Madi > Recent Status Updates

“All wheels must have a hub. A Ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.”

“I wish we'd been married, Becky. I wish we were married now."She nodded.

"So do I. Miles, why didn't we?"

[...]

After a moment I said, "Maybe we still can." Because she was right, of course; it was simple and obvious; I just hadn't let myself see it. Of course we could have failed; I could have wrecked her life; but that made me no different from any other man who might have done the same thing.”

He shrugged." I won't argue with you, Miles. You seem to have guessed pretty well how things are.”

"And do you mean to say you'll miss the strain and worry that goes along with them? It's not bad, Miles, and I mean that. It's peaceful, it's quiet. And food still tastes good, books are still good to read-"

"But not to write," I said quietly. "Not the labour, hope, and struggle of writing them. Or feeling the emotions that make them. That's all gone, isn't it, Mannie?"

(2/2)

“All right, Miles," he said quietly, "so you know. We tried to make it easy on you, that's all; because after it was over, it wouldn't have mattered, you just wouldn't have cared. Miles, I mean it" - his brows raised persuasively - "it's not so bad. Ambition, excitement - what's so good about them?" he said, and I could tell he meant it.

(1/2)

Great thanks to you, dear readers, for allowing me to inhabit your imaginations and your nerve-endings. You like it darker? Fine. So do I, and that makes me your soul brother.

From the afterword:

Horror stories are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic.
A paradox, but a true one.

Nothing is colder than cold November rain. It crossed my mind that someone should write a song about it... and eventually, someone did.

“I warn you that what you're starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions."

With three agencies prowling, two French and one Swiss, it is merely a matter of time. No one gets away with bold crimes for long. Luck always runs out, it’s inevitable. The couple is going to get caught.

The crime on Darties’s list that feels closest to terrorism may be the 1996 theft of a portrait by Corneille de Lyon, a court painter during the reign of François I, the famously art-struck French king. It was François who purchased the Mona Lisa directly from Leonardo da Vinci’s studio, for four thousand gold coins, which is why the indelible work, created by an Italian, hangs in France.

Runners-up for the most stolen artist include Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, and Joan Miró, but none approach Picasso’s total of about 1,000 swiped works. This includes the theft of 118 Picassos at once, from an exhibition at the Papal Palace in Avignon, France, in 1976.

The phrase made no sense to me, but all the time it echoed in my sleep, a terror gripped me as if the words were a threat of mortal danger. “Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghost.”

Unmistakably it was Schratt’s voice that spoke again and again: It followed me into the day.

Most parents think they understand this openness better than, in many cases, they actually do, and try to keep their children away from [...] horror and terror—“Rated PG [...], but may be too intense for younger children,” the ads for Jaws read—believing, I suppose, that to allow their kids to go to a real horror movie would be tantamount to rolling a live hand grenade into a nursery school.”

His worst fear, my mother said, was not of the submarines but of having his master’s license revoked because of his poor eyesight—while on land, he had a habit of driving over curbs and through stoplights. My own eyesight is similar; they look like glasses, but sometimes I think they’re a couple of Coke-bottle bottoms up there on my face.

It has always seemed peculiar to me that I owe that moment in my own life to my father, who left my mother when I was two and my brother, David, four. I don’t remember him at all, but in the few pictures of him I’ve seen, he is a man of average height, handsome in a 1940s sort of way, a bit podgy, bespectacled.

The thing about baseball is there’s nothing to complain about or fret over, and remember, there’s no crying in baseball.

Never overvalue yourself — that’s in baseball and in life.

If I’d done my schooling like my dad had wanted, I could probably pull out some deep quote from my memory about paths not taken, walking in the woods or other nonsense.
The only paths I ever saw were basepaths. I’m a baseball lifer. I love the game, and I want to be a part of it.

(Gibby on a threat of being fired after buying his young son Kyle a Derek Jeter jersey)

Nothing ever came of it, but it just shows you that if they want your head bad enough, some people will try anything. Just go ahead and do it. I guess I could understand if it had been me wearing it — I loved Jeter too.

Crazy things happen. You think you’ve got it right there and all of a sudden it evaporates. That’s the beauty of baseball: you never know.

[...] I explained to the media my side of having to get up close to him, but Josh delivered a beauty: “I was just coming back to the dugout and hit my bat against the [wall], and Gibby asked me what kind of cologne I was wearing,” Donaldson told reporters. “I said, ‘It’s this new cologne called Tom Ford, I just got it.’”
We moved on [...]. I love the kid to death, one of my all-time favorites, but he was a handful.

While the ’16 Jays weren’t the ’86 Mets, we were disliked. We had some guys that were cocky, who wore their emotions on their sleeve, who weren’t afraid to complain and bitch at umpires or to fight. As a team, we weren’t afraid to stick our chest out, because we were coming off a good year and we were good.

But it was two very good teams that were built for their own specific ballparks and divisions, and they both worked. I’ll take our guys any day.

But in the end, it’s good old-fashioned fundamental baseball that still wins. Game 6 is a perfect example. You strike out, you’ve got no shot at scoring. We had two of the best opportunities to take our shot, but it didn’t happen. I would bet on my guys in that spot every time.

2/2

It usually comes down to pitching, and they out-pitched us. Baseball has changed quite a bit since then, and 2015’s not that long ago. In today’s game, everyone strikes out or hits a home run.

(1/2)

I’m currently sitting at 53 lifetime ejections. That’s not bad, but a long way from the top: Bobby Cox is at 161, but percentage-wise for number of games managed, it’s close.

The best thing the umpire can say to me is, “I may have missed it.” Now what can I say to that? We’re all human.
But if you say you’re right all the time, we know that’s not the truth, because nobody is. So if you have that attitude, now it just tells me you have no flexibility and it’s probably going to get ugly.

In Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS, it was Greg Maddux of the Braves against Liván Hernández of the Marlins, and the umpire was calling pitches six inches off the plate strikes (check it out). Hitters had no chance. After that, I think they started cracking down. People still talk about that game. Heck, if you don’t want to be out there and do your job right, call in sick or quit.

Dayton was a little surprised that I declined interviewing further for the Pirates job, but I was back in KC for a third year. Plus, if I had somehow gotten that job, there wouldn’t have been a second go-round in Toronto, which I’ll cherish forever. Things usually work out.