All posts filed under: Baseball

Observations from the old ball yard, especially focused on our hometown nine – the Washington Nationals

Where the journey begins

Published by DJB

Everyone has an origin story. Some carry a soul-stirring strength that extends across time and space. They may be so powerful that they aid in protecting the setting, preserving the very places where the story originates. While watching a repeat of the Ken Burns film The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on my local PBS station, I am reminded of how many of our parks include mountains, lakes, and meadows that are part of the origin story for Native Americans. Places that have deep meaning for the soul. Sacred places. Other origin stories evolve, as the nation, group, or individual comes to a fuller understanding of who and what they are. As is appropriate for a nation built on the shared work of the imagination, the complex American origin story continues to unfold, especially during this era of turmoil and change. “All of us tell stories about ourselves,” write Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback in the Harvard Business Review. “Stories define us. To know someone well is to know her story — the experiences that …

Nine Books for a Spring Without Baseball

Published by DJB

If you are already missing baseball, you have company. To help you through the gloom, I’ve gone back into the More to Come archives to gather my personal “Best Books about Baseball” list. Here you’ll find my top nine books — one for each inning — to help you through this spring. And there might even be some “free” extra-inning baseball at the end! (NOTE: I’ve linked to my reviews, but they may be buried in a longer post containing information on multiple books. Look carefully and you’ll find the book in question.) Okay, let’s play ball! For the 1st and 2nd innings, we’ll have the top hitters from each team coming to the plate. So I’ll begin with some of the best: two baseball books which I included in the 2014 post Twelve Influential Books (And a Few More Thrown in for Fun). How Life Imitates the World Series by Thomas Boswell – The longtime Washington Post sportswriter’s first book of baseball essays, published in 1982, is still his best. How can you not …

No baseball today

Published by DJB

Today was to be Opening Day 2020 for the World Series Champion Washington Nationals. Alas, the Covid-19 virus had other plans for the world. But I have a suggestion for you. Last week the Washington Post asked their writers to name their top sports movies to watch during the coronavirus crisis. They really only needed to have included one. Watch Bull Durham. The best baseball movie ever. Its not even close. I’ve written many times — most recently earlier this month — about my personal spring training regimen of reading a baseball book and watching Bull Durham. I watched the movie again earlier this week, and it didn’t disappoint. Regular readers know how I feel. But don’t just take my word for it. I’ve recently been reading a number of columns about culture and politics by the Post opinion writer Alyssa Rosenberg. She’s smart and a very good writer. So no surprise to learn that she thinks Bull Durham is a great movie, and well deserving of the moniker of a film classic. As her Post colleague Tom Boswell once said a long time ago, “Marianne Moore …

Babe Ruth and the creation of the modern celebrity

Published by DJB

In the coming weeks, if we are able as individuals to stay healthy, we may all be looking at books in our “to be read” pile to fill up this time of coronavirus. For very good reasons sports leagues and tournaments are shutting down. Opera houses and theatres are going dark. Schools are closing. Restaurants may be next on the list. Watching cable news is just too damn depressing (and not always very informative). As I was writing this, Major League Baseball cancelled the rest of spring training and has pushed back opening day at least two weeks. If you are looking for a good sports book to fill up your hours, I wish I could send you to Jane Leavy’s 2018 The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created with more enthusiasm. Those who know my reading habits are aware that I always read a baseball book as part of my personal spring training. (The other part of the regimen is watching Bull Durham, the best baseball movie ever.) In 2020, The Big Fella was the …

Tribalism and the Abandonment of Democracy

Published by DJB

What do the Houston Astros have to do with the state of our democracy? Let’s see. Baseball—rightly or wrongly—has long been compared to life, or vice-versa. Washington sportswriter Thomas Boswell’s first book was a 1982 collection of essays entitled How Life Imitates the World Series.* In the essay that gave the book its title, Boswell makes the observation that the pressures in baseball differ from those of other sports. It is a pressure that ebbs and flows, day-by-day, over the length of a long season played out every day as opposed to the once a week or twice a week rhythm of the games in football, basketball, or hockey. Yet baseball pressures are heightened at key tipping points, such as during a pennant race, when one’s true character and strength comes through. Just like in real life. What’s more pressure-packed than a World Series? Or an impeachment trial? Recently, it struck me that Boswell’s premise was perfect when the subject—as it often does these days—turns to the future of our democracy. To see how baseball and life …

Connect and care

Published by DJB

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to break into a rant? Come to think of it, that could be an opening line from an Andy Rooney parody. I’ve been thinking of that cranky curmudgeon from CBS’s 60 Minutes recently as I’ve listened to some of our political discussions. Rooney would fit right in as a television pundit in our age of grievance. I am afraid I understand the allure of grievances all too well. The temptation to rant is very enticing at times, and on very serious subjects, no less. For example… In recent weeks I’ve had the thought that what the world needs to hear is my take on the grating personality of Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney. Most recently he claimed his team was “favored by God” after they beat Ohio State in the college football semifinal. I usually quote the late Lewis Grizzard on God and sports: “As best as I can tell, God was undefeated in all sports last year. Anybody who won thanked Him, and I never heard a …

Farewell 2019, Hello 2020

Published by DJB

It is time, once again, when I first look back over the past twelve months and then think ahead to where I want to go in the year to come. This annual review is one small part of a larger practice to have an honest conversation with myself in the hopes that I’ll then be able to have real conversations with the larger world. During 2019, I’ve thought a great deal about place, privilege, and—given the tenor of the times—paths forward individually as well as collectively. Why place? My career has been focused on older and historic places, what those places can tell us, and how they can nurture us (or not) into the future. Although I took a gap year from full-time work in 2019, I didn’t stop thinking about my life’s work. Knowing that emotions flow through place, in my writing over this year I’ve focused more on the buildings and landscapes in our cities and towns that, while coming from my professional life, also have deep personal meaning for me. Why privilege? …

More to Consider

Published by DJB

I’ve long been a fan of the pithy proverb that contains truth in 20 words or less. Perhaps my love for the short and to-the-point adage came from my Grandmother Brown, who was known to say things such as, “The graveyard is full of people who thought the world couldn’t get along without them.” I admit I might have heard that particular one when she thought I was getting too big for my britches. To capture some of my favorite sayings without having to write an entire blog post about them, I created a feature on More to Come that I labeled More to Consider. (Clever, huh?) Every other week or so I update these quick bursts of truth. This section of the website is easiest to see on a laptop, where it resides near the top of the right hand column. But most people read my posts from their phones, where you have to scroll almost to the bottom before finding the saying for the week. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of the more …

My 2019 Year-End Reading List

Published by DJB

As 2019 draws to a close, I’m sharing my annual list of the books I’ve read over the past twelve months. As regular readers of More to Come know, since returning from sabbatical early in 2016 I’ve committed to reading more, and to seeking out a wider range of works beyond my favored histories and biographies. With that in mind, here—in the order I read them—are the treasures I found on my reading shelf this past year. Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (2006)—Craig Nelson’s excellent biography of Paine captures the relevance today of the man who wrote three of the bestsellers of the eighteenth century, topped only by the Bible. Paine’s famous opening to The American Crisis—“These are the times that try men’s souls”—was written in the winter of 1776, yet it resonates today as much as it did when Washington’s small army was fighting for its life at Trenton and Princeton. The coalition that controls America today repudiates much of Paine in following the John Adams/Alexander Hamilton approach of …