in game of inches –
somethings wrong? Change the inches!
But square sinks won’t drain!
From what I read, some folks are wondering what is wrong with the game of baseball.
What they mean is something is wrong with Major League Baseball and that it doesn’t seem to have the same attraction as it did, the same strangle hold on the national imagination that it did.
What could be wrong with a GAME that is played by multi-millionaire’s ‘playing’ for teams controlled by billionaires funded by an entertainment industry that creates kazillionaires and how could it have lost touch with the little people?
The game itself, as some like to say, is a game of inches.
The bang-bang play at first.
The deep fly ball that becomes a foul ball by less than the width of the ball.
And something is wrong here.
I read where one of the suggested solutions is that there are not enough inches.
I read where it has been suggested that bases, the physical bases, be increased on size by 3 inches.
This will be tried out this year in the minors.
Boy, Howdy!
Smack my head and call me stupid.
Of course!
It is the size of the bases!
I remember reading a long long time ago when the American Basketball Association merged with the National Basketball Association.
One of the major benefits of this was that one Julius Winfield Erving II would now be playing for the Philadelphia 76ers.
That meant that Dr. J would be coming to the Detroit Pistons.
The article I was reading started with the story of a fan in Detorit who read the news, drove to the Pistons Ticket Office, put out his money and said, “Give me two for everything you got with the Doctor!”
I can just imagine reading about all the one time Baseball fans running to the ball park ticket window and asking for more tickets NOW THAT THEY FIXED THE SIZE OF THE BASES.
OH PLEASE.
REALLY!
Can some one, any adult, anyone, any math teacher, any physics teacher, any teacher, ANYONE please tell these geniuses that expanding the base by three inches will only move the bang-bang play three inches further out?
How does this change the game?
How does this improve the game?
In the novel, Shoeless Joe, JD Salinger remarks that, ” … the one constant through all the years had been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers. It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played in 1905. It is a living part of history.”
In the movie, “Field of Dreams”, this speech is delivered by James Earl Jones (’55-UofM) in the roll of a fictional Terry Mann who wrote a book titled the “Boat Rocker.”
I am not sure why JD Salinger and “Catcher in the Rye” (which plays an integral part of the novel – Ray’s Dad is a Catcher … ) but there it is.
So something is wrong with Baseball.
It must be the game.
Who thinks these things up?
Who thinks these things?
This morning I spent 5 minutes trying to wipe out the kitchen sink.
The sink is a deep, flat cornered, rectangle.
The corners are sqaure.
The silly thing won’t drain.
You wipe one corner of crumbs and they flow to the next corner.
You chase them around and wipe and wipe and wipe.
Then you spray.
No matter what you do, a square sink won’t drain.
SO who came up with this design?
Who thinks these things up?
Who thinks these type of things?
Sinks were rounded and dish shaped, sloping towards the drain for a billion years for one reason.
THEY WORKED.
They really could not be improved on.
SO WHY?
Who makes these decisions?
Some years ago I was told by a plumber that a plumber needed to know just three things.
One, pay day is friday.
Two, don’t chew your nails.
Three, water flows downhill.
Sometimes I tremble for humanity.
I used to have a baseball bat in my office.
I had written on it with a magic marker, COMPUTER REPAIR KIT.
One of the tech guys was in my office and laughed at it, then said, very quietly, “You know, Microsoft does NOT make things to NOT WORK.”
And he stared at me for a bit.
I think about that a lot.
And I think about how true it is.
Of course Microsoft does not makes things to NOT WORK.
So it the computer is not working …
Not wanting to point fingers but then maybe what was wrong was something … I did?
Boy, Howdy!
I am going to the beach.
No Haiku For You 