twins 7, white sox 1

Kevin Slowey was dominant, Michael Cuddyer drove in four runs and the Twins won their home finale 7-1. But this afternoon’s ballgame was all about Torii Hunter.

A free agent at the end of the season, Hunter will likely sign elsewhere, for more money and more years than the Twins will offer. But as the offensive core of their four division titles, a defensive marvel and as the face of the franchise, more than 29,000 fans came to say goodbye and to implore him to stay.

He was cheered before each at bat, and cheered when he took the field. Fans rose to applaud, hoping their clamor could somehow will him to stay, to re-sign and remain their hero.

Walking off the field in the ninth to an ovation less raucous and more somber than most, he doffed his cap and retreated into the dugout. Fans kept applauding, trying to extend the moment, their time with their hero. Hunter climbed the dugout steps once more, tipped his cap to one final burst of adulation and then jogged into the clubhouse.

ins and outs of a dinner party

In:
12 pork chops
11 egg yolks + 1 egg
7 c. flour
6 tbls. butter
4 oz. goat cheese
3 c. Water
2 lbs. fennel
2 lbs. potatoes
2 granny smith apples
2 oz. sun dried tomatoes
1 package + 1/4 tsp. yeast
1 lb. parsnips
1 package cornbread mix
1 c. apple cider
1 quart heavy cream
1 c. sugar
1 c. peach nectar
3/4 lb. carrots
1/2 lb. shallots
1/2 lb. mushrooms

Out:

farewell chicago

Time to go home.

Brazil 4, USA 2

While lamenting the start of the loathsome American football season, I seized an opportunity to watch some real football. With 43,000 others, I saw the U.S. National soccer team face the best in the world, the Brazilians.

Even better than the football match I watched in Rome, the Brazilians dazzle with their skill and deftness. The U.S. took an early lead on an ugly goal, but quickly gave it back with an own goal. Brazil led 2-1, then the U.S. tied it again at 2, before two more Brazilian goals (including one on a magical shot from the world’s best player Ronaldinho), composed the final, a 4-2 Brazil win.

The result might have been disappointed, but the opportunity to watch the best in the world play the beautiful game in before a passionate and vocal crowd is the essence of sport. That this match was a meaningless friendly bolsters my desire to see the real deal at the World Cup. South Africa in 2010, anyone?

disaster in the ghetto

A trip through a south Chicago neighborhood evaluating damage again brought me up close to the depths of urban poverty. As we traveled from street to street assessing flood damage we visited houses in various states of disrepair. The residents seemed unconcerned, apathetic to their homes' conditions, acclimated to the squalor.

A "grocery" store on a corner had one sign announcing its acceptance of WIC, while the other proclaimed a bargain on 22 oz. bottles of Budweiser. The streets are cracked, crumbling, just as are the houses to which they lead.

Approaching one set of houses, two teenagers walked by in the street, absent from school on just the fourth day. As I approached one home, accompanied by a policeman, one said to the other, "Motherfuckers think cuz they got the police with them they can knock on the door, look around inside."

I cross a lawn to the next home, closer to the ambling teens. "I woulda shot them motherfuckers in the face," he continues, louder this time so I will hear. I glance over as they look back at me, chortling.

That’s the real disaster in these communities, the poverty and despair, and it is not one for which federal aid will be or even can remedy. They have atrophied to such an extent that there is no solution. Survival is the basic battle with little reward for success. So systemic and debilitating is the here that it's difficult to comprehend it being any other way.

raining at ORD

The 12th floor windows of my hotel room are streaked with rain, blurring the view of O’Hare airport. The sky reminds me of a winter night in Minneapolis, cloudy and bright, reflecting the thousands of lights below that guide planes home. A plane glides to the ground, then moments later another glides into the air. Rain continues to fall, softly.

The airport is a place of constant motion, of constant change. Inside, people bustle from point to point, mostly alone, coasting half-aware through the alienating environment we’ve constructed between home and away. Outside the movement is slower as planes aggregate the disconnect each traveler feels into a mass of steel bringing some where they want to be and others away from that very same place.

dreaming of sleep

Battling mosquitoes and mugginess. Traversing the mud and muck in flooded yards, examining damaged homes. Two hours in Chicago traffic and ten hours hopping in and out of a van, approaching strangers and asking them about their problems.

Despite two days of this, the confusion of sleeping in four different rooms on four different beds in four nights, the dislocation of an unfamiliar city and the isolation of hotel living, despite all that or perhaps because of it, sleep comes not easily. Even now, knowing that each minute clattering away on the keyboard is a minute not asleep, a moment not resting for tomorrow’s tour, sleep resists my efforts to cling to a glimmer of drowsiness.

My eyelids close easy, but behind them, the blissful slumber so often promised by the hotels in which I stay, continues to elude.

Apparently Snoop Dogg is staying at my hotel. How long can I sit at the bar hoping he shows up?

back to work

A two week respite now concluded, packed I head off to Chicago for another chapter in the glamorous life of a traveling disaster salesman.