Take me out to the ballgame

There are few things more sacred in this world than a father and son at a baseball game. Great wars have been fought to preserve this right, and it stands as one of the great gifts, often unspoken, that a father can give to his son. Walking up to the ballpark gate, the men walk subtly more upright in an attempt to regain the glory of their high school playing days, a glory all but faded now after years of physical neglect. But their sons don't see that faded glory; they are proud simply to be known as the son of that Great Man who can unlock the key to America with a simple transaction on a street corner with a man who wears a placard, "I buy tickets." The ballpark noise --- vendors, chatty fans, static-filled announcements --- grows louder as the pair near the destination of their pilgrimage...

Dad puts the glove in his backpack because it's too heavy for me to carry and I keep dropping it anyway. It is his old one, an ancient Rawlings Gold Glove model, near-ivory now and cracked after years of exposure to rural Minnesota sun and dirt. A Lee Smith signature is scrawled in ballpoint on the thumb. Neither of us knew he was the all-time leader in saves when we got his autograph. He was wearing a uniform, which was the most important (and single) criterion for who got a glove or ball thrust into their hands.

As we walk towards the Metrodome, that eyesore of 1980's sports architecture, we are joined by more fathers and sons and daughters and aunts and uncles and friends, until we are just a sea of hot, sweaty Minnesotans adorned in the jerseys representing the magnificent history of the organization --- Puckett, Killebrew, Carew, Versalles, Kaat, Hrbek --- and the ruinous (1990's) present --- Hale, Coomer, Cordova, Knoblauch, Mahomes. The sights, sounds, and smells of the ballpark are overwhelming. Dad steers me in my dazed state to our gate and through the turnstiles. The daily promotion is a Bert Blyleven bobble head. Something is wrong with the spring in mine and Bert's head remains cocked like an inquisitive dog. It's fitting.

I ask for and receive a hot dog, chips, and a coke. I am now ready to find my seat, although I spill most of the pop on a middle aged woman as I shuffle past her in Section 221, Row 13, on my way to Seat 8. It's ok though, she's wearing a Frank Thomas jersey. I give her a sheepish smile and move on. My dad mutters apologies behind me (he's no fan of the White Sox or the Big Hurt either). We settle into our seats just in time to hear the PA announcer Bob Casey say, "There is no smoking in the Metrodome, nooooo smoking in the Metrodome." That's fine, we don't intend to.

The way the players take the field proves that these are men playing a boys game. During warmups, even the lowliest utility infielder --- who would not look out of place at a grocer's check-out counter --- takes on an exaggerated, lazy swagger in the casual way he fields the slowly rolling grounders, takes a jaunty crow-hop, and zips a dart over to first. Most of the relief pitchers are still in the dugout during these early innings, but when they do saunter towards the bullpen along the left field foul line, they joke like first graders on a field trip. I sit for a few minutes with my mouth agape, soaking it all in. Dad idly leafs through the program. Some ketchup falls from my hotdog and onto my lap. Instinctively I cringe, but Dad just smiles and hands me his handkerchief. Mom would've been so mad.

"See how all the players get into the ready position as the pitch is being thrown?" I nod as I notice the subtle ballet taking place on the field. Most players tap their gloves as the pitcher reaches the top of his windup. Some then just bend over, gloves extended. Others move catlike a few steps towards the batter, in anticipation. I take mental notes and soon adopt a pre-pitch ritual reminiscent of Kirby Puckett's. He was my favorite. Dad has probably read Puckett's memoir, "I Love This Game," to me at least a dozen times. I am sure now that it was not worth reading a dozen times, but he never complained.

I am quiet as the game progresses. This is not unusual; I am usually quiet with my dad, but a high-five after a homerun sure says a lot. It's part of a special ritual that countless fathers and sons (and daughters!) have shared in over the years. The slow cadence of baseball fits perfectly into the dynamic of the relationship. It's heartbreaking to see the ritual broken so tragically and unexpectedly. Fathers will do almost anything to provide for their children. Sometimes it's something as simple as a foul ball touched by a hero...

When I was very young, my dad and I went to see the Christmas lights at the zoo. I was standing outside of the bathroom waiting for my dad to come out. Dozens of people were bundled up and milling about around me, swirling with the snow. The bathroom door was illuminated by the yellowish glow of the sodium streetlight above when he came out, decked out in Sorels and a one-piece snowmobile suit. He slipped on a patch of ice and fell, hard. The people stopped swirling and looked on in surprise. I don't think I moved --- my eyes were stuck wide-open. My father finally moved and spent a few seconds inspecting the damage, which was luckily nothing more than a bruised tailbone and an ego. I can't imagine a future where dad didn't get up...

As we walk to the car in the hot, muggy August night, I stop and raise my arms. "You're getting too big for this," he says as he hoists me up. I have a hastily cleaned mini Twins helmet that held my sundae in one hand, the other is clasped around his neck. I fall asleep in the car and wake up the next morning in my bed with the baseball sheets. This is how a ball game should end.

Day 17: Want

Name three things you want, and don't you dare feel guilty while doing so.


1. The AVID "Diva II" Turntable, $1,800

2. Swag menswear

APC Jeans

Hamilton 1883 Oxford

UNIS Chinos

The Hill-Side Pocket Square

Barbour Jacket

Finally, a pair of Aldens

3. Oh, and a new bike (steel is real.)

Yep, I'm super greedy.

Day 14: Bandwagons

What bandwagon have you yet to jump on? Why?

Menswear edition.

Double Monk Straps. I just don't see why they're such a big deal. They look goooofy.

Also, cargo pants are back. But WHY??

The double breasted suit. It'd be kinda classic, but then again, I'd have to keep it buttoned up all day. I sweat too much for that noise.

Day 12, Day ((14-1) (I'm superstitious, not religious))

What are you admitting defeat about? Is it really too late to turn it around?

Starting center for the Minnesota Lynx. 10 years of tryout rejections signals that it's probably time to hang up the ole gym shorts and call it a day.

So, Lent!Blog! participants, what’s your guilty pleasure? Really now, make it embarrassing. Make it count.

I was going to write a post about how my guilty pleasure is reading Chuck Klosterman essays. Especially Chuck Klosterman essays about how it's wrong to label guilty pleasures as "guilty pleasures," but I thought that too meta for a Lent! Blog! Challenge, so I abstained. But Gina, take a gander at the Klosterman essay -- it seems as though you two share a love, be it guilty or not, of Ashlee Simpson...

I actually think Klosterman can be kind of annoying, so I decided to throw my latent hipster aside and embrace the fun definition of guilty pleasure, sans ironic detachment.

So I thought about name-dropping some early- to mid-80's movies that are cited as "MOVIES YOU HAVE TO WATCH BEFORE YOU DIE/GUILTY PLEASURES," in bars across the country among twenty-somethings in the know. But I was such a shut-in, cable-less turd growing up that my movie touchstones are the not-yet-cool blockbusters that still need to age a decade or two before I feel comfortable naming them as definitive cultural moments of my childhood. Sorry Independence Day, Armageddon, Cool Runnings, Little Giants, Rookie of the Year, Twister, Men in Black  -- your time has not yet come.

Then I thought about what's most embarrassing but gives me the most pleasure in life. And then it struck me like a hard-hitting Andy Cohen (of Watch What Happens: Live!) Real Housewives of New York (Bethanny v. Kelly) Fight Reenactment (starts at 4:00) --  I love watching Bravo!. I used to explain it away as, "Just the channel Top Chef happens to be on, so I reluctantly watch it," when my roommate questioned my manhood upon finding the channel switched to the network that brings you the Rachel Zoe Project ("ah-mah-zing") when all he wanted was to get his Sports Center on. After a few months of this humiliation, I decided to bite the bullet for the other 5 straight guys who watch non-Top Chef fare on Bravo! and admitted that I do, from time to time, tune in to see Jackie's trainers go crazy on Workout, or Patti talk about how the "Picker Picks" (it's true) on Millionaire Matchmaker, or watch Jeff Lewis, well, flip out on Flipping Out. What can I say? Watching Bravo! lets me turn my brain off for a sec and live a life I'll (thankfully) never live. And isn't that what guilty pleasures are all about? 30Rock seems to think so...

Days 9/10/11

What is one change, big or small, that you've had to deal with lately? Was it hard? Why or why not?

I've been trying to wear pants that fit me better. It's hard (wait, was that a joke question, Gina?) because I have short legs. If my legs were an animal (living or dead) appendage, they would be T-Rex arms for sure. Except my legs can support my body weight (i.e. I can walk); T-Rex surely could not do arm-stands. That being said, I'd say that trying to find pants that fit me is one of the big changes in my life that I'm trying to deal with right now. I'd appreciate some distance right now, thanks.


What is one recent sign that you're really and truly an adult?

I'm also trying real hard to run a marathon. I've signed up for a race (Stillwater!), got myself a training plan, and found a group of occasional running buddies, and bought myself some new shoes. The last time I ran one was when I was 20 and so full of spit and gumption that I didn't run at all the month before the race. I just drove to Duluth, slept at a buddy's house, and ran the fucker. I definitely paid for it with some bloody nips and the inability to walk for a few days, but I did it. Now, persistent aches and pains (most recently, bouts with achilles tendonitis) that flare up when my training ramps up have made me realize that whatever youthful vigor I possessed is now long-gone. I feel as though I may be destined to bring up the rear of the race, with the nice older ladies and their cheerful balloons, chatting me up as I wave at the tiring crowd as the sag wagon bears down on me at a glacial pace, the bored teenage drivers inside the wagon throwing me eye-daggers as I stagger towards the finish line. My time: DNF.

I complain to my dad and he just laughs, "Just wait 'till you're 50."

Also, the girls I tend to date all seem to think that I act like an old man. So what if I like to go to dinner at Perkins at 4:30? The wait is shorter and the waitresses are older at 4:30. Plus, my dates get to hear war stories over decaf coffee -- what more could a girl ask for?

What is one recent sign you're not so grown up, after all?

Two words: poop jokes.

Three more words: lots of them.

Day 9: Act Like Your 8th Grade Self

What song lyric have you been loving lately?

I recently realized that, had I been interested in getting a tattoo at 18, there would've been an 85% chance that it would've been a lyric of a Dave Matthews Band song. Needless to say, I'm glad that I had no desire to get a tattoo at 18, but it's a good indicator of my constantly shifting musical tastes. Hopefully it's not cyclical.

But there are a few song lyrics that withstand the test of time. Here are some of my favorites.

"There are ghosts of the eyes of all the boys you sent away, they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets, they scream your name at night in the street, your graduation gown lies in rags at your feet, and in the lonely cool before the dawn, you hear their engines roaring on, when you get to the porch, they're gone, on the road, so Mary climb in, it's a town full of losers, I'm pulling outta here to win." "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen



"The deacon caught a draft, the priest just kinda laughed, she crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass, she was limping left on broken heels and she said, "Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?" Holly was a hoodrat, now you finally know that." "How a Resurrection Really Feels" by the Hold Steady [so yeah, that's why my blog has the title it does...]



"The salty lips of the socialite sisters with their, Continental fingers that've never seen working blisters; oh, I know, they've got their problems, I wish I was one of them." "New Lace Sleeves" by Elvis Costello

Day 7/8

Yeah, I got more "/" than Kordell. That, and I'm a lazy poster.

What's one buzzword you hear at work that you're so over?


"Winning." With a close second being the troll/warlock distinction.

What is one sign of the apocalypse you've seen lately? When you see things like this, do you laugh, cry - or both?

I love vinyl records; specifically, listening to them on a dedicated turntable with a decent system (speakers and amplifier). I get a lot of crap for this interest of mine, but that's fine. Let the h8ers h8, as my grandmother always says. Part (most?) of the problem comes in the form of mass-produced (read: cheap) equipment that has undoubtedly made up most of my friends' listening experiences thus far. Hearing a scratched, dusty record on a cheap player, through cheap speakers and a boombox is not the ideal way to listen to records. Kind of like how Red Lobster, cheddar biscuits notwithstanding, is not the best place to form your final judgement on seafood. 

So it kills me to see that Best Buy and other retail outlets are selling these cheap USB turntables that plug directly into your computer. Two things are especially irksome:

1. I have nothing against portable music -- I'm a pretty voracious consumer of music blogs and my itunes library dwarfs my record collection (about 750 to 450). However, I own only a few duplicates of albums in portable and vinyl form. For me, my records and my mp3 collection represent mostly non-intersecting bubbles in my Venn diagram of music. The intersecting albums are usually newer ones that I like a lot -- enough to get the physical copy (recently, Joanna Newsom and Destroyer made this esteemed list). My theory is that some music is best listened to in one format or the other (new stuff on mp3, old stuff on vinyl, generally). But even if you would like to have one of your records on your computer, USB turntables are NOT a good way to make your records portable. Here's why:

2. USB turntables are really shitty, with maybe one possible exception. If you have a pile of records sitting in your basement and you want to enjoy them, go onto ebay and find a nice, vintage Denon direct drive turntable, refit it with a quality cartridge, and hook it up to your receiver or amplifer. It's more legwork, but I guarantee that it'll be well worth it (and only a little more expensive). Doing it the "hard way" might also change your views towards vinyl. They won't be simply an antiquated piece of technology that's currently holding your favorite music captive. Record players will be a gateway into the magical world that is vinyl. 

So the sign of the apocalypse is that the idea of making ridiculous things like USB record players available for cheap purchase, under the misguided rationale of, "Hey, records are cool -- young people love them! But they also have short attention spans and love computers. Hey, we sell computers, too! Let's sell record players that plug directly into your computer!"is crazy. It subverts the whole reason records are so enchanting and actually probably turns people off the medium, thus reinforcing the popular notion that records are popular simply because hipsters like (well, hipsters never "like" anything; maybe "permit the existence of" is a more accurate term) them. No, records are popular because they sound amazing.

Anyone interested in possibly acquiring a full set (record player, receiver, possibly speakers) should let me know... I really have no need for two systems in my tiny apartment.