Mary Beth Ellis, Author at Redleg Nation

Baseball Is Life: Other People’s Fun

07/29/2021

Baseball is a business of other people's fun. The players are supposed to have it, and if the fans have it, despite what the scoreboard says, a game can still be considered a success. I have a friend who, al... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: Center of the Field

Mary Beth Ellis

07/21/2021

Cincinnatians of a certain age grew up linking baseball with the center of the city. For those of us raised post-suburbia and post-multiuse stadium, a live baseball game was Of Downtown. You had to get on the i... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: Home

Mary Beth Ellis

07/14/2021

We lose sight of it sometimes as we strain to look over the outer fences, but home is the heart of baseball.

Baseball Is Life: The Enemy

Mary Beth Ellis

07/07/2021

It's easier to shift the blame to electrons and think of us as a meaner society now that we can send insults and threats at the speed of Internet. But I've been struggling with Being Nice long before the screeching of a modem dial-up entered it.

Baseball Is Life: Background Programs

Mary Beth Ellis

06/30/2021

They had to talk me down from the ledge when some teacher explained that entire bodily systems—heart, digestion, even blinking—worked without me thinking about it. They’re background programs. I knew these thin... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: What Do We Need?

Mary Beth Ellis

06/23/2021

The Purge is upon us. As of late, I'm my own personal fire sale; if I've not used or smiled upon something in the pretty-much immediate past, out it goes. I would be a very effective, very hated baseball team o... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: Great View of the Ballpark

Mary Beth Ellis

06/16/2021

What's it like when the ballpark is down the street?

Baseball Is Life: Cicada Gas Station Juice

Mary Beth Ellis

06/09/2021

I suppose I could back a team and a town where this never happens in the first place, but the cicadas are where the uproot isn't. And I am rooted. Even when I'm unseen, living apart for a while, I'm clinging to this patch of Earth.

Baseball Is Life: Lineage of Love

Mary Beth Ellis

06/02/2021

I heard a phrase the other day that struck a strong, lingering chord. I'm not going to tell you where because you will mock me. (It was in yoga class. I am now quoting things I've heard in yoga class. I know... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: IT IS YOUR CITY OF RESIDENCE

Mary Beth Ellis

05/26/2021

Meet our current monument to an assumption of understanding in the form of the worst group project to hit this city since the cicada emergence.

Baseball Is Life: The Fork

Mary Beth Ellis

05/19/2021

What you see here is a fork in the road. These are two articles I wrote for the Concord Monitor of Concord, New Hampshire. I was three weeks out of college and on a job interview. What better place for a po... Read More...

Baseball Is Life: What’s Inside Baseball?

Mary Beth Ellis

05/12/2021

I don't mean: Explain this boring inside joke of a conversation. I mean: What is actually, physically inside a regulation Major League Baseball baseball? One of my favorite exhibits at the Reds Hall of Fame ... Read More...

Author Mary Beth Ellis