The local Bird and Bee

This arrived in the post:

Talked about John Lennon's Imagine sessions on Downtown yesterday. I was somewhat in rakehell mode. It was a funny one.

I have begun head work on a new short story, "The King of Ting." I'll be retroactively updating this list as I go along in the journey and the fight of this quest. I think "quest" really is the right word here. This is not a career, not a period of a life; it's a grand quest. I'm here for something bigger than a career or this life.

Only one climb of the Monument today. One yesterday. Three the day before that. More importantly: that's sixteen days in a row with at least one climb. And as many days with at least three miles covered on foot, though obviously it's more, often.

Finished up judging my first fiction contest today. I picked three winners, but from a personal standpoint I learned a few things. Knowledge is weaponry for me right now, with what I am trying to do.

Feel good about the ALCS. Talking to a friend last night I opined that the 2-3-2 format is such an advantage for the higher seeded team. There is a lot less pressure to win the first two at home. The other team is not going to take all three middle games. You win one, you take it back to your place. But you tend to play looser in those middle three if you got one at home--which you most likely did--and two out of three is a real possibility. Get the first two, and it can snowball. A series that looked long might end fast. But worse case scenario, you're playing at home again with a real chance.

The Pearce homer was the biggest play last night, more so than the Bradley grand slam. Second biggest play: the second hit-by-pitch during Osuna's disaster of an appearance. Was that the worst appearance by a closer in Division Series history? I don't know. But I'm not amiss to ask the question, surely. 2/3 of an inning, two HBP, five earned runs.

A question: has a team ever won the World Series and defeated two 100+ win teams in the same playoffs? I would think it is very likely that a team never has.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, airs tomorrow night. I'll miss it--though I have it on Blu-ray somewhere in this disaster or in storage. So imaginative. And beautiful artwork. If you watch it, note the loving care extended to the backgrounds, even. Those shades of purple twilight and developing darkness early in the work were a direct inspiration for the cover of Dark March.

Woodstock is not in this special, nor the Christmas one. Sometimes I see Peanuts products--like mugs at the CVS--that get this wrong. Always bothers me. Did you know that if you go to Woodstock's Wikipedia page, you can learn that his official job is Snoopy's secretary? That's nuts. What the hell does a dog need a secretary for? This amuses me to no end.

I will miss the special because I'll be out on yet another hot date. That's not remotely true, of course. It's just me these days. Only me. Working. Battling. I'll be at Sanders Theatre at Harvard for a Boston Philharmonic concert of Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, Dvorak's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. Someone is going to have to text me Red Sox updates. Brahms was my age when he wrote that first symphony. And I like the cello a lot. Don't you like the cello?

***

It's the next morning. I fell asleep during the four and a half hour Red Sox game. Baseball is asphyxiating itself with replay. Let people be human. Do we really need to cyber-ize the shit out of everything? Baseball, a child's game, needs to be the sports equivalent of that person who checks their phone on average 150 times a day? A play happens, the manager puts his hand up for the umps to wait a bit while they check the replay, and it's every play it feels like. These games should be the best thing going in sport, but you can't ask for 1/6 of a person's day, every day. Look at me. Right now, I have no life, no friends, no wife, I don't have kids to get ready for school in the morning, I'm lonely, and I'm not staying up to 1 AM for it. (I'm also not staying up to watch Craig Kimbrel suck. I know what Kimbrel is going to do. In the mornings, sometimes, I simply check to see if he walked the bases loaded--like he did last night--and whether he gave the game away or someone saved him--as Benintendi did last night.)

But people are human. They make mistakes. Let people be human. If an umpire makes a mistake, overcome it if you're a championship team. It's like we are terrified of just letting people be human. This is a good idea, so I pitched it to USA Today for a World Series op-ed. As for Mr. Kimbrel: Cora strikes me as a guy with some balls. He should remove Kimbrel from that closer role, and he should leave his ass off the World Series roster if the Red Sox get there, as I've thought they would since witnessing the Pearce homer in Game 3. Why did I think they'd get there? The two-out hits, for one thing. And, more importantly, they almost always answer back. You can't beat a team that always answers you back. On top of that, Bradley is hot at the best ever time, and the bullpen, which I thought would preclude a championship, has been outstanding. Never saw that coming. They are doing this with their so-called three best pitchers sucking. Price starts today. If ever there was no pressure on Price for a postseason game, it's today. The thing about Price--with Cora--is that they can overcome him sucking. They remove him early. If he gives up 3 or 4, they can come back. The damage is contained. Kimbrel, as a closer, doesn't have a containable situation. It works out--somehow--or he blows up his own ship. Still a lot of baseball to be played, though. And while these Astros remind me of the 2017 Cubs--when your time is up, it's up--they are an elite team, this is the closest 3-1 series ever, just about, and teams come back from 3-1 all the time. The Astros have the kind of team to do it. Especially with Craig Kimbrel on the Red Sox. Kimbrel can give the opponent two games by himself, easy.