Come late spring, my dad turned into a man I didn’t recognize. Normally a quiet man who spent his free hours taking a nap on the couch, he morphed into a talkative baseball fanatic. The Philadelphia

Here Comes The King

I was supposed to live at Dad’s the next day, but the Cardinals kept adding innings to innings and who can miss a game like that, the way a city like St. Louis breathes a year

We were allowed to be alone in the stadium, an object which is infinite. Prove it.
I can’t remember if we took the bus. More likely your dad dropped us in traffic and the civic door thunked on our

“The feeling of aluminum ringing up through your wrist
When you hit the sweet spot
Because you can always clip it and get to first
But that vibration, that's the game,”
I say, but Dr. Phil

Somewhere in the archives of Baseball America, there’s a story by an Italian journalist named Giovanna de la something or other, and she attempts to verify, through old box scores and personal

Just ahead is the familiar field, a diamond with rounded corners. I walk up with head down, anticipating that time will drag its feet while I sit and wish I could be attending to other things. But

I think to myself, that must’ve been Kenny’s doing,
and quickly look for a spare centerfield wall nearby,
so I can climb into the sky
and maybe somehow replace what was stolen.

He was black, handsome, and nonthreatening, so white people loved him.

I think I give non-important people dignity. I still believe there is magic in this world.

The paper said my team (Sand Gnats) had a chance this year (second season with the new name), so I opened the fridge, opened a beer, sat down, and turned the TV on to watch the first game of the

My brother and I were standing outside of the 30th street station in Philadelphia.

I forget how old we were but we were old enough that our mom let us take the train alone from Lancaster to

The one and only time I ever met Ken Griffey, Jr. was at a baseball clinic.

I was hitting off a tee when he strolled up behind me. I was 12, and Junior was still in high school, a volunteer, but

On the 20th Anniversary of Randy Johnson Hitting A Dove Mid-Air with A Fastball During Spring Training in Tucson, Arizona

I.

There must be something there
about peace and the odds of it all:
a

I want to give Glenn Burke a high five / I want to give Glenn Burke a high five for seeing Dusty Baker’s raised hand and just hitting it / I want to give Glenn Burke a high five for coming out in 1978

My legs on yours, in the stadium lights,
I have only just learned your name.
You point, across the outfield,
at the worst fight we will ever have.

I can barely make it out in the crowd
of

The boys are back together and everyone's in town except it's desolate and nobody gives a damn

It was the first walk I’ve taken
through the neighborhood
so late in summer without
listening to a ballgame.

Those voices from Toronto,
Cincinnati, L.A.—the waves
of crowd noise

It took me all morning to build the fence.  I used old lawn chairs, cardboard boxes, and rusty sign posts from the dumpster behind 7-Eleven.  I meant for it to look like Camden Yards.  The right field

Across the basement, your best friend pitches graduation balloons like they’re weightless baseballs. You swing with a curtain rod that had fallen behind the couch (your mom will ask about that

Mike and Nick and Tom are already playing stickball in the back lot when Dad drops you off at P.S. 236. On one brick wall they’ve chalked a strike zone, on the floor is a powder-blue pitcher’s mound

you have probably peed with everyone you’ve ever loved, including the woman you do right now

Previously on...
Part 4  ||  Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1 

Last year, Tim and I bought cardboard cutouts of ourselves ($129 each, apparently for charity) that watched every Athletics game in the stadium that we could not.

My husband Paul and I are drinking beers and eating hot dogs at the baseball stadium in San Francisco. It’s even a little boring, and I have my back to the field for a while so can I face my friends

In 1949 we had viewed television for three years on a 12” screen. It inhabited a large wooden box with doors that pulled out and covered the picture tube when not in use. For the most part in those

We were on vacation in Kansas City. Knowing I had never been to a major league game, my in-laws got my husband and me tickets to the Royals while they agreed to stay back at the hotel room with our

Bishop and I were smoking a joint on the pitcher’s mound. We drew dicks with our fingers next our school’s logo. It was mid-March, around midnight. I stopped drawing dicks and looked up at the empty

She was cursing at her TV. A Red Sox game was on. She was yelling at David Price, newly acquired from the Detroit Tigers. Price was behind in the count. I wanted to tell her that David Price was a

When he drops you off at home you realize the soles of your feet are covered in tar.