Fresh Out of the Minors

I am watching my second Orioles game in the last three days and could it possibly be that the O's will win two in a row. Bottom of the eighth and up two runs.

I'll pop the champagne early and post an image of Io #10: The Baseball Issue. Edited by Richard Grossinger and his wife Lindy Hough, Io "is a journal exploring myth, geography, origins, and the common source materials of literature, natural history, and physical science. The issues develop around radically different foci, but the overall theme remains the same and is developed in different areas and aspects." Other foci include dreams, Mars, oecology, and alchemy.

The Baseball Issue has become something of a collector's item due to the inclusion of the poem Brooklyn August, which opens "In Ebbets Field the crab-grass grows/(where Alston managed)/row on row." This poem swings and misses but it helps that the hitter is a young Stephen King. In fact, Brooklyn August is one of his first published appearances. Stephen King is now a Boston Red Sox fan and a heavy hitter in the literary game. Like most writers, King got his start in the minor leagues of the little mags and it is refreshing to hear that he remembers his roots. Apparently a small, independent publisher out of Maryland, Cemetery Dance, will issue his next book, Blockade Billy, which is about a 1950s major leaguer with a dark secret. Nice to see that King has rounded the bases and come home.

JB