All Entries Tagged With: "Silverton"
Rockies Dar Castro a Look
(Blake Street – El Curveball Tropical – 18 de julio. 2016)
Las nuevas aventuras del personal de pitcheo Colorado Rockies ahora incluirán ex lanzador cubano y el presidente Fidel Castro. El equipo nacional de Liga planea trabajar el año de edad, durante el entrenamiento de primavera de r
El pensamiento arrojado incluso por sus más fieles seguidores en la isla de Cuba, Castro ha hecho resurgir en los últimos tiempos, compitiendo con algunos de los mejores jugadores en Cuba mientras se gira en estadísticas impresionantes. En sus años de juventud Castro tomó una decisión histórica entre la facultad de derecho y el béisbol luego se conformó con el dictador.
Ahora jubilado, que quiere jugar a la pelota de nuevo. Con el nuevo florecimiento diplomacia entre los EE.UU. y Cuba no debe enfrentar problemas de inmigración o de encontrarse a sí mismo acosado por las sombras feas de la deserción.
“Si sus piernas sostienen que yo creo que tiene un par de entradas a la izquierda,” dijo un escucha Rockies. “No le estamos esperando para robar una gran cantidad de bases o la cubierta del jardín central, sólo tirar strikes.”
Una figura imponente en el montículo durante décadas en la isla, Castro tiene años de intimidación efectiva en su haber. Si va a usar un uniforme del equipo reglamento o sus fatigas más familiares estarán hasta funcionarios de la liga que están monitoreando el evento con gran interés.
Castro se espera al entrenamiento para los Rockies en febrero en una instalación sin nombre en una fecha no revelada. Se espera que grandes multitudes. Las pruebas para el personal de socorro Colorado Rockies entonces comenzará en marzo. Se observará protocolo normal: La mujer y los niños primero.
Varios otros equipos, incluyendo los Dodgers y los Reales han abierto un diálogo con Castro y su agente Gabriel Márquez de Colombia. Márquez, un famoso novelista espera saldar su cliente aterrizar una posición de exploración en el Barranquilla antes de Carnaval.
Si Castro hace el corte que se saltará los menores debido a su avanzada edad.
– Cachemira Herradura
Last Year of My Life (Continued)
The Journals of Patrick McGinty
continued from yesterday
Is this a rash I see? Good lord I’ve got the pox! Maybe that’s the problem. One would think the doc could have diagnosed something so obvious. The train conductor tells me of a brother who dies of ulcerative colitis. That sounds important. If I’m going to drop dead I’d just as soon it be from something with an important sounding name or maybe it would be better to get run over by this train. It’s quicker. The conductor shakes me. We’re in Ridgway. He says I passed out and was mumbling about covering home with the bases loaded. The pain is bad today. There’s a McGinty family living somewhere in Ouray County. They might be relatives although they’ve never produced any ball players, so I doubt it. Prospects here are slim since everyone is working for the railroad or in the gold mines. Who can blame them for wanting to get ahead. Damn the pain! I hope if this is it they bury me with my spikes on. I’ll have to dig them out of my locker back in Denver. It’s been 10 years since I’ve played ball. What torture sitting there on the bench watching our boys take a pasting.
The train creeps over Dallas and makes a stop at Sams. Two young boys are playing catch along the tracks. One says he lost his only pair of shoes in Leopard Creek and is hoping for an early summer. That one kid has a cannon for an arm. I leave him my calling card. A prune-faced woman approaches as I board the train. She scolds the boy, and tears up the card while letting loose a scowl in my direction. They never said it would be easy. The pain in my back is getting worse. I wonder if it’s the altitude? I think I’m developing puritis ani…or something like that. Dr. Turlo prescribed a furlough from whiskey then he headed off to the local bar for lunch. I wonder if there’s a hospital in Telluride these days and, for that matter, if I’ll make it that far.
It’s snowing as we climb the last pass to Telluride and it’s only a few months till the dog days arrive back in the Midwest. There’s a rancher’s kid here by the name of Collins that I came to see play but the weather could be a problem. His dad was shot during the labor dispute in 1902 and I think he wants out of Telluride. Too many bad memories. All this way for another snowstorm. Maybe I should seek honest work like preaching or gallivanting around the countryside with a medicine wagon. I’m too old to find a rich woman to marry and too young to retreat to the rocking chair. Mining and baseball have a lot in common. The workers and players do the sweating and the owners make the money. But at least we play ball above ground in the sun. I sign up Eddie Dougherty, Mike Finnegan and two Tyrolean kids named Petresko. One looks like a catcher and the other throws kind of funny. Who knows. Telluride’s really hopping tonight. The miners must have just got paid. There’s not much point in getting back to the room since I can’t sleep anyway. I think I’ll take a walk.
I wake up in a room filled with the smell of roses and ammonium. There’s a nurse standing nearby. Did I die? Is this some kind of celestial emergency room? She brings me water as a young man walks into the room. He asked how I’m feeling. I say it’s too early to tell. He tells me how he found me passed out in an alley in Finntown. Thought I was drunk but then thought better when he checked me. Says I was screaming like bloody murder. It’s all foggy to me. After I tell him what I do he says he’s a baseball player and was the youngest member of the state championship team in 1913.
Then the doctor comes in and we go through all the pleasantries again. Hey, the pain is gone. Upon consultation with the doc I find that I have passed a kidney stone. Apparently I accomplished this feat at about three o’clock in the morning on the way to his office. Guess I kept the whole town up half the night. The kid asks if I want to see the little devil and I decline. Damn, I feel better. He brings me some eggs as the nurse encourages me to get up and walk around. The kid wants to talk baseball. Says he remembers me when I played for the Tigers in 1908 but that he won a few dollars betting on the Cubs in the World Series. We lost it four games to one.
According to this enlightened doctor I should be fine in a day or two. He adds that he can’t do much for my gout. I ask about my strangulated hernia and he just shakes his head. What about that pain? I thought I had tuberculosis or something. He laughs and says a kidney stone is no walk in the park. That’s a great way to put it, doc. He says I’m as healthy as a horse but should slow down on the drinking. I wire the doctor in Denver that I will not be keeping my appointment. I hear there are a couple of pitching prospects down in Dolores and a Ute kid built like Ping Bodie. I’m on my way.
– Rocky Flats
The Last Year of My Life
From the Journals of Patrick McGinty May, 1919
Travel this spring is different. I am not long for this world. That old sawbones in Denver should be able to tell me something next week. At least he’s honest, not like that croaker in Lamar. Sure, I’ll just get lots of rest and stay away from whiskey. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Did he have to go to medical school back east for both of those years to figure out that remedy? I think all these doctors should go off somewhere together and search for a cure for congenital stupidity and bad handwriting.
In just about an hour we’ll reach Gunnison and I can stretch my legs. This train is hell on my back and my kidneys. Maybe I’ve got that Chrome’s disease. It sure did a job on Harry Selig and he was no older than I am. He could have managed in the Majors but for his health. I can see Tomichi Creek. There’s a great hotel in this town called the LaVeta but one doesn’t stay there overnight on a baseball man’s salary. They say there are even tunnels right from the hotel to the houses of delight. Maybe someday, when one of my teams goes all the way, I’ll go all the way. I’ve always had a great time in Gunnison but I do miss my old third baseman Chuck Morganthau who caught a bullet in France. He had a pretty wife and a lot of ability but something tells me he’d never be able to support a family scooping up grounders and hitting line drives.
The train has finally stopped. My back feels better. I wonder if there’s a pharmacy in this town anymore. What with all the federal interference it’s hard for a fellow to get anything that works on pain. I hear there are a couple of fine pitching prospects working the mines in Crested Butte. Of course if they decide to give baseball a shot they could put their futures in jeopardy. The mines, although dangerous, pay a decent wage and one’s career can last longer. Nobody wants to pay for entertainment these days unless it’s Ziegfeld’s or neighborhood cock fights. Why that Rosencrantz kid might have gone all the way to the big leagues if his father didn’t insist on his going to the normal school. I suppose he’s teaching school somewhere in these mountains. At least he makes a decent salary. The Jews aren’t stupid.
The two boys that I heard about in Crested Butte can throw hard but one is married with three kids and the other can’t speak a lick of English. Maybe next year? It’s back on the damn train for me after a night of sleeplessness at Molly Duran’s Boarding House and a breakfast of biscuits and gravy at the Sodd House. Elmer Sodd told me he wants to sponsor a Fourth of July double-header between the Gunnison team and whatever heap of scrap I manage to put on the field. I say I’ll get back to him. What a pompous bastard he is sitting back in his kitchen, but he was quite a prize fighter in his day, even fought Dempsey down in Alamosa. He’d have whipped him too, from what I hear, but the ref called the fight due to Sodd’s broken ribs and an eye that refuses to go back into its socket, even to this day. The joke around here is that the thing will end up in someone’s pancake batter before it’s all said and done with.
The train barely pulls out of Gunnison and we’re already in Montrose. I must have nodded off despite this damn foot. Could be the gout. I wonder if that’s the trouble. Can somebody’s gout creep all the way up the legs and make mush out of the back. I wonder if I ruptured something last season and it’s just waiting around to line one past me when I’m not looking? Montrose has fielded some fine teams over the decade although the war took its toll. I was too old for that dance but I did spend a few feverish nights in Cuba at the turn-of-the-century.
According to the morning paper Babe Ruth hit a 587-foot homer against the Giants down in Florida. That boy has all the tools and he’s making a living. Other than the White Sox, and Joe Jackson, the Yankees seem to have an inside track on the pennant. The Reds look good in the National League. The rest of the paper is full of careful debates on Prohibition and updates on the peace conference at Versailles. It should be fun checking out the whiskey operations in the San Juans. I’ve got three kids signed from this part of the valley and all of them should show up at least until the sugar beets are ripe.
Continued tomorrow on www.sanjuanhhorseshoe.com
on “Featured Peeks” Page
Eternity Inc.
Here we are in the heavenly boardroom of boardrooms, perched on a corporate cloud insulated by inhumane cubicles in the prestigious neighborhood near the Pearly gates. Sitting back in vests and cigars are Michael, Peter, Gabriel, Moses, Paul and Himself, the Creator and CEO. They have just concluded a final phase of a secret merger that would destroy the dominance of Lucifer International in the highly competitive, universal soul industry. Lucifer and his thugs could finally be brought to their knees if the spreadsheet was accurate. The time had come to streamline the operation here at Eternity Inc. and raise the funds necessary to deliver the deathblow.
Peter: Let’s just sell the Holy Roman Empire franchise we bought from that crooked Dutch pirate back in 1806. It must have some market value.
Gabriel: The numbers on that particular stock don’t add up to much.
Moses: Then I suggest we sell the Red Sea property and list the condos in Egypt and Jericho.
Peter: Our Joshua subsidiary won’t care for that. They’ll perceive it as a desertion, subject to a hostile takeover.
Moses: Joshua and his people can be replaced, Sir.
Michael: If we sell the Holy Roman Empire stock, the Red Sea land, the California Angels, the New Orleans Saints and the party box at South Bend we could pull this off.
Creator: Interesting. Good work, boys. But I have to tell you that for decades I have been considering the possibility of dropping the entire project.
Michael: Do you mean the entire human experiment?
Creator: I built the joint once. I can do it again and maybe the second time around with fewer botches and less conflict. There are plenty of stars out there and plenty of anxious species. Now, tell us again, Gabriel, what exactly do our numbers say?
Gabriel: They are far from conclusive. Production has been way down since the last audit. Nothing seems to help us lower operating costs while Lucifer chips away, gaining more and more of the soul pie. Natural resources on earth are dwindling, nuclear energy has arrived and yet all attempts to introduce new technology have been resisted at every turn by these pathetic creatures. Professionally speaking I would clearly suggest at least a sellout.
Creator: And what are the projections on potential buyers?
Michael: If I may interject GF, we have made every attempt from collective bargaining to fringe holidays but the humans won’t get on the straight and narrow for nothing. After over 2000 years in the saddle we are now at the point of diminished returns. Investment ratios are out the window. Anarchy looms. Sadly, I must agree with Gabriel.
Creator: If we dump the earthly portfolio how much are we talking about here?
Peter: We have 2.3 billion invested counting future escrow, low interest loans, salaries, pensions and benefits. The whole deal can’t be worth more than 5 or 6 in this sluggish market. That means we stand to make roughly 2.5 billion and gain temporary operating capital of 2 billion.
Creator: And that’s enough to close the door on Lucifer?
Peter: By about $300,000, Sir, if nonmonetary factors remain stable.
Creator: Well, I’ve got a 10:30 tee time. I’d like you to conclude this matter this morning. Any final thoughts, Paul?
Paul: I feel our best margin is in the franchise market. I’d like to sit on it for a few decades…but the thought of crippling Lucifer? That is tempting beyond words.
Michael: Let’s not forget that we have an emotional attachment to earth. We all love a weekend at the Vatican or lunch with the Archbishop of Canterbury. What about the ski trips to Park City and football in the Bible belt? If we sell we sweet and quick. No sense alerting brokers over at Lucifer.
Creator: Moses?
Moses: I hate to be negative but I’ve been watching the place deteriorate since they built the Great Pyramids. Lucifer keeps gaining souls with the same old tired message we had 4000 years ago. If we keep it we have to revamp it. If we can’t afford to do that much then we have to let it go.
Creator: I trust your judgment boys and I’m behind the eight ball with the carpeting of Purgatory and painting those Elysian Fields. Money is tight.
Moses: Then let’s sell it. The decision has been made for us.
(Peter, Gabriel, Paul and Michael seem to concur.)
Paul: They had their chance down there on earth. Instead of relishing the paradise before them they worry about what comes after. They have missed the boat.
Creator: I guess that about wraps things up. We dump it. There are plenty of lost souls that will thank us later…Now where did I leave my pitching wedge?
– Melvin Toole, Vicar, Oracle of the Blinding Light
July 29, 2016
National Clown Retreat Dismissed
(Foggy Bottom Red Nose Review July 28, 2016)
The 15th Annual American Clown Convention was banned from meeting inside the confines of the District of Columbia last evening. Citing a “seriously disruptive element of chaos and anarchy”, presiding Judge Emmet “Blinky” Kelley ruled that the clowns and their entourage must leave town in 24 hours of face arrest.
A spokesperson for the clowns said she blamed the decades of political shenanigans that have left the electorate and the civil powers with a bad taste in their collective mouths.
“These Presidential contenders and pretenders have blatantly attempted to compete with us for the attention of the dumbed-down American public,” said one radical clown, his grease paint dripping down his cheeks. “We’ll be back. This city has more clowns per capita than anywhere on the planet and we want to be a part of the action.”
The clowns were loaded onto buses this morning and driven to points in Maryland and Virginia where they will be encouraged to mix with the local citizenry.
– Gabby Haze
