All posts tagged: Bull Durham

The Church of Baseball

Published by

“I believe in the Church of Baseball.” So begins Annie Savoy’s opening monologue in the movie Bull Durham.  And after going through all the religions she has tried, comparing baseball to sex, and talking about bad trades (“Who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas for God’s sake”) she ends up with: It’s a long season and you gotta trust. I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball. Today I needed the Church of Baseball, and it didn’t fail me.  Oh, I did get up and go to the 8 a.m. service at my other church…especially since we were meeting our new rector after an interminable period of transition.  But I’ll freely admit that I went to the cathedral at Nationals Park today to feed the soul. The Nationals have been on a tear.  Heading in to the home finale, they had won 11 of 14, including sweeps on the road of the Mets and the Phillies.  Tom …

Playing Favorites

Published by

I picked up Top of the Order:  25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player during the Politics & Prose sale a couple of weeks ago.  Only a handful of the writers were familiar and the inclusion of Michael Jordan (yes, that MJ) and the fictional Crash Davis in the list of favorites indicated this anthology was going to take a different tack from the typical list of baseball’s greatest hits. Top of the Order is, at best, uneven.  I couldn’t wait to get through some of the self-indulgent essays (see Pat Jordan on Tom Seaver) which were more about the author than I cared to read.  At their best, some of the essays captured the special nature of fandom (see the obsessive Darin Strauss on Mariano Rivera) where you didn’t mind the intrusion of the writer.  Steve Almond leads off with a strong piece on Rickey Henderson that hooks the reader into this quirky collection.  Neal Pollack writes a terrific essay on Greg Maddux that demonstrates how dominant Mad Dog was through so many years …

Hot Stove League

Published by

It is 30 degrees outside, we’re approaching winter solstice, so naturally a young man’s thoughts turn to…baseball! Yesterday at work I used the term Hot Stove League in a memo to some colleagues, referring to rumors about projects that were heating up.  A friend who loves baseball said she wasn’t familiar with the term, so as is usual I sent her the link from Wikipedia.  According to that source of all knowledge: The Hot Stove League is a baseball-related term, referring to the off-season. Therefore, it is not actually a “league”, but the term instead calls up images of baseball fans, anxious for the start of the new season, gathering around a hot stove during the cold winter months discussing their favorite baseball teams. The term has also come to refer to the wave of off-season player transactions (trades, re-signings, free agency, etc.) that occur between seasons, especially during the winter meetings.  Since most free agent signings and trades occur during the off-season, this time of significant player transactions (including rumors and speculation about possible trades), is …