One more invaluable baseball book that I recommend to people who aren’t diehard fans is Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball by John Helyar.It’s over ten years old now, but it gives great historical context to the business dealings of MLB, it’s written by an outsider (with inside sources) and doesn’t get “bogged down” in the game itself — like Moneyball, it’s not about the game itself but about the game behind the game.

Bryan

Dear Bryan,

Thanks!More baseball book (and link) suggestions appear below; as always, if I got it more than once, there’s an asterisk after it — and if I’ve read the book in question myself, there’s a plus sign after it.

Baseball Between the Numbers*
Throwing Bullets: A Tale of Two Pitchers Chasing the Dream
I Was Right on Time, by the late great Buck O’Neil+
The Teammates+
Baseball For Dummies (NB: Joe Morgan was a great player and is in the Hall of Fame, but is widely pilloried by fans as an announcer; caveat lector)
Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball*+
The Bad Guys Won+
Watching Baseball: Discovering the Game within the Game
The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination With Statistics+ (not that mathy, don’t worry)
Three Nights in August
Any Ring Lardner collection
The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2006
Baseball Babylon: From the Black Sox to Pete Rose, the Real Stories Behind the Scandals That Rocked the Game+
Last Days of Summer
Baffling Baseball Trivia
Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball’s Lunatic Fringe
Nine Innings+
Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame+

royalsreview.com
letsgotribe.com
deadspin.com
sbnation.com
beyondtheboxscore.com
athleticsnation.com
firejoemorgan.blogspot.com
bleacherguy.com
thepostgame.com

Hi Sars,

So this isn’t exactly about a boy, or a cat, but a little of both. I don’t even know how to classify it. I met a guy last year, he helped me put together an art show, I thought he was pretty cool, we start to hook up, I tell him before it goes anywhere that I have HSV1, or herpes, and tell him to sleep on it. This is my MO since my diagnosis, to give the new partner a minute to take in the scariness and make a decision they won’t regret. So, he tells me he’s gay, I’m pretty sure he’s just too scared to say he’s scared, call him on it, and so to “prove it” he shows me his horribly prolapsed anus and so, okay, I believe you, please god just put that thing away.

I was living in Houston at the time (hurricane refugee from New Orleans), and needed someone to rent my place in New Orleans. His place had supposedly been flooded, I rent mine to him at bargain-basement price of $300, all utilities included. My place was not flooded at all, but I was stuck in Houston for several more months because of work. It’s a fantastic little apartment and I pay in all over $1000/mo. I told him when I came back, we’d work something else out. Apparently he took this to mean that he would be living with me indefinitely for only $300 a month. When I came back, he’d taken over the place, moved in a flea-ridden cat (I have two dogs, my cat was killed in the storm, and they all have their shots and flea medicine), he’d been sleeping on my mattress, removed from my bed and taken to his room, with NO SHEETS! EEWWW. He was also constantly telling me how he thought he might be in love with me, and didn’t know what to do about these feelings, he’d never been with a girl but wanted to experiment, et cetera. He’s 33, Sars, long past the age of figuring this sorta thing out, no?

I told him I wasn’t really interested in being anybody’s sexual guinea pig, and anyway wasn’t gonna sleep with my roommate, blah blah rejection-cakes. Anyway, paired with lots of other roommate problems, uninvited guests, random man walking into my bedroom at 3 AM, et cetera. I’m really uncomfortable and end up kicking him out. It is ugly and we fight and he threatens me. In the course of all this, I discover that he’s been lying about all sorts of things: his family, he used to have a girlfriend, his job, his name, even where he lived before the storm — not even here, but in Kansas City, MO! So I give him a specific deadline, tell him everything has to be out, then change the locks when he leaves. He left behind a disgusting room, a piano out by the pool, an old beat-up computer, and worst of all, he put his cat outside and just left her! She was always an inside cat, and she’s terrified of my dogs, plus my sister has moved into the other bedroom so there’s no place to lock the kitty up safely, so now I’ve been feeding her and trying to get her used to the dogs and trying to find her a place and all that.

We had some ugly text messages back and forth, where I told him he was horrible for abandoning an animal and that since he didn’t pick up his things by the deadline we’d agreed on, I would be selling the computer and using the funds to pay for the care and feeding of the cat. He responded by threatening me with printing out fliers saying I was a disgusting diseased whore and printing my name and image with the words “has herpes.” I was really shocked, and responded that I have always been honest about my virus to any and all potential partners, which is why he knows, and that he was the first person ever ugly enough to use it against me. I then told him to leave me alone and that any further contact from him would be treated as harassment. He kept texting me for about an hour or so, but I just saved each message and didn’t respond.

About a week later, some random friend of his shows up claiming he’s here to pick up “his” computer. I told him I was sorry, but that J had left it here, along with a cat, and that it was abandoned property and furthermore I had to reason to believe that it was this guy’s property now.

A month has gone by, and now he’s starting up again with the blackmailing emails, that if I don’t drop off the computer at such and such time and place, he’s printing up fliers.

I called the police, and they said I couldn’t do anything until after he printed them, but even then it would be a civil court issue. Someone has come by the house and ripped the cable out of the side; we’re pretty sure it’s him, but of course can’t prove anything.

Any suggestions on how to deal with such psychosis? Also, any readers in the New Orleans area want to adopt a really, really sweet female kitty?

Signed,
I really thought Katrina was the worst thing to hit me last year

Dear The Prolapsed Anus Would Be A Close Second, For Me At Least,

Because of various post-dislocation issues that might be in play here, I will spare you the lecture on boundaries I might otherwise deliver in favor of strongly advising you to give the computer back to him, along with anything else he might have left behind.I know you want to “win” here, but you can’t.This is a sociopath you’re dealing with; give him the computer, and cut off all contact thereafter.

If he continues contacting you or harassing you, don’t respond; document everything.Change the locks again if you have to.Alert your landlord or super that this might be an issue in terms of destruction of property, and suggest that they install motion-sensitive lights or some other discouraging appliances in the building.But do not respond to J anymore.

Even if he prints the flyers, I would strongly recommend that you ignore it.Nobody in their right mind thinks anything about a flyer like that other than that the person who posted it is not well, and J isn’t; he’s deeply fucked up, and engaging him really isn’t going to get you anything.

If you feel like you’re in physical danger, yes, involve the authorities, but short of that, give him his stuff back — in public, preferably through third parties — and excise him from your life.He wants you to respond; he feeds off it.Don’t.

Dear Sars —

I come from a very close family.I also have a great marriage.But
they don’t really go together so well.My parents, my brother and I
always enjoy each other’s company and laugh a lot.We’re very loud and
boisterous, and I think pretty fun.We’ve got a definite “us” vibe
going on.My brother’s wife goes along with that just fine and she
gets all crazy with us.

My husband, however, is not of that same personality.I mean, he’ll
joke like everybody else, and gets along great with each of my family
members individually, but when we all get together, he kind of stands
apart.Sometimes he even gets impatient with us, usually when we’re so
busy joking around that we don’t get our kids fed on time, or get our
son so wound up that he won’t be able to go to bed when he has to.
Which seems reasonable to me.

So this leads to some tension.I feel like my family is on one side
and my husband is on the other, and I really don’t want to choose.I
wind up defending one to the other and vice versa all the time, and,
wow, does that suck. On the one hand, my husband’s a stick in the
mud.On the other, my family is too silly and easily distracted.
Neither description is too far off.I can see both points of view.

What I want is for my family to be more understanding of my husband,
and for my husband to be more understanding of my family.I’d hope
they’d do that for my sake, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.
We’re not a very confrontational family.We’re much more likely to
laugh it off and not talk about it.And for that reason, it doesn’t
appear to be a big problem, but every time we get the family together,
I get more and more stressed about it.

So, what should I do?Just accept that I can’t change people and
ignore it?After all, if my big family problem is some underlying
tension and some comments afterwards, that really doesn’t compare to a
lot of families’ problems.Should I talk to people individually?I’ve
tried with my mom and my husband and neither is willing to see the
other’s side.I really love everybody involved and I want them all to
get along.

Sincerely,
My stomachache at Thanksgiving isn’t from the Turkey

Dear Tummy,

Each other’s “side”?I don’t know…I don’t think there are really “sides” here so much as different personalities and social styles, and you can’t really resolve that.And it’s not really your job, past a certain point.

What you can do is try to make the various parties involved feel a little easier in the situation.For instance, if your husband gets stressed out by the flakiness that seems to ensue from your family’s gatherings, take steps beforehand to make sure that doesn’t happen; talk to him beforehand and ask him to remind you when it’s time to start fixing dinner for the kids, or work out a strategy for including your son in things but not overstimulating him.I think your husband feels excluded in these situations, like he’s being left to deal with the kids while you yuck it up with your family, and I don’t see anything wrong with you doing that, but if you haven’t explicitly discussed a policy where, on weekends like this, your husband is the responsible one, he might feel resentful, so just get it out there: “I don’t want to leave you holding the bag, honey, so let’s set up a division of labor now and be clear on it throughout our visit.”

As far as your “other” family is concerned, well, they need to not take it personally, and you need to tell them as much and then drop it.It’s not as though he hates them; he just isn’t quite like them, so if he wants to do his own thing during these visits, at times — read a book in another room, have some quiet time with your son — I do think your family should have adjusted to the fact that that’s his nature by now.

I know it feels like your job to make them adjust and to bring everyone together on this, but at a certain point, your willingness to do that starts to send the message that you’re taking it on yourself and nobody else has to try to get along and accept differences.Ignore the stick-in-the-mud comments, make your husband comfortable vis-a-vis maintaining a routine for the kids, and try to worry less about it.

[10/24/06]

Share!