It's Tuesday evening, October 23, and the Boston Red Sox are squaring off with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first game of the 2018 World Series. The Fall Classic.
Temperatures will be in the 40s tonight with a wind-chill factor that will make it feel a lot colder. Tomorrow night will be colder yet, temps dipping into the upper 30s at game time and the wind-chill factor making it feel in the lower 30s. And if the series goes seven games, they'll wrap things up in Boston in November--at temps that could drop below freezing. At the risk of saying the obvious, that's too cold for baseball games. "Fall Classic" is a classic misnomer.
Of course we began calling the WS the "fall classic" back when it was played and completed in September, when we regularly enjoyed what we called Indian Summer, a late summer warming trend that soon gave way to the much colder weather of October.
But in 1961, the owners extended the season from 154 games to 162, which extended the season by eight games over about a week and a half. And then beginning in 1969 a second round of post-season play was added, followed by a third round in 1994, and a fourth (the one-game wild-card playoff) in 2012. And here we are in late October pretending this is baseball at its best--the best of the National League pitted against the best of the American League. Ridiculous. Laughable.
The two leagues don't even play the same game. The AL allows since 1973 designated hitters to hit instead of weak hitting pitchers. The NL holds on to the game's roots by insisting on pitchers taking their cuts at the plate. If you were building a baseball team, do you think your roster and philosophy and strategy--your management of a pitching staff, your use of pinch hitters, and your nightly lineup--just to mention a few tactical issues--would be different if you could send up a hitter four times a night instead of a pitcher? Once again, the situation is ridiculous. Laughable.
The obvious conclusion is that the two leagues should not play each other at all until they all play the same game under temperature-regulated domed stadiums. Put the two leagues on an equal standing so they can get back to playing a true World Series once again. One thing is for sure, this ain't the fall classic anymore. And it hasn't been for a long time.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Not Exactly an Apology
My new biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's love life, Longfellow in Love, has been out about two months. Every day I have to fight off the impulse to apologize for it.
The first reason is because the paperback book runs to 261 pages (the notes, bibliography, and index swell it up to 287), yet it costs $45. The publisher sets the price of course, so I'm not at all responsible, but it's clearly steeper than I'd like it to be.
The second reason is a tad more complicated. I know my friends and relatives would like to encourage me, but if they can get past the price, they are still looking at a nonfiction title that most of them pass up for books on the fiction list. And the ones who do read nonfiction, probably are not inclined to biography. And the ones who do read biography might not want to read about a dead white male poet whose reputation took a nosedive in the 20th century.
So I think many of my friends and relatives will read the book, if they can manage it at all, as a dreary homework assignment. That is very disappointing. But there is good news too.
I wrote the book as narrative nonfiction, which means it is driven by fiction techniques, like not revealing the story until the end. Like building suspense. Like resolving conflicts. Like developing characters who speak to each other in words taken directly from their letters and journals. Like building to a climax, two of them in fact. Like consciously trying to entertain in the story telling. The substructure is built on dependable scholarship, but the book is written in a narrative style, not an academic one.
My hope is that any reader who picks this book up (friends and relatives included) will be pleasantly surprised at how well it moves along from page to page, chapter to chapter, start to finish.
No need for an apology there.
The first reason is because the paperback book runs to 261 pages (the notes, bibliography, and index swell it up to 287), yet it costs $45. The publisher sets the price of course, so I'm not at all responsible, but it's clearly steeper than I'd like it to be.
The second reason is a tad more complicated. I know my friends and relatives would like to encourage me, but if they can get past the price, they are still looking at a nonfiction title that most of them pass up for books on the fiction list. And the ones who do read nonfiction, probably are not inclined to biography. And the ones who do read biography might not want to read about a dead white male poet whose reputation took a nosedive in the 20th century.
So I think many of my friends and relatives will read the book, if they can manage it at all, as a dreary homework assignment. That is very disappointing. But there is good news too.
I wrote the book as narrative nonfiction, which means it is driven by fiction techniques, like not revealing the story until the end. Like building suspense. Like resolving conflicts. Like developing characters who speak to each other in words taken directly from their letters and journals. Like building to a climax, two of them in fact. Like consciously trying to entertain in the story telling. The substructure is built on dependable scholarship, but the book is written in a narrative style, not an academic one.
My hope is that any reader who picks this book up (friends and relatives included) will be pleasantly surprised at how well it moves along from page to page, chapter to chapter, start to finish.
No need for an apology there.
Keep Your Pocket Comb Holstered
This just in from the New York Times: A five-year study published in 2001 in something called "Academic Emergency Medicine," reported that "there were an estimated 105,000 injuries related to hair-care products."
It is now nearly two decades later and the mind reels at the current hair-care casualty figures (not yet released). I don't think there is any cause for panic, but clearly we need to use caution with these products. Maybe it's time for the president to name a blue-ribbon national task force to look into the matter and head off future problems. Let's just call this a word to the wise.
It is now nearly two decades later and the mind reels at the current hair-care casualty figures (not yet released). I don't think there is any cause for panic, but clearly we need to use caution with these products. Maybe it's time for the president to name a blue-ribbon national task force to look into the matter and head off future problems. Let's just call this a word to the wise.
Friday, October 5, 2018
President for Life
As of today, it doesn't take much of a prophet to foresee that sexual miscreant Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court. It's a case in point that proves the rightness of women's accusations against men in every other avenue of American life can be canceled out when the subject comes to politics. The accusations against Kavanaugh by credible women in an open forum should have been enough to bury his nomination. And his wild, undisciplined anger in response to the accusations proves he doesn't have the controlled presence of mind to be judicious enough to assume a seat on the court.
But he will.
Of course he is supported by the Trump-man himself whose record as a vulgar womanizer did not keep him from subverting the will of the people in the 2016 election, which he lost by a whopping three million votes--and still became president. These are strange times when women's rights are being upheld and advanced in every corner of American life except partisan politics, where the old boys-will-be-boys defense hangs on as though it were still 1960.
One other prophecy while I'm looking into the crystal ball: If some kind of magic keeps anti-Trump voters out of the voting booths in 2020, and if the moron president should thereby win a second term, he will begin early in that term to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment which restricts presidents to two terms. He will try to become President for Life, a modern-day Roman Emperor. You wait and see.
But he will.
Of course he is supported by the Trump-man himself whose record as a vulgar womanizer did not keep him from subverting the will of the people in the 2016 election, which he lost by a whopping three million votes--and still became president. These are strange times when women's rights are being upheld and advanced in every corner of American life except partisan politics, where the old boys-will-be-boys defense hangs on as though it were still 1960.
One other prophecy while I'm looking into the crystal ball: If some kind of magic keeps anti-Trump voters out of the voting booths in 2020, and if the moron president should thereby win a second term, he will begin early in that term to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment which restricts presidents to two terms. He will try to become President for Life, a modern-day Roman Emperor. You wait and see.
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