It’s the first baseball broadcast of the spring. The veterans play a few innings, then step aside to let the youngsters have a turn.

“James Loney is just 19 years old,” says the TV announcer.

“19 years old!” says my daughter, looking up from her dolls. She had been ignoring the game until now.

My daughter is 3. She is impressed by 19. It still sounds like a kid’s age to her, but it’s older. Older means being-allowed-to-do-things. Older also means bigger, and bigger means being-able-to-do-things. James Loney is able to do things.

“Wow, 19 years old!” she repeats.

Back when I was 19, I–
  Oh, geez. I’m twice as old as Loney, aren’t I?
Another new milestone: you know you’re getting old when–

Loney swings. His follow-through reminds me of David Justice. Justice and I are the same age. Justice retired from playing over a year ago.

Sigh. Sometimes, older means not-being-able-to-do-things.

Later, my daughter maneuvers into her booster seat for supper. As she’s settling in, she sings from the D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song:

“Leo Durocher, Leo Durocher,
Starts to wiggle and to twitch.”

She has no idea who or what a Leo Durocher is, other than something that wiggles and twitches. Heck, I don’t really know, either. He was before my time, too.

But her little song makes me smile. Baseball is back, and the generations have resumed their conversations with each other. Suddenly, the world seems like a whole lot less lonely place to live.

And why he left your court, the gods themselves,

Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

–William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act III, scene II

Wotting. To wot. Chaucer used the word hundreds of times, Shakespeare used it 31 times. Now the word has vanished from the English language.

“To wot” meant “to know”, but there was once a distinction between the two. Why wot left our tongue, the gods themselves, wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

Swedish has two related words, “veta” and “kunna”, which retain the distinction. “Veta” means “to know that“, while “kunna” means “to know how“. If you’re describing a fact, you use “veta”. If you’re describing a skill, you use “kunna”. Knowing that Josh Beckett is a pitcher and knowing how to pitch are two different kinds of knowledge.

I have spent hours working on an essay trying to describe a particular distinction in the brain. This morning I realized the distinction is perfectly summarized by the difference between “veta” and “kunna”. In English, it’s a struggle to differentiate these two types of knowledge. A Swede will get it right away.

I know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claims that people are limited in their thinking by the features of their native language, is out of fashion. But from my experience, some ideas just more naturally come to mind in one language than another.

Just for fun, here are some other Swedish language features which lack a direct English counterpart:

• Dörrarna stängs. If you ride the Stockholm subway, you’ll hear this phrase. It means “The doors are being closed.” Somehow in English, there’s a feeling that “…by the driver” is being left out of the sentence. In Swedish, you can use a transitive verb and an object without implying a missing subject.

  I often wonder if this influences our culture, that we so eager to find blame for everything that goes wrong because we can’t use transitive verbs without implying that there’s some act of willpower behind it. A car was totalled, the driver was injured…by whom? Sometimes, humbug just happens, and there is no subject for the verb.

• Jobbigt. This is a great adjective. It means “a lot of hard work.” Did you do your homework? No, it was too jobbigt.
• Tro, tycka, tänka. These verbs all translate as “to think”, but they are three different kinds of thinking.

  “Tro” is a belief about facts, whose truth is independent of your belief. “I think the Marlins won the World Series last year.” Even if I think the Tigers won last year, the fact still remains that the Marlins won.

  “Tycka” is a belief or opinion whose truth depends on your belief. “I think your hat is lovely.” If I don’t think the hat is lovely, the hat is not lovely.

  “Tänka” is a thought process. “I think about baseball every day.”

  In English, the line between fact and opinion feels fuzzy. In Swedish, it’s clear. When I hear English speakers confusing opinion with fact, I end up wishing we had this distinction in English.

• Kissenödig. Another great adjective. It means “in need of peeing”. I’m kissenödig, where’s the bathroom?
• Lagom. This adjective is everything you need to know about Swedish culture. It means “just the right amount”, or “not too much, not too little.” In America, the ideal state of being is the richest person with the biggest house. In Sweden, the ideal is to be lagom. You want to be lagom rich with a lagom home. Even if you are the best, like Björn Borg or Ingemar Stenmark or Peter Forsberg, you still are expected to act as if you’re only lagom successful.

Well, I tycker that this entry is lagom long. It’s getting jobbigt to write more. I’m kissenödig. Dörrarna stängs.

Names! We’ve got names!
And for all the steroid claims,
Let us go and cast our blame!
They’ve been blemishing our game!
They brought baseball so much shame!
Let us burn them down in flame!
Let’s take Sheffield and take Bonds
And go throw them into ponds
To see if they will drown!
Or maybe run them out of town
And then hunt them west and east,
Like a scary, vicious beast
Or an evil undead zombie!
Let us hound this vile Giambi!
Let us villify Velarde
Who would imitate Joe Hardy
To secure a higher level
And sell his soul off to the devil.
Santiago and Benard
Should be made to suffer hard
All feathered and all tarred
Their careers forever marred
For the image that they scarred,
For their blatant disregard
Of baseball’s hallowed yards,
Let us torch their baseball cards
‘Til all that’s left is charred,
Just charcoal, dust and ash.
Throw these people in the trash,
And then–

And then?

We’ll be positively sure
That baseball will be pure.
Forever.

Blissful–
This will
never

occur
again.

So I’ve been working on my essay about aesthetics, and it’s taking longer than I expected, and I suddenly realize I’m writing the word “so” about twice a paragraph. So I guess we all have our personal language tics. So I guess I’m no Peter Gabriel.

So I finished last in the Primey balloting for best baseball weblog. I’m not surprised. My finishing first would be akin to a cartoon winning the Best Picture Oscar. The award for sites like mine is simply to be nominated. So congratulations to the winners.

So speaking of cartoons, I made one while my brain got stuck on the aesthetics essay. It’s a fanimutation with a baseball twist. It’s actually a “translation” of a Swedish fanimutationish flash video called “Ansiktsburk”, which in turn is a “translation” into Swedish of a Lebanese pop song from the early 1980’s.

So if you have Flash 6.0 or greater, you can view my cartoon, “Fur Hat” (300kb).

Of players who aren’t in conformance
of rules that prohibit performance-
enhancement and doping,
I really am hoping
they’re caught and it leads to reformance.

I have a confession to make. I’m actually starting to enjoy some of the spam I get now. As spam gets closer and closer to real human writing to fool the spam filters, it’s starting to fool me, too. I’ve already written one poem using spam as a model.

Here’s the text content of a spam email I got today. It sounds like a poorly translated confessional poem:

That could well be the answer. I’m cold, you said, staring at the continuation we had to feel through yesterday. (Things were looking worse.) I’d thought it was sad to hate the forest the way she’d done.

A house full of condiments and no food. He wanted to know more. What is the answer? (I’m loving the way you walk with me so quietly, contentedly.)

I can never describe the walk back to my truck. Love what you do and do what you love And for ten minutes, he was a hero. It was time…

(I’m loving the way you walk with me so quietly, contentedly.) Can you tell me the answer? she asked. I’m evil. The same thing we do every night, he replied. A house full of condiments and no food.

This cracked me up. Which leads me to a question: would spam be any less evil if it actually contained messages with some artistic merit?

Hmm…I wonder if I could sell my Random Diamond Note Generator technology to a spammer? Imagine getting spam like this:

Many fans are betting that the Phillies will shift Jimmy Rollins to another position, perhaps second base, but that could change if Marlon Byrd consolidates his debt more quickly than expected, or if Todd Pratt, who, after receiving new medication, can finally learn to hit a changeup, which he is practicing to do off of satellite TV images of Eric Milton and Billy Wagner throwing batting practice.

On second thought, never mind…

today my
thoughts won’t
crystallize

Winter sport snowing complaining
Temper too short frozen raining
Bone blood the days
Report ears a phrase
Pitchers and catchers spring training.

incoherence
fractured ice on a melting stream

Ice: my true nature
is wet. Water: I long for
evaporation.

the air is full of himself

Miscellaneous jibber-jabber:

I’ve now got a beta version of the 2004 Fantasy Draft Simulator available. I’ll take a break from it for awhile to work on presenting my art theory, and then I’ll finish it off in another week or so.

I’ve added more Humbug Soup. The latest one, #4, is entitled What the Dodgers have with DePodesta.

There’s a nice discussion about baseball songs over at Baseball Primer. My two daughters (ages 6 and 3) have a strong opinion on this. They both agree that “Move Over Babe (Here Comes Henry)” is by far the best baseball song ever. “D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song” places a distant second. Hmm…I better go make sure my theory about art can explain this…

[UPDATE:] My wife thinks my six-year-old likes “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” second best, and that my three-year-old prefers “I Love Mickey”. I guess I was probably projecting my own preference on them. Well, at least I was right about “Move Over Babe”. The music is from a CD called Baseball’s Greatest Hits. My kids love to listen to it. I highly recommended the CD for baseball fans, especially those with kids. But you might have to burn a copy without the Tommy Lasorda bleepfest, unless you want to try to explain it to them.

I’m going to try a little experiment. I’m going to translate some poems, not just into English, but into Baseball. I suspect the result will be an exercise in corniness and cliché, but that’s never stopped me before.

This translation is of a poem by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. It’s called “En värld är varje människa” (Every person is a world). After learning that Alex Rodriguez will be a New York Yankee, it seems appropriate, somehow.

Every person is a team, with a roster
full of egos in silent rebellion.
Each player is a prisoner
inside a thousand possible battles
against a thousand possible enemies, and these battles
though incomplete, truly exist,
as real as I am. And the stars
and superstars who rule these possibilities
are themselves trapped
inside some larger entity whose ego and soul
they understand as little as we understand
theirs. Their losses and victories
paint the colors of our emotions.

The clear evening sky sparkles.
Beyond the horizon, a mighty steamship passes by.
We’re unaware of it until the swell hits the shore,
first one, then another, and many more,
the waves crashing and rumbling until everything settles down
as it was before. And yet, everything is different.

A strange anxiety casts a shadow on us,
telling us that a voyage has begun,
that a possibility has been unleashed.

Do baseball statistics need better marketing? I don’t know. Do foul poles need better engineering? Does infield dirt need better tech support?

Bah! I hate February.

Months and months of winter. Indoors, confinement. Outdoors, concealment, under layers of jackets and ski hats and scarves. Long dark nights. Clouds, rain, snow and cold.

Every year from mid-February through early March, I suffer the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. My emotions bubble to the surface, ready to pop at the slightest touch. I get extremely irritable. I get angry for almost no reason. Setbacks make me depressed. Sometimes I even have panic attacks.

The same brain chemistry that makes you sleepy at night and alert in daylight causes SAD. A long winter with little sunlight builds up a light deficit in my brain. In February, the debt becomes due. My mind goes into a haze.

It’s not so bad here in America. In Sweden, where I’ve spent three winters of my life, the symptoms are far worse. That far north, the sun only spends a few hours each day in the sky. It peeks up over the horizon and drops right back down again. It provides no warmth. It’s just a little yellow dot off in the distance.

In the fogs of February, the sun is an abstraction. Joy is an abstraction. We can talk about them, but they are not real to me. The only thing that seems clear is that full control of your thoughts and feelings is an illusion.

The most religious experience I’ve ever had was after my first winter in Sweden. One day in late March, I walked outside. The temperature was probably about 10 degrees C (50 degrees F). The snow was melting all around. I looked up, and was stunned. I could actually feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

A true miracle.

At some point during the long Swedish winter, I had ceased to believe in the sun. I had become a solar atheist. But with a single, real sensation, I was born again. For several minutes, I just stood there, absorbing the warm rays like a dry sponge sucks up water. Hallelujah!

Back in the USA, it’s baseball that February transforms into abstraction. There are no games, no trades, no real baseball experiences. Baseball talk just feels hollow, without substance. You can try to touch it, but like fog, you can’t grab it. It’s not there. Everything seems absurd, like so much infield dirt tech support.

But in March, the first game I hear on the radio from spring training is my salvation. The rhythm of the broadcast, the sounds of the ballpark, the unfolding drama of the game: my senses bathe in the return of real baseball. When I feel baseball again, I feel my true self returning with it.

So it’s mid-February now. Today, we are babysitting my wife’s eight-year-old nephew and five-month-old niece, in addition to our own two girls, ages 6 and 3. My wife is taking care of the baby; I’m trying to handle the other three kids.

The nephew is always hungry. No sooner do you feed him one thing, than he’s asking what’s next. Usually, I find it amusing. Today, I find it annoying.

My wife put on a John Denver CD to sing to the baby. I start making lunch. The baby starts crying. I am reminded how absolutely impossible it is to ignore a crying baby. Nature’s perfect annoyance. My wife gives her a bottle. Things quiet down again, for the moment.

So John Denver sings. I cook. And a strange sensation comes over me. I am being profoundly moved by the music. A deep, emotional reaction. To John Denver.

That just ain’t right.

At that moment, I realized that my February blues had set in.

The baby starts crying again. Bottle won’t help this time. Can’t figure out what’s wrong. My three-year-old picks this moment to become jealous of the attention her mother is giving someone else’s baby, and starts a temper tantrum. “I want to throw all the food in the world on the floor! I want to break every window everywhere!”

I want to do something, anything, to make them stop crying.

The baby suddenly reveals what’s wrong. She also reveals she is ready for a larger diaper size. End temper tantrum: three year olds find messy diapers fascinating. Relief.

The stereo switches CDs: Carole King, Tapestry. I finish cooking lunch, and put it on the table for the kids. I go back to the kitchen, sit down, put my head in my hands, and breathe a deep heavy sigh. Three weeks to go.

Carole King sings:

Snow is cold, and rain is wet.
Chills my soul right to the marrow.

I won’t be happy till I see you alone again.
Till I’m home again and feeling right.

I wanna be home again and feeling right.

Nephew cleans off his plate and asks for more. He impatiently tries to con the girls into giving him some of their food. The girls respond by trying to annoy him. They start bickering.

I have a strong urge to put a stop to it. Instead, I put a stop to myself. I don’t need to control everything that’s going on. I can’t control everything. Control is an illusion. At some point, insisting on it is counterproductive. Let it go. Let the kids play.

Oh, and the original question: do baseball statistics need better marketing? My opinion: there are only 30 people in the world, one for each team, who need good baseball statistics. To the rest of us, statistics are an illusion: a trick that somehow we can control the fates of our favorite teams. We can’t.

The illusion is nice, but at some point, you’re better off just stepping back and taking a deep breath. Let the kids play.

Though nothing could really prepare us
For stunning news making-aware us
That all lefty mashers
Are in-the-pan flashers,
In Oakland, they really don’t Karros.

I finally got the new design up. Whew!

I was getting pretty sick of the old look. This blog has been up for a year now, so it’s time for a change. And the nominees are:

• New color scheme.
  I don’t know why I had red on the old one. It’s my least favorite color. I wanted something more clearly associated with baseball. So I picked a color scheme to have an old-time scoreboardy feel to it. Or should I say, a scorebardy feel?
   
• New logo.
  It’s kind of a baseball field sliced in half, or something.
   
• Tabbed navigation.
  I read somewhere that this is a good thing for usability. I hope so.
   
• Related info area.
  One problem I’ve had is that if you put hyperlinks inside a poem, it distracts from the poem. Your eye goes right to the link. So I needed somewhere less distracting to put links. Off to the side of the page they go! Now all I have to do is go back through my archives and add those links everywhere.
   
• New About section.
  Now in non-fiction flavors! Learn almost everything about me. Or not.
   
• Updated Periodic Table.
  Any site I didn’t visit regularly was replaced. Also, a mini-sized version on the home page.
   
• They said ‘Humbug’.
  The word ‘humbug’ has been replaced by ‘B.S.” in America. That in itself is humbug. I want to bring the word back. So to encourage its revival, I’ll highlight any media use of the term on left side of the home page. (“Bah, humbug” doesn’t count.)
   
• Humbug Soup.
  A little anagram game. If people like it, I’ll make more.
   
• Mock Swedish Translator.
  In case you need it.
   
• Updated Diamond Notes.
  A few more random sentences with the new look.
   

Some things I haven’t gotten around to. These are the next things on my priority list:

1. Fix any bugs on the site that I find.
    
2. Draft Simulator ’04. I hope to have it by the end of next week or so.
    
3. Linkify archives.
    
4. Present essays on aesthetics. I’ve got some ideas about how art works that I want to share, as soon as I get those other things done first. 

Please let me know if you see any problems with this site. I haven’t tested this on Macs/Safari or Opera, so I’m particularly interested to hear if the site looks OK on those browsers. If the site is too slow to load, let me know that, too. Thanks!

A best weblog nomination?
I think it’s just an aberration.
When compared to Diamond Mind,
My work is surely less refined.
For business you can turn to Pappas
He’s the best one to recap us.
When you need a baseball muse
With David Pinto you can’t lose.
And those guys up in Seattle
Can give anyone a battle.
Although I’m certain I’m the rhymiest,
I doubt my humbug is the Primiest.
I think my chances are remote,
But still, I wouldn’t mind your vote.

The Red Sox are bringing back Ellis:
“We’re hoping that he can propellis
Into winning a ring
With his masterful swing
And make all those Yankee fans jellis.”

The covetous Yankee community
Drools at their new opportunity
For their gluttonous Boss
To grab Chavez or Glaus
And fill up their unAaron-Boonity.

When first we saw Jesse Orosco
Brezhnev was ruling in Mosco.
We had no CDs
VCRs or PCs,
And no one bought bulk yet at Costco.

When age strikes our current young stars
Maybe we’ll drive flying cars.
We’ll all watch TV
In HD3D
As the Expos play home games on Mars.

To say where the future will go
Is hard, but there’s one thing I know:
There will still be a need
To genetically breed
Orosco-like lefties who throw.

There is a movement afoot in Darwin, Australia to make humbug illegal:

“Humbug is, I suppose, being a public nuisance, being a nuisance to the community, going out of your way to give people a hard time, people that you don’t even know,” NT Minister Assisting on Indigenous Affairs Jack Ah Kit said.

I’m sorry; I never realized.

Monday is Martin Luther King Day. King had a dream which inspired millions. My dreams, on the other hand, make no sense at all. Can anyone make sense out of this one I had last night?

I was on a train headed due east out of Berlin. I expect the trip to be long and boring, but occasionally, in the mountainous regions, the track twists and turns and even goes upside-down like a roller-coaster. I marvel at the quality of German engineering.

The land turns flat again, and to avoid boredom, I turn on a TV. They’re showing the final meeting of the 2004 season between the Giants and Padres, in San Diego. John Madden is doing the color, and Steve Young, wearing his full 49er uniform (shoulder pads and all), is a guest commentator.

The Giants are leading in the bottom of the ninth, but the Padres have loaded the bases. With two outs, Matt Williams, somehow unretired, is sent in to pinch hit. He hits low line drive to the opposite field, barely fair over the low right field fence. Grand slam! The Padres win! The Padres clinch the NL West! The Giants, dejected, are left only with the slim hope that they can pass the Cubs for the wild card spot.

I look out over the German landscape rushing past the window of my seat on the train. I wonder if I can see any fireworks from the celebrations in San Diego. Instead, something begins to emerge from the clouds like ghostly angels: the giant floating heads of Julie Andrews, Florence Henderson, and Angela Lansbury, singing songs of glorious celebration. God, it occurs to me, must be a Padres fan.

Now, I ask you: what the heck can this dream mean?

New England confronts Indiana.
McNabb tries to be Joe Montana.
But what I never know
From this NFL show
Is how it affects Frank Tanana.

I just discovered an HTML typo in my photo essay that left many of you unable to view it. Please try again, and accept my apologies.