Poscast with my baseball hero
Joe Posnanski
MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011
（这篇是SI专栏作家 Joe Posnanski 所写的文章，关于他的英雄，球员时代的 Duane
Kuiper。Joe Posnanski 是个非常棒的运动作家，而 Kuiper，也许是如今棒球世界最好
的播报员。）
There's a baseball bat in my office that I sometimes pick up when stuck
between paragraphs. I don't swing the bat, at least not at full speed. No, I
put it up against my shoulder and walk around with it for a little while. I
let it quiver behind my head as I imagine standing in against fastballs.
After a while, I put the bat down and return to my writing. I could say that
the bat helps me think, a wooden muse, but that's not exactly right. I could
say the bat clarifies things in my head, sharpens them, and that's true ...
but no that's not quite right either. The bat reminds me exactly why I do
this ... and maybe why someone keeps paying me to do it ... and maybe why I
got so lucky.
每当文思阻扼，我常会拾起办公室角落的球棒。我并不挥棒，至少不是全力挥击。不。我
将棒子斜靠肩上，走个几步。有时让它在脑后轻轻摇晃，想像自己面对一记耀眼的快速球
。良久，再放下棒子，回去写作。或者我可以声称球棒帮助了我的思绪，如木制的缪思，
但并非如此；或者说它猛烈击中了我某些想法，其实也不尽然……。好像都不大对。它提
醒了我为何从事这项工作……也许解释了为何有人仍愿支付薪资让我从事这项工作………
也许它说明了我有多幸运。
* * *
One of the wonder of our games. I think, is that they are exactly as
important or unimportant as you make them. A pitcher could throw a perfect
game in the seventh game of the World Series, and it wouldn't mean much of
anything to my mother, for instance.* On the other hand, an intentional walk
to Yuni Betancourt in a June Brewers-Marlins game might set me off on a
5,000-word post. It is not just perspective, it is commitment. It is all
about how deeply you want to enter the world.
一项我们的赛场上的神奇魔咒。球员们可以如你所想要的那般重要（或不重要）。比方说
，一名投手在世界大赛第七战投出完全比赛，对我妈而言可能并不代表什么。然而，如果
六月中的酿酒人与马林鱼之战，有人敬远 Yuni Betancourt，也许我会怒写五千字分析文
章，愤击键盘如飞（译按：六月，战况尚未吃紧。Yuni Betancourt，绝非酿酒人打线最
危险的前五名打者）。凡此种种，非关视角，这是献身与承诺。这一切取决于你愿意多深
入这个世界。
*Then again: what happens on Dancing With The Stars and American Idol means
quite a lot to her, and absolutely nothing to me. All depends on your world.
*同样的，《与明星共舞》(Dancing With The Stars) 及《美国偶像》(American Idol)
发生的那些大小事对我妈都有深刻意义，却与我绝缘。端看你处于哪个世界。
When I was 10, I wrapped myself in the world of the 1977 Cleveland Indians. I
don't recall this being much of a choice, but looking back on it I guess it
was a choice. Nobody I knew cared as much. Even though we were all 10 in
school, there was a cynical strain running through the other kids in my
class, and they mostly made the entirely sensible and terribly unromantic
decision that the Indians were not worthy of their best hopes. Even by then,
more than 30 years ago, the Indians had not been to the World Series in
almost 25 years