In which we listen to ourselves being recounted in the mouth of the boyfriend 

The people in my workshop suggested the stories were detailing co-dependency. From my position of fiction writer I laughed and nodded in agreement so as not to appear too sentimental towards the material. I thought of my classmates as boring and responsible and generic, and reasoned that they couldn’t understand the characters’ interactions because they were only limitedly tolerant of anything eccentric—

I do not remember this, cannot call up the image. 

We are launching a new project, HOBART HANDBOOKS, the first project of which is our Handbook on Baseball, collecting some of our favorite pieces from our last thirteen years of online baseball

The story goes that Mario is Luigi’s brother. Nearly all we know about him is that he is a brother.

Sometimes we appreciate things a lot later in life than we should.

The tourists stand on the hostel balcony, shirtless, sun on their golden skin and hair or maybe their skin is the sun.

Yesterday my mom called me up and asked me to buy her cigarettes. I told her no and hung up. 

By dread I’m inspired, by fear I’m amused. The phrase was cursived on a cocktail napkin and folded into my handshake by a steel-haired young woman two weeks before my 20th birthday. 

In my head I can't believe what he just said. How the hell are we going to take a bunch of ordinary popsicle sticks and turn them into bombs? Bombs? Shit, they explode. There's fire involved! Is Kevin nuts? We'll kill people!

At my friend’s bonfire on a chilly Southwestern night, a blond woman in Birkenstocks approached me and said that her name was Singing Humyn.

Only one person on the team had a significant mustache. She was the only girl, but she wasn’t good at math. 

Once outside, I unroll The Jacka's sweatshirt from my jacket, revealing the XXXL garment, in all its glory, reeking of blunts and harsh body odor.

Two years earlier in a set of skyscrapered offices with panoramic views of dusty Los Angeles, I was an underling and he was not.

April 6, 2014
Opening Day
San Diego Padres
vs.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Dodger Stadium
Los Angeles, CA

San Diego



Los

She lasts another day, maybe two. 

Another night we got so high I broke into our next-door neighbor’s house and stole their television so we could watch The Simpsons. I asked Loretta where I should put it. She said on top of the TV, which is how we discovered that we already had a TV.

Tara and I were impressed by the Goth subculture Goth Ryan and Tara’s boyfriend took part in not just because of the black strappy clothes, black fingernails, and heavy eye makeup (which we immediately began imitating), but also their directness and openness about feelings of sadness and rottenness. 

I love it when I’m speeding and then again I love it when I crash.

Abdullah greeted me outside of the Jaipur, India train station, asking if I needed a ride. He was quick to show me his official license, knew where my hotel was located and did not make false claims about it having burned down recently, a popular scheme according to my Lonely Planet guidebook. 

I was nineteen the summer of 1956 when the Baseball Fairy tapped me with her wand and almost sent me into orbit. 

When I was fifteen, I started receiving letters from Division I baseball coaches about the possibility of joining them on such and such Elysian Field and helping the squad reach its goal, which

I didn’t become a fan of baseball until I was in my early twenties. As a teenager, I thought sports were antithetical to the sort of arty, book-reading persona that I had been trying so hard to affect.

When the time came for its demolition, there was no implosion at Shea Stadium.

March 7, 2015
Spring Training - Cactus League
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
vs.
Oakland Athletics
Hohokam Stadium
Mason, AZ

Los