Dennis O'Hare

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246 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 6 Aug

Dennis O'Hare’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Selected Shorts · Romance of the Summer · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

1981, the summer the baseball players went on strike.

The dull weeks drag by, the summer deepens.

The strike is nearly a month old.

Outside the city, the corn rustles and ripens in the sun.

Summer without baseball, a disruption to the psyche.

An unexplainable aimlessness engulfs me.

I stay later and later each evening in the small office at the rear of my shop.

Now, driving home after work, the worst of the rush hour traffic over, it is the time of evening I would normally be heading for the stadium.

I enjoy arriving an hour early.

parking in a far corner of the lot, walking slowly toward the stadium, rays of sun dropping softly over my shoulders like tangerine ropes, my shadow gliding with me, black as an umbrella.

I like to watch young families beside their campers, the mothers in shorts, grilling hamburgers, their men drinking beers.

I enjoy seeing little boys dressed in home team uniforms, barely toddling, clutching hot dogs in upraised hands.

I am a failed shortstop.

As a young man, I saw myself diving to my left, graceful as a toppling tree, fielding high grounders like a cat leaping for butterflies, bracing my right foot and tossing to first the throw true as if a steel ribbon connected my hand and the first baseman's glove.

I dreamed of leading the American League in hitting, being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I batted .217 in my senior year of high school.

an average 1.3 errors per nine innings.

I know the stadium will be deserted.

Nevertheless, I wheel my car down off the freeway, park and walk across the silent lot, my footsteps rasping and mournful.

Strangle grass and creeping Charlie are already inching up through the gravel, surreptitious, surprised at their own ease.

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