Blast-from-the-Past Whirled Series: Will the Cardinals Taste (and Smell) Victory in 2013?

Satsuma ball, waiting in my Florida garden for a Cardinals' victory so it can finally ripen

An interesting conversation with a friend the other day revealed that baseball fan (at least male fan) habits are universally similar. The friend recalled that her male relatives (all Cardinals' baseball fans) used to watch the World Series of baseball as a matter of ritual, gathering together in each other's home for every game, visually glued to the TV set (now quite small by today's mega-size standards), while simultaneously listening to the play-by-play radio broadcast. Now these are dedicated fans, I thought, raised on Jack Buck's voice, not quite trusting what they saw on those television screens, and needing something more emphatic, something with verve. But wait! What's missing from their sensory-rich experience? They're watching, listening, and (if I know anything about males, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this one), nervously gripping some kind of ball. Of course, I'm talking cheese here. You know, the kind that baseball wives dutifully serve with crackers or crusty bread. Anyway, the missing sensory elements in this Blast-from-the-Past baseball series could only be...Yes, the smell of baseball. You've already got the taste of cheese in your mouth. Now focus on the smell. It's sweat, covered by after-shave and perfume, covered by popcorn, covered by peanuts, covered by beer, covered by hot dogs, covered by puke, covered by....unwashed, left-in-the-locker-too-long Red Sox. So now consider them all washed up for this year. Go, win this 2013 World Series, Cardinals!

It's Almost Halloween: Reach For 'The Long Hand of Twilight'

Remember when fantasy and science fiction books were fun to read? Silly instead of sinister, they didn't leave you with an uncomfortable chill in your spine or a brow-knitting blight on your spirit. Instead, they brightened your outlook on life as well as your face by turning the tables on things that go bump in the night. Laugh them away, those monsters that keep you awake when you should be sleeping. Send them to their eternal rest so you can enjoy a temporary version of it. Hmm. Maybe that's why so many people these days have trouble sleeping. Watching and reading too much horror, fictional or real, their minds can't relax. They are stuck in perpetual "fight or flight" mode. The autonomic nervous system's sympathetic response to the horror stimulus is unsympathetic to the body's need to rest.

If laughter is the best medicine, then The Long Hand of Twilight, a novel by Justin Bayne, will be an easy pill to swallow. It's a delightful book written by a native Floridian, someone who doesn't care for social media or self-promotion. He prefers to hide in the shadows so he can work on dispelling them. A prolific writer, he will, I know, forever dispel those shadows, those awful fears and doubts that haunt our thoughts and dampen our spirits. His book (someday soon to be plural!) will lead them by the hand and send them flying back to wherever it is they belong.

Fearlessly and shamelessly, I proudly promote Mr. Bayne's work for good reason. A recent addition to our family, he works hard at his day job and writes when he can find the time, something we all know doesn't grow on trees. If only it did.