MILWAUKEE — Two hundred twenty-eight years before the October of Aaron Ashby, Samuel Taylor Coleridge presaged the strange natural phenomenon of stillness for which the Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher is responsible. Back then, the English poet wrote about the eerie stillness around the equator when the convergence of trade winds sends air upward, with not a breath to billow the sails of ships.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
