CHIN MUSIC
Selected Columns from Boston Baseball
By Glenn Stout
(Copyright 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 by Glenn Stout. All rights reserved.)
ON THE DEATH OF TED WILLIAMS
I heard a rumor, but I don’t believe it for a minute. Ted Williams isn’t dead.
Close your eyes for a minute and look. Do you see it? All green and gorgeous? Ted’s house - Fenway Park. Mid-summer, in the sunshine. Ted Williams isn’t dead. He’s everywhere here.
I’ll show you. See up there, way, way, way up in right field? See the red seat? Ted’s still there — section 42, row 37, seat 21 - 502-feet from home plate. In 1946 he hit a home run that landed there. Well, sort of. It put a hole in the straw hat of an engineer from Albany.
Now look up a little farther. The Jimmy Fund sign. No one’s ever done more for the Jimmy Fund than Ted. Even when Ted was getting booed and fighting with the press and complaining about everything, that all stopped when it came time to go to a hospital and see a sick kid. See, when Ted was a kid and his mother spent all her time with the Salvation Army and his dad was away even more, Ted just about had to raise his little brother, Danny, all by himself. Then Ted ran away to play baseball and Danny got in trouble and then got cancer and died. Ted never said no to the Jimmy Fund.
Now look over to your right, on the façade of the roof. 9-4-1-8-42. The way it was before they changed it. The way it should be now.
Everybody knows number 9. That’s Ted. First, as ever.
He’s right next to number 4, Joe Cronin, Ted’s first manager. Ted drove Cronin and everyone else crazy in his first spring training. He never shut up and he never stopped thinking about hitting. But he was too young. When Cronin sent him down to the minors and a few vets gave Ted the business on his way out the door, Ted vowed he’d come back and make more than all of them put together. He was right, and he did.
Then there’s number 1, Bobby Doerr, who played with Ted in the PCL, the only guy on the team who could calm Ted down. When Ted talks about “my guys,” he means Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky. His guys.
And number 8, Yaz, Ted’s successor out in left field. At his first camp with the Sox Ted gave Yaz a long complicated lecture about hitting. When Ted finished and walked away, Yaz turned to a reporter, almost shaking, and admitted, “I can’t understand half of what he says . . . He scares me.” And then there’s number 42, Jackie, who should’ve played with Ted and would’ve if the men who ran the Red Sox had been half as smart as Ted was. You know what Ted said when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965, don’t you? He said, “Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as somebody else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.”
That’s right, that’s what he said. Ted Williams was the first guy, the very first guy to bring this up. And this was in 1966, when it wasn’t cool or p.c. to talk about such things, but he did anyway because that’s the way Ted was. He just thought it was right and he said it. Five years later the Hall of Fame took Ted’s advice.
Now look down a little lower. That’s right, look at the bullpens, where a lot of pitchers got a lot of extra work because of Ted. Tom Yawkey had them built in the winter after Ted’s rookie year so he could hit more home runs. Didn’t work, at least in 1940, when Ted tried too hard and didn’t hit a single home run there. The press called it Williamsburg, but the name never really took. It made the fans mad, if you can believe it. They thought Ted was getting special treatment. They were right of course. Ted’s always been special.
See the awning above the bench where the Red Sox pitchers sit? Out toward center field? Yeah. That where Ted’s last home run, number 521, the one that made John Updike famous, landed. Smacked it off Baltimore’s Jack Fisher in the eighth inning on September 28, 1960. Ted didn’t stop at home, didn’t tip his cap, just crossed home plate and ran into the dugout and sat there by himself.
Notice how big right field is? The biggest in baseball. That’s where Ted played his rookie year, 1939, all arms and legs and enthusiasm. Between pitches, he’d stand out there and practice his swing. When the fans cheered him, he’d pluck hit hat off his head by that little button and wave it like mad. Oh god, the fans. They loved him at first, and truth to be told, Ted loved them. That’s why he got so damn mad later, when he got booed. You have to care about something to get angry about it, and Ted cared.
Now look out to left field. That’s where they moved Ted in 1940, to save his eyes. It worked, and Ted learned to play the wall when it was part tin, part wood, part concrete, when it had dead spots like the parquet floor at the Boston Garden and the scoreboard was bigger and had National League scores, too. Ted played the wall well. This was before it was called the Green Monster. This was when it was covered with ads for Gem Blades and Calvert Gin.
Oh, but the fans in left. With the wall catching the sound behind him, Ted could hear everything they said. And the fans were so close, they could see Ted’s ears turn red. The thing’s they’d say – God, he’d get mad! But you know what? That’s what drove him, that’s what got him going. The things they said and stuff those writers, the Knights of the Keyboard, the stuff they wrote. Every word just made him madder. And then Ted would pick up the bat, he’d pick up the bat and walk to home plate and dig in and look out to the pitcher, another guy trying to make him look bad, and Ted would dig in, and then, and then . . .
You can’t help but look to home. That’s where Ted really lived, in that little 4×6 box on the first base side of home plate, focused on that invisible rectangle exactly seventeen inches wide above home plate from the his knee to his shoulder, and the square inch or so on his bat where he tried to hit the ball every time. Remember the picture in Ted’s book, The Science of Hitting, with all the different colored baseballs in the strike zone with Ted’s batting average on them when he swung at those pitches? When I first read that book when I was a kid, I thought Ted actually saw all those colored baseballs coming at him, and that he picked out the one’s with highest number to hit, and that’s why he was so good. Maybe he did he did see them.
Because no one else in baseball history ever spent more time at bat, saw more pitches, cursed more or swung more than Ted Williams. Forget about his off the chart 20-10 eyesight or the one-in-a-million reflexes. Ted Williams was about practice. Said so himself. Listen: “There’s never been a kid who hit more baseballs than Ted Williams.”
Think about that for a minute, because Ted might be right. When he was a kid, a little kid, he spent hours and hours at the playground, swinging a bat. And he never stopped, not really. I think that anytime Ted was doing anything else he loved, like fishing or flying, he was, in a way, still just swinging the bat, concentrating, looking for a strike, tuning out the world and focusing on only one thing, the only thing that mattered, what he was trying to do right now.
That’s the first, best, and only lesson of hitting right there. Hell, it’s the only lesson of doing anything.
Can’t you see him? Can’t you see him swing?
Ted Williams isn’t dead. Close your eyes, and there he is again, bigger than life.
Number 9. Swinging. Kissing it goodbye and walking down the street.
The greatest hitter who ever lived.
FENWAY NOTES (from 2005)
Fenway Park changed my life.
I grew up in Ohio and wasn’t a Red Sox fan, but I never had an opportunity to live in a city with a ballpark, and wanted to see major league baseball the real way. So in the fall of 1981, in the midst of a recession, only five months after graduating from college and finding myself back home in Ohio pouring concrete, I sold my trombone, packed up the Dodge Dart and a small U-Haul trailer and drove.
New York and Yankees Stadium was too scary. Chicago, with Comiskey and Wrigley, was too close to home. I parked in front of a $225 studio apartment on Comm. Ave. across the street from the Terrace Motel.
There were no jobs - this was before nearly twenty-five years of non-stop economic growth that has utterly changed the face of Boston - and after a month I was down to counting spare change. When I accidentally dumped a bowl of spaghetti on the floor, we ate it anyway. On Christmas Eve I got a job as a security guard at minimum wage and worked double shifts through the holidays to make the rent.
Boston was different then. Everything was gritty and worn. There was broken glass everywhere. The sidewalk outside every bar was stained with vomit. There were no yuppies. Boylston Street was abandoned at night. Punk rock still had a chance. The junkie next door once pounded his head on our door all night long and we never thought about moving out.
I lost the car on unpaid parking tickets but survived the winter and in the spring my girlfriend nabbed a job at BU. We scammed our way into some sub-leased staff housing in Kenmore Square, I wrote papers for BU and Harvard students for extra money. In 1982 I made $6000.
But I was right around the corner from Fenway Park. Perfect. Ten bucks got me into the ballpark and three beers. For another $10 I could go to the Rat, see some rock ‘n roll, drink two or three more beers and be home in five minutes. I probably went to two dozen games that year, plus a few more after the ushers abandoned the gates to the bleachers after the third or fourth inning and I walked in with the panhandlers and drunks who collected empty beer cups for a teaspoon of swill.
I was poor, but I had baseball. Walking up the runway into the bleachers changed my life. It was like going to grad school. I majored in Fenway Park, Kenmore Square, the Del Fuegos, poetry, baseball, and books. I fell in love. I saw, watched, learned, got curious, did research, read, stopped dreaming about writing and started doing it. Five years later I was freelancing, writing the sports column for Boston Magazine and beginning the work I still do today.
None of this would have happened had I not been able to go to Fenway twenty or thirty times a year, none of it at all. I went to work at the Boston Public Library. My universe stretched from Kenmore Square to Copley, with Mass Ave. as the axis. The city paid me to go to library school. In 1986 the Red Sox got popular. Winning became important. Prices rose. I started writing books. I was making more money and could afford to keep up with the price hikes, but Fenway was changing. It became impossible to get a good ticket unless you knew someone, paid in advance and had a life that followed a plot. Passion flagged into predictability. All of a sudden Fenway Park was like Fanueil Hall, all tourists and loud talk. Fans wore better sweaters, did the wave, and got up and down all the time, said the same things over and over. The bleacher seats had backs, were reserved and usually sold out in advance. Going to a game took more planning than going on vacation.
Fenway changed my life again.
There was no reason to stay. In 1993 I quit my job to write full-time and moved away. I didn’t miss Fenway, but I did miss what it had once been. It no longer told me anything authentic about Boston, except to underscore the fact that nothing much in Boston was authentic.
Two years ago, I moved again. Now I’m in Vermont, a long way away. And all I remember about the last time I was at Fenway Park is that I sat in a seat I couldn’t afford with 35,000 people I no longer recognized, that somebody won, and somebody lost, and what had once brought me to Boston was gone.
I wonder if it changes anyone’s life anymore.
FERVANT PITCH (from 2005)
Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older and don’t play much myself anymore, but the more I look at baseball the more I look for signs of the genuine and authentic. The more I look the less I see of that in “Baseball as presented by MLB.” Increasingly, it seems that there is less and less room in MLB for plain old, unfettered, un-hyped baseball. It’s mostly just programming now, some “reality show” pandering to ratings and merchandising. The game is now unabashedly and proudly run by cloying go-getters with management degrees who yearn to “grow the business,” players produced by p.r. firms and all that nonsense. Success is measured not so much by wins and losses, time well spent at the ballpark or napping on the couch, but by “maximizing revenue,” “market penetration” and “branding.” This crass manipulation even filters down to fans, perhaps here more than anywhere else, where too many suddenly follow the same stupid stereotype, buy all the crap and mouth saccharine sweet nothings like they do in that god-awful movie that made me want to go on a spree killing and take a cheese grater to Jimmy Fallon’s face. And that was just from seeing the promos.
Fortunately, this game hasn’t all been bought and sold and wrapped up in an official MLB authorized package, not yet anyway, at least not up here. My daughter, who just turned nine years old, is playing Little League for the first time. I’m happy to report that after a couple of weeks in the backyard and two sloppy practices standing around on a dirt field with a broken backstop, no mound, flat orange plastic bases and the snow-capped Green Mountains in the background, real baseball seems to be doing just fine.
Apart from a year of six-year old girls’ softball she was never interested in playing before, but this spring, all of a sudden, she is. Her reasons have nothing at all to do with the Red Sox, annoying animated NESN graphics or anything decided at some meeting of MLB lawyers. I couldn’t get her to watch a game on TV unless Harry Potter played “quidditch” between each half-inning, and even then I think she’d read through the boring parts and make me turn off the sound.
I think much of her sudden interest in the game stems from the fact that it is spring, her friends are playing, and we both I like being outside without wearing long johns. This is why 98% of us ever started playing in the first place, and MLB has yet to find a way to cheapen or infect that. Baseball, at its very best, is just a way to get us outside with our kids anyway, and as much as I like watching the game myself, I think the millions of hours we collectively spend watching and/or listening each year would be better spent in the backyard or in the park. Just once, I’d like to see MLB cancel a game because the weather’s too nice.
I have tried to teach her baseball, failed miserably, and wisely have given up. Like most kids, she knows better, for baseball is a game not really taught but accidentally learned on one’s own. She likes trying to throw two balls simultaneously, one in each hand. She likes to spin around after swinging the bat whether she hits it or not. And the discovery of the “sno-cone” snatch while playing catch has increased her pleasure immeasurably, if not her effectiveness. I go along with all this, because when you’re nine years old the only measure of anything is in smiles. When she gets dizzy, the balls collide in the air or one inexplicably sticks in the web of her glove, her smiles makes Drew Barrymore’s look like Drew Bledsoe’s.
At practice the other day, I took the on-deck hitters behind the backstop to hit wiffle balls off a tee. After aiming each child the right direction and putting the right end of the bat in their hands, I’d ask their name, what grade they were in, and what their favorite team was.
They all knew who they were, and most could tell me what grade they were in. But when I asked them to name their favorite team, nothing. No Red Sox, no Yankees, no glimmer of recognition. No amount of marketing pizzazz and saturation advertising had made it down to their level. All I got was the wrinkled brows and puzzled looks of the innocently and gloriously oblivious.
Except for one kid. He thought hard, and then with a very serious look on his face, he looked up at me and told me the truth.
”Hot Wheels.”
Take that, MLB.
GAME OVER (from 2003)
Funny, how this game grows on you.
This spring I followed in a long tradition of paternal guilt and helped coach my daughter’s seven and eight-year-old softball team, although I’m not sure if either “coach” or “softball” were the right words, at least at the beginning. But there was no question about one thing; those girls were definitely seven and eight-years-old.
I realized this immediately at our first practice. For the first time ever, I was surrounded by players who had longer hair than I did and wore butterfly earrings and sparkly sneakers. Two, maybe three, put the glove on the correct hand every single time and held the bat with the knob end down. These were obviously our “cagey veterans.” Another tip off was that these grizzled few chewed bubble gum, wore braids and didn’t have to ask what a shortstop was.
For some reason, in our town little girls bat against live pitching (thrown by the coaches), whereas the boys, with their delicate constitutions and big league dreams, hit off a tee.
I was sure this spelled disaster. After all, I had spent the spring pitching to my daughter and then picking up the ball after she missed it and ran around the bases anyway. The kid can read Harry Potter like a fiend but thrown objects seemed like something from another planet.
But that first day she dug in and swung at the first pitch and hit the enormous bright yellow ball with all her might - directly into her face.
A scream, then tears, and, I was certain, psychological damage that would someday cost me thousands. But then a funny thing happened. Peer pressure. She got back in and that was the only time all year a tear was spilled on the field. Well, almost.
After a few “practices” (although it was really impossible to call them that since practice denotes improvement), the big day arrived. Uniforms! And a parade!
Up until then the girls spent most of their time standing around looking bored and waiting for a ball (”Please, God”) to be hit. But put uniforms on them and march them in a parade and the real goal, giggles, start right up. I canceled the time-share for the psychiatric couch.
Then the games began. Everybody bats and plays all over the place and when the last batter hits, everybody gets to race around the bases, which all they really want to do anyway. No one keeps score - a good thing - since not even Bill James can add that fast.
But even when you are seven and eight-years-old, you get up for the game. In practice, no one had ever fielded a ball and thrown a runner out. On the rare occasion when both fielding and throwing took place, the rest of the equation, a never before seen skill called “catching” was also required. I figured the odds of all three happening in succession, at the right base, before the runner got there, were about on par with the Red Sox winning the World Series.
This too, may now be a possibility. For in the heat of the game, these little girls who couldn’t run, catch, throw, field, hit or hit with power, all had the that unspoken sixth tool, the really big one that makes the all others seem really dumb. They played. And then they made the plays, hitting, fielding, catching, and throwing, just like real players.
Okay, not very often, but often enough so at the end of the first three-inning game, which only took approximately seventeen hours during a driving rainstorm while I tried to stay upright and awake, my daughter said, “Daddy, that game seemed like it only took a minute.”
She was right, of course, because when you are seven and having fun and cheering and running around the bases and wearing a uniform and BEAMING every time you do something right, like stop at first base, time does fly. That’s what happens when you PLAY ball, which is something each one of these kids could do better from the start than any of us could have hoped to teach them.
But we were moving away and had to miss the last week of the season. That made me sad, because I liked seeing all those smiley faces and tying all those shoes and making bad jokes while giving everybody “high-fives” from the coach’s box. And along the way every single time they played they all got better and even better than that, had more fun.
It wasn’t until after our last game that anyone cried again. The girls knew we were leaving and somebody made a cake and brought brownies and soda and all the girls signed one of those big yellow softballs in their very best handwriting and gave it to me.
I was afraid my daughter might start bawling, but she had fun to the end, giggling and still playing while saying goodbye to friends she would never see again, little girls that I will never, ever forget.
I didn’t let them see, but the only tears were mine.
BECAUSE I CAN (from 2001)
All I want to be is the front man, because I’ve got some plans. Someone else will take care of the filthy lucre because I sure don’t have the money. Because when I’m installed as the Red Sox new CEO, there’s gonna be a few changes.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to fire anyone, at least right away. Making people squirm is one of the perks of being a real live big league CEO and I want to enjoy watching people who detest me kiss my ass for a while.
The first thing I’m gonna do is start talking. One of the real tragedies of this team is that neither the current CEO, GM or MGR want to talk, and when they do, they don’t say anything. Just try to shut me up. My stock answer will be far more memorable than “manager’s decision,” “professional hitter,” or “Whatever you say, Bud.” My answer to just about everything will be “Because I can,” because, well, I can.
I plan on being one of those “attention to detail” kinds of guys. Like the details on that logo on the left field wall, the one that says “1901″ and “2001″ and “100 SEASONS.” I plan on finding out who’s responsible and then ordering them to sit down and actually count the number of seasons the Red Sox have been playing baseball - BECAUSE THIS IS SEASON ONE HUNDRED AND ONE! IT IS NOT SEASON 100! It’s 101! THAT’S ONE-ZERO-ONE! If the same guy approved that drawing last year of Fakeway with the five infielders, well, maybe I’ll fire one person. I mean, this is basic arithmetic.
And speaking of basics, let’s move on to English grammar. These two sample sentences from RedSox.com indicate another job action: “Tris Speaker — “Spoke” was born in a center fielder’s mold, which he broke soon after he retired in 1928.” And “The revered sportsman had a strong financial backing, but lived with the heart and admirable disposition of a simple fan of the game.” WARNING: Writing is for trained professionals. Do not try this at home.
But enough of that. Back to dear old Fakeway, AKA New Ballpark. I’m gonna end the charade. This is a bigger fraud than the signing of Steve Ontiveros. The new ballpark is dead dead dead dead dead dead dead. The Red Sox know it, the media knows it, the bankers know it, Bud Selig knows it, Tom Finneran knows it. That’s a fact, and this is no joke. I’m gonna make my minions lick the concrete walkways in retribution for perpetuating this shameful deceit that has caused hundreds and hundreds of people to worry about their homes and livelihoods and wasted millions on consultants and shrimp. Because I can. And because it’s right.
Next act: Ticket price equity and full disclosure. The thousands of season tickets that the club sells to ticket agencies for scalping will be revoked and given to charity. Lux box prices will be doubled. 600 Club prices will be quadrupled. All grandstand tickets in sections 1 thru 5 will be clearly marked “This seat sucks” and sold for ten bucks, because they do suck and it is a sin to sell the worst seats for so much.
I’m also pulling down Carlton Fisk’s “27″ and putting up Tony C’s “25.” Because I can and because it’s right. And I’m restoring 9-4-1-8-42 in proper order. Carlton can go back up next year. Right after I put up Luis Tiant’s “23″ and give him a cushy no-show job.
Vendors will be allowed to resume their old places outside the park. Competition is good.
I’m opening the gate between the bleachers and the grandstand. It’s a god-given right that if you buy a ticket you should be able to wander around park and try to sneak into better seats. Beer cups go back up to 12 ounces. And I’m opening the park an hour earlier so kids can see all of batting practice.
I’m also taking out the first five rows of seats behind the screen for use by the disabled. Because I can, because it’s right and because I’m sick of seeing people in great seats others would kill for talk on cell phones all game long.
That canned music goes. Guys wearing suits on the field go. Vice presidents go. The Coke bottle goes. The milk bottle goes. John Hancock goes. Coors Light goes. Wally goes.
Johnny Pesky stays and gets to do whatever he wants for as long as he wants to. And the scoreboard guys get their own ticker so they can finally update the scores.
On the first day of the years’ longest road trip I’m inaugurating a week-long, dawn to dusk marathon of amateur baseball played at Fenway by local teams. It’s just grass, and it grows back. Really.
That’s just a start, but don’t worry, I’m not gonna change everything. There’s all sorts of venerable old traditions I’m gonna preserve. Like not stealing bases. Hiring yes-men. Trading away good young pitching. And whispering lies and sweet nothings to Scribbler McMouthpiece.
Because I can.
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (from 2003)
I miss the Red Sox.
This feeling does not come because I have moved 300 miles away. In fact between the Internet, the satellite dish, the internal combustion engine and the telephone, I am as close to this team as I have ever been. My kind of longing has nothing to do with physical distance.
I miss the Sox because I don’t much recognize this team, this park or its fans anymore. That’s not altogether bad, for there were vast portions of the old Sox, the Sox I lived with for the better part of the last three decades, that are far, far better left in the past. But when I look at this team, now something has disappeared that isn’t coming back. Ever. It is as the Sox have been taken over by the lizard aliens that can only be seen with those special sunglasses. Something essential and genuine is gone and has been replaced by something remote, premeditated and programmed. Call them the Stepford Sox.
Without dwelling in nostalgia, back in the day the best thing about the Red Sox was that they made me laugh. They were as predictably and determinedly entertaining as any team in baseball. Victory and loss took place simultaneously and often disguised as one another. Heroes and goats intermingled (see Stanley, Bob). The Red Sox had personality and were a genuine hoot, sometimes stupid and never funnier than when they were being serious (see Clemens, Roger aka “Possessed Rebel”). Victory was a delightful surprise, never more so than when they actually won when they were supposed to.
I think it was the organization’s almost complete and utter lack of self-consciousness that made them this way. Oh, they were serious, all right, but the kind of serious that either made you shake your head, grab a drink, or fall to the floor laughing. Under past regimes myopia was a way of life and for all the bad that sometimes caused, at the same time the Red Sox - players, fans and front office - were always doing things so completely and utterly clueless it made them somehow endearing, like watching a bunch of kids play by themselves on the sandlot. Now they’re all doing Tom Ermanski drills.
Even Fenway Park leaves a funny taste. It costs as much as an amusement park and produces the same kind of forced pleasure. Oh it’s a grand and glorious place, and I don’t have any problem with much of the stuff they’ve done recently, at least on the inside. But a theme park mentality has taken hold, all the way from the ghastly lawn mower art on the field to the way too perky “Fenway Ambassadors.” Fenway’s under glass now, all false fronts forced smiles, like Main Street at Disneyland. In the new media guide the Red Sox refer to Fenway as a “product,” and promise to “preserve all that’s good about Fenway Park and take that experience to a higher level.” How can something be taken and preserved at the same time?
Personally, I blame that most loathsome of phrases, “RED SOX NATION,” and all it entails, the jackboot, fascist connotations that are unintentional but also spot-on accurate. Perhaps the economics of the modern game has made it this way, but there seems to be a stultifying conformity in evidence among Red Sox fans that never used to be detectable. In fact, that was one of the best things about Red Sox fans - no two were alike - and now no two are not. When I watch the Red Sox now and scan the faces in the stands, a more joyless crew is hard to imagine. Oh, they cheer, but everyone seems so serious and is paying such close attention and their reactions appear so inextricably bound to whether the Sox are winning or losing there may as well be a leather-clad dominatrix on the mound giving out orders. For the first time in team history there is an enforced sameness to all things Red Sox, from the predictability of the “spontaneous” chants to that godawful “Pledge of Allegiance” knockoff promo on NESN. Why don’t we just dispense with the national anthem altogether and play that instead?
Everything is for sale, absolutely everything, particularly the emotion of the fans. “Would you like two “Long Sufferings,” one “Calvinist,” and a couple of “Curses” with your ballgame, sir? You are the product now, not this game. This season has barely started but your experience of it has already been optioned and sold as a prepackaged story line to serve ESPN, MLB Productions, a half-dozen books, three films and a string of tired celebrities grabbing face time in their final fifteen minutes. Get in line or get out of the way.
Makes me want to take out my rake and burst it like Bob Stanley once did with beach balls in the bullpen. Those were the days.
Next month Glenn Stout plans to complain about sunshine, birthday parties and puppies.