Hello once more.  I must start off by saying that I have been somewhat remiss in getting posts up of late, but I’ve alternately had my girlfriend and parents in town over recent home stands and my mind has been elsewhere by and large.  That being said, given the way we have played over the last week maybe it is best that I not recall all the details.  Our recent game action consists of losing three of four games to Erie, which actually improved our overall record at Erie’s Jerry Uht Park to 1-10 on the season.  It is very frustrating to continue to lose game after game to a team like Erie, who while certainly a good team, is not a collection of surpassing talents that simple dwarfs us.  They do continue to beat us over and over again though so there is nothing to be done but tip our caps… and then go out and play better tonight in the first game of a four game series against Erie.  Hey, we’re 2-2 against them at home so that is something maybe.  After our series with Erie we went out and lost two of three to Altoona, the team with the second worst record in the Eastern League.  Enough said.  My own performance over the last week has been good for the most part.  I allowed a few un-earned inherited runners in one appearance and threw 2.2 scoreless innings in an extra-inning affair with Erie in my most recent appearance, so one can only hope it is the front end of a long hot streak.

 

Away from the field I have been doing a variety of things, namely taking seemingly forever to finish Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.  It generally takes me anywhere from a day or two to a week to burn my way through a standard 300-400 page book but for some reason this particular book really jammed me up.  It is a great book and I recommend that anyone with an interest in American history (that would be all of you) pick it up, but for whatever reason I just struggled to finish it.  Oh well, now I’m on to The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl.  Other than that I’ve just been hanging out in Erie (boo) and now hanging out with my parents and brother around Akron.  We took in the Hower House a couple days ago which was okay.  It is an old Victorian home built in 1871 by John Henry Hower and currently owned by the University of Akron, where the home resides.  It is a cool old house and I am glad I saw it, but if I could only do one or the other I would not tour the Hower House at the expense of seeing Stan Hywet Hall.  Well, I’m off to spend some more quality time with the family before I head off to the field so I’ll leave you with a poem by my favorite poet, Stephen Dunn, and sign off until next time.

 

What Goes On

by Stephen Dunn

 

After the affair and the moving out,

after the destructive revivifying passion,

we watched her life quiet

 

into a new one, her lover more and more

on its periphery. She spent many nights

alone, happy for the narcosis

 

of the television. When she got cancer

she kept it to herself until she couldn’t

keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated

and saved her, and one day

 

her husband asked her to come back —

his wife, who after all had only fallen

in love as anyone might

who hadn’t been in love in a while —

 

and he held her, so different now,

so thin, her hair just partially

grown back. He held her like a new woman

 

and what she felt

felt almost as good as love had,

and each of them called it love

because precision didn’t matter anymore.

 

And we who’d been part of it,

often rejoicing with one

and consoling the other,

 

we who had seen her truly alive

and then merely alive,

what could we do but revise

our phone book, our hearts,

 

offer a little toast to what goes on.