This is Mike Shannon’s pencil: This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to bat .288/.339/.462 during the course of the 1966 season. This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to captain a gondola — a gondola handsomely crafted from the very same pencil — along every nautical spice route. All the while, Raquel Welch felt safe. She found the turmeric soothing. This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used, in 1932 in Greenwood, Mississippi, to write the lyrics, “You’re closer to me, baby, than Jesus to the cross.” This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon, … Continue reading This Is Mike Shannon’s Pencil

Not so long ago, Adam Jones sounded his conch and let all know that something worthy of your reverential wonder was about to happen … As philosopher-kings and tribal warlords alike have told us via oral tradition, there is eating … Continue reading This Meatloaf Shall Suffer Adam Jones’s Godlike Hunger

Whoa, whoa, whoa … What the fuck did you just say to Rich Gale? What in the living fuck did you just say to this 6-foot-7, 225-pound sum-buck? Rich Gale will set those gold-rimmed Christian Diors aside — maybe hand them for safekeeping to Pete LaCock, who will mutter, “Shit, you shouldn’t have said that,” — give a considered stroke of his mustache with thumb and pointer finger and get the shit down to business. Don’t let the feathered body wave fool you: If Rich Gale’s smoky baritone doesn’t get through to you, then these got-damn soup bones will do … Continue reading What Did You Just Say To Rich Gale?

CLEVE’S-LAND OF THE OHIO – The Blood-Colored Leggings of Boston Town entered this docket in the Land o’ Cleve with expectations as heavy as President Taft, that flatulent Yalie, but, lo, they have buckled and sunk under Job’s burdens like … Continue reading The Indians beat the Red Sox

Have you seen this, friend? I like the looks of it. I am going to Borchert Field. I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys. Part of me — the good part — hopes that the Tripoli Arab Patrol is a patrol made up of Arabs rather than a patrol in search of Arabs to be patrolled. But I’m still going to Borchert Field. I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys. The Tripoli Arab Patrol is world-famous throughout Shrinedom, so it can’t be all bad. I’m told a band will play. I enjoy a good Sousa march. I’ll hope … Continue reading I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys

Regarding Chance Ruffin, we are faced with two possibilities insofar as his soul, essence, and factory settings are concerned. The first is that, as put forth by Chance Ruffin stakeholders and as is widely believed, he is a simple pitcher absorbed by his craft. The other, more subversive supposition is that Chance Ruffin is not a pitcher but rather — actually and in actuality — a hyper-realistic thumb puppet. Please regard the following instance of color photographic evidence: That, mute onlookers, is unassailably a thumb puppet. Note that absence of any real slope from head to neck, which is indicative … Continue reading Chance Ruffin: Pitcher or thumb puppet?

The child doesn’t want to sleep because of the wonderment about him. Why would one enter, of one’s own volition, that state of soft death when there is so much to absorb? The adult, in contrast, embraces the coward’s sojourn known as sleep because he realizes a consciousness-less existence — a numb, unfeeling life on ice — is in so many ways preferable to the waking one. These little tastes of the abyss ready us for the unending, unswerving one to come. So it follows that when the human animal begins taking naps, begins looking forward to the captive embrace … Continue reading Tug McGraw did not nap