Patrick – Page 88 – They're Just Words

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Patrick

A Gift From Your Grandpa

Baseball can be a little bit like church in that a lot of the meaning is in its rituals. That’s how most fans endure the 162-game season, why a team can be out of the pennant race in May and people will still show up—it’s the rituals, the smells, the sounds, the memories linked to Cracker Jack and the seventh-inning stretch. It feels like sitting on your grandpa’s lap. Everything’s gonna be alright. For nine innings you feel safe. When we’re small, there are some sports we sign-up for, but baseball is something you inherit.

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Patrick

Sister Mary Joanna & The Invention Of The “Fun Fact”

Sister Mary Joanna was four feet nine. She was a Sister of Notre Dame. It would be many years before I understood that she had nothing to do with the Fighting Irish football team, the Four Horsemen or “Touchdown Jesus.” For that matter, it would take a long time for me to figure out why they called her “sister,” because I had four sisters at home and they weren’t even close to the same thing. She spoke broken English (it might have been broken Italian). She had a pretty impressive black mustache, only a day or two from the combing and trimming stage (for this we labeled her Mister Joanna, even though we knew that mocking God’s sister might trigger a natural disaster).

Posted on October 22, 2017October 22, 2017 by Patrick

The Awful, Terrible, Embarassing Football Story

By the time our announcer had uttered his last cliché of the night, the parking lot was empty. It made it easy to find his car, but when he turned the key, nothing happened, so much for the line about the non-stop motor. No, someone or something had short-circuited his high-powered attack and now he set out on foot.