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    Ducks on the Pond: A Love Letter to the Sport of Baseball
    Ducks on the Pond: A Love Letter to the Sport of Baseball
    Ducks on the Pond: A Love Letter to the Sport of Baseball
    Ebook186 pages1 hour

    Ducks on the Pond: A Love Letter to the Sport of Baseball

    By R. Scott Murphy

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "Ducks" is a love letter to baseball, but it's not just diamonds, dust & Dodgers. It's about youth, wonder & nostalgia-simpler times when Pluto was a planet & reality stars were not. Steal away to Kool Aid-stained summer days, wiffle ball, BBQ hot dogs and "American Top 40" with Casey Kasem. Award-winning writer R. Scott Murphy uses his "storyteller mashup" style to blend "Cultural Literacy" with "Schoolhouse Rock" and take snapshots of the grand game. He morphs generations of Bronx Bombers in "Revelry In The House of Ruth," the ultimate conversation starter for Yankee Nation. Liven up your longball lingo with "The Home Run Alphabet." Take a poetic excursion to every MLB stadium & every World Series played since 1965. Count down Murphy's favorite baseball nicknames with music references as assigned by ESPN's Chris Berman. Albert Pujols becomes "E Pluribus Pujols," and "The Monsters Are Raging On Huston Street." As Casey Kasem would say, "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMay 2, 2011
    ISBN9781617925993
    Ducks on the Pond: A Love Letter to the Sport of Baseball

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    • 5/5
      R. SCOTT MURPHY'S "DUCKS ON THE POND" (A REVIEW)If you are looking for a great anthology ode to baseball, you must pick up this book. R. Scott Murphy has put together poetry and prose, laced with wonderful back stories that highlight the history of this Great American Sport perfectly.There is no way you can escape the nostalgia this book so eloquently offers.-Kitty Bullard / Great Minds Think Aloud Book Club

    Book preview

    Ducks on the Pond - R. Scott Murphy

    Mashup

    Introduction

    Who in the wide world of sports is R. Scott Murphy? Why another book about baseball? Isn’t baseball old school, and not in a Converse Chucks are still cool kind of way? Hear me out, please.

    In advertising school they teach the elevator pitch theory. This means you need to be able to pitch your big idea in the same time window as a typical elevator ride. We’re talking thirty seconds. Andy Warhol said everyone would have fifteen minutes of fame, but sometimes you have to hurdle those thirty seconds to get there. It’s all about painting pictures and using action verbs.

    What’s in it for you, Mr./Miss/Mrs. Person-Standing-at-the-Bookstore? I realize you may be previewing this online while you’re eating something with a spork, but it has more charm if you are actually in a bookstore—even if it is just theater of the mind. So please imagine that your physical being is occupying brick-and-mortar bookstore space. Anyway, you’re scanning this section as text messages whistle in and hilarious tweets and Facebook updates careen across your cranium. Yes, I’m going for alliteration. Thanks for noticing it. I want to occupy some of your valuable space-time continuum with my soliloquy/jabberwocky about the only game where you are celebrated and put into the hall of fame if you regularly succeed three times out of every ten. Really. But it’s not necessarily about the end game. It’s about the chase, the ducks swimming on the pond. Modulate with me on my mad frequency.

    Where else can you be a golden great if you do something well three times out of ten? Spelling test? F. That new project at work? Better beef up your monster.com credentials (as far as they know, you did lead that important project). Where else? Give me thirty seconds. Switch off that chunk of satellite you call a phone. Head to the quietest corner of the bookstore you can find. Really. I’ll wait. Go ahead. I promise, Too-Much-Cologne Guy standing in the science genius book section is not staring. That bookstore-hot blonde in the next aisle? She has a boyfriend that’s all wrong for her, but she won’t realize it for another few weeks. It’s just thirty seconds. Go ahead. I promise, she really thinks he’s the one, and she will not volley back your best Joey Tribbiani confident smiles.

    Close your eyes. Really. Okay, this is me changing my voice to sound like Morgan Freeman. Baseball … I mean it. Morgan Freeman, not Tracy Morgan or Morgan Fairchild (not that there’s anything wrong with either one of them). Two birds. I got you thinking Morgan Freeman, and I also squeezed in a Seinfeld reference to garner some pop culture cred. Isn’t this fun? Thirty seconds, Morgan Freeman ….

    Remember, Morgan Freeman. Baseball. There’s no caged octagon, no 400-pound gladiators, no 11,520-square-foot, center-hung, high-definition television screen, no gold medals (let’s rub in some salt and point out that baseball’s not even an Olympic sport anymore), and no clock management strategy.

    Precisely.

    Absent the ability to perform Jedi mind tricks, and hoping not to waste this Morgan Freeman moment, I give you three words: The Wonder Years. You’re darn right I’m talking about the late eighties Kevin Arnold/Winnie Cooper TV comedy. Now you’re saying, Morgan, (thank you) "what does The Wonder Years have to do with baseball?" Everything and nothing.

    Nothing. I know Kevin Arnold didn’t have enough hand-eye to hang with Tim Lincecum, and Winnie probably never got her own MLB fashion line like Alyssa Milano. Everything. But promise me you’re not so desensitized that you don’t remember that long-lost, best-part-of-a-roller-coaster-ride funny feeling in your stomach—like when Kevin and Winnie first kissed? It’s not exclusive to them, but they are a good example.

    Wonder. Nostalgia. Sense of belonging. Simpler times before reality people took over our lives. Your favorite birthday party of all time. Your first crush. The magazines you hid under your Stratomatic baseball game. The catchy little pop song you pretended to hate. Your first, awkward kiss. Your first mad idea about making a quick million bucks. The toy you couldn’t put down. The way-too-loud, almost-girlish yell you let out at the office (where you’re really not supposed to be on eBay) seventeen years later, the day you found said toy in mint condition on eBay.

    Understand? That’s baseball for me. Set your flux capacitor for 1.21 gigawatts and come along for a trip through Kool-Aid-stained summer days, Wiffle ball till dark, BBQ hot dogs, and weekly American Top 40 radio shows with Casey Kasem. We all wish we were young again, but the closest we can get to that is conjuring whimsical memories of hats flipped back and chasing the ice cream truck. We’re all nostalgic, even my nine-year-old. Who knew The Wiggles would create such a lasting impression? Should I be worried about it? Probably. Anyway, Ducks on the Pond will give you a snapshot of youth and wonder. I’m not promising to build a fountain of youth, but I am promising a ride you’ll enjoy.

    In baseball, as in life, it is a very good thing to have ducks on the pond. There is anticipation. There is promise. There is the chase. There is a chance for success. Come with me on this baseball journey, and you will discover things you never knew about yourself.

    Now you’re saying, Morgan, (thanks again) it’s been more than thirty seconds. Would you want someone to put a clock on your best memories? I didn’t think so. Besides, they didn’t stop Belushi when he was convincing the misfits at Faber that it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. In the spirit of the golfer (actor Henry Wilcoxon as the bishop) with Bill Murray in the rain in Caddyshack, you’re not going to interrupt the best pitch of my life, right?

    Move from the corner. Plunk this book down at the closest register. Hurry. I lied before. You do have a chance with that Tribbiani-lovin’ bookstore beauty, but only if she sees this book (already purchased) in your hand. Walk right up to her. Today is your Viking day. You bought the book, right? Walk right up to her and blurt out, Wonder Years! She may propose right on the spot. In the unlikely event that she doesn’t, tell her she has classic beauty, just like Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years. Nine out of ten dating services say this will work. But if it doesn’t, I promise, you don’t really want a woman that doesn’t appreciate The Wonder Years. In that case, buy nine more books. They are ducks on the pond, and I absolutely guarantee success with at least three of those ten books!

    Sincerely,

    R. Scott Murphy

    Chapter 1

    Revelry in the House of Ruth

    Cultural Literacy Meets Schoolhouse

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