The Greatest Game Ever Played

hy·per·bo·le

hīˈpərbəlē/

noun

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

synonyms:

exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment

The best place to find hyperbole in this world is Facebook. We're all guilty of it. We eat a good steak or see a spider or celebrate a lost tooth, and it becomes the biggest event since The Eagles reunited for the Hell Freezes Over tour (and then toured like 6 more times). Often, we are the guilty party, with our gushing description of the events we just witnessed.

"OMG!!!!! Holly just got 4th place in Jump Rope For Heart in her class of 22 kids!!! #proudmama #olympics2020"

"I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin. I literally have THE BESTEST HUSBAND IN THE WORLD!! He bought me my favorite ice cream (Vanilla Bean!! YUM YUM!!) after my 11 hour kidney transplant surgery. AND I CAME HOME TO A CLEAN HOUSE!!!! I LOVE YOU BOO!!!!!!"

And sometimes, our parents and grandparents and drunk friends do the job for us.

"Feeling sad since my little pup has an achy tooth. Gotta go to the vet tomorrow. :("

      Sally Bickertooth and 41 others LIKE this

Sally Bickertooth: OMG sis, I am SOOOOO sorry. This just breaks my heart. You two are in my prayers!! Get better little snuggle bear!!! Txt me when you leave for the vet so I can say a prayer while you're driving to the vet!!!!!

On and on it goes like that on almost every page on the entire bloody website. It doesn't make me angry, but it gives me pause whenever I want to say something like I did in the title of this piece, because I'm probably just blowing smoke outta my ass like I do every time I like something and tell the world about it. BUT. 

I've had 12 hours to digest the AL Wildcard game at Kauffman Stadium last night, and I consider that enough time to make a bold statement and stand by it. That was the best baseball game any two teams ever played since Abner Doubleday invented the sport. 

You've probably heard all the story lines a million times already, regardless of whether you live here in KC or not. 1985. George Brett. Dick Howser. Frank White. Don Denkinger. CD's were invented. "No outs to go!" And the ensuing lifetime of banality, struggle, 100 loss seasons, bad management, absent ownership (still an issue) and generally apathy for baseball in this town. Good fans went to 5 games a year, 10 if their company or neighbor inherited season tickets. Then, on Dayton Moore's arrival, things started to change (and stay the same). We built the best farm system in baseball and promptly traded the best prospect in the sport and a solid #2 pitcher for James Shields and Wade Davis. The coin started spinning on that day; Dayton Moore called "heads" and we waited...

Last night, with Colon in scoring position and the best young catcher in baseball at the plate hacking like hell to advance him, the coin spun around one final and precariously slow time...and landed. When we exhaled it was heads up.

If you watched the game or talked to another human being today, you know how the game went. What you probably don't know unless you live here (or root from Arizona) is how it felt. I grew up in Wyoming, long before the Rockies existed, and my hometown was so far from any MLB team that the Sports Editor at the paper would take a poll (you had to mail in your vote) to decide which team to cover as "our" team each season. Sometimes it was the Cardinals, sometimes the Yankees, and once I recall Seattle as the victor. Someone may correct me on all of this, but my point is that "we" (people born there with no immediate association or family member in the Majors) had to try to feel good about something without seeing it very often or being fully vested. That sucked. I cheered for the Yankees on and off as a bandwagon idiot (even bail-bribed myself out of a Mexican holding cell with a Yankees hat in 1990). But I moved to KC in 1994, and for the last 20 years, I've metamorphosed into a die hard, blue blooded (literally had my blood dyed blue) fan of the Royals. After 20 years of doing anything, you automatically get into the club. I'm also, by that logic, a beer.

My two boys are Royals fans by birth, and they've only ever known heartache, boredom and grainy stock footage of Brett getting mobbed and champagne bathed to build their feelings about this team. Until last night, that is.

We watched together and we gave up after the 7-3 lead looked like too much to overcome. We left the watch party and retreated to our house to get ready for school, an 8-8 Chiefs season and 6 months of cursing Ned Yost and his devilish desire to over-manage at the most inopportune times. But we never stopped watching. Then we got glued and we got a run across and it became the most electrifying 120 minutes of my sports life, and Salvy swung at a pitch that wasn't in the zone (it might not have been in the zone if the zone was an Auto Zone) and Colon crossed the plate and we hugged and laughed and I had tears on my face. Over a stinking baseball game.

The Royals might play 11 more games and sweep their way into a second World Championship. They might go to Anaheim and lose two then fly to MCI and choke away more glory at The K in front of the very people they just gave life back to last night. I don't care either way, and I mean it. I WANT them to win 11 more, don't get me wrong. And I'm not setting the bar at, "well we had a great run and the WILDCARD GAME WAS WORTH IT AND NOW WE'RE HAPPY AGAIN FOR 29 MORE YEARS!!!" Whatever they do, they will never be able to do what they did last night. In one game, they tore off the bandage on the oldest wound in professional sports. No other major sport has a city with a longer post season drought, and it would be difficult to repeat it if you tried. For today, for right now, the slate is clean.

Do you know what has happened in the world since the last time the Royals won a playoff game?

Well, I drank a pot of coffee and wrote a blog. It rained a little. Oh, and they fueled a jet and flew the team to L.A.

HEADS!

The 20-ounce Wolf Spider in the Room

I've been doing a lot of edgy (for me) things lately.

I'm generally the kind of guy that takes the exact same number of steps from bed to shower, shower to coffee pot, pot to car, car to office, and so on until my head explodes like a water balloon on a stove top. I don't mind routine, but once I shake it I realize the importance of seeing things from a different view. Our minds have a rigid tendency to conform to the known. We like to feel comfort, yearn to feel safe and it gives us great joy to be in control of our surroundings, feelings and vision. It starts from the first moment you were swaddled in your mother's arms and your heart rhythms still matched.

To get some edge back, I'm trying to drive a different way home from work, if only by a block, every single day. (So edgy you could just faint, right?)

You remember "Fear Factor"? The show pitted normal people (and sometimes B list celebrities) in a competition to take on physical challenges for glory and cash. Thing is, they really weren't all that physical to begin with. As the title of show implies, the challenges were almost always mental. I know I don't want to eat a 20-ounce Wolf Spider on my own time (and for free), but here I am with a bunch of strangers watching me do it. I'm confident this network has gone to great lengths to ensure that Wolf Spiders aren't in any way poisonous (lest a contestant die on National TV) and that its really no different than a sandwich.  I can see the $50,000 on the table over there, but I can't shake the notion that maybe, just maybe, this is the King Wolf Spider no scientist has ever seen and he's positively loaded with poison and this will become a Faces of Death movie on You Tube in 5 minutes.

It's not that I can't physically do it, it's that I'm mentally not WILLING to accept the challenge because I never physically have done it and survived. But after one Wolf Spider and seeing my checking account balance grow by the grand prize amount, I bet I could eat a Wolf Spider every day (provided the prize would repeat itself). No longer a fear...no longer a factor.

So the edgy thing I've been doing is reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and applying some of his logic to my own thought concerning world events of today. Edgy in the sense that I was raised Roman Catholic and my kids attend really terrific Catholic and Jesuit schools and my wonderful Mom is the single most devoted and loving Christian woman I've ever met. Edgy in the sense that I have taken a different "route to work".

Dawkins is a noted atheist and an outspoken one at that, and I'm not writing to inflame anybody or to praise or quote him- or to state any particular fact about myself- other than to mention that, in reading and pondering some of the ideas presented to my brain that had been previously on the self-imposed "off limits list" I grew up with and around, it sparked me to write.

I'll try to keep this subject condensed, and if you already stopped reading I don't blame you, but here it is:

Michael Sam/Jason Collins/Arizona/Kansas/Uganda/Russia/Etc.

I am not asking that you try this exercise, I am simply telling you that I tried it. I promise you won't die if you close your eyes and reach into the cage with me. The prize if you can achieve this task is totally up to you, it's not mine to give. Oh you WANT to try it?

Ok, close your eyes tight. We are going back in time now to the day of your birth.

You are thirty seconds old. Your mother is cradling you in her arms, feeding and swaddling you.
Stop there.

We haven't yet been to the bris or the baptismal font and we never hit a synagogue or mosque. Stop there, at that moment when your mother first held you. That love that she felt right then, for you alone, unimpeded by any outside influence, was the truest form of love- more powerful than a thrashing atom bomb, tomahawk slam dunk, passionate pulpit-pounding sermon all packaged in a blazing guitar solo. Anything else you "learned" or were "taught" about love from then until now- about law and about right and wrong- were just watered down versions of true and pure love (or hatred), passed on from eons of error-prone human beings.

Keep your eyes closed.

Did she whisper anything in that first breath into your face about hell, damnation, bigotry or sin? She didn't, did she? Of course not. Because in the instance of pure and unalloyed love, there is no such thing. It cannot exist-this love- with any hint of hate or bigotry or fear. As soon as that part rolls in, it's just your path, your future routine. They begin to shape you, for better or worse, in their own image. It's out of love, quite literally and (sometimes) quite sadly.

Keep your eyes closed.

Now it's been a year. You've been to the bris or the baptismal font or the mosque. Does she still love you? Of course. Has it been reinforced by a belief system? In some indelible way, you must admit that it has, regardless of which outside influence you've been living in. That love is never pure like that again. It has boundaries and structure. Notice I am not singling out Christianity or Wicca or the Mosque or Hinduism or Scientology. It's earth, and it's huge and people are...well, strange and imperfect.

But if you could reproduce that instant post-birth feeling you only once had- bottle it and take a shot of it and and re-experience it again, how would it feel to immediately turn on your television in that state of mind and see a story about the Arizona legislature passing a bill that would allow for the discriminatory treatment of hundreds of thousands of people, once babies born into perfect circles of trust and love, now adults and no different than they ever were, except for through the eyes of...

God?

Surely not. Surely this is human bigotry. Surely the same God who gave a mother the love and energy to stare into her son's eyes and make that initial connection, surely that God hasn't also just coerced the Arizona legislature to give her the legal right to refuse service to him in the diner where she works because he's gay. Surely that God didn't just persuade the President of his own country to make it illegal and punishable by life in prison for a baby girl to be gay and to be born in Uganda. No way, right?

Hell. No. That hatred and bigotry is all yours and you are free to get rid of it any time you like.

Saying this out loud is me eating my giant Wolf Spider. My account balances are growing in empathy, respect and happiness- for myself and for all other imperfect humans.

You can open your eyes now.

For No One

Revolver first asked for a Walkman five months before the Christmas of 1981. He spotted Gus, his teenage neighbor sitting in his yard, grinning like a proud sinner and drumming his kneecaps. The cassette deck was clamped to his belt and his excellent long hair hid the earphones.

“What is that thing?” he asked Gus.

“I can’t hear you, Rev. What? It’s Foreigner! You like Foreigner? Check it out! It’s called a Walkman.”

Gus handed him the orange-eared headphones. Revolver leaned in to meet the tethered distance of the cord and was immediately transformed into a juke...box...hero. With stars in his eyes.

After soaking it in for a few seconds, and not wanting to overstay his welcome, Rev gave them back.

“That kicks butt,” he muttered, failing to sound cool, older or longhaired.

“No,” Gus said, “it kicks ASS, man. Their best album yet, and it sounds so much better on cassette than on vinyl. Hey, and don’t tell your Dad I said ass, right?”

“Oh I won’t. Man. That thing kicks some...damn ass.” His eyes dropped to his shoes and he blinked hard.

Gus winked at him and red-faced Revolver sulked back into his house to brush up on his cursing and to memorize the Encyclopedia entry on speeding up the growth of one’s hair.

By Thanksgiving, he’d made his case abundantly clear, taping pictures from magazine ads for the Walkman all over his bedroom and the fridge. His favorite one featured a pair of doublemint-twin blondes roller skating in a park and wearing astoundingly short shorts. And while Revolver’s Dad certainly seemed amiable to his quest, his Dad’s new girlfriend was not.

“I don’t know, Tom. Seems like anytime I see a Walkman I see a cigarette or a beer can, too. Isn’t that a little too hippie and grown up for a ten year old?”

Dad would hug Rita and lift her off the floor, trying to change the subject or make her laugh, which, while serving a purpose, also made Revolver sick to his stomach. His real mother (who would have already bought him a Walkman by now) had only been dead for two years. She loved music and would sprawl out on the living room shag playing records, singing loudly almost every night. She named her only son after her favorite album for crying out loud, so Revolver was repulsed by this replacement woman’s lack of taste and (possibly) a human soul. Her opinion meant nothing to him, so he ignored it and stayed on the mission.

Two weeks before Christmas-- the back of his hair now past his shirt collar--Revolver found a Radio Shack bag on the top coat closet shelf. Inside was a Walkman. A clean yellow deck with black foam earphones; vacuum sealed in clamshell plastic. A piece of folded green construction paper was taped over the price tag.

For: Rev

Love: Dad

Exploding in a blend of happiness and guilt, he quickly wrapped it shut and went to replace it when another bag caught his eye. He reached into see if it was the new Foreigner cassette and pulled out a small felt-covered box.

Inside a diamond ring sat nested in silk.

For: Rita~ Will you?

His eyes welled and spilled. In his mind spun the vision of his mother singing her favorite McCartney lyric:

“And in her eyes you see nothing

No sign of love behind the tears

Cried for no one

A love that should have lasted years.”

Revolver shoved the ring into his pocket and went outside to dig a really deep hole.

Try to Avoid Bad Words

(My round 10 entry into NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest, which mandated the story be no more than 600 words, and to be in the form of a voice mail)

“Ahem. Hello and good evening Mr. and Mrs. Palabra. This is Irving Skinner calling, Dean at the Northwestern Directional School for Boys. I’m sorry to trouble you during the dinner hour, but I was hoping I might be fortunate enough to actually speak with either of you as you’ve been terribly difficult to reach.

As you’ll recall, you enrolled your son, Mala, here in September. I’ve heard reports that your Volvo left a lengthy patch of warm rubber in front of his dormitory on drop-off day, and unfortunately the opportunity to introduce myself escaped more quickly than you did. On a side note, I appreciate the consistent and very gracious checks you’ve been sending in the envelopes with a large smiley face in place of a proper return address.

I have repeatedly attempted to reach you at the emergency contact numbers you provided the admissions office. When I call the number for Patty, I am asked to leave a message regarding my thoughts on “the driving habits of any of Highway Master’s over the road professionals.” I was forced to weigh the odds of you being in the trucking business, Mrs. Palabra, with the notion that you made a typographical error on that particular line...

I also tried the number listed as the best way to reach your husband, Tristan. I was promptly and loudly given the hours of operation for Pete’s Ping Pong, Pool and Pizza Pub. Out of morbid curiosity, I paid a personal visit to Pete’s, and yes, all of those wonderful things are indeed present under one roof, along with a surprisingly valid permit to serve food. Not present was Tristan Palabra.

As luck would have it, one of our students here has a parent working for the FBI, and he helped me track you down. Let me say for the record that I wouldn’t normally leave a message like this, but your evasive actions have left me no choice.

On the day Mala arrived at our prestigious school, we had our first recorded fire. In nearly 150 years of caring for and instructing the leaders of tomorrow, we’ve never had such an incident. Your son took full responsibility for the blaze during a group interrogation when he wrote “I started the fire” in magic marker on my pant leg. Our school psychiatrist assisted me with an impromptu counseling session for him that evening, during which, and to my complete amazement, he managed to start the second fire in school history.

The list of atrocities has been lengthy in his first two months here.  We’ve had several organized spray painting contests, a statue relocation into my office, and, in the most memorable incident at the Homecoming Football game, a solo streaking of the field that lasted seven...full...minutes.

The final straw occurred today, though. Over the course of the semester, despite all his tribulations, Mala has actually attended class. In between food fights and the sit-ins he leads in solitary protest of mandatory showering, your son has also begun to fancy himself a writer. He handed in an English paper this morning that shocked his teacher so deeply that she immediately left the classroom to bring it to me. She’d instructed the boys to write a poem about  the human heart, and for his part, Mala could only muster thirteen words. Let me read it to you:

Mine sped off in a fast Swedish coupe, and I never said goodbye.

Perhaps a visit is in order? Some of us here could probably use a hug.

Oh, and bring your checkbook...”

My entry in Round 9 of NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest.
The prompt, write a 600 word story that revolves around about a President, real or fictional.




Amigo’s New Hope

Fresh coffee drips while the girls pick through yesterday’s magnificent May Day arrangement. Each places a spring bud behind her ear; a pale pink Primrose for Malia and a shock-white Ghost Flower for Sasha. Kisses and goodbyes fill up the kitchen and then they exit. Neither acknowledges me under the table, my chin propped along Father’s shoe; my legs lazily splayed.

From down here, he doesn't look well. The nervous tapping of his unoccupied shoe narrowly misses my ear. His face is tired and drawn like an old scarf. He leans down, tousles the scruff of my neck and slowly pulls straight the curls there, ten or twenty times. He’s out of sorts and distracted- hasn’t flung my tennis ball once across the room, though I patiently wait.
Mother rises, kisses his forehead and whispers slowly against it, “Be calm. Breathe. You’ll make the right decision.” His smile for her is awkward at best; painful at worst.

He’s walking now and I tether. I adore his gravelly voice in my ears and his large hand on my neck. In the sprawling circular office I rest near him, but out of reach. I've learned that if I want to stay in here, I must stay out of the way. People fire in and out throughout the morning. Mr. Gates and Mr. Biden arrive first and never leave. Mrs. Clinton comes in just before lunch, straight from the helicopter that seems daily to invade my yard. I can’t stand the violent, spinning blades; howl at them with thunder. Sensing my agitation, she is quick to me; spending a minute around my ears, eyes locked with mine. I like her immensely.

Food and tea trays rush in and out during the long day, and three times I leave to stretch my legs in the grass. Mr. Biden joins me once while talking rapidly into his phone. The roses are in glorious bloom and I spend hours wandering around them, nuzzling, admiring and dozing off in the freshly cut grass.

It’s nearly 4:00 when I wander to the kitchen for water. The girls should have come home slinging their jackets and laughing, but they’re nowhere to be found. I’m rankled by all of it. Our routine is missing. When I trot back to his office, he’s halfway down the hall, heading to another room. He turns on his heels and calls me to follow with his eyes and hands.

The Situation Room is packed, but silent. “I need to watch this,” he says, and I spin under his chair and press my chin onto his shoe. Again, the scent of leather and coffee beans makes me heavy-eyed. People murmur and drone for a while. I hear the snap of a camera; raise my head quickly at their sharp claps and solemn hand raps on the tabletop.
“He’s dead,” someone says.  The room slowly empties.

Now, it’s very late and I’m curled up against Sasha on her bed. He watches her chest rise and fall in restful beats. He kisses her, pulls her covers up and tight, and turns his hands to me.

He’s different now.  Lines from this morning have softened; the dim light of the room imbues his face. A corner smile rises as he gently runs his hands along my back.

“After today, I hope to sleep as well as you do, Bo…Amigo’s New Hope, indeed” he whispers.

I can’t comprehend, but I understand. I doze away dreaming of Roses and Ghost Flowers; worn leather soles and Arabica beans.

A short story for NPR- His Floor

This is my submission to NPR's new short story (600 word) contest. It must be about someone coming to town, and someone leaving town. Wish me luck...

His Floor

Her nose drained down her lip, tried to freeze there, but dropped to a button on her coat. Winter’s gravity pulled everything toward the sidewalk. She imagined sleeping there, but the wind pushed her legs further down the street. Rusty pulled up in his truck, yanked his coat and briefcase toward him, and pled with her to accept the offer. This time, after three days of declining with soft smiles, she took it and climbed slowly into the warm cab.

He’d been watching her for weeks. He knew her patterns and paths, and could tell the time of day by her location on the street. He did what he knew he should have done before winter landed in Laramie, and offered her the space. She stared out the cracked windshield of the blue Ford and thought about what he’d just explained.

He had a house on Grand, had rehabbed the entire thing and, being single and in a college town, split it into two apartments. He lived in one and rented the other to grad students. But he never properly finished the basement to create a third unit suitable to rent. She could stay there if she wanted, free of charge. Burdette wasn’t afraid of Rusty, and never needed to look closely at him to judge his character. In 83 years, she’d heard enough voices to trust through tone.

The basement was dark, but heavily insulated and dry. He’d already moved a spare single frame and mattress into the corner with an unfinished nightstand next to it. He was in the process of stripping and re-staining it, and that told her he was sorry he didn’t have much more in the way of furniture. The tenants upstairs might loan her a spare chair or a radio. He said he would check with them, and she nodded and ran her hand under her eyes. Then she hugged him a bit and he hugged her back, warmly and without regard for the smell in her hair and clothes.

She came and went freely for the winter, awakened each morning straining her eyes to see the floor joists above her. The comforting cut wood suspended across the ceiling of the room, her strong and oak-scented shelter. Rusty brought her a grey porcelain mug full of coffee each morning before he left for work, and on finishing it, she departed for the 12^th Street Mission Kitchen. No matter the depth of the snow, the wind’s force or the pain in her bones, Burdette spent every day walking. Her legs went for loops of blocks, stopping in the Kitchen twice a day and always back to Rusty’s at dusk, falling asleep under the oak joists. Her ceiling was his floor.

In April, as the swell of snow slipped to rain and tulips, he sat down with the grey mug and touched her hand. He was quiet while she drank her coffee and looked up the joists. Her eyes dropped and caught his, reddened. He took off his glasses and spoke softly.

He’d been transferred to Cheyenne. More money and somewhere he’d always wanted to live. His renters upstairs had graduated and were moving to Omaha. The house was sold to a man, he explained, moving to Laramie with a family- two children and his pregnant wife. They needed a big house, so Rusty had sold it to them. He kissed her forehead and went to his truck.

Burdette drank her coffee in silence, and imagined the feeling of running her hand along that ceiling. She put on her coat and she walked.

2012 Breakdown: Fantasy Style

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