"The Last Pitch"

Grades are in! Time to refocus on my next work-in-progress, a tighter and more "publishable" version of my "Baseball in Literature and Culture" conference contribution, noted here a while back. (That's tighter as in more concise and coherent, not more sloshed or stupid. Gotta set the bar high.)

As noted: at the conference in March I paid tribute to John Updike and his classic New Yorker tribute to the great Ted Williams, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." It was my small way of bidding "Rabbit" adieu. Ted, we learned from conference speaker and former MLB star Mudcat Grant, was one of the too-few white stars who welcomed baseball's integration and were kind to African-American ballplayers.

So this will be an homage to Williams and Updike, and a consideration of baseball as mirror to society and culture, and a meditation on death. And I promise, it will be cheerful. Stay tuned.