Tacoma 11, Your Portland Beavers 2
Inning One: Ars Fanatica
The Astute Reader might remember how, in a recent iteration of the Report, yours truly went head over you-know-whats for Gregory F. Augustine Pierce’s new-ish book How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball. Pierce, president and co-publisher of ACTA Publishing and ACTA Sports, not so coincidentally is also editor of another collection from the press, this one called Diamond Presence: Twelve Stories of Finding God at the Old Ball Park.
Perhaps even less coincidentally, James himself provides one of the blurbs for that book, which goes something like:
There are two things that one can never say often enough: one, that the game exists only to be enjoyed; and two, that there is no limit to the number of ways that it can be enjoyed. Diamond Presence shines a light upon these two truths.
While the Gentle Reader would obviously take great pains to avoid such baleful company, there are those out there — especially among the computer- and fun-hating ranks of Puritan sportswriters — there are those who might be shocked and/or awed that Bill James — a.k.a. Baby Daddy of the Sabermetric Revolution — would be able to spare even one minute from whatever goes on in his mother’s basement to emerge into daylight and (gasp!) enjoy baseball. And yet, here you have it, James seems not only to enjoy baseball, but insists that “the game exists only to be enjoyed.” Only, he says. Note it duly!
Inning Two: On That Note
Hey, remember how, in each of the last two Reports, I’ve quoted liberally from Bill James’s The Baseball Book 1991? Well, I’m gonna do that again. Like, right now.
In this episode of WDJD (What Did James Do?), we visit James’s Basic Questions entry on Oddibe McDowell, then of the Atlanta Braves:
How does he fit into the Braves’ outfield?
I’ve been stubborn about Oddibe, continuing to believe that he was better than he is. His numbers have never been great, but there was always something about him that I liked.
The thing to note here — what I get from it, anyway — is James’s sorta sly admission about some maybe-kinda-a-little-bit irrational feelings for Oddibe, which he suggests in the line “… there was always something about him that I liked.”
First, we should note that this is not necessarily the sort of behavior one expects from a raging stat geek. On the contrary, it’s representative of the sort of arbitrary allegiances we baseball (sports?) fans develop sometimes to certain players — allegiances, that is, based frequently on little more than “a feeling.”
Second, more generally, I would like to invite readers of all colors, creeds, and inseems both to develop and examine their own, totally irrational allegiances.
*I just call him Oddibe. We’s on a first-name basis.
Inning Three: Apologia of Sorts
Roman Gentleman of Letters, Pliny the Younger, writes in a letter to Tuscus — you know, Tuscus — he writes apropos the latter’s reading list:
Remember to be careful in your choice of authors of every kind: for, as it has been well observed, ‘though we should read much, we should not read many books.’
The reason why I bring this up is to nip in the bud any comments an Outspoken Reader might have in re my constant invocations of Bill James, ACTA Sports, and/or the very succinctly-named Gregory F. Augustine Pierce. What a guy like me does — what smart people in general do, I’m guessing — is read deeply those works that they (i.e. the smart people I just mentioned) find particularly useful. Other texts oughtn’t be read merely for “variety” or “diversity’s sake” if they possess less in the way of Truth.
In other words: if the Ecstatic Truth Baseball Report’s greatest achievement is the occasionally able exegesis of certain, better works by certain, better writers, then so be it.
Inning Four: Apropos Blurbs
Among the “stories and pieces” in his 2001 collection Superbad, terrible infant Ben Greenman includes “Blurbs”, a send-up of the blurb form, in general, and, more specifically, the often preposterous flights of hyperbole that one finds in said form. Greenman goes one step further, too: the blurbs in the piece are about the piece itself — creating a recipe which, were I 53-year-old woman, I would refer to as “delish.”
Included in Greenman’s “Blurbs” are the following, uh, blurbs:
In just four-hundred words, this piece dismantles the history of modern literature and pieces it back together again.
–The Los Angeles Times
The central conceit — a humor piece composed entirely of blurbs about that humor piece — reads like a Mobius strip tied around Jorge Luis Borges’s finger.
–The Boston Globe
Imagine a cross between the blurbs from Bridges of Madison County and the blurbs from Infinite Jest.
–The Cleveland Plain Dealer
A splendid piece, beautifully conceived and crafted … No other collection of blurbs this year comes close.
–The San Jose Mercury News
If John Barth met Samuel Beckett in a bar, and the two of them got into a cab, and the cab picked up Andy Kaufman, and then the cab driver turned around, and it was Dorothy Parker, that would be awfully strange. It would also be the rough equivalent of this marvelous short work.
–The Baltimore Sun
Inning Five: Three Blurbs
Were someone to write a series of blurbs somehow involving tonight’s game, it might look like this:
“Douglas Fister’s Preposterous Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio is a stunning novel, a breathtaking tour de force. . . . Submit to the addiction and receive Preposterous Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio’s pleasures unadulterated, unabridged, and magnificent.”
–Book Page
“Tacoma’s Cavalcade of Prospects* offers huge entertainment. . . . Only Gaddis and Pynchon have this range. So brilliant you need sunglasses to read it, but it has a heart as well as a brain. Cavalcade of Prospects is both a vast, comic epic and a profound study of the postmodern condition . . . a Naked Lunch for the aughts.”
–Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Ambitious and frequently brilliant . . . Tacoma’s Twenty-Hit Barrage [is] a raucous Falstaffian, deadly serious vision of a cartwheeling culture in the self-pleasuring throes of self-destruction. . . . Almost certainly the biggest and boldest novel we’ll see this year . . . and probably one of the best.”
–Kirkus Reviews
*I mean, seriously: Mike Carp, Michael Saunders, Jeff Clement, and Adam Moore. Plus Mike Morse and Prentice Redman aren’t so bad.
Inning Six: Kyle Blanks Watch!
Kyle Blanks puts the pain in Au Bon Pain.
His line entering today’s game was: 276/386/471 (AVG/OBP/SLG) with 11 HR, 36 BB, and 62 K in 264 PA.
In 4 PA Wednesday afternoon, he went 2 for 4 with a 2B.
Ya heard!?!
Inning Seven: Stretch
Q. What’s the newest name of crack Portland Beavers Media Relations Intern Rob “Rocket” Morse’s fantasy team?
A. The Pence is Mightier
Inning Eight: Nary a Jerry
Jason Vondersmith, in case you didn’t know, is both a) a sportswriter for the Portland Tribune and b) someone in whose presence — owing to my privileged status as Official Baseballing Journalist, that is – someone in whose presence I’m allowed to sit without being dragged away by the crack squad of security personnel here at PGE Park.
Jerry Owens, in case you didn’t know, is both a) the leadoff hitter and center fielder for the Rainiers of Tacoma and b) named Jerry.
It was this latter fact which the aforementioned M. Vondersmith pointed out with some surprise as M. Owens strode to the batter’s box this evening, adding something to the effect of (M. Vondersmith did, I mean), “You don’t find a lot of Jerrys in the baseball these days.”
Nor did he err in this observation. In fact, as of right now, in The Bigs, there is only one Jerry: Cincinnati Reds Everyman Jerry Hairston, Jr.
“What about Jerry Blevins?” maybe the Informed Reader is shouting somewhere in front of his computer. “Well, what about Jerry Blevins?” I ask back, as if to make a point. “Everyone who’s anyone knows that Blevins hasn’t pitched in the majors since May 12th, after which he was sent down to Oakland’s Triple-A affiliate, Sacramento.
“Oh, yeah!? Well what about –” Stop, friend. You’ll only embarrass yourself. Just stop.
Inning Nine: A Moustache by Any Other Name
Despite the present dearth of Jerrys in The Show, our old friend Yesteryear has had its share of them. About a gabillion, if I’m counting correctly. Jerry Reuss, Jerry Remy, Jerry Mumphrey, and the Original Jerry Hairston all come to mind. Of course, there’s nothing too peculiar about this. Jerry is a pretty common name. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly, there’s a good chance that exactly 100% of the dads connected to Concord Northeast Little League from about 1990 – 1993 were named Jerry. I could be misremembering that, but I’m pretty sure.
What is peculiar is the proportion of Jerrys who have opted to decorate the face part of their bodies with (frequently amazing and sometimes pervy) moustaches. Reuss, Remy, Mumphrey, Hairston: all ’stached it up big time. I don’t have the hard data at hand, but my guess is, were one interested in making a Venn diagram in which one set consisted of former major leaguers with the praenomen Jerry and another set consisted of major leaguers named Jerry who had moustaches, it would probably end up looking a lot like:
