Game on!

The World Champion Philadelphia club of the National League brought the mighty American League pinstripers to their knees tonight, taking advantage of the mysterious winds of the Bronx bandbox, putting Kev in the plus column. We will forgive our taking the bloody socks of Boston against the glove-challenged Metropolitans of Queens, but Kawakami, alias KK, stood up brilliantly against Halladay in the home of Sherman’s gift to Lincoln. It must be hell for unreconstructed Confederates to see that statue at 59th Street with Nike hailing the victor astride his prancing mount. But it’s just a game, after all.

Just a game? What nonsense. Why, it is the very reason for living. If it were not for games, the world would be a dreary place, fit only for debtor prisons and dour sires and mares counting the pennies they earn while the mules in their harnesses plow the 20 acres allotted them.

God (your higher being or whomever) has now given us summer. A delicious sweat trickles on our brows. Shorts and polo shirts are required wear. A golf glove keeps the left hand noticeably paler than the rest of the exposed appendages. The same glove protects the mole on my index finger knuckle that has reminded me which is my left hand since I was a boy. I pray it doesn’t fade.

But I stray beyond what makes the world goes ‘round – fear and greed.

Just as the previous administration knew its bread was buttered by preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, so does the present one know that economic recovery will define it. Fiscal and monetary policies have as their single goal reviving animal spirits even at the cost of soaring inflation down the road.

Bush, Cheney, et al., were willing to sink to waterboarding to prevent another 9/11. Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, et al., will risk all to get the U.S. fully employed again. The bet they are making is that growth will be robust enough to pay for the debt used to get it going. They could well be wrong, and the U.S. could be saddled with slow growth, massive inflation and a collapsing currency, but given that they hold all the reins of power, I wouldn't doubt that climbing out of the mess is all but certain, though it may land us in another mess.

In the meantime, though, staying with equities, oil and other commodities seems the path of least resistance.

And Lebron is indeed King James, the guy who ruled Britain when Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest.”

Oh yeah, broke 100 the other day with a brilliant display of course management. I’ll insist on nothing less in the future