Bloomsday

In the 783 pages of his novel "Ulysses," James Joyce describes the activities of several ordinary people as they go about their ordinary days in their -- and his --  home town of Dublin. All the action takes place on June 16, 1904. When the Tigers, playing at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull when the yard was called Bennett Park, beat the Philadelphia Athletics 6-5.


Leopold Bloom is a character in the novel, and it's his name Joyce buffs who celebrate the day as a literary holiday have given June 16.


On this Bloomsday, the Tigers played the Colorado Rockies at the corner of Park and Comerica, and Tom and Maggie Bloom had quite an ordinary day.


We collaborated on breakfast;  sausage links and hash browns made from real potatoes, orange juice, and dry cereal. Maggie went to town, to meet her friend Peggy (Meg 'N Peg, they're affectionately called in the second floor baseball bunker) and to do some shopping. I cut the yard -- a task long overdue -- and contemplated the wisdom of having it paved over with green cement.


The Tigers played at four, on the Fox Saturday game. The Blue Jays, playing the Phillies at home, started at 1:07 PM. I tuned both the upstairs and downstairs radios to the game, washed the breakfast dishes, gave the kitchen a thorough cleaning, and contemplated converting to paper cups and plates, and plastic silverware. Every meal a picnic. How romantic.


Maggie called to ask what I wanted for dinner. I said kidney pie, gorgonzola cheese, and wine, since that's what Bloom ate on 6-16-04. She said she'd consider the request, but that its chances of fulfillment were unlikely.


The Jays won 6-5, on a walkoff single by Rajai Davis -- the last out in Verlander's 2011 no-hitter -- and pushed the Phils sans Howard and Utley all season deeper into the National League East cellar.


I called Maggie and asked her to bring home some powdered cleanser, since we were almost out, and to remind her that she was and always will be my special sweetheart, knowing that Peg would hear at least half the conversation.


Doug Fister, back from the DL, started and showed no signs of rust. He went through the Rockies' lineup like the proverbial knife through melted butter. The Tigers scored single runs in the first, fourth, and fifth. Miguel Cabrera hit a grounder back to the pitcher and, when the Rox were finally done throwing the ball away, scored. Rugburn went 1 for 3 with a walk, affirming the Tiger brain trust's decision to bring him up from Toledo while raising his average to .164. The Tigers won 4-1, their 31st win to go with 34 losses, one  step closer to official mediocrity (.500).


Maggie returned. Gone shopping almost six hours, she had two little bags of stuff that contained cleaning products but nothing that was on Bloom's menu. She said she was thankful we live close to the malls, unlike Peggy who's an hour's drive away.


Did they win? she asked.


Indeed they did, my queen. What's for dinner? 


What do we have?


Not much ...



So that's what we had. Toasted tuna sandwiches, the last of a bag of steak fries, leftover fast-food salad. Ritz crackers. An ordinary meal cobbled together by two ordinary people at the end of a day unremarkable save for the Tiger win. And I contemplated the wisdom of reading almost 800 pages of fiction to end up at more or less the same place.