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Today I heard Garrison Keilor's Writer's Almanac.

It was a revelation: (for those who don't know it's a mon-friday feature. A featured writer, some other writers; with less detail, and a poem).

First, I usually dislike the poems. Even when he chooses one I like for content, his delivery irritates me. Today he managed to avoid both of those by, of all things, having a poem by an author I don't like (John Updike, on baseball).

The featured author was... Dan Brown. The explanation of how he started writing was illuminating: He was on vacation, devoured a Sheldon novel and decided he could do that too.

Next was Octavia Butler! It's her birthday today. With a better thumbnail of her career/self. Last was Erik Maria Remarque (who's birthday it would have been, were he not, you know, dead).

This is the link to the Writers Almanac: after 22 June you will have to go back to find it. If you want to hear it, there's a link but I don't know how long it lasts)

Baseball

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
the fact that some are chosen
and some are not—those whose mitts
feel too left-handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop's wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's
spotlight swivels your way,
and the chatter around you falls still,
and the mothers on the sidelines,
your own among them, hold their breaths,
and you whiff on a terrible pitch
or in the infield achieve
something with the ball so
ridiculous you blush for years.
It's easy to do. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right,
beginning with baseball.