Failing to attain the all-time MLB consecutive loss record after getting so close was apparently the last straw for the White Sox ownership. So Manager Pedro Grifol was fired last night, putting him out of his misery. Here he is in the dugout during a recent loss, praying to Jesus for “just one goddamn fucking relief pitcher who can fucking get one fucking out.” Jesus, however, as everyone knows, is a Yankee fan.
On this date, 170 years ago, Henry David Thoreau published Walden. It was not a hot seller and it took five years for the 2,000 print run to sell. Most of the citizenry were waiting for the movie. His earlier work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers did worse. One thousand were printed, but only 300 sold, and the rest were returned to HDT. He wrote in his diary: “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”
Yeah, try pushing a blog devoted to nonsense, Hank.
This poem made me remember how thrilled my mom was over our Caitlin and how neither my dad nor my brother lived long enough to meet their grandchildren. It’s by Ira Sukrungruang and is called “How To Tell Your Mother There Will Be No Grandkids in Her Future.”
Don’t enter conversations
about generations. Use the art
of misdirection. Tell her the rain
is falling. Tell her today
you saw a cardinal,
her favorite bird, and it was
feeding its young seeds.
No. Better not mention
the young. Tell her,
instead, the garden is coming in
thick this spring,
and the tulips have multiplied,
their buds like hands in prayer.
Better yet,
tell her about the work
crying in your briefcase.
Tell her you wish
you had three lives:
one for work, one for your dreams,
and one for her. That one
will have as many Siamese warriors
as she wants, swinging on a tree
as wide as an ocean,
its limbs twisting and turning.
In that life,
they listen, those warriors,
for the sound of her voice.
They wait for her to emerge
from the jeweled temple.
I finished the article on RFK, Jr. in the New Yorker. It’s a compelling read. To say he does not come across well is putting it mildly. Even on his signature issue, vaccines, his work wallows in falsities. His marital infidelities were legion. At some point, Mary Richardson [his wife] became aware of a diary, from 2001, in which Kennedy had logged his sexual conquests. The New York Post obtained the contents of the diary, reporting that “it included dozens of women, with numbers next to their names to indicate sexual acts; ten meant intercourse.” I wonder what, like, three meant, or four. Mary was a bit off too, mentally, and later hung herself.
Kennedy’s son Conor, who is 30 now, formerly dated Taylor Swift. Sure pays to be a Kennedy.
Baseballer Billy Bean died, but it’s not that Billy Beane, with an e, who was played by Brad Pitt in Moneyball and was the groundbreaking GM of Oakland. His obit in the NYT even says that. This Billy Bean was a scrappy hustling outfielder for the Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres, who was the second ballplayer ever to come out as gay, in 1999, after retiring in 1995, because baseball was not ready to accept him. (Glenn Burke was the first.) He worked for MLB as an ambassador for diversity and inclusion and died at age 60 from leukemia. He was handsome and athletic, so he got all the hot girls and even married a “classic beach girl” for several years. But he couldn’t abide living a lie. He is the only player not a pitcher to throw a beanball.
Craig Spot Maldoon Hardie posted this in the Dull Men’s Club: I saved a butterfly from being stuck in the pool, she then wouldn’t leave me alone and landed on my baldy head. I feel pretty now. 
Lindsey Bradley came back with:
This was me several years ago in a butterfly garden at the county fair 
Headline in The Onion: Iowa State Fair Visitor Gored By 500-Pound Yam.
In the puzzle today, I loved the clue for H BOMB: “What awakens Godzilla from the ocean, informally.”
Rex’s guest blogger informed us that the production team of the most recent Godzilla movie wore matching shoes to the Oscars.
Also in the puzzle, at 6D, “Marvel’s Maximoff” was WANDA. She was played by the beautiful Elizabeth Olsen. Smoky eyes; bedroom hair. We’re on to all of your tricks, Olsen.
We’ll let those smoky eyes close for us tonight. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 