up my brother Alan and me at school, and took us to a day game against the Cubs. It was Alan’s first time at Ebbets. For the first few innings he was flushed both with the euphoria that comes from witnessing your first big league game, and the rush you feel when you’re playing hooky for the first time. By the fifth inning though, he was bored. While my 7-year-old brother nodded off, Carl Erskine retired the last 12 Cubbies to complete the first live no-hitter I ever saw. I still remember how exhilarated I was on the last play of the game. When Eddie Miksis hit an easy ground ball to Pee Wee Reese, I neatly penciled 6-3 in my scorecard and then jumped to my feet to watch as players and fans headed for the mound to celebrate.

***

All throughout batting practice, we stood with our mitts on behind the box seats between third and home, and sometimes when foul balls bounced crazily off the concrete promenade we wrestled for the prized souvenirs with Bensonhurst hoods — guys who sported greasy D. A. haircuts and wore pegged pants, motorcycle jackets, and black shit kickers.

An hour before the game, we drifted over to the right field bullpen to watch “The Knothole Gang,” WOR-TV’s pre-game show. Wearing a Dodger blue warm-up jacket and cap, Happy Felton, the chubby host, introduced Gil Hodges to the TV audience. Gil grabbed a bat and hit a bunch of easy grounders and pop flies to three kids. They were all about our age, and each wore his Little League baseball uniform. One of them in a baggy, “Brooklyn Kiwanis Club” shirt won an autographed baseball. He also got to go to the dugout with Hodges.

We walked away grousing about the injustice. “How is it those kids get chosen for the show?” Billy asked.
Heshie yelled “Hey Happy Man, when do we get to be on?”

Old Hap looked up and smiled at us. Then he turned away, unclasped his microphone and shuffled his cue cards.

As Dodger players perched on the top step of the dugout, a wave of cheers cascaded down from the upper stands. This lets us know that up in “the old catbird seat” behind home, Red Barber has just announced, “And the Dodgers take the field” to everyone listening in on the radio, or watching on TV. While Gladys Gooding played the National Anthem on the Hammond organ, and Lucy Monroe sang “Oh say can you see…” in her high-pitched soprano, I watched fathers in shirt sleeves and fedoras, and young boys with Dodger caps and two toned, reversible jackets tied around their waists, place their hats in front of their hearts and sing along.

On the field, the players stood silent and still. When they too placed their hats over their hearts, I noticed that Pee Wee’s sandy blond hair was thinning, and that the Duke was prematurely graying.

Then Tex Richart’s voice reverberated over the P.A., “Batting first, first for the Giants, Giants, number nineteen, nineteen, Alvin, Alvin, Dark, Dark, shortstop, shortstop.” The home crowd booed loudly when Dark took his practice cuts with his trademark black bat. And they cheered in unison when Don Newcombe threw a called strike on the games’ first pitch. Once everyone settled in and the game was underway, I sat quietly, scorecard resting in my lap, recording each put-out neatly in pencil. In the Giant’s half of the inning, Bobby Thomson flied out to Duke Snider in center field. I looked over to the press box and I imagined Red Barber telling the radio and TV audience that “Thomson’s inning ending fly ball is just an easy can of corn for the Duke.”

***

I’m jolted from my reverie when the Twins’ ticket booth guy asks me for $52. It takes a few seconds for it to register.

“Fift” I start to say, then stop myself.

“I guess I’ve been away from the game longer than I thought,” I tell Tom as we head up the first base ramp.

***

Sometimes at Ebbets, it was fun just to watch the characters in the stands. In the fifth inning of today’s scoreless tie, old Hilda Chester, a stout, white-haired woman dressed like a rag picker, ran through the stands clanging metal cow bells and leading cheers. We stood up and yelled with everyone else. She was accompanied by the Dodger “Sym-Phony,” a group of rag-tag musicians who were all decked out in tattered tuxedos and stove-pipe hats. I instinctively started tapping my toes as they played tinny, off key Dixieland jazz. And during the seventh inning stretch, Gladys Gooding urged the fans to sing along as she played “Follow the Dodgers,” the team’s theme song. Like a church choir, we all joined in.

On this day, Newcombe and the Dodgers beat their nemesis, Sal Maglie. The game winner was a three run homer by Gil Hodges in the bottom of the seventh. As the ball disappeared over the Brass Rail sign in left center field, people behind me began to shower the lower grandstand with confetti; and all around us we saw grown men and women standing on their seats and hugging one another. When the game ended, the exuberant crowd refused to leave until the team emerged from the dugout to wave their hats at us.

Later, we stood at the third base entrance outside the park and watched the younger kids impatiently waiting for the players to come out. A little blond boy in an over-sized Dodger hat yelled “Hey, there’s Pee Wee and Robbie,” and they all milled around their heroes–thrusting scuffed baseballs, Topps bubble gum cards, and black vinyl autograph books at them. Some players signed for a few minutes, then ducked into touring cars or taxis taking them, I imagine, to exotic Manhattan destinations.

During the hot, crowded subway and bus ride home, we’d keep the glow alive by replaying the day’s highlights to one another — complete with simulated crowd noises and sound effects. Heshie would imitate Red Barber saying “Hodges has just parked one in the left field seats, and that’s all she wrote for Maglie.” Some people applauded. Others looked at us like we’re crazy. I didn’t care: the ticket stub in my pocket made me feel a part of an elite, exclusive club.

***

Once we’re inside the Metrodome, I scan the vast, extravagant structure, searching for familiar landmarks. In place of light towers, thousands of high intensity lights line the stadium’s rim. When I look down at the playing surface, I’m disappointed to see that there’s no infield dirt; the playing field is a huge swatch of green artificial turf. It looks like an immense pool table.

And what about the ambiance? Loud, intrusive rock and roll assaults you from all sides — interrupted by infomercials for local automobile dealers, supermarket chains, and real estate agencies. Each sales pitch is accompanied by an animated graphic that appears simultaneously on the four message boards surrounding the playing field. When we aren’t being hyped by the ads, a prerecorded soundtrack keeps informing us about the souvenirs, hot dogs, peanuts, beer, and soda on sale at the concession stands. As I watch batting practice and infield/outfield drills, I wonder how the players manage to screen out all the noise and distractions. Especially the starting pitchers who are warming up in the bullpens.

Even after the first pitch, the merchandising blitz doesn’t let up. The between inning commercials are timed to play at specific intervals. An overhead blimp drops souvenirs into the crowd every three innings. And every other inning, screaming teen aged girls and boys sprint around the perimeter of the field throwing balled-up Twin’s tee-shirts into the stands. As soon as they’re gone, we get another round of loud music. Sometimes, I notice, it gets piped in between pitches.

“God forbid, they should leave you alone for more than 30 seconds,” I say to Tom.
He laughs. “Yeah, maybe they’re afraid you might watch the game.”
“Not much chance of that happening” I say, as I scan the crowd.

I notice that some fans have brought their electronic toys with them. A teenager two rows in front of us is wearing headphones. A middle aged man with his baseball hat on backwards channel surfs on a palm sized TV. The woman to my left is chatting on her cell phone, while her young son plays video games on his lap-top computer. I wonder if there will be a karaoke contest during the seventh inning stretch — just to see who can do the most outrageous rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

One of the things I used to love about watching baseball was the slow, contemplative pace of the game, especially those quiet interludes between pitches, when you could sit back and savor the circus catch or home run you’ve just witnessed. Or you could talk to the people around you and second-guess, even argue about the managers’ strategies and maneuvers.

Everything here, however, is designed to distract you — to pull your attention away from the game that’s unfolding on the field. And if you miss anything, they’ll show it to you again — and again and again and again— on the giant TV screen in center field. I tell Tom that it feels like we’re conducting a field study of professional baseball at the beginning of the new millennium. And in some ways, we are.

***

I grew up playing sandlot baseball and rooting for the Dodgers. Both were a big piece of my adolescent identity. I wasn’t part of the “in” crowd at school. I was chubby, scared to death of girls, and an undistinguished student. So, naturally I felt a simpatico with this team of hopeful underdogs. “Wait ‘til next year” was the fans’ official mantra. And aptly so. Because until they won their first World Series in ‘55, the Dodgers had lost seven straight to the Yankees.

Throughout high school, from June to early September, Ebbets became my sanctuary–a place where I was happy and secure — where I fit in. As an avid Dodger fan, I belonged to a fraternity of like-minded dreamers.
But that abruptly changed in 1957, when Dodger owner, Walter O’ Malley, announced that the franchise would be moving to Los Angeles. The news seemed to have dropped suddenly from the sky. I felt betrayed, stunned. Just like that, I no longer had a refuge, nor a team to root for.

It was purely by coincidence that I happened to end up in L.A. the year after the Brooklyn Dodgers officially became the L.A. Dodgers. In June of ‘58, my parents moved to Los Angeles, and the next fall I enrolled at UCLA where I pitched freshman baseball and wrote sports for The Daily Bruin.

Two years had passed and I was still angry at the Dodgers. When I left New York, I‘d vowed to friends that I wouldn’t go to see them play. But in April of ‘59, Mike Mandell, a fraternity brother, invited me to opening day. Mike’s father, Harry, a minor studio exec at Universal, had managed to score three field boxes behind the Dodger dugout. I thought it over for a few days before my curiosity got the best of me.

The speeches by city officials, turncoat Dodger brass, and a few Hollywood celebs were pompous and self-serving. And except for Duke Snider, Johnny Podres, Gil Hodges, whose best years were behind them, most of the players I remember had either been traded or had retired. Before the move to L. A., Jackie Robinson was sold to, of all teams, the Giants. I inwardly cheered when Robbie decided to leave the game.

The stadium irked me even more than the ceremony. The Coliseum is a 100,000-seat football palace that in the ‘50s and ‘60s housed three teams; UCLA, USC, and the LA Rams. The Dodgers had temporarily moved here because their new park at Chavez Ravine was still under construction. At the local taxpayers’ expense no less.

For my money, the Coliseum was a spectator’s nightmare. The inner structure is a round, dirty white concrete slab with no tiers, no upper deck, and no backs on the bleacher style seats. Like most football stadiums, the interior is a widening band of concentric circles. The higher you sat on the circle, the further away you were from the game.

And what about these oddities? There was more room in foul territory behind the plate than on the entire left side of the field; and the left field wall was only two hundred and fifty feet away from home plate. A wind-blown fly ball to left stood a chance of drifting over the outfield screen. And because the right side of the field angled out away from the plate, a 400-foot fly ball to left or right center was a routine out.

None of it seemed to bother the fans, though. At first, they acted as if they were charmed by what was happening on the field. Every time a player hit a high pop fly, they cheered like it was a home run. But by the third inning, most of the conversation around me was about movie agents, lunch meetings, and script deals. Nobody talked the old Ebbets Field lingo, and only a handful of people took the trouble to score the game. Some of the Hollywood types in fact, couldn’t seem to figure out what the numbers in the score book meant. I wasn’t even tempted to explain it to her.

“How come the first baseman is wearing number 14, and the program says he’s number 3?” asked a peroxide blonde in pedal pushers and spike heels.

I also took note that there were only a handful of fathers and sons in the crowd. At 19, I was one of the youngest males in attendance. Most of the crowd looked like they’d been shipped over from Central Casting. Many of the older men wore garish, flowered shirts and monogrammed sun visors. Some of the younger ones even brought their surf boards. Several women dressed in gauzy see-through blouses, form-fitting short shorts, and tongs. And I saw a few in halter tops and bikini’s. Every two innings, the celebrity wanna-be’s would preen for the TV cameras; and all throughout the game there was an unbroken flow of traffic to and from the concession stands. By the seventh inning of a one run game, the Coliseum was less than half full. When I left that afternoon, I knew I would not return.

In the fall of ‘59, I transferred back to New York and enrolled at Hofstra College. At 20, I was a typical college kid; I went to fraternity parties, slept in, and chased girls. I pitched middle inning relief on the baseball team, majored in English and wrote sports for The Hofstra Chronicle, the school weekly. My vague hope was to someday become a writer and teacher.

The summer before school started, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to major league baseball. When I went to Yankee Stadium, I kidded to friends that I was only there as a tourist. But in the winter of ‘60, I stumbled across a Newsday article announcing the impending demolition of Ebbets Field. How could I not attend? Maybe I’d find some closure here.

1960: A bone chilling, late February morning. For the first time in years, I took the Green Bus and IRT subway to Brooklyn. Alone. I walked down Franklin Avenue and saw the light towers of Ebbets in the gray distance. When I reached Empire Boulevard, I turned left and walked through the marble rotunda, past the boarded up ticket windows, before heading up the third base grandstand ramp.

The first thing I saw when I reached the portal was the huge, black scoreboard in right field. Then I gazed around the outfield for a last look at the old Abe Stark, “Hit This Sign and Win a Suit” billboard, and the fire engine red Tydol Flying A” sign.

I closed my eyes, and for a moment I was 12 years old again. But the reverie ended when I looked out at the brown outfield grass and saw jagged ruts and bare patches, the residue from two years of stock car races and neglect. Then below me, I noticed the shabby looking blue box seats, surrounded by faded, chipped red railings.

A sparse crowd, maybe a few hundred men and three or four women, huddled behind the third base dugout. But they weren’t waiting for autographs. We’d gathered here to witness the demolition of Ebbets Field. In the crowd, I recognized two of the old players; pitcher Carl Erskine, always a winner, always a classy guy, and next to him the unfortunate Ralph Branca. Who’d have expected that kind of loyalty from Branca, a man who was so unfairly maligned by the fans and press? Is it penance he’s seeking here?

Lucy Monroe sang the National Anthem just as she’d done at countless Dodger games. But the speeches were canned eulogies. While some phony Brooklyn politico with bad teeth droned on, informing us — without any sense of irony — that Ebbets Field was now 46 years old, I was thinking about Walter O’ Malley, the owner who sold out millions of naive, loyal, baseball fans like me. I recalled the scene in The Great Gatsby where Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim. Wolfsheim is the character who’s based on Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who’d allegedly conspired to fix the 1919 World Series. As Nick shakes Wolfsheim’s hand he thinks: “It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of 50 million people — with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.”

The demolition crew were fittingly outfitted in Dodger blue wind breakers; and as the giant white-washed, red stitched “headache ball,” crunched into the third base dugout, chunks of concrete and splintered wood flew in all directions. I felt an ache in the pit of my stomach.

I caught my breath and closed my eyes again. This time, I was back in the center field bleachers watching Duke Snider camp under a lazy fly ball. The Duke casually pats the pocket of his mitt, waiting to gather in what Red Barber used to call “an easy can of corn.” Then I imagine I see Jackie Robinson crouched between second and first base, hands on knees, waiting for Newk, Ersk, Padres or “the Preach” to deliver the next pitch.

I was jolted back to the present when the “headache ball “smashed into the right field scoreboard. The concrete beneath me started to quiver. It felt like a minor earthquake.

While I was walking back to the subway, I made a promise not to attend another major league game.

In my senior year of college, I was engaged and making plans to attend graduate school in Michigan. I hadn’t attended a ball game since the demolition. That is, until the Mets happened upon the scene.
When the Mets arrived in the ’62 expansion, their home field was the Polo Grounds, the ancient green walled stadium atop Coogan’s Bluff. Recalling those weekend outings with my dad, I took the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Express and got off at 158th Street. By instinct, I headed east until I saw the horseshoe shaped stadium I remembered so well. I walked down from the platform and sat in the third base lower grandstand– my father’s old seats. I felt like I’d taken a step back in time.

For the first season, I tried to love this new team. But something was pulling against my enthusiasm. I sensed a similar caution in a lot of the old Dodger and Giant diehards. Maybe we were holding back because we knew the Mets would soon be moving to a new park.

We’d been hoping against hope that the Mets would move to Brooklyn, or even Manhattan. But Flushing Meadows? At least the owners were smart enough not to call the team the Flushing Mets.

Sure enough, in ‘63 when the Mets moved into Shea Stadium, the Polo Grounds was razed and replaced by an urban housing project. I’d read somewhere that the wrecking ball that demolished the Polo Grounds was the same one that wiped out Ebbets Field three years prior. And what about this absurdity? Today, a housing project stands where the Polo Grounds used to be. At the exact spot where Thomson took his historic swing is a sign that reads “No ball playing allowed.”

For a time, I felt as if I’d been abandoned again. But soon, my curiosity caught up with me again. On opening day weekend, I went to see the Mets play in their new park.

Shea Stadium sits on a tract of marshland near the old World’s Fair site. There are no row houses, tenement or apartment buildings, no kids playing in the streets, no trees, candy stores, taverns, newspaper or scorecard and peanuts’ hawkers. Without a vibrant urban neighborhood to surround it, the setting had an eerie, hollow ambiance.

The inside of the park was not much more appealing. Unless you sat in the expensive boxes near home plate, you felt like you were in a cavernous football palace, like the Coliseum. The outfield fences had no billboards–just stark, blue walls with orange numbers like “390” and “410” painted on them. The only recognizable links with the ball parks of my youth were the field’s natural grass and dirt.

To me, Shea lacked intimacy, warmth, character. Like many of the newer ball parks, the stadium was designed as a single level concentric circle. Perched high above the playing field were luxurious “sky suites” complete with television sets, sofas, plush carpeting, and wet bars. Inside the stadium, vendors no longer hawked ball park hot dogs, or Dixie cups with wooden spoons, or waxed paper cups of Schaefer beer. Instead they pedaled foot long bratwursts, gourmet ice cream, and premium draft beer served in clear plastic cups. A “brat and brew” were more expensive than the price of a field box at Ebbets Field.

Mets fans were fanatical about their new team; and they were as loyal to their heroes as we were to the old Dodgers. And that’s as it should be. But each time I went back to Shea, the Mets had acquired new players, guys named Smith, and Hunt, and Christopher. Some, like Marvelous Marv Throne berry, even had zany personalities. It was just that I’d never heard of them. And every two weeks, the owners would bring in several new guys.

Sure, they resurrected Stengel, the Duke, and Roger Craig. But it was just to sell tickets. None of them could help this patchwork quilt of a ball club. As a matter of fact, Craig, a proven winner with the Dodgers, lost 20 games in his first season as a Met.

It was a new regime all across the board — and a new era. The announcers, Lindsay Nelson, a network football guy, Ralph Kiner, the old Pirates’ slugger, and side-man Bob Murphy, were knowledgeable enough about the game. But compared to the Old Redhead and Connie Desmond, these three seemed as bland as Cream of Wheat. After a while I even quit scoring the games: I couldn’t keep track of all the new guys. If I was still searching for the old Ebbets Field magic, I knew I wouldn’t find it here. I gave the Mets two seasons before it was time to move on.

In the fall of ‘64, I left for Michigan and quickly got caught up in graduate school, my marriage, and adjusting to the Midwest. But in the spring, a colleague took me to Tiger Stadium, now one of the oldest ball parks in the majors.

I turned off the Lodge Expressway at Grand Avenue, and for a few bucks I parked my car in someone’s back yard. To get to the stadium you had to walk past blocks of wooden row houses, past knots of people sitting on front porches and steps, through twilight streets where kids were playing ball in fenced in school yards and treeless, concrete parks. It reminded me of the old Brooklyn neighborhoods that surrounded Ebbets Field.

Through the night mist and factory smoke I could see in the distance the enormous towers atop the ball park, and the bluish white glow of the stadium’s arc lights. My heart was in my throat. It felt just like the day when my four cronies and I headed down Franklin Avenue to attend our first Dodger game.

Even the crowd at Tiger Stadium reminded me of the old Brooklyn fans: factory rats from nearby automobile plants, newspaper reporters and white-collar guys from downtown office buildings, fathers and sons from the outlying burbs. I sat in the first row of the upper stands, between third and home. From my vantage point, I could see the sweat rolling down Mickey Lolich’s cheeks as he checked the runner at first; and I could hear the infield chatter, as well as the profanities coming from the Yankee dugout. The aroma of stale beer, hot dogs, and popcorn perfumed the chilled night air. Maybe, this was the replacement I’d been searching for.

For the next five seasons, I went back to Tiger Stadium each summer. I even rooted for the team when they won the ‘68 World Series against the Cardinals. But over the next few years, I found myself getting restless and edgy whenever I read the sports pages. In October of ‘69, the “Amazing Mets” became the first expansion team to win a World Series. Why wasn’t I elated? This was a team, after all, that I could identify with. Seven years ago, the Mets were a rag-tag aggregate of rookies and retreads. Their manager, Gil Hodges, was even an old Dodger favorite of mine. My indifference was a bad sign.

By 1970, I was more disenchanted with baseball than I’d been since the Dodgers left Brooklyn. Tiger Stadium and the people were the same. But the game was undergoing big changes.

From the early 60ss on, franchises began building suburban, multi-purpose indoor stadiums. In the middle of the decade the player’s union was established, and for the first time in over fifty years, both leagues had added new teams. Franchises appeared in old minor league towns like Seattle and Kansas City. By the end of the ‘69 season, there were 24 teams — eight more than had existed 10 years ago. Far too many for me to keep track of.

Both leagues had also split into two divisions, East and West; and a playoff round now proceeded the World Series. To encourage more offense, pitching mounds were lowered by several inches. In spring training games, both leagues were already experimenting with designated hitters. Team uniforms had also changed. The baggy flannel grays and whites had given way to form-fitting, brightly colored polyesters. The most flamboyant players even wore flashy white spikes. By the end of the decade, professional baseball had undergone so many transformations that I couldn’t keep up.

None of this should have surprised or upset me. Baseball was simply reflecting the temper of the times. Since the mid-60s, the culture had undergone radical upheavals. Why should professional sports be any different?

By the early ’70s, I was attending fewer and fewer Tiger games. When I did go, I’d often leave before the seventh inning. My excuse was that I wanted to beat the traffic home. Truth is, I’d lost interest in baseball. The two leagues had expanded to twenty-eight teams; there were owner-player lock-outs; Astro-turf and domes were de rigeur; free agency had taken away what little continuity was left; and too many players looked and sounded like rock stars.

In 1974, I got my Ph.D., took a job teaching writing at Michigan State, and began to write. By the end of the decade, baseball had all but dropped out of my life.

Curiously enough, it was writing that led me back to baseball, if only for a short time. In 1984, a play I co-wrote was produced in Chicago. And when rehearsals turned out to be more grim than glamorous, I found myself escaping to the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field.

Like the neighborhoods surrounding Ebbets Field, “Wrigleyville” had that gritty urban feel I used to love: the Addison Avenue “El” rumbling on the overhead tracks; hurly-burly traffic noises outside the park; beer-and-shot- bars where people gathered to talk before and after the game. And on Sheffield Avenue, fans in beach chairs watched from tenement rooftops.

The park itself was a throw-back to the old days: ivy-covered outfield walls and manicured, emerald grass surrounded the infield diamond. Hard-hat “bleacher bums” drank beer and sun bathed in the left field stands. An upper deck grandstand populated by kids and dads in shirt sleeves. It was like being in a time warp. Each time I went to a Cubs’ game, I felt a strange mix of familiarity and contempt. Why couldn’t all ball parks be like this?

After the play closed, I went back to Michigan. Now when I look back on that time, my fondest memories are of not of nights spent at the theater watching the play, but those lazy summer afternoons when I hid out in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.

In the next five years, I got more absorbed in teaching, writing, and travel. My next visit to a ball park, in 1989, came about in a most unusual fashion. Enroute home from a trip to France, my wife Carole and I had an overnight layover in Boston. The plane landed at 6:30 in the evening, and as we were riding the shuttle bus to the airport hotel I overheard two pilots making plans to go to the Red Sox game. We were dog-tired from the flight, yet I was overcome by an impulse to head straight for Fenway Park. Fenway was one of the last of the old urban ball parks. I’d always wanted to see a Red Sox game here. Who knows how much longer this legendary dinosaur will even exist.

Despite Carole’s objections, we dropped our bags at the hotel, rushed to catch the MTA, and arrived just in time for the first pitch. When I saw the vendors selling steamed peanuts outside the park, and the forty foot “green monster” in left field — when I bought two grandstand seats and found that I wasn’t a football field away from the action, when I ate a steamed ball park hot dog and scored every put-out — it was if I’d never fallen away from the game. Carole fell asleep in the fifth inning. I stayed up for the full nine.

As usual, I was buzzed when I left the park. But the feeling lingered for less than an hour. That’s when I knew this was only a one-night stand. I was almost 50 and I was getting on with my life.

By the early-90s, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper or watch a sports show without hearing about free agents, salary caps, and multi-million dollar contracts. The real baseball news was now reduced to the daily box scores.

Once in a while when I needed a break from my writing, I’d peek at the box scores. And a few times during the summer, I’d attend a local minor league or city league game. As for the rest of it, Skydomes, Kingdomes, Astrodomes never inspired me. Neither did the second generation of new stadiums; the cookie-cutter, suburban parks with luxury suites and plastic grass. Nor did I like the network shills who interviewed owners about lockouts and strikes; or millionaire players and agents who’d talk only about thirty million-dollar deals made with teams I’d never heard of. And it occurs to me that for two of the last five years the World Series was won by the Toronto Blue Jays, a team from a foreign country; a franchise that didn’t even exist until I was in my late thirties.

Moreover, the Series’ games I used to look forward to on hot September afternoons are now played at night, in late October, sometimes under retractable “moon roofs.” After the last recap has been broadcast–interrupted by six beer and automobile commercials — it’s usually past midnight, and a light frost has begun to coat the grass on my front lawn. Neighbors who work in the morning, and kids who have to get up for school, have long since fallen asleep. So have I.

Just before the owner’s lock-out of ‘94, I was ready to give up on baseball for good. Or so I thought.
One night, I was watching a ball game on ESPN. And between innings, I found myself getting caught up in, of all things, a beer commercial. It was a scene shot in a bar, featuring two cranky ex-Brooklyn Dodger fans — both of whom were about my age. They were kvetching about the Dodgers’ defection from Brooklyn in ‘57, arguing about how greedy the owners and players had become, and grumbling about what a crime it was that baseball had become such a commodity. Yadada, yadada, yadada, I thought. Same old litany I’d been chanting for the past three decades.

The first few times I thought it was mildly amusing. But after several viewings, the commercial started to irritate me. Before long, I figured out why; I was beginning to identify with the guys in that ad.

Around that same time, I was reading Pete Hamill’s collection of essays and memoirs about New York in the ’40’s and ’50’s. One segment in particular gave me pause. “Why,” Hamill writes, “are the middle-aged almost always talking, at the risk of maudlin cliché, about the old Neighborhood, about places gone and buried, about Ebbets Field and Birdland, the Cedar Tavern and the old Paramount?”

“The reason is simple,” he says: “In those places, they were happy. Sentimentality is always a form of resentment.”

That last phrase hit a nerve. For days afterward, it troubled me that I had become so crotchety about a game I was once on fire for. Perhaps I needed to take a step back and rethink this. Maybe I should give baseball — and myself — one more try.

My reentry began somewhat tentatively. Following the cancellation of the ‘94 World Series, it was still easy to remain cynical and detached from the game. But in the summer of ‘95 — the season that Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record — I read that the Oriole’s were playing in a new downtown stadium — a replica of the concrete and steel parks I’d grown up with in the ‘50s. Even the name, “Camden Yards,” called up memories of the old urban ball parks. That same season, ESPN began its “Sunday Night Baseball” series. And as Ripken inched up on Gehrig’s record, I found myself tuning into the late innings of Oriole games and surfing some of the sports talk shows, just so I could keep up with the streak.

My interest waxed and waned over the next two years, but I always managed to perk up right around playoff time. In ‘96, the Yankee’s Series comeback against the Braves caught my attention, but the unscrupulous dismantling of the ‘97 champion Marlins’ soured me on the game once again.

But in 1998, like every other baseball fan in the universe, I got caught up in the McGwire-Sosa home run derby, and the Yankee’s remarkable winning season. And dotted throughout that summer were a series of extraordinary moments. Cub rookie, Kerry Woods struck out 20 men in a game; the Yankee’s David Wells’ pitched a perfect game; and Ripkin’s record breaking hitting streak ended. By the time regular season was over, a half dozen players had hit forty or more home runs, and three of the four pennant races went right down to the wire. When the playoffs and World Series came around, I was hooked.

As the playoffs evolved, I noticed that three of the eight teams — the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs — were playing in the same stadiums they’d inhabited since the 20s; two others, the Indians and Rangers, played in parks that were modeled in one way or another after Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field. Moreover, of the three remaining play-off teams, the Giants and Padres had reverted back to playing on natural grass. Only the Houston Astros were still housed in a domed stadium — and even that would change within two years.

For the first time in decades, I followed the post season with more fervor and interest than I’d thought myself capable of. But it was during the Cubs-Giants wild card play-off, that I became aware of just how preoccupied I was becoming. I rooted for the Cubs; partly because I loved Wrigley Field, partly because the team’s futility reminded me of the old Dodgers; and partly because the Giants used to be the Dodgers’ old nemesis.

By the middle innings, I found myself admiring the clutch pitching and graceful defensive plays on both sides. I marveled at the hitting talent of Sammy Sosa, and of course, Barry Bonds. I even got teary and nostalgic when during the seventh inning stretch, when comedian Bill Murray, dressed in a Cubs’ jersey and hat, led the crowd in a poignant rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” And I felt a surge of hope and identification when the old Cub veteran, Gary Gaetti, atoned for a costly error by hitting what would turn out to be the game winning homer. I bit my fingernails and paced the room during the tense, dramatic ninth inning, when the Giants almost pulled the game out.

In early October 1998, what mattered most was not the buzz and hype, but the game itself — the human drama, spectacle, and aura. When the season ended, what I recalled most were singular moments like the look of dismay on Padre pitcher Kevin Brown’s face when he served up a game winning homer to the Braves’ Michael Tucker; and the Yankee’s Scott Brosius trying to contain his joy as he completed the last put-out of a remarkable 114-win season. That’s the kind of stuff I used to savor back when I was sitting in the third base upper grandstand at Ebbets.

***

A similar kind of moment keeps Tom and I riveted to our seats at the Metrodome on that blustery March night. It’s the top of the eighth, and Ripkin is only one shy of hit number 3,000. Most likely, this’ll be his last at bat. For once, the crowd is hushed and still. No cell phones ringing, no music blaring, no computer games bleeping. We’re all in this together, holding our collective breath, concentrating on each pitch. When the Twins’ pitcher goes to ball two in the count, even the home fans begin to boo. On the next pitch, a low slider on the hands, Ripkin slices a bleeder to the right side. Everyone groans. It looks like a sure out. But just as the second baseman move over to field it, the ball takes big hop over his shoulder, skids across the carpet, and winds up in short right field. We all stand in unison and cheer. On natural grass, that ball would have been a routine play.

So for that one moment, I don’t hate artificial turf. The Twins first baseman hands the ball to Ripkin, and the umps stop the game. Ripkin holds the ball up and waves his cap to the crowd, exposing a shiny, bald pate.

Kids are jumping up and down on their seats, adults are high fiving each other, and everyone applauds as the hero takes a victory lap around the circumference of the diamond. It’s a spontaneous, unscripted scenario — reminiscent of the old camaraderie I’ve missed for so many decades.

2002: On the flight home, it strikes me that for the last three plus decades I’ve been trying to recapture the feeling of a time and place when a trip to the ball park was a magical journey and a communal ritual; an adventure you’d later brag about under the streetlights, or out on the front stoop.

Well, I’m no longer that 12-year-old kid, and Ebbets Field, the Dodgers, and that bygone world no longer exist–except in my memory and imagination. But the game endures; and people still love to go to the ball park. And who am I to criticize their motives?
These days, I’m learning to look beyond the media circus and corporate P.R. And sometimes, there are moments in between the beer, car, and dot.com commercials when I can appreciate baseball the same way I would an opera, a ballet, or a play.
And whenever I like, I can switch off the TV before the shills and hype artists spoil the afterglow.

Michael Steinberg founded Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction in 1998. He’s written and co-authored five books and a stage play. Still Pitching won the 2003 ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press Memoir of the Year. An anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers Of/On Creative Nonfiction, with Robert Root, is now in a sixth edition. Currently, Steinberg is the nonfiction writer-in-residence in the Solstice/Pine Manor low residency College MFA program.

Michael Steinberg on Creative Nonfiction

by William Meiners

For a first-time teacher like myself, about as calm and erudite as a young, professorial Jerry Lewis, it never hurts to bring a real expert into the classroom. When Michael Steinberg showed up to my creative writing class at the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College in February I learned very quickly, alongside my students, what a great teacher Mike has been for about three decades. And a deep source of knowledge about the field of creative nonfiction.

Mike and Bob Root wrote the book on creative nonfiction. Well one very good one called Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction that’s now in its sixth edition and used in college classrooms all over the country. We caught up at a bookstore in East Lansing last month to talk more on the subject. Then we kicked the following back and forth through emails.

William Meiners: You mentioned that your anthology, Fourth Genre, which you wrote and put together with Robert Root, and the same-titled journal that came out more or less at the same time. Could you talk about both the timing of the two, as well as your initial ideas for putting such a collection together?
Michael Steinberg: Both publications were, in some ways, coincidences. The anthology, which came out in 1998, grew out of a course pack of readings that Bob and I put together for our graduate classes. At the time, there were no anthologies that covered the genre’s spectrum — personal essay, memoir, literary/personal journalism, and personal/cultural criticism. Since it was a teaching text, we organized the course pack as a writer’s conversation on/about the genre. Part one contained a series of selected pieces that represented the four subgenres I just mentioned. In Part two, we chose essays on/about matters of genre and craft. In addition to craft essays that Bob and I, and a few other teacher/writers wrote, we found a handful of pieces written by some of the writers whose work appeared in Part one. That gave us the idea to add Part three. We chose four essays that our best students had written; and we asked them to write an accompanying commentary on/about how they wrote their pieces.
We taught and revised the course packs for two semesters before deciding to expand the first two parts by adding about a half dozen essays, memoirs, literary/personal journalism and pieces of personal/cultural criticism — by a variety or writers. We kept Part 3 intact. At a point, we found that we’d collected enough work to constitute a teaching anthology. We sent out a proposal to 22 publishers. A few trade houses liked the idea but couldn’t provide the permissions/acquisitions budget we needed. Allyn and Bacon, then a small textbook house that published books on/about teaching writing and literature, offered to publish it. And today, the anthology is in a sixth edition.

WM: And the journal?
MJS: The first issue of the journal, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, came out in 1999. It grew out of a conversation I had with an adult student in one of my graduate course in literary/creative nonfiction. She was an aspiring writer who’d never written personal essays or memoirs before. The readings and writing assignments, it seems, led her to believe that she could write with more ease and fluidity in this genre than she could in either fiction or poetry. Coincidentally, she happened to be the journals editor for the Michigan State University Press.
To make a long story short, she did some research and found that, at the time (1997), the only journal of literary/creative nonfiction was Lee Gutkind’s Creative Nonfiction (first published in 1995). As it turned out, The Michigan State University Press took on Fourth Genre. That was 17 years ago and today Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre (I‘m no longer the editor), and River Teeth (which first appeared in 1999, two months after we did) are still the three most prominent journals of literary/creative nonfiction in the field.

WM: I’ve read various articles about the genre. From Lee Gutkind getting the “Godfather of Creative Nonfiction” label to another on the thoughts about the “non” label, essentially calling something “not fiction.” It all reminded me about having read and been curious to learn more about In Cold Blood about 10 years back. And of course, I think two different movies about Capote were coming out around that time. But I read somewhere that he claimed to be writing a nonfiction novel, an oxymoron since a novel is defined as a work of fiction. Or maybe it’s getting into double or triple negatives. Nevertheless, does In Cold Blood come up much in the discussion of the genre? Or is it more linked to the writers/journalists who may have defined it a decade or so later?
MJS: There are a few different theories about this. Lee Gutkind (among others), for example, believes that the genre we’re now calling creative nonfiction, grew out of the New Journalism movement of the 60s; books of investigative reporting by writers such as Capote, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and Gay Talese, among others. Critics called these books “nonfiction novels.” Which really means that the writers of these narratives were journalists who were using a novelist’s tools — plot, character, scene, dialogue, setting, etc. —nin order to make their “true stories” read more like plotted narratives. In time, the term “nonfiction novel” got replaced by works of what we’re today calling “literary/investigative journalism.” Some journalists and critics will argue that literary journalism is the earliest and purest form of creative nonfiction.

WM: I suppose all writing is some sort of “truth-telling,” if only to attempt to write a story, poem, or play that smacks of the truth. What drew you specifically to telling true stories?
MJS: Although in my personal essays and memoirs I do use research and reportage, I don’t write “true stories.” Let me explain that. I’m one of many personal essayist/memoirists that use our experiences, our lives, as raw material for finding out what fiction writers call discovering “what we didn’t know we knew.” I think this process of exploration and discovery, in other words, writing out of a sense of “not-knowing,” is closer to the ways in which writers of literary fiction and lyric poems create their works than it is to the ways in which investigative journalists approach their craft. Many of the debates/controversies on/about truth in nonfiction — especially those on literary memoir — generate from these two differing approaches. Yet, along with many others, I consider both to be works of literary/creative nonfiction. In fact, some of the best work I’m reading right now combines the personal with reportage and research.

WM: You told my creative writing class that creative nonfiction might feel a little more natural to you. I think all writing is probably difficult. What’s the most difficult thing about writing in the “fourth genre”? What are the links to fiction and poetry?
MJS: Yes, all writing is difficult, especially when it’s required, like a class assignment or a job related project. But, in my case, I write because I feel compelled to do it. For years, I tried to express my deepest feelings and confusions in fiction or poetry. But, over time, I found that I could be my best self as writer when I wrote personal essays and memoirs. In those forms, I feel less inadequacy and doubt — less hesitant and self-conscious. More spontaneous, I’d say. There are a couple of quotes to that effect that I’ve taped up above my writing desk — one from the novelist/essayist David Shields, and the other from novelist/journalist Pete Hamill. Shields says, “Find the form that releases your best intelligence. Find what you do exquisitely well and play it to the hilt.”
In describing the shift from writing news stories to feature columns, Hamill writes, “From the beginning, the form felt natural to me. I was like a musician who had found at last the instrument that was right for him.”
Hamill adds, “It freed me from an impossible objectivity…”
That freedom, that feeling of being in sync as a writer, parallels my own discovery, when, after decades of struggling to write fiction and poetry, I realized that writing personal essays and memoirs came more naturally to me than either of those forms did. It was the writing breakthrough I’d been struggling toward for much of my adult life.
As for links between literary nonfiction and fiction and poetry, I think there’s an important relationship, at least in my experience, between good literary nonfiction and good fiction and poetry — and I’ll also include drama in that mix as well. That’s because what’s most important, most necessary, in all forms of writing — literary, critical, and popular — is how skillfully the writer shapes/structures the work. And that always comes down to matters of genre and craft.
Whether the work is narrative or lyric, all literary writers possess similar tool kits. For myself, a personal essayist/memoirist, I’ve learned from good fiction writers how to use narrative and plot; and how to create three-dimensional, fully rounded characters, (in my case, mostly first person narrators), as well as how to craft dramatic scenes.
The heart of the playwright’s craft is dramatizing conflict through the use of dialogue and scene. Poets, especially those who write lyric poems, bring a freedom of imagination, an ear for rhythm and language, an eye for imagery, and a comfort and ease with metaphor. And, literary journalists and cultural critics, we’ve increasingly found, are often combining research and reportage with more personal presence, and in some cases, more intimate, voices.

WM: Your memoir, Still Pitching, has baseball as a central theme, though of course it’s about much more. Why did you decide to frame, or at least build it, around these memories of being a young pitcher? I love the title, which resonates in many ways. On the mound, ball in hand and every part of the game depends on what this player does. In what ways has that been a metaphor for living your life?
MJS: All memoir, I believe, is, in one way or another, about identity (and loss). In my case, the catalyst for writing Still Pitching was an impulse/urge to try to go back into the past in order to better understand how being a kid baseball pitcher led me to being a midlife writer and writing teacher. It’s all speculation, of course; but that question sent me back to my New York childhood and adolescence to see if I could discover who and what might have been the most influential forces that helped shape my adult self. Baseball turned out to be one of those influences. That inquiry and curiosity also allowed me to focus the memoir on those early, formative years.
I don’t think, that, in the writing I fully answered such a complex question. But, through a long, long process of drafting, revising, and rewriting, I was finally able to execute and to understand what Annie Dillard calls the process of “fashioning a text.” Which, in the end, is what all of us who write literary work are trying to do.
What you say about the title Still Pitching being a metaphor for living my life is something I never really thought about. But, since I do believe that persistence, tenacity, and determination are so important to becoming a writer — or, for that matter, to accomplishing anything else you’re proud of — the Still Pitching metaphor does have some truth to it.

WM: Having started a literary magazine about sports 21 years ago, I knew I wanted the focus to be on creative nonfiction. And in my mind, I thought maybe this is literature with a small “l.” After all, it’s about sports. But then an essay you shared with us, “Elegy for Ebbets,” was our first to get a nod in Best American Essays, in 2002. Some affirmation, for both of us, I suppose, that it’s not just about sports. What make writing about sports, beyond the daily coverage or “hot topic” sense, important as fodder for literature?
MJS: We both agree that there is a difference between sports writing and writing about sports. For the most part, sports are an arena I seem to be able to understand from the inside-out. In conversation, a colleague who, himself is an athlete, referred to this kind of sensibility as a “sports intelligence.” And so, in my writing, I often use sports as a lens; by which I mean, a way of seeing, a way of better understanding and utilizing the strategies, the tactics we need to know, in order to get ourselves through, or even to master ongoing personal problems and confusions. And these internal struggles are what all human beings have in common. Whatever I’m writing about sports, challenging relationships, family difficulties, serious health problems, personal losses — or anything else, really — I’m always hoping that readers (in my case, readers of memoir), can identify with the narrator’s (the “I’s”) internal struggles; that is, his fears and self-doubts — as well as his/her need to belong to something larger and/or to comprehend and overcome whatever human obstacles he/she might be facing.

WM: I hate whenever someone asks me who my favorite writer is. Probably because I think they’re going to judge me and then ask about 10 writers I’ve never heard of. No one really wants to interview me, but I’ve got this fear that someone might give me the Sarah Palin treatment and I’ll be shaking my head saying “I love all of it and read everything,” which I don’t. That said, who are your favorite writers? And why?
MJS: It’s a bit like writing; you don’t know what works or doesn’t work until after you see it on the page. And even then, recognizing whether it’s good or bad can take years, sometime even decades. Something that might have been a good choice years earlier, might today look like a poor fit. This kind of evolution and change also relates to the shifts in my reading preferences over the years.
Different authors have captivated my imagination at different times in my life. When I was growing up, for example, I loved reading Salinger and Twain, as well as Clair Bee’s popular novels about teenage sports heroes. Those writers created characters and situations, that, as a kid, I could identify with and understand. When I was a young adult, I admired and identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters — people, who like myself, came from a lower middle-class background and who entertained dreams of greatness and who aspired to a life of stature and privilege. When later on, when I became enamored of literary nonfiction, I cultivated an appreciation for writers like Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, E.B. White, Vivian Gornick, and Scott Russell Sanders. The list goes on and on. And, like most readers, I love the writer(s) and books I’m reading right now; that is, until I read the next author and next book.

WM: Fourth Genre is a staple textbook in creative nonfiction classrooms, and you’re up to six editions. Can you talk about the various additions to the book and where you see the genre heading in the next five to 10 years?
MJS: In the mid to late 90s, when the genre first began to get some recognition as a legitimate literary form, the majority of work that appeared in the first few editions and issues of the anthology and the journal, were largely internal, linear narratives; and by that I mean, “Montaignian” personal essays. In addition, I saw a sprinkling of memoirs and some works of literary/investigative journalism and personal/cultural criticism.
The works I’m seeing in journals today, as well as the best writing that my MFA students are producing, often are experiments in form, voice, narrative persona, structure, and language. For example: short pieces of prose that use language and form in most unexpected ways; increasing numbers of essays and memoirs that combine personal narrative with analysis, research, and reportage; as well as works of literary journalism and personal/critical essays, where the narrator’s persona (by which I mean, the “I”) is sometimes at the center of the piece and sometimes not.
I’m also seeing more segmented and disjunctive essays, as well as an increase in lyric and lyrical essays, some of which take the kinds of imaginative and linguistic leaps that the best poetry does. In addition, there’s graphic nonfiction, as well as blogs, visual and video essays, and forms that combine different elements of media.

In short, this genre, like the contemporary visual arts, is, I believe, pushing at the boundaries that once separated the more traditional and experimental literary forms. And as a result, we’re seeing more existing hybrid, forms.

WM: You shared your story with me, and my class, about being a 20-plus year professor of English and writing courses, and then making a decision that you wanted to become a serious writer (in your 40s, I believe). And of course you’ve been successful as a writer over another 20-plus years. Was it as easy (and I know it’s not easy) as just making up your mind to do this? As a teacher of writing, what’s your best advice for anyone who wants to write stories about his or her life?
MJS: My decision to write grew out of an urgent midlife need to try to do something I’ve always dreamed of; that is, for decades, I’d yearned deeply to become a literary writer. When I was coming up, fiction, poetry, and in some circles, drama, were considered to be the only legitimate literary forms. I’m being kind to myself when I say that I was a less-than-skilled-writer in all of those genres. For as long as I can remember, my best, most compelling works were my personal essays and memoirs. I taught and wrote personal essays with my composition students for decades. Yet at the time, personal essays were considered to be the province of freshman composition. A deliberate slight, to be sure. And so, I resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to become known as even a workaday literary writer.
But life can be full of surprises. About five years before literary/creative nonfiction began to get some national attention, I had my first of what would be two cornea transplants. The surgery was a wake-up call — a first brush with mortality, if you will. My greatest fear was the possibility of losing my sight. At that point in time, I told myself that, even if I didn’t succeed, it was urgent for me to put as much focus, energy, and commitment into my writing as I could. Failure would have been devastating; but knowing my nature as I do, I don’t think I could have lived with myself had at least not tried. Plus, I knew, that time was running out.
Five years later, literary/creative nonfiction began to slowly enter the literary conversation. And today, it’s considered by many to be “the fourth genre.” Not fourth in terms of its stature; but fourth in that it’s inclusive of the other three.
So the very short answer to the first part of your question is that I became a writer through a combination of luck, circumstance, will, desperation, and readiness. As I’m fond of telling my MFA students, talent and a buck fifty (it used to be a quarter) will get you a phone call.
As for the advice I’d give to those who want to write stories about their lives, in addition to the David Shields and Pete Hamill quotes [above], I’ll offer two others, the first by Donald Hall, the next by William Stafford — both of whom, are, by the way, among our finest poets. Since I’ve talked a good deal about baseball and determination, I’ll cite Donald Hall’s advice first. *When Hall refers to “poems” or “poetry,” I’ve extended it to all four literary forms (see italics below).
I watch the old ones, the athletes without the talented young bodies. I watch the intense, concentrated pushing of the self past the self’s limits. It is like writing poems *{stories, essays, memoirs}, or it is what writing poems ought to be if you’re going to last as a poet; you have to bring everything to the poem that you have ever learned as to the painting if you are a painter, or to the swing of the bat if you are a hitter, and everything you ever do. You have to push up to the limit and past the limit.
Hall indicates here that what’s most important is that we bring, not just an “I”, but our fullest, wisest, most experienced (three dimensional) selves to the writing desk. And I also agree with William Stafford’s belief that, for many, many different reasons, we all too frequently talk ourselves out of writing.
Here’s what he has to say about that.

I believe that the so-called “writing block” is the product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance… One should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing.

And…

I can imagine a person beginning to feel that he’s not able to write up to that standard he imagines the world has set for him. But to me that’s surrealistic. The only standard I can rationally have is the standard I’m meeting right now….You should be more willing to forgive yourself. It doesn’t make any difference if you are good or bad today; the assessment of the product is something that happens after you’ve done it.

And to that I’ll add something that my colleague Mimi Schwartz often tells her nonfiction students, “You’re the only one,” Mimi says,  who can write your story.”

Michael Steinberg founded Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction in 1998. He’s written and co-authored five books and a stage play. Still Pitching won the 2003 ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press Memoir of the Year. An anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers Of/On Creative Nonfiction, with Robert Root, is now in a sixth edition. Currently, Steinberg is the nonfiction writer-in-residence in the Solstice/Pine Manor low residency College MFA program.