Chad Abunassar

“In 1962, the San Francisco Giants were preparing to host the LA Dodgers for a crucial three-game series, late in the season. The Dodgers, led by master base stealer Maury Wills, were five and a half games ahead of the Giants. Before the series began, the Giants manager approached Matty Schwab, the team’s head groundskeeper, and asked if anything could be done—wink wink—to slow down Wills. “Dad and I were out at Candlestick before dawn the day the series was to begin,” said Jerry Schwab, Matty’s son, as quoted by Noel Hynd in Sports Illustrated. “We were installing a speed trap.” Hynd continues: Working by torchlight, the Schwabs dug up and removed the topsoil where Wills would take his lead off first base. Down in its place went a squishy swamp of sand, peat moss and water. Then they covered their chicanery with an inch of normal infield soil, making the 5- by 15-foot quagmire visually indistinguishable from the rest of the base path. The Dodgers were not fooled. When the team began batting practice, the players and coaches noticed the quicksand, and so did the umpire, who ordered it removed. Schwab and the grounds crew came out with wheelbarrows, shoveled up the mixture, and returned soon after with reloaded wheelbarrows. It was the same bog. They’d just mixed in some new dirt, which made it even looser. Somehow the umpires were satisfied. Then Matty Schwab ordered his son to water the infield. Generously. By the time the game started, there was basically a swamp between first and second base. (“They found two abalone under second base,” wrote an irritated Los Angeles sports columnist.) Maury Wills, en route to an MVP season, stole no bases, and neither did his teammates, and the Giants won, 11–2. Pleased, the Schwab father-son team continued to conjure more marshy conditions, and the Giants swept the Dodgers—and went on to leapfrog them to win the National League pennant. There’s something admirably mischievous about this story. I mean, it’s cheating, let’s be clear, but it’s cheeky cheating. It’s fun to think that the father-son groundskeeping team pulled one over on the National League’s MVP. The underdogs won one—they tilted the odds in favor of their home team.”
― Dan Heath, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

“Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small. No matter how hard you try to cover everyone,”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown