Fields of Wonder

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.