The Introvert's Party

NaNoWriMo Countdown: 1 Day

1 Last Party or "Party"

Everyone out there in The City for the parade and others just enjoying the fete of Abnormal Psychological Expression, have fun and be safe.  As for me, I am enjoying my last day before NaNoWriMo being cozy and coffee-ed with husband+dog.  Yelling at the Giants players with 1 million other folks is not for me.  I hate Disneyland on a slow day.  I will be celebrating in my own introverted, somewhat nerdy, somewhat Bert-like way.

That is to say, I will be writing about, reading about, or watching coverage of the 2012 season.   Great articles about baseball are thrilling.  I don't mean those statistically explosive blurbs on sportscast conglomerates, churned out by some beat writer.  Not to rag, I'm sure their jobs are tough (or not, if Everybody Loves Raymond has taught us anything).  What I'm hunting for is some spoetry (yes, sports poetry) by the odd fan who put his Anchor Steam beer stained ticket stub between the pages of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, lifted the needle from his H.M.S. Pinafore record, and jotted down a quick, heartfelt love letter to The Giants with his trusty Parker Jotter.  Did I just describe George Wills?  Hipster George Wills who sports Warby Parkers and buys his chambray bow ties from J. Crew.   Where is that sports writer?  And will he share his thoughts with me over a cup of Chemex brewed coffee?

I'll probably just spend the day re-reading my favorite passages of Roger Kahn, even if he writes about the Dodgers.  He reflects back on a different era of sports writers, or maybe a time of writers who wrote about sports. What little I've read of Roger Kahn has impressed me to no end.  In the second chapter of Memories of Summer, he relays his entrance into the world of sports writing at the New York Herald Tribune, where he started as a night copyboy: 

"'I don't like figure-filberts.  You can always look the numbers up.  But take a pennant race between mediocre clubs and call that a 'dubious battle.'  That's the ticket.  Where does it come from, the phrase 'dubious battle?'
'A novel by John Steinbeck.  He took the title from Milton.  In dubious battle on the plains of heaven. Paradise Lost.'
'You know Milton and you like baseball,' Woodward said.
'My mother thinks baseball is my religion.'
'Keep answering the telephones and reading poetry,' Woodward said. 'Something may turn up for you in sports.'"

 Woodward, or R. Stanley Woodward, the sport editor, was replaced by Bob Cooke, who informed Kahn to study up on Heywood Broun.

"Pulled from the soiled beige envelope in the drab newspaper library at one a.m., Broun's stuff lit up the night.  He was quoting Macbeth, and Grant at Spotsylvania in 1864, in a brilliant baseball story.  Keats and Frost could wait.  It would be something just to write like Heywood Broun.  To write baseball, just like Heywood Broun."

 The parade streamed live (with the awkward and slightly dated commentary; "usherettes," "the Orient," "arriving in groves,") and everything was quiet outside.  We munched on our Rally Hash(brown)tag breakfast and settled in for a laaaazy morning.

Have fun at wherever your loyalties take you tonight.  Soak up your surroundings, jot down the oddities in your mental notebook.  Nothing gets your imagination going like watching Static Cling share a moment with Psy and Bane to the tune of Monster Mash. 

And come back hungry for the White, Blank Page.  I will try to post through NaNoWriMo, sanity willing.  My thought was to post daily, but honestly just doing 12 posts is a row drove me a wee bit batty. 

Happy Halloween!  Or whatever other reason you might be sporting orange and black.