March 2008 Archives for Agony & Ivy

Section 436 Row 9 Seat 108

PMc - Are you out there?

I've tried to maintain contact with professional sports journalist PMc this off-season, who has written in this space before. However, he's moved, and his e-mail addresses are no longer working. Here's hoping he swings by the site, gets in touch, and resurrects the column.

If there's anyone else who is interested in writing a bi-weekly literary-journalistic column about the Chicago Cubs this season, let me know.

-JCB

Our Year

By JCB on Sunday, March 30, 2008

The crowd was vocal. Because the subject here was baseball and the stadium was full of scholars—and historians—and soon enough I found myself engaged in learned debate with all these ... strangers, these ... guys.

--Mason Marzac in Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out,” Act Two.
* * *
Saturday night around eleven o’clock I went to one of my stacks of books and pulled out my copy of “Take Me Out,” a play by Richard Greenberg. I bought the script about a year ago after the Zach Scott Theater here in Austin performed it. I thought the play was not only excellent but of exceptional literary quality, so I ordered a copy from Amazon or somewhere to add to my library, where baseball literature does its best to counterbalance the stuffier law books that look as heavy as they are.

On The Naming Rights to Wrigley Field

By JCB on Friday, March 28, 2008

If the question is whether the owner of Wrigley Field should sell its naming rights to a sponsor, there is no correct answer.

However, approaching it from any given perspective, it feels like there is a correct answer--sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes the answer feels very strong. Unless we have some form of analysis to identify the proper perspective--and we don't, besides each person choosing her own--this means we're asking the wrong question.

The right question is much deeper. It encompasses the inherent tension between baseball as business and baseball as sport, as pastime, as tradition. It encompasses the tension between our past and our present, our legacy and our policy. It encompasses the tensions in our country's changing culture, especially regarding technology, media, and advertising.