Information Blues.

Add:

One bowl raisin bran
One pint Bear Republic ESB
One slice of Lanesplitter pizza with jalapeños, one black olive
One pint Bear Republic Red Rocket
One cake Rainbow Donut
One handful granola stolen from Doran’s desk
One pint Guinness
One fresh, warm maple buttermilk bar from Happy Donut

Chew, sip, agitate. Lean in over the pool table and lose focus, dilute yourself pondering long cut shots. Program the juke box with soul and Iggy Pop. Then return home to do the dishes and wait for aching to start. Finish with a few notes in your journal, some regretful and/or rock’n'roll words about how donuts aren’t necessarily a prudent combo, but sure feel good for a few moments.

As manic as my baseball fandom has seemed recently, I realize I’m just a beginner. I listened to the game on the radio last night as the A’s executed a wrenching come from behind victory on their last strike, and I remember
Ken Korach musing, “Geez, I could watch the A’s play the Angels all year long and be happy.” All year long? That would make him happy!?

I tried the thought on: when I watch the A’s versus the Angels I’m deeply invested, with the possibility to emerge either highly frustrated or cautiously at peace. The Angels are an annoying team; they play a tricksy, rogue type of ball which centers on stolen bases and hit-and-runs. They play the suicide squeeze more than any team I’ve seen. And their manager, while admittedly skilled, is an incredible whiner; he’s perpetually bending umpires’ ears, arguing to get a pivotal play reversed on account of any imagined interference. I’ve watched him complain that pitchers’ uniforms are non-regulation (numerously! As in: Hey buddy, you’re not allowed to wear that pink bracelet because your mom has cancer! Hey, you can’t have that (good luck) sticker on your glove! It’s distracting to hitters! and etc.) The guy is just so anal, so bloated with manipulation it drives me crazy. Whenever the camera pans to show his face he’s poised at the edge of the dugout with his eyebrows raised, cheeks puffed, poised to fuss.

The two teams are closely matched and quickly building a heated legacy. If I watched them play 162 games, it would be “great baseball” but I think I’d require anti-psychotics after the third week.

This is the train of thought that’s lead me to the conclusion: I am an amateur! A beginner fan! I’m an amateur in many things; I’m a young man. I’ve been working on my baseball humility.

I don’t know how it happened, as I’ve given up trying to explain or rationalize it now, but I’ve bonded with baseball and I hold the Oakland A’s close to my heart. How silly it seems! But this has been hard at times, because every baseball team loses a lot of games. Even the most stacked squads of $200 million payroll hit men win only ~%60 of the games they play. Last year teams won their entire division by succeeding at a rate of 56%! I think about this all the time; it’s a statistic that reverberates in my head. I’m not used to being around so much failure. It’s both fascinating and manic; for every team that goes on a six game win streak, they’re probably going to lose 5 soon. The numbers are inescapable, a kind of baseball divinity, but the (amateur) fans, most of the players themeselves don’t care, they careen through the highs and lows. And when they win a few in a row they feel like they’re going to win forever, then when they lose they feel hexed, squashed, defeated. For a while. Until after it smarts for a bit and someone dredges up an old piece of baseball wisdom, pops off a “But tomorrow’s another game!” and the towering pieces are set back up (to fall.)

Something that I’ve realized about myself is that I don’t do well with failing, so historically I’ve set myself up for mostly sure things. Baseball is a massively unsure thing, but I think it’s teaching me. I’m trying to dissolve my Christian absolutism; the boys of summer are instructing me in a brand new zen. I’m trying to find balance in the middle (somewhere around 56%, if we’re lucky.) I’m attempting to buffer defeat with balance and perspective. That’s got to be a useful life skill, because the impressions of failure tend to stick around so much longer than success.

I feel boring lately. I’m in a private, compressed mood. Just picture a ruffian drinking whiskey in the bathtub, listening to Sam Cooke, and that’s me; that’s all you need to know. Picture me riding my mountain bicycle on a condemned rollercoaster in Joaquin Miller, picture me climbing North Pinehurst at 80% heart rate, chatting with Dr Bowers. Picture me sauntering saltily into Los Cantaros for an exceedingly mediocre burrito wearing my secret agent single ear feed to the A’s game:

We’ll call you when your burrito’s ready.
and Richie Sexson lines it hard into right field
Wha-What?
We’ll call your name when it’s ready.
as Swisher comes on fast to make the catch in the gap
Gehhh..

My secret agent baseball feed is actually pretty cool: not boring. I walk around in public, I ride my bike, and Bill King talks to me. He talks about what he ate for dinner, goes on at length about the weather, describes the position of the outfielders–whether they’re playing him to pull, straight away, or opposite field. These things are all good to know, they paint a glowing picture in my head, assembled from the composites I’ve seen before.

Hanjin kaleidoscopes:

Cosco departs:

I’m starting to feel like Pops, who watched trains. I watch the harbor, get my mind blown by the size of the cargo ships, the muscle of the tugboats; wonder what the hell exists inside all those boxes, how it feels to ride across the sea.

I want to get back on my bicycle.

Yesterday I was so happy to be riding that I identified my expression to be like that of an eager dog, chasing a frisbee. You know those dogs who are in the zone, focused, wearing bandanas, chasing discs. My mouth was open, my tongue was out, I was eating up road like chasing a ball. I was an eager dog with a 300 yard stare. I was chasing harmony like anybody else, in the face of twenty knots of ice cube wind.

The weather seems more like Fall than Spring now, bright but howling cold. It’s the kind of weather that feels like a fever.

Today I rode again. The Escalator aka The Bone Handler and I spun up the Bitch. It’s really called Broadway Terrace, but we like to refer to it as Bitch School. Ie:

Discipline’s my middle name.
And no one comes back the same from
Bitch School.
Bitch School.

We did the Bitch en Todo, ie all the way from Broadway, aka Meister’s Bane. I climbed the entire Bitch in my middle ring, what we call Tradicional, before bikes had fancy things like triple chainrings.

The School is so dramatic–you climb hundreds of feet instantly–and before you know it you’re riding along a golden wall above the bay, watching the sun recede behind Mount Tam, and for a slight moment you forget how much your thighs are pained from the damn tradicional. So you grunt and spit and you climb the hill. And it’s beautiful, so worthwhile to suffer for such a great view and the accomplishment you receive, that small certificate you’re rewarded and hang framed in your head: I climbed the Bitch School (once again; and nothing to the detriment of repetition, which is itself sublime) and lived to tell the tale. April 14th, 2005.