ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BASEBALL

  • Kirby

    On this day in 2006, Kirby Puckett died at the young age of 46. In honor of Kirby, I am reposting this that I wrote and posted in July here at ClimbingSky: I was lucky enough to move to the Twin Cities and to begin going to Twins games regularly in 1986. That meant I… Read more

  • Musings on The Game

    With Opening Day less than a month away, my mind turns more and more to The Game. This year the teams that I will be following most closely are: The Twins collapsed last year due to a combination of injuries and poor situational hitting. They enter this season with injury questions around three key position… Read more

  • A Need for Speed

    Anyone that has visited ClimbingSky by now knows that my favorite player is Rickey Henderson, the epitome of speed on the base paths. Getting on base, disrupting a pitcher’s timing/concentration by being a threat to steal makes it easier for your teammates to do their job: advancing runners and knocking in runs. My local nine,… Read more

  • Spring is Here

    I have long been silent on baseball here at ClimbingSky. For some reason, it is hard for me to write about baseball when there are no games going on. In the past, during the offseason, I would read baseball books to get me through the dark days. But for the past few years, I have… Read more

  • Catchers and Pitchers Report

    This week catchers and pitchers report to Spring Training. The long, dark days of winter are coming to an end. For baseball fans, Spring Training means hope and possibility. Here are some of my favorite quotes about Spring Training. Spring training means flowers, people coming outdoors, sunshine, optimism and baseball. Spring training is a time… Read more

  • Poetic Fragments and Drafts

    Getting up early every day to write for decades means that I have filled analog notebooks and computer files with what I have come to think of as Poetic Fragments or Poetic Drafts. They are too brief and small to be complete poems but at the same time, I can often find no way of… Read more

  • Rickey

    Last week, a text from my friend Bob alerted me to the sad and surprising news that Rickey Henderson, “The Man of Steal,” was dead just a few days short of his 66th birthday. Here is my post from earlier this year occasioned by the death of another G.O.A.T. Read more

  • Friday’s Food for Thought: Elliot West on History

    Segmenting time, or periodization, is something we have to do if we want to organize the past and give it meaning. But it’s dangerous. By choosing some dominating event and saying that its period starts here and ends there, we run the risk of neglecting other events that don’t fit well into the scheme we’ve… Read more

  • Let’s Go Mets

    Tonight the Mets begin their NLCS series against the Yankees of the West Coast. This first game of the series will be on FOX which means I will actually get to see it. Some numbers: None of that though matters. Right now, the Mets are playing better. Hitting for more power. Driving in more runs.… Read more

  • A Mid-Week Rant

    During the regular season, I have a subscription to MLB.com. It allows me to watch just about any baseball game I wish to watch. So during the regular season when I wanted to catch the Mets, it was an easy thing to do. Not so though now that playoff games have started. In a misguided… Read more