The Hammock Papers: Plugging.

19 September 2012

Plugging.

You want the bad news -- the kind that makes you so frustrated that you want to throw your remote control at the television?

Or do you want the good news on this cool autumn night -- the part where Miguel Cabrera looked like a super hero again, smashing a pair of home runs and leading the Tigers to a 12-2 victory over the Oakland A's, and you feel like anything is possible and maybe, just maybe, the Tigers still have some hope?

OK. Let's start with the bad.

After pitching two innings Tuesday night, right-hander Max Scherzer was pulled from the game. A short time later, a voice crackled over the intercom in the press box: "Max Scherzer has left tonight's game because of right shoulder fatigue. He is scheduled to have an MRI."

Right shoulder fatigue? MRI?

Now, Tigers fans never overreact, but it's safe to say, at that moment, every single one of them screamed, "OH NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! NOT TO SCHERZER! THIS SEASON IS CURSED! NO!"

Because nothing about "shoulder fatigue" and "MRI" sounds good.

Not in the middle of a pennant race.

NO TIME TO PANIC: Now, to the good news.

The Tigers didn't fold like a bunch of pansies (no offense to any pansies out there). They didn't give up. They kept plugging along with several replacement parts and, oh, yeah, a couple of stars. "That was a pretty hairy situation," manger Jim Leyland said. "Fortunately, we exploded and got some runs."

Read the rest at The Freep.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL