Safe by a Mile

Charlie Metro's career runs the gamut of the specialties found in baseball-player, coach, manager, scout, inventor. Metro has lived baseball at every level from the Great Depression to today's multimillion dollar contracts. One of a kind, Metro's life mirrors the astounding changes in the game as well as in the nation. Metro's tale is full of heart and a wealth of anecdotes, the result of a fascinating life and a true love of the game. Charlie Metro was born Charles Moreskonich in Nanty-Glo, Pennsylvania, in 1919. He played in the major leagues from 1943 to 1945 with the Detroit Tigers and the Philadelphia Athletics. He managed for parts of two seasons, with the 1962 Cubs and the 1970 Kansas City Royals. He also coached the 1965 Chicago White Sox and the 1982 Oakland Athletics. Although he had far longer service in the minor leagues, he will probably be best remembered as one of the great scouts and teachers in baseball history. This excerpt includes the Introduction and Chapter 1, "Hookey from High School."

Locus Amoenus vs. Locus Terribilis: The Spatial Dynamics of the Pastoral and the Urban in La Ceppède’s Théorèmes

The opening sonnets of Jean de La Ceppède’s Théorèmes (1613, 1622) present an urban vs. rural conflict that mirrors the dialectic between sin and salvation running throughout the work. La Ceppède’s focus for this struggle becomes the stark contrast between Jerusalem and the garden at the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem, as the place where Christ is persecuted and eventually tried, represents a Babylon-like enclave of transgression, while the garden is portrayed as a site of purity and tranquil reflection. From a literary standpoint, La Ceppède’s emphasis on the clash between dystopian and utopian settings comprises part of his adaptation of the pastoral, where this particular struggle becomes one of the genre’s principal motifs. In general, the contrast between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives emerges as the point of departure for the poet’s figuration of nature, both human and physical. A human construct, the city of Jerusalem becomes a metaphor for human corruption. In view of humanity’s fall in paradise and the denaturation it symbolizes, the poet’s goal, on both intellectual and affective levels, is to place the reader/dévot in a position to lift her/himself from the depravity of human nature to the grace of divine nature.