Old Time Family Baseball

Sure, you may love your constant access to Internet porn (pervert), but things were never better for the bawdy baseball fan than the 1910s. Gaze upon these baseball postcards with wonder and lust and be sure to try out these tips sure to spice things up in the bedroom.

A Close Game: With a friend in tow, find a sexual partner and smoosh her really hard between the two of you. Making sure to hold hands (with each other, not the woman), giving her a panic attack because she’s claustrophobic.

A High Ball: You’ll need a few props for this one. Get a large “sex” table and have your partner sit on top. Then sit in a nearby chair, raise a toast, and stare intensely into each other’s eyes for three to four hours.

A Double Header: A saucy number, you’ll need two partners to complete this. Sit cross legged on the floor with the two evening companions surrounding you. Then whisper sweet nothings in their ears, alternating between compliments and questions like “did you remember to mail the check to the cable company?”

A Steal: A great way to get romantic on the ball field. While your partner slides head first into the bag, make it look like you’re going to tag her with the ball. At the last moment, wrench her head backwards and plant a big, wet kiss. Then tell her, “Seriously, you’re out. Go back to the dugout.”

Catching a Hot One: First, have your partner reach her left leg out as far as it can go while still touching the ground. Then, while leaning back, have her roll all of her weight onto her left hip while she places her free hand just above her buttocks. She’ll be unable to support herself, so please brace her as she rolls her head back and pretends to be dead. HOT!

A Home Run: Another team effort, first have your partner sit atop your shoulders while you sit cross-legged on the floor. Then have a dentist come and give her a routine tooth inspection.

A Balk: For the S&M couples. Have one partner stand silently for hours while the other degrades them for all their failures and crushed dreams.

Breaking Her Contract: While your partner sleeps, see how many objects you can rest on top of her. For every ten, you can remove one article of clothing (limit: socks).

(images via Room 26: Cabinet of Curiosities, Legendary Auctions)

I wanted to thank everyone for making this weekend’s blogathon such a success. From the writers who submitted pieces, to the people who donated money, to those who reblogged, retweeted, and emailed links to friends, family, and kind hearted enemies. I never would have made it through my 24 hours of work had it not been for the outpouring of support and I’m glad we could come together for an organization like Doctors Without Borders.

That said, we are still shy of our fundraising goal, needing just $69 more dollars to reach $2,000. Every dollar counts and if just a dozen people donate ten or fifteen dollars, we can easily reach our goal.

I hope you enjoyed the 80-something pieces that were posted over the weekend and I’m already excited by how we can improve upon it next year. Shoot me an email and let me know how you enjoyed the weekend and if you have anyt thoughts. If you’re looking to read through the posts, they can all be found here, tagged under blogathon.

I’ll be leaving donations up for the next week, so if you’re hoping to snag a copy of Battlefield Baseball or any of the other prizes up for grabs, go donate now. Thanks again and now we will return to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Reft was drifting, heading toward that familiar sixth inning feeling, when he heard the phone ring. There were steps and a grunt when the bullpen coach answered. Reft heard the coach call his name. The single sharp syllable sent a jolt through his mind and down into the notched machinery of his nerves and limbs, and he rose to start his warm-up tosses.

He stood on the rubber, staring down at the dirt expanse below, and waited a minute or two before he thought the bullpen catcher would be in place. Around him, the noise of the crowd was uniform, accentuated every few minutes by the slurred exclamations of various fans incensed by the score or a player or the umpire’s call on a pitch 450 feet away. He pushed through his sloppy warm-up tosses, caught the catcher shake his head a few times.

Reft slouched through the seasons with three decent pitches. He’d been told that he even looked like a long reliever, though he’d failed to compartmentalize that, hadn’t been able to find the corresponding features in his own ability the away an paleontologist brushes away thousands of years of dust to reveal a full skeleton. Each scout had a different language for each player he came across.

At some point it became inconsequential, and he bounced between teams and seasons like a ball that’s bobbled and kicked around the infield. And he didn’t mind that because after all, what was it to be part of the game? Even if it was the same game, the same numbers year after year. The headlines were all the same (“BeReft of relief”).  It wasn’t the money. Or maybe it was, but the money had long ago become a constant in the equation he used to project what it would feel like to play another year. More money than he could ever spend, thought you wouldn’t have known it compared to the cash that followed some of the big name players from city to city. It didn’t matter, but there was a time when it did, a time when he had a Midas touch. When every ball he gripped turned into a sharp slider that fell so far out of the zone it was like he had never even thrown it or a two-seamer that came in so hard at the hands it would have hurt your knuckles just to stand up there and take the called strike.

And then he was standing at the bullpen door, listening to the tense hum of the crowd. There was a stop on the shoulder, and he pushed through, loping across the outfield toward three bases full of white and grey uniforms. The afternoon light came in at skewed angles, so that the infield was shrouded in darkness, and when he stepped over the lip of the grass and onto the dirt, between second and first, something shifted inside him.

He made it to the mound and kicked the dust of the rubber, and as he bent to slap around the rosin bag he caught a glimpse of the scoreboard, and the three-run lead rattled him like it was his first time.

Will Hall is a Boston-based public relations professional. He’s not really a guest - you can find him every Wednesday night blogging at Old Time Family Baseball. His writing has appeared in various Word documents on his computer.

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Doctors Without Borders is an international medical organization that provides independent, impartial assistance in more than 60 countries to people whose survival has been threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. Please help us reach our goal of $2,000 by donating here.

  I don’t care who wins.  Really, honest, unless-I-have-money-on-the-game, couldn’t care less.  And understand: I’m not some sports vagrant, man-without-a-team, nor am I that jerk that sits at the bar while everybody hoots and hollers and rigidly insists that sports are stupid and don’t matter.  No.  I watch the games and cheer and curse and load up on beer – I even made it to the playoffs in my fantasy league this year.  But try as I might, nope, I just don’t care.
 
            Really, I’ve tried.  Even though watching sports has never enthralled me as much as watching, well, just about anything else, I keep watching.  I watch because my friends watch and I kind of like my friends and I have yet to meet a bartender that listens when I ask them to put on PBS.  While I dream that one day recreational drinking will center around watching 80’s television, until then, I’m here.  If you can’t beat the sports fans, join them.
 
            So I’m a so-so sports fan.  I don’t remember stats and I always forget the names/positions of players.  When I get caught up in sports-based chitchat, I talk out of my ass and regurgitate whatever angry sports ranting I had heard that weekend.  If somebody asks me about my favorite sports moment, my first instinct is to say, “the locker room scene in Might Ducks 2.”
 
            Part of me wishes that I could be a die-hard sports enthusiast - an ESPN extremist – to know what it’s like to be moved to tears and ecstasy by a HR, TD, FG, OT, etc.  I was in Mass. for the 2008 Pats/Giants Super Bowl and I watched as an entire party started to sit shiva after New England’s upset and while I stood there amid the misery unmoved like Camus’ Stranger wondering if there was any more bean dip.
 
            It’s that stoicism that will always separate me from real sports fans.  While my friends muttered in disgust at the increasing number of steroid users, I sat there hoping that more athletes would adopt the Dock Ellis approach and trade their performance-enhancing drugs for the mind-altering.  So I’m not a purist.
 
            I’m a so-so sports fan.  Really, I might not even be that.  I might not like sports at all, just a faker, if sports is about penants & grudges & loyalties.  I do enjoy a close double-play, a hard slide into home plate, I like it when an outfielder eats grass to make that game-winning out – I just don’t care what game, what team, what happens next week.
 
            But if being a sports fan means looking forward to watching the game with friends, hooting & hollering over drinks, and enjoying the electricity of a Yankees-Red Sox series, enjoying the night, the game, the company, then yes, I’m a sports fan.  And even though I might prefer to be watching Major League, or The Longest Yard (the original), or even The Longest Yard (the re-make), I’ll be watching the game with my friends this weekend – and I’m already looking forward to it.

Cisco Covino is a writer and musician from NYC.  His fiction appeared in Midwest Literary Magazine and The Blackstick Review.  Check out his blog The Dirty Lamp.

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All that stands between us and hitting our goal is a measly $107. Do your part for this amazing organization by donating here.

My total lack of skill in making predictions of any kind has never stopped me from making them in the past, so why start now?

So, in honor of Old Time Family Baseball’s super neat and creative way to raise funds and awareness for the amazing charity, Doctors without Borders, I give you 5 totally random Baseball Predictions for the 2012 Season…

1.  Ryan Kalish will become the starting Right Fielder for the Boston Red Sox, and will have a monster season—eventually.  Yes, I predicted this last year; that JD Drew would come up lame and Kalish would replace him and make us forget all about JD Drew.  And all of that happened—Just with Josh Reddick instead.  Ryan Kalish got hurt in April making a diving catch, which aggravated an old shoulder injury, which then messed up his neck.  To make a long story short (and failing miserably), he was out most of the season, and then was shut down in August, and then had neck surgery in Sept, and shoulder surgery in November.  If all goes well, he will be back with the Sox by June—and that is when he will make his move.  I see 18 homers 20 stolen bases and a .295 batting average for the 24-year-old in 2012—and if it doesn’t happen this year, I will keep making the prediction until it does…

2.  Alex Rodriguez will not be returning to his former glory. I don’t care what manner and variety of chicken fried goatís brains they inject into him.  He is going to be 37 years old this summer, and has been pretty much in a steady decline for the last 5 years.  And last year he played 99 games, and hit 16 home runs—Yeah, SIXTEEN.  Stick a fork in him—he’s done…

3.  The Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves will not have their seasons implode like they did in 2011, with embarrassing Septembers that saw Wild Card Leads of 9 and 8.5 Games, respectively, dwindle to nothing, and then both losing their final game of the season in heartbreaking fashion.  Both got there for a reason—for the Sox, it was abysmal pitching, for the Braves, anemic hitting—and I cannot imagine that perfect storm happening again…

4.  The American League East will go something like this: Tampa Bay, Red Sox, Toronto, Yankees, and Oreos.  Crazy?  Maybe not.  I think Tampa Bay is the team to beat—they are young and hungry, and have great picthing.  I do, however, think the Sox will win the Wild Card.  As far as Toronto beating out the Yankees?  The Yankees are even more quiet in this off season than the Sox (and that is saying something), and they are O.L.D….Jeter is going to be 38, Mariano Rivera will be 405 (ok, only 42) and they were the 3rd oldest team in baseball last year.  I know they always seem to get it done (much to my chagrin) but really, how much longer can they do that?  And, as far as the Oreos in last place.  Heck, even Dan Duquette can’t save a team that has Peter Angelos as its owner…

5.  Pedro Martinez will have a change of heart (again) and decide that he really doesn’t want to retire (again), and would like to pitch some more before he calls it a career (again)…

So, there are some of my thoughts on what could happen in 2012—or could as easily not happen.  This IS baseball, afterall, so anything is possible…

A Red Sox fan since the early 80’s, Christine started her blog, Boston Red Thoughts, in May 2005, and has logged over 1100 posts in that span. Boston Red Thoughts has been nominated for Best Sports Blog, Blogger Choice Awards, and, most recently, was nominated as one of the Top 20 sports Blogs of 2011 by Shape Magazine. Christine has been a member of the BBA since its inception in 2009, and the Boston Chapters’ President since 2010. She can be found at www.bostonredthoughts.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter as @bostonredthots.

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Doctors Without Borders is an international medical organization that provides independent, impartial assistance in more than 60 countries to people whose survival has been threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. Please help us reach our goal of $2,000 by donating here.

Longtime New York sports columnist Jimmy Cannon used to have a theme for rainy days, a periodic column he titled, “Nobody asked me, but….” Veering from his typical sports beat, Cannon would give his opinion on a range of topics, and for a writer who considered himself a friend of Joe DiMaggio, the columns were a marked departure from form.

Jimmy Cannon died in 1973, but as my friend and fellow blogger Michael Clair has instructed participants in this blogathon to write about whatever, I’m going to take a page from Cannon’s playbook.

Nobody asked me, but….

I love to write. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, I would lock myself in a room and write. Course, the writing would get deplorably bad after about Year 4 of this, but that’s another story.

My girlfriend is the most courageous person I know. She is also one of the sweetest.

This is the year the American economy starts to improve. Granted, I’ve been saying some iteration of that the last three years now, but things are still looking up in my book.

I’ve heard cats can resemble their owners. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old Tabby and Abyssinian named Augustas. Little man looks, acts, and eats like his dad.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam have begun getting played on classic rock stations. This makes me feel old, even if Pearl Jam essentially came on the scene two decades ago as a classic rock group-in-training. Those guys sounded like dinosaurs in 1996.

Kim Jong-il’s death has me thinking of “Team America: World Police.” I’ve probably YouTubed the film’s deliciously offensive musical number, “I’m so Ronery” three or four times now.

Now that America has a black president, can we start thinking about a black Batman?

I would make a terrible undercover narcotics detective. Paradoxically, I might also make the world’s worst drug dealer. In either vocation, I might get shot my first day on the job.

I also wouldn’t last a day in the Mafia.

I’ve learned a lot of important lessons in my life. Here’s one: Writers and broadcasters generally make for excellent interviews. It makes sense, seeing as they get paid to talk. Athletes, by and large, aren’t nearly so articulate.

Publicly controversial people are often privately insecure.

If there’s a Hell, that “So what we get drunk?” song must get played constantly. It booms over the loudspeakers of Hades. During waterboarding sessions with Satan.

Dancing is not as easy as it looks. Nor is singing in public, hitting a baseball, or making a citizen’s arrest.

If I went around looking like the guys on Jersey Shore, I would get beat up constantly. One of the women on that show once referred to herself a walking holiday. I’d be a walking asskicking.

I think I could run a 40-yard dash in under five seconds. I could throw a baseball at least 60 mph. If push came to shove, I could probably kick a field goal.

Graham Womack can be found over at Baseball: Past and Present.

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Doctors Without Borders is an international medical organization that provides independent, impartial assistance in more than 60 countries to people whose survival has been threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. Please help us reach our goal of $2,000 by donating here.

• Assisted Suicide Squeeze
• Diagon Alley
• Around the Horn of Plenty
• Omar Little Hop
•  Bronx Stink Finger
• 70’s Bush League
• Can of Korn
• Jay Leno Music
• Cirque Du Soleil Catch
•  The Teenage Girl Cutter Ladies Cycle Fungo-delic “That’s Hot” Corner
• Dr. Pepper
• Diet Dr. Pepper
•  Dr. Pepper 10
•  Ribbie Mcentire
• Shoefetish Catch
• Metric System Blast
• Touch ‘em all, like Sandusky
• Uncle Charlie’s Ball Bag
• Whiffenpoof

Evan Kaufman is a writer/improviser living in Boston. He’s got Twitter, Tumblr and a deep respect for root beer.

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We have less than $200 needed to reach our goal of $2,000 for Doctors Without Borders. Don’t you want to be a part of that? Every dollar counts so donate whatever you can afford here.