x

x

You get so used to Hollywood screwing up (by dumbing down) adaptations of kids books that it’s difficult to know what to say when you watch a movie like Where the Wild Things Are. The worst thing that can be said about it is that it’s not really a movie for eight-year-olds. Seeing as we’re not eight-year-olds, we’re fine with this. The best thing that can be said is that it gets childhood almost exactly right. Credit for this goes not just to director Spike Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers, but most of all to young Max Records, who as Max captures all the wonderment, loneliness, imagination and terror of growing up. There’s a scene when he and Carol (voiced perfectly by James Gandolfini) race up to a cliff overlooking the sea. Another Wild Thing runs up behind them and bumps into Max, nearly knocking him over the ledge. There’s a split second when it appears Max might fall, and you feel the danger of this strange world of imagination, no matter how imaginary it may be. That’s the tightrope walk of growing up that the movie captures beautifully. Aside from the second half dragging a bit, the movie was a pleasure to watch. Our favorite characters may have been KW’s friends Bob and Terry. We won’t give anything away, but let’s just say they tell pretty good jokes.

As we’ve said before, College Summit is one of the highlights of our year. CS (for it is an organization fond of abbreviations — we were WCs this past weekend in Glenville, West Virginia, under the supervision of a WCC who reported to a WD) is a national non-profit with a very simple, very laudable goal: To enable any high school student who can make it in college make it to college. CS works year-round with school districts in pursuit of this goal. In the summer, it hosts four-day workshops to give students a taste of college life (they stay in dorms); information on financial aid; one-on-one time with a college counselor to discuss schools that would be a good fit; and time to write their application essay, or — in CS jargon — “personal statement,” ideally one that “shows not tells” and identifies a student’s “heartbeat.” The last part is what we volunteered to do.

English teachers have been known to have a hard time acclimating to College Summit’s approach to writing. It begins with a ten minute free write when students (known as “peer leaders”) are given no directions aside from keeping the pen on the page. The results are inevitably a bit rambling and stream-of-consciousness, but almost always there is some germ of a story in them. That germ is what the other peer leaders help identify when free writes are read aloud. The students respond to one another by noting what phrases or images stood out and which ideas and story lines they want to hear developed further. (This is “goldmining.”)  Then the process repeats: free write, goldmining. After two takes, there’s usually enough for a first draft.

The genius of this approach is that it tricks students into writing what really interests them. There is no mention of a five-paragraph, three-point essay. The message of the statement — spinning it into something appropriate for an application essay — comes last. By then, the table is already set. If students have been steered toward writing what’s interesting and unique about them, it’s a breeze tacking on a paragraph that basically says, “This is why you want someone like me at your college.”

It’s remarkable what these 17-year-olds have already lived through. Pregnancy. Abuse. Depression. Neglect. Poverty. What gives College Summit urgency — and why we believe in it so much — is that it offers students a glimpse of life without those realities. Seventeen is still incredibly young; there may be no more decisive factor in rerouting a young life than higher education.

We have broken one of the cardinal rules in that this post has been all tell, no show. So allow us to tell three stories:

1) On Saturday night there is a banquet. One of CS’s guiding principles is “celebration.” Students and volunteers alike get dressed up and have a sit down meal with the full array of silverware and cloth napkins and programs detailing the evening’s agenda. “Now which fork do I use first?” one of Ben’s students asked. “I think you use the one at the top,” someone else chimed in. “No,” a third corrected, “that’s the dessert fork. It comes last. You start on the outside and move in.” “So I want this one?” the first student asked, taking the first fork and digging into his pasta. “Well,” the third said, “ideally that’d be for the salad, but sure, you want that one.” “Hey, it works for me,” the first student said, a huge grin on his face. “I mean, I’ve never really had a meal like this. The fanciest place my family goes to eat is Shoney’s!”

2) College Student alums are encouraged to come back as volunteer peer leaders. They play maybe the most important part of the weekend: walking, talking examples of someone who made it. CS alums sit in on the writing workshop sessions, reading and critiquing essays; they fan out at meals, getting to know as many different students as possible, drawing out the shy and withdrawn; and, as much as anything, they are available. Students seek them out, talk to them, share with them in ways they might not two strange adults from Cincinnati.

On Sunday morning, during the closing circle, CS alums do something that sends a chill through us every time. Someone asks everyone in the room to close their eyes. Then one of the alums speaks, beginning, “I am …” and filling in adjectives to paint her life story. “I am potential,” one might begin, “I am hope. I am brokenness and disappointment and rape. I am a work in progress.” Then another alum speaks over top of the first. Soon all eight are talking, weaving their statements in and out of the others, crescendoing and receding as the spirit moves them. You hear their voices breaking, and you hear the sniffles around the circle. At the end, in unison, all eight say, “I am College Summit.” And you open your eyes and don’t even bother to hide your tears because there isn’t a dry eye in the room.

3) We had the pleasure this summer of working with a staffer named Morgan. Morgan was the Tech Coordinator (or TC) for our workshop. His job was to make sure the online site CSNav ran smoothly.

Morgan also shared a fondness for Bill Brasky SNL sketches. During meals, he would begin with a testimonial to Bill Brasky in a throaty, slurred voice. He concluded it with “To Bill Brasky!”, raising his glass and clinking it with everyone else at the table. None of the students were familiar with the sketches, and they found the premise absolutely hilarious. Some would try to chime in, but most just let Morgan and another CS alum do the toasting.

We were sitting at the next table when we heard the ruckus. Naturally one of us had to join in. So Ben got up, filled his drink at the fountain, and as he walked back past Morgan’s table said, “Say, are you guys talking about Bill Brasky?” Their eyes lit up. Someone else knows the joke! “We sure are!” Morgan said. “Well,” Ben said, clapping his hands around two guys and leaning into the table, “Brasky and I go way back. Once I saw him punch a hole in a cow just to see who was coming up the road!* To Bill Brasky!” Cheers and a toast. Uncontrollable giggling from one kid. Puzzled looks from the two girls at the table, perplexed by the alien sensibilities of the teenage male. The satisfaction of teaching a teenager to write and making him laugh at the same time.

——————–

If you’re interested in volunteering for a summer 2010 workshop, start here.

x

* = This is an actual line from one of the sketches. Ben ad-libbed one later on: “Not many people know that Bill Brasky was the inspiration for The Sound of Music. When he snores at night, it sounds like the ‘Do Re Mi’ song in perfect harmony!”

Books, more than music, TV or movies, are especially disserviced by Top Ten lists. Let’s compare them to movies. Your typical movie runs around two hours. Your typical book generally demands two to three times that time investment, longer if you’re attempting something like Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and shorter if you’re reading Dr. Seuss or just happen to read at a blistering pace. And there are so many books. Yes, there are so many movies too. But it seems to us that it’s much easier to narrow TV shows or movies down to a shortlist than it is to corral the Top Ten Books of the Year.

We suspect many would disagree with us on this. Think of all the new music that comes out every year. How on earth do we narrow that down to the ten best? Rolling Stone engages in a particularly ludicrous exercise of ranking the Top 100 songs of the year. There may be a case for the single catchiest, most emblematic song of any given year. But after the top two or three, what differentiates song #12 from, say, #63? Or #91? What makes “Spaceman” by The Killers sixteen spots more superior than “Aly, Walk With Me” by The Raveonettes? (And RS abides by the polite notion that no band should occupy more than one spot on that list, a democratic but critically limiting gesture.)

This is all standard nose-turning at the commodification of art into tidy boxes with grades or number values attached to them. But let’s face it, we love Top Ten Lists. They’re punchy! They’re controversial! They’re conversation starters! So here we go. (We promise not to do this throat-clearing for every post this week.)

We refuse to rank these books in any order, though we have grouped them thematically and singled one out as the best. Without further ado, here are the Ten Best Books released in 2008 that we found the time to read.

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Steven Millhauser.  The weakest of our four collections, Dangerous Laughter has been earning such praise mainly as a sort of literary Lifetime Achievement Award for Millhauser. All of his standard themes — adolescence, the extremes of obsession, the strange fantastical realms of imagination cozying up to reality — show up in thirteen stories that read like spooky, sometimes comic parables. (Millhauser wrote the short story that was the basis for The Illusionist, if that gives you a frame of reference.) The first story in this collection, “Cat ‘n’ Mouse,” is a literary treatment of a Tom & Jerry cartoon. The cat and mouse become heroic, tragic figures locked in an epic contest of wills. It sets the stage for all that follows, with “A Room in the Attic” and “The Wizard of West Orange” being the standouts. While we heartily recommend this collection, we especially recommend Millhauser’s very first novel, Edwin Mullhouse, a parody biography of an 11-year-old as written by his best friend that is one of the richest, funniest and most terrifying books about childhood we’ve ever read. If you’re in the mood for something shorter, this essay that Millhauser wrote for the New York Times Book Review in October is also an excellent introduction.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE, Elizabeth Strout.  Strout is a master of the rituals and routines of small town lives, and these stories, set in Maine and revolving around the central figure of retired schoolteacher Olive Kitteridge, are rich with spiritual drama. These people love and hurt one another. Sometimes they forgive and reconcile, many times they do not. What Strout does so well is locate the humanity of her characters even as she strips them to the bone and lays them bare on the page, skeletons and all. Olive is among the orneriest and least likable figures in recent fiction, which is part of her charm. She’ll remind you of at least one of your relatives. Melancholy looms over each of these stories (the best of which is “Security”), but if you see Olive through to the end you’ll be rewarded with that rare quality only the best short stories deliver: a genuine epiphany that requires no sleight of hand.

OUR STORY BEGINS, Tobias Wolff.  Most of the stories in Our Story Begins are collected from previous editions, but they remind you of Wolff’s mastery of the form. Reading them a second, third and fourth time, you’ll be startled by the hints and suggestions of all the other stories taking place on the margins of the page. “Flyboys” is ostensibly about three boys building an airplane, but underneath that there’s a shifting allegiance of friendship as well as a prickly portrayal of class tension. While the new stories here aren’t as dazzling as his earlier stuff, they are sturdy, well-crafted stories that showcase Wolff’s skill at pinpointing how the choices people make illuminate the depths of their character, leading to self-discoveries that usually happen a moment too late.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Jhumpa Lahiri.  We really hate the cover, and that’s the only thing going against the best short story collection of the year. Lahiri is firmly grounded in the mundane of everyday relationships, particularly between husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, or brothers and sisters. Her stories are simple and straightforward, and unlike Millhauser they pull no punches. Which is why it’s so startling to reach the end of them and feel genuinely transported by something revelatory that has just transpired on the page. The three linked stories that end the collection start slow but build to a harrowing crescendo, touching down in recent history by weaving one of the characters into a profound natural tragedy. Whether this collection is better than her first, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies, is purely an academic argument. You should read them both.

NON-FICTION

We’ll recommend only one book here, as we dabble very little in non-fiction or generally stick to current events-related titles that typically age poorly. That said…

THE DARK SIDE, Jane Mayer  …is an exception to the rule, a timely work of investigative journalism that translates well to book form and should remain relevant for years to come. It is also a thoroughly depressing read. Mayer traces the evolution of America’s policies on torture and detainment in the wake of 9/11 as our government sought to balance the need to prevent another such attack with the mission to uphold American ideals of civil rights and justice for all. Mayer’s account is even-handed but appropriately critical: she makes no straw men, but she also drives to the heart of who authorized and shaped policies which effectively endorsed torture. Not a light read, but a provocative, thoroughly researched one. It will take a toll on you.

To lighten things up before we get to the final five fiction picks, let’s have a brief interlude with …

THE FUNNIEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ZOMBIE HAIKU, Ryan Mecum.  Few books capture the existential angst of zombie existence better than Ryan Mecum’s Zombie Haiku. His meter is both Keatsian and bone-chilling. You will laugh. You will cry. You will lock your doors and take temporary solace in the fact zombies have difficulties with doorknobs. If you have not already introduced yourself to this zombie masterpiece (and even if you have), do yourself a favor and watch this:

GRANDMA’S DEAD: BREAKING BAD NEWS WITH BABY ANIMALS, Amanda McCall & Ben Schwartz.  We’ve all had to share bad news before. But how do you tastefully convey the sentiment which says, “You’re my least favorite child?” Or, “Recycling won’t help?” It’s a tricky two-step. Thankfully we have baby animals to help us do it. This book is handily equipped with tear-away postcards that you can mail to your friends. 

GET YOUR WAR ON, David Rees.  The most profane and outrageous strip of the past six years, Get Your War On made the jump to an animated comic this year at 236.com. It was also collected in this single volume. It is extremely offensive. It is also hilarious. 

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE, Christian Lander.  Adapted from the blog of the same name, SWPL skewers a certain type of liberal-minded, “Wire”-loving, NPR-listening, “Arrested Development”-watching, indie rock-enthusing white subculture. Or, the Vores.

Now, on with the Top Ten.

NOVELS

NETHERLAND, Joseph O’Neill.  If you would have told us that we’d fall for a book about cricket this year, we would not have believed you. But we did. And Netherland was probably our most enjoyable read of the year. It is a book which makes you aware of the pleasure of just reading it (without doing so in a distracting or pleading way). Many books have tried to capture New York post-9/11. Netherland is not a perfect book, but it almost perfectly succeeds in just that task.

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, David Wroblewski.  A big, sprawling yarn roughly based on Hamlet starring a mute boy and set on a dog-breeding farm in Wisconsin. Not your typical formula for a bestseller (aside from the dog part), but The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, some fifteen years in the making, is superior popular fiction. You may have heard that Oprah recommends it too. (We’re coming around on Oprah ever since she got Cormac McCarthy to go on TV.)

LUSH LIFE, Richard Price.  Like a season of “The Wire” compressed into 464 pages. Set in the rapidly changing Lower East Side, Lush Life starts with a murder (an accident? premeditated?) and accelerates into a multi-layered, sociologically-complex thriller on class, race, justice and forgiveness. Everyone says Price writes the best dialogue out there, and we find no reason to disagree. 

(While we’re at it, who is Walter Kirn sleeping with at the New York Times Book Review that he gets to review all the best books and do such a hack job on them? His hack job on Lush Life [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous that I didn't write this book myself but watch me write a tough, gritty, street-smart review that only glancingly addresses the book I'm supposed to be reviewing"] was surpassed only by his hack jobs on Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous that I didn't write this book myself nor am a young prodigy like Mr. Foer but I can sure take the punk down a notch or two with a snarky review"] and especially How Fiction Works [summary: "I'm secretly incredibly jealous of the esteemed critic  James Wood and I wish he would die. Therefore accept my gift of a steaming heap of sophomoric condescension"]. Stop. Giving. This. Man. Reviews. Or just assign him to James Patterson “books.” (We scare quote “books” because no one has invented the term for “paint-by-numbers-using-words” yet. Give us your suggestions!) This way Kirn would still collect a regular paycheck six or seven times a year but do no further harm.)

(Glad we got that off our chest.)

HOME, Marilynne Robinson. Home was not as rewarding as Gilead, but it’s Marilynne Robinson. She’s written three books in twenty-eight years. If she writes a book, it makes the Top Ten list.

Last but certainly not least,

2666, Roberto Bolaño.  How do you separate Bolaño’s masterwork from all the hype surrounding it? How can a dense, sometimes confounding 898-page novel separated into five parts which may or may not add up to a greater whole really deserve all the superlatives being thrown its way? Being as prone to hype as we are (and given the fact no less than six of our friends are reading this and having giddy conversations about its potential even in part one), the only way to find out was to start reading it and plunge our way through the occasional four-page-long sentence or bizarre dream sequence or tangential, Borges-esque surrealism. We’ll admit right now that we haven’t quite finished yet (we’re still in part four), which may strike some as preposterous that we’d still include it on a Best Of list. We promise a full review in the new year. But like Netherland in a quite different fashion, 2666 (a reference to the apocalypse? To the time lapse between the Garden of Eden and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt?) is about the journey, and it’s a reading experience unlike any we’ve had in a long time. For this reason, and for the book’s open defiance of categorization or closure (what Henry Hitchings calls Bolaño’s “enthusiasm for misdirection”), we jump on the hype bandwagon and endorse it as the Best Book of the Year. 

(If you are still of the mindset that we sacrificed whatever credibility we may have had as literary critics by endorsing a book we haven’t even finished yet, we have only one question: Have you never written a paper on a book that you did not read in its entirety? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. That said, should we encounter something so awful in the last part of 2666 that would make us regret our endorsement, we will retract its Book of the Year status and retroactively award it to Netherland. You will know if this happens.)

HONORABLE MENTION

THE BRIEF, WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Junot Diaz.  Why just an honorable mention for last year’s Pulitzer winner? Well, it technically came out in 2007, but we finally took the advice of friends who said the book demanded our attention. Talking about it just now, we can’t believe we both read this just seven months ago in the spring. It feels like four years ago and it feels like last week. You know what we mean?

THE YEAR’S WORST

We didn’t have to endure many stinkers this year, but one stood out: 

WHAT WAS LOST, Catherine O’Flynn.  There are few genres which make us cringe more than “literary mystery.” Why must genre fiction always aspire to “literary” standards? Michael Chabon has done much to tear down these silly categorizations, but still they persist. For us, the worst example of this recent fashionable trend was Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories, an insufferable little book which succeeded neither as literary novel nor mystery yet garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. (Stephen King was typically hyperbolic about it. In all fairness, Case Histories may have suffered from the Rebound Syndrome, since we read it immediately after the exceptional On Beauty by Zadie Smith.) In the vein of Case Histories, Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost tries to be a commentary on urban and societal change while telling the story of a missing girl who may or may not have resurfaced twenty years later. Yawn. We felt compelled to finish it to say we did. Now we feel compelled to tell you it was bad. Our work here is done.

Tomorrow: The Best & Worst of TV!

One of our friends anonymously commented to yesterday’s post about the regret of attending his high school reunion with his pregnant wife … and running into the girl to whom he lost his virginity. How could we ever foresee these messy, complicated scenarios from the perspective of sixteen? We can’t. Such is the curse (and blessing) of adolescence. 

This got us thinking about movies where the main character gets to do childhood over again. The aforementioned Grosse Pointe Blank isn’t a replay of Martin Q. Blank’s high school experience, but it is an atonement: He’s going back to win the girl he abandoned ten years earlier on prom night. Along the way he kills a guy, declines blow offered to him by a deadbeat classmate (the scene which produced Erin’s favorite line: “For a while … For a while”), and smashes a television over a rival hitman’s head. That’s probably an atypical path of reconciliation, but there are plenty of other examples.

Atonement is about the redemptive possibility of art to correct the mistakes of youth and lives that have gone off course. (Skip the movie, read the book.) Peggy Sue Got Married (one of Erin’s favorites) is another movie with a reunion, only at this one Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) faints and wakes up as a high school student with a chance to do it all over again. Then there’s “Strangers With Candy,” a perverse spoof on the after-school special, about ex-junkie Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) going back to high school at the age of 46 to learn all the right lessons the wrong way. (Skip the movie, watch the TV show.) 

Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain” is about a dying man’s memories, the most resonant of which is a hot summer day of childhood playing baseball with his friends. Wolff said this about adolescence:

As for writing about youth, I find it compelling because you’re catching people at a moment where, if they turn five degrees in another direction, twenty years down the line they’re going to end up very, very far from where they’d have gone if they had continued on their original course. That’s the way we are when we’re young. We’re always turning by these minute degrees that forever after change the course of our lives.

Wolff concluded, “That situation is inherently interesting for the fiction writer.” Who wouldn’t want to go back and correct the mistakes of our youth so long as it didn’t actually involve doing it all over again? 

The Readers Forum continues with this question: If you could (or had to) be a teenager all over again, what would you do differently? Share your wisdom here. Of course, you’re not limited to this subject. Already in the forum, Carl Lindner has banned Ben and Andy Sweeney permanently from his UDF stores, Matthew Leathers has gone table-dancing, and Scott Guldin has showcased his Photoshop prowess. Join the fun!

There is a real pleasure in reading a book that was written by someone you know. There’s an even greater pleasure when that book turns out to be very good. That was how I (Ben) felt three years ago when I read John Green’s Looking For Alaska. A heavily autobiographical novel, Looking For Alaska was about Miles “Pudge” Halter, the prototypical John Green male protagonist: smart, witty, curious, withdrawn, insecure and über-obsessive. The object of his adoration, Alaska Young, was the prototypical John Green female: smart, beautiful, confident, unstable and charming, with the (metaphorical) ability to walk on water. Miles meets Alaska at Culver Creek Boarding School, where a traditional boy-meets-girl, coming-of-age story took on exceptional depth by tackling subjects like faith, loss and death. It was, first and foremost though, very funny. And honest. I read it in one sitting. 

John and I both went to Kenyon and majored in English. We were sophomores together in P.F. Kluge’s Introduction to Fiction Writing class. During one of our first classes, we were critiquing John’s piece, which included a sex scene. Professor Kluge let us discuss every piece as a class before weighing in with his own verdict as the final word. We had finished talking about John’s story and turned to Professor Kluge, awaiting his judgment. He sat silently for a few seconds. Finally he said, “John … you’ve never had sex, have you?” There was a brief silence. Then someone — it may have been John — laughed, and pretty soon we all busted up. “No, I haven’t,” John said. Kluge smiled and nodded his head. “I know.” 

Whether he remembers that exact moment or not, John heeded Kluge’s implicit advice. What he has done so well in his young writing career is to capture adolescence in all of its awkward, in-between glory. In writing workshop jargon, he writes what he knows. John’s service to the burgeoning YA genre, it seems to me, is that his teenagers are real. They are funny and hyper-literate. They are generally mature but given to bouts of occasional stupidity. They fight and reconcile. They have heads for big ideas. They have one foot still firmly planted in adolescence and another stepping into adulthood. And John is generous toward them as much as he holds them accountable for being, well, teenagers.

John’s second book, An Abundance of Katherines, took many of the same themes (quirky, obsessive teenage prodigy with a talent for anagrams falls for charming, self-assured girl) and added a road trip, mathematical theorems and a deceased Austro-Hungarian archduke, not to mention a slew of hilarious footnotes. His newest book, Paper Towns, is more like his first book than his second, but it combines parts of both. It starts with a commanding female presence in the form of Margo Roth Spiegelman, turns on her mysterious disappearance (did she run away? commit suicide?), then follows a series of clues which lead our young hero Quentin Jacobsen on a desperate, quixotic, Bluefin-guzzling road trip to Agloe, New York, a town which may not even exist. (“Paper towns” are fake towns created on maps to protect against copyright infringement.)

When I say that I think Paper Towns is John’s least successful book, I do not mean to say that it isn’t also extremely funny, inventive and well worth your time. But once Margo exits stage left around a hundred pages in, the narrative loses steam as Quentin and friends adjust to life without her. And the clues Margo leaves behind are scattershot and quite open-ended (they involve Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a Wilco/Billy Bragg album, abandoned suburban developments and a Wikipedia-like site called Omnictionary). How Quentin gets from A to B (or from Orlando to Agloe) is a bit of a blur. That said, this book has the best ending John has written yet. If you ranked all three of John’s books together, Looking For Alaska is still the British “Office,” while Paper Towns is the American spin-off, season three (which is to say, very good). (In this analogy, I suppose that makes An Abundance of Katherines “Extras.”) Anyway, I continue to be thrilled for John, who also has quite a following from his popular website and one he created with his brother called nerdfighters.com. I’ll happily read anything he writes, even if I’m no longer required to for a class participation grade.

The jealousy part is what I still have to work on. Not only have John’s books won a slew of accolades (Alaska won the Printz Award while Katherines was a runner-up, and Paper Towns has garnered numerous starred reviews already), but Alaska and Paper Towns are both slated to be films. Good for you, John. At least I can say I knew you when, in those days you were still a virgin.*

—–

* = John is now married, so I’m assuming things have changed. John, if you ever read this, forgive me for openly speculating about your love life.

For this edition of This Day in Vore History, we reach all the way back to 1992, when young Ben was fifteen years old.

Baseball was my first love. One of my first memories of my dad was him teaching me how to read box scores. I remember the columns of numbers and abbreviations slowly arranging themselves into a pattern I could decipher. As I studied them I had the sensation of learning vital things, things I knew would matter in my life. 

Great forces of evil conspired to keep me from starting Little League the year my friends did. My birthday fell after the July 31 cut-off. This was still in the era when baseball careers began at age eight, not five or six with t-ball. On the first day of official sign-ups, while my friends boasted of the great careers waiting for them, I went home, slammed my bedroom door, and wailed through supper. (The injustice of it, my tears said.)

Once a summer, usually the middle weekend in August, my family went to Pittsburgh for a weekend doubleheader: A Saturday night Pirates game and Sunday matinee. We stayed at the Sheraton Station Square and took the Gateway Clipper to the games. The Pirates were terrible in the 80s. I was too young for the “We Are Family” championship teams of the 70s, with Willie Stargell and Bill Madlock and Dave Parker smoking in the dugout. I inherited the Pirates of Joe Orsulak, Benny Distefano and the atrocious Jose DeLeon (2-19 in 1985). Still, those weekends were the highlights of my summer. I just learned not to base my happiness on the Pirates winning. 

The pieces for a good team were there in the late 80s, but it wasn’t until 1990 that the Pirates won the division. You may remember the Killer Bs — Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla — as well as All-Stars Andy Van Slyke and Doug Drabek. But it was the role players — Jay Bell, Sid Bream, Steve Buechele, John Smiley, Mike LaValliere, Bob Walk, Orlando Merced, Jeff King — who made them such a solid team. Pittsburgh lost to the Reds in the 1990 NLCS, then Atlanta in 1991. By then everyone knew the window was closing. Bonilla signed with the Mets. Bonds was sure to leave soon. Atlanta looked to be good for a while. We had missed our chance.

Except Pittsburgh had a great year in 1992. Barry Bonds won his second MVP. Tim Wakefield came out of nowhere to finish 8-1 in 13 starts. They finished 96-66. And Atlanta was waiting for them again in the NLCS.

My first and only playoff baseball game was Game 3 at Three Rivers Stadium. Pittsburgh was down 2-0 in the series and turncoat Sid Bream hit a solo home run in the 4th inning to put the Braves up 1-0. The Pirates were still scoreless until Don Slaught stepped to the plate in the bottom of the fifth and belted a home run that landed six rows in front of me in the left field bleachers. We taped the game at home, and you could see me, my brother, my dad and uncle in the very top row of the screen when the ball landed. I was high-fiving the daylights out of everyone in the section.

Pittsburgh won that game 3-2, lost Game Four, then won Game Five to send the series back to Atlanta. They jumped all over the Braves in Game Six, scoring eight runs in the second inning. Wakefield won (again) and the series went, as it had a year before, to a decisive Game Seven.

After losing Games One and Four, Drabek pitched masterfully. He held the Braves scoreless through eight innings, while the Pirates managed two runs off the evil John Smoltz. My dad stayed up to watch the game with me that night, even though he traditionally goes to bed around eight thirty. We had a running joke in my family every Monday when my dad would say, “Sure am looking forward to that Monday Night Football game tonight!”, to which my mom would sarcastically reply, “Right.” She knew — everyone knew — my dad would be lights out and snoring on the couch by nine fifteen. This never stopped the ritual though.

After the seventh inning, I got the idea to tear up six little pieces of notebook paper and write “Five outs,” “Four outs,” etc., down to “No outs!!!” (I distinctly remember putting three exclamation points.) As Drabek worked the eighth, I handed my dad each scrap of paper. I’m not sure what he made of the ritual, other than that his son was giddy and acting a little stupid at the thought of his beloved Pirates finally going to the Series.

Drabek started the bottom of the ninth and gave up a lead-off double to Terry Pendleton. Then Jose Lind — Gold Glover Jose Lind! — booted a David Justice grounder. Sid Bream walked after that. Jim Leyland pulled Drabek and put in State College High School grad Stan Belinda. I remember being very queasy at that point. The final three scraps of paper in my hand were getting a little damp with palm sweat. And my father was unleashing some of his more potent curse words; “dang nabbit!” and “criminy!” were just rolling off his tongue.

Belinda got Ron Gant to fly out, scoring Pendleton. Damon Berryhill walked on several verrrrry questionable ball calls. (Home plate umpire John McSherry left in the third inning with chest pains. Left field ump Randy Marsh and his microscopic strike zone called the rest of the game.) Belinda got Brian Hunter, who I really just hated for no good reason, to pop up for the second out. I remember shouting when it happened. Yes! This was really going to happen!

The Braves sent Francisco Cabrera to the plate. Cabrera was the last position player on the Atlanta bench. He was literally their last straw. He had played in only twelve games during the regular season and went to the plate just ten times. You could not have asked for a better match-up. I pictured every Braves fan seeing Cabrera walk out of the dugout and wanting to Tomahawk Chop themselves to death. Francisco Cabrera? That’s who our season is riding on?

Baseball fans know the rest. Cabrera singled to left field. Sid Bream, former Pirate, slowest man in the universe, rounded third and beat the throw from Bonds by inches. Skip Caray had a coronary. The Braves went to the Series. The Pirates have never had a winning season since. (As Bill Simmons put it, “The franchise was effectively murdered by one play.” And my innocence, Bill. And my innocence.)

What still gets me is the suddenness of it. We were up 2-0 going into the ninth. Even when Cabrera stepped to the plate, the Pirates were still ahead 2-1. One minute I had that final “No Outs!!!” in my hand, the next my dad and I were speechless as Atlanta players rushed the field and crushed Sid Bream under a human pyramid while a dejected Andy Van Slyke just sat there in center field, unable to comprehend it.

I couldn’t either. I had never felt as miserable as I did at that moment. Growing up, I thought, is not getting any easier. To commemorate this bitter, hard-earned wisdom, I removed the VHS tape from our VCR player, took it outside, and smashed it with a hammer.