autumn tactics

Baseball on the radio, money out of my pocket

I’m in the process of salvation– moving blogs from paper to hypertext and video from old drives to new. Like so many refugees and urban renewals, I am the shining patron of the common people: my media, bits packed off for a better life through magnetic rezoning. This is a far more time consuming process than you’d imagine, most directly from the fact that I’m moving somewhere on the magnitude of two hundred gigabytes (and wondering why I didn’t get that two terabyte drive at Yodobashi today). Ever multitasking, I’m listening to a Giants game on my vintage 1970 Toshiba AM radio, parsing so many streams of semi-consciousness my mind is awash in an opium trip of frenetic, multilingual communication. In Japanese baseball there are no Queen and Baha Men ballads blasted over sub-grade acoustics, there are only kazoos and brass bands carrying over a din of perfectly chorused claps and thunder sticks; like a Class B college football game with conformity.

To their credit, baseball on Japanese radio is infinitely more interesting than the bored, lifeless owls that perch on the FCC regulated spectrum. Every swing is important, and connecting with the horsehide spurs an effervescing fountain of praise from the commentators. It’s like sliding down the steep side of the dirt bank behind your development, or over the hill from lofty Culbreth to Carr’s Field– at first, you’re apprehensive, and try to keep your composure, slowly making your way down. But then gravity and the center of mass overcome you, legs are kicking, flying, and it’s all you can do to run straight down at sixty degrees and avoid falling head over heels in terrible grass-stained death.

Yodobashi is a red, cheering, nexus of cool electricity and new plastic, calling me in with promises of twenty-one percent discount points and best-sellers. After an epiphany of thinking to myself heavily while stomping around the Kandagawa I knew I at last truly needed a voice recorder, and MP3 technology and toothpick form factors were going to grease the rocky path to my wallet. I had the two hundred and fifty gigabyte fanless Buffalo drive, now all I needed was the Sharpie-sized personal recorder to complete my day’s digital ascension. So in perhaps the shortest path ever to purchasing non-powerstrip technology I pounced on the Sanyo ICR-S170M, thinking myself oh so smart declining the added battery purchase from the grinning and perhaps too helpful salesman. Pointo wo tsukau! This surge protector was “FREE”!!!

…Originally recorded some Saturday in April??…

Mailmen come on bikes

I’m in sitting in the sun, on just about as blue a day as Tokyo can manage. The light is warm on my shoulders, left bare by my torn, ragged surf shirt of eleven years. I’m kicking myself for not having my camera with me, having discovered more of Meguro and then there’s some nice, terraced apartments here just asking quietly to be remembered. My hair is dry and loose, beached in patches, blowing around on my forehead.

Tokyo is an amazing city if only for the fact that it looks like ten dozen other cities, all over just enough space to drive around in a day. The concrete is cool to the touch, and my indigo jeans are warm. Babies wear frog hats and movers drag boxes over acid rain stained steps. Women’s pointy shoes are in, though I can’t say I care much for them. Click, clack in aprons and khakis shirts girls walk by. Opening onigiri is still a mystery to me, and the dried nori sticks and steals the moisture from my lips. Old men huff along on bicycles, dirty backpacks and denim fluttering behind them.

I cannot describe how sour the ume boshi (dried, pickled plum) is. It looms before me, in one piece, ready to fall out. I know I must eat it and the pit at once but I’m frozen, unable to bite, like standing at the deep end of the pool in swim class, legs bolted to the lip, unable to dive. I bite and it stings my tongue, lips curling around in a grimace as I hold the pit between my teeth. I blanche with a scowl, like Henry trying his Eggs Bradley for the first time. But I take a swing of tea and swallow, it’s gone and only empty rice remains.

I get a call from Arka and we agree to get together for food and speaking English at six. The smell of gasoline reaches my nose and I think of my father’s collection of cannabalised Lawn Boys in the garage, so far away but not so different. The sweat begins to collect in the pits of my limbs and I sigh. Spring has come too quickly and it’s time to walk again.

Just another sports rant

After Sunday’s further display of management boobery, I am unable to contain myself any longer. I simply must add words to the thoughts and hearts of every single sentient Seattleite. THE MARINERS ARE KILLING ME! It is a rare franchise (though not singular) that can lead its fans to soul-stealing despondency not only frequently, but while continually one-upping itself in unabashed idiocy. An article on Page 2 several months ago by one former resident of the Puget Sound highlighted how the city of Seattle itself is a grey, misty, morass of sports tragedy. However, over the next three hundred words I will focus solely on the Mariners.

We have the best stadium in baseball. We have some of the greatest (and most humble) players in the league. We have a retractable roof, a sparkling, pine inlaid subterranean goods store, a comical moose for a mascot. We even have Ichi-rolls on sale at the concession stands. What we don’t have, however, is common sense and confidence.

Mariner Moose is starting to worry about the draft.

The Mariners are their worst enemy… first there is Martinez refusing to retire without a ring, disallowing us to make room for a DH that can hustle, next a bouquet’ of talented, headcase pitchers, and then gold glove infielders that can go from thirty five homeruns to a .219 average in less than six months. Certainly not least of all we have Ichiro, the most mature of all Japanese sports expatriates. He doesn’t wallow in endorsements, he doesn’t look for big publicity, he just plays. He plays his heart out in right field, runs his tail off every time he even thinks about getting to first, but unfortunately he left the stamina drinks back here in Tokyo. He’s just plain inconsistent through the All-Star break, oscillating between amazing to mediocre in two to three week stints. And worst of all like so many K-Mart beach towels he fades after the late July trade deadline, blending into the pale, featureless background that is the rest of the Seattle offense.

The players’ problems, however, are nothing compared to the incompetence of the management. Bob Melvin is no Lou Pinella, he doesn’t have a tenth as many ejections as Lou, a clear indicator that there won’t be any fires starting in the locker room. He’s called about three post-game meetings this dismal year, but judging by the Mariners’ record he’s got about a semester’s worth of summer school to teach. However, even this is dwarfed by the geniuses we have in the front office.

More superstars have walked out of Safeco than the gilded, double doors of Mann’s Chinese theatre: Griffey, Johnson, A-Rod, and now Garcia. Pat Gillick was often criticized (and rightfully so) for doing absolutely nothing for three seasons with the Mariners beating down the record books in wins, but choking on September.

This year the great Bill Bavasi did more trading than the club has seen since the start of the Clinton administration, though it seems like the only records we’re going to break this year are in runs to the return counter at free agents `r us. Aurilia, Spiezio, and Ibanez were supposed to electrify an upper-middle tier offense. Instead, they’re pulling the team average down to a vomit-inducing .240. From these trades we’ve lost Mike Cameron and Mark McLemore, which is an even break offensively but a shot in the foot for defense. The only positive results that have come from all the lobotomized buying have been the departure of Jeff Cirillo and Arthur Rhodes, the former the previous generation’s investment in the Mendoza Line, the latter the cause of many blown games (and possibly postseasons) over the last four years.

So what’s to be done? Sell off the rest of the players that make Seattle, Seattle? Moyer deserves a golden medal for the same reason as most Mariners, quietly putting up dependability and stature equivalent to big players with nicknames like “The Rocket” or “Cheeseball”. Maybe he’ll leave and the GM will bring home another gasping fish for the dugout, taking one more chunk out of the franchise’s quickly evaporating pension plan (and our pride). Maybe not. Either way, there’s no hope in sight unless you’re a staunch believer in miracles, and in that case, you’d better just stay in the cornfield.

“It’s either a leg thing, or a _spiritual_ thing, or a PSYCHOLOGICAL thing; or a heart attack thing! (groans)”