Just some Baby Birds preparing the fly, fly away to St. Louis: the city with basepaths paved with gold and per diems that can pay for sushi instead of burgers. You can have it all … by
Author: olabner
Welcome! I've followed baseball since I was 8 years old and started this site to illustrate the beauty of the game in prose, poetry, and photography.
I have a Master's in Creative Writing at Missouri State University. For my thesis I wrote a collection of nonfiction micro essays about working in remote Alaska fishing lodges for five summers in my 20s.
After graduation I worked as a northern lights guide in Bettles, Alaska, for 8 months. You can find my favorite aurora photographs at bestnorthernlights.com
I am a freelance writer and photographer. You can find my portfolio at maryellenchiles.com
I got to the ballpark half an hour early to watch puppies and their parents parade around the stadium. The people smiled and the dogs sniffed my camera lens and waited for scratches. A Naturals hitter cracked a ball far…
I haven’t cried this much in a Starbucks since I had to work at one starting at 5 a.m. every day. It wasn’t so bad as long as the Seahawks won, and of course Howard Schultz visited. But here in…
Such a game when your team falls behind 5-1 into the 9th. I wondered what I might do later that night, still overly caffeinated from several days of updating my website in the hopes of drawing eyes and wallets. Next…
Sometimes your side gets picked off twice in one game, losing baserunners when you’re struggling to give them a base to begin with. Then you’re smiling like you don’t mean it. Then it happens again: (The other pix made it…
According to the Baby Birds’ Twitter, “a couple of thousand kids” showed at the game today. They were grouped by their elementary schools. Judging by their “pitch” when they yelled they were about 10 or 11 years old. Luckily, the…
Of course, I’ve been listening to news about the Mueller Report all day like it’s a holiday. I kept listening for the sake of Fresh Air if you will: a report on pitches from the Tyler Kepner, author of K:…
I tried to keep up on college ball a bit while living in the Arctic, but I didn’t catch much of it. (You can find northern lights and sled dogs on my Instagram.) But now I am in the land…
“Oh? You’re working with the summer league up there?” a broadcaster asked. “No, I’m just … going there,” I said. Oh. Fairbanks? Beyond – to Bettles, pop. 12 on Wikipedia and 7 in reality. It’s a village 35 miles north…
Since he’s running for a president – I recall the time I met Howard Schultz: He was wearing a navy blue hat with a yellow M for Michigan, standing in line at a coffee shop. He was about 6 foot…