Cleat Quotes

What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Baseball isn't just a game. It's the smell of popcorn drifting in the air, the sight of bugs buzzing near the stadium lights,the roughness of the dirt beneath your cleats. It's the anticipation building in your chest as the anthem plays, the adrenaline rush when your bat cracks against the ball, and the surge of blood when the umpire shouts strike after you pitch. It's a team full of guys backing your every move, a bleacher full of people cheering you on. It's...life

The big men are all deaf; they don't want to hear the little squeaking as they walk across the street on cleated boots.

Would you rather have the lords and nobles back? What is Democracy for? Not so we can rob each other. Or cheat.' I said cheat and felt the teeth in it, the cleat, the cut, the eat.

Lesbian is important to me," Phoebe says. "The world likes to act like it's a porn category, not an identity. It took me a while to realize it wasn't. I want other girls like me to know it's a beautiful word.

Your sister," I say evenly, "is incredibly sick. I'm sorry if that interferes with your dentist's appointment or your plan to go buy a pair of cleats. But those don't rate quite as high in the grand scheme of things right now. I'd think that since you're ten, you might be able to grow up enough to realize that the whole world doesn't always revolve around you." Jesse looks out the window, where Kate straddles the arm of an oak tree, coaching Anna in how to climb up. "Yeah, right, she's sick," he says. "Why don't you grow up? Why don't you figure out that the world doesn't revolve around her?" ... There is a scuffle on the other side of the door, and then it swings open. Blood covers Jesse's mouth, a vampire's lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a seamstress's pins. I notice the fork he is holding, and realize this is what he used to pull off his braces. "Now you never have to take me anywhere," he says.

I knew soccer/non-American football jerseys weren't cheap. Sohrab could have used that money on some new cleats for himself, but he had gotten me the jersey instead. "Are you okay, Darioush?" "Yeah. Yeah." I blinked some more. "It's just really, really nice." It made me feel like I belonged.

This was another taarof: Sohrab giving me his nicer cleats. And invoking my being a guest was one of the strongest strategies you could employ in taarof.

Trousers rolled to the knee but still they got wet. They tied the rope to a cleat at the rear of the boat and rowed back across the lake, jerking the stump slowly behind them. By then it was already evening. Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks. The lake dark glass and windowlights coming on along the shore. A radio somewhere. Neither of them had spoken a word. This was the perfect day of childhood. This is the day to shape the days upon.

Her golden hair moved like a hundred moths, all trying to saturate themselves in sunlight, while his hair was spiked like cleats, and he wore a shoe for a hat. He said it helped him to headstands while looking up her dress.

when life decides to kick you in the balls, it sometimes wears metal cleats.

Heroes. I'll never see them that way again. I've seen who real heroes are. And they don't wear cleats on game day.

What happened?" I ask. My heart hurts. "That big guy," he says. His voice is high and tight. "Number forty-six. Jeez, he just bashed his shoulder right into my chest, and when I was on the ground, he steps on my leg with his cleat." He sniffs hard, rubs his nose on his sleeve, doesn't meet my eyes. "That bastard," I say. "The minute he gets off the field I'm going to kick him in the balls." Oliver laughs a little, his eyes filling up at the same time. "He'll never know what hit him. His balls are gonna go flying, I promise you that. People will wish they brought their catcher's mitts.

We can do anything we want with today just as long as we leave yesterday exactly where it belongs.

You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s pretty much never been done before, ever. That’s science, right there. —Megan Rapinoe

The trembling started in my cleats and worked its way through my aching ankle, my tensed calf and thigh muscles, my pounding chest until it finally shook loose the fear that had slowly eaten away the resolve I’d found at Spirit Lake Bible camp. What would I do if anyone at school found out the truth about me?

I know what you’re thinking,” Ellis said, hitting the key remote in his hand. “It’s pretty much the most stunning example of vehicular perfection ever.” We all stood there, watching as the back door of the sky blue van slid open, revealing two rows of seats, the rear of which was stacked with soccer balls and various pairs of cleats. “Don’t try to point out to him that it is just a minivan,” Heather said, climbing into the backseat and pushing a ball onto the floor. “We’ve tried.

Heroes. I’ll never see them that way again. I’ve seen who real heroes are. And they don’t wear cleats on game day.

It is the bold, the loud-mouthed, the cruel, the vital, the revolutionaries, the might in arms and will, who march over the soft patient flesh that lies beneath their cleated boots.

Once aboard Top Job, George and Nancy had the mainsail and jib up in record time. Bess dutifully coiled the sheets. “The wind is perfect.” George sighed happily, taking the tiller. Top Job sailed smoothly, gathering speed as the sails filled. The boat was running before the wind. As the craft approached the mouth of the harbor, George noticed a post she assumed was a racing marker. She decided to have a look at it, thinking she might take part in Saturday’s races. “Ready about, hard alee!” she called. Nancy uncleated the jib sheet. Then she and Bess scrambled to the other side of the boat. Nancy trimmed the jib sheet, cleating it on the starboard side. George handed her the tiller, saying, “Try her. She handles beautifully.

it’s so easy to imagine it: a future Henry who comes to the lake house with him every summer, who learns how to make elotes and ties neat cleat hitches and fits right into place in his weird family.

The first day of spring, the vernal equinox—the season of renewal when the earth sheds its winter cloak, flowers bloom, and the heart feels as though everything is once again imaginable. The smell of fresh-cut grass, shagging fly balls, and scraping mud from baseball cleats. A brief contemplation and tear for those gone from the field, their easy laugh and nimble sprint no longer gracing the game.

The Sometime Sportsman Greets the Spring by John Updike When winter's glaze is lifted from the greens, And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing, Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing. This year, he vows, his head will steady be, His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal; And so they are, until upon the tee Befall the old contortions of the real. So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from Hibernal months of television sports, Perfects his serve and feels his knees become Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts. Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss, Which shall be high, so that the racket face Shall at a certain angle sweep across The floated sphere with gutty strings—an ace! The mind's eye sees it all until upon The courts of life the faulty way we played In other summers rolls back with the sun. Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade.

Some men shy from the morning kiss, worried their breath isn't fresh enough. Fuck that. We can kiss minty-cleat later. I'd rather have the morning kiss, the one that smells of heat and last night's blurry sleep, yesterday's dirt and drama.

Soon ranging up by his flask, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up from another fling.

Wulf tested the ice underfoot before he took the first step, Thrit at his side. “I used to have nightmares about falling into a break,” Thrit said. Their cleats rasped through the snow. “Vell always said they were bottomless.” “Don’t talk about it.” “Fine. I’ll think about it.

~Here’s to kick-offs, goals, assists, shootouts, livin’ on the road, the smell of wet grass, early mornings, breakaways, crossbar shots, countless hours of practice, Nike cleats, , shin pads, big passes, loud chanting, new equipment, sniping shots, corner kicks, coaches, passion in our numbers, living with your team mates, the girls you trust become your second family, pick up, fights, let downs, miracles. Some people say soccer’s a matter of life or death, but it isn’t, it’s much more then that, and most of all – the best game in the world, our passion, our life, our future, our love, our game .. SOCCER.~

And what enriched me while reading Adorno, for example, lay not in what I read but in the perception of myself while I was reading. I was someone who read Adorno! And in this heavy, intricate, detailed, precise language whose aim was to elevate thought ever higher, and where every period was set like a mountaineer’s cleat, there was something else, this particular approach to the mood of reality, the shadow of these sentences that could evoke in me a vague desire to use the language with this particular mood on something real, on something living. Not on an argument, but on a lynx, for example, or on a blackbird or a cement mixer.

Soon the river would narrow and carve through water rushes and overhanging trees still dripping with weed and flotsam from the previous high tide; it was the stretch I never trusted, the stretch of river that pulled my imagination as taut as rope around a cleat, and where I saw thick gnarled roots crawling across the mudflats

One of the downsides of being a lesbian athlete is other women are always doing hot things around you.

I'm proud of you. For setting boundaries to protect your happiness. For going after what makes you happy.

The corollary to you can be whatever you want is you don't have to be anything you don't want

In her childhood, the grass was green. There were cleats and freshly laundered jerseys with silly team names and sliced oranges on the sideline. And to see the differences, to find these beautiful boys worthy of curiosity, of examination—it’s the core of her chosen profession but it feels like human sightseeing. A tour of others. Look at these poor boys, happy despite everything.

I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

You can tell you are a soccer girl if. You dont mind falling in the mud You dont care if you get tripped. You get back up again when you get pushed. You out run all the guys. You dont care to get a little sweat and blood on you. You dont care about getting kicked in the ankles a million times. You dont care about people stepping on your toes with there cleats. You dont care what your hair looks like after you play. All your makeup is washed off! If you are all those you are definitely a soccer player! :)

The pass opened straight on to the ice helm, which looked a mile wide, filling a deep valley between two sides of the Oxhorns. Snow covered its gaps, like butter smoothed with the flat of a knife. That made it far more dangerous than if it had been naked. Wild swung his longaxe into his hand, watching the ground for shadows and tucks that boded a hidden crack in the helm. At least the layer of snow was thin. About halfway across the ice, an isle of rock hunched free. Hróthi buildings huddled on it, flying the same banners. Wolf tested the ice underfoot before he took the first step, Thrit at his side. “I used to have nightmares about falling into a break,” Thrit said. Their cleats rasped through the snow. “Vell always said they were bottomless.” “Don’t talk about it.” “Fine. I’ll think about it.

It got to the point where he didn’t even look up at the sky any more as he blundered back and forth. The human mind had evolved for just one universe, he thought. How much of this crap was he supposed to take? He felt exhausted, resentful, bewildered. “Wait.” He paused. He had loped out of the portal onto another stretch of scuffed, anonymous regolith. She was lying in his arms, her weight barely registering. He looked down into her face, and pushed up her gold sun visor. “Emma?” She licked her lips. “Look. Up there.” No Galaxy visible, but a starry sky. The stars looked, well, normal. But he’d learned that meant little. “So what?” Emma was lifting her arm, pointing. He saw three stars, dull white points, in a row. And there was a rough rectangle of stars around them—one of them a distinctive red—and what looked like a Galaxy disc, or maybe just a nebula, beneath … “Holy shit,” he said. She whispered, “There must be lots of universes like ours. But, surely to God, there is only one Orion.” And then light, dazzling, unbearably brilliant, came stabbing over the close horizon. It was a sunrise. He could actually feel its heat through the layers of his suit. He looked down at the ground at his feet. The rising light cast strong shadows, sharply illuminating the miniature crevices and craters there. And here was a “crater” that was elongated, and neatly ribbed. It was a footprint. He stepped forward, lifted his foot, and set it down in the print. It fit neatly. When he lifted his foot away the cleats of his boot hadn’t so much as disturbed a regolith grain. It was his own footprint. Good grief. After hundreds of universes of silence and remoteness and darkness, universes of dim light and shadows, he was right back where he started.

It’s not like I wasn’t busy. I was an officer in good standing of my kids’ PTA. I owned a car that put my comfort ahead of the health and future of the planet. I had an IRA and a 401(k) and I went on vacations and swam with dolphins and taught my kids to ski. I contributed to the school’s annual fund. I flossed twice a day; I saw a dentist twice a year. I got Pap smears and had my moles checked. I read books about oppressed minorities with my book club. I did physical therapy for an old knee injury, forgoing the other things I’d like to do to ensure I didn’t end up with a repeat injury. I made breakfast. I went on endless moms’ nights out, where I put on tight jeans and trendy blouses and high heels like it mattered and went to the restaurant that was right next to the restaurant we went to with our families. (There were no dads’ nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.) I took polls on whether the Y or the JCC had better swimming lessons. I signed up for soccer leagues in time for the season cutoff, which was months before you’d even think of enrolling a child in soccer, and then organized their attendant carpools. I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

Prayer for the Dads Enduring the Epic Winter Rains Along the Muddy Sidelines at Pee Wee Soccer Games Brothers, I have stood where you stand, in ankle-deep mud, trying not to call instructions and warnings to my child, trying to restrict myself to supportive remarks and not roars of fury at the gangly mute teenage referee who totally missed an assault upon my beloved progeny; and I have also shuffled from leg to leg for an entire hour in an effort to stay warm; and I have also realized I was supposed to bring snacks at halftime five minutes before halftime, and dashed to the store for disgusting liquids in colors unlike any natural color issued from the Creator; and I too have pretended not to care about the score, or about my child’s athletic performance, but said cheery nonsense about how I did not care; and I too have resisted the urge to bring whiskey to the game in a thermos, and so battle the incredible slicing wet winds; and I too have resisted the urge to bring the newspaper or a magazine and at least get some reading done during the long periods of languor as small knots of children surround the ball like wolves around a deer and happily kick each other in the shins; and I too have carefully not said a word when my child and six mud-soaked teammates cram into my car and bang out their cleats on my pristine car floor and leave streaks of mud and disgusting plastic juice on the windows; and I too know that this cold wet hour is a great hour, for you are with your child, and your child is happy, and the Coach of all things gave you that child, and soon enough you will be like me, the father of teenagers who no longer stands along the sidelines laughing with the other dads in the rain. Be there now, brothers, and know how great the gift; for everything has its season, and the world spins ever faster. And so: amen.

I’ll tell you what,” he says. “You keep me company while I finish my dinner. I won’t even ask you what you have…or don’t have…under that coat. Deal?” I smile tentatively and smooth down my hair. “Deal.” “You don’t have to do that for me,” he says, gently taking my hand away from my hair. “I’ll get a blanket so you don’t get dirty.” I wait until he pulls a clean light green fleece blanket out of a closet. We sit on the blanket and Alex looks at his watch. “Want some?” he asks, pointing to his dinner. Maybe eating will calm my nerves. “What is it?” “Enchiladas. Mi’amá makes kick-ass enchiladas.” He stabs a small portion with a fork and holds it out to me. “If you’re not used to this kind of spicy food--” “I love spicy,” I interrupt, taking it into my mouth. I start chewing, enjoying the blend of flavors. But when I swallow, my tongue slowly catches on fire. Somewhere behind all the fire there’s flavor, but the flames are in the way. “Hot,” is all I can say as I attempt to swallow. “I told you.” Alex holds out the cup he’d been drinking from. “Here, drink. Milk usually does the trick, but I only have water.” I grab the cup. The liquid cools my tongue, but when I finish the water it’s as if someone stokes it again. “Water…,” I say. He fills another cup. “Here, drink more, though I don’t think it’ll help much. It’ll subside soon.” Instead of drinking it this time, I stick my tongue in the cold liquid and keep it there. Ahhh… “You okay?” “To I wook otay?” I ask. “With your tongue in the water like that, actually, it’s erotic. Want another bite?” he asks mischievously, acting like the Alex I know. “Mo mank ooh.” “Your tongue still burnin’?” I lift my tongue from the water. “It feels like a million soccer players are stomping on it with their cleats.” “Ouch,” he says, laughing. “You know, I heard once that kissin’ reduces the fire.” “Is that your cheap way of telling me you want to kiss me?” He looks into my eyes, his dark gaze capturing mine. “Querida, I always want to kiss you.

Texeira tested the rope running through the cleat, giving it a yank before nodding to the fireman controlling the winch. He switched the engine on, and she rappelled down the cliff, keeping her knees bent as she began a slow descent. Blasts of wind off

It got to the point where he didn’t even look up at the sky any more as he blundered back and forth. The human mind had evolved for just one universe, he thought. How much of this crap was he supposed to take? He felt exhausted, resentful, bewildered. “Wait.” He paused. He had loped out of the portal onto another stretch of scuffed, anonymous regolith. She was lying in his arms, her weight barely registering. He looked down into her face, and pushed up her gold sun visor. “Emma?” She licked her lips. “Look. Up there.” No Galaxy visible, but a starry sky. The stars looked, well, normal. But he’d learned that meant little. “So what?” Emma was lifting her arm, pointing. He saw three stars, dull white points, in a row. And there was a rough rectangle of stars around them—one of them a distinctive red—and what looked like a Galaxy disc, or maybe just a nebula, beneath … “Holy shit,” he said. She whispered, “There must be lots of universes like ours. But, surely to God, there is only one Orion.” And then light, dazzling, unbearably brilliant, came stabbing over the close horizon. It was a sunrise. He could actually feel its heat through the layers of his suit. He looked down at the ground at his feet. The rising light cast strong shadows, sharply illuminating the miniature crevices and craters there. And here was a “crater” that was elongated, and neatly ribbed. It was a footprint. He stepped forward, lifted his foot, and set it down in the print. It fit neatly. When he lifted his foot away the cleats of his boot hadn’t so much as disturbed a regolith grain. It was his own footprint. Good grief. After hundreds of universes of silence and remoteness and darkness, universes of dim light and shadows, he was right back where he started.

...will they . . . will I be . . .” I couldn’t get out the tail end of the thought; it was like it had spikes that had sunk too deeply into my tongue for me to spit it out. It was a thought wearing cleats.

It is always us against them. That’s what all of life is. We fight wars for that reason. We make decisions every day to protect our own loved ones, even if it means hardships for others. You buy your boy a new pair of cleats for lacrosse. Maybe you could have used that money to save a starving child in Africa. But no, you let that child starve. Us against them. We all do this.” “Tripp?

As he tumbled from the ship, he managed, through remarkable presence of mind, to seize hold of a rope. It was one of the topsail halyards that, good news for John, was trailing in the rolling seawater. Used to raise the upper sail, the trailing rope now provided the only chance of escaping catastrophe. It should have been carefully tied to a cleat, but it was not secured. And due to that piece of untidy seamanship, John Howland survived. In the desperate lunge that ended with him grabbing the twisted, slippery rope, he saved himself from drowning. He clung on even though he found himself, in Bradford’s words again, “sundry fathoms under water.” Back on the Mayflower there was a hurrying of men to the side of the pitching vessel. Many hands took up the shipward end of the rope and hauled him back towards safety. As the exhausted and drenched man was pulled from the waves and up against the rough timbers of the rolling Mayflower, someone grabbed a boat hook and, by catching it in his coat, helped pull him back on board.6 It had been a close call. Had the trailing rope not been there, had Howland failed to catch it, he would have been swept away by the white-crested waves and lost. As it was, he lived. It was an almost unbelievable event; an astonishing cheating of death. All of the godly who witnessed it or who heard of it would have felt convinced that it was possible only by the providential hand of God. Jonah-like, John Howland had been both thrown into the stormy deep and also rescued from it (though without the intervention of a great fish) by the will of God. His, clearly, was a life marked out for future importance in the story of the colony about to be founded. Heads would have nodded as word of the event spread among the godly passengers on the ship. Here, clearly, was a man in the hand of God. A man blessed and marked out by the action of the Almighty. The crew, though, probably winked and swore as they considered the naivete of a landsman taking the air in such a storm. For them it was just the latest evidence that these passengers were doomed to disaster; they lacked the edge and awareness needed to survive what lay ahead of them. And those less godly among the passengers might also have been less willing than some of those around them to assume the certainty of providence acting in the events. Which of these would be proved right—faithful Saints, profane seamen, uncertain Strangers—only time would tell. But one thing was certain: the name of John Howland was on everyone’s lips. And he himself was being written into history.

Ben shot up almost a foot the summer after 6th grade and traded his cleats for high-tops. The promise of Hawkeye basketball has a chokehold on this town, and any boy who crests six feet in 7th grade is drafted without mercy.

She was treading on thin ice—with cleats.

kicking strap (vang) pulls down on the boom. This stops the sail twisting and also bends the mast, flattening the sail. The cunningham and outhaul also flatten the sail when pulled tight. Note that the handle of each control is rigged so that it hits the cleat at ‘max off’. This means that you can go instantly to ‘max off’, and gives you the least amount of rope in the cockpit. We will look at the mainsheet and the final part of

I’m hurt, okay, but in this game, pain is not the enemy. Failure is your enemy. Being too slow, missing an opening, miscalculating a pass, these things you control. Doing it right is your only friend, messing up is your foe, and the distance between them is all you are here to care about. The rest is landscape. Pain is the turf under your cleats. Pain is weather.

Angela stopped and faced the team. “Don’t let my sacrifice be in vain. Win this, bitches,” she said. Ruby approached and put her hand on Angela’s shoulder. “We will win this for you, Cleat Face.

cleats.

FROM OTHER SOURCES Pre–race and Venue Homework Get hold of any history of past events at the venue, plus any information that the conducting club may have about weather and expected conditions. Go to the weather bureau and get history for the area. Speak to sailors from your class who have this venue as their home club or who have sailed there on a number of occasions. Boat, Sails, Gear Preparation Checklist Many times the outcome of a race is as dependent on what you have done prior to the race as to what you do out on the course. Sometimes no matter how good your tactics and strategy are a simple breakage could render all that useless. Hull – make sure that your hull is well sanded and polished, centreboard strips are in good condition, venturis if fitted are working efficiently, buoyancy tanks are dry and there are no extraneous pieces of kit in your boat which adds unwanted weight. Update any gear that looks tired or worn especially control lines. Mast, boom and poles – check that all halyards, stays and trapeze wires are not worn or damaged and that pins are secure, knots tight and that anything that can tear a sail or injure flesh is taped. Mark the full hoist position on all halyards. Deck hardware – check all cam cleats for spring tension and tape anything that may cause a sail tear or cut legs hands and arms. Check the length of all sheets and control lines and shorten anything that is too long. This not only reduces weight but also minimises clutter. Have marks on sheets and stick or draw numbers and reference scales for the jib tracks, outhaul and halyards so that you can easily duplicate settings that you know are fast in various conditions. Centreboard and rudder – ensure that all nicks and gouges are filled and sanded and the surfaces are polished and most importantly that rudder safety clips are working. Sails – select the correct battens for the day’s forecast. Write on the deck, with a china graph pencil, things like the starting sequence, courses, tide times and anything else that will remind you to sail fast. Tools and spares – carry a shackle key with screwdriver head on your person along with some spare shackles and short lengths of rope or different diameters. A tool like a Leatherman can be very useful to deal with unexpected breakages that can occur even in the best prepared boat.

I don't believe that the meek shall inherit the earth: The meek get ignored and trampled... It is the bold, the loud-mouthed, the cruel, the vital, the revolutionaries, the mighty in arms and will, who march over the soft patient flesh that lies beneath their cleated boots.

The corollary to you can be whatever you want is you don’t have to be anything you don’t want,

If you can’t joke about giant french ticklers and gas powered dildos in a fucking locker room then the terrorists win, E. Our freedoms are eroding.

His mamãe was the best artist at that show, the disaster that became the yardstick by which I measured all others. Her series of child-sized mannequins depicting the stages of life of a waka in Palmares Três made me bite back tears. She dressed a child in a smock made lovely by a border of hand-stitched coffee beans and sugarcane. The older ones wore a shimmering aquamarine dress with a wistful bow gathered like flowers beneath her chin; a soccer jersey for a team that didn’t exist and shockingly orange cleats; and the last mannequin came of age in a simple wide skirt and blouse in blushing pink and a turban the color of dried blood.

If you can’t joke about giant french ticklers and gas powered dildos in a fucking locker room then the terrorists win, E. Our freedoms are eroding. I’ll pick up lube and condoms instead. Bring your hand. It’s the only action you’re getting.

Sir, I think you’d better come with me,” the guard said, grabbing James by the elbow. James wrenched it free and demanded Aaron’s room number again. And again. And again. The guard shouted, the receptionist shouted, James shouted; the emergency room crowd took a sudden interest in the latest celebrity gossip in their magazines. “Hey!” A woman’s bark from down the hall pierced the commotion. “Whoever’s disturbing my peaceful environment of calm and healing is gonna get popped in the nose! And I just got a manicure! Now who’s causing all . . . ?” The short woman with a black beehive of hair and flushed cheeks matching her scrubs spotted James over the top of her thick, silver-rimmed glasses. Her lips pursed. “Listen, Deena,” James said, “I don’t know where you found this candy striper, but she won’t tell me where Aaron is. And I’m trying to explain to the nice big officer here that—” “Save it,” Deena said, cutting him off. Her cheeks faded to the same color white as her lab coat. “They’re back here.” She flicked her head down the hall and held up a hand to the guard. “He’s fine, Trevor; I got him.” “You sure?” The guard inflated, ready to pounce if the head ER nurse gave the order. “Yes, I’m sure. But I’ll call you if there’s a problem.” Deena raised one black eyebrow and scowled at James as he approached. “Won’t I, Mr. McConnell?” His plastic cleats left a trail of baseball field dirt for the guard to follow. He was in no mood for a reprimand. “Just tell me where he is.

There were three girls from the Midwest—two from Michigan and one from Chicago—and they got the whole team hooked on some card game called euchre.

That breakout summer for Jayson Tuttman was also when he was featured on a poster that soon ended up on walls around America. It was a picture of Jayson, shirtless and wearing his Mets pants and cleats. He had dark grease marks under his eyes to cut down glare, and he looked soulfully into the camera. He held a baseball bat, and the muscles in his chest and arms gleamed with oil. He stood on first base and there were several baseballs at his feet. And there, at the top of the poster in enormous letters, was his name: SPIKE!

Calling Phoebe loud and obnoxious and gay ignores all her layers and contradictions. That’s Grace’s issue with fame—people take you at face value. Nobody bothers to look for the person beneath the brand. To most people, Grace isn’t a person; she’s a soccer player. Even to her family—they come visit for the first game of the season. Her dad calls after every game. She’s used to it by now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating. It’s absurd to her that Matthews is talking about herself like a brand, like that’s a good thing. But then, she’s a rookie; she doesn’t know fame yet.

When we sailors are slow to adapt to this shift in the relativity of time we inevitably find ourselves covered with boat bites. A toe snags on a cleat, or while clambering into the cockpit, a knee bumps the winch. When first back on board, I try to ease gracefully into this different flow, hoping to avoid a scraped shin or a head bump. Remembering to reduce my first world momentum, I purposely operate in slow motion, accepting the feel of this different dimension and the movement of the boat underfoot.

And then Pujols hit the monster, no-doubt home run . . . and all that sound died immediately, suddenly, like someone had hit a mute button on the city of Houston. “It was so quiet,” Sweeney says, “you could practically hear Pujols’s cleats hitting the dirt.” So yes, it’s hard to imagine a louder sound than that silence.

He’d known early what he was meant to become, and he had considered that certainty heaven sent. Henry had had a calling, a talent, a drive. All behind him now, though he missed the thrill of it, the sense of accomplishment. But a man had to know when to hang up his cleats, when to take his bow and leave the field.

I’m done before everyone else. I sit back and watch my team in various stages of undress and marvel at their smallness. Don’t get me wrong; they’re definitely not a girly-girl group. Our best pitcher could probably level half the baseball team with her eyes closed, and she’s less than half my size. Some girls have their legs up on the bench, untying their cleats. I couldn’t get my leg up on this bench anymore with a crane. But not for long. Good-bye pizza, ice cream, and cheese fries. I want to win.

Chino grabs my hand. Presses his fingers into my skin. A hot comb. I feel his heartbeat. My throat closes. I dig my other hand into the cold dirt like soccer cleats. The pebbles press against my skin. Some bits shine in the moonlight. Flickering. I forgot about them.

I am a boy mom, but I am raising two very different boys. So what does #lifewithboys mean in my house? Mud. Blood. ER visits and black eyes. “He threw a rock at me!” but also, “Let’s play a math game on the computer!” Holes in the knees of brand-new pants. Dirty cleats and stinky jock-straps. Marathon games of Monopoly, chess, and Sudoku. Reading Harry Potter five times. Yelling “No throwing baseballs in the house!” Science camp by day and soccer practice by night. Messy hair and dirty fingernails. Overdue library books. Tears. Fears. And love. We may have holes in the walls and holes in our pants, but I wouldn’t trade this life. It’s exhaustingly beautiful and never boring. Someday, my youngest child may have a boy just like him, and when he throws a baseball through the living room window, I’ll tell my son that it’s okay. He’s just a little boy.

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Desperate times, desperate measures. Ever since the beating in the park Sancho had felt something go wrong inside him, not a physical ailment but an existential one. After you were badly beaten, the essential part of you that made you a human being could come loose from the world, as if the self were a small boat and the rope mooring it to the dock slid off its cleats so that the dinghy drifted out helplessly into the middle of the pond; or as if a large vessel, a merchant ship, perhaps, began in the grip of a powerful current to drag its anchor and ran the risk of colliding with other ships or disastrously running aground. He now understood that this loosening was perhaps not only physical but also ethical, that when violence was done to a person, then violence entered the range of what that person--previously peaceable and law-abiding--afterwards included in the spectrum of what was possible. It became an option.

Even their leather combat boots looked ferocious with their iron cleats, great for marching through mud or stomping on faces.

After you were badly beaten, the essential part of you that made you a human being could come loose from the world, as if the self were a small boat and the rope mooring it to the dock slid off its cleats so that the dinghy drifted out helplessly into the middle of the pond; or as if a large vessel, a merchant ship, perhaps, began in the grip of a powerful current to drag its anchor and ran the risk of colliding with other ships or disastrously running aground. He now understood that this loosening was perhaps not only physical but also ethical, that when violence was done to a person, then violence entered the range of what that person—previously peaceable and law-abiding—afterwards included in the spectrum of what was possible. It became an option.

I call these lessons ‘learned on the fly’ because the knowledge gained from the experiences connected with them were very much akin to the spirit of the centerfielder in baseball running backward at full speed, looking towards the heavens, trying to not lose sight of the ball or fail to notice the sensation of gravel from the warning track under his cleats as he knowingly approaches the blindside impact of an outfield wall. His focused intention guides him into trying to make the catch that will save the game for his team, his city and the harmony of the moment, despite the foreboding threat of a pending collision. Decisions in these situations are made in an instant. One weighs the purpose of the game, the success of the catch and one’s own safety of survival in a fleeting moment, and in all hopes one lives to tell about it in the glow of great success.

A sudden streak of light made me blink, as if someone had flashed a mirror in my face. I looked around and I saw a brown delivery truck parked in the middle of the Great Lawn where no cars were allowed. Lettered on the side were the words: HERNIAS ARE US Wait…sorry. I’m dyslexic. I squinted and decided it probably read: HERMES EXPRESS “Oh, good,” I muttered. “We’ve got mail.” “What?” Annabeth asked. I pointed at the truck. The driver was climbing out. He wore a brown uniform shirt and knee-length shorts along with stylish black socks and cleats. His curly salt-and-pepper hair stuck out around the edges of his brown cap. He looked like a guy in his mid-thirties, but I knew from experience he was actually in his mid-five-thousands. Hermes. Messenger of the gods. Personal friend, dispenser of heroic quests, and frequent cause of migraine headaches. He looked upset. He kept patting his pockets and wringing his hands. Either he’d lost something important or he’d had too many espressos at the Mount Olympus Starbucks. Finally he spotted me and beckoned, Get over here! That could’ve meant several things. If he was delivering a message in person from the gods, it was bad news. If he wanted something from me, it was also bad news. But seeing as he’d just saved me from explaining myself to Annabeth, I was too relieved to care. “Bummer.” I tried to sound regretful, as if my rump hadn’t just been pulled from the barbecue. “We’d better see what he wants.

That should have made me happy, I guess, but things had been easier when they underestimated me. I shoved those thoughts out of my head. Paul said that soccer is never supposed to be easy because nothing worth doing ever is. If they weren’t going to make it easy on me, I should take it as a compliment and try a little bit harder. Then I figured something out. I could use their fear of me to our team’s advantage. While the two best offensive players on their side were worried about me, they couldn't try and get into a scoring position themselves. I broke hard for the right corner, and they followed me. I hoped they couldn’t see me grin because they totally fell for my trap. Vince threw the ball in near Percival, who only dribbled a few feet before passing it toward the enemy goal. Seamus and the striker realized they’d been had. They both zipped after the ball, leaving me in the dust. I let them get ahead, and then pushed myself as hard as I could. The looks on their faces when I ran past them were so hilarious. They both tried to pick up the speed, too. But they had been hauling a lot of extra weight up and down the field all day. My smaller body worked to my advantage. That didn’t mean I wasn’t tired as all get out. I concentrated on breathing evenly, instead of gasping like a landed fish. I felt the grass under my cleats, the wind going through my sweat-soaked hair, and fell into a kind of trance.

Now, as she helped Conor tie his cleats, made him stand, and did the thumb test to see where his big toe was, it hit her how manipulative Chad had been throughout their relationship. Devy never had a say in anything. Not about where they went out to dinner, where they lived, where they went to college, their marriage—nothing. He controlled every aspect of her life.

At the Fishhouses Although it is a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses an old man sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of codfish it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water. The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up to storerooms in the gables for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on. All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of the benches, the lobster pots, and masts, scattered among the wild jagged rocks, is of an apparent translucence like the small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls. The big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them. Up on the little slope behind the houses, set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass, is an ancient wooden capstan, cracked, with two long bleached handles and some melancholy stains, like dried blood, where the ironwork has rusted. The old man accepts a Lucky Strike. He was a friend of my grandfather. We talk of the decline in the population and of codfish and herring while he waits for a herring boat to come in. There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb. He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, the blade of which is almost worn away. Down at the water's edge, at the place where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp descending into the water, thin silver tree trunks are laid horizontally across the gray stones, down and down at intervals of four or five feet. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, element bearable to no mortal, to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly I have seen here evening after evening. He was curious about me. He was interested in music; like me a believer in total immersion, so I used to sing him Baptist hymns. I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." He stood up in the water and regarded me steadily, moving his head a little. Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug as if it were against his better judgment. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us, the dignified tall firs begin. Bluish, associating with their shadows, a million Christmas trees stand waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones. I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame. If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

Phoebe is stupid and horny, but she isn’t that stupid and horny.