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To the curb . . .

I haven’t read that big-hitter book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” yet . . . but I feel that life-changing spirit moving within me, hallelujah!

When the month turned, I promised myself to throw out, sell, give away or otherwise discard at least one possession a day. A New Year’s resolution in July. Why? Because I really don’t need a best-seller, or any of the scads-worth of decluttering books and testimonials out there, to sip on the affirming tonic of simplification.

Control feels good, in whatever amounts. Self-control; to breathe and count to 10 and let a virulent moment percolate and die. Self-discipline, to push through a workout or a task with mindfulness and feel lifted when it is done. Self-worth, to appreciate your place in the order of the universe and to value that gift.

It is along the lines of breaking a habit — “I will only drink two cups of coffee this morning.” — or promoting a new skill — “I will spend 15 minutes on that learn-a-new-language website, learning, um, a new language.” I will read just a chapter of this book a day, go to bed 30 minutes earlier each night, put a dollar into an envelope  for charity each morning.

Extremes — obsessions, compulsions, hoarding — aren’t the issue. They don’t have to come into play. The ticket is small bites. Tapas meals, so to speak. Wednesday, the brand-new-with-tags sweatshirt hanging there that I will never wear went into the donation bag. Thursday, to the curb with the crusty living room chair with cat scratches down one hideous leg, and a couple of ratty area rugs shoved into the garage years ago for no perceptible reason. That felt damn good.

Now today, free time to root through books boxed and sitting in the attic. They are forgotten. Unused. Valueless here any more. Why are they there?

Inertia. That’s all. The force that mutes self-awareness, self-improvement, that reinforces unproductive patterns lapsed into without forethought. They are comfortable when they are unexamined. Shine a light on the clutter — physical, mental and emotional — and it scatters. It abhors challenge, craves the comfort of more of the same, then more of the same, and then more still . . . of the same.

This house will continue to streamline on its inevitable way to new hands. Same for the storage bins that time and experience shove under beds and into corners to darken the spaces that would most benefit from light and fresh air.

Purge the chaos, feed a soul thirsty for nourishment, even if it doesn’t realize it. That’s the chapter and verse. That’s the book.

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Crying For Baseball

One little kid standing at home plate wearing an oversized helmet, wielding a bat as tall as he is, trying and mostly failing to make contact with rainbow tosses arced softly by a dad-coach. Six or seven or eight other little kids arrayed about the skin infield, standing with their baseball gloves on their heads. Kneeling in the dirt sifting for pebbles or bugs or something as dad pitches and kid swings and misses, over and over. A mom standing alongside, urging Morgan and Cody to stop gazing into the dirt and to pay attention. To pay attention . . . um, why?

This soul-sucking scene plays out far too often on far too many dog-walks I take at the field across the street. Well-meaning (I suppose) but coaching-clueless parents leading “baseball” practices for 6-year-olds who have no idea why they are being made to stand on a dirt infield, with little or no activity in their midst, learning nothing at all about baseball other than to hate baseball for, well, making them stand on dirt with little or no activity in their midst, while kids in the other corners of the field are yelling and chasing soccer and lacrosse balls.

These bored kids will not be long for the game, and I do not blame them. I blame societal circumstances that long ago made neighborhood pick-up baseball games extinct as dodos, that left “organized” baseball the only baseball left to be played by kids, that forced well-meaning, coaching-clueless parents to lead baseball practices they have no business leading.

They have no business there because they are blind to what they are doing, namely killing baseball for the kids they are trying to excite to baseball.

This conundrum has puzzled me for the 15 years I have coached in rec ball, American Legion ball, high school ball and observed the coaching that goes on around it all. The puzzle is why moms and dads cannot and do not take the minor steps necessary – minor as in reading articles or viewing YouTube videos for basic drills every kid can do at the same time — to think about structuring practices that include no standing around but steady skill-building, fun activities for 30 or 45 minutes — 60 at the very tops. Run-the-bases races. Catch the easy rollers or pop-up competition and throw-the-ball-at-the-target contests. The underhand tossing of tennis balls — coach to kid, or multiple parents to multiple kids simultaneously — so they can feel and instinctively know what it is to swing a bat (however they swing it) and to feel and see and sense the joy of connecting a rounded stick with a rounded ball in flight.

It is not that hard, not in the least, except that it is being made to seem so at the very entry point where baseball cries out for simple joy, simple activity, simple simplicity.

It hurts my heart, because the kids, and the game, deserve so much better.

 

 

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Dorothy Mae

 

momsun
Sunset from the bridge tunnel, 5/18/12

So, this has become a melancholy week. This is the week three years ago my mom marked her 84th birthday, and died four days later.

Honestly, I’m still not sure the exact cause of death, other than the broken heart she’d lived with for the four years she was without my dad.  I know she too was ready to go the night we sat on his bed, helpless in the nursing home; as it happened, she shared that same room, recovering from a broken shoulder.

But fate had different plans. And so she survived and endured and napped and disengaged – and passed the better part of 1,400 days waiting for her turn to go.

A shattered leg suffered in a fall at her assisted-living apartment, and subsequent kidney complications, put her on that irreversible path to goodbye.

Dorothy Mae was a farm girl from Denton, Md. transported to the Philadelphia suburbs as a young girl. She worked for a little while during the war after high school, but soon married and became a “homemaker,” as we used to put down on the school forms.

She was 4-foot-11 in her prime, smaller as she aged and osteoporosis came into play. She never got a driver’s license. She never flew in a plane. She never turned on a computer. She was content to dote on Dorie for the 60 years they were married, through absence and paycheck-to-paycheck days and fertility issues that brought my sister and I to her as adopted children. And yet mom and dad conceived our brother. Two adoptees, and then they hit the procreative lottery. Imagine that elation!

Mom and I never talked about that miracle, though, nor much about my adoption, really. The details weren’t important. She and dad were proud of their children, provided a loving home. That’s all that mattered.

Dorothy was seen and loved around town, a constant presence on foot power, and she loved it there. It was a small place, where neighbors cared and knew her joys and sorrows. Yet the day we brought her back from the nursing home, to try and carry on in a house now with a bottomless hole, she asked “How long do I have to stay here?”

I knew she meant “How long until I can rejoin Dorie?”

When my dad’s grave marker was installed, it included Dorothy’s name and birth date as well – and an empty space to the right.

It was dismaying to see that, until we came to realize Dorothy’s empty space was unbearable. Until the solace she sought, three years ago tomorrow, set her free.

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Phollies

Philadelphia-Phillies-1971-1991

The Philadelphia Phillies of my youth stunk out loud.

From 1964, when they gagged away the National League pennant in the last couple of weeks, to 1974 – ages “little boy” to “oh my god, he has a driver’s license?” personally speaking — they had four winning records and won 47 percent of their games. And except for the Crash of ’64, they never even sniffed a championship. This fabled run of ineptitude actually included the 1972 season, when left-hander Steve Carlton, pitching for baseball’s second-worst team – thank you, Texas Rangers – somehow won 27 games for an outfit that won 59 in all.

I mention this because the Phillies (of my youth extrapolated) stink out loud again — on pace for their worst season since my late father, who died seven years ago at 84, was 1.

Back then, I didn’t know any better. It’s just how it was. Philly teams stunk. Sorry, kid, that’s how it is here. Want some ketchup for that scrapple?

But now it’s just sad, because the Phillies have not stunk recently. They won the World Series – just the franchise’s second WS title – in 2008. They lost the World Series in 2009. They won their division in 2010 and 2011. First baseman Ryan Howard, second baseman Chase Utley, catcher Carlos Ruiz and shortstop Jimmy Rollins were stalwarts on those teams.

But it is 2015. Rollins is 36 and batting .176 in the first season of his native California twilight with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Howard is 35 and batting .193 in Philly. Utley is 36 and batting .103. One-oh-three, which translates to nine hits in 25 games. Ruiz is 36 and hitting .242 with one extra-base hit. Roy Halladay retired a couple of years ago, his arm shot. Cliff Lee, on the DL again with a shot arm, is about to join him in the pasture. At 10-18, the Phillies are baseball’s second-worst team – thank you, Milwaukee Brewers – and on pace to outdo those ’72 phrauds by a country mile.

I was going to say that the dismantling of this now-threadbare franchise is disheartening, except it wasn’t dismantled. It was left by its heinous (mis)-management to simply languish, whistling past the proverbial graveyard, handcuffed by foolish contracts, failed player development and frivolous scouting. Fs all around. If there is a franchise “plan,” it is not apparent. And any promise of a fortuitous reversal any year soon is not forthcoming.

In the meantime, those left who still care about baseball in what’s totally become an Eagles town are required to avert their eyes. Shake their heads. And rue the Philly twilight of three beloved athletes who are marking fruitless time in a pitiless march toward the end of their careers, which might very well come in midstream a la another Phillie great Mike Schmidt in 1989. Hitting .203 after 42 games, Schmidt quit at age 39, tearfully aware he no longer could play.

A trail of tears has formed again in Philly. Valedictories hang in the air, cruel and unforgiving, circles of brilliant athletic lives all but closed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Suited Up

I’m so happy I’m able to still wear a baseball uniform.

You sometimes hear big-leaguers talk about the thrill of putting on their team’s colors – the pinstripes and the script across the chest and the fitted cap. But it really is true for them; the most self-aware players, at least. Those who understand the rare gift they possess and, in most cases, its minuscule shelf life.

But it is also true for high school coaches, the ranks of which include me as a volunteer assistant who makes it out to the field when he can. That is hardly as often as I would like. Nowhere close. Bills must be paid and office hours logged, it seems. Still, “community service” hours offered and encouraged by my new employer allow me to be out on the field, in the uniform, in the base coach’s box, a couple times a week at games – practice times unfortunately do not mesh with this new schedule. Yet there still are chances. And every chance is a chance I do not take lightly.

In that regard, with first pitch pressing or often already taken place, I have become deft at dashing from the office to the car, the uniform piled in the front passenger seat. Shoes and socks easily slip off as I drive barefoot to the first stop light, which affords ample time to switch out to the uniform socks. At the inevitable next light, the business shirt gets doffed into the back seat as the T-shirt and school-logo coaching shell slide over my head.

The momentarily naked man from the waist up behind the wheel perhaps raises eyebrows in the vehicles nearby.  I never notice, though. I am too busy taking off my pants.

This is easier than it looks, although it does involve unbuckling the seat belt and squirming to the side at just the right angle (while seated at the light, of course!). Lift up, slide down, slip off, toss in the back, slide on most of the way – then snap up, buckle and align at the next light. Probably 10 or 15 seconds flat. Done.

By that point, it’s all over but the donning of the weathered turf shoes that reside in the trunk once I’ve parked at the field. By then, the game face is on, and usually so is the game, so I jog over and slide into the dugout to soak up and savor it all again.

I get to take up space in the first-base coach’s box, cheerleading, congratulating those who make it that far, encouraging those – much more frequent, of course, because baseball is totally a game of failure – forced to make U-turns back to the bench after making out.

I started coaching years ago to touch the part of me that went dormant when I chose a bird in the hand – a sports writing job – over the concurrent pursuit of a college baseball graduate assistantship.

I started as a way to honor my father, who literally built a youth club from the ground up across the street from our house and introduced me to baseball. I think of him, and how proud he was of me even reaching the minor leagues, every time I am on a baseball field, without fail.

I started and continued long after my son and daughter put baseball and softball aside, because being on that perfect field and teaching the game’s finer points — and feeling warm and worthy when a particular lesson takes root — “feeds my soul,” as a helpful confidant of mine likes to say.

You bet I am proud to still wear the colors.

You bet I am blessed to still take the field.

With luck, the kids around me sense a soul being fed — and perhaps might aspire to the same for themselves. Today, and over their countless tomorrows.

 

 

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The terrible time . . .

Eight years since the mass murder at Virginia Tech.

The horror remains unimaginable and always will be so. My good friend and former sports writing colleague Kyle Tucker and I were e-mailing some memories today about that terrible time and the role Hokies football played toward healing when it returned 4 1/2 months later; Kyle was decamped in Blacksburg then as a world-class beat writer, as you may know.

It moved me to look up the things he and I wrote from that first emotional game Virginia Tech played that early September, 2007 afternoon when Hokies fans filled Lane Stadium to weep and watch and reflect.

I pulled the front-page story I was asked to do that day from the newspaper archives. I paste it here in memory:

 

A Tech tradition. Memories of ‘the 32.’ Closer to healing.

BLACKSBURG | A voice hung in the air of Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium on Saturday. The song it sang was simple, clear and haunting. It accompanied a photo montage on the video board, heralding the blessed return of football to this proud college-football town. Healing was in the words. Hope was at its heart.

Walk humbly son

Walk humbly now

And cherish every step

For a life well spent

On this earth we’re lent

Will be marked by the void you have left …

Moments earlier, the 66,233 people who filled the stadium had raised their voices in a spontaneous pre game cheer – for the Hokies’ opponent, East Carolina University.
“Thank you … Pirates!” “Thank you … Pirates!”
Usually, that four-syllable cadence is reserved for a rousing chant that shakes Lane’s walls: “Let’s go … Hokies!”
Then again, usually the visiting school doesn’t present a $100,000 check to its host at midfield right before kickoff.
East Carolina’s donation to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund was one of many signs of something dramatic, something different on an overcast afternoon.

Two orange ribbons with a maroon “VT” decorated the playing field. A flyover of two Air Force jets followed the national anthem and a moment of silence. The teams simultaneously ran into the stadium, a departure from the Hokies’ usual solo entrance to a heavy-metal soundtrack. Hokie fans had been asked by Tech’s administration not to boo the Pirates.

Four-and-a-half months after 32 people were killed on campus in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Virginia Tech’s community gathered to weep and comfort but, yes, to celebrate its familial bond.

Normally, the opening of football season is one of the most-anticipated events at Virginia Tech. Normalcy, though, really wasn’t in Saturday’s equation, even as the ninth-ranked Hokies defeated East Carolina 17-7.

It was a step, however. Welcome and eagerly awaited.

“I think that’s going to be a continuous process,” head coach Frank Beamer said. “I think as long as you’re Virginia Tech, I think you’re probably going to remember April 16 every day. I think that’s just part of it, and let’s continue to move on.”

Walk humbly, son

And store your pride

When you need strength later on

For your life’s work will be judged if earth

Is saddened when you have gone …

“We heard that song playing when we walked into the tunnel,” Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon said. “I don’t know what it was. But the whole stadium seemed to be silent. That was definitely a weird feeling.”

That kept with the day’s somber tone, the surreal sense that Virginia Tech student Milford John-Williams tried to explain as he lingered near ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” telecast, which originated across from the stadium.

“This is just a mixing bowl of emotions,” said John-Williams, a senior economics major from Woodbridge . “I don’t know that words can really describe it.”

Mingling nearby, Tech graduate Terry Saylor worried how that emotion would affect her team. It will be much this way all season; media will continue to spotlight the Hokies’ ability to rally their “Nation.”

Tributes and spirit-fund checks will continue to flow from opposing schools, even as the Hokies pursue the national-championship chance many experts believe is within their reach.

“I think the players could be feeling an emotional pressure to have a successful season,” said Saylor, Class of ’77, who added that she and her husband, Greg, were “compelled” to attend the game from Atlanta.

“I don’t think you can ever put it behind you completely,” Greg Saylor said. “I’d just as soon it be played down, though. You’ve got football players trying to do their best. You can’t wallow in it continually. But for the moment, this is our reality.”

And perhaps focus was hard to find amid the buildup. The Hokies’ performance was disjointed; they struggled to run the ball, gaining only 33 rushing yards against a team they were favored to beat by four touchdowns.

They scored just one offensive touchdown – 10 points came on a field goal and an interception return. Tech fumbled the ball away twice, and Glennon threw an interception on the Hokies’ first play of the game.

“It’s quite obvious we better be better next week,” said Beamer, whose team plays at second-ranked Louisiana State next Saturday night.

Walk humbly, son

Walk humbly, now

And forget not where you are from

Will you walk humbly, son?

When it was over, Beamer said Tech’s seniors will place the game ball at the memorial at the on-campus Drillfield, where 32 stones honor those killed in the massacre.

Running back Branden Ore said the Hokies know they’ll play for “the 32” all season. And Glennon hoped the Hokies were “mentally tough enough” to deal with the responsibility they have shouldered.

“Once the whistle’s blown, we have to put that out of our heads and go out and play football and do our assignments,” Glennon said. “Obviously we didn’t do that today, because we came out flat, especially on offense.”

Still, a football season is always a hard and challenging walk. But along their new, uncharted road, these Hokies will walk accompanied like never before.

 

 

(Note: That ’07 season, Tech went 11-3 overall, 7-1 in the ACC and won the Coastal Division as well as the ACC championship game.)

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Just do it, kid

My default recollection has always been that the notion to become a sports writer came to me late. Relatively. I’d dabbled in it loosely in high school, and for a few bucks for the first time as a college senior —  a bored business major with a native ability to string words together, I’d noticed, better than a lot of my peers in English class.

Once I failed my life-long quest, to that point, to become a major-league ballplayer — getting into the race in the minors but barely off the starting line really — sports writing became a viable option that wound up being more than viable. But it seemed accidental. I would do it a while, have some fun, then get on with coaching college baseball, my real calling.

But when I found out earlier today that Stan Hochman, an all-time great, wise, savvy, prolific and ballsy Philadelphia sports columnist, had died at 86, it hit me that my recollection was faulty. I realized this because, out of the brain dust and cobwebs matted atop each other, I remembered my one and only brush with Stan Hochman.

I’m not here to say he was my hero or mentor. But looking back, he damn well might have been my inspiration. It only took me 45 years to figure that out.

As a kid, 9 or 10 maybe, I was at the Spectrum in Philly with my dad. We were at a 76ers game, although it actually might have been the NBA all-star game. I know I attended the latter around that time in the late ’60s, because I still have the game program in a box in the attic — um, unless I sold it a couple years ago. I think I might have sold it. I’m pretty sure it had Bob Lanier’s autograph on it and I thought, hell, that’s got to be worth a few bucks online. Yeah, I hate to think I sold it . . .

Anyway, why I bring this up: I was just a little kid but I full-well knew who Stan Hochman was. THE awesome columnist for the Philly Daily News, a raucous, tabloid, afternoon daily at the time that ran long stories and devoted pages and pages to sports coverage, many more pages than the Inquirer.

So I am at the game. I am walking by the court during warmups to sneak peeks at the players, perhaps the all-stars. I recognize Stan Hochman from the picture on his column. He is sitting at his seat on press row. I have never spoken to a sports writer in my life. I have no reason to speak to a sports writer. And I have no idea why something moved me, a shy kid with nothing to really say to anybody, to speak to Stan Hochman, of all people, at that moment. (And what would I say anyway?) But I did speak to him. I stopped at his seat. I don’t recall interrupting him, I think he was just sitting there. And my memory tells me I said something along the lines of “Excuse me, Mr. Hochman?” My memory tells me he turned and looked at me. He did not ignore me or tell me to get lost. “Yes, son?”

I told him I really liked his writing. What the hell? What? But he was gracious. He said thank you. And again, for some reason I didn’t quit while I was ahead but I continued: “May I ask you, how did you become a sports writer? How DO you become a sports writer?”

Foreshadowing? Where did THAT come from? I’d always thought I was big-leagues-or-bust. No Plan B. Having a Plan B meant you werent’t all in on Plan A. Who knew I was actually working on B as a pre-teen? Stan Hochman remained pleasant. Patient. I haven’t Googled this, so my memory could be exposed as very wrong and this was all a dream, in which case this would all be embarrassing. But Stan Hochman answered my question. My questions. My recollection is — again, I haven’t awoken Mr. Google — he said he had been in the Navy, and no, he had not gone to college to become a sports writer (I had asked him if he’d gone to college to become a sports writer). Somehow, it had just happened, he said. He started writing and soon enough he had become Stan Hochman, the sports writer (soon to be the Philly sports writing legend). And he said kid, you could do it, too. If you want to do it, why not? You could do it, too.

I thanked him and moved along, wary even then of over-staying my welcome and being a pain in the ass. But I had shared Stan Hochman’s space for maybe 60 seconds. He had encouraged me, some dumb kid bugging him before a game. I went on and continued to read his blunt, witty, bare-knuckle column in a bare-knuckle pro sports town for years and years.

And in the end, I did not go to school to become a sports writer. I just started writing, and soon enough I was a sports writer. Damn if Stan Hochman hadn’t said it could be so. Damn if he wasn’t right.

 

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New day

Easter.

Hope.

Full hearts, unlocked, allowed to flower and burst.

And these words for Easter, and every day, from “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker:

“Have you ever found God in church? I never did.

I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too.

They come to church to share God, not find God.”

 

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Kentucky? Read all about it

If you want the best, most authoritative, most compelling sports-writer coverage of Kentucky’s quest to win two more games and complete an undefeated college basketball season with the NCAA title, riding with Kyle Tucker of the Louisville Courier-Journal is where you want to be.

No writer has been closer to coach John Calipari’s program the last few years. If it is happening in or around Kentucky’s team, my man KTuck, still known in Virginia for his exhaustive, game-changing beat work on Virginia Tech football, is all over it. Hell, he’s all over it before it happens.

You know what I mean. He’s the best there is at the day-to-day college sports grind. Nobody grinds the grind like Kyle, and that’s a badge of pride not awarded lightly. He’s just the best. He cares. He knows his stuff. And through skillful reporting and writing, he wants to you know and care, too.

Check him out all week through the title game next Monday, where Kentucky will be if it beats Wisconsin on Saturday night.

On Twitter, he’s @KyleTucker_CJ. Follow him now, sports fan. You’ll be glad you did.

 

 

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Unflinching

freemanI saw a tremendous finish to a college basketball game the other night, one of the best I’ve seen live. Maybe the best. I was sitting just to the left of the basket, at a media table, when Trey Freeman banked in his running 3-pointer that beat Murray State and sent Old Dominion to the NIT semifinals next week at Madison Square Garden.

(Jason Hirschfeld photo)

The ball arced from about 30-feet away. It banked into the basket cleanly. And the white-noise eruption of multiple jet engines, or something like it rising from the seats and bouncing off the ceiling, ensued. And it sustained for many minutes of pure delirium at the Constant Center.

Yet I barely moved a muscle the entire time, except for my fingers pounding a keyboard and my eyes scanning a stat sheet. I was working as a freelancer for the Associated Press. And it was my job to file a short story on the game immediately, if not sooner, after the horn sounded.

So I stayed calm, composed my words and hit the “send” button mere seconds into that swirl of chaos.

But I wondered as I left The Ted a bit later, after refiling a story with quotes from players and coaches, how I’d have reacted had I not been on the clock, but rather just a patron in the stands.

I didn’t have to ponder long, though, because I’d been in similar situations, and so I already knew the answer. I would have looked on with a large measure of minimal reaction. I’d have recognized the magnitude and serendipity of the moment, certainly, and probably uttered a “Wow” or an “Oh my God” or “Well, how about that?” to my seat-mates. Would have offered appropriate applause for the athletic drama.

But go crazy? Lose a lung bellowing? Rush the court? Feel lifted on wings, somehow, the next day or two? Not quite. That shipped sailed long, long years ago, if it ever really floated in the first place.

No cheering in the press box is right, and proper. It is a workplace, not a wing joint. And so working in sports journalism — and I started part-time in college — stripped from me all but the most deep-seated fragments of “fan” that percolate to the surface, for this child of Philly sports, only occasionally via an Eagles or Phillies game.

So it was during some of the greatest, most famous sports moments I was blessed to cover as a writer: Kirk Gibson’s World Series home run in 1988. Keri Strug’s gold-clinching vault in the ’96 Olympics. Payne Stewart’s putt to win the ’99 U.S. Open. They happened. I soaked it in. And with the crowd noise bursting my ear drums, my brain immediately began forming words and sentences. No time for emotion. No instinct toward emotion, really. Labor needed to be performed.

But react impassively often enough and “impassive” becomes a default state. That’s the danger. It drills so deeply into the nervous system, this requisite detachment, it infiltrates personal spaces and behaviors far from the arena. It did for me, I admit. So let me re-state that thesis as a singular assessment.

Still, as I ruminated on my ride home from a Ted gone bonkers, I truly was pleased I had witnessed what I had witnessed, and also that I’d been able to provide the news-service story read by much of the country  — well, anyone who cared about the game anyway.

Had you looked at me before, during and after that ball banked through, however, you’d have had no clue to my satisfaction for having added a cool, great moment to my mental menu. I know that is unfortunate collateral damage of the task-focused, neutrality-required, deadline-driven vocation in which I trafficked for so long.

There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s no emotion — if it can be helped — in writing about the pulsing emotion of sports. That’s irony not lost on a sports “fan” lost long ago.