I'm used to being good at athletic pursuits, being able to perform the motions of a game well, so yoga is soulfully as well as physically challenging. It's humbling when my muscles are unable to support the motions demanded -- and of course the nature of the demands, upon balance and the core muscles, is symbolic. So it is good, then, to meet that challenge, in the hope that it's metaphorical in some way....

The blocks of stone on the corner, beside the buildings under construction. Two trunk-sized fragments laid on the street beside the intersection, catching the streetlight, their bulk giving them the presence of old draft animals. They look like concrete, and are definitely man-made, but already they've become stone, they have the authenticity of time.

Jerry Trupiano was inexplicably released as the play-by-play man on the Red Sox radio broadcasts, replaced by an announcer perfectly capable but inadequate, who doesn't fit in the way that Trupiano did.

Baseball is the one sport that can still be reduced to radio: a background noise for life, not the center of attention but the accompaniment to a summer day. A story to drive to, fall asleep to. Ball, pause, strike, pause, ball, pause, foul, pause ... and on for two or three hours, the moments filled as much by ambience as action, giving time describe the events and their actors. Trupiano and Joe Castiglione were the perfect pair, two slow-spoken and aging men who'd watched many games before, pacing themselves with the gradual ebbs and flows of the games. Trupiano's was a deep voice. His replacement is high-pitched, too quick to speak, to insistent on a rapid flow of information.

If Castiglione and Trupiano's gravelly meanderings could have been found sitting together outside a store in a small town, in the bleachers or a rainy-afternoon bar, the new announcer belongs to a loud and crowded bar on an afternoon where you'd be better off outside, to sports scores updated on top of taxis. So long, Jerry. Baseball won't be right without him.