Hello again out there in cyberspace.  You will hopefully excuse the extended period since my last post as there has been a lot going on of late.  As many of you may know, my teammates and I with the Akron Aeros capped an impressive romp through the Eastern League with a 10-6 win over the Connecticut Defenders last Saturday to claim the Eastern League Championship.  As a team we were both above .500 and in first place for every single day of the season, won our division, finished with the league's best record, went 6-1 in the playoffs, won the league championship and nearly swept the league's individual awards (MVP Carlos Santana, Pitcher of the Year Jeanmar Gomez, Manager of the Year Mike Sarbaugh).  To call it a dominant year from a team perspective would not be an exaggeration.  From a personal perspective I had a good season as well, going on a hot streak after the all-star break to just duck under a 3.00 ERA on the season and picking up my first win of the season in my last appearance.  However, the nature of being a minor league baseball player is such that it is hard to be entirely satisfied with even a season as excellent as this one.  Ultimately the goal of every minor league player is to continue to advance levels and eventually play in the major leagues.  Winning a championship is something that most players never get to experience and I am happy to have experienced it and performed well in contributing to it, but I did not earn a promotion and thus cannot call myself entirely satisfied with the season.  Maybe it isn't the warm and happy team-oriented sentiment you would expect to hear less than a week after winning my first championship ring, but the fact of the matter is that in a business where players have no control over their contract and no recourse for mitigation of real or perceived grievances with the organizations that hold their contracts there is an inevitable focus on individual performance.  So job well done, handshakes all around, but with the knowledge that there is a larger goal yet to be accomplished.

Now comes the much deserved portion of the season: the offseason.  Since the beginning of my professional career I have not had a full offseason to rest and prepare myself for the upcoming season.  I have done two instructional leagues, the Hawaii Winter League and the Arizona Fall League so I will definitely welcome the opportunity to not play and be able to focus on lifting, running and just being away from baseball to mentally decompress.  The time away from throwing will be the most welcome part of the offseason as I've only had about six weeks off of throwing since I started getting ready for the 2007 season in December 2006 and while my arm is none the worse for the wear I feel some much deserved rest is in order.  Thank you to everyone who logged on and followed this blog during the course of the season and one last time I'll send you off with a poem for your enjoyment.  Take care.

A Beginning & An End

by Dale Clark

Time is an infant

a new beginning, a new end

What came before is relived

We feel with our eyes,

The pristine magic of earth

Flat wooded shores, white oaks

Redwoods are sages,

They whisper of the past

We see the native ones,

as they lived in harmony

The great plains of grass

The desert of painted dunes

A myriad of purple hues

Herds of buffalo roam,

no man can own them

The nomads of the plains

the cliff dwellers of the desert

farm with ancient secrets

We come on great ships

sailing salty seas

White greed captures and owns,

it destroys all and itself as well

Cities covered with darkness

A beginning will be born to end

A civilized world shall remain savage.

Hello again.  Since my last post I and my teammates with the Akron Aeros have continued rolling along, sweeping three games from the Reading Phillies on our way to a spot against either the Connecticut Defenders or New Britain Rock Cats in the Eastern League championship series.  I threw twice in the series, registering a scoreless inning to finish game two and allowing a meaningless run in the eighth inning of last night's series finale.  As I mentioned last time, it was refreshing to give up a lead-off triple in the eighth inning and be able to look up at the scoreboard and think to myself that as long as I didn't give up five more of those and turned the ball over to the next guy with the lead in tact I had done my job.  In the playoffs the only thing that matters is the final score and it is nice to view the game in that light for once, rather than being primarily concerned with my individual numbers and knowing that if they are good it will probably help the team win games.  We are now in Connecticut awaiting the outcome of the first round series on the other half of the draw, in the northern division.

In the interim between my last post and now, there has been precious little to report in off-field news.  I have mostly finished packing up the apartment in Akron and tied up many of the loose ends there so all there is left to do is push off once the season comes to a conclusion.  I started and finished John W. Dean's interesting and educating (if somewhat predictably toned) book Broken Government in the last couple days in addition to what is certainly one of the best books I have read in recent memory, Richard Wright's Native Son.  It is an extremely compelling novel and if you haven't read it I command you to go pick it up immediately.  Well, I guess you don't have to, but it really is a must read.  Beyond that, there really is nothing new to report.  I had hoped to check out a Chuck Close exhibition at the Akron Art Museum, but I'm not sure at this point if the scheduling is going to work out to allow me to go.  If I make it though, you'll be sure to hear about it.  Look for updates on the playoffs soon and until next time I'll leave you with a poem by Mark Strand from his award-winning collection Blizzard of One.

A Piece of the Storm

By Mark Strand

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,

A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room

And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up

From your book, saw it the moment it landed.  That's all

There was to it. No more than a solemn waking

To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,

A time between times, a flowerless funeral.  No more than that

Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,

Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,

That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:

"It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."

Hello again out there.  Sorry for being a bit over a week between posts, but I no longer have internet access in my apartment so I had to find a convenient time to stop off at the library and write.  The major development since my last post is the ending of the regular season.  It is hard to believe but after 142 games the regular season is over and it is finally time for the playoffs.  As a team we had an outstanding year.  We spent a grand total of zero games at or below .500 and were in first place in our division for every day of the season.  Our team also produced the Eastern League's Player of the Year (Carlos Santana), Pitcher Player of the Year (Jeanmar Gomez) and Manager Player of the Year (Mike Sarbaugh) in addition to excellent performances by several other players.  Heck, our closer Vinnie Pestano was only a save or two behind the league lead and he didn't play at all after being shut down in early July with an "upper extremity" injury.  Personally, I ended the season on a roll that pulled my overall numbers from mediocre at the all-star break to pretty good by season's end, and I managed to just sneak in under the 3.00 ERA mark so I'd have to consider it a successful season.  My long string of good performance was almost marred by a poor outing to end the season, but I managed to minimize the damage, keep my overall numbers in a satisfactory range, and end the season on a positive note.  None of those numbers matter anymore, however, as it is now playoff time and the only numbers that matter are the numbers on the scoreboard at the end of the game.  We open up the playoffs at home against the Reading Phillies with high hopes.  We played well all season and ended the season with eight straight wins so hopefully we can carry that momentum into the playoffs against a tough Reading team.  Stay tuned for those results.

Away from the field most of my focus of late (other than this past weekend when my girlfriend was in town) has been on cleaning and packing up my apartment so that whenever our playoff run ends I can throw all my stuff in my car and leave at a moment's notice.  This is genuinely one of the worst parts of being a minor league baseball player.  The awful bus travel, getting paid like an unpaid summer intern, crappy hotels, distance from family...the hassle of moving out at the end of the season is right up there with all of that.  The reason being that as players we are entirely responsible for setting up our own housing so despite the fact that we are setting up what amounts to temporary housing in our minds we still have to set everything up as though it were our permanent residence.  Throw in the facts that guys move around during the course of the year and  that we don't know our move-out date because we are in the playoffs and it is a major headache.  Our cable and gas bills are set up through players who are no longer in Akron and getting a final walk through on our apartment will be impossible so we will be at the mercy of the complex management on the final condition of our apartment.  Fun times for all, capped off by long drives for most of us.  Aside from dealing with the annoyance that is our apartment situation I have been doing my typical reading, painting and exploring the area on foot when I get the chance.  On the heels of the sale of my first painting I decided to go back to the well again so I am working on selling another recently completed piece, again of what I would consider to be dubious workmanship but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  On the reading front I recently polished off Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and I'm currently working on Richard Wright's masterpiece Native Son.  I meant to read Native Son a few years ago when I went on an African-American literature kick over the winter, but I am just now getting around to reading it and I have been totally absorbed since the moment I picked it up.  Well, I should really get back to packing and cleaning before I head to the field.  Look for updates on the playoffs as they unfold and until next time, enjoy this poem.

Tell Me

By Anne Pierson Wiese

There are many people who spend their nights

on the subway trains. Often one encounters

them on the morning commute, settled int corners,

coats over their heads, ragged possessions heaped

around themselves, trying to remain in their own night.

This man was already up, bracing himself against

the motion of the train as he folded his blanket

the way my mother taught me, and donned his antique blazer,

his elderly sleep-soft eyes checking for the total effect.

Whoever you are--tell me what unforgiving series

of moments has added up to this one: a man

making himself presentable to the world in front

of the world, as if life has revealed to him the secret

that all our secrets from one another are imaginary.

Hello again.  Sorry for the long interval since I last posted, but with the end of the season looming and the playoffs to follow shortly after that there should be no lack for blog fodder in the immediate future.  Since I last checked in things have been rather annoyingly consistent.  We won two games against Bowie (the third being postponed) and then began the many varieties of the same thing.  A four game split against Erie, a four game split with Bowie and losing two of three games to Binghamton with one game left to keep up our roll of splits.  Over the last month we have split all of our four game series and alternated 2-1 series wins and losses the rest of the time.  Like I said: annoyingly consistent.  Having said all that, however, our series at Bowie ended in our clinching a playoff spot and the ensuing celebration is the type of thing that every professional athlete should get to experience at least once.  I also have continued to throw the ball well and have picked up a couple saves and haven't given up any runs since my last post over five or so appearances, which is an encouraging sign.

Off the field I haven't had a whole lot to report.  As usual I have been doing a lot of reading.  I recently finished off a few books of poetry, Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones, Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and I am almost through Hot, Flat and Crowded by (Minnesota native) Thomas L. Friedman.  Probably the most interesting of my recent experiences came after a day game when I decided to take a walk down by the Cuyahoga River.  Being around sunset there were the usual deer, raccoons and other various small mammals running around, but what was somewhat surprising to me was seeing a couple of river otters romping around and having a gay old time.  I had been under the impression that river otters were extinct in this area of the country but turns out they were reintroduced at different points over the last twenty-five or so years and now they live on many Ohio rivers.  I just thought it was cool because I'd never seen them outside of a zoo.  Much less exciting was walking between two trees and getting a sizable spider web to the face about twenty minutes later.  No worries about the spider though, as it apparently managed to bite me on the calf before I shooed it away.  Can't really blame it I guess.  Anyhow, I'll make sure to check back in again sometime in the near future and keep you updated on the playoffs, but until then I leave you with a Czeslaw Milosz poem (by request, even though I find a lot of his stuff overrated I do like some of his more recent work).  Until next time.

Many-Tiered Man

by Czeslaw Milosz

When the sun rises

it illuminates stupidity and guilt

which are hidden in the nooks of memory

and invisible at noon.

Here walks a many-tiered man.

On his upper floors a morning crispness

and underneath, dark chambers

which are frightening to enter.

He asks forgiveness

from the spirits of the absent ones

who twitter far below

at the tables of buried cafes.

What does that man do?

He is frightened of a verdict,

now, for instance,

or after his death.

Hello again out there in cyberspace.  It has been another fairly uneventful week, but not necessarily a bad or non-productive one.  Our week on the road was much the same as our previous week at home, again taking two of three games from the Connecticut Defenders and again losing two of three games to the New Britain Rock Cats to again end the week at 3-3 overall.  As I said previously, I'm not sure that any of us are happy with losing a series, especially after we started the road trip on such a positive note, but having a .500 week is a luxury that we have earned by being 8.5 games up on second place and 10 on third place and a playoff spot at this point of the season.  I also had a similarly disappointing performance, frustratingly appearing in only one game during the trip.  In the first inning of my appearance I struck out two guys with a runner in scoring position t keep the game tied in the ninth but then gave up a run to lose the game in the tenth.  Again, I came out of the gates with a good performance but ended on a disappointing note in giving up the run and then having to sit on it for the duration of the trip.  So from both a personal and team perspective we will strive for better performance moving forward as we continue to chip away at our magic number (13 for the playoffs, 14 for first place), while realizing that a .500 couple of weeks is no cause for worries at this point of the season.

Off the field there hasn't been a whole lot to report.  As the season gets to this point every year and the body starts to get a bit tired I tend to cut back on the extra curriculars and take it pretty easy away from baseball.  Probably the most notable thing that has happened over the last week is that I finally sold my first painting.  It was one of those things that I decided to do based on my trip to the Akron Art Museum and seeing all the terrible pieces that passed for art hanging there.  I figured I could make something as good as most of the things there and rather than just sit around saying it I decided to put my money where my mouth is, go forward with an attempt to start putting color to canvas, and paint something.  I won't say that the result was a modern masterpiece or anything, but I think the results were pretty good (as good as most similar stuff anyhow).  Anyway, based on this initial success I am planning on doing a few more paintings (probably with an eye towards subsidizing my book collecting habits) and hopefully I'll have another painting done in the next few weeks.  Other than selling the painting, the main excitement of the week was finishing a few books on the road trip.  I finished off R.A. Scotti's Vanished Smile about the theft of the Mona Lisa, Fury the first of what will probably be the first of many novels I read by Salman Rushdie, and possibly the best book I've read this year: Loot by Sharon Waxman.  I'll be sure to update you again sometime during the upcoming days during our series with playoff hopefuls Bowie and Erie and until then I leave you with a poem.

Kelp

by Jeffrey Yang

How easy it is to lose oneself

in a kelp forest. Between

canopy leaves, sunlight filters thru

the water surface; nutrients

bring life where there'd other-

wise be barren sea; a vast eco-

system breathes. Each

being being

being's link.

Hello once more.  This installment follows and unspectacular week of baseball that saw a flurry of inter-divisional play in the Eastern League that squared us off against Connecticut and New Britain.  We won the series against the Defenders 2-1 and lost the series against the Rock Cats by the same count, resulting in an overall 3-3 record over our six game home stand.  It wasn't anything flashy or inspiring but at this point in the season and with a reasonable lead in our division we can get away with playing .500 for a week now and then even if we should aspire to more.  We have an opportunity to try it all over again starting tomorrow when we square off against Connecticut and then New Britain following a day off and a hellishly long road trip made worse by a road construction induced delay.  Personally I threw once in each series and managed not to surrender a run so I guess that's good and hopefully I can replicate those performances in my upcoming outings.

Hello again out there in cyberspace.  I am happy to report that things are looking up since I last checked in.  The Erie team that seemed invincible in their own park was noticeably more so back home in Akron.  We swept all four games from Erie and didn't leave any of the outcomes in doubt, outscoring the SeaWolves 34-9 overall in the series.  After the Erie series we went on the road to Binghamton and rolled through the series.  The final game was a tight affair from start to finish resulting in a 3-2 victory, but the first two games were fairly lopsided with our offense propelling us out to early leads and the pitching holding on from there.  The wins were badly needed for morale after our string of prior losses and they also pushed our "magic number" to clinch a playoff berth into the range where it becomes worth keeping track of at 26.  As long as we keep our heads down and keep chugging along we'll be through that in no time (hopefully).  The week was also a good one for me as I had three appearances and didn't allow a run, but more importantly I stranded all five runners I inherited.  Overall, it was a good week for both myself and the team to build upon for the last month of the season and into the playoffs.

My non-baseball activities over the last week have not been overly exciting.  I finished a few more books from the huge unread pile I have that I can't stop myself from adding to.  The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl was an interesting and engaging historical novel about the circumstances surrounding Charles Dickens' last novel that I had been meaning to read for a while, and I also started and finished two Pulitzer Prize winning poetic works: Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway and Practical Gods by Carl Dennis.  Also, on the day off yesterday I watched the movie Waltz with Bashir while I was laying out a painting.  The movie was excellent, probably the best movie I've seen from last year.  The painting...didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped it would.  A couple of the colors didn't work out as I would have liked, but since I'm basically doing it as a joke anyway I'm not sure it really matters.  Well, I think I'm going to call that good for now so I can go start in on a new book (Loot by Sharon Waxman), do some of the cleaning up I intended to do yesterday and then head to the field.  Until next time, I leave you with a poem by the great Langston Hughes and encourage you to visit this website to hear Hughes explain his inspiration for the poem and also give a reading of it.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers    

by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hello once more.  I must start off by saying that I have been somewhat remiss in getting posts up of late, but I've alternately had my girlfriend and parents in town over recent home stands and my mind has been elsewhere by and large.  That being said, given the way we have played over the last week maybe it is best that I not recall all the details.  Our recent game action consists of losing three of four games to Erie, which actually improved our overall record at Erie's Jerry Uht Park to 1-10 on the season.  It is very frustrating to continue to lose game after game to a team like Erie, who while certainly a good team, is not a collection of surpassing talents that simple dwarfs us.  They do continue to beat us over and over again though so there is nothing to be done but tip our caps... and then go out and play better tonight in the first game of a four game series against Erie.  Hey, we're 2-2 against them at home so that is something maybe.  After our series with Erie we went out and lost two of three to Altoona, the team with the second worst record in the Eastern League.  Enough said.  My own performance over the last week has been good for the most part.  I allowed a few un-earned inherited runners in one appearance and threw 2.2 scoreless innings in an extra-inning affair with Erie in my most recent appearance, so one can only hope it is the front end of a long hot streak.

Away from the field I have been doing a variety of things, namely taking seemingly forever to finish Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.  It generally takes me anywhere from a day or two to a week to burn my way through a standard 300-400 page book but for some reason this particular book really jammed me up.  It is a great book and I recommend that anyone with an interest in American history (that would be all of you) pick it up, but for whatever reason I just struggled to finish it.  Oh well, now I'm on to The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl.  Other than that I've just been hanging out in Erie (boo) and now hanging out with my parents and brother around Akron.  We took in the Hower House a couple days ago which was okay.  It is an old Victorian home built in 1871 by John Henry Hower and currently owned by the University of Akron, where the home resides.  It is a cool old house and I am glad I saw it, but if I could only do one or the other I would not tour the Hower House at the expense of seeing Stan Hywet Hall.  Well, I'm off to spend some more quality time with the family before I head off to the field so I'll leave you with a poem by my favorite poet, Stephen Dunn, and sign off until next time.

What Goes On

by Stephen Dunn

After the affair and the moving out,

after the destructive revivifying passion,

we watched her life quiet

into a new one, her lover more and more

on its periphery. She spent many nights

alone, happy for the narcosis

of the television. When she got cancer

she kept it to herself until she couldn't

keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated

and saved her, and one day

her husband asked her to come back --

his wife, who after all had only fallen

in love as anyone might

who hadn't been in love in a while --

and he held her, so different now,

so thin, her hair just partially

grown back. He held her like a new woman

and what she felt

felt almost as good as love had,

and each of them called it love

because precision didn't matter anymore.

And we who'd been part of it,

often rejoicing with one

and consoling the other,

we who had seen her truly alive

and then merely alive,

what could we do but revise

our phone book, our hearts,

offer a little toast to what goes on.

Hello again out there in cyberspace.  Sorry for the ten day or so intermission, but I've had my girlfriend in town for the past six days so my priorities were temporarily shifted to the real world.  The last ten days have been a bit of a mixed bag on the field for us here in Akron.  After capping off a losing series against Reading with a loss, we traveled to Erie and promptly lost all four games there to drop to 0-8 at Jerry Uht Field this year.  I had an outing to forget in game two of the series, coming in with two men on base only to surrender two flare singles followed by a home run that provided the final margin.  I bounced back with a good outing to end the series, however, throwing an efficient inning plus to get some momentum going for myself.  After a much needed break we resumed against Bowie and after a series opening loss bounced back for three straight wins to give us a desperately needed victory in the series.  I had two good outings, commanding my pitches and avoiding walks, which has been a bit of an Achilles heel for me throughout the season.

During our aforementioned all-star break, I finally got a chance to see a few of the sights around Akron and Cleveland that I've wanted to take in but hadn't had an opportunity to until now.  On Tuesday I took in Stan Hywet Hall, the manor home of Goodyear Tire and Rubber founder Franklin Seiberling.  The grounds alone would have been worth the price of admission, but the house itself was pretty amazing.  Ornate wood work, secret passage ways and fabulous architectural design (among other things) made for a thoroughly enjoyable experience and one I would recommend if you ever find yourself with time to kill in Akron.  As much fun as Stan Hywet Hall was, the real excitement of the week was the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Any disappointment in my experience at the Akron Art Museum was more than recompensed by my time spent wandering halls covered in Old Masters, iconic moderns and personal favorites.  The opportunity to see one of Monet's massive Water Lilies series, one of my favorite Picassos (Life, from his blue period), and numerous paintings from the Hudson Valley school (including one of my favorites, Albert Bierstadt's Yosemite Valley) in person was a real treat.  Throw in major works by Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gaugin, Auguste Rodin and many others and it was more than I could realistically have hoped for.  Even if you don't share my zeal for art it really is a must see if you're in the area and you are doing yourself a disservice not to take it in.  Hopefully I'll still have a good reason to be hanging around Cleveland long enough to see it once the current building project they have under way is completed, because it really looks like it is going to be something when it is finished.  Anyway, I think I'm going to call that good for now so I can go pack for the upcoming road trip.  Until next time.

Hello again and welcome back to another installment.  It has been a fairly quiet week or thereabouts since I last checked in.  We played an up and down series on the road in Bowie followed by another up and down series against Harrisburg, but managed a 5-4 record on a road trip featuring nine games in five days.  Obviously we would prefer to have been a bit more consistent in our play and taken another game from Bowie, thus winning both series, but with a six game lead on second place and eight on a playoff spot a winning road trip in any fashion is at the least an acceptable outcome.  What stings a little more was losing a three game series to second place Reading at home, but we'll have an opportunity to pick up some quality wins on our upcoming three day road trip to Erie before getting a brief reprieve over the all-star break.  My individual performance has, in a fashion representative of my overall performance this season, been a bit of a mixed bag.  I threw 3.2 innings across three appearances and while I have finally begun producing strikeouts in a manner more consistent with my typical performance,  I have still been too streaky throwing strikes and consequently I have not been overly efficient.

Off the field there hasn't really been a lot to report.  I've had a pretty quiet week with my most notable accomplishments of note being the finishing of a number of the books that have been queuing on my bookshelf during the season.  Other than that I haven't done much other than finally getting around to stretching a painting I bought earlier in the season and decided that (in a continuation of my previous art-related rant) I would try my hand at making some "art" of my own just to prove to myself how fairly ridiculous some of that stuff is.  However, since I really have no desire to display said terrible "art" I am currently at a bit of a loss for what to do with it.  eBay maybe?  Anyway, I'll check back in after the all-star break and let you know what sort of hijinks I get into on my off days.  Until then, I will revive my habit of leaving you with a poem.

Another Time by W. H. Auden

For us like any other fugitive,

Like the numberless flowers that cannot number

And all the beasts that need not remember,

It is today in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,

So many have forgotten how

To say I Am, and would be

Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace

To a proper flag in a proper place,

Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs

Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will

When it was gifted with possession still,

Just as if they were wrong

In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,

So many are so lonely as they die;

No one has yet believed or liked a lie,

Another time has other lives to live.