I sat down with Jack Duffy last spring. Soon after, my computer crashed. After rewriting my term papers, I finished my Master’s and moved to Alaska to work for four months. This year I also dealt with a few episodes…
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
Strange – I scheduled this post at the end of May so I could fill out the site for each Monday I was gone. This was the final day. Now he’s somewhere else; listed as released from his Cardinal affiliate…
Conner Greene was sent up to Triple-A Memphis, and won the AAA National Championship with the Redbirds. Now he’s playing in the prestigious Arizona Fall League, still throwing as hard as he can, as he once told me, breathlessly, after…
A few young players worth watching while you still can (for cheap – and at beautiful Hammons Field in Springfield, MO). Now they’re competing against a new group of classmates. Some have transferred. Some have graduated. Some have burned…
The player in the top photo, Brooks Zimmerman, just had surgery. I hope he comes back. He’s a senior, but maybe he can stretch his eligibility. The third player depicted, shortstop Robbie Merced, transferred to Fort Scott Community College, in…
I wonder if these coaches like where they are, or if they just want to step a little bit higher, have a little more responsibility, and attract a little bigger crowd. Maybe it’s everything. A former colleague tripled his pay…
Mason has transferred to Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri, just 81 miles west on I-44. I imagine he will play more. Maybe the crowds will be the same. Maybe he liked the feel of the place more than Hammons Field…
Whatever happened to Austin Knight, we will ask. He had the long hair and it hurt to watch him throw because his shoulder looked like it was displaced by each pitch. When things didn’t go well I heard him yell,…
Ben is still playing, and likely starting, though I haven’t seen a game of fall ball yet to confirm. Who knows what will happen by the time the season begins this spring? Good things. Perhaps new things. Or nothing but…
Well. Nate the Great. No words needed; only his warmup song. The greatest, and way better than Jake Burger’s. by