oh, I was kind of hoping for a wrap-up of the last minute 2-2 score for the Sounders, actually.

Yeah, Mariners!

I'm looking good on Miltie playing in enough games, but the Silva side of things is not looking so good. Barring a huge letdown or injury (and I don't wish injury on anyone) I think I'm losing this one. I'm hoping the pressure of being the #1 pitcher will get to Silva.

Beckett's novels are vastly more interesting than his plays, which are derivative of Maeterlinck.

What works will you be discussing in your course? Malamud? DeLillo's Underworld? Is there a way I could sit in on any of your classes?

PS CF- Can I get an example of how Americans use baseball to determine who Americans are? And if Jacques Barzun were writing about learning the heart and mind of America today, would he still use baseball or more popular sports like football or basketball?

And holy crap, Jacques Barzun is 102 freakin years old!

@4 Sitting in isn't an option, but you could take the course. . . reading list (partial):

Lardner, You Know Me Al
Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
Malamud, The Natural
Sturm, The Golem's Mighty Swing
Moore, The Last Season
Eight Men Out (Sayles, 1988)
The Natural (Levinson, 1984)
Bull Durham (Shelton, 1988)
A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992)
plus the children's books Baseball Saved Us and Dirt in Their Skirts, dozens of poems and essays and other stuff.

@ 3 for the most overinformed and probably pretentious post in the history of slog. Love ya, Fnarf.

@2 - Oh, don't worry. Silva will return to right around his career averages any minute now. He may be getting a bump from changing leagues, since batters have never faced him before, but that will screech to a halt soon enough.

I agree with 10. I had a good look at Silva's stats and he's a career 5th starter all the way. The NL scouts are going to figure him out real quick. He must have Scott Boras for an agent - I can not for the life of me figure out how he got such a generous contract. MB at least had some good offense in the past.

Silva's riding a ludicrously unsustainable BABIP, that's all. He doesn't have any magic powers to turn batted balls into outs, so a more reasonable percentage of those will start turning back into hits very soon. Also, a good number of those hits will start to fly over the fence, as they always do with him, especially in Wrigley. Bye-bye zero-something ERA.

CF- Your preference, Malamud's ending or Levinson's?

Forget milteeeee. What about griffeeeee return to comiskeeeeeee?? Where's the outrage??
Apologeees in advance.

@ Slake: During the Second World War, Japanese prisoners in internment camps played baseball. When the Dodgers made the World Series his rookie year, Jack Robinson said that when he heard the national anthem being played before the first game, that was the first time he felt that the song was for him. Immigrants dominate the game in historical waves, first the Irish, then Germans, now Latinos. Read all of the lyrics of "Take me out to the Ballgame": it's the story of how an Irish immigrant girl becomes American by rooting for baseball players (and, probably, fucking them).

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/p…

And Barzun would still look to baseball. It's our oldest game, and the one with the richest literary and filmic history. For every great football or basketball or hockey movie, poem, novel or play, there are dozens about baseball.

Thanks CF, good stuff.

@15, actually I think our oldest game is cricket.

There is a theory that the quality and quantity of sports literature varies inversely with the size of the ball. Basketball none, baseball lots, golf more. This theory collapses in the light of a closer examination of some of that golf "literature", which is usually even more boring than golf itself, which is saying something. Unless you count P.G. Wodehouse.

And there's been a ton of great soccer writing in recent years, which involves a large ball. America is still waiting for the Great Beach Volleyball Novel, though.

Chifan, have you ever read Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Proprietor"? Best baseball fiction ever, maybe because it's really about rotisserie baseball. And, you know, existentialism and stuff.

Coover's novel is indeed great--and I'd argue it's as much about OCD as anything else. Wish I had room for it in the syllabus, but I always construe literature very broadly, so to include TV shows (three Simpsons episodes), comic books (Brian Azzarello on 9/11 and rooting for the D'backs against the Yankees as the patriotic thing to do, as well as Sturm's book), nonfiction essays (a great one about Babe Ruth v. Mickey Mantle v. Mark McGwire, set in a barbershop) and the culture around the game (vendors, ballhawks, neighborhoods, sportswriters, etc), I've got to limit the novels. Also, only have six weeks. Never enough time. . . but I did change the days I teach this summer just to make time to get to Seattle for the final Cubs game. . .

And I'd agree Beckett's novels are great. But I like the plays too.

@17 - it's squash, field hockey, or lacrosse, you anti-Native sod!

Care to elaborate on what is "native" about squash or field hockey, Will?

[Psst, here's a hint: nothing at all].

My understanding is that all of your few remaining brain cells have to do double or triple duty, rendering you incapable of distinguishing between the game of squash and Navajo squash blossom necklaces.

Reading your posts is like watching someone crank the handle on an old-fashioned adding machine; we can SEE the gears turning and the dials rotating and the new message laboriously coming into consciousness before you post it.

"I have absolutely no idea what this is about, but I've heard of this other thing that I mistakenly believe is related to it, so I'll mention that, and people will want to have sex with me after the next Slog Happy because of how smart I are". Thunk thunk thunk.

So, are we live-slogging the Sounders game in Toronto on Sunday?

It's carried live on CBC.

to the fucktard @21 - seriously, have you never read any history of native peoples, are you just an ignorant twit?

I'm with CF on End Game--it is good (but will be awesome @ Steppenwolf). I must quibble with his snide dismissal of US Cellphone Field: at least they have a doggie day, unlike some other ball parks I could mention. (Though, this being the dog-hatin' Slog, I realize the virtue of this is a matter of opinion).