Dugout Quotes

My idea of Heaven has nothing to do with fluffy clouds or angels. In my Heaven there's butter pecan ice cream and swimming pools and baseball games. The Brooklyn Dodgers always win, and I have the best seat in the house, right behind the Dodger's dugout. That's the only advantage that I can see about being dead: You get the best seat in the house.

Wait,” Toby said, talking over her as she looked around at all of us. “So this means all you guys are off, like, rounding the bases and I’m still in the dugout. I’m the person selling Cracker Jack in the stands.” “This metaphor is getting weird,” Palmer murmured to me.

I remember you explaining the bases to me in this dugout. The best baseball conversation we ever had.” I lean forward and claps my hands together. “Maybe you missed part of the conversation, because I wasn’t explaining baseball.” … “I know, but I still enjoyed the demonstration.

The doctor said a ball hit me. But I don’t remember batting.” “You were in the dugout. Henry made a bad throw.” “Henry did? Really? Are you sure?” “Yes.” “Well, it’s always the ones you least suspect.” Owen let his eyes fall shut. “I don’t remember anything at all. Was I reading?” Affenlight nodded. “I warned you. It’s a dangerous pastime.

That was the only thing that had got him through the four years of blood and madness: Know exactly where your gun is when you doze for ten minutes in your dugout; always check your gas mask; see that your men have understood their orders to the letter. You don't think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation" p. 33

I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, “Fuck you, Shakespeare.

A dugout got blown up and came down in the men's tea. They were frightfully annoyed.

You can’t hit the ball if you don’t swing, Trout! That’s twice in a row!” Unfortunately we were only two rows away from the field, which was well within hearing range, and that comment earned her a glare from the center fielder in question. When she caught his attention she blew him a kiss and yelled, “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite!” The guy tried to hold his glare, but he broke down and laughed. “Thanks, gorgeous. I’ll hit the next one just for you,” he said as he disappeared into the dugout.

The bond we have, this connection, it’s what the greatest love stories are made of. It’s what I want our story to be made of.

There’s something obscene in this love of the past which ends in breadlines and dugouts. Something obscene about this spiritual racket which permits an idiot to sprinkle holy water over Big Berthas and dreadnoughts and high explosives. Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.

Coach Smith poked his head into the dugout. “If you ladies are done with the warm and fuzzies, I’d like you to get your asses on the field with your team.

In the shadow of skyscrapers, half-nude men in dugouts cast nets into the lagoon. The work of arms and shoulders. I think of Auden’s line: Poetry makes nothing happen.

You’re my hero, Mickey Catalan,” Lydia says into my ear, over the roar of the crowd. “Heroine,” I correct her. “Hoo—fucking—ray!” Bella Right screams at me when I get into the dugout. Everyone is yelling my name. Right now, everyone loves me. Right now, I even love myself.

The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind with Apache and Lupe. We barricaded the door with the rug and started bailing water out the window. Mother came back and begged us to go pray with her on the hilltop. "To heck with praying!" I shouted. "Bail, dammit, bail!" Mom look mortified. I could tell she thought I'd probably doomed us all with my blasphemy, and I was a little shocked at it myself, but with the water rising so fast, the situation was dire. We had lit the kerosene lamp, and we could see the walls of the dugout were beginning to sag inward. If Mom had pitched in and helped, there was a chance we might have been able to save the dugout - not a good chance, but a fighting chance. Apache and Lupe and I couldn't do it on our own, though, and when the ceiling started to cave, we grabbed Mom's walnut headboard and pulled it through the door just as the dugout collapsed in on itself, burying everything. Afterward, I was pretty aggravated with Mom. She kept saying that the flood was God's will and we had to submit to it. But I didn't see things that way. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail - the gumption to try to save ourselves - isn't that what he wanted us to do?

You want me to say something about Bill? Bill who? Bill Schroeder? Never heard of him… I’m kidding, of course.

Life has a way of fixing things. – Stu Callebrew (the Dugout’s owner and Matt Jacobs good friend/father figure)

And the Great Adventure - the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they'd devoured as boys - consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be killed. The war that had promised so much in the way of 'manly' activity had actually delivered 'feminine' passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had hardly known. No wonder they broke down.

Traumatic events can be compared to facing a demon pitcher on the baseball diamond. Life tells us we have to take a swing at the ball, but engaging this demon comes with consequences. If you make first base, you’ll feel the need to sleep. Not so bad. Second, you’ll want to forget it all happened. Don’t we all? But third base brings the onset of madness and if you step off the plate there’s only death. In the great game of life, sometimes it’s better to strike out than hit a home run. After all, you can relax in the Dugout with friends until you’re ready to knock the demon out of the park.” Alexander Rollins, Keystrokes

We did pretty well in the ACC that year and we ended up going to the College World Series. Paul Molitor was there, playing shortstop for Minnesota. I caught one game in that World Series, going 2-for-5 at Rosenblatt Stadium against Temple

Forest is the backbone of the O-fers. He pitches, bats cleanup, collects the fees, makes all the pre game reminder calls, fills out the lineup card, and is the undisputed (though unspoken) team captain. Few things inspire like watching Forest round third in the late innings with a head full of steam and two bad knees, his spare tire heaving violently beneath his snug jersey, just as the second basemen is fielding the relay. "Run, Forest, run!" We yell, from the dugout. It never gets old.

Here,” said Autolycus, “is a settlement of curly-bearded, long-robed Assyrians, exiles from their country; and beyond stretches the land of the Chalybeans, a savage tribe famous as iron-workers, with whom I have lately traded. Soon we shall sight an islet, called the Isle of Barter, close to the Chalybean shore, where we of Sinope come in our dug-out canoes, and lay out on the rocks painted Minyan pottery and linen cloth from Colchis and sheepskin coats dyed red with madder or yellow with heather, such as the Chalybeans prize, and spear-shafts painted with vermilion. Then we row away out of sight behind rocks. As soon as we are gone, the Chalybeans venture across to the islet on rafts; they lay down beside our goods broad-bladed, well-tempered spear-heads and axe-heads, also awls and knives and sail-needles, and go away again. If on our return we are satisfied with their goods, we take them up and make for home; but if we are not satisfied, we remove apart from the rest of our merchandise whatever we think is not covered by their payment. The Chalybeans then return again and pay for this extra heap with a few more iron implements. In the end the barter is complete, unless the Chalybeans in a huff take away all their iron goods and let us sail off empty-handed; for they are a capricious race.

When the crops were thriving, Squanto took the men to the open forests where the turkey dwelled. He pointed out the nuts, seeds, and insects that the iridescent birds fed upon. He showed them the leaf nests of the squirrels and the hideouts of the skunks and raccoons. Walking silently along bear trails, he took them to the blueberry patches. He told them that deer moved about at sundown and sunrise. He took them inland to valleys where the deer congregated in winter and were easy to harvest. He walked the Pilgrims freely over the land. To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land. He took the children into the meadows to pick wild strawberries. He showed them how to dig up the sweet roots of the wild Jerusalem artichoke. In mid-summer he led them to cranberry bogs and gooseberry patches. Together they gathered chestnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts in September. He paddled the boys into the harbor in his dugout canoe to set lobster pots made of reeds and sinew. While they waited to lift their pots, he taught them the creatures of the tidal pools.

It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

(Cobb brought as his guest Tigers third baseman George Moriarity, who during the 1935 World Series as an umpire would distinguish himself by stalking over to the Chicago Cubs dugout and threatening to eject the entire team after some players had made anti-Semitic remarks to Tigers star Hank Greenberg.) The next day Cobb broke his rule about

Her nose was just millimetres from his, breathing in as she was breathing out. He closed his eyes and decided to go for it. He kissed her and was pleasantly surprised when her lips hungrily accepted his. A warm glow engulfed his body, feelings he had never felt before. She wound her fingers into his hair. His hair curled around her fingers, soft and fine. His soft lips and skin so different from the shaven faces of her abusers. She could taste the apple he had previously eaten on his breath, she couldn’t describe how beautiful it tasted. This was real and was love. All he knew for sure was that right here and now in this dug-out tree, he was falling in love, and he could only hope that he was feeling the same way. For the briefest of moments, the war was over. Hitler, the Hitler Youth, and the hate against Jewish people was gone. Fritz had never felt so happy. Yes, he was cramped, his back and legs stiff; he was hungry, and the worst was yet to come, but for now he was the happiest he had been since he could remember.

Every time I see Sandy Koufax, I apologize. I always thought I was going to keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

Actually, I had two career highlights: I got an intentional walk from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets.

If there’s one thing I learned from being the only girl in my family, it was this. Do not give boys an inch, because they will always take a mile.

What seemed to interest and absorb her most was that all that filth, all that chaos of broken limbs and dug-out eyes and split heads was then covered—literally covered—by a church dedicated to San Giovanni Battista and by a monastery of Augustinian hermits who had a valuable library. Ah, ah—she laughed—underneath there’s blood and above, God, peace, prayer, and books.

Watch Brandon run across the field,” Bird said. He made a beeline for the pitcher’s mound, did a little leap over it, and ran to the dugout. “He does that every time,” Bird said. “Why?” “Says it brings him luck. He is so superstitious. He won’t wash his game socks as long as the team is winning.” “Ew! And he didn’t want to work in a fertilizer plant?” “I know. Go figure.

The Brewers, feeling the crush of small-market economics and fearing injury problems, decided they couldn’t afford to keep Molitor, whom Bando regrettably referred to at one point as “just a DH.” Toronto swept in with a three-year, $13 million offer. “If Paul Molitor leaving the Brewers doesn’t show that the small markets are in trouble, nothing does,” Jim Gantner told the Milwaukee Sentinel at the time.

The moment he jumped clear of the dugout, the moment his feet touched solid ground, he knew he’d cheated death. But he hadn’t felt safe till this moment of seeing Parambil. He’d always imagined that as an adult he’d live in a bustling city far away from here, a place full of life. Only now has he grasped just how vital Parambil is to him, as necessary as his heart or his lungs. One leaves home at one’s own peril.

We gotta come up with a plan,” Shaftoe says. “The plan: You live, I die,” Goto Dengo says. “Fuck that,” Shaftoe says. “Hey, don’t you idiots know you’re surrounded?” “We know,” Goto Dengo says wearily. “We know for a long time.” “So give up, you fucking morons! Wave a white flag and you can all go home.” “It is not Nipponese way.” “So come up with another fucking way! Show some fucking adaptability!” “Why are you here?” Goto Dengo asks, changing the subject. “What is your mission?” Shaftoe explains that he’s looking for his kid. Goto Dengo tells him where all of the women and children are: in the Church of St. Agustin, in Intramuros. “Hey,” Shaftoe says, “if we surrender to you, you’ll kill us. Right?” “Yes.” “If you guys surrender to us, we won’t kill you. Promise. Scout’s honor.” “For us, living or dying is not the important thing,” Goto Dengo says. “Hey! Tell me something I didn’t fucking already know!” Shaftoe says. “Even winning battles isn’t important to you. Is it?” Goto Dengo looks the other way, shamefaced. “Haven’t you guys figured out yet that banzai charges DON’T FUCKING WORK?” “All of the people who learned that were killed in banzai charges,” Goto Dengo says. As if on cue, the Nips in the left field dugout begin screaming “Banzai!” and charge, as one, out onto the field.

It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war’s brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of it was a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilian life and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our old philosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the “hat trick” with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up to Christian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers’ knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentle arts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scales of emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense of beauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and it was abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, which revealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beast law. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table. It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise. Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled. So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore’s club in the pictures of a fairy-tale. So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellow in the Oxford “Union”) whose pleasure it was to creep out o’ nights into No Man’s Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy’s barbed wire, until presently, after an hour’s waiting or two, a German soldier would crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with his rifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each night he made a notch on his rifle three notches one night to check the number of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout with a hearty appetite.

He hit .200 with 14 homers in his career, but four of them were off Hall of Fame pitchers: Sandy Koufax (twice), Fergie Jenkins, and Gaylord Perry. “Every time I see Gaylord, he says, ‘Here comes the worst day of my life,’” Uecker said

They were the first men to be exposed to poison gas, massed machine-gun fire, and strafing airplanes, and lived with rats and lice, amid the stench of urine, feces, and decaying flesh, staring up at the sky by day and venturing out only by night. Separated by the junk of no-man's-land, the great, impotent armies squatted month after month, living troglodytic lives in candle-lit dugouts and trenches hewn from Fricourt chalk or La Bassee clay, or ladled from the porridge of swampy Flanders.

TIMELINE OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S LIFE 1865-Laura’s sister Mary is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1867-Laura Ingalls is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1869-The Ingallses move to Indian Territory, Kansas 1870-Caroline Ingalls, “Carrie,” is born in Kansas 1871-The Ingallses return to the Big Woods of Wisconsin 1874-Lives in a dugout near Walnut Grove, Minnesota 1875-Charles Frederick Ingalls, “Freddy,” is born 1876-Laura’s brother, Freddy, dies at nine months old Laura moves with her family to Burr Oak, Iowa 1877-Grace Ingalls is born in Burr Oak 1879-Mary becomes blind after a fever 1880-The Ingallses begin homesteading in De Smet, Dakota Territory 1885-Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls marry 1886-Rose Wilder born in De Smet 1894-The Wilders move to Mansfield, Missouri 1932-Little House in the Big Woods is published when Laura is sixty-five 1954-Laura awarded the first Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, for her eight-book Little House series 1957-Laura (age ninety) dies at her Rocky Ridge home in Mansfield

The front is a cage, and you have to wait nervously in it for whatever happens to you. Here we lie under a criss-cross of shell trajectories, and we live in the tension of uncertainty. Chance is hovering over us. If there is a shot, all I can do is duck; I don’t know for sure and I can’t influence where it is going to come down. It’s awareness of chances that makes us so indifferent. A few months ago, I was playing cards in a dugout; after a bit I got up and went out to go talk to some men I knew in another dugout. When I got back, there was nothing left of the first one, a direct hit from a heavy shell had flattened it. I went back to the other dugout and got there just in time to help dig the men out. While I was away it had been buried. It is simply a matter of chance whether I am hit or whether I go on living. I can be squashed flat in a bomb-proof dugout, and I can survive ten hours in the open under heavy barrage without a scratch. Every soldier owes the fact that he is still alive to a thousand lucky chances and nothing else. And every soldier believes in and trust to chance.

This place has got a rhythm to it. It's like a heart beating. Buh-bump. In forty-five minutes our guys will come out for batting practice. Then the vendors will start showing up. Buh-bump. Buh-bump. And the fans will start to arrive, and the other team will come in, and you can see them over there in the dugout. Buh-bump-buh-bump-buh-BUMP. Then the lights go on and the umpires step onto the field and they play the national anthem. - And in his mind's eye, Lefebvre could see it, and feel it, as surely as he could feel his own pulse, the baseball game, a living, breathing thing.

At the Samarka Camp in 1946 a group of intellectuals had reached the very brink of death: They were worn down by hunger, cold, and work beyond their powers. And they were even deprived of sleep. They had nowhere to lie down. Dugout barracks had not yet been built. Did they go and steal? Or squeal? Or whimper about their ruined lives? No! Foreseeing the approach of death in days rather than weeks, here is how they spent their last sleepless leisure, sitting up against the wall: Timofeyev-Ressovsky gathered them into a “seminar,” and they hastened to share with one another what one of them knew and the others did not—they delivered their last lectures to each other. Father Savely—spoke of “unshameful death,” a priest academician—about patristics, one of the Uniate fathers—about something in the area of dogmatics and canonical writings, an electrical engineer—on the principles of the energetics of the future, and a Leningrad economist—on how the effort to create principles of Soviet economics had failed for lack of new ideas. Timofeyev-Ressovsky himself talked about the principles of microphysics. From one session to the next, participants were missing—they were already in the morgue.

13 core principles of managing: 1. Make a personal connection first; everything else follows. 2. There is only one team rule. (Respect 90) 3. Freedom is empowering. 4. Never hold a team meeting in your home clubhouse. 5. Do not have a fine system. 6. Wear whatever you think makes you look hot. 7. Empower your coaches. 8. But don’t allow your coaches—or veterans—to be harsh on young players. 9. Question data with feel. 10. Pregame work is excessive. 11. Keep signs simple and to a minimum. 12. A lineup card is all a manager needs in the dugout. 13. Forget “The Book.” Making the first or third out at third base is okay.

O Life, Life, let me breathe, --a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the existences rats lead --Nosing along at night down some safe vat, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death, Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. "I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone." Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned; The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. "Pushing up daisies," is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

The smoke of pipes and cigars fills the room. Desires, thoughts, ambitions in seething confusion. God only knows what will come of them. A hundred young soldiers, eighteen lieutenants, thirty warrant officers and noncoms., all sitting here, wanting to start to live. Any man of them could take a company under fire across No Man’s Land with hardly a casualty. There is not one who would hesitate for an instant to do the right thing when the cry “They are coming!” was yelled down into his dugout. Every man has been tempered through countless, pitiless days; every man is a complete soldier, no more and no less. But for peace? Are we suitable? Are we fit now for anything but soldiering?

We were members of a research group with a great interest in nuclear physics and totally devoted to this branch of science--and ironically we ourselves had become victims of th atom bomb which was the very core of the theory we were studying. Here we lay, helpless in a dugout! And yet it was a precious experience for us. Placed on the experimentation table, we could watch the whole process in a most intimate way. We could observe the changes that where taking place and that would take place in the future. Crushed with grief because of the defeat of Japan, filled with anger and resentment, we nevertheless felt rising within us a new drive and a new motivation in our search for truth. In this devastated atomic desert, fresh and vigorous scientific life began to flourish.

He was fat. He was not very good looking. He didn’t play up to the press. But he tried. Boy did he try. I could still see him stretching from first to third on a single to center and belly-whopping into the bag, invariably safe. I related to Thurman. I had been a catcher in Little League, I was chunky, I played tough, and I too was pretty ugly. I always took Thurm’s side in arguments, and somehow I could feel what he was going through in that Yankee dugout, sensing his fear and dislike for Reggie (Jackson). I understood Thurman Munson’s terribly private ordeal, trying to simply play ball without wanting to be on the cover of a magazine, avoiding the fanfare in a town that breathes glamour and ignores dedication. His death signifies to me how difficult life really is, how hard it is to do what you want, to love and maintain your family and still do your job. The American dream drags onward….

IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history. At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades. I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the war has left with me. At that time, before the battle of the Somme, which opened a new chapter in the history of the war, the struggle had not taken on that grim and mathematical aspect which cast over its landscapes a deeper and deeper gloom. There was more rest for the soldier than in the later years when he was thrown into one murderous battle after another ; and so it is that many of those days come back to my memory now with a light on them that is almost peaceful.

The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us, Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall. It is this Chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit. I went back to the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out. In the interval it had been buried. It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

With certain women, we do not love them as we would wish or as they would wish. We prefer to violate them and lose them. The surprises of thought are like those of love: they wear out. But here too you can carry on for a long time doing your conjugal duty. Rome, Berlin, Sydney, New York, Rio. My secretarial staff is expanding. My rainbow too. The night which would fall simultaneously on all the cities of the world has not yet occurred. The sun which would illuminate all the cities of the world at once has not yet risen. Every woman is like a timezone. She is a nocturnal fragment of your journey. She brings you unflaggingly closer to the next night. Some women have disguised themselves as Congolese dugouts or Aleutian pearls. Why shouldn't they disguise themselves as a timezone, or even as the ecstasy of the journey? Everywhere there is pleasure you will find a woman in disguise, her features lost or metamorphosed into the ecstacy of things. Everywhere there is a woman dying.

The Bears would play in Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970. In their first home game, they beat the Rochester Jeffersons. Wrigley Field was particularly ill suited for football. The end zones, which are normally ten yards deep, were foreshortened by a dugout on one side, an outfield wall on the other. A wide receiver might make a catch, then fall into the dugout. On one occasion, Bronko Nagurski, the great power runner of the 1930s, took the ball, put his head down, bulled through every defender—and straight into a brick wall. He got up slowly. When he made it to the bench, Halas was concerned: “You okay, Bronk?” Nagurski said he was fine, but added, “That last guy gave me a pretty good lick, coach.” In the early years, most NFL teams played in baseball stadiums, and many took the name of the host team. Hence the Pittsburgh Pirates, who played in Forbes Field, and the New York Football Giants, who played in the Polo Grounds. Halas considered naming his team the Cubs, but in the end, believing that football players were much tougher than baseball players, he called them the Bears.

By the time I got down there, Bird was standing to the left of the backstop, near the warm-up area, smiling at Brandon. It was obvious he was trying not to get caught smiling at her, that he was supposed to focus on the game. I scooted over until I was standing behind the dugout. Jason was still messing with his gloves. I was surprised the Velcro still worked, that it hadn’t worn down until all the tiny sticky teeth were gone. “Hey, Jason,” I said. “Awesome no-hitter.” I was vaguely aware of someone gasping and someone else moaning, as Jason came up off the bench fast, spun around, and stared at me like I’d morphed into something from The X-Files. The guy who’d gasped, Chase, put one knee on the bench, so he could talk to me in a low voice and still be heard. “You’d better go.” “Why? What did I do?” “You never talk to the pitcher when…” He shook his head. “You just never talk to the pitcher when--” “I just wanted to congratulate him on a good game--” “It’s not over ’til it’s over,” Chase said. “You jinxed me,” Jason said, crouching down in the corner, pressing his palms against his forehead, like he’d been struck with a migraine headache.

The shoot-to-kill order came through at zero one fifteen, relayed over a satellite radio. It’d been just three hours since the two-man reconnaissance team had reported the sighting. They lay in a shallow dugout on a windblown ridge, the leeward slope falling away steeply to an impassable boulder field. A desert-issue tarp all but covered the hole, protected from view on the flanks by thorny scrub. Shivering, they blew into their bunched trigger-finger mitts. The daytime temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more, and fine sleet was melting on their blackened faces. Darren Proctor extended the folded stock of his L115A3 sniper rifle. He split the legs of the swivel bi-pod and aligned the swivel cheek piece with the all-weather scope. Flipping open the lens cap, he glassed the terrain cast a muted green by the night vision. The tree line was sparse, a smattering of pines and cedars shuddering in the biting wind. Glimpsing movement on a scree slope fifty metres or so beyond, he focused in. The eyes of a striped hyena shone like glow sticks. He watched as the scavenger ripped at the carcass of an ibex or wild sheep. A second later it sniffed the air, ears pricked, and scampered off.

They are many indeed that lie there, though until now we have not thought of it so. Hitherto we have just all remained there together, they in the graves, we in the trenches, divided only by a few handfuls of earth. They were but a little before us; daily we became less and they more, and often we have not known whether we already belonged to them or not. And sometimes too the shells would bring them back among us again, crumbling bones tossed up; scraps of uniform; wet, decayed heads, already earthy, to the noise of the drumfire issuing once more from their buried dugouts and returning to the battle. It did not seem to us terrible; we were too near to them. But now we are going back into life and they must stay there. Ludwig, whose cousin was killed in this sector, blows his nose through his fingers and turns about. Slowly we follow. But we halt yet a few times and look about us. And again we stand still, and suddenly we know that all that yonder, that hell of terrors, that desolate corner of shell-hole land, has usurped our hearts;—yes, damn it, that it should sound such slush! —it seems almost as if it had become endeared to us, a dreadful homeland, full of torment, and we simply belonged in it.

were good friends. They’d maintained their friendship after Ted was out of the game. Both of them were avid fishermen, but they both had different ideas about it. They would hassle on technique, and neither would give in to the other.” Wallace Lawrimore vividly remembered the April 6, 1939, game in Florence between the Red Sox and the Reds. “Daddy carried two carloads of family to the game. We all went up to the dugout to tell Cronin we wanted some passes to get in. I got a program from that day, with all the players’ autographs.” The one ball field Florence had was deemed unsuitable for a major-league game because the fences were too short, so it was decided to build a field from scratch at the local fairgrounds. They laid down a coating of dirt for the infield and put up some circus-style bleachers for the 2,285 spectators who showed up, but when it came time for the game, gale-force winds blowing out toward left field drove the dirt everywhere, and conditions made the game virtually unplayable. It was called in the ninth inning, with the score tied 18–18, because they ran out of baseballs. Ted went 1–2 before leaving the game in the third inning after complaining of chills and a fever. Several days later, Gerry Moore of the Globe summed up spring training

You never talk to the pitcher when…” He shook his head. “You just never talk to the pitcher when--” “I just wanted to congratulate him on a good game--” “It’s not over ’til it’s over,” Chase said. “You jinxed me,” Jason said, crouching down in the corner, pressing his palms against his forehead, like he’d been struck with a migraine headache. “You don’t really believe that superstitious--” His head came up so fast, and his stare was so hard that I stopped. He did believe. He really did believe. And judging by the way the other guys were looking at me, they all believed. I backed away, not knowing what to say. I’d just felt sorry for him because he was being ignored. The guy at bat struck out, and Brandon was next. Bird had her fingers crossed while clutching the wire of the fence. “I think I just made a big mistake,” I said, my voice low. “Yeah, I heard you. According to Brandon, you’re never supposed to use the term no-hitter in the dugout.” “Well, I wasn’t technically in the dugout.” “But your words traveled into the dugout. Close enough.” “Great. You don’t really think I jinxed them, do you?” Brandon struck out, the first time he’d struck out since playing for the Rattlers. When he walked by and glared at me, I found myself wishing Harry Potter was real, sitting in the stands, and could turn me into a rabbit’s foot. I didn’t really believe in bad luck. I believed we made our own luck, but I also understood the power of positive or negative thinking. If you think you’ll lose, you’ll lose. The next inning, when six batters in a row got base hits off Jason, the coach put in a relief pitcher. By that time, even people in the stands were looking at me like it was my fault. Someone suggested I sit behind the dugout of the visiting team.

Roll call. What’s this week’s all scatter word?” “Lowdown,” said Camilla. “And the all clear?” “Deadweight,” said Nona. “Perfect. What are your stations if that thing in the sky even looks like it’s about to start periscoping?” “The underground tunnels by the fish market,” said Camilla. “The big underpass bridge dugout,” said Nona. “Ten points to you both. And what do you do once you’re there?” “Hide until you come,” said Nona, and then added, truthfully: “And rescue any nearby animals so long as they don’t exceed the size of a box, and are wooly rather than hairy.” “Half points. No animals, hairy or wooly, I don’t care. Cam?” Camilla had finished with her hat, and now she was easing the big dark glasses onto her face— the ones she kept specially, despite the fact that they were a little unbalanced on her nose and her ears. They made both Palamedes and Camilla look chilly and clinical, but as Palamedes said, they solved the problem of the ghost limb. Without them he was everlastingly pushing something up his nose that wasn’t there. And Nona thought Camilla privately rather liked them. She settled them on, considered the question, and said: “Fight.” “No points. Camilla if you engage with a Herald, you’re not coming home.” “That’s your theory,” said Camilla. “There’s data behind it. Hect—” “If Camilla gets to fight, I should get to keep adjacent dogs,” said Nona decidedly. “Even if they’re hairy.” Pyrrha turned her eyes up to the ceiling in mute appeal. Her exhalation rasped loudly against the vent in her mask. “I used to run the whole Bureau,” she said, and now she didn’t sound like she was addressing either of them. “Now I’m up against wannabe heroes and hairy dogs. This is the punishment she would’ve wanted for me. God, she must be pissing herself laughing… let’s go kids. Like hell am I walking in this heat.

I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig,” he goes on. “And we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits, either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for and we knew what would come. —But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die. There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. —We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can’t you see how it is perishing in all this pig’s wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of it that here they call life? —No, Ludwig, we lived then! And you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck heap here!” He is breathing hard. “It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed—now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and, by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been dammed up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. —But that will not do me. I’m going where comradeship is still to be found.” Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. “And why is it, Georg? Why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. —They told us it was for Honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. —They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!” He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. “Can’t you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can’t you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us! Can’t you see? Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land, believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don’t you see now? —There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content, that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the dissatisfied, the eager, the storm troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!” His

The game jostled back and forth, and then came the final inning. Some player named Casey came to bat, like his teammates, looking like a rock. Lightning ripped through the air as rain came down in sheets. The scoreboard said the horses were beating the rocks by two points, but there were two men on base. If Casey hit a homerun, the rocks would beat the horses. If not, too bad for the rocks. This man, Ben, and the two people with him looked horrified as this Casey came to bat. They had red shirts with horses painted on them. They jumped up and down for joy when they saw the final pitch, and Casey sulking back to the dugout. He had struck out. After the game, the four hiked back to a very small car.

Gary Bell is nicknamed Ding Dong. Of course. What’s interesting about it is that “Ding Dong” is what the guys holler when somebody gets hit in the cup. The cups are metal inserts that fit inside the jock strap, and when a baseball hits one it’s called ringing the bell, which rhymes with hell, which is what it hurts like. It’s funny, even if you’re in the outfield, or in the dugout, no matter how far away, when a guy gets it in the cup you can hear it. Ding Dong.

Today many families, dysfunctional or not, are without men. The worst learning situation for a boy is when he observes his own father ignoring his responsibilities, and that includes ignoring the needs of his son. The boy is left with a negative male image that is hard to overcome and even harder to accept, because it has been reinforced by his own father. The rage that begins with the absence of the father will continue to grow if there is also the absence of a mentor. A man who has compassion and respect for others can set a great example for a boy. To be an effective mentor, a man should spend time with a boy over a period of time, but even a “mentor moment” can be very powerful. Can you remember such a moment in your life when a mentor affected your life in such a way that you will always remember him? During the fifth game of the 1991 World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Minnesota Twins, Joe Cozart took his son, Joe, Jr., to the parking lot of the Atlanta stadium to soak up the atmosphere even though they did not have tickets. The series was tied (two games each) and scalpers were selling tickets for as much as $700 a seat. A stranger approached the father and son and asked them if they would like to see the game from the inside. The man gave them two tickets five rows behind the Twins’ dugout. The stranger stopped by during the game to see how Mr. Cozart and Joe, Jr., were enjoying the game. When Joe and his son asked the man’s name, he told them to have a good time and walked away. That day a dream came true for a 10-year-old boy in Atlanta. His life was forever touched by a kind, generous stranger.

Chase Stern steps out of the dugout and I lean forward, admiring the perfect fit of his pants, his confident stride to the sideline.

Rita turns her face away and buries it in my neck, as if she can't bear to meet my eyes out of shame and self-disbelief, such that I can almost hear her mind going Idiot I am he's such a slime, and so it occurs to me that I should hug her as tightly and chastely as I know how, which I do, and in mid-clutch she sort of cracks, literally, her spine aligning with the sudden gravity, and I pretty much carry her to the sofa before I ease her up onto it, hands cupping her thighs, head in her throat, rubbing my face in the heat-heavy spot of her wishbone, the tiny redolent dugout I've tasted thousands of times. And if I could remake myself into just that shape and size it's right here I think I would forever reside.

You’re not going to always hit a home run in life. You’re going to strike out! You’re going to walk to the dugout of life, frustrated, while spectators chirp your name in judgment. They’re afraid to even get on the field, and you know it. The fact that you get back up there, unafraid, going after that next home run, makes you the person you are.

Perhaps that’s why, of the Four, Google seems the most retiring, the most likely to remove itself from the limelight. “Gods don’t take curtain calls,” John Updike famously wrote of Ted Williams’s refusal to come out of the dugout to acknowledge the crowd after his last at bat. Lately, Google seems to prefer to keep its cap low over its eyes,

We came out of the dugout for opening day and saw a fan holding up a sign: 'Wait 'Til Next Year

William Duncan Strong was a scholar, a man ahead of his time: quiet, careful and meticulous in his work, averse to spectacle and publicity. He was among the first to establish that Mosquitia had been inhabited by an ancient, unknown people who were not Maya. Strong spent five months traversing Honduras in 1933, going by dugout canoe up the Río Patuca and several of its tributaries. He kept an illustrated journal, which is preserved in the Smithsonian’s collections—packed with detail and many fine drawings of birds, artifacts, and landscapes.

There were not enough guns and, as a result, their fire was too widely dispersed. Gas, so useful in other attacks, not least to deter the enemy gunners, was not employed in this bombardment, except for a small amount from French 75 mm guns. Many British guns were outranged by many German guns. The ammunition was all too often faulty, either failing to go off or sometimes exploding in the barrels of the guns. The weight of shot was not enough to penetrate the deep German dugouts

Vasilisa Yuzhnina PRIVATE, HAIRDRESSER My specialty… My specialty is men’s haircuts… A girl comes… I don’t know how to cut her hair. She has luxuriant wavy hair. The commander enters the dugout. “Give her a man’s haircut.” “But she’s a woman.” “No, she’s a soldier. She’ll be a woman again after the war.” All the same… All the same, as soon as the girls’ hair grew a little, I’d curl it during the night. We had cones instead of curlers… Dry pine cones… We could at least curl the forelock…

They lay in a shallow dugout on a windblown ridge, the leeward slope falling away steeply to an impassable boulder field. A desert-issue tarp all but covered the hole, protected from view on the flanks by thorny scrub. Shivering, they blew into their bunched trigger-finger mitts. The daytime temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more, and fine sleet was melting on their blackened faces.

While I was in the partisan unit, I received a letter from my husband by some miracle. This was such a joy, so unexpected, because for two years I had heard nothing from him. And then a plane dropped some food, ammunition…And the mail…And in the mail, in this canvas bag, there was a letter—for me. Then I wrote a letter to the Central Committee. I wrote that I would do anything so long as my husband and I were together. We waited for the plane, it was nighttime and pitch-dark. And some sort of plane was circling over us, and then it dumped bombs on us. It was a Messerschmitt. The German had spotted our camp and circled back again. And at the same time our plane, a U-2, arrived and landed just by the fir tree where I was standing. The pilot barely landed and immediately began to take off again, because he saw that the German was circling back and would start shooting again. I took hold of the wing and shouted, “I must go to Moscow, I have permission.” He even swore: “Get in!” And we flew together, just the two of us. I figured out from the postal code where my husband was fighting... They said, “You know, it’s very dangerous where your husband is…” I sat there and wept, so he took pity on me and gave me the pass. “Go out to the highway,” he said. “There’ll be a traffic controller, he’ll tell you how to go.” I arrive at the unit, everybody’s surprised, “Who are you?” they ask. I couldn’t say I was a wife. I tell them—his sister. “Wait,” they tell me, “it’s a four-mile walk to the trenches.” They told him that his sister had arrived. What sister? They say, “The redhead.” His sister had black hair. So he figured out at once what sister. I don’t know how he managed to crawl out of there, but he came soon, and he and I met. What joy… Suddenly I see the superiors coming to the dugout: the major, the colonel. Everybody shakes my hand. Then we sat down and drank, and each of them said something about a wife finding her husband in the trenches. That’s a real wife! The next day my husband was wounded, badly wounded. We ran together, we waded together through some swamp, we crawled together. The machine guns kept rattling, and we kept crawling, and he got wounded in the hip. With an exploding bullet, and try bandaging that—it was in the buttock. It was all torn open, and mud and dirt all over. We were encircled and tried to break out. There was nowhere to take the wounded, and there were no medications. When we did break through, I took my husband to the hospital. I buried him on January 1, and thirty-eight days later I gave birth to a son.

The [nuclear] deterrent does not cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of Hitler when he found himself in his final dugout.

Among athletes, the unlikely source is the stathead who’s spent time in uniform, satisfying Sarason’s condition that the ideal go-between be embedded in the community, “rendering some kind of service within the schools, requiring that in some way they become part of the school.” These rare birds of baseball, fluent in front office and dipped in dugout wisdom, are “perfect conduits to get a message from high theoretical guys down to guys who are just used to grinding it out on the baseball field,” San Diego Padres manager Andy Green said in 2017. “Unless that message gets translated where a guy speaks both languages, it usually ends up falling on deaf ears. It can be the perfect game plan laid out by the front office, but if it doesn’t run through one of those conduits, it tends to, one, not be understood, or two, not be implemented at all or maybe even spurned altogether.

Gary Carter never cursed. Never. To him expletives like 'F-bomb' and 'Gosh darn it!' were strong enough. But when he saw CONGRATULATIONS RED SOX! and could hear Dennis Boyd cackling from the edge of the Boston dugout, mockingly waving good-bye to the Mets players. The veteran catcher was pissed. With a two-balls, one-strike count, Carter looked up at Schiraldi, whose brow was glistening with sweat. 'The kid was scared' he says. 'You could see it.' (Schiraldi, by way of disagreeing with this assessment, says 'Gary Carter can suck my ass.') On the next pitch, he lined a Schiraldi fastball to left for a single. Upon reaching first, Carter slapped Bill Robinson's hand. 'I'll be damned," he said, 'if I'm gonna make the last fuckin' out in this fuckin' World Series!

She knew how unhappy Rafe and Loreda were. The two of them, as alike as grains of sand, had more trouble these days than the rest of them. Not that anyone on the farm was happy. How could they be? But Tony and Rose and Elsa were the kind of people who expected life to be hard and had become tougher to survive. Her in-laws had worked for years—him on the railroad, her in a shirtwaist factory—to earn the money to buy their land. Their first dwelling here had been a dugout made of sod bricks that they’d built themselves. They might have come off the boat as Anthony and Rosalba, but hard work and the land had turned them into Tony and Rose. Americans. They would die of thirst and hunger before they’d give that up. And although Elsa hadn’t been born a farmer, she’d become one

My girl. My jersey," I say right before the people around us start oohing. "I can't believe you just did that," she says, attempting to hold back a shy smile. I quickly peck her lips. "Believe it. I used to dream about you being mine. Now you are." I start back down the stairs. "My dream girl wears my name." I throw her a wink as my heart races faster than my feet back to the dugout. Cameron Salt is my future. I've never been more sure of anything in my life, but I've also never lived in this moment. One where I'm enough and the girl I want wants me back. I saw it on her face. My move was bold, but it was everything, just like her.

For the next great Brewers team, he can provide a link to those guys. He is able to do that and he does a good job of it. And

A little while later, we had our first practice. The first one I ever went to, and they strapped the gear on me and put me behind the plate. My father said, “You’re going to thank me some day…” Lo and behold, I was a catcher from that day forward.

One morning the Pomo lookouts saw a long boat coming up the lake with: ... [a] pole on the bow with [a] red cloth. And several of them came. Every one of the boats had ten to fifteen men ... The next morning the white warriors went across in their long dugouts. The Indians said they would meet them in peace. So when the whites landed, the Indians went to welcome them but the white man was determined to kill them ... One old lady, a Indian told about what she saw while hiding under a bank in under a cover of hanging tuleys [bulrushes]. She said she saw two white men coming with their guns up in the air and on their guns hung a little girl. They brought it to the creek and threw it in the water. And a little later two more men came in the same manner. This time they had a little boy on the end of their guns and also threw it in the water. A little ways from her she said lay a woman shot through the shoulder. She held her little baby in her arms. Two white men came running torge [toward] the woman and baby. They stabbed the woman and the baby and threw both of them over the bank in to the water. She said she heard the woman say, ‘O my baby;’ she said when they gathered the dead, they found all the little ones were killed by being stabbed, and many of the women were also killed [by] stabbing. She said it took them four or five days to gather up the dead: And the dead were all burnt on the east side of the creek... The next morning the soldiers started for Mendocino County ... The Indians wanted to surrender. But the soldiers did not give them time. The soldiers went in the camp and shot them down as if they were dogs. Some of them escaped by going down a little creek leading to the river. And some of them hid in the brush. And those who hid in the brush most of them were killed ... They killed mostly women and children ...

The walk-off win provides one of baseball’s most thrilling outbursts, launching a couple dozen tense teammates out of the dugout into a frenzied mosh pit of elation.

Sub-Zero I am a genteel wretch, not without gaiety or self-respect, a ‘ragamuffin top’, so to speak, dining daily off an eclectic tasters menu culled from hunter green dumpsters of Zagat 29s. It’s really not a bad life, a bit of an adventure too, like the time I went fishing for bream from a mokoro in the Okavanga Delta and a hippo nearly tipped my dugout because I inadvertently came between the mom and her calf. I pissed my pants and returned for a change of wardrobe and cocktails to my five star safari tent at Camp Moreni, a charming hideaway with a teak wardrobe, designer linens, woven rugs and en-suite bathroom. Lately, I’ve sought shelter in a Sub-Zero Pro 48 cardboard box which I’ve accented with freshly plucked Lilies of the Valley. Sure, it’s smaller than the GE 25 cubic but you can’t compare the stiffness of the corrugation, the A-fluting and 400# test strength. Hey, without our standards what are we?

Sub-Zero I am a genteel wretch, not without gaiety or self-respect, a ‘ragamuffin top’, so to speak,dining daily off an eclectic tasters menu culled from hunter green dumpsters of Zagat 29s. It’s really not a bad life, a bit of an adventure too, like the time I went fishing for bream from a mokoro in the Okavanga Delta and a hippo nearly tipped my dugout because I inadvertently came between the mom and her calf. I pissed my pants and returned for a change of wardrobe and cocktails to my five star safari tent at Camp Moreni,a charming hideaway with a teak wardrobe, designer linens, woven rugs and en-suite bathroom. Lately, I’ve sought shelter in a Sub-Zero cardboard box which I’ve accented with freshly plucked Lilies of the Valley. Sure, it’s smaller than the GE 25 cubic but you can’t compare the stiffness of the corrugation, the A-fluting and 400# test strength. Hey, without our standards what are we?

Obvious choices for the east window: the two bloody bargains on which civilization claimed to be based. The bargain, Rivers though, looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies were founded. If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience from your sons. Only we’re breaking the bargain, Rivers thought. All over northern France, at this very moment, in trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors were dying, not one by one, while old men, and women of all ages, gathered together and sang hymns.

The term in baseball nowadays is a “walk-off home run.” It didn’t exist until Kirk Gibson hit his famous pinch-hit home run off Dennis Eckersley in game one of the 1988 World Series and Eckersley referred to it as “a walk-off,” meaning, quite simply, that when someone does what Gibson did to him in that game, there’s nothing left to do except walk off the mound into the dugout and then into the clubhouse.

All football, hockey and soccer teams would now have to wear tutus.” Brian continued. “Well, I like baseball, and we don’t have to wear tutus because we don’t beat up on each other.” “Well put, son.” I gave him the thumbs up, while picturing both dugouts racing out onto the field in pink and blue taffeta tutus as they lit into each other in a massive brawl over a bad call at first base.

Grandpa, please,” I’d say. “I have to study.” “What you have to do is acquire a taste.” He’d leave me to read but then would barge into my room a minute later with some weak excuse. Had I called him? Did I need help with a difficult passage? “Grandpa, these are children’s books.” “First children’s books, then Lenin’s.” He’d sit at the foot of my bed, and motion me to keep on reading. If I came home from school frightened because a stray dog had chased me down the street, Grandpa would only sigh. Could I imagine Kalitko the shepherd scared of a little dog? If I complained of bullies Grandpa would shake his head. “Imagine Mitko Palauzov whining.” “Mitko Palauzov was killed in a dugout.” “A brave and daring boy indeed,” Grandpa would say, and pinch his nose to stop the inevitable tears. And

Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees They reached a river where the water was open, seething and churning over rocks. We’re going to cross that? thought Mercy. It’s too wide and deep. We’ll drown. Tannhahorens took off his tobacco necklace. He loved to smoke, as did all the warriors. Since they smoked only when they had time and felt safe, the prisoners also loved it when the men smoked; it meant everybody had time and was safe. Tannhahorens poured tobacco into his palm. He lifted it toward the sky, calling as the loon called, his voice shivering through the wilderness. Then he faced the river and held, it seemed to Mercy, a conversation with the river. Finally, over the sharp rocks and ripping current, Tannhahorens threw all his tobacco. Every Indian did the same. The captives stared. Eliza, who had not spoken once since her husband was struck down, said, “It’s an offering. They give their best to the river, and hope the river will give its best to them.” They walked upstream, fighting thickets and snarling brooks. When the Indians stopped to kick at a great melting drift, Mercy was too tired even to wonder. Snow covered a dugout canoe. Forty or fifty feet long, it had been made of one great pine, the center core burned out and chiseled clean. They would paddle the rest of the way. Mercy lay on fur on the bottom of the dugout, the sounds of water above her head, for she was lower than the surface of the river. Not having to carry her own body was joy. The loons called back for hours, wailing a long wandering cry, like a bell that would not stop ringing or a sob that would not stop weeping. Tannhahorens said to Mercy, “It is the speech of the north,” and Mercy understood. That wild terrifying beautiful cry was the sound of where she was going.

In the dug-out, on the bench. The Anfield bench. Bill stared out at the players of Liverpool Football Club on the pitch. The Anfield pitch. In the sun, the players of Liverpool Football Club shining. In the sun, in their kits. Their red shirts, their white shorts. And their white socks. And in the dug-out, on the bench. The Anfield bench. Bill heard the whistle blow, Bill heard the crowd roar. The Anfield crowd.

And the solid thwack of leather and wood colliding in perfect disharmony. The first made his dick hard, the second melted his heart, and the third brought a smile to his face. Todd rounded first base, his lips curving upward as the baseball soared into the centerfield stands. He stepped on second base, vaguely aware of fans scrambling to see who would come up with the homerun ball. Rounding third, his smile faded, even though the entire Mustangs team waited just beyond home plate to celebrate his ninth inning, game-winning homer. High-fiving his teammates, he accepted their jubilant accolades, removed his batting helmet, and waved to the crowd before ducking his six-foot-two frame into the dugout that had been his home for his entire Major League career. Thinking about the yet-to-be-determined dugout he would call home next season made his stomach cramp. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he told the Mustangs team

When I finished playing, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I went back to Wisconsin. I actually never left Wisconsin. I was told one time by a very smart man, Paul Schramka, who owns Schramka Funeral Homes, that if you stick around Milwaukee and you’re good to the people, the town will take care of you.

had been doing a weekly Sunday baseball show on the Brewers’ flagship radio station, WTMJ. I did it with a Milwaukee guy named Chuck Garbedian and Len Kasper, who is now the TV play-by-play man for the Chicago Cubs.

There are not many who do leave on their own terms. I certainly didn’t.

Some of us who worked with Bud for years in New York focus on all he accomplished as commissioner, and we forget, lose track of the fact, that he was the person that saved baseball in Milwaukee.

They weren’t happy with us, but they also knew that Milwaukee was an incredible baseball town. The Braves were the first National League team to draw 2 million fans. The fans were so passionate. But it was an uphill battle.

I’ll never forget, though, as I was walking to my office after the final out a woman came up to me and said, ‘You wanted a team in the worst way, and that’s exactly what you got.’ I never forgot that.

meant, what they mean today. All the ups and downs. And they’re all chronicled there. I hope that people that come [to the Experience] will really understand the franchise, what it means, what it will mean in the future, and what we went through to get it and keep it.

Bud Selig had preserved baseball in Milwaukee, a feat almost as unlikely as bringing it back in the first place. “Of all the marvelous things that have happened to me, including becoming commissioner of baseball, that will always be my proudest accomplishment because the odds were stacked tremendously against us,” Selig said. “There were many times when I wondered if it would happen.

I lived near him during my time with the Brewers and I would stop by his house sometimes to drop something off, and he’d be cutting his grass, cleaning the pool, or playing with his kids. He was just a normal Wisconsin guy, who happened to be one of the best baseball players on the planet.

And one of those guys, not exactly a teammate, but definitely one of the guys, he’s here today—Bob Uecker. And believe it or not, Bob Uecker played a significant role in me being here today.

County Stadium, while it was one of the older parks in the game, had an atmosphere in the summertime unmatched by at least the majority of other parks. The tailgating and the loyalty of the fans made it a great atmosphere for the players to perform in.

Well, the fans of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were always tremendously supportive. There were so many days when I arrived to County Stadium, and there would already be 10 to 15,000 people in the parking lot, five hours before game time. I think it’s pretty obvious they invented tailgating.

Watching him, I learned that you take the broadcasting job one day at a time. You don’t worry that the team is 20 games out. First place? Last place? It doesn’t matter. You just hope for a good game that day. You don’t rip people.