Nine things about Bruce Kimm:
- Bruce Kimm hit one major league home run.
- I watched a baseball game last night, or part of one, partially because I’ve been looking at and holding this Bruce Kimm baseball card a fair amount lately.
- I don’t follow baseball any more, not really, not day in, day out. I used to live for it. The most exciting moment of the whole summer when I was a kid was the All-Star game. My brother and I got to choose one night a year when we could stay up as late as we wanted, and we always picked that night. That’s how I saw Bruce Sutter for the first time, making American League stars swing and miss at a disappearing forkball. That’s how I saw Dave Parker throw a laser beam from right field to Gary Carter at home plate. I was always most excited to see players from my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, show up in the game in the most colorful version of their uniform in the history of their franchise, the mid-1970s version, where bright red joined the blue and white. But the player I was most excited to see, in that game or any game, wore the uniform type shown in this Bruce Kimm card. Nearly fifty years later, my excitement for that player was the reason I watched a baseball game last night, or part of one.
- Besides holding a Bruce Kimm card in my hand lately, I’ve been holding a phone in my hand. I’ve been doing that for some years now, even though all it seems to bring me is anxiety, dread, emptiness, powerlessness, need, hopelessness.
- Violence, anger, hate, predation, destruction, alienation, erosion of meaning, despair.
- I wanted to see the rookie Paul Skenes, starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. He had, I saw from looking at numbers available on my phone, started exactly as many career major league games as Bruce Kimm’s teammate, the most exciting player I’ve ever seen, Mark Fidrych, before Fidrych started the 1976 All-Star Game for the American League. Skenes did well, though his drab, generic “National League” uniform seemed to dull everything for me, increasing the generalized dulling of light and color that I’ve been experiencing roughly ever since I started holding my phone in my hand, or even since it has been holding me.
- Fidrych didn’t do so great in his 1976 All-Star start, possibly because he wasn’t pitching to his usual catcher, Bruce Kimm. Kimm had come up through the minors with Mark Fidrych, and when Fidrych broke into the starting rotation for the Tigers, Kimm was tabbed to be his personal battery mate. I’ve written plenty about Fidrych elsewhere, what he means to me, so here I’ll just ruminate for a moment on Bruce Kimm, on his place in the world. My own place in the world, in a certain sense, maybe in its most hopeful sense, is that of a witness to Mark Fidrych, which is to say a witness to joy. And so think of Bruce Kimm! Just 60 feet and 6 inches away from Mark Fidrych for virtually every inning of that 1976 season, connected to him pitch by pitch with crouching intensity, as if in deep, unshakable prayer.
- I found on my phone that Bruce Kimm’s one career home run was perfect. It came in the bottom of the eighth inning of a 2-2 game being pitched by Mark Fidrych three days after the pitcher’s 22nd birthday. Kimm untied the game for Fidrych, and then he went out and caught the top of the ninth, and after the last out, we can assume, moved toward Mark Fidrych as Mark Fidrych bounded toward him, the latter bursting like a new sun with happiness and gratitude.
- That’s what I want to hold in my hand for a little while today.
Cardboard Gods 
You must be logged in to post a comment.