Hello again.  Sorry for the long interval since I last posted, but with the end of the season looming and the playoffs to follow shortly after that there should be no lack for blog fodder in the immediate future.  Since I last checked in things have been rather annoyingly consistent.  We won two games against Bowie (the third being postponed) and then began the many varieties of the same thing.  A four game split against Erie, a four game split with Bowie and losing two of three games to Binghamton with one game left to keep up our roll of splits.  Over the last month we have split all of our four game series and alternated 2-1 series wins and losses the rest of the time.  Like I said: annoyingly consistent.  Having said all that, however, our series at Bowie ended in our clinching a playoff spot and the ensuing celebration is the type of thing that every professional athlete should get to experience at least once.  I also have continued to throw the ball well and have picked up a couple saves and haven’t given up any runs since my last post over five or so appearances, which is an encouraging sign.

 

Off the field I haven’t had a whole lot to report.  As usual I have been doing a lot of reading.  I recently finished off a few books of poetry, Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones, Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and I am almost through Hot, Flat and Crowded by (Minnesota native) Thomas L. Friedman.  Probably the most interesting of my recent experiences came after a day game when I decided to take a walk down by the Cuyahoga River.  Being around sunset there were the usual deer, raccoons and other various small mammals running around, but what was somewhat surprising to me was seeing a couple of river otters romping around and having a gay old time.  I had been under the impression that river otters were extinct in this area of the country but turns out they were reintroduced at different points over the last twenty-five or so years and now they live on many Ohio rivers.  I just thought it was cool because I’d never seen them outside of a zoo.  Much less exciting was walking between two trees and getting a sizable spider web to the face about twenty minutes later.  No worries about the spider though, as it apparently managed to bite me on the calf before I shooed it away.  Can’t really blame it I guess.  Anyhow, I’ll make sure to check back in again sometime in the near future and keep you updated on the playoffs, but until then I leave you with a Czeslaw Milosz poem (by request, even though I find a lot of his stuff overrated I do like some of his more recent work).  Until next time.

 

Many-Tiered Man

by Czeslaw Milosz

 

When the sun rises

it illuminates stupidity and guilt

which are hidden in the nooks of memory

and invisible at noon.

 

Here walks a many-tiered man.

On his upper floors a morning crispness

and underneath, dark chambers

which are frightening to enter.

 

He asks forgiveness

from the spirits of the absent ones

who twitter far below

at the tables of buried cafes.

 

What does that man do?

He is frightened of a verdict,

now, for instance,

or after his death.