"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

It Ain’t Over (Even When it’s Done)

From our pal Glenn Stout:

It’s over, but we’ve been through this before, baseball and I, and I’m sure I’ll survive the winter soon to come. I know even as the whoops and hollers of baseball’s newest world champion fade that somewhere in the silence that follows, another season will start to make its sound.

There will be trades, Tommy John surgeries and free agent signings for too much money. Even though there will be snow upon the ground, there will also be talk about pitchers and catchers reporting, aging veterans and rookie phenoms. Something deep inside me will start to stir, and then I’ll hear it again; a voice on a playground, a bat meeting a ball, a cheer and a slap on the back. At first it will be faint and far off, but as the days get longer the sounds of baseball will be back beside me. Soon enough, we will both be ready for another season.

16 comments

1 thelarmis   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:02 pm

very Todd Drew like.

nice.

2 Alex Belth   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:04 pm

One of the reasons why I'm happy about the NBA coming back is that they are my bridge to spring training...

3 Ara Just Fair   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:11 pm

I've got the Steelers and the Sabres to get me through the winter. December 21st is the next date I'm looking forward to on the calendar. The days start to get longer again. Winter Solstice, baby!

4 thelarmis   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:22 pm

i don't follow any other sports besides mlb. as much as i want the regular season to start, the time away from daily baseball games/stats/news, gives me a chance to get all kindsa stuff done and i cherish that.

i'm working really hard at finishing my 2nd CD and starting to pay some attention to getting the 3rd CD composed. catching up with my ever expanding and already massive music collection, which includes cd's, dvd's & books. i'm also trying to learn the Swedish language and take care of a bunch of other work and non-work related projects.

so i definitely don't need another sport to pass away the time!

5 Alex Belth   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:30 pm

4) Yeah, I agree, I like the downtime and I don't follow the NFL or the NBA like I do baseball. In the winter, I catch up on movies and reading mostly.

6 OldYanksFan   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:32 pm
7 thelarmis   ~  Nov 29, 2011 2:37 pm

[6] he's 35 & expensive. bullpens are volatile, i don't think we need him. but i wouldn't be upset if we had him...

8 kenarneson   ~  Nov 29, 2011 5:56 pm

[4] Why are you trying to learn Swedish, thelarmis?

9 thelarmis   ~  Nov 30, 2011 12:04 am

[8] ken - not sure if you'll check this thread a day after, but...

this summer, i was on tour with a swedish music group. i was traveling daily with about a dozen swedes for upwards of 2 months. i was well impressed with their incredible grasp of the english language; not just speaking, but their grammar, spelling, punctuation, et al. was all excellent.

i wanted to be respectful and learn the proper way to say their names; no one likes having their names mispronounced. i also would pick up on some vocabulary words and phrases. before i knew it, i was doing really well and they were impressed. one of the background singers is a vocal teacher at a similar music college like where i teach and she was my main coach.

3 weeks after the tour was over - and i hadn't heard or spoken svenksa - i randomly ran into a swedish friend of mine in atlanta, at a music festival. i blew him away by speaking his native language and before we knew it, we spoke swedish for a half-hour.

i recently picked up a swedish phrase book/dictionary and a grammar book. i'm just flipping through them on my own. i'll go through them a bit more extensively in the coming months and really test myself on vocabulary and phrases. the grammar and pronunciation will be more difficult. i don't have anyone to skype with though and that would surely be helpful.

my plan is, once i feel as though i've gotten pretty good with these books on my own, to go out and find a private tutor. i've already looked it up and it seems like i can get good instruction here in town. i'd look at 50 2-hour lessons over the period of a year. i figure by then, i should be somewhat fluent and would go visit the country for a "holiday."

after that, i'm gonna learn how to play the cello! : )

10 Chyll Will   ~  Nov 30, 2011 12:45 am

[9] They use cello in death metal? >;)

11 thelarmis   ~  Nov 30, 2011 12:54 am

[10] YES! actually, they do!

http://www.apocalyptica.com/us

12 Chyll Will   ~  Nov 30, 2011 1:49 am

[11] I would love to hear Yo Yo Ma's take on DethKlok.

13 thelarmis   ~  Nov 30, 2011 2:03 am

[12] i'm actually friends with two of the touring members of dethklok! they're brilliant prog rock musicians and played with my fusion trio 2 summers ago. : )

14 kenarneson   ~  Nov 30, 2011 11:31 am

[9] Cool. My cousin's wife is a vocal teacher at a music school in Stockholm, and is a part of the music scene there. She also lived in New York for about five years. I bet we have some mutual friends of friends.

Pronunciation is by far the hardest part about learning Swedish for a native English speaker. The grammar is very similar to English, so there aren't many big differences except for gendered nouns. No verb conjugations is a big plus!

15 thelarmis   ~  Nov 30, 2011 1:12 pm

[14] nice! yeah, if it's the same school, i might know 2 of the vocal teachers and a vocal student. small world!

pronunciation is definitely hard. but i think the grammar is, too. all the articles being different, some going at the end of words, negative clauses going in between words. other sentence structure with words all over the place. it's really weird to me. maybe once i get more of a grip and have a real teacher, it'll make more sense. right now, it's a pretty confusing mess!

do you speak any swedish or have you been over there? my childhood best friend has an older brother who's lived there for 15 years and never bothered to learn the language. that completely flummoxes me! i guess you don't need to, since everyone there speaks english so well, but c'mon!

16 kenarneson   ~  Nov 30, 2011 3:28 pm

[15] Yes, I speak Swedish fluently. My parents both grew up in Sweden (though oddly neither was born there), and all my siblings and cousins live there. Myself, I've spent three years living in Sweden, and I go there every other summer to visit the relatives.

You can definitely get by in Sweden speaking only English. Don't think I could stand doing that for 15 years, though! You'd still miss out on so much.

Hey, if you know two of the teachers, maybe you actually know my cousin's wife directly. Here's her web site.
http://www.asarydman.com/

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"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver