Grappling with a Host of Issues

Probably not what anyone wants to hear. 

Total Suplex of the Heart is focused on Georgie, a young woman writing for a web site that gets an idea to do an article on a local hardcore wrestling promotion. But once hired, to act as a valet, or less charitably, eye candy, Georgie finds she really loves wrestling. The storytelling and the characters as much or more than the physicality.

For the remainder of the story, Georgie is around or involved in wrestling to some extent, but writer Joanne Starer tends to focus on how those things intersect with various issues Georgie has (which are drawn from Starer's own life, including starting her own women's wrestling promotion in the early-2000s.) Georgie has body image issues and anorexia, neither of which is helped by her valet character often being dressed up in skimpy outfits designed to titillate the male audience.

So there's a scene where a friend she's made through wrestling is trying to help her find new clothes for her costume, and artist Ornella Greco draws two panels side-by-side: one is how Georgie actually looks in the outfit, and the other is what Georgie sees in the mirror, with a more noticeable belly, and some hair on her legs, bags under her eyes. Basically that she's fixating, or imagining, on perceived imperfections. Or Georgie narrates her cycle of binging, and justifies it by assuring that she tries to eat healthy foods. Except binging on raisin bran has negative consequences.

There's also her tendency to gravitate towards guys for affirmation, and those guys are often completely self-absorbed. Even the guy who seems "nice", is really trying to have the relationship entirely on his terms. They're working together on a show for the wrestling school Georgie helped him start and run, but it's all for him. Everything is on his schedule, according to his needs. The guy who points this out, seems to be doing so more to convince Georgie to sleep with him, than out of any real concern for her.

Greco draws most of those guys as physical specimens, though I'm not sure if that's meant to be how they really look, or how Georgie perceives them. Meaning as an the inverse of her self-image. That she sees them as these perfect guys, and she's lucky they like her (because she sees herself as such a mess), so she needs to make sure they keep liking her. By being the fun one, or the supportive one, or the flirty one.

 

But amid all that, Starer does emphasize that Georgie makes a lot of friends through wrestling. Actual friends, who not only support her or encourage her to figure out what she wants, but also will call her on her self-destructive behavior. Starer ends the story on an up note, one she admits in the afterword doesn't mirror the reality of her situation at that time in her life. She's likely right that it's important to note toxic relationships or body issues don't just magically fix themselves, but I appreciate she let the comic end on a more positive trend. I often found myself occasionally groaning at Georgie's latest bad decision, so having her step away from that was fairly carthartic. Though Starer usually has Georgie groaning at herself along with us, per her narration boxes. But it's an illustration of the cycles people get caught in, making the same mistakes over and over, even knowing they're doing it.

What I Bought 9/2/2025 - Part 3

The food truck selling the Cuban sandwiches still has not been at the big Friday food truck thing since the first time I went. I missed my chance. On the other hand, I did have some jerk chicken tacos last Friday. The spiciness kicked my ass.

Wrapping up the books from August with the last issue of one mini-series, and the return of another after an absence of several months.

Dust to Dust #6, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (wirter), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - The jackrabbits all being very careful not to make eye contact with the person in the gas mask.

Sarah the photographer is still asking questions about the alleged child killer the sheriff let escape, while also trying to better understand the sheriff. The sheriff, back on his feet after the moonshine brothers beat his ass, has sworn off the demon drink and sets out to fix a break in the phone lines that he says the mayor didn't seem too concerned about finding and repairing.

But the mayor's found the rough drafts of Sarah's article, and doesn't approve of how his town is being portrayed. So he shreds her notes and boots her from the hotel. In general, the mayor appears to be grow aggressive and unhinged. The sight of a photo of his wife makes him hit his daughter (who is starting to figure out her baseball-playing fiance is a loser), and he's lost all patience with the alleged "rainmaker", who has produced bupkis so far.

And run through all this is the jackrabbit drive. Essentially, the locals feel there are so many rabbits they're like a plague. So they run them all into a big chicken-wire cage, and beat them to death with sticks. Based on what the sheriff tells Roscoe, they don't even use them for meat, they just kill them so they don't eat whatever pitiful amount of crops grow. The parents even encourage the kids to grab a stick and join in, but one boy, Roger, would rather read a book or help the rabbits escape.

Jones spends quite a few pages in this issue on that whole deal, but it's entirely ignored by any of the main cast. The sheriff is playing repairman, the ballplayer is fooling around with the preacher's daughter, the mayor's having his breakdown over the bleak financial situation, Sarah's not interested in taking pictures of that bit of local color. Because it's a waste of time. It doesn't solve any of the problems facing the town; it's just an opportunity for these people who feel beaten down by the world to take out their frustration on something that can't fight back, then go have themselves some booze to cool the thirst they worked up in a pointless effort.

Past Time #5, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - There's always gotta be one class clown in the team photo.

Henry murdering that scout last issue brings the story back to where the mini-series began. Because the scout's sportswriter buddy, Jack, was a day late showing up, but spent the next several decades tracking Henry as he jumped from one bush league to another, under vaguely similar names, sometimes with an excuse for the affliction that made him need to stay out of the sun.

Eventually Henry had enough of being hounded, and has sufficient power to put everyone else in the stadium into a stupor while he smacked line drives at the writer's head. Terry ends up caught, hanging from the ceiling and bleeding into a bucket, but Henry lets him live. No thanks to Ronny, who is still hanging around with Henry for some reason, but doesn't care what he does to this guy.

Olson sets the scene in two columns of panels, one red and one blue on each row. The red are focused on Henry, on his anger or maybe just on his wants. He wants a story written about him (but only the story he wants told.) He doesn't want to hear about the war. The blue are focused more on Jack or Ronny. Jack bringing up Henry's war record like that matters at this point, Ronny just bored with the whole thing.

But they let Jack live and now it's 1988. Henry might just get to play in the major leagues, and Jack abide that thought, or whatever Henry is getting to play in the majors. But he's too late. Henry gets his at-bat, and Jack Terry gets hit by a car because he stopped in the middle of the street, too aghast at Henry getting his dream.

The book ends in the "present day" where, despite what Henry told Ronny that night in Chicago "one last time", he's still playing baseball. In Mexico, wearing a luchador mask and calling himself "Hector Hermanos." So Henry's selfish to the end, or maybe he just loves playing baseball too much to stop. And being an immortal creature of the night means he never has to stop. Ronny's still with him, I guess the effect of Henry siring him. In an earlier issue, Henry staked someone he bit that was still trying to find him to be with him.

Or maybe for all Ronnie's talk about dying in a church, and being angry about what Henry took from him, he doesn't want his life to end, either. Continuing on, for the love of the game.

What I Bought 8/4/2025 - Part 2

I took my car in for some work at the beginning of the week, only to be told it didn't need the work. It was the same mechanic shop both that delivered the warning, but what I heard as, "this part is wearing out, replace it immediately," was really, "this part is wearing out, you'll need to replace it eventually." Which is relieving, but also kind of obvious. Everything on a car is going to wear out eventually. But now I'll know what it is when it happens, I guess.

Bronze Faces #4, Shobo and Shof (writers), Alexandre Tefenkgi (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - I bought a variant cover, the Chris Visions one, rather than this one. Same price, and it looked pretty cool.

This is kind of a regroup issue, after the apparently disastrous end of the heist last issue. Ogiso are hiding in a lighthouse in Senegal. Liam's looking after his injured brother in the top of the lighthouse. Tefenkgi uses the circular shape to put the two brothers dead center in a double-page establishing shot, with smaller panels showing their conversation reading clockwise across the two pages.

Cisse decides it's time to bail, but when he suggests to another member of the gang they do likewise, it turns into a fight. The lead-up to which Tefenkgi draws in 3 rows where there are no borders between panels on each row. Like it's all part of a single sequence that rolls without pause (although Cisse loses his pipe somewhere between the second row and when he avoids the bottle in the third row.) Liam intervenes and Cisse catches a hit upside the head, but the rest of the group just let him leave with a bag of their cash. And then Sango takes off alone, intending to rob the London Museum by herself.

Shobo and Shof give us some backstory on the detective, the case that hurt her rep and the pressure she feels here, but the most interesting part to me is the flashback to Sango and Gbonka's first meeting, when Gbonka moved into the house. Sango actually introduces herself and friendly and supportive. I get the feeling she received a similar speech from Timi's dad when she moved in. Still doesn't explain what caused the rift. Was it a difference of opinion on how to show their "fire"? Was it Timi, who isn't present in the flashback, but as he seems a lot younger than either woman, was probably in bed. Though it also fits with Timi's absence in the present. It's treated like he's dead, but I figure no body, no death.

Either way, it sounds like Sango's heading right into trouble, and Gbonka's got no plans to follow. Which is a good way for someone to wind up dead beyond any doubt.

Past Time #4, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist/colorist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - What's smearing blood on the ball do for the spin rate?

We get a flashback to the Western Front, where Henry took some shrapnel to the eye, but survived long enough to be bitten by a Kraut vampire. From there it switches to Jack Terry covering a ballgame at the Polo Grounds. Terry's the old guy that was questioning Ronny at a bar in the first issue, but now he's talking with a scout who's been assigned to check out a couple of players on the barnstorming circuit, which Terry's supposed to write about.

One of those players is Henry, the other the speedy second baseman who got knocked the fuck out by the crazy vamp last issue. Henry's pretty excited, but there's just one problem: the game the scout plans to attend is a day game. Whoops. Looks like Henry and Ronny (still trying to adjust to his recent change in status) will both be missing that game.

So Henry pretends to be a hired chauffeur, picks up the scout - Terry's absent for some reason - drives into the woods and wrecks the car, killing the scout. Because if the scout can't see him play, he won't see anyone. No, that's literally his stated reason. I'm not clear on if we're meant to infer this selfish attitude is the result of Henry being a vampire, similar to "saving" Ronny's life by turning him, or if it's just who he is. We've only gotten a couple of glimpses of his life before. The flashback to WWI, when he seems like a wide-eyed youngster too eager to see things for his own good, and the flashback to his college days, when he seemed less interested in baseball than reading the paper about the war. Neither really suggests a selfish dick out to spoil other people's chances if he can't get one.

But there's a couple of spots during the conversation between Ronny and henry where I'm not sure what the art was telling us, either. In the first, Ronny is wandering the field, picking up baseballs. he grabs one, then pauses as whispers, 'Sweet Jesus, what am I?' Was it something about how he found the ball, despite being blind? Because we've seen him perform this role before, apparently by tracking the sound of contact to figure out where the ball landed. Hell, he threw batting practice perfectly well. Best I can figure, even if Ronny's figured out the telepathy thing, the reality of the situation still hits him harder some moments than others.

The second time, Henry tries to play the, "I killed the guy you owed money, you owe me," and Ronny clutches his side and drops the bag. His voice balloon says he's laughing, but it looks more like he's in pain. I guess he just found the fact Henry didn't know about it being a day game really funny. Even if Ronny wanted to help Henry, there's nothing he could do about the sun shining even before it became as lethal to him as to Henry.

I don't feel like, even with the mini-series being one issue longer than I thought, that this book is really coming together. I guess there's still a chance for a ninth-inning comeback. 

What I Bought 6/30/2025 - Part 2

Earlier this week, they made us get everything off the floor at work so they could clean the carpets one night. Except they didn't show up, then told us the next day we had to move everything off the floor again because this time they were totally going to show up (a day late.) I hate people who can't keep schedules, especially where they're expecting you to help them.

Today we're looking at third issues.

Past Time #3, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - Wow, a Ronald Harris card, complete with blood spatter from his untimely death! Neato!

The Barnstormers are playing a local group of religious weirdos. One in particular is always mumbling to himself, but more critically, he's a dirty player. Throws an elbow into the face of the Barnstormers second baseman, setting off a huge brawl. During the fight, Henry finds out the guy is a vampire like him.

Henry flees the field entirely, but tracks the opposing ballplayer to a church later. They argue a bit, then fight a bit, the church gets lit on fire, and Ronald shoots the other guy in the head twice. Don't know if that's going to do the trick with a vampire - 2 shots to center mass didn't do much to Henry - but then Ronald has a heart attack of something and Henry bites him. Still, two head shots from a blind man when the entire building is burning down is pretty slick.

As the fight progresses, Mangual has reds and oranges gradually overtake the panels. Obviously, everything is on fire, but also things are being pulled out of the shadows. Henry's been trying to stay hidden, but not only has he run into another like him, the guy seems to know what Henry's been up to. Which means he might not be as safe with this traveling ballclub as he thinks.

That said, the pacing on this mini-series is all over the place. Took most of two issues to get Henry on the team, and in less than half an issue he's fighting another vampire and Ronald's dying. I don't have any idea what Harris is really going for with this book. He hasn't delved into Henry or Ronald's past, hasn't really delved into Henry being a vampire.

Henry turning Ronald without asking permission does tie into what Ronald said last issue, about Henry being willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. Now is that a vampire trait, or was that always part of Henry and his condition just gives him a greater ability to assert his will? Don't know, and don't know if we'll find out.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #3, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) -  The carnage of a convention can be difficult for a novice.

Shauna, still playing both sides, has to try and pull it off during Quiltfest. And in a sign of either how ill-suited she is for espionage, or how tired she is, Shauna figures it's a great idea to get both her employers table space directly across from each other. Because it'll be easier to keep tabs on them. It's also going to make it rather difficult to keep her bosses from noticing she's working for both of them.

It's the kind of mistake I'd make when I play chess. "Yes, ha ha." *notices extremely obvious mistake* "Shit, that was stupid." 

Indeed, the whole thing blows up on her about one page into the actual convention. She's about to get tarred and feathered (or whatever one does to quilt saboteurs) as the one behind all the sabotage, but she made friends with the husbands who hang out in the pub while their wives buy quilt stuff, and got the idea to speak with this mysterious Mabel. Who looks old enough to have watched Mary, Queen of Scots, get beheaded, and has buyer's remorse over some industrial grade quilting machine she bought that made everyone jealous. Plus, it made quilting too commercialized, too American.

Now see here, you can't blame all capitalism on the U.S. We just took what the various European powers were doing and did it. . .I don't want to say "better." Did it more. Yeah, we do more capitalism than everyone else (unless we've already been surpassed by China or India.)

Either way, the interpersonal connection means Mabel comes to Shauna's defense, and insists the two shopkeepers have a quilt-off, that very night, in a "loser leaves town" match. If professional wrestling taught me anything - besides how easy authority figures are to distract or trick - it's that there's always a loophole to those kinds of matches. Also, I'm still convinced Bryn is behind the initial sabotage, as part of some "statement." Just putting it on the record - again - for when I'm inevitably proved wrong next issue.

Blood in the Garden - Chris Herring

Herring details the course of the New York Knicks during the 1990s, starting with the hire of Pat Riley to pull them out of the mess they'd become in the '80s. From there, he progresses through their battles with Michael Jordan and the Bulls, until they finally reached the Finals the year Jordan took off, only to lose to the Houston Rockets in Game 7 because John Starks couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat, but also couldn't stop taking shots.

After that, the team begins a steady slide as the players grow tired of Riley and Riley decides management isn't giving him what he wants (read:everything) and eventually leaves for the Miami Heat. The Knicks try to arrest their decline through repeated playoff battles with the Heat and the Indiana Pacers, and even make one more NBA Finals at the end of the decade (where the Spurs summarily curbstomped them.) But by that point, nepo-baby doofus James Dolan was running the team. Into the ground, that is.

Herring intersperses chapters focused on specific players or coaches among chapters about specific seasons or series, typically the point where that person is critical to what's happening. So Riley's biographical chapter comes early in the book, to explain who this guy is the Knicks were so desperate to get. Starks' chapter is when he's shooting the Knicks out of that Game 7 (while Riley stands there on the sideline watching him do it, refusing to apparently even consider subbing in Rolando Blackmon, who the Rockets absolutely knew they could not stop.) Franchise cornerstone Patrick Ewing's chapter comes late in the book, as the Knicks are trying to finish strong in the playoffs and Ewing lands awkwardly and basically destroys his wrist. Herring describes it as an injury consistent with falling from a 3-story window, which, ouch.

I read this book in one night back in April (as I mentioned back then, I was way ahead on Thursday posts) when I couldn't sleep. Around 11:30 I decided there was no point in just laying in bed and got up to read, and finished it about 4 hours later. And it was only after I finished that I noticed I was getting tired. So the book reads fast, and it keeps your attention. And this is coming from someone who mostly despised the Knicks in the '90s.

Though I think it was all the playoff game rock fights they had with Miami I hated. First to 70 points wins, basically. As Herring notes, it's like a team fighting its mirror. Riley made the Knicks a tough, physical team that beat the hell out of its opponent and ran everything through their center. Then he went to Miami and did the same thing again, while the Knicks, after a brief dalliance with Don Nelson and up-tempo offense, kept playing the same bully ball style. Put them up against different teams and they were almost tolerable to watch.

As it turns out, personality-wise, they're fascinating. The harsh training and practice Riley espoused, which got to the point one player had to wear a flak jacket during to survive practice because of his busted ribs. John Starks' irrational confidence, which alternately saves and kills the team. Anthony Mason's wild mood swings - during Don Nelson's brief tenure as head coach, Mason is alternately irritated Nelson has put a lot of offensive responsibility in Mason's hands, but also leaving notes threatening to kill Nelson if he pulls him from a game again.

Herring's portrayal of Pat Riley as kind of a lunatic and an asshole pretty much confirms the distaste I've had for him for 30+ years. There's an early anecdote about him firing a well-liked team staff member. He tells the players that yes, everyone liked that guy, but sometimes you need to shoot a hostage so the others will wonder what's gonna happen next. I stopped and stared at that paragraph for a bit.

'During a practice that first year under Riley, Van Gundy repeatedly shouted at Charles Oakley, telling him he was playing soft. After the third such remark, Oakley fired the ball at Van Gundy's crotch, leaving the coach doubled over.'

Overdue Movie Reviews #1 - Little Big League (1994)

Billy's (Luke Edwards) a huge baseball fan, knows all the arcane rules and can cite situations and examples from the lengthy history of the game as evidence. When his wealthy, baseball-loving grandfather (Jason Robards) passes away, Billy learns he's the new owner of the Minnesota Twins. And when the manager of the team (Dennis Farina) chooses to disregard Billy's suggestion that screaming at and insulting the players isn't helping their performance, Billy fires him. In need of a manager, Billy takes his friends' suggestion and hires. . .himself. Hijinks and life lessons ensue.

The movie has a bit of rising and falling action. The players' initial resistance to being coached by a kid, only for them to eventually buy in when he encourages them to remember baseball is fun. Then the pressure starts to get to Billy, the tough decisions - releasing an aging veteran who is one of Billy's favorite players - take the fun out of it. He starts ignoring his friends, snapping at the players. The team's star (Timothy Busfield) is dating his mom, and Billy doesn't handle that well.

The team starts losing, there's a funny bit where Billy gets ejected from a game for calling the ump a dork, then adds a few more, colorful, remarks (which are blocked by an air horn.) When the umpire repeats them to Billy's mom, he gets grounded for a few games, and gives a press conference where he refers to himself in the third person (always a bad sign.)

Eventually Billy figures out he's not ready for baseball to be a job yet, loosens up again, and the team goes on a late winning streak to get into a 1-game playoff against the Mariners. Kind of weird to see the Mariners played as the big bad, but the Mariners were an up-and-coming team in the mid-90s, so it actually makes more sense, given the time period, than the Yankees being the final boss in Major League (the Yanks were mediocre to shit from 1988 to 1994.) Of course, the Twins had won 2 World Series in the previous 7 years before this movie came out (compared to Cleveland, which has not won a World Series since World War 2), so the notion the fans would be ecstatic about the team almost making the playoffs as a wild card is a little odd.

Where was I going with that? Oh right, the Mariners as bad guys. Ken Griffey Jr. in particular is played as this imposing, cocky hitter. He hits a home run to give the Mariners the lead, then practically saunters around the bases, even winking at one of the Twins' infielders as he goes by. When he walks later and Bowers (Jonathan Silverman, playing a goofball relief pitcher) tries a pickoff, Griffey remarks that just for that, he's going to steal second base, maybe third, maybe even home. Then gets tricked by a faked, wild pickoff attempt the entire Twins' team, including one of the security guards, take part in. Pure cocky heel getting his comeuppance, which is just an odd role for a super-popular player known at the times for highlight reel plays and nicknamed "The Kid."

The movie gets some good mileage out of "child in an adult world" stuff. Billy learning about the wonders of adult films being available to rent in hotel rooms when on a road trip. The principal calling Billy into his office, then being real excited because the Twins might be able to sign Rickey Henderson. Billy and Bowers having fun with water balloons. The best bit is probably in the hours before the playoff game, when the team rallies to help Billy with his math homework. Maybe help should be in quotations marks. I've heard from people who at least played in college, that baseball players are the stupidest of all collegiate athletes, and this movie certainly plays to that stereotype.

What I Bought 6/2/2025 - Part 1

I realized last weekend there are a lot of movies in my DVD collection I've watched several times, but never reviewed. Maybe they got a paragraph in those posts I used to do where I covered five movies I watched over the weekend while sitting around waiting for Alex to get off the phone, or off the can, or I wrote about some specific part of the movie, but that's it. I may try to correct that in the near-future.

For now, let's dive into May's comics, now that I've actually got them. Going to keep it simple and just write about a pair of second issues today.

Past Time #2, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - The wings have got to be some sort of violation of the rules. They're obscuring the ump's sight! Not that it matters to a blind man, are you freakin' kidding, ump? That pitch was a foot outside!

Back in 1925, Ronald, shakes off the beating he got last issue, while Henry disposes of the bodies, then has to dispose of the person he tried leaving dead in the cornfield last issue. Amazing that the sun was apparently well up in the sky, yet no one saw him stake a man shuffling down the sidewalk while literally smoking in the sunlight.

Henry hitches a ride under the train the ballclub takes to Des Moines, and that night, the team's rightfielder gets injured when one of the bulbs for the field lights bursts as he's chasing a fly ball. I think the flash blinds him and that somehow makes him trip over his own feet and break a leg, but I don't love how Olson draws it.

He adds these little dirty yellow things in the air around the light as it bursts, which makes me think it's actual glass, then draws more of them around Coombs' face in the next two panels. I think it's supposed to be like he's seeing spots, but I thought at first that he was getting showered with broken glass.

Either way, Coombs is out and here's Henry, passing himself off as Ronald's friends (while messing with his mind) and touting his ballplaying days from college (which we hear about in a brief flashback, but we don't see him play.) Ronald's apparently a heck of a pitcher, even blind, but not against a guy with vampire speed and reflexes, so Henry's got himself a night job. And all it took was sabotaging that light. How exactly he sabotaged it so it would explode when Coombs was looking up at it, which would only happen on a ball hit over his head, versus it exploding during the 98% of the game Coombs is either watching the pitcher and the infield, batting, or in the dugout, I don't know. Point is, Henry does whatever it takes to get what he wants. Is that a vamp thing, or a Henry thing, that's unclear.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #2, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I know the tight spandex is a classic lady spy look, but I feel for an activity like that, a Spy vs. Spy reference might have been more appropriate.

Shauna's new boss just found her car burned up. She suspects a former employee-turned-competitor, and offers to pay for Shauna's boat repairs if Shauna will prove Pat set the fire. Pretend to be fired here, apply there, get the dirt. Simple, except for the part where I've not seen a John Allison character yet I thought had any capacity for subterfuge or deception. They are all, in their own ways, horrible actors and liars.

Before Shauna gets to the espionage, she's got to find a corsage. I mean, a reason to get the brooding Bryn interested in her to the point she could need a corsage. I mean, whatever. . .she wants to jump him. Or be jumped by him, but he's too busy being deep and soulful about the injustices of the world. Which he solves by keying peoples' cars. Look, man, just say you're antisocial

Shauna finally visits the other store, gets hired by badmouthing the competition, and returns for her first day of work to find someone clogged the drains to flood the store. Clogged them with quilt wadding, like you can get at the other store! So now Pat asks Shauna to play spy for her, on the other store. Again, this is absolutely not something I believe she can accomplish successfully, but so it goes.

I feel like all signs point to Bryn, as part of some attempt at a "statement" by trying to crash the local quilting economy. Wreck the stores, customers gone, husbands forced to find something else to do besides sit at the pub while their wives shop, something something revolution? Seems too obvious, but unless it's this mysterious "Mabel", I've not got any other suspects.

What I Bought 5/5/2025 - Part 2

I've really been digging the NBA playoffs this year. Even the series that were over quickly had at least a couple of games with cool performances or huge comebacks. Overtime games, last-second shots, the Western Conference just being a Thunderdome of good teams beating the crap out of each other. Fun times.

Dark Pyramid #2, by Paul Tobin (writer), PJ Holden (artist), Sara Colella (color artist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I doubt she's going to be happy when she turns around.

With Shailene's help, Becca escapes the giant, bizarrely-speaking murder creature (which we'll learn is named Eve.) That gives Shailene time to explain a little more about the situation. Measurements of seismic shockwaves revealed a pyramid beneath Mt. Denali. Now the locals all look at you funny if you bring it up. Probably a violation of the "Never Mind All That, Then," ordinance.

Shailene explains a lot of Hooky's fans that showed up to help are staying in the big house of some rich lady Shailene used to date, and it might be a good place to rest and prepare. Unfortunately, Eve got there first. I laughed at the bit where Becca insists they should go in and help, and promptly gets herself and Shailene trampled by a panicked crowd. It's not funny for them, because now Becca's trying to carry an unconscious Shailene to safety, only to run into the military, who apparently work with or control Eve. But still, seeing the altruistic intentions backfire so spectacularly was kind of funny.

Tobin spends four pages on what was going on in the house before Eve showed up. It's mostly people getting drunk and talking about random crap. Holden doesn't draw anyone making preparations for a search-and-rescue mission, just people standing or sitting around, drinking and talking.  'I found a banjo but it doesn't have strings. I realize this is a problem,' is uttered at one point. One lady is just walking around topless. Very comfortable with her body, I suppose. Or she was, until Eve ripped her apart.

It feels at first glance like it's just establishing that no, these people were not going to be much help to Becca or Shailene. But the scene is focused mostly on this one guy, Hermann, who seems to like meeting people and learning stuff. Tarot, how to play the banjo, whatever. So I assume he's going to evade the military's attempt to round up whoever Eve doesn't slaughter and prove useful.

Past Time #1, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos Mangual (letterer) - Who is throwing red paint all over the scoreboard? That's really inconsiderate. 

Harris uses a framing sequence set in Chicago in 1988, as the Cubs are about to finally have nighttime baseball games at Wrigley Field. One old guy who has a bite mark on his neck has tracked down a blind black man named Ronald Harris. Ronald doesn't have a reflection, but "Jack" wants to know about someone else, someone Ronald met in 1923.

Which is where most of this issue takes place, 1923 Nebraska. Horrifying. We see a little of a night game between a local team and a barnstorming group Ronald helped coach. Olson keeps the uniforms baggy and the players kind of crappy. Also, the umpire's wearing a top hat, which I can't recall being the fashion at the time, but what the heck. On the down side, when a player slides into what I think is second base, its drawn wrong. It looks like he slid coming from the outfield instead of second base, which I'm positive is not how baseball was played in the 1920s.

After the game's over, Ronald has a brief conversation with a man the sheriff may be looking for. The mystery man seems more concerned that someone he beat and left unconscious in the cornfield wasn't there, but when Ronald's getting beat up at some later point over money he owes, the mystery man rather violently saves his life.

So there's a few mysteries. Who Jack is, how Ronald ended up a vampire, what's up with Henry and the man he left in the cornfield. How Jack found Ronald in the first place, maybe? I'm curious to see how Harris doles out the answers, if we get them. And I'm curious how he and Olson weave the baseball into the story.

Good Enough to Dream - Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn had written several other books on baseball, most notably The Boys of Summer, about the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson, but in this one, he's focused on the minor leagues. Specifically, the 1983 Class A (meaning, at least three levels below the majors), independent (meaning, unaffiliated with any major league franchise) Utica Blue Sox.

Kahn's writing about them because he, in a series of events that are largely not interesting enough for the amount of pages devoted to it, becomes president of the team. So, in addition to talking about the players and managers, and the fights with umpires and the grind of a season with no off-days for over two months, he also talks about the challenges of running a minor league team that doesn't have any financial backing from a big league club.

Kahn has to pay off the $3,500 debt the team's previous owners owed the power company, has to arrange for a bus service to get the players to road games, has to devise promotions to bring in more fans, sell advertising, on and on. The people helping him are varying degrees of competent and relatively new to running a ball team, so the lack of knowledge factors in.

During a critical game late in the season, Kahn is informed by his general manager that she didn't purchase enough baseballs, and the team may risk forfeiting if they run out. Which leads to Kahn calling sporting goods stores until they locate a guy willing to drive back to his store and sell them more baseballs, all the while the game is still playing. Or the attempt to honor one of their players on his birthday by turning off the field lights and having the fans hold candles and sing "Happy Birthday", runs a-cropper because nobody thought about the fact the field lights have to cool off after being shut down before they can be turned back on. Leading to a nearly 20-minute delay which nearly made the Blue Sox forfeit.

Kahn's an engaging writer, witty at times - the kangaroo court sequence on the bus is hilarious - thoughtful at others, willing to poke fun at himself when his big ideas (like the birthday stunt) fail. He captures the interpersonal forces at work on the team. The players whose nerves get to them, or who worry about how being so far from home could end their marriage. The players' frustration with the manager, Jim Gattis, who is never satisfied and constantly haranguing them about something. Is that driving them to play better in the hopes he'll shut up, or does it cause them to burn out? If he's giving them grief when they win 80% of their games, how much worse can he be when they go on a losing streak? Kahn, at least as he presents himself here, is trying to walk the line of supporting his manager and not pulling rank, but also trying to get the man to ease off for the good of the team. Of course, as he presents himself here, I'm not sure how effective he is, especially at reining Gattis in.

One bit on a purely baseball note that interested me, was the sense the Blue Sox had that the rest of the teams resented them for making the other teams look bad. After all, the Blue Sox's roster was full of players those same franchises had either discarded or never considered at all. For the castoffs to beat the ones deemed worthwhile made all the guys whose business was to recognize talent look bad. It's not so much the pride aspect that intrigues me, but that the other teams wouldn't jump at the chance to grab a guy one of their opponents discarded, especially once he showed he had a little juice. Maybe things were different in the '80s, less analytically cutthroat. Or maybe it's just the difference between getting outsmarted by someone you regard as a peer (a guy with the same job as you, but for a different big league club), versus someone you think is a piker compared to you (an independent team.)

I wonder how much of that was real versus perceived by the Blue Sox. Gattis is presented as clearly believing the league is conspiring to keep them from winning the pennant, and Kahn relates a few occasions where he tries to talk up some of his players to people in the offices of those other teams, only to be blown off. But Gattis seems perpetually aggrieved, and most of the Blue Sox are old for the level of competition. Maybe only by a year or two, but that is regarded as significant sometimes.

'Barry Moss found himself in a perplexing role. Gattis wanted to show the other players that he indulged no favorites. Even though Moss had grown up with him and even though Moss was his confidant and coach, Moss, the player, was a favorite target. Sometimes, in one of Gattis' daily sermons, he paused and turned to Moss and said, "Barry, in the fourth inning you looked real horseshit chasing that low inside pitch." Pause. Inhale. "Real horseshit."'

Stolen Season - David Lamb

Lamb had been working as a foreign correspondent in Africa and the Middle East for several years, and having returned to the U.S., decides to reconnect with his youth by touring minor league baseball teams across the country.

He actually starts the book talking about how in 1955, the first year after the Braves moved from his hometown of Boston to Milwaukee, he managed to get a gig writing columns for the Milwaukee paper about his perspective on the season. He literally wrote a letter to the Milwaukee paper and they agreed. They even flew him out to Milwaukee one week, which was a pretty big deal for a kid.

So the members of that team are threaded through the book, even though that was a major, rather than minor, league team. He travels out to ace pitcher Warren Spahn's ranch in Oklahoma, or talks with Hall of Fame third baseman Eddie Mathews, at that point working as a hitting instructor for the now-Atlanta Braves (the franchise chased the TV dollars and promise of a publicly-funded stadium south after a just dozen years in Milwaukee.)

But the book is a nostalgia trip in a lot of ways, and Lamb clearly thinks the minor leagues, where the players make very little, subsisted on hot dogs from the concession stands, and played in aging stadiums, sometimes in front of just a few dozen people, better resembles the way he remembers baseball as a kid. Because there's a lot of grousing, both from those '50s Braves players and Lamb, about the current (for the late-1980s) crop of players being all about money. About them not wanting "it" bad enough.

It's not surprising - baseball seems like a very nostalgic sport - but it's also not good when I'm grumbling out loud, "Nobody is paying Ozzie Smith big bucks to hit home runs, Lamb. They're paying him to be the greatest defensive shortstop you'd ever be fortunate enough to see, you fucking putz."

When Lamb's not telling us to both get off his lawn and just sticks to describing life in the minors, the book is pretty good. He talks to a lot of minor leaguers. Young guys who still think they're on the way up, but also young players who are starting to realize the dream is never going to happen. There's also Ron Washington, future World Series-losing manager and baseball meme (courtesy of the Moneyball movie) toiling in AAA at 37, trying to prove he should get one last shot at the majors. Lamb goes into how shoestring some of these operations are, where the owner of the team bought them for a dollar, and he runs the ticket stand and comes up with promotions to boost attendance, or is calling advertisers to sell space on the outfield wall. He talks to ones that succeed and ones that fail. He spends a couple of pages talking to a pair of minor league umpires, also hoping to reach the big-time someday, and what they have to do to get the mud they use to keep the baseballs from being too slick for the pitchers.

Despite the fact he's making this circle of the country in an old RV, and setting aside an eyeroll-inducing "real America" intro for the section when he reaches the Midwest (I live in the Midwest, and have my whole life. The qualities he ascribes to the people are nothing unique or special, to the extent they even exist here), it's not a travelogue, ala Blue Highways. He keeps the descriptions of any travel issues to brief digressions here and there. The cops knocking on the door of his RV because he parked at the far end of a mall parking lot and they found that suspicious. His friend meeting him in the Carolinas and grousing about the cold showers until they finally get a real hotel room. Brief issues that tie his impromptu journey to the shoestring existence a lot of the players are going through. The team bus is late, a hitting slump is affecting a guy's relationship with his girlfriend, things like that.

'This was to be Monson's fifth season in pro ball and his second at Stockton. Talking to him in the dugout, what struck was that the pressure of the minor leagues - the pressure to succeed and advance or be gone - had taken part of his youth from him. He spoke of, "turning my life around for baseball," of the need for a pension plan in the minors, of the fear of debilitating injuries, and of a book he'd like to write titled Highs and Lows: My Life in Baseball. Somehow those were things one might expect to hear from a much older man. Monson was twenty-two.'

Against a Rock with a Hard Fist

This looks like a scene from a horror movie I'd regret spending 90 minutes watching.

Volume 4 of The Boxer picks up where volume 3 left off, with lightweight champ Jean Pierre Manuel flat on his back after Yu started to let loose. Of course, this only excites Jean, that he's finally seeing the perfection he's always sought, so he comes back for more. His attempts to adapt to Yu's abilities are useless, and all he can do is take punishment from a fighter that is not going to stop unless told to, coached by a psychopath only too happy to watch Yu beat someone to death.

JH pauses between knockdowns to delve into Jean's childhood, how his disappointment with his lousy parents informed his life and his pursuit of something not tainted by failure or flaw. And then, when it looks like things are about to begin again, the fight's interrupted. I'm not sure I buy that Jean could be pulled back from such a destructive course so easily, and the whole heartwarming aspect kind of ignores how, last volume, he was beating up muggers in alleys and stealing their blood to use in a painting. But it feels like the end of the fight is more about laying hints of K's motivation. His fighter not only wins, but wins so conclusively Jean, who was undefeated in 38 fights before this, leaves the ring to retrieve the belt and hand it over himself, and K's furious.

Rather than immediately jump into K's next target, welterwight champion Yuto Takeda, the story shifts back to Injae, who's about have his first bout. Being trained by the same guy that introduced K to Bakesan in volume 1, Injae unfortunately draws a tough match-up for his debut. A veteran with the very cool name of Rock Kang. JH spends several pages on how Injae tries to train for the match against a fighter his coach describes as, 'a perfected version of you,' and then we get the fight itself.

As opposed to the easy triumphs Yu experiences, Injae's fight is a seesaw affair. It's also very much boxing like you see in the movies, both fighters throwing punches constantly, though we do see both fighters working to either evade or at least block punches. Injae shakes off a knockdown right out of the gate, and even appears to have the advantage after 2 rounds. At which point Rock's superior experience is shown to take over and Injae's in a fight to survive, questioning whether this is going to be his only fight before a fade to obscurity.

I'm not sure what was going on at the end, when Injae feels too exhausted to dodge Rock's knockout punch, then sees the image of Bakesan knocking him the fuck out back in volume 1, and suddenly is dodging easily before unleashing his own 1-2 combo. Is he trying to prove Bakesan wrong? That doesn't seem to jibe with his stated reasons for becoming a boxer, or what he supposedly loves about it, so I don't know. Bakesan, incidentally, has become a yakuza boss, though he's pissed at the sight of Yu becoming a champion. There's no indication he has any idea what Injae's up to, and vice versa, though it feels like JH is setting them up for a rematch somewhere down the line. How that's going to work, I don't know.

Past Time - Jules Tygiel

The book is a series of essays about baseball and the U.S. Not how baseball shaped the country's culture, especially given that the team owners are so often reluctant to embrace new things. More how the sport's changes reflect the attitudes of a given time.

So Tygiel might have an essay about Bobby Thompson's game-winning home run against the Dodgers in 1951, and how more people than ever were experiencing the game via radio and even the newer medium of television. Then he'll discuss the challenges faced in trying to adapt to a new way of describing a game to fans, and how many of the team owners resisted broadcasting games, as they many resisted airing them over radio, because they believed fans wouldn't come spend money at the ballpark if they could just listen (or watch) at home.

Which is a far cry from the state of things today, where it's all about TV (or streaming) money, and once teams have that guaranteed money locked in, a lot of them don't see any need to, you know, put together a team that would bring fans to the park by being good enough to compete for a championship.

Some of the essays are more interesting to me than others. Chapter 6, "Unreconciled Strivings," was a brief, but informative look at the Negro Leagues and the various challenges they faced. The push to have more of the teams owned by black people rather than white, and how hard it was to get a stadium of their own, rather than being stuck renting say, the Yankees' stadium when they were on road trips. At the same time, the teams were often trying to encourage white fans to come to the games (mostly without success), to get bigger turnouts. That Sunday games were the only ones that tended to draw big crowds, because that was the only day most black Americans had free to go to games. So teams scheduled a lot of double-headers on Sundays, and unofficially encouraged teams to make sure their best pitchers were available for Sunday games. The push-and-pull between wanting baseball to be integrated, but also not wanting to lose these leagues that were uniquely theirs.

In contrast, I didn't find Chapter 3, "Incarnations of Success," useful or persuasive. It details the rise of four players: Charles Comiskey, Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Clark Griffith. Each later became a manager, and still later, owned their own teams. Each of the four during their playing careers joined various movements to get better pay for the players, or break the reserve clause that meant one team held their rights for as long as it wanted, only to start pushing to reduce player salaries once they were on the management side of things. But that wasn't terribly surprising, and I'm not sure it really highlights anything specific about the United States in the first decades of the 20th Century that wasn't true in lots of other places across the globe and at different times.

I'm not sure the book would be of any interest to a non-baseball fan. It probably isn't in-depth enough about broader history to entice someone in that regard, and the writing can be fairly dry. The amount of humor or energy is reliant on the quotes or anecdotes Tygiel pulls from for each essay.

'Baseball did not appeal to Americans, as many have suggested, because it took less time to play than cricket or townball. The architects of the game deliberately adopted an out and inning structure designed to compress play into the time available for games.'

Baseball, in the Baseball Manga? Absurd!

Do you want somebody to say that?

After going a long time thinking I'd never find a copy of the 7th volume of Cross Game at a reasonable price (meaning, not $70 or more), I stumbled across someone selling a copy on Amazon for about $15 this January (as of last week's manga review, we moved on from stuff I bought last year.)

In a sharp, and welcome, departure from the all-consuming teen melodrama offering that was volume 6, volume 7 actually spends a lot of its pages on baseball. It's the beginning of the last tournament to reach Koshien this group of players will have, so it's now or never for Ko and Akaishi to make Wakaba's dream a reality.

Adachi doesn't only focus on the Seishu Gakuen squad, as their old foe Coach Daimon's team would face them in the second round. If he makes it that far, because in his path is a team led by Azuma's old teammate Miki, the one who left even before Daimon got fired because he wanted to play on a team where everyone loved playing baseball.

Adachi takes a different route with each game Seishu plays. The first one is such a dominant win the game is called after 5 innings (mercy rule), and is primarily used for a joke about how half the guys on the team asked Aoba if she'd go on a date with them if they reached certain achievements - one using two stolen bases as the benchmark for example - and none of them hitting the mark. Ko promised he'd get double-digit strikeouts if it meant they wouldn't go on a date, and pulled it off, though he apparently didn't realize it until Aoba mentioned it. But was Aoba disappointed? Oh no, the internal conflict!

The second game is a tense pitcher's duel against Miki's team. Miki's the ace pitcher now instead of the centerfielder, and while he's not on Ko's level of dominance, he gets results. Adachi wisely focuses on how Seishu keeps getting guys on base, but Miki always bears down and keeps them from scoring. Only late in the game does Aoba note that the opposing team hasn't gotten a single hit off Ko, leaning into the notion of how good a pitcher he is.

The third game is really just used to set-up a gag for the fourth game, as Ko tries to figure out why he was throwing harder than normal (in the process helping his team finish the game before a rain delay could begin.) When he asks Aoba for her perspective - because his motion is based on hers - if there was anything different with his mechanics, her observation leads to him walking a bunch of guys in the next game, though they still win easily.

The fifth game is likewise breezed through in a couple of pages, as the story shifts focus to Akane, who is in the hospital for another round of treatment for an unspecified condition. Aoba spends a lot of time with her, while Ko seems determined to just push through and keep playing, reasoning there's nothing he can do but hope things turn out well. And he knows how little good that does. The main issue is Akaishi, who's thrown by the whole thing and who struggles in the 5th game. This as the ace pitcher and elite slugger of Ryuou Gakuin, the presumptive favorites and team that knocked Seishu out of the tournament last time, remark that Seishu's catcher (Akaishi) is the one big advantage Seishu has over them.

So Akaishi's got to get his shit together, because standing between them and Ryuou is a team that seems blessed. Every win's been by a single run, and in close games, things can turn on one little thing. Adachi shows the Nishikura team score their first run in a series of isolated panels on one page. A grounder taking a funny hop over Senda's head. A bunt, and the runner advancing to second. Then a pop fly that lands just inside the foul line. Little things that added up to cancel out a lead-off home run from Senda. The panels contrast Nishikura's coach looking on confidently from behind his glasses, all the while Ko is mowing down batter after batter.

The volume ends on Ko visiting Akane, then he and Aoba visiting Wakaba's grave. It's a signpost of their shared history, that Ko agrees to tell Aoba about Akane's surgery (while hiding it from Akaishi) and how far they've come from when they were kids. There's a flashback showing the two of them getting in trouble for throwing mudballs at each other in the cemetery when they were little.

With all that out of the way, it's time for the big showdown, which we looked at when I reviewed volume 8.

A Perfect Monster

Is this the start of some terrifying, and adorable, new Planet of the Penguins? In this blogger's opinion, yes!

Volume 3 of JH's The Boxer sees Yu challenged by another up-and-coming lightweight, Qasim Al-Hajad. It's briefly set up to seem like contrasting rivals, as Qasim loudly boxes for the fun of it and uses unorthodox attacks he probably saw in video games, while Yu shows no emotion and just knocks people swiftly into oblivion with textbook form.

Just as quickly, Qasim is exposed as a bully who turns tail the moment he can't overwhelm his opponent with sheer athleticism, and as such, a disgrace to boxing. Calling back to volume 1, when Injae's father told him that, as a boxer, you can't ever stay down, no matter how outclassed you are, or it's over. The poser dispatched with ease, JH moves to the real show, Yu's bout against the undefeated lightweight champion, Jean Pierre Manuel.

Unlike in volume 2, when JH waited until the fight's began to dive into John Taker's backstory and "rookie killer" persona, we see Jean as he prepares for a bout against what might be his dream, and learn what boxing means to him. He seeks perfection through it, absolute perfect control of every part of his body. In Yu, from the first punch he threw at John Taker, Jean has seen his goal brought to life.

Then we see the extent he's willing to push himself to, in the hopes of attaining that same level. JH might overplay his hand here, as Jean not only begins roaming back alleys at night, fighting gangs that will kill him if they can. No, he goes so far as to steal some of their blood and use it to paint some vision of how he perceives Yu. Given how the fight plays out, though that isn't until volume 4, it pushes things too far.

JH draws Jean with an intense look from the start, but the further along the story goes, the thicker and rougher the lines that define Jean's face become, and the color of his pupils begins to spill over the lines into the whites of his eyes. It gives an air of someone unhinged, or maybe so tightly wound he's almost vibrating. There are also, during Jean's "training," narrow panels of blood cells rushing through arteries, or nerves firing, showing how Jean's body is reacting to the stress of the situation as he slowly attains the control he's sought. By the time of the fight, JH is stretching, almost smearing, their faces as they dodge punches. Partially to illustrate the quickness of their movements, but also to make them look less human, as they reveal the kinds of "monsters" they are.

And volume 3 ends with that looking like it still wasn't enough to keep up with Yu.

Nasty Cutter - Tim O'Mara

A notable lawyer turns up dead in the bathroom at a dinner to honor his charity work. By the next day, someone's broken into his law office, though it's unclear what, if anything, was stolen.

Ray Donne's a former cop-turned-schoolteacher whose father was the partner of recently deceased. Which puts him on the periphery of both cases, along with his reporter girlfriend Allison, and his friend (and tech guy) Edgar.

Credit to O'Mara, he really tries to jam a lot into this book. Besides the mysteries around both those incidents, there's Ray working with a couple of different kids have issues at school, Ray and Allison butting heads over how she goes about getting a story, Ray's sister hassling him to move his relationship with Allison along, Ray checking in on a student that got a job helping an elderly man through the dead lawyer's charity. There's two brothers, one who had a brief major league baseball career (the title being a reference to his best pitch, a cut fastball), the other who spent ten years in prison for assaulting a girl when they were in high school.

The truth about that, which ties into one of the two incidents that start the book, was easy to spot a mile off. The solution to the other incident felt like it came out of left field. Maybe because Ray is barely involved in that investigation after the opening scene. He's not doing any snooping for it; he just stumbles into the answer at the end without having any clue he was so close. I had to sit there a moment and ponder if that was really how O'Mara was having the mystery solved.

That speaks to the book's larger; little tension or suspense. There's no ticking clock of needing to clear an innocent person or Ray trying to avoid being killed himself. He's not driven to find the killer of his father's old partner, he's really not even looking. Ray's uncle is police commissioner, but he's not seeking Ray out to talk about the case. It hardly feels like it matters to anything that's happening. 

A few people get angry with Allison for digging up things they want buried, but it's never to a point anyone feels like they're in danger. The closest thing to suspense is whether Ray's going to put his foot in his mouth with Allison one time too many, and that only because, since we only get Ray's thoughts, I have no clue how close to the line he is with her.

'With my back to the stairs, Buzzer Guy looked over my shoulder and said, "Hey, you're in luck. It's the girlfriend."

I turned and looked into the face of Robert Donne's girlfriend.

She did not look nearly as happy to see me as she had that morning.'

The Tao of the Backup Catcher - Tim Brown with Eric Kratz

Brown's book is about what it is to be a backup catcher, both in terms of what sort of jobs you're expected to fill, how one finds themselves in the role of backup catcher, what sort of life tends to result from that designation, and the mindset one can develop if they embrace the job.

His primary window into the world is Erik Kratz, who played for 9 major league teams over 11 seasons. It's kind of crazy to me that over the course of his career, I only attended 9 baseball games, and he was the starting catcher in 2 of them. I saw 8 of his 951 career plate appearances (he went 0-for-8.) Kratz played for a lot more than 9 minor league teams, and between being sent up, down, released, traded, waived, and so on, switched teams more than 3 dozen times before he retired at the end of the 2020 season.

But that's part of the life of the backup catcher. Teams like to have you around for all the little things you do, until they decide someone who can do the big things is more important to have. Then you're looking for another job. Kratz tends to remain pretty upbeat, but doesn't sugarcoat the times he questioned what he was doing, hanging on in the minors, or when he got frustrated that what looked like a chance to stick somewhere evaporated again.

Brown tends to focus on a certain aspect of the job or process in a given chapter, speaking with Kratz or any number of other backup catchers, past and present. For example, what it means to become a starter's "personal" catcher, as Eddie Perez was for Greg Maddux for a time. Or even just what your job is a catcher with regards to your pitcher. Sometimes you have to be almost like a parent, other times you have to challenge him. Brown relates a story where Yankees' catcher John Flaherty went out to the mound to tell Randy Johnson not to ever show him up by yelling at him about where he set his stance, during a game. Or the work backups put in helping pitchers warm-up before games or in the bullpen. How exhausting that can be, but you do it because someone has to, so why not you?

Other times, it's focused more off the field. The grind for Kratz and his wife Sarah, as they have to constantly move. Find new apartments, set up electric and phone service, break current leases, scramble to cover rent (minor leaguers get paid basically dick.) The jobs they work in the off-season, the way Kratz carves out any time he can after a full day of construction work to take some practice swings.

Despite that, the tone of the book is light. The guys Brown talks to all made peace with the roles they ended up with. All of them would have loved to be the starting catcher, but whether due to talent deficit, lack of opportunity, or just bad luck, it didn't happen. But they found something they could do, and they tried to do it the best they could and most of them found a sort of peace with that, in the good days. Brown details all the little things the backup does to help the team, the unglamorous stuff, but in a way that makes the backup catcher seem like the man behind the curtain, rather than the unappreciated janitor.

'What comes of this is a league - a culture, even - of backup catchers reasonably sure they could be No. 1 catchers, but who are rigorously invested in the day in front of them. Most would defend their jobs, their teammates, and the final score with the thick end of a fungo bat. As soon as they go get it. It's in the blue bag up in the dugout tunnel. Which they know because they put it there after batting practice. When they helped clean up the field. Just to be helpful. It wasn't gonna pick itself up.'

Loaded Bases

That girl's about 5 seconds away from learning Giantopia definitely isn't inside her locker.

Gemma Hopper, the lead character in Brie Spangler's Fox Point's Own Gemma Hopper, is a 13-year old who feels like she's being crushed by the weight of too many things, unnoticed by anyone. Her mother is absent, the specifics only hinted at, and her dad seems to always be working. Which leaves care of her twin younger brothers, and the house in general, entirely to Gemma.

You might think her older brother Teddy could help, but he's busy being the hotshot baseball star, everyone's darling. Gemma's reduced to being the pitching machine for his hitting exhibitions. She's tall for her age, and awkward about it. Spangler draws Gemma looking twice the height of her best friend Bailey, and at least as tall as her brother or dad. School is an endless string of things, trying to get in with the popular crowd is a struggle, it's just a lot.

Some things Spangler shows us, like a three-page sequence of laundry day. A panel of Gemma moving through the rooms, gathering clothes, lugging them to the laundromat, washing, folding, and coming home to her little brothers still scarfing chips in front of the TV like they were when they left. 

Sometimes, Spangler leaves it to the imagination. When Gemma's letting her brother show off, she does it by throwing at least a half-dozen different pitches to the exact locations he tells her to. It's not commented on, since Teddy is swatting them all over the park, but that's pretty impressive for a 13-year, both in the number of pitches and the command of them she must have. So when she gets fed up playing the comic sidekick for Teddy's ego boost, it's sort of a natural outcome of what we've already seen.

Spangler avoids making the story just an airing of grievances of Gemma, by having her make her own missteps. Gemma has a few heart-to-hearts with Teddy that help her see his perspective on his own fame, even if Teddy's attempts to help feel at least a little self-serving. When taking Bailey's advice on a school project goes awry, Gemma throws Bailey under the bus in a moment of frustration. She tries to just ignore everyone for a day or two (Spangler illustrates this in a simplified style of Gemma navigating some dotted line trail like one of those Family Circus cartoon strips where the kid takes the ludicrously roundabout course to cross the street), and that gets her chewed out by Bailey when the girl finally corners her. Gemma's so wrapped up in what's weighing her down and thinking she's on her own, she missed the people who were actually trying to help her.

I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. Gemma gets her moment to shine and be seen, which is good. More importantly, while nervous, she doesn't run from it. Spangler has Gemma trying to pitch while being mocked by a spectral version of herself (with wavier hair), which Spangler outlines in red, rather than the blue that dominates the book otherwise.

But it still feels as though her father only notices the amount of stuff he just sort of dumped on her to deal with because he's been told she's really good at baseball, which he's crazy about*. In much the same way that baseball was just something fun he did with Gemma and Teddy, until he saw Teddy's talent. Then it was serious business for Teddy, and Gemma was left behind to handle all the things Mr. Baseball was too busy for.

* The twins are named "Pedro" and "Carl", and I assume that's for Carl Yastrzemski, but my mind first went to Carl Everett, who played on the Red Sox with Pedro Martinez and all I could think was, "You named your kid after the guy who said he didn't believe in dinosaurs because he'd never seen one?"