Stingy Kids

Vida Blue

My interest in perfume has been chronicled extensively on this blog (there's even a tag for it, which should make finding my perfume-related posts a little easier--UPDATE: alas, those posts were on my defunct Vox blog).  About a year ago, I began to consider a baseball and perfume pairing that I call "Vida Blue."  Here are my notes for three "Vida Blue" fragrances:

Spring Training

Mint

Grass Linden

Orange

Avocado

Basil

Sugar Cane

Sage

Tuberose

Home, Away

Leather

Caramel

Grass and Loam

Tobacco

Salt

Winter Ball

Cocoa, Star anise, Sandalwood

 

"Spring Training" is promising, the other two not so much.  But in my perfumista fantasy, Minka Kelly and Derek Jeter are the models and spokespeople for "Vida Blue" (although Jeter has his own line and would probably consider this a conflict of interest).

While I'm in the mood for sharing, here's my recipe for "Thistles," a fragrance inspired by the poetry of Esther Raab.

Thistles

Vetiver

Lemon Peel

Thistle tincture

Eucalyptus

Olive

Frankincense/Oudh

Lily or Rose

Baseball: Blog All Open Tabs

Lately, my musings on baseball have turned to the connection between religious reliquary and baseball memorabilia. Here are some links that touch on this subject and others that don't: 

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With baseball cards somewhat passe nowadays, these connoisseurs came to the auction to buy genuine, "game-used" equipment and paraphernalia straight from the clubhouse, complete with "letters of authenticity" from experts, family members and previous owners. "The closer you get to the player, the better," explained Leland's chairman, Joshua Evans. "Lots of use is desirable." 

(Dispatches and a Fan Gets a Souvenir) 

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Earliest Baseball Relic Found 

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The catcher hits for .318 and catches every day 

The pitcher puts religion first and rests on holidays 

He goes into cathedrals and lies prostrate on the floor 

He knows the drink affects his speed he’s praying for a doorway 

Back into the life he wants and the confession of the bench 

Life outside the diamond is a wrench 

("Piazza, New York Catcher," Belle and Sebastian)

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NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

"NINE studies all historical aspects of baseball, centering on the societal and cultural implications of the game wherever in the world it is played. The journal features articles, essays, book reviews, biographies, oral history, and short fiction pieces."

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Dale Thayer Debuts, Becomes a Cult Figure:

"The score presented the opportunity for Thayer to get some work in, and holy heavens did he ever. When the camera flashed to Thayer, the first and only thing anyone noticed was the miraculous mustache, one with roots all the way to Mecca and back. This my friends, should be on scouting reports."

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And this gem by Stephen Jay Gould:

Baseball (as the codified form of a large variety of basically similar stick-and-ball games) has, like the poor, always been with us. Teams, leagues, and various lists of "official" rules had coalesced by the mid-nineteenth century, but Jane Austen refers to something called "base ball" in her 1797 novel Northanger Abbey, and various contests based on hitting a ball with a stick and scoring by running around bases came to America in the early days of European colonization and then grew and diversified as the nation expanded and knit together.

(Baseball's reliquary: the oddly possible hybrid of shrine and university)

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Online discussion spaces about baseball skew heavily male, some of them exclusively so. It is a routine tactic to express one’s hatred of one’s rivals in effeminacy terms, impugning their manhood, implying that they are like those lesser creatures: women. T-shirts abound: A-Rod Sucks Randy’s Johnson, Derek Jeter Drinks Wine Coolers. Success is masculinity; a pitcher’s ability to intimidate correlates positively with the size of his testicles. Sometimes, as a female fan, it is hard to express one’s opinion about a player without being accused of romantic feelings.

It does get tiresome after a while, looking into the mirror of the fandom and not seeing my own reflection. 

(Veejane Acheson, "The Abomination of the Pink Baseball Cap")

Memorial Day

We reached Citi Field in time for the Mets batting practice, my first time witnessing this spectacle. The players were on right field, rolling on the grass, their arms and legs akimbo. Two stylish trainers would occasionally call out a drill and the guys would go into a different stretch, entirely out of synch. A flock of young women stood along the railing swooning as David Wright and Daniel Murphy twisted their hips. "I'm standing like twenty feet away," one woman said, talking into her cellphone. "Oh my god, he's looking at me!" another cried. Murphy and Wright looked back and laughed. Most of these players are younger than me, some quite a bit, a detail that really isn't relevant on the field. But in this particular crowd, the thought that any one of these players, with few exceptions, could be my younger brother was sobering. David and I moved quickly to get a better view of the pitchers, an area fraught with far less tension but where chances of coming way with a relic increase substantially. Our friend Tien had taken advantage of no line at the Shake Shack, so we ate burgers and watched Stokes, Takahashi, Green and Parnell warm up. I was prepared to let go of our original idea: to ask Brian Stokes to sign my jersey, the one David, my husband, had custom ordered for my birthday last year, before Stokes was on the official roster.  I asked the person next to me if batting practice etiquette discouraged asking for a signature. "They sometimes toss up balls but they don't usually sign stuff," he said. "See, they don't sign stuff," I told David, admittedly with some relief.  David kept reading his Mets program. "Just wait," he said.

Eventually, the guys started to wind down. Stokes sat down for a moment and looked around. "Do something!" I begged David, completely losing my nerve. He called out to Stokes, who turned in our direction and saw my jersey--Stokes 43--hanging over the railing.  He gave me a thumbs up. I gave him a thumbs up too. That seemed like a good story. 

A few moments later, Stokes got up and started signing some balls for fans further down the row. Most of the players walk past the balls scattered over the field, ignoring the entreaties of the fans. It's like feeding pigeons, David said. But Stokes was gracious and generous. I gathered my wits and waved my jersey in his direction. I insist that I called out to him but David is certain that I was mostly mute throughout this entire transaction. He came over and reached up for the jersey and our pen. "Where should I sign it?" he asked. "Anywhere!" I croaked. He signed his name in purple. "Over the heart!" I later exclaimed. "Or the boob," Tien noted. He tossed up the shirt and then reached down, grabbed a ball, and sent that up as well. I heard murmurs all around me. The purple Sharpie followed. A better story. 

The ball Stokes gave me is slightly worn, with grass stains along its red seams. It still has the scent of a new ball. I was prepared to turn my jersey into a relic, but the ball caught me by surprise.  I tossed it around yesterday as I contemplated new turns in my work. It has life in it yet.

The Yips

This past Sunday,  Mike Pelfrey, a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, balked at the mound three times in a game against the San Francisco Giants.  Baseball rules spell out clearly what constitutes a balk.  It's not uncommon but it is costly, as runners on base instantly advance to the next base.  Three times in one game is, unfortunately, uncommon.  Pelfrey blamed it on a temporary case of the yips, a sudden and inexplicable loss of ability. 

First baseman Jeremy Reed later told reporters that he tried to say something to Pelfrey to get his mind back in the game but had little experience in that role.  Sometime jams in baseball can be resolved by one perfect pitch, but what if the pitch is lodged somewhere, out of reach.  What line can you cast to get it out?  

In fall 1995, I attended a Galway Kinnell-Gary Snyder reading at the University of Richmond.  I was with a friend who was an avid Kinnell fan, and on the drive to the campus, she tried to describe the experience of hearing him read his poetry live.  "You'll have to hear it for yourself," she told me, giving up.  The theme of the reading was the environment.  Snyder read new poems and a few from Turtle Island, which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Then he turned the podium to Kinnell.  My friend was right.  Kinnell had a wonderful, deep voice and read his poems in measured and steady cadences.  It was an example for me of how to be a good reader of poetry without engaging in theatrics.  After reading some of his poems, he shared "One Ordinary Evening" by Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first collection at the age of 83.  (Ants on the Melon was published the following year.)  As far as poetry readings go, this was excellent.

Then Kinnell announced that the last poem he would read would be "The Bear," his signature poem.  It's a long poem, and what made Kinnell's readings of The Bear so famous is that he could do it entirely from memory.  So he began--

In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

A few stanzas into the poem, Kinnell stopped.  He started from the beginning and, again, stopped in the same place.  He paused and said that something was breaking his concentration.   Like others, I looked around trying to find anything out of place, out of the ordinary.  But the door was closed, no one was going in and out, and we were quiet.  Did he see something we couldn't see?  It quickly became clear that Kinnell would not get out of that jam and, then, from one of the front rows, a man whispered the line that had been misplaced in Kinnell's memory.  Without glancing up Kinnell repeated the line and kept going.  He read this entire, brutal and gorgeous poem out loud.  When he finished, he reached into the cheering audience and grabbed the man by the hand, grateful that he had got him through the inning.

El beisbolista, el poeta

Miguel Batista is a published poet and novelist--he's also a relief pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  He started his MLB career in 1992 with the Pittsburgh Pirates but hasn't spent that long with any team, nine in total.  Overall, he's had a solid career but his performance this season has been uneven.  This is what the Red Sox commentators were observing when one of them mentioned that he also wrote poetry.  "You don't hear that often.  A baseball player who is also a poet.  And he's published too."  Upon hearing this, my head exploded.

Batista's official website represents all sides of the man: poet, writer, musician, baseball player and (touchingly) human being.  In his own words:

Dominicano por destino, pelotero por profesión, poet por pasión" es una frase  que resume la vida de Miguel Batista. Porque para hablar de él hay que viajar un poco más allá de su prestigio como jugador de  béisbol y ahondar en sus valores humanos, así como en las miles de páginas en que se revela su vocación por la palabra.

Dominican by birth, pitcher by profession, poet by vocation" sums up Miguel Batista's life in an nutshell.  To really understand who he is, you have to dig deeper than his fame as a Major League Baseball player, and get to know his human values.  You have to immerse yourself in the thousands of pages he has penned as a poet and novelist, revealing his heartfelt passion for the written word.

Baseball season affords players very little down time.  Apparently, Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona play cribbage before games.  A lot of players tune out with video games.  Batista writes.  His first book--Sentimientos en blanco y negro--slowly came together, in fits and starts: 

...pese a su agitada agenda deportiva y aprovechando su escaso tiempo libre, en aviones, en el "clubhouse" o donde fuera, Miguel iba escribiendo en papeles sueltos o libretas, sus sueños, sus dudas, temores y amores.

In spite of his hectic schedule and little free time, Miguel wrote on scraps of paper and notebooks, in the dugout, on airplanes, wherever he happened to be.  He wrote about his dreams, his doubts, his fears, his loves.  It was 1999, and he never imagined that any of his writings might be published one day.

Something about this process--it's fragmentary quality--reminds me of Marina Tsvetaeva, an early twentieth century Russian poet.  I read once how Tsvetaeva would quickly pen a line poetry while making dinner or tending to her daughters.  Granted she worked under particularly straitened circumstances, but a number of great poets have juggled writing with full-time careers in other professions--for example, Wallace Stevens (lawyer) and William Carlos Williams (physician).

There are a few poems in Spanish and English on his website.  Read them and make your own assessment of his work.  What interests me, and what I admire, is that Batista makes time for a creative life.  And he doesn't compartmentalize it.  It isn't relegated, as it was for Robert Mitchum, to a secret, private practice.  It's all there in the open--the good, bad and uneven--"...we kindly/ surrender to the most beautiful feeling/ we have always known" ("Perfect Stranger").

Stokes

My favorite Mets player has a name that most fans and even Shea staff don't recognize right away.  "Stokes, is he new?" asked a hot dog vendor two weeks ago.  "I thought Stokes was your maiden name" remarked a fan seated behind me.  On any given night Shea Stadium is awash in Wright, Beltran, Delgado jerseys.  Even Piazza still gets some love.  But I'm "probably the only person in New York wearing a Stokes jersey," to quote Joe, who sits in our section.

I grew up thinking that baseball was the most tedious, uneventful sport.  At one point, I think my younger brother played Little League.  That's how little attention I paid to the sport.  My husband, on the other hand, has been a Mets fan since birth and some of David's earliest memories are attending Mets games.  As a kid, he made a papier-mâché Mr. Met.  A sculpture that I think will stay in the family forever, no matter how moldy it gets.  It was David who took me to my first professional baseball game and taught me how to keep score.  But I still didn't get the game.

That is, until Robb Nen.

In 2002, the Giants were in the World Series and playing against the Anaheim Angels.  During these games, David would eventually fall asleep but I would keep  the TV on for company.  I remember that I was working on a paper and by the eighth inning, I was usually ready to go to bed.  So I would sit on the floor and, if any remained, I would  watch the final moments of the game.  The game I most remember must have been Game 4 because the series was far along and the Giants won that night.  And I remember that Nen played. 

When Nen stepped up to the pitcher's mound that night and leaned forward, I knew that something special was happening.  It was in his poise, the way he just dominated that space and looked ahead with complete confidence.  I used to complain to David that Mets games were frustrating to watch because they lacked energy in the last few innings (a comment that comes back to haunt me these days).  I had never seen energy pick up the way it did when Nen walked onto the field.  I felt my heart race and for the first time, I not only watched a game to the end but also didn't want it to end.  David woke up to me cheering and jumping up and down. 

That was Nen's last season as a closing pitcher.  In his efforts to move the Giants ahead in the series, he aggravated a rotator cuff injury, underwent surgery and retired.  Recently, the owner of a card shop asked me why I was so interested in Nen.  I told him that when I first saw Nen pitch, "it all made sense."  I don't even know what I meant by that.  I guess it was just the moment when I started to pay attention.  When I started to care about the mechanics of a pitch and the different roles that ball players occupy during a game.  After that night, every baseball game felt like a unique dramatic narrative--and with me, once a literary analogy reveals itself, I'm pretty much hooked.

But for some of the sports fans I know, my interest in Nen was strange.  I wasn't a Giants fan and had no interest in the Mets.  I liked baseball-- a lot-- but lacked a team.  And for the next six years, I went to games at Shea and kept asking questions.  But I wasn't invested in the victories and losses of any team or any player.

This summer I wasn't able to attend many Mets games but I finally had the time and opportunity to go to Shea on August 9.  John Maine, one of the Mets starting pitchers, was injured and a new pitcher would be starting in his place.  It was a big deal because this guy would be making his starting debut with the Mets and if he did well, he could be good for our slagging bullpen.  It's hard not to be caught up in the excitement of a player's first outing with a team.  It's a make or break moment.  If things go very badly, you may never see that player again.  So that's why I was paying a little more attention than usual when Brian Stokes came onto the field.

He traced the dirt in front of him with his foot and threw his first pitch.  A closer's pitch.  I was hooked.

On that night, Stokes pitched about five innings and gave up some runs.  David was convinced that we would never see him again.  But I knew that Manuel wasn't going to let Stokes's 96 mph fastball out of his sights.  I was right. 

Stokes's future with the Mets may not be carved in stone but for the past two months he's been pitching solidly as a reliever.  He's even closed some games which gives me hope that one day he'll become a full-fledged closer.  But I'll be happy to see him in a solid set-up role as well.  I just wish the Mets had a little more rope to give him.  It's hard to grow into a role when every game is do or die.  But that's why Stokes's confidence and tenacity impress me all the more.  Even if the inning is not going well for him, he fights through until every player is out or until Manuel pulls him out.  And then he walks out tall.   

Being a fan of Stokes means that my favorite part of a Mets game is frustratingly short.  Once, for instance, he was brought out for just one out.  One pitch, one out.  Lightning Stokes.

Being a fan of Stokes means that I sit through Mets games with great anticipation.  It means that over the past two months I started to care not only about one player but also an entire team (which is inevitable when your favorite player sometimes doesn't even appear).  It means that yesterday when Ryan Church made that absurd run in the eighth inning, I was jumping and screaming like those crazy fans I used to observe from a distance. 

It means that when Stokes came out to deliver the last two outs of the seventh inning, I was cheering him on.  I was cheering for my team.