Motor City Here We Come?

I didn't realize it until I looked at the standings, but Detroit has been on a tear. So, there is a reasonable possibility we could be playing them in round 1, instead. So how do we stack up?

May 18 (home): win (1-0, WP: Bard)
May 19 (home): win (4-3, WP: Papelbon)
May 26 (away): win (14-1, WP: Aceves)
May 27 (away): win (6-3, WP: Wakefield)
May 29 (away): win (4-3, WP: Albers)
May 29 (away): loss (0-3, LP: Beckett)

It looks like we do pretty well against the Tigers, but we came up against them while we were hot, and even then, there were a lot of close games.

Here's how our potential starters fared:

Beckett: 2.25 (12.0 IP)
Lester: (0 IP)
Lackey: (0 IP)
Bedard: 3.18 (17.0 IP)
Wakefield: 2.57 (7.0 IP)
Miller: (0 IP)
Buchholz: 2.08 (13.0 IP)

That's an awful nice looking set of numbers. However, if Detroit manages to get their rotation set (which they should, since they are 8 games up in their division), then Verlander would be pitching twice. So far this year, he's pitched 15.2 innings against the Red Sox, with a 1.72 ERA. That's kind of scary.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

It's looking more and more like we'll be playing the first round of the playoffs in Texas. So, here's a summary of how the regular season games went:

April 1 (away): Loss (5-9, LP: Bard)
April 2 (away): Loss (5-12, LP: Lackey)
April 3 (away): Loss (1-5, LP: Buchholz)
August 22 (away): Loss (0-4, LP: Bedard)
August 23 (away):Win (11-5, WP: Lackey)
August 24 (away): Win (13-2, WP: Beckett)
August 25 (away): Win (6-0, WP: Miller)
September 2 (home): Loss (0-10, LP: Miller)
September 3 (home): Win (12-7, WP: Bedard)
September 4 (home): Loss (4-11, LP: Lackey)

They're a tough opponent for us, no doubt, and there are a lot of high scoring games, usually decided in the early innings. As for our possible starting pitchers, here are their ERAs against Texas this year:

Beckett: 1.50 (6.0 IP)
Lester: 8.44 (5.1 IP)
Lackey: 11.15 (15.1 IP)
Bedard: 4.50 (24.0 IP)
Wakefield: 1.50 (6.0 IP)
Miller: 7.04 (7.2 IP)
Buchholz: 5.68 (6.1 IP)

(Note that Lester's only game against Texas was the season opener, and Lester always starts out poorly.)

Rotation

So, for the time being our rotation is as follows:

Lester
Wakefield
Miller
Lackey
Weiland

Ummm.......

What Makes Murakami Addicting?

I was in a weird mood the other night, and so didn't want to continue reading You Don't Love Me Yet (Lethem's excellent rock and art and love novel), so, in anticipation of IQ84, I blew the dust off of Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and lost myself in the first two chapters. I mean, seriously lost myself: I stayed up way too late because I got lost in that Murakami groove.

This morning, I pondered: what is it about his writing that is so mesmerizing? I mean, it's not like his prose is anything unique; on the contrary, some of the descriptions are so bland that they verge on cliche. For instance:

"An old, brown, withered Christmas tree stood in the corner of one garden. Another had become the dumping ground for every toy known to man, the apparent leavings of several childhoods. There were tricycles and toss rings and plastic swords and rubber dolls and tortoise dolls and little baseball bats. One garden had a basketball hoop, and another had fine lawn chairs surrounding a ceramic table." p.13

There are portions of his novels that just go on and on like this. In fact, to me his uninspiring novels (I'm looking at you, Dance Dance Dance) border on boring for this very reason. What I think it is is that this familiarity of prose (can't think of a better way to put it) really puts you in the mindset of his typical protagonist, a "boring" male in his 30s who is a bit of a stranger to himself, into routines, etc. This sucks you into a certain ordered mindset, and the bizarre events start occurring - and they do! - the juxtaposition is that much more jarring. You see this in great effect in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, where the "normal" chapters are interspersed with the "fantasy" chapters and while they tell completely different stories, the manner of telling is exactly the same.

This is a long way of saying that to me, it's really the plot of his novels that is so engaging. Bizarre occurrences and complete normality live side by side with no real explanation and after a while just start to make sense in a strange way. Think "Johnny Walker" and "Colonel Sanders" in Kafka on the Shore and how they fit into the novel. Critics writing about Murakami bandy about labels like "dream-like" and "magical realism" (which always makes me think of "Latin" authors (think Gabriel García Márquez) but I think what Murakami is trying to do is different - it's more subtle, subconscious, and ironic. And I just can't get enough of it!

In just the first chapter of TWUBC, the narrator is called multiple times by someone who wants to talk dirty to him and exclaims that "Ten minutes... is all we need to understand each other." He makes spaghetti and listens to Rossini and tells us about his lost cat and boring job. He falls asleep in the yard of a 16-year old girl who puts him to sleep by whispering about "the lump of death... something round and squishy, like a softball, with a hard little core of dead nerves. I want to take it out of a dead person and cut it open and look inside. I always wonder what it's like." p. 20

This type of writing combines the boring and cliche with the bizarre and unlikely, and presents it all equivalently. Most of his writing is ambiguous, as if the author himself wasn't entirely sure what it all means. To foax like me, who loves to try and fill in the blanks, it's a heady brew.

 Does this make sense to you? What draws you to Murakami? What keeps you coming back for more? What's your favorite book of his? (For the record, mine alternates between TWUBCand Kafta on the Shore.)

Update: Edited to correct spelling mistakes. Blogger's new interface doesn't really work well with Chrome's spellchecker.

Running Makes me Stupid

I'll just put this out there. When I exert my legs on a long run, my brain seems to take a break.

Today, for instance, I set out for my long run without a clear goal in mind. But I was feeling pretty good after the first ten miles, so I decided that I would continue on until I got to 75% of the distance of my upcoming 50k. After several minutes of struggling with the math in my head, I finally calculated that 75% of 31 miles is 22.75 miles.

It wasn't until I was in the car on the way home that I realized my mathematical error.

And it's not just math. Several weeks ago, I arrived at my doorstep after a long run and came inside panting. After I announced to my wife how far I had run, she asked me what route I took. I responded that I had several times around "that long green area in the middle of town where all the people are walking." She looked at me quizzically. "Do you mean the mall?" "Yeah," I said, "the mall. That's what they call it. I couldn't remember."

I'd like to think that this is a normal, easily explainable thing, perhaps caused by all the blood being directed to my muscles rather than my head. But I have never noticed it talked about on blogs or in runners' magazines, so maybe it's just me.

5k

I ran 5k tonight and managed a new personal best - a 7:56/mile pace. A year ago, I couldn't even imagine the idea of going faster than 8:00/mile over that distance.

I still can't conceive of 6:17 and will never even come close. But it's pretty fun getting faster over short distances (and pretty funny that I am getting interested in short distances while you guys are moving toward longer ones).

Are there any strategies you recommend for further picking up the pace?

Recent Reads

A few quick thoughts on the books while I read in Greece.

The Child in Time is by far my favorite novel by Ian McEwan. Most likely, it is because it is his least focused. Well worth reading if you are looking for soemthing new.

Troubles, by J.G. Farrell, is engaging but overrated. Perhaps if I was British and more interested in the Irish question, I would think differently.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, turns out to be more of a random collection than I had hoped. Good for subway reading, though.

Sex and the River Styx is gorgeously written, but gets repetitive: each essay explores exactly the same ideas about the environment and about aging. Worth buying, but to maximize your enjoyment, put this on your bedside table and read on essay every month or so.

Outsider in Amsterdam turned out to be one of the least rewarding mystery novels I've read in a long time. Very hard to understand the positive reviews for this one.