Creative History

The stands are packed with fans literally hanging from the rafters and ledges and sitting on the concourse steps.  The air is thick with cigarette smoke.  The grandstand is littered with peanut shells and puddles of stale beer. Entering the fourth quarter the game is knotted in a scoreless tie.  Despite the fact that it’s been a sloppy, even a poorly played game, the atmosphere is nonetheless palpable with tension and excitement. The visiting team, the Portsmouth Spartans clad in purple, are about to kick the ball off to the heavily favored Chicago Bears.  The local Chicago fans are waiting in hushed expectation for their hometown Bears to receive the ball and to finally break through the Portsmouth defense and score--in this the waning moments of the game. All the fans know that it is only a matter of time before their imposing six foot three inch tall two-hundred and sixty pound fullback, Bronko Nagurski--the best player in all of pro football--punishes the P...

Nearly 100 years ago in his Postmodern poetic masterpiece The Wasteland T.S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month”.  Little did he know how prophetic his words would become for all of us less than a full century later. We face an April, as baseball fans, during which the baseball season has been indefinitely put on hold for the safety of the nation.  We, as Americans, face an April without our national game being played professionally for the first time since 1883.  We face the possibility of a long hot summer, a chilly darkening fall, and a barren stark and freezing winter all without baseball. But take solace baseball fans because it could be worse. I’m not talking about worse in the sense that a thermonuclear war, living through the Black Death of the 14th century or a War of the Worlds type extraterrestrial invasion could all be worse than the current Covid-19 pandemic that we are going through at present because, sadly, it remains to be seen how t...