Baseball is: a game, a shield, clothes, the past, the fast color red, a fucked hand, nothing.
Beautiful writing by someone who knows that baseball is all of the above, as well as what baseball is not: the future, a fix for things, an apple-producing mechanism, pointless.
That is, this is a work which engages fully with the breadth of baseball the game, which can also be: a mindset, a memory, the sum of history, a transformation of regret into rage.
When I was a kid, I remember feeling humbled by the idea that sports were a mechanism for adults to sort out their problems in a civilized way. Sports were war for the type of person who had grown past the need for war. Therapy for people who can deal with their problems alone. This is a nice thought, and it still is, but it starts to fall apart when you take a closer look at the players and see them struggle. Not just with their game, but with everything, and then that internal conflict comes out in their game. And at that point it becomes clear that baseball is just real life. Or maybe it's the other way around?
All to say I think Robin perfectly encapsulates baseball's inherent, devastating contradiction: that our most comprehensive metaphor for the suffering of conditioning is a meaningless game for children.
Another laser beam strike by KILLJILL.