Let’s greet the day with this tart poem from The Writer’s Almanac by Sheila Packa called “Rhubarb.”
Celebrate bitter things
after long winter
rhubarbs’ red green stalks
and partial sun
shared with cutworm and fly
and ants that come—
no house can resist their arrival.
Life’s too much or not enough—
savor the undernote of butter.
Smile in dandelions’ faces
after the rabbits take other blossoms.
Taste from the plate I’ve heaped
tart rhubarb
ripe strawberries and sugar.
How good a hitter is James Wood of the Gnats? Well, he singled in the first inning yesterday against the Angels, but so what? When he came up in the fourth, he grounded out. In the fifth, he was walked intentionally, and he was walked intentionally again in the seventh. It was a tight, back-and-forth game with neither team leading by more than a run and it was 4-3 LA after seven. The last thing the Angels needed was for Wood to jack one over the fence, as he has done 22 times already this season, some of them pretty scary drives. So they walked him intentionally again in the ninth, after Jacob Young’s timely two-strike single tied the game. The game advanced into extra innings. Neither team scored in the tenth, which gave Wood another at-bat in the eleventh. The astute among you may see where this is going: He was intentionally walked again. But the Gnats had done more than enough damage by then and a well-rested Kyle Finnegan blew through 3 crisp innings for the win.
Wood’s four intentional walks tied Barry Bonds, Andre Dawson, Roger Maris, and Manny Ramirez, but that’s not the record. Dawson was put on first a fifth time for the record back on May 22, 1990. He was with the Cubs and it was Cincy that wanted no part of him.
Wood, who is only 22 and from Rockville MD, is having a phenomenal year, kinahora. He’s making Gnat fans feel better about losing Juan Soto. Wood was obtained by the Gnats from San Diego in the trade for Soto, along with all-star SS CJ Abrams and ace starter MacKenzie Gore. Here’s JW.
As for the Mets: WTF!!?? After racing out to the best record in the majors, they hit the skids, losing ten out of eleven. Ouch. They appeared to right the ship taking two from Los Bravos leading into last weekend. Then all hell broke loose. Against the lowly Pirates in Pittsburgh, the Mets lost all three games by scores of 9-1, 9-2, and 12-1. That’s a total of 30 runs against and only 4 for. How bad is that? Well, it’s the worst three game series in Mets franchise history, including 1962 when they set all sorts of losing records, albeit lovably, in their first year.
Phil said the Mets were all too embarrassed to show their faces, but he got this nice shot of gorgeous PNC Park, where the Pirates play. That’s the Clemente Bridge in the background, spanning the Allegheny River.
Remember this?
I know exactly what you’re thinking — what a great idea for a crossword puzzle theme! At 36A in today’s NYTXW the clue was “Classic Robert De Niro line in ‘Taxi Driver,’ and a hint to the four theme answers.” Of course, it was ARE YOU TALKIN TO ME? And the four themers were exclamations that end with a person’s name, one of which was new to me:
“GEEZ, LOUISE!” (17A: “My heavens!”)
“WHOA, NELLY!” (25A: “Hold it right there!”)
“NO WAY, JOSE!” (51A: “Absolutely, positively not!”)
“BYE, FELICIA!” (61A: “I’m done with you!”)
“Bye, Felicia” is a dismissive sendoff to get some idiot out of your face. The phrase originally comes from a scene in the 1995 film Friday in which Ice Cube’s character says “Bye, Felisha” to dismiss Angela Means’ character, Felisha. Due to the phrase being spread orally, it morphed into “Bye Felicia” and that’s now the most popular variation.
In last Tuesday’s puzzle “How two foes confront each other” was the clue for MANO (as in mano a mano). Rex noted many people think it means man to man, but it means hand to hand. D’oh! I was one of them. Similarly, the word “manhandled” doesn’t mean manhandled — it means handhandled. [Wait, what?]
This poem is from The Poetry Foundation. It’s by Czeslaw Milosz and is called “A Song On the End of the World.”
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
Warsaw, 1944
[Milosz was born on this date in 1911 in what is now Lithuania. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. ]
We were looking forward to a Clark-Bueckers matchup last Friday, but Caitlin was out with an injured groin. PB scored 27, but Caitlin’s Fever clipped Paige’s Wings 94-86.
Rex Parker, one of the patron saints of Owl Chatter, was away for a few days, and returned today. Part of his vacation was spent birding, and he shared this neat picture.
See you tomorrow Chatterheads!
The Wellington Files 