Ezra's Essays

Category: Sports

  • MAIL CALL

    This essay has an air of inevitability about it. If a pitcher stands on the mound and expectorates on the baseball, the batter should know that the next pitch will inevitably be a spitball which will start out at waist level and sink to his shoe-tops by the time it crosses the plate. There is…

  • FADING TO GRAY

    As this essay is being started, it is a cold, rainy, Sunday afternoon in late April. It means that most people are home bound which is the bad news on a Spring weekend. The good news is that the Boston Red Sox took three straight from the New York Yankees over the past three days…

  • THE 0-FER FACTOR

    The Salvation Army, the Baptist Young People’s Union, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Luther League (Missouri Synod) have approved this essay only on the ground that I disclose that it is a political and not a baseball essay. But to make my point it is necessary to call on the practice of baseball…

  • EUPHEMISMS

    In the last four years of my career with AT&T, I was a Director of Correspondent Relations. The word “correspondent” is an anachronism. It goes back to the days when people wrote to each other and before the use of the telephone. Nonetheless this job required that I should visit other telephone companies around the…

  • A FEW FOND MEMORIES OF BLONDIE

    When Harry Livermore has something to say, it is usually worth listening to. Harry is older than I am and he has a degree from Grinnell College in Iowa. He is a consummate mid-Westerner whom I met on Mother’s Day, 1952. Harry was my boss in Kansas City as well as in Chicago. But more…

  • THAT ONE SO HIGH SHOULD FALL SO LOW

    This humble essay has spent a longer time in gestation than normal. The longer pregnancy is brought about by the fact that it deals with human failures. And secondly, some of the characters in the essay are less than glorious. No one likes to read about failures; they like to read about cuddly dogs and…

  • WHISKERS

    During the 2004 and 2005 major league baseball seasons, center field on the Boston Red Sox was patrolled by a fellow named John Damon. During those two seasons, Damon declined to cut his hair and he also declined to shave. When he batted, the batting helmet would often squirt upwards because of the pressure exerted…

  • THE HOT STOVE LEAGUE BLUES

    Hundreds of years before I became an essayist, there was a grand summit meeting held on the grounds of what would eventually become the Buckingham Palace in London. It was attended by all of the reigning gods, kings, archangels, head rabbis and prophets, as well as by the leading preachers and politicians of the day.…

  • FOUL TIPS

    In a recent essay entitled “Passed Balls and Wild Pitches,” I recorded three incidents that were really gaffs that have marked my life in recent years. In this essay I will continue the baseball metaphors by using the title of “Foul Tips.” Passed balls and wild pitches ordinarily have an impact on the outcome of…

  • THE PAPAJOHN.COM BOWL GAME

    For intellectuals who have no desire to know about sports, perhaps I should explain that the title has to do with a post-season football game. I was baffled myself until I looked into this matter and found that Papa John was a pizza maker serving the tastes of the citizens of such states as Alabama.…