BASEBALL.
When I was younger, I remember a man once saying to me, most likely in language much less poetic than my memory of it, that it was no worthwhile thing to play Little League baseball each summer. It was spring, maybe March or the beginning of April, and at eleven years old, I was preparing to wash out of the only sport I ever made much of a pass at. My friends were signing up for the local league and the man - an elder in my church and a Korean War veteran - answered my question about letting the list pass by me unsigned by saying, "It's a small thing to hit, a baseball."
I remember the oddity of that statement: was this a casual observation of my weakness at the game? A commiseration? A statement of resignation, or - perhaps best of all - a scruffy, old-man validation of my own (and perhaps his own) desire for lethargy? It seemed impossible, that an adult of the most statured positions would encourage me to not stick something out or give it the old college try - an anamoly of nature, somehow; a slip-up from a wry, if not ornery, old man too damn close to whatever it is old men are close to to care about the goings-on of a slow, awkward kid.
Still eight months from my twelfth birthday, I took what I thought to be his advice and stayed home for the season. I remember very clearly missing the games, even from my spot on the bench where I usually experienced them. It was something, being a part of that game, I have always understood that. But there were practices and drills and laps that were less missed, and dads and fear and failure. I thought of baseball so much in terms of hot, humid South Carolina afternoons and bees buzzing around the outfields I most often found myself standing so uselessly in. So, it was a trade I took then knowingly and willingly, with not so much a sense of regret as a sense of nostalgia - a hallmark of this particular game for as long as people have played and failed at it, I imagine. After all, it is a small thing to hit, a baseball.
But as I'm sitting here thinking about all this now, writing things down I didn't sit here intending to discuss, the Braves are winding up a game on the television in my office and I keep catching myself drifting off just into the sound of it. For once we're winning, I'm proud to observe, and convincingly: it's the bottom of the eighth and the home team is up 13 to 5, with both Jones boys going deep and this season's hero, Brian McCann, going 1 for 3 with an RBI. I feel good about it, I'm realizing, and not as I might about something I quietly root for, like discounts at the supermarket or the outcome of treasury elections, but in a way that puts a smile on my face even in a room where I know I'm alone. It moves me, baseball does, even at an age growing alarmingly far from the twelve I almost was the last time I turned down the opportunity to play it.
And more, it does this at a time and in a season that couldn't mean less. The Braves are a team I love, at times to an alarming degree. I anticipate the beginning of each season the way you wait for a check to come in the mail: with no patience and a thousand plans for how to spend it. I follow the camp journals and the scouting reports and the injury logs, I plan a handful of evenings when I might be able to make it to Atlanta, and most of all, I expect to win. For a long time, I've only known one kind of disappointment - that of losing thirteen of fourteen times in the playoffs - but it came in such rushing and violent moments of extremity that it almost tempered itself: there is no pain as sharp to a fan of at least this game as that of losing at the very end. Baseball embeds itself in me to such an extent each Spring that I forget each and every season that it is not a constant - and when it is ripped away from me in October, I feel, every time as if for the first time, that I am a fish who has swallowed a hook and been allowed to forget it entirely before a dozing fisherman sets it, now at a point so much deeper than I could have imagined it would go. But done enough times, this pain is more akin to a bandage pulled off in one rush - excruciatingly brief. However, this year I'm remembering something I've been allowed to forget for a long, long time: what its like to know the end is near from almost the beginning. Baseball this season has been five months of living with a dying relative for me; hope and the abandonment of hope, hope and the abandonment of hope. I speak hyperbolically, but only in an effort to put an image up to something that seems irreversibly internalized - something in me is tied to basball not as a hobby or interest or even a love, but as an expression. I think I see this small, strange game as an investment at its most basic level, and maybe what draws me (so closely) to it is knowing that the game - with its rhythm and skill and play - is a knowable, perservering thing. Baseball is what another old man once said it was: above all, a game we can all imagine playing. The simple mechanics of it - hitting, catching, fielding with a glove - these are things we see and understand in their essence immediately. There are no playbooks for it, no apparent call for extreme athleticism, yet almost no other activity produces the same moments of elation and impossibility and amazement that baseball does: a diving catch, a sweeping curveball, the mightiest of deep-fly home runs...and all from something I feel so interminably close to; a myth I drink down readily in exchange for the belief that I also dove once, I also hit a small, round ball well with a bat and could do it still. It is at once distant and close, and I believe we let it blur these lines not because it elevates us as individuals but because it brings the possibility of the incredible so close.
Yet at least for me, this wonder for baseball as a game is irreversibly tied to the same Braves club that just disappeared into the tunnel leading to their lockers across the room from me - a team that has devastated me for five long months with losses and failures and, more than either of those and at once the same as them, warned me from the very beginning that their term here, at least this season, would be a painfully short one.
But here I am, watching again, even hoping again, at this late hour. But I'm smiling agian, too, over the smallest of things: a hit with two outs from a pitcher, a home run in the seventh inning from a player I like in a game decided since the third. Rounding the bases, Andruw Jones stumbled over the toe of his own shoe and fell to a knee, getting back up only to laugh his way home. As he headed back into the dugout, the rest of the team waited at the steps before attacking him with pats on the shoulder and slaps to the helmet, laughing and warning him about the ledge between the field and their seats. It was a small and ridiculous scene, but I laughed out loud with them, sharing, I imagined, in that small, unforeseen moment in a game and a week and a season that seems to already be so definitively settled. It doesn't make the best anecdote, but it connects somehow to that memory of me as an eleven year old. Looking back, I have no regrets about not finishing things out as a baseball player; frankly, I was pretty bad at it, and despite the game's appearances, it's not something anybody can do. It's an awfully thin bat that you've got to hit with, and if you can't handle that part of the game, there's really not much for you - even at eleven. But I do miss being in the dugout when a teammate comes back with a sheepish grin, knowing despite the score that he's going to get it from everybody inside. Games seem so entirely filled with these moments, points in the large gaps in action that are more baseball than the hit and the pitch, I think. It's those things I miss most from being there, but those are also the moments baseball, of all games, most lets us share in from the stands. It isn't entirely a myth, that thought that any of us could be there on the field in starched white uniforms. Like you might expect, there is that sliver of truth still in it, somewhere in between the grounders and pop-outs and double plays. Somewhere in there, a game is being played that doesn't just promise another season, it gives us moments that seem, impossibly, to succeed even in the midst of losing. That was by far the area of the game I was most adept at, at eleven and ever since.
But it's an awfully small thing to hit a baseball.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Get Loneliest
MUSIC.
Today is August 22. Do you hear it? That last gasp of summer? That long exhale, like a friend looking over your shoulder in the middle of a conversation, telling you to make no mistake: there is something sneaking up behind you and you cannot get out of its way. For myself and at least one other friend reading this, that something coming is Friday's first wave of freshmen at South Carolina. I can't say I don't want to see them. And I can't say I do, either.
But friends, there's hope. Of a sort. This August 22 is not just the last Tuesday of your summer, it is also the release date for the newest album from any reasonable human being's favorite twosome, The Mountain Goats. For those unfamiliar with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes's indie-acoustic stylings, shame on you; get out of here. Nobody wants your kind loitering about. For those who have, I bring good tidings: thanks to the magic (yes, magic!) of illegal music downloading and client-to-client engines, I have heard and am now listening to this latest effort, entitled Get Lonely by our friendly songsmiths. It's on its third or fourth cycle, and I feel adequately prepared to say: good news - its nice. I would say more - perhaps throw a little zip into it - but its the damndest thing: I'm sorta down. This album delivers on its premise, gathering together under a fairly vague banner an emphatically serene (?) collection of tracks in keeping with the "slow stuff" of the Mountain Goats' most recent offerings. "Maybe Sprout Wings" and "Wild Sage" pick up on the winter-parking-lot motif of The Sunset Tree's closer, "Pale Green Things," kickers like "If You See Light" and "Cobra Tatoo" favor many of the offset tributes to Darnielle's friends of various eras that populated 2002's We Shall All Be Healed, namely "Linda Blair is Innocent" and "Mole," and the album's handful of light pop-infused tracks like the first single "Woke Up New" and "If You See Light" crackle in the rhythm of the album the way a song like "Peacocks" did on earlier albums: they become striking and beautiful mostly because they are such a departure from where the album seems to be taking you. As in most of the more reflective tracks from TMG's last three albums produced in part by John Vanderslice, Darnielle reverts back to a fairly simple "man with an acoustic guitar" model with light accents of electric guitars, brushed drums and a clean, harmonic bass. Pianos also make an appearance on several tracks and serve their purpose nicely, breaking up the rhythm of the album and providing a different tool for J.D.'s melancholy.
And of that there is plenty. Again, this album is difficult to discuss or review (if that is what this is); its tone is exactly what its title sets out to be, and it achieves this remarkably well, with diverse and varied lyrics, all of which find a way to touch that nerve Darnielle seems to have perhaps contemporary music's greatest link to: that small buzzing inside of us that sees children's love through the lost eyes of adults. There are mornings alone, walks in the dark, cold city streets, puritanical misjudgments; moments of frustrated release and bitter restraint and all of it timed and tuned to an entirely believable and authentic, well, thrust that pushes what should be a cumbersome album forward. The result is exactly what you want it to be: a slow processional of an album that somehow avoids the temptation to wander, instead moving evenly through the frozen scenes of a disparate and fairly crushing loneliness.
Although criticism of Get Lonely has to, thanks to that awfully conspicuous title, address this work as a unified whole (lets not say 'concept album,' okay?), the individual tracks here have been rightly described as "shuffle-able." You've got a lot of strong songs here, particularly the downright painful "Woke Up New," "Wild Sage," "Half Dead," "Moon Over Goldsboro," and my favorite of the bunch so far, "New Monster Avenue," which allows an almost-dissonant bass rumble to build as Darnielle waits for "neighbors with torches" to take him away; the song's play with both persecuted and persecutor is incredibly sharp, reminding us perhaps most deliberately of the self-aware nature of loneliness (as opposed to that word that will no doubt find its way into many a review: depression). Also exceptional is the album's briefest and most instrumentally dynamic track "If You See Light," which begins with horns before a strikingly efficient slap-bass line drives what becomes the back half of the album's answer to "New Monster Avenue," reminding us of the previous song's - and the album's - immediacy:
When the villagers come to my door
I will hide underneath the table in the dining room with my
Wings drawn up to my chest
That sense of almost-allegorical layering with Darnielle's lyrics is perhaps the album's most significant step forward for The Mountain Goats; in keeping with the emotional purge that was The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely is alive with both a keen and decidedly un-ironic emotional sincerity and a renewed grip on metaphorical expansion that seemed to cross into new territory on the previous album, particularly in songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" and "Up the Wolves." This escalation of Darnielle's typically incidental and isolated (although always astute and moving) lyrics continues here, suggesting he is not done growing yet; there will be much more to Get Lonely to in the future, I suspect, and plenty to celebrate as well. In a line that Darnielle shouldn't be so modest about from "Cobra Tatoo," he sings "God did not need Abraham / He could raise children from stone." Is this a reminder that Get Lonely is just that - an exercise for an extremely talented group in putting together "downer" songs in a music environment clamoring for more and more energy right now? Is Darnielle trying to tell us that his own output shouldn't be pigeonholed but celebrated for its dedication to its titular topic? After four listens now, I can't honestly say. But its a damn good lyric. And at least when it comes to those, on Get Lonely, there's plenty of good company to go around.
Today is August 22. Do you hear it? That last gasp of summer? That long exhale, like a friend looking over your shoulder in the middle of a conversation, telling you to make no mistake: there is something sneaking up behind you and you cannot get out of its way. For myself and at least one other friend reading this, that something coming is Friday's first wave of freshmen at South Carolina. I can't say I don't want to see them. And I can't say I do, either.
But friends, there's hope. Of a sort. This August 22 is not just the last Tuesday of your summer, it is also the release date for the newest album from any reasonable human being's favorite twosome, The Mountain Goats. For those unfamiliar with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes's indie-acoustic stylings, shame on you; get out of here. Nobody wants your kind loitering about. For those who have, I bring good tidings: thanks to the magic (yes, magic!) of illegal music downloading and client-to-client engines, I have heard and am now listening to this latest effort, entitled Get Lonely by our friendly songsmiths. It's on its third or fourth cycle, and I feel adequately prepared to say: good news - its nice. I would say more - perhaps throw a little zip into it - but its the damndest thing: I'm sorta down. This album delivers on its premise, gathering together under a fairly vague banner an emphatically serene (?) collection of tracks in keeping with the "slow stuff" of the Mountain Goats' most recent offerings. "Maybe Sprout Wings" and "Wild Sage" pick up on the winter-parking-lot motif of The Sunset Tree's closer, "Pale Green Things," kickers like "If You See Light" and "Cobra Tatoo" favor many of the offset tributes to Darnielle's friends of various eras that populated 2002's We Shall All Be Healed, namely "Linda Blair is Innocent" and "Mole," and the album's handful of light pop-infused tracks like the first single "Woke Up New" and "If You See Light" crackle in the rhythm of the album the way a song like "Peacocks" did on earlier albums: they become striking and beautiful mostly because they are such a departure from where the album seems to be taking you. As in most of the more reflective tracks from TMG's last three albums produced in part by John Vanderslice, Darnielle reverts back to a fairly simple "man with an acoustic guitar" model with light accents of electric guitars, brushed drums and a clean, harmonic bass. Pianos also make an appearance on several tracks and serve their purpose nicely, breaking up the rhythm of the album and providing a different tool for J.D.'s melancholy.
And of that there is plenty. Again, this album is difficult to discuss or review (if that is what this is); its tone is exactly what its title sets out to be, and it achieves this remarkably well, with diverse and varied lyrics, all of which find a way to touch that nerve Darnielle seems to have perhaps contemporary music's greatest link to: that small buzzing inside of us that sees children's love through the lost eyes of adults. There are mornings alone, walks in the dark, cold city streets, puritanical misjudgments; moments of frustrated release and bitter restraint and all of it timed and tuned to an entirely believable and authentic, well, thrust that pushes what should be a cumbersome album forward. The result is exactly what you want it to be: a slow processional of an album that somehow avoids the temptation to wander, instead moving evenly through the frozen scenes of a disparate and fairly crushing loneliness.
Although criticism of Get Lonely has to, thanks to that awfully conspicuous title, address this work as a unified whole (lets not say 'concept album,' okay?), the individual tracks here have been rightly described as "shuffle-able." You've got a lot of strong songs here, particularly the downright painful "Woke Up New," "Wild Sage," "Half Dead," "Moon Over Goldsboro," and my favorite of the bunch so far, "New Monster Avenue," which allows an almost-dissonant bass rumble to build as Darnielle waits for "neighbors with torches" to take him away; the song's play with both persecuted and persecutor is incredibly sharp, reminding us perhaps most deliberately of the self-aware nature of loneliness (as opposed to that word that will no doubt find its way into many a review: depression). Also exceptional is the album's briefest and most instrumentally dynamic track "If You See Light," which begins with horns before a strikingly efficient slap-bass line drives what becomes the back half of the album's answer to "New Monster Avenue," reminding us of the previous song's - and the album's - immediacy:
When the villagers come to my door
I will hide underneath the table in the dining room with my
Wings drawn up to my chest
That sense of almost-allegorical layering with Darnielle's lyrics is perhaps the album's most significant step forward for The Mountain Goats; in keeping with the emotional purge that was The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely is alive with both a keen and decidedly un-ironic emotional sincerity and a renewed grip on metaphorical expansion that seemed to cross into new territory on the previous album, particularly in songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" and "Up the Wolves." This escalation of Darnielle's typically incidental and isolated (although always astute and moving) lyrics continues here, suggesting he is not done growing yet; there will be much more to Get Lonely to in the future, I suspect, and plenty to celebrate as well. In a line that Darnielle shouldn't be so modest about from "Cobra Tatoo," he sings "God did not need Abraham / He could raise children from stone." Is this a reminder that Get Lonely is just that - an exercise for an extremely talented group in putting together "downer" songs in a music environment clamoring for more and more energy right now? Is Darnielle trying to tell us that his own output shouldn't be pigeonholed but celebrated for its dedication to its titular topic? After four listens now, I can't honestly say. But its a damn good lyric. And at least when it comes to those, on Get Lonely, there's plenty of good company to go around.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A (Second) Shot at This...
MOVIES.
I'm posting, for the first time, my list of the top 100 films ever released. To be brief, my intent in putting this up in this forum is twofold: first, I would like to open a discussion about film on a larger scale on this blog - I welcome any and all comments about anything this post brings up - your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, suggestions, even your thoughts on lists in the larger sense, if that's what strikes you. Second, I hope to use the feedback from my friends and others to improve my own posting - in short, I want to make this the best list I can.
So, here goes: A top 100 films, selected and ranked on grounds of artistic, cultural and creative merit. Although in large part unavoidable, my attempt in making this list was to ignore either contemporary relevance or temporal considerations. In other words, I believe David Lean's 1956 version of "Great Expectations" is better than versions both before and after its release not because it broke any technical ground, but because I believe it is a more focused and emotionally satisfying creative work than any other rendition. Similarly, I leave "Birth of a Nation" off this list not because it is racially offensive, but because, frankly, I believe there have been 100 movies better than it made in the last 100 years or so.
On with the show:
Honorable Mention
I'm posting, for the first time, my list of the top 100 films ever released. To be brief, my intent in putting this up in this forum is twofold: first, I would like to open a discussion about film on a larger scale on this blog - I welcome any and all comments about anything this post brings up - your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, suggestions, even your thoughts on lists in the larger sense, if that's what strikes you. Second, I hope to use the feedback from my friends and others to improve my own posting - in short, I want to make this the best list I can.
So, here goes: A top 100 films, selected and ranked on grounds of artistic, cultural and creative merit. Although in large part unavoidable, my attempt in making this list was to ignore either contemporary relevance or temporal considerations. In other words, I believe David Lean's 1956 version of "Great Expectations" is better than versions both before and after its release not because it broke any technical ground, but because I believe it is a more focused and emotionally satisfying creative work than any other rendition. Similarly, I leave "Birth of a Nation" off this list not because it is racially offensive, but because, frankly, I believe there have been 100 movies better than it made in the last 100 years or so.
On with the show:
Another Top 100 List
*draft 2 - major changes include additions of "Blade Runner" (1982) and "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), expansion of honorable mentions to 25 entries*
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Godfather (1972)
- Schindler’s List (1994)
- The Godfather, Part II (1974)
- The Searchers (1956)
- Seven Samurai (1954)
- La Dolce Vita (1959)
- The Graduate (1967)
- Psycho (1960)
- The Bicycle Thief (1949)
- On the Waterfront (1954)
- Gone With the Wind (1939)
- The Seventh Seal (1957)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Rashomon (1950)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- The Third Man (1949)
- The Great Dictator (1940)
- Raiders of the Lost
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Annie Hall (1977)
- Vertigo (1958)
- It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
- Sherlock Jr. (1924)
- Raging Bull (1980)
- Jaws (1975)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- Ran (1985)
- High Noon (1952)
- Sunset Blvd. (1950)
- It Happened One Night (1934)
- Metropolis (1926)
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- Star Wars (1977)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
- The
- Taxi Driver (1976)
- Duck Soup (1933)
- Easy Rider (1969)
- Rear Window (1954)
- Bonnie and
- Days of Heaven (1978)
- Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (1977)
- Apocalypse Now (1979)
- All About Eve (1950)
- Network (1976)
- 8 ½ (1963)
- The Gold Rush (1925)
- Paths of Glory (1957)
- The Lord of the Rings (2003)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
- A Clockwork
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
- The Lost Weekend (1945)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- The Elephant Man (1980)
- Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Double Indemnity (1944)
- Nosferatu (1922)
- Great Expectations (1956)
- The Sting (1973)
- Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
- King Kong (1933)
- The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- The Quiet Man (1952)
- Notorious (1946)
- Life is Beautiful (1999)
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Patton (1970)
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- E.T. – the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- Kill Bill (2003)
- Miller’s Crossing (1990)
- Cool Hand Luke (1967)
- La Strada (1954)
- The Night of the Hunter (1955)
- The Conversation (1974)
- The Man Who Shot
- Unforgiven (1992)
- The Big Sleep (1946)
- Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
- The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Honorable Mention
- The Deer Hunter (1976)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- The 400 Blows (1959)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
- M (1931)
- The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- The Last Picture Show (1971)
- The Right Stuff (1983)
- Modern Times (1936)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Mr. Smith Goes to
- Requiem for a Dream (2000)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- Blow-Up (1966)
- The Wild Bunch (1969)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
- North By Northwest (1959)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- Traffic (2000)
- Platoon (1986)
- This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Monday, August 14, 2006
A Call to All Listmakers
MOVIES.
The day has finally come:
I can no longer distract myself from making a Top 100 Movies list. Sure, it's cliche and, to be blunt, a set up for failure - but dammit, I need to do it. I've thought about it, pondered about it, wished about it, dreamed about it for too long! So, over the coming week, I'm putting it together.
But there is a problem. When you've seen roughly a thousand movies in your life, it can be hard to remember the 'great ones' - especially when the pressure is on. So what I'd like to do is this: I would like to ask that anyone reading this post - anyone at all - respond with a list of their own ten personal favorite movies. Top ten (10) lists from everyone. It doesn't have to be detailed or thought out or even "artistic"; hell, it doesn't even have to be ten (10). But please, post 'em up. It'll be fun. And, maybe more importantly, fun to argue.
So that's it: I'm begging. To get us started, here's mine (as of now, anyway):
1) Citizen Kane
2) The Godfather
3) Schindler's List
4) Casablanca
5) Lawrence of Arabia
6) The Godfather, Part II
7) The Searchers
8) Seven Samurai
9) La Dolce Vita
10) The Graduate
Your turn.
The day has finally come:
I can no longer distract myself from making a Top 100 Movies list. Sure, it's cliche and, to be blunt, a set up for failure - but dammit, I need to do it. I've thought about it, pondered about it, wished about it, dreamed about it for too long! So, over the coming week, I'm putting it together.
But there is a problem. When you've seen roughly a thousand movies in your life, it can be hard to remember the 'great ones' - especially when the pressure is on. So what I'd like to do is this: I would like to ask that anyone reading this post - anyone at all - respond with a list of their own ten personal favorite movies. Top ten (10) lists from everyone. It doesn't have to be detailed or thought out or even "artistic"; hell, it doesn't even have to be ten (10). But please, post 'em up. It'll be fun. And, maybe more importantly, fun to argue.
So that's it: I'm begging. To get us started, here's mine (as of now, anyway):
1) Citizen Kane
2) The Godfather
3) Schindler's List
4) Casablanca
5) Lawrence of Arabia
6) The Godfather, Part II
7) The Searchers
8) Seven Samurai
9) La Dolce Vita
10) The Graduate
Your turn.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Hall Yes?
BASEBALL.
A question for the forum: what do we do with Shoeless Joe? I ask because last night, in celebration of my mother's birthday, my family and I visited downtown Greenville, SC in order to tour both the new minor league baseball stadium (designed as a dimension-replica of Fenway Park, presumably in order to 'prep' the members of their single-A club, the Greenville Drive) and the beautifully renovated downtown "Falls Park." As we worked our way down Main Street, I was surprised by a small courtyard that had been set up on the far West End of town dedicated to none other than Joe Jackson. Now, as you may or may not know, Greenville was the birthplace and longtime home of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, an exceptional Major Leaguer from 1909 until his expulsion from baseball in 1920 as part of the Chicago "Black Sox" team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. In his eleven years in the Major Leagues, Jackson batted over .350 nine times, won the league batting title twice and was voted MVP of the 1917 World Series, and as a large plaque informed me last night, the courtyard and statue on Main Street stand on the ground where his childhood home had been located before being moved last year to the outfield of West End Park - the pseudo-Fenway mentioned earlier. As part of the Joe-mania of the surrounding area, a large shop window has been decorated with a collection of Jackson memorobilia underneath a slogan reading "HALL YES! INDUCT SHOELESS JOE!" The window also contains various stat sheets from Jackson's career, a retrospective of his "flawless" play in the 1919 Series, and a copy of the U.S. Court report declaring Joe and 7 of his teammates "innocent on all counts of conspiracy" that ended the players' criminal trial in 1920. A petition is also posted on the store's window, requesting signatures from any citizens "wishing to see Joseph Jackson inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame."
And as I took all this in last night, reading about Jackson's life and career, witnessing a town celebrating its hero, I couldn't help but hesitate for a moment before I put my name down on that piece of paper - and now, Sunday afternoon, I still can't make up my mind about Shoeless Joe. What is there to say about a cheater? Was he one? These seem like particularly prescient questions for baseball fans, don't they? And what do we make of a career cut short in any fashion, especially one so incredibly controversial? Can the city of Greenville celebrate someone like Joe? And, as that window made so painfully clear, can what made Jackson so undeniably great in his eleven years of play ever be recognized without working through what has made him so infamous in all the time since?
I'm writing this post because I'm not sure - and I really want to love the guy. After all, I'm from a town only twenty minutes away - he's practically my hero, too. But should he be? And what do we do for him (and the list of other offenders, which seems to grow by the year)? Can we recognize merit alone?
These seem like questions worth asking, I think, so there they are. Your thoughts?
A question for the forum: what do we do with Shoeless Joe? I ask because last night, in celebration of my mother's birthday, my family and I visited downtown Greenville, SC in order to tour both the new minor league baseball stadium (designed as a dimension-replica of Fenway Park, presumably in order to 'prep' the members of their single-A club, the Greenville Drive) and the beautifully renovated downtown "Falls Park." As we worked our way down Main Street, I was surprised by a small courtyard that had been set up on the far West End of town dedicated to none other than Joe Jackson. Now, as you may or may not know, Greenville was the birthplace and longtime home of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, an exceptional Major Leaguer from 1909 until his expulsion from baseball in 1920 as part of the Chicago "Black Sox" team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. In his eleven years in the Major Leagues, Jackson batted over .350 nine times, won the league batting title twice and was voted MVP of the 1917 World Series, and as a large plaque informed me last night, the courtyard and statue on Main Street stand on the ground where his childhood home had been located before being moved last year to the outfield of West End Park - the pseudo-Fenway mentioned earlier. As part of the Joe-mania of the surrounding area, a large shop window has been decorated with a collection of Jackson memorobilia underneath a slogan reading "HALL YES! INDUCT SHOELESS JOE!" The window also contains various stat sheets from Jackson's career, a retrospective of his "flawless" play in the 1919 Series, and a copy of the U.S. Court report declaring Joe and 7 of his teammates "innocent on all counts of conspiracy" that ended the players' criminal trial in 1920. A petition is also posted on the store's window, requesting signatures from any citizens "wishing to see Joseph Jackson inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame."
And as I took all this in last night, reading about Jackson's life and career, witnessing a town celebrating its hero, I couldn't help but hesitate for a moment before I put my name down on that piece of paper - and now, Sunday afternoon, I still can't make up my mind about Shoeless Joe. What is there to say about a cheater? Was he one? These seem like particularly prescient questions for baseball fans, don't they? And what do we make of a career cut short in any fashion, especially one so incredibly controversial? Can the city of Greenville celebrate someone like Joe? And, as that window made so painfully clear, can what made Jackson so undeniably great in his eleven years of play ever be recognized without working through what has made him so infamous in all the time since?
I'm writing this post because I'm not sure - and I really want to love the guy. After all, I'm from a town only twenty minutes away - he's practically my hero, too. But should he be? And what do we do for him (and the list of other offenders, which seems to grow by the year)? Can we recognize merit alone?
These seem like questions worth asking, I think, so there they are. Your thoughts?
Friday, August 11, 2006
Modus Operandi
This blog is intended to serve as a forum for comments and discussion on a variety of topics, including but not limited to: baseball; music, namely of indie, folk, rock and post- stratification; movies, namely movies of exceptional artistic, cultural or social merit; philosophy, namely broad discussion of language as both communicatory means and cultural artifact; alchemy, in particular the pursuit of altering devalued earth elements into the fetishized ore forms of a present consumerist state; archery, as both reclaimed tool and leisure-class indulgence; and the all-important detachment of signifier to signified.
Blogging, for example.
Blogging, for example.
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