Social Distancing Journal: Week 11 (May 25-May 31, 2020)

A quick note: I haven’t had enough time to accomplish everything I want to do, so I gave myself permission to let some things slide, including these weekly journal entries. I am going to try to get caught up by writing these as I can, which defeats the purpose of documenting at the moment but is better than nothing. Have I forgotten some things I might have wished to put in these? Most likely. Does this mean some of these will be shorter? Definitely.

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I love getting mail. Let me qualify that: I love getting good mail. Lately it seems like I’m not getting much in the mail period, whether it’s fun mail, bills, or junk. I don’t miss the absence of the two latter items, but a package from an online order can still be exciting to anticipate.  My fascination with getting things in the mail started as a kid. My hometown didn’t have home mail delivery, so my family had a post office box that was shared with the family business and my grandmother. You needed to turn a dial to enter the combination to be able to get what was inside, an element that might have made utilizing this public service seem more thrilling. I always looked forward to taking a break from working at the grain elevator to pick up the mail.

As a kid and teen I sent letters, mostly to current and former professional baseball players, seeking autographs. I used the reference book The Sport Americana Baseball Address List, which provided the addresses for “virtually every player to debut in the major leagues since 1910.” I’d drop a letter in the mail, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope that raised the chances of a response, and then wait to see if anything came back. 

I learned that sending baseball cards to be signed was probably a fool’s decision, as there was no guarantee you’d ever get them returned. Sometimes the athlete would simply sign an empty space on  the letter I hand wrote and send that. Some were more generous in providing a signed memento while others used a stamp or autopen. I haven’t looked through all that correspondence in ages, although it occurs to me that one of the weirder things I have is a letter from pitcher Bob Knepper, which, if I recall correctly, addresses why he didn’t think a woman should be an umpire. (He made some controversial statements about the role of women as it pertained to Scripture and, in this particular situation, about a woman making calls in baseball games.)

In college a care package from my parents or grandmother was always welcome, and this week I was reminded of the simple pleasure of getting homemade baked goods in the mail. As everyone has been isolating, a friend and I have been exchanging photos of what we’re making in the kitchen. She’s also shared recipes with me, which I’ve had fun making. While these are small things for friends to do to stay in touch, they help me feel more connected and regain a sense of normalcy amid this strange time being physically disconnected from everyone but service workers at the grocery or drive-through windows. She offered to send me some cookies she and her family made for Eid, and I wanted to reciprocate by baking some things to mail her.

There’s nothing noteworthy about getting cookies in the mail, especially when they’re not even from out of town, but awaiting and getting that package lit up my day. I also really enjoyed the time I spent making molasses cookies and mini apple and strawberry rhubarb pies to send her. I think I’ve said it before--and this is not intended to sound like I’m patting myself on the back--but during this time of social distancing, I have found doing nice things for others has been a great way of spreading some happiness and getting out of my own head. I was happy to receive cookies in the mail, but I also found it really rewarding to spend time making desserts to give away too. 

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Painting no. 5 - 5/28/20 - Photo by Mark Pfeiffer

Flowers were this week’s painting challenge. I thought this assignment would be easier to tackle--the video tutorials always make it look so effortless--but this one tested me quite a bit. I put more paint on the canvas than was probably beneficial and kept trying to correct from these early missteps. Texture is where I attempted to salvage what I began. I don’t think this is my best painting out of the few I’ve completed, but it didn’t end up the total mess that I worried it was headed toward being.

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As I’m writing this in early July, I don’t specifically recall what I was listening to or watching during this week. It’s likely I was still in a mode of not watching much at all. I’m going to assume that David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was among what I was spinning as it’s something I’ve turned to regularly. The album ranks among his best, but it’s also near the top of Recently Added in the library on my phone, which is as responsible as anything for it racking up plays. After his death in 2016 I bought several of his earlier albums to fill in gaps in my knowledge, mainly anything that wasn’t a single or rock radio staple, of his discography. This album was a more recent acquisition as I’d been holding out for a deluxe reissue that I don’t think  manifested. It features “Ashes to Ashes”, one of my favorite Bowie songs. This album sounds to me like a significant influence on Nine Inch Nails, but that may be less of a sharp observation and more of me remembering reading that when Trent Reznor’s band toured with Bowie. I’ve never had much interest in NIN, but of concerts that were nearby that I wish I’d seen, that’s one high on the list.

Previous Social Distancing Journal Entries:

Pre-Social Distancing

Week 1 (March 16-22, 2020)

Week 2 (March 23-29, 2020)

Week 3 (March 30-April 5, 2020)

Week 4 (April 6-12, 2020)

Week 5 (April 13-19, 2020)

Week 6 (April 20-26, 2020)

Week 7 (April 27-May 3, 2020)

Week 8 (May 4-10, 2020)

Week 9 (May 11-17, 2020)

Week 10 (May 18-24, 2020)

Million Dollar Arm

MILLION DOLLAR ARM (Craig Gillespie, 2014)

After three years since striking out on their own Los Angeles-based sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and his business partner Ash (Aasif Mandvi) are struggling mightily to stay in the game. Although they’re wooing a professional football player to sign on with Seven Figures Management, he seems likely to commit to their competition. For their last best chance to stay in business J.B. proposes to find the hardest and most accurate throwing cricket bowlers in India in a televised contest called The Million Dollar Arm. The top two finishers will be brought to the United States to be converted into baseball pitchers. If all goes well, the prospects will be offered Major League Baseball contracts and put J.B. first in line to lock up talent in a huge country where no one else is looking.

J.B.’s time in India doesn’t go exactly as planned--the winning athletes throw the javelin and play field hockey rather than being experienced at cricket--but he leaves with lanky lefty Rinku (Suraj Sharma) and right-handed Dinesh (Madhur Mittal) ready to be molded and Amit (Pitobash), an eager, baseball-loving assistant who can translate between the Americans and Indians. Although J.B. wanted a one-year timeline, his investor demands six months for pitching coach Tom House (Bill Paxton) to work wonders before a pro tryout.

MILLION DOLLAR ARM opens with J.B. practicing his pitch to a football player he hopes will become his client. Director Craig Gillespie’s film plays as though it’s also trying to persuade us to buy into the vision of a potential emerging market for American professional sports. Based on a true story, MILLION DOLLAR ARM feels like the next step in the public relations campaign for the agent and Major League Baseball. Hello India, we’d love to have you become fans of our product, and if you can supply a player or two to our teams, all the better.

The well-executed formula is Nutrasweet to Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s SUGAR, a fictional drama which followed a Dominican Republic prospect and the culture clash he faces when coming to the United States to play in the minor leagues. MILLION DOLLAR ARM is more about the agent, which can leave something of a bitter aftertaste in treating these Indian athletes as exotic totems collected on the American’s path to personal betterment, but the film’s second half improves at conveying their struggles in adjusting to a new land and profession. It also helps that Hamm, although not in full-blown Don Draper mode, comes off as persuasive and indifferent to those he is relying on to maintain his financial position. J.B.’s sharper edges have been sanded down, but Gillespie and screenwriter Tom McCarthy don’t ignore them entirely.

Although MILLION DOLLAR ARM isn’t like the masala films India produces, it mixes a little bit of almost everything into a satisfying whole. As a sports drama it demonstrates knowledge of its subject. Rinku and Dinesh aren’t presented as surefire all-stars in the making. They may light up the radar guns, yet their feats are typical for anyone trying to make it in MLB. Light comedy keeps MILLION DOLLAR ARM from drooping under the weight of the seriousness and highly sentimentalized tone often bound to baseball movies. The romance with Brenda (Lake Bell), a medical intern renting J.B.’s bungalow, is very Hollywoodized yet retains a natural believability through the stars’ relaxed charisma. It might have been fun if a song could have been worked in too.

Grade: B-

Sugar

SUGAR (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008)

The baseball drama SUGAR draws its title from the nickname of Dominican Republic pitching prospect Miguel Santos (first-time actor Algenis Perez Soto). Sugar is so known because of his fondness for sweet foods, but the moniker could just as well derive from his skill hurling a ball.

Sugar views baseball as his ticket to the United States and the fortune and fame that come with being a Major Leaguer. As is usually true of enormous aspirations, the journey is more complicated than Sugar expects. He earns a spot with a minor league team in Iowa, but rather than rocketing to the big leagues, he struggles with the language barrier, cultural differences, and an injury.

As of this year's Opening Day, Latin Americans accounted for twenty-nine percent of Major League Baseball players, with the majority of them coming from the Dominican Republic. Camps there were recently in the news because of scandals involving player signings and age falsifications. Although SUGAR is not based on any individual's true story, it provides an absorbing look at a baseball pipeline that impacts the game significantly yet is largely unfamiliar to fans.

That reason alone should be sufficient for baseball enthusiasts to make SUGAR a must-see. At a time when sabermetrics break players down into pages of predictive statistics, SUGAR delivers a potent reminder of off-the-field challenges that affect performance on the field. Athletes aren't robots, and this humanizing examination of one immigrant's quest grants greater appreciation for what must be overcome to even have a chance to succeed.

Co-writers and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck present this fascinating inside baseball tour with empathy and pull out a strong lead performance from Soto, a non-actor who once aspired to follow his character's dreams. Because Sugar comes to the U.S. with very limited knowledge of English and lacks a confidante, Soto must convey much of what he thinks and feels without speaking.

To baseball fans most farm system players, especially non-natives, are voiceless and faceless. Their names may be bandied about as they work through the system, but tales of these roster fillers' ups and downs mostly go untold. For a moment SUGAR borrows the spotlight for one of these commonplace but ignored stories.

Grade: A-