Baseball Talisman(s) Weeks 4 & 5

This week's ball was a joy to carry. I want to keep this baseball with me for several weeks, meditating on the quotes, mantra-like. They were given by Ilya Kaminsky in a workshop. The first:

"Because I found Hitler inside of me..."
Mother Teresa, when asked why she chose a life of service to the poor.

and

"Argument with others is rhetoric. Argument with oneself is poetry."
William Butler Yeats

I will continue with this ball in my backback as a subtle reminder of two quotes that will need to stick with me for the rest of my life.

The one I spin, twirl and carry with me today, however, for week 5, is a recent excerpt from the lovely Elizabeth Thorpe:

I want to write about baseball, like others have and will. There is something about baseball that is incorruptible, no matter how many Barry Bondses break records. No matter how many little kids get baseballs signed because they are the loudest instead of the most polite. No matter how much the players make. The core of baseball, a large core, is solid, made of the finest materials. We are fibers in the string that wraps the core, intertwined in our love and fear and disappointment, in the buildup of details that make history. It matters that my cat was named for Tony Pena. It matters that I watched the victory parade, that I saw the trash cans piled over with styrofoam Dunkin cups on an early morning when we didn't have to drag ourselves out of bed. It matters that one of my most enduring memories from childhood is watching the Red Sox with my mom, the sound of the fans going in the windows, a mixing bowl of popcorn between us. Someday I will be able to write about New England and the Red Sox in a way that will make me feel I finally got it right.

Amen, sista, you're wicked pissa.

I'm beginning to think that I should compile these someday, and title the collection, "Jim Churchill-Dicks and His Balls" Anyone? Anyone?