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s slipping off the mound in his delivery before the grounds crew desperately tried to dry off the mound mud ohtani strikes out yoshida with a 98 mph fastball in their only matchup he pitched 2 innings before another heavy downpour caused the game to stop for a long rain delay and ohtani s day on the mound was over he did stay in the game as a designated hitter and i drifted into deep sleep while the angels held on for a 5 4 win avoiding a sweep during my stay in tokyo i notice there s a tv channel that specifically shows the daily highlights of japanese mlb players from shohei ohtani and masataka yoshida to yusei kikuchi and shintaro fujinami i m also struck by how much anime is on tv it s on almost every channel one night i ve got anime on tv and there s a whole bizarre sequence featuring a baseball game in a rain storm where the field gets completely flooded osaka japan late april i ve been in japan for a couple weeks the nippon professional baseball season is well underway but i haven t been able to attend any games yet because of logistics games are either sold out or too far away now that i m in osaka the hanshin tigers play in a historic ballpark a short train ride out of town so my plan is to head out to koshien stadium to see the hanshin tigers host the rival yomiuri giants only problem is there s been a steady rain all day i ve been wearing a hanshin tigers hat around town eliciting comments from the locals a bunch of tigers fans high five me at an okonomiyaki restaurant a tour guide yells out nice hat while guiding people thru the streets i take the train out west near the scenic hills of kobe the train is filled with tigers fans folks just getting out of work a kid in a tigers hat with his grandmother everyone is anxious to get to the ballpark and hoping the rain lets up it s not until we all arrive at the park walk underneath the highway overpass and pass all the merch vendors in ponchos that we learn the game has been canceled due to inclement weather my one opportunity to see a ballgame in japan a rivalry matchup no less and the tigers would go on to win the pennant for the first time in 18 years and the game was rained out just as i arrived at the stadium my only consolation was that at least i got to see the stadium koshien stadium will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year it s the oldest and most revered ballpark in japan one of the few stadiums in the country without a roof it s also quirky because it features an all dirt infield i figured it was unlikely they d be able to play the game with that infield all muddy rainouts are part of baseball though part of the experience of a baseball season the outer facade of the outfield was covered in ivy which was a nice look outside of koshien stadium nishinomiya japan koshien stadium was built in homage to the polo grounds in new york the mythic status the polo grounds holds in the consciousness of an american baseball fan is partly due to the fact that the old ballpark no longer exists there s no way to experience it except in grainy footage or playing mlb the show and yet in japan there is a 100 year old baseball mecca conceived in the same bowl shape as the polo grounds i m committed to get back there one day to actually see a game the bowl shaped koshien stadium built in 1924 inspired by the polo grounds queens ny in the middle of may i spent a few days in nyc hanging with family and i went to a mets game my first in person baseball game of the season thankfully opted for the friday game instead of the saturday game because the latter got rained out the friday game ended up being the most exciting win of the mets season and one of the best mets games i ve ever witnessed up close before getting to my seat the mets had fallen behind 3 0 to the cleveland guardians on a 3 run homer from josh naylor in the top of the 1st soon the mets were down 7 0 but they chipped away in the bottom of the 7th pete alonso came to the plate with the bases loaded and the mets trailing 7 3 he blasted a game tying grand slam that sent the packed crowd into frenzied mayhem and pete was so pumped he did a full celebratory twirl between the bases the mets fell behind again down 9 7 going into the bottom of the 10th but once again fought back battled through every at bat and won the game 10 9 francisco alvarez hit a homer and a game tying rbi single brett baty went deep in this game francisco lindor had the walkoff hit in a huge game against his former team it was the highest high point in a down year for the mets after the next day s rainout the mets swept a sunday doubleheader to finish off their best week of the season arlington tx mid june i was at the ballpark in arlington watching corey seager crush line drives all over the park for the texas rangers in their fancy retractable roof warehouse stadium the rangers have a brand new ballpark with a retractable roof yet it never rains there the roof is to block the sun the old ballpark for the rangers remains standing right across the street completely functional but lacking a roof to shield the field from the brutal solar rays blasting down each day for half the year houston tx middle of june i zip on down to houston to watch the mets play the astros mets season falling apart they stole a badly needed win against the astros in the first game of the series i was there to see justin verlander returning to houston to pitch for the mets against lefty framber valdez who carved his way thru the mets lineup verlander was off to a shaky start on the season for mets lacking command falling behind in the count nearly every at bat he battled but gave up a bomb to alex bregman and got beat by his old squad next afternoon i was there at the ballpark again the roof was once again closed to keep it nice and cool indoors the mets looked sluggish as they dropped a winnable game to lose the series after the game perched across the street from the ballpark in a hotel room on an upper floor in a tall building i watch as a massive storm system arrives over the city of houston the skies put on a cinematic lightning and thunder orchestra as the torrential rains gush down i notice minute maid park has the roof open and the lights on posted by pq at 12 03 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels baseball japan mets new york city sports texas thursday october 5 2023 the stone vortex walking in a quiet cemetery in a scenic valley in search of a poet s gravestone silence tranquility the peace of souls in repose in the midst of a road trip i d made a quick stop in bethlehem pennsylvania on a summer afternoon to pay a visit to the grave of the poet h d aka hilda doolittle sept 10 1886 sept 27 1961 located in nisky hill cemetery on east church street the same street where h d was born and spent her childhood three months prior back in april i was in asia walking along the beach on a small tropical island in the philippines where a thick blanket of humid heat smothered the air and the lines of h d s poem heat became a repeated mantra o wind rend open the heat cut apart the heat rend it to tatters fruit cannot drop through this thick air fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes cut the heat plough through it turning it on either side of your path a poem like this one is an object of contemplation an artifact to be carried around consulted unpacked and admired h d wrote many of these perfect gems h d was the premier poet of the style her lifelong friend ezra pound had called imagism or vorticism for the concentration of compacted representation into a vortex of words efficient concise unencumbered expression carved into verse as if chiseled into stone as pound described it in his vorticism declaration it is the picture that means a hundred poems the music that means a hundred pictures the most highly energized statement the statement that has not yet spent itself in expression but which is the most capable of expressing the point of the image in pound s view was not simply to create a picture in words but to create an intellectual and emotional complex a convergence of meaning and impression for h d especially the poetic image was not something inert a verbal photograph but something alive a compacted energy that opens up a portal h d s poems had become important to me the last couple years there is a force in so much of her poetry that i find gives me strength i had been reading what s widely considered her greatest work the war trilogy last year when i posted here about shell poetics and quoted there is a spell for instance in every sea shell continuous the sea thrust is powerless against coral that extended ode to the sea shell comes from the walls do not fall which she composed in london where she was living during the german blitz of world war ii pound s declaration about vorticism emphasizes the image in poetry and it was pound who originally suggested to hilda doolittle that she sign her poetry h d imagiste he touted her work as the exemplar of imagist expression this was around 1912 before world war i started pound had met hilda doolittle when they were high school students and they fell in love he eventually convinced her to meet him in london where they got engaged before breaking it off but they remained friends doolittle had also known william carlos williams since their high school days in pennsylvania it s incredible that these three giants of 20th century literature all basically grew up together h d led an interesting life she was a muse for acclaimed writers like ezra pound d h lawrence and richard aldington she consulted with sigmund freud for years she even starred alongside paul robeson in a silent film about an interracial couple she was in london during both world wars she traveled to egypt and to greece both cultures were major influences on her poetry and was living in zurich when she died in 1961 her cremated remains were repatriated to the us so that her final resting place could be in the doolittle family plot in the moravian cemetery on east church street where she grew up and so there i was walking thru that cemetery on a quiet street in bethlehem pa hoping to find h d s grave and hoping it was worth stopping for it was my girlfriend s idea she s from the south jersey philly area and accompanied me on the trip neither of us had any idea what we were going to find though when we reached h d s gravestone there was already a couple people there paying their respects the grave stone was decorated with sea shells it felt like a pilgrimage site for her readers her epitaph is an excerpt from a poem she wrote in her 1929 collection red roses for bronze the poem is actually titled epitaph so you may say greek flower greek ecstasy reclaims forever one who died following intricate song s lost measure the silence which hung in the air of the cemetery that afternoon spoke to me about life and death i d just learned a few days prior that an old friend i grew up with had tragically died far too young the shock of this knowledge was fresh and the air was pregnant with meaning it was also a day or two after my 38th birthday which thankfully i got to spend surrounded by my close family with all this in the air in my mind with a friend s spirit having been permanently exhaled back out into the mysterious universe i was there in the quiet cemetery surrounded by gravestones and wondering what is the value of a human life what are any of us worth to the universe why are we here why do we live looking at the gravestones i was struck by the inevitability of our bodies and souls all one day inevitably being summarized and compacted into a stone tablet on a patch of grass someplace the stone vortex i also was struck how h d hilda doolittle a relatively minor literary figure unknown to most people on earth had achieved so much in her life and made such an impact that i and countless others like myself were drawn to visit her gravestone and i actually felt great pride for what she had accomplished her own poetry was etched in stone onto her grave and she inspired people to turn her relatively small unassuming final resting place into a shrine a suitable legacy perhaps it is in the brevity and economy of her use of words so carefully chosen often simple recognizable words together coagulating into an alchemical reaction a mystical force capable of inspiring impacting staying with her readers all birthed out of a few lines in her war trilogy she wrote i know i feel the meaning that words hide they are anagrams cryptograms little boxes conditioned to hatch butterflies the backdrop to this cemetery scene was kinda surreal as a little further down in the valley stood an old steel mill its rusty interlocked tubes and chimneys granting a steampunk vibe to the setting this was the old bethlehem steel mill active during the days when hilda doolittle was a child growing up on this street there was a story to be discerned in looking at the graves in the doolittle family plot looking at the names and the birth and death dates later reading up on her family one could see that the family had a daughter who died at five months old hilda was the only girl in a family with five brothers one of her brothers was killed in world war i in 1918 and very shortly after that hilda s father died it seems he suffered a stroke upon the shock of learning his son had been killed another of h d s poems from her collection red roses for bronze birds in snow has a bit that i think captures the essence of the scene i was encountering like plaques of ancient writ our garden flags now name the great and very great our garden flags acclaim in carven hieroglyph here king and kinglet lie here prince and lady rest mystical queens sleep here and heroes that are slain her father was a professor of astronomy when he was appointed as head of the astronomy department at university of pennsylvania he moved the family to a neighborhood just outside philadelphia at the observatory at the university charles doolittle dutifully observed and studied the tiniest most minute perturbations of the earth s spin on its axis in the swirl of my thoughts on life and death and the story of the doolittle family i was remembering scenes from terence malick s 2011 film the tree of life a son goes off to war the family learns that he has been killed and as the parents process their child s untimely death the film shows a sequence beginning with the birth of the universe the development of solar systems our sun coming to form the earth congealing into a round rocky orb scenes of dinosaurs and then a meteor blast the unspoken message seems to be that every individual life began with the birth of the universe and every single event that occurred afterwards big or small happened in such a way so as to allow for the birth and development of that individual person till tree from tree tree among trees tree over tree bec...