baseball's one night stand

i was handed the keys to a penske truck and instructed
to drive it out west,
to san francisco.
it was filled with expired skin creams.

that was a long time ago, but
i remember colorado and
and meeting some navajo indians outside coors field
one of em sipping a hair spray cocktail
and the others having a conversation about something.
two of us went to the game
and then to boulder
and then i took a detour to the four corners
followed by a long highway darkness that made las vegas
truly the city of lights.

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it gets me thinking of cc sabathia
and the brewers trading one of their hyped prospects,
matt laporta back in 2008.
and how lights out sabbathia was for the rest of the season.
11-2 with a bunch of complete games and flirts with no hitters.
the brewers won the wild card and
a couple of first round draft picks
when sabbathia signed with new york in the off season.

where is laporta these days?
how often does the window open for starving teams?
kansas city and toronto don't care about "depletion of a farm system"
and they shouldn't.

i don't buy meat because it has potential.
i buy it because i know it's good.
let someone else test taste and die with prospects.

baseball's hot foot

i learned like the buddha about old age, dying, disease,
but i learned it all at county stadium.
i was a kid holding my dad's hand
looking for autographs.
i had no idea about...
paper beer cups exploding,
people making out under the bleachers,
giant urinal troughs,
drunk boxing matches,
and everyone eventually having to exit.

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chemistry on a baseball team
is like any other chemistry.
it's invisible and yet,
so many people take about chemistry
as one of the keys to success.

they might be right,
but why even talk about it?
it's like trying to describe a feeling between two people,
better left unsaid.

what gets me is people who preach that
chemistry has to be positive.
what about the yankees in the 70's?
and all the cat scratching between reggie and martin.
or what about the pirates in 1979?
that "we are family' hype was apparently an irony.
those guys were a mixture of ethnic upbringing variety,
inevitably loud and combative
or so phil garner remembers
in the book,
"The Pirates" by Lou Sahadi.

bert blyleven was on that 79 pirates team.
i met him a few years later as an indian.
i was hanging out beside the indians dugout at county stadium,
whining for autographs,
"mr. blyleven, mr. blyleven, will you sign this ball?"

next thing i knew mr. blyleven pointed to my shoe.
he had pranked me a hot foot.
i was initiated.
that's the only baseball chemistry i've ever known.