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.

how to walk in snow

i take each step through the snow as if it's my last.

it's a himalaya monk walk,
a meditation.
i don't need a gym membership.
i'm a mohawk packing up furs into a canoe
voyaging montreal to green bay.

there must be a reason why the quebec town kahnawake
is so close in spelling and pronunciation
to milwaukee.

the great distances people traveled
probably didn't seem like great distances.
they were just doing what had to be done.

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when i think back on the longest game in major league baseball history,
i remember harold baines hitting a home run off chuck porter
in the 25th inning at old comiskey park in 1984.
the brewers only used 6 pitchers the entire game.

i like shared starts.
i like the idea of john axford pitching the first two innings of a game,
followed by marco estrada and mark rogers and tom gorzelanny
and whoever in the ninth to close it out.

gallardo is the only horse in the rotation.
he'll get his five days rest and
all the other relievers/starters can rotate,
pitch one game, sit out one game.
that would make for 80 appearances per pitcher
and if it worked effectively,
the billy beane paparazzies would be all over brew city.