Ballpark Requiem
“Yes,” Bukowski said mournfully. “It’s an abomination. Approximately half the seats in the new stadium are further away from the action than the last row of seats in the old ballpark. I want to know why that’s better, just because there’s not a post somewhere in the proximity.
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“Imagine if Monet had done a series of Comiskey Park studies,” he muses in the entry dated June 13. “This no doubt would offend those who love the views of Rouen Cathedral but see a ballpark as too pedestrian a subject. Monet haystacks and poplars also might seem a little on the simple side. They must be exempted under the ‘bucolic clause.’”
A rule of thumb when books appear is that the title is never what the author wanted. We asked Bukowksi about this.
“Those arches that extend around the park suggest the windows of a church or one of the multistory factories that were once so common here. Comiskey put his ballpark in the middle of a neighborhood filled with people [who] still viewed life the way peasants did and sought connections between work and play and worship.”
“Where’s the rest of him?” Coffey wondered in a column this month. “Do we ever get a view of him from the belt south? Does he wear shoes? Is that all there is?”
