Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: Goodbye, Sparky

Tag: self-indulgence


5Nov 2010
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Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: Goodbye, Sparky

Ex-Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson

I rarely have the chance to wax on non-football related material during the season, but the recent passing of Sparky Anderson urges me to do so.  As a youngster growing up just outside of Detroit, Sparky Anderson was the leader of the only team I knew to exist.  Before I understood what Major League Baseball really was, Sparky was the face of the Tigers.  His name was synonymous with baseball.  I didn’t even realize that other managers existed.  I assumed he was the Commissioner of Baseball, the Emperor of Everything I Wanted to Be.

See, when I was growing up, I was certain that I would play baseball for a living.  I was hooked on baseball as soon as I was old enough to hit off a tee.  I still remember my first baseball card.  Actually, it was a set of baseball cards; my parents took me to a sports memorabilia store and bought me a Topps team set of the 1987 Detroit Tigers, including guys like Chet Lemon, Tom Brookens, Matt Nokes, Mike Heath, and Darrell Evans.  During the summers, I would go outside and play baseball with my neighborhood friends.  After coming inside, I would invariably plop down in front of the television to watch an afternoon game, whether it was the Tigers, the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox, or the Atlanta Braves.  And if I didn’t have a Little League game that night, I would force my dad to grab his glove and play catch out in the street.  Once it got dark, I would watch more baseball.

I was the type of kid who wrote down starting baseball lineups.  From memory.  For every single team in the league.

My dream of playing in the big leagues dissipated in middle school.  I went from being a dominant Little League pitcher to a kid unable to throw a ball without severe pain shooting from my shoulder to my forearm.  The doctor told me to take the summer off from playing baseball.  Instead, I moved from pitcher/shortstop to playing first base full-time.  That way I wouldn’t have to throw the ball much, and in practice, I could toss the ball underhand back to the pitcher.

Baseball was my first sport.  I loved the feeling of striking somebody out, turning a double play, making a diving catch, sliding safely into home.  Every time I think of baseball, I think of the Detroit Tigers and old Tiger Stadium.  I think about how my grandpa used to have the Tigers game on every time I visited, and he’d make a remark about how “Ol’ Sparky” threw a fit at the umpires for a bad call of one kind or another.  Then Sparky would amble back to the dugout, and the game would continue.

Yep, there was nothing like watching Sparky Anderson and the Tigers as a kid.  Back when it was all balls and strikes and home runs and stolen bases and umpires kicking dirt.  Back when Grandpa told me about the exploits of “Ol’ Sparky.”

Rest in peace.

18Jun 2010
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Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

If Harry Potter had “relations” with Hermione Granger, met up with a Bret Easton Ellis character, found a Portkey to the Wood Between the Worlds, and then faced off with a ‘roid raging Lord Voldemort . . . that might begin to approximate the events in The Magicians.

A Brooklyn high school student named Quentin has an unhealthy level of interest in a magical place named Fillory, which is essentially C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. With few friends and not much of a relationship with his family, Quentin finds a Hogwarts-like school named Brakebills. He finds that he fits in well with the school and some of the other students, and being infatuated with magic, Quentin devotes himself to the tedium of learning magic. Unlike J.K. Rowling’s Potter, however, Quentin isn’t exactly a leader or “The Chosen One.” He’s just a regular wizard with a shortage of self-esteem.

Amid love triangles, drug usage, and heavy alcohol consumption, a fellow student named Penny finds a magic button (sounds familiar?) that transports its possessor to the Neitherlands, an endless city of fountains that are gates to other worlds. Penny convinces Quentin and a few of their friends to visit the Neitherlands in the hopes of finding Fillory. Once Quentin finds the enchanted land that he thought was only the figment of an author’s imagination, he’s tasked with a mission to save Fillory’s equivalents of Narnia’s Aslan – two rams named Ember and Umber.

Holding degrees in comparative literature from both Harvard and Yale, Grossman doesn’t attempt to hide the derivative nature of his novel. The appearances of some of his characters and, especially, locations are almost laughable at times. He might as well be Gregory Maguire elaborating on the story of Snow White. But I suppose Snow White having a sex drive and an addiction to painkillers might sully the children’s story. The story was so dependent on the series by Lewis that I stopped mid-novel to familiarize myself with The Chronicles of Narnia, the reading of which had somehow alluded me as a child.

One issue I had with The Magicians was the inconsistent pacing. At 402 pages, there are bound to be a few slow spots. The vast majority of the novel takes place in Brooklyn and Brakebills, with only the last sliver depicting the more exciting Fillory. Only the occasional exciting event occurs at Brakebills, and while developments happen with sufficient frequency, there is a bit of a lull in the middle. Fortunately, the last section of the novel flies by at a breakneck pace, concluding with one of the most terrifying fantasy scenes I’ve read. Lord Voldemort could learn a thing or two from Grossman’s villain.

Overall, The Magicians was a fantastic read. Not only did Grossman build an excellent amount of tension, but he also has an impressively deep vocabulary. I’m a fairly intelligent individual, but more than a handful of times, I found myself cracking open a dictionary to keep up with the language. The climax left me wanting more, which is the perfect time for an author to close up shop.

12May 2010
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Self-Indulgent Post of the Week: Matthew Albanese

Matthew Albanese photography
The most recent Paste magazine highlighted the art of Matthew Albanese, a New Jersey native who creates landscape art from household items and the contents of his spice rack. True story. The above photograph isn’t an actual twister blowing through the Great Plains. The miniature set was created from steel wool, moss, and ground parsley.

There’s more neat stuff featured on Albanese’s website, like a Mars scene made from paprika and a volcano built from tile grout and cotton. Since I have no artistic skill whatsoever, I’m often enthralled by people who make unique art. Mr. Albanese seems to fit that category.