Tag Archives: Baseball

Giants Stand Tall, Defy Ezra Pound

By Robin Bates | Published: October 27, 2012

The San Francisco Giants would make their 1960’s forebears proud.

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Oh, Captain! Is Jeter’s Fearful Trip Done?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 20, 2012

Seeing “the Captain” Derek Jeter break his ankle conjures up Whitman’s “captain” poem.

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Thinking beyond the Baseball Box

By Robin Bates | Published: October 6, 2012

The film “Moneyball” helps explain this year’s extraordinary story of the Oakland Athletics.

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Midsummer Madness–Orioles Chasing First

By Robin Bates | Published: September 22, 2012

In this topsy-turrvy baseball season, as in Midsummer Night’s Dream, all things are possible and the Baltimore Orioles are a game out of first.

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Stephen Strasburg as a Balzac Parable

By Robin Bates | Published: September 1, 2012

The strange case of Stephen Strasburg–missing the playoffs if he exceeds his innings pitched limit–has parallels with the Balzac novel “The Magic Skin.”

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Cardinals’ Victory Invokes Mythos of Spring

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2011

St. Louis’s improbable World Series victory corresponds to the mythos of comedy as described by Northrup Frye. Comedy’s improbably reversals symbolize the escape of life from the clutches of winter.

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Novels and Baseball Fans, Fixated on Time

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2011

As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.

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The Poetics of Base Stealing

By Robin Bates | Published: August 20, 2011

Robert Francis’s poem “The Base Stealer” helps us appreciate the exquisite tensions between the base runner and the pitcher.

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A Poetic Game of Throw and Catch

By Robin Bates | Published: August 6, 2011

In his poem, Robert Francis compares the interaction between poet and reader to two boys playing throw and catch.

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