Tampa Bay, Obama, and Doritos: An Interview with Josh Spilker

Since Thanksgiving I feel like all I've read are high school research papers, in class writing prompts, exam essays, and high school research papers, and the only conclusion I've come to about the grading process is that teenagers write in dog years: every page read about lowering the drinking age is the equivalent of seven pages by anyone else. However, this post is not about high school papers; sometime in between grading shifts I interviewed writer Josh Spilker about his book Ambient Florida Position, which can be found here. The following are excerpts from the conversation: 


Me: What sparked the idea for the book?

Josh: I actually set out to write a story about Detroit [the book takes place in Tampa].

When Belief Becomes Bankable: The Rays Uprising

Carlos Pulido

Josh Spilker is a Tampa Bay Rays fan, and he's written here before about that and other things. He also has a novella out now (digital), which you should definitely check out (hard copy...scroll to bottom), but he's here today to talk about baseball, money, and miracles. Enjoy:

At this dinner meeting with people from church, with a small smoky fire, bratwursts and italian sausage, pumpkin bread, it was fall, near the end of September and the whispers of October hum on the horizon. Things turn inside and then wrap up, and the St. Louis Cardinal fan/homeowner turns on the television. St. Louis taking care of business, Braves stumbling, Boston in a rain delay and the Rays left for dead. A Red Sox fan looks at the TV-- “Call the game,” he says and “Yankees killing the Rays.” There may/

may not have been a high-five and I fell back into a recliner. The recliner sunk and sighed; relieving itself.

The Passing of Carl Crawford: A Retrospective

Josh Spilker has been here before, writing about the Vandy pipeline that gushes onto Soldier Field, basketball vignettes, and SEC picks. He also is the proprietor of the indie music blog Deckfight and writes an indie lit. column for Impose magazine, but all that is neither here nor there because, right now, Josh just needs to contemplate what the loss of Carl Crawford to the Boston Red Sox means to him and his fellow Tampa Bay fans:

MLB Channel Surfing:

Channel surfing Tuesday night's baseball games with Berndon's MLB.TV premium package and like channel surfing it's pretty much stream of consciousness:

I watched 5 of the 15 games played yesterday, taking a brief break to watch the Cubs, who promptly acknowledged my loyalty by taking a 0-0 game and making it a 6-0 deficit in the 10 minutes I watched. I also decided to let MLB Tonight act as my remote control for about an hour because, for one, the mosaic option on mlb.tv gives you 4 games at once, and it also makes each game have the look of a 1970's Atari game. Three of the five games started at ten o'clock, and the Texas-Oakland game was in extras.

Detroit-Tampa Bay: After Tampa Bay's Matt Garza threw a no-hitter against a Tigers lineup missing three regulars, and including some dude named Will Rhymes playing 2B, they look to continue this dominant pitching against 12-5 Justin Verlander.

William & Mary grad, Will Rhymes, whose names sounds like the lovechild of Will.I.Am. and Busta Rhymes, hit a bloop single that causes BJ Upton (Langston's former middle school basketball teammate) to roll his ankle. When disaster strikes.

Carlos Pena brings up an interesting debate, at what point is a "power hitter" a liability, especially when said power hitter is hitting .204? Carlos didn't like the question, answering it with a 2 run HR to center, number 22 on the year. 2-0 TB.

Alex Avila of Detroit looks like a dead ringer for Jack Parkman in the Major League movies, but he does not hit nearly as well. TB catcher John Jaso doesn't get any of the hype, but he's probably a top 5 AL rookie. He's slowed down to .267, but Dioner Navarro was an all-star catcher for the Rays during the World Series season, and Jaso's play has sent him to the minors.

I was just about to give Jason Bartlett the Carlos Pena treatment, but before I could even get close to typing the phrase "disappointing season," he rips a single. Tampa Bay owns me.

Fantasy Update: Justin Verlander will no longer be enjoying the luxury of getting any run support for the remainder of the season. Verlander's line so far: 5 innings, 2 hits, 2 runs, 2 BB, 4 k's. Also, Ben Zobrist has 20 steals? I had to idea the "Zorilla" had wheels like that.

Johnny Damon leads off with a single, then Cabrera pops a double into the corner, what will "The Other Guys" be able to do. (The answer: lineout, infield single with a Bartlett throwing error, flyout, strikeout). It's a 2-2 ballgame.

Carl Crawford will not get shown up by talk of the footspeed of Ben Zobrist. Steals #35 and 36 for Crawford, who is renting a condo in Verlander's noggin right now. Speed kills. Matt Joyce hits a double to make it 3-2 TB.

I'd have to say the Rays bullpen is deeper and better than the Yankees right now. Grant Balfour and Joaquin Benoit have been great bridges to Soriano. They do the job tonight with a combined  4 strikeouts, on four batters faced, each throwing 95 plus.

Crawford now has 3 steals. It would be a shame to see him in Yankee pinstripes next season. Verlander still hits 97 on the gun in the 8th, ends up with 8 innings, 5 hits, 3 runs, 3 bb, 6 k's. The Tigers mount a slight charge with 2 hits and a walk, but Miguel Cabrera, who might lead the league in intentional walks by here's end unless they get some help for him, hits into a double play, as Rafael Soriano closes it out. Tampa is now 2 games behind the Yankees. Damon and Cabrera go 4-9 (.444), the others go 8-27 (.296).

Oakland-Texas: The A's are shockingly only 7.5 games back of the Rangers, who send Cliff Lee and his 7 walks in 130 innings against the squad known for walking and OBP.

Oakland's lineup is a little left of imposing, I'm predicting Mr. Lee to be dealing this evening. In the 1st, Daric Barton, who is second in the AL in walks, works the count to 3-2, but then grounds out to first. This will be an interesting battle throughout the night.

Leading MVP candidate runs out an infield single by diving head first into first base. I've yet to see anything he can't do.

The A's will be a factor as early as next season, their rotation is basically all young and hypothetically going to get better and better. I'd be alright with Dallas Braden, Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill, and Brett Anderson as my staff.

Lee simply works over Jack Cust, 22 more outs till a perfect game. No perfect game but, Lee has 33 strikes on 46 pitches through 3 scoreless. Other random early game observations: It's good to see Vlad Guerrero doesn't look like he's 126 years old anymore. Also, I had no idea that both Elvis Andrus and Neftali Feliz both came over from Atlanta in the Teixeira trade a couple of years ago. How sick wold the Braves be right now with those two?

Reason Texas is going to the playoffs aside from acquiring Lee: Nelson Cruz is hitting .329 with 13 HR and 54 RBI in maybe half a season worth of games, and he hits 6th.

Gio Gonzalez is taking a different approach to Lee, ie he, like most other mere mortals actually throws balls from time to time. He has a couple more walks, and has given up a couple more hits, but it's still only 1-0 Texas through 6 and a half. Lee has 9 k's and has only given up 4 hits through 7, while Gonzalez has thrown 111 pitches, giving up 5 hits, 1 run, and 3 walks through 6 with 6 k's.

The A's bullpen was just described as being a "strength of their team." I wish the Cubs realized this in April when they decided the triple A all-star team would suffice in the late innings.

Late Inninng Observations: Lee strikes out the side in the 8th, on his way to 9 innings, 0 ER, and 13 K's. Nelson Cruz hits an infield single, I'm willing to bet 10 million dollars that Bengie Molina will not follow suit. 1-1 going into the bottom of the 9th, if anything is just in baseball the Rangers will walk off and win it for Lee here. Baseball is not just; we're heading to extras. Josh the Magnificent leads off the 10th with a walk, followed by Cruz hitting an absolute golf shot into the left field seats. I believe Tejas is for real.

Boston-Los Angeles: Another instance of an old face squaring off against his old squad, with John Lackey going up against the fading Angels in LA. 0-0 through two innings as Lackey is pitching against Cy Young candidate Jered Weaver. Why have the Angels not traded for a 1B by now? They should have done it a month ago. Luckily for me, this means Derek Lee is still on the Cubs. It might be too late by now, but they could have prevented falling quite as far as they have.

Bobby Abreu doubles in Macier Izturis, 1-0 LA in the 3rd. Jed Lowrie comes back from the DL just in time to take Bill Hall's spot filling in for Pedroia, hitting a bloop double over Juan Rivera's head in left, giving Boston a 2-1 advantage. Mike Cameron does a Willie Mays impression with an over the shoulder grab, followed by Jeremy Hermida gunning out Alberto Callaspo going for a double. I believe the pitching and defense template Boston wanted to follow is paying off tonight at least.

After Kevin Youkilis decides to make my fantasy team's Avg. plummet a little further, Ortiz gets on, and scored from 1st on an Adrian Beltre double. The impressive thing about it was that Papi's fat ass was flying. He looked like he could run a little bit. Maybe the MLB feed was a little off. I will take back any previous and forthcoming fat jokes.

Abreu knocks Lackey out of the game with a solo shot, making it 3-2 for now until Boston's bullpen loses it. The speed of Papi returns, as he "legs out" an infield single that results in a throwing error and a 4-2 BoSox advantage. The Adrian Beltre "hit the ball on one knee" technique is kind of neat. I will try this next time I'm crusing the ball at the 60 mph speed at the batting cage.

Papelbon has been a little shaky this year, he should be able to get the bottom 3 hitters of LA's order 1-2-3 here. Lowrie makes a nice stop robbing Howie Kendrick, and Boston does get a 1-2-3 9th, picking up a game on the Yankees.