The poor decisions of Seattle Mariner GM Bill Bavasi are making Derek Zumsteg suffer. But instead of blaming Bavasi, Zumsteg considers a Buddhist idea: that the source of his suffering is actually his desire to win. Perhaps, he implies, he should heed the Eastern traditions and try to avoid desire.

Western tradition has a slightly different message. In the mythology of the West, desire also leads to suffering–but the suffering is worth it. Take the tragic story of Tristan and Iseult. Tristan drinks a potion that makes him fall in love with Iseult, who has been chosen to marry a king. Tristan is told that pursuing the affair will result in his death.

“If by ‘my death’ you mean this agony of love, that is my life!” responds Tristan. “If by my death you mean the punishment that we are to suffer if discovered, I accept that. And if by my death, you mean eternal punishment in the fires of hell, I accept that, too.”

In Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ“, Jesus faces a similar choice: to live a pleasant but unremarkable life, or to unite with God by suffering the crucifixion. He chooses–He wants–the path of suffering.

We who choose to watch baseball are also choosing to suffer. It would be simpler not to drink the love potion. Our Iseult, the World Series championship, is likely destined for some other king. So why watch? The whole affair is doomed, almost pointless.

Almost. But as Roger Angell said in an interview with Ken Burns,

…the people who tell me they hate baseball, they’re out of baseball–they sound bitter about it. But I think they sense what they are missing. I think that they feel that there’s something that they’re not in on which is a terrible loss. And I’m sorry for them.

Although I think baseball does suffering and failure better than any other sport, it’s not unique to baseball. The most remarkable thing I have ever seen in sports was the press conference where Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive. Everyone in the room was in tears, thinking that he was announcing his death. But Magic was not gloomy; instead, he seemed like he was positively looking forward to fighting the battle against AIDS.

That press conference was the Lou Gehrig speech of my generation. Magic Johnson was the first athlete I ever saw apply the true lesson of sports: you’re going to lose. You’re going to fail. You’re going to suffer. You’re even going to die. But if, despite that knowledge, you can still willingly take on the challenges life puts before you, you can be redeemed.

“Tejada, R U going 2 stay
N Oakland N still B N A?”
“I M gonna go
N Bcome N O
N not B N M or A J.”

Milton’s a gamble too bold.
They’re betting his health will not fold.
Only Ed Wade
Would chase such a trade
And think he’s turned Silva to gold.

Joe’s trading finger is itchy.
In pulling the trigger for Richie,
He’s hiring big guns
To scratch out more runs,
Going batty, and not quite as pitchy.

From Randy to Pedro goes Schilling.
I’m somewhat surprised that he’s willing.
In some other place,
He’d be the clear ace.
In Boston, he’s still second billing.

The Long and Hernandez duet go
To play in the new park at Petco.
The Padres should not say
Regarding Mark Kotsay
They’ll someday regret he was let go.

Locked in a doghouse, unfree,
The recent transaction for Lee
Allows Hee Seop Choi
To escape Illinois
By turning a Florida key.

Saint Lou
Ain’t Lou.

Beane’s outfield was so bad he felt he
Should make it less Lucy Van Pelty,
While JP’s poor mound
Was too Charlie Browned:
And thus was born Lilly-for-Kielty.

Although I don’t have any proof,
This Nathan-Francisco-and-Boof
Trade made today
Will make A.J. say,
“I miss hitting under a roof.”

Ok, this one is not gonna be a poem. It’s 2:39AM, and I’m tired.

As I wrote recently, I’ve been contemplating changing a few things about this site. In order for a blog to be successful, you need to have people coming back every day. Unfortunately, I simply cannot write baseball poetry every day, or I’ll go nuts. The verses need to come when they want to come.

So I have been planning to expand my writing to include essays. I won’t be doing any sabermetric analysis; there are a gazillion sites that do that. Instead, I intend to look at baseball aesthetically– a side of baseball that the blogosphere is neglecting, and an area I know something about. The science of sabermetrics can explain why teams win, but only the science of aesthetics can explain why fans watch.

I also plan to redesign the site, and add a few features that will make this site more fun and interesting, while still continuing with the baseball poetry. I was hoping to launch the new design around New Year’s.

One of those fun things I’ve been working on is a Periodic Table of Links. Thinking I had about a month and a half before it needed to be done, I was just sort of leisurely working on it. I started trying it out, to see if it was useful. One of the links was to Instapundit, the king of the blogosphere.

Well, even though I had no links to it on my site, Instapundit saw the URL in his referrer logs yesterday, and then linked to it himself. So much for security by obscurity. Suddenly, the whole blogosphere knew about it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the blogosphere at the time; I was outside painting a playhouse I’ve been building for my kids. Imagine my surprise when I logged on later and found that Instapundit had linked to a page of mine that was incomplete and nobody was supposed to know about!

Well, I’ve been scrambling ever since to make that page presentable. It was intended to be just my personal list o’links, like every other blog has, only with a humorous interface. But thanks to Instapundit, now it’s got some kind of Authority, with a capital A. People want to be on the list. It’s quite strange.

So I guess I’ll be accelerating those changes now; implementing them piece by piece instead of all at once. But that’s for tomorrow to worry about.

Now it’s bedtime. Maybe when I wake in the morning, Patrick Duffy will be in my shower. I’ll think to myself, “Barry Zito’s uncle! What is he doing here?” And since he’s all wet, I’ll wonder if it isn’t Barry Zito’s uncle at all, but the Man From Atlantis, and that will remind me of the weird episode where the Man From Atlantis goes to another planet where water is completely invisible and he runs into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which will make me try to remember whether Kareem is called Roger or Clarence in Airport, which will remind me of the angel named Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life, and I’ll think about jumping off a bridge into the water because I’m going insane from a lack of sleep, but the angel will tell me that I mustn’t do that, and I’ll say “what are you gonna do to me, make it so I’ve never been born?” And he’ll say, no, because the man in my shower is not the Man From Atlantis at all; it’s only Bobby Ewing; and so then I’ll ask Bobby Ewing to go get his brother J.R. for me, and I’ll ask J.R. to get that genie friend of his to blink me back in time so I never clicked on that Instapundit link on that half-completed page, so none of this really happened, and I went to bed early and got a good night’s sleep.

And all will be well, and all my friends will love me, and we’ll all gather around the Christmas tree and sing, “Should auld aquaintance be forgot…” And I’ll look up, wink, and say, “Good night, Clarence.”

Gillick, unlike guys like Sabean,
Would no deals he should have been mabean.
The good thing, I’m guessing,
About never yessing
Is never Giambi-for-Mabrean.

Will replacing Stand Pat with Bavasi
Make Seattle’s GM seem less lasi?
Though I’m sure that it might,
And their present looks bright,
Their future now looks very hasi.

This site’s first year is coming to an end
with 138 verses penned,
200 hits per day, bots excluded,
which is not a lot, so I’ve concluded
it just isn’t worth it, as it now stands,
to keep up the effort this site demands
in this format. Something has to be changed;
this site somehow has to be rearranged
into a new format that can attract
a bigger audience that it has lacked
so far. It must grow or it must die.
Stagnation means death. I am forced to try,
despite my doubts, something more bold and new.
I’ll break to figure it out. What to do?

Picture a vessel, adrift neverending oceans:
peacefully, it embarks, rocking…rocking…emotions
tranquilly ebbing, just easily riding along,
waves intoning longing lullabyes in song.
Envisioning nature’s calm aquatics, romantic nostalgia arouses completely inaccurate oceanic notions.

Undersea reality belies its nostalgic appeal.
Life offers only pain; environments reveal
rough options: defeat, ruin, injustice, grief–unsatisfied emotions. Zero
habitats offer luxury, leaving alternatives nobody desires. Sometimes, wistfully, one rare, true hero
can avoid suffering, thereby inspiring life’s lamentable ordeal.

Heroes are required. Regret, illness, shame,
heartache, evil: living life is no game
featured on Xbox;
but all needles, kicks, shocks–
real experiences. Defiance merits a name:

Marlin! Overcoming real dangers, even competitors are impressed:
giant obstacles neatly zapped, a lightweight exhibiting zest,
bearing each confinement keenly; escaping, then thanking
powers eternal; nurturing; never yanking
chains; achieving breakthrough results, excellence rightfully assessed.

Basically, unless Marlin pretends
courage overcoming nasty impediments naturally extends
life, our willpower evaporates. Little lies
replace evidence, disable memory. Optimism never dies,
lest existence ends.

Just when fans conquer their fear,
And start to think, “This is the year”,
Some Dent, Boone or Beckett
Will show up and wreck it:
Still Waiting for Goats to appear.

Nightmares arose from our innocent dreams,
From childish wishes on shimmering stars,
Once-cheerful faces disfigured with scars,
Our laughter transformed into ghastly screams,
Tricked by mirages which won’t quench our thirst,
Our seeds get planted but fail to take root,
Our hungers fed by hollow, rotten fruit–
We’re destined to want, and thereby we’re cursed.

Five more outs. Just five is all we needed.
We hoped. We prayed. We begged and we pleaded.
They never came, and now we’re left haunted
By ghosts who curse us for what we wanted.
Our curse is not to fail, it’s not to cry,
Our curse is just an echo: Why? Why? Why?

Rosters for Jack and Dusty:
Remlinger, Cruz, Guthrie,
Penny, Banks, Lofton,
Beckett, Bump, Simon,
Bako, O’Leary, Borowski,

Wood, Alfonseca, Tejera,
Mordecai, Conine, Cabrera,
Goodwin, Lee, Willis,
Rodriguez, Miller,
Clement, Sosa, Urbina,

Redman, Redmond, Ramirez,
Encarnacion, Veres,
Glanville, Harris,
Lowell, Karros,
Grudzielanek, Martinez,

Prior, Pierre, Pavano,
Gonzalez, Gonzalez, Zambrano,
Fox, Hollandsworth,
Helling, Farnsworth,
Looper, Alou, and Castillo.

Rosters for Little and Torre:
Mueller, Millar, Mirabelli,
Mussina, Matsui,
Arroyo, Dellucci,
Damon, Almonte, Merloni,

Boone, Posada, Giambi,
Garciaparra, Embree,
Johnson, Burkett,
Jackson, Pettitte,
Clemens, Kapler, McCarty,

Heredia, Lowe, Ramirez,
Timlin, Ortiz, Contreras,
Rivera, Rivera,
Soriano, Sierra,
Garcia, Suppan, Martinez,

Williamson, Wakefield, Wilson,
Williams, Walker, Wells, Nelson,
Flaherty, Varitek,
Jeter, Jones, Sauerbeck,
Weaver, White, and Nixon.

Snow travels lightly
But falls hard, stuck there, stranded,
Until the spring thaw.

The first round of playoffs begins
With the Yanks playing host to the Twins.
If Minnesota can score
This one won’t be a bore,
But if not, New York easily wins.

If the Marlins decide to omit
The chance to let Barry Bonds hit
They will still, in my mind,
Need somehow to find
A way to defeat Jason Schmidt.

Atlanta postseason? Ho hum.
Their presence is making me numb.
The Cubs! Holy Cow!
In the playoffs! Oh, wow!
Let’s hope Dusty won’t do something dumb.

If Hudson and Zito and Foulke
Get beat up by Manny’s big stroulke,
Oakland cries yet more tears
Having lost four straight years,
Unless Boston finds new ways to choulke.