I. What is Haiku?

RedSoxHaiku.com does a credible job of explaining Haiku to a lay audience. The short version for non-Japanese speakers: Who Knows?

A quick reading at linked web sites turns up a cultural tradition that encouraged evolving poetic forms; a deep interaction inside the poem with the written and spoken characteristics of Japanese language; a highly codified structure, shape, and content: centuries, syllables, and caesura.

Like baseball, the experience of Haiku transcends its rules, the actual play is not bound by rule.

From a bathing tub
I throw water into the lake —
slight muddiness appears.
Hekigodo Kawahigashi (1873—1937)

First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father's face
Kijo Murakami (1865–1938)

Yankee Stadium, 16 October 2003, 10:58pm.

ATBAT 25 BALL 0 STRIKE 0 OUT 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0   r h e   REDSOX 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 1       5 9 0   YANKEES 0 0 0 1 0 1 0         2 6 1

II. Some Baseball Facts

Some facts courtesy of Baseball Prospectus. In all regular season major league games since 1972, visiting teams leading by three runs with one out in the eighth inning won 6281 games, lost 445. When the score was exactly 5 to 2 the visitors won 1380 to 99 losses. With their starting pitcher still in the game – 411 wins and 29 losses.

Over the past 31 baseball seasons visiting teams reached this game state about once every two weeks. On the average they lost once a year.

III. 1918

America's entry into World War I shortened the 1918 baseball season by a month. The Red Sox played the National League champion Cubs right after Labor Day winning four games to two as pitchers Babe Ruth and Carl Mays each won two games. Combined, the two teams scored just 19 runs.

More than a million American soldiers poured into Europe's trenches, tipping the awful balance. Summer in France saw the stem and turn of Germany's last major offensive; for Americans it was Belleau Wood in June, Argonne Forest in September. Over 100,000 doughboys die before Armistice Day, November 11.

Estimates of total World War One casualties — 8.5 million combatant deaths and 8 million war related civilian deaths. Perhaps 7 million surviving combatants were maimed for life.

Some think the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 was a direct result of the deprivations brought on by the war. Accurate counts don't exist for the world wide flu toll; estimates range from 20 million to 70 million dead. In the United States perhaps 450,000 died of the Spanish Flu.

IV. [links]

Red Sox Haiku

Canadian Broadcasting System — support for a suite of programs on the Halifax Explosion

Baseball Prospectus — observation and analysis of baseball fact

1. 17 oct Pedro and pitch counts
2. 21 oct 3 run leads

FirstWorldWar.com — 3,900+ pages "authored as spare time permits …"

1. casualties

BambinosCurse.com — Edward Cossette, ht 6-0, wt 195, bats right, throws right.

Web Logs

JOHO the Blog — David Weinberger, author, radio commentator, Red Sox fan

Idle Words — Maciej Ceglowski, currently of Brandon VT, recent visitor to Halifax NS and the Bay of Fundy