Which Is Nice

Got a haircut the other day. The barber waved the obligatory mirror on the backside and I was shocked! shocked!, I say! to see the rear of the cranium hairless, as it has been for years. Sigh.

But it keeps us cool in the summer heat, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

There is also a bald spot in the fabric of American life that needs Rogaine, or at least a toupee. It’s not the Glenn Beck rally in Washington. It’s not Obamacare. It’s not Darrelle Revis island. It’s not Navy fumbling at the goal line versus Maryland, keeping us from -- for entertainment purposes only -- cashing in. It’s not the Orioles taking the first two from the Yankees, which is also nice.

No, it’s the world we have lost. Where is Army’s lonesome end formation? Where is the split T (best onion rings and milk shakes in the world at a restaurant in Oklahoma City by the same name)? Where are the 180-pound offensive linemen? Where are the blocking rules we learned (that is, you can’t use your hands)? Where are the sports stories that review games and players and not arcane contracts?

We feel we are strangers in a strange land (apologies to Robert Heinlein). We live without iPods, still knot our ties the same way, a cool breeze through our window still seems like the breath of God wafting over our fevered flesh. Yet something has changed in our public life.

The sporting life we seek to lead is bespattered with People Magazine and movie directors, brilliant as they may be, despoiling 13-year-old girls and getting away with it. Cigarettes costing $12 a pack in the People’s Republic of New York. Poetry drowned out by hip-hop nonsense blared from an Escalade. Tea Party crybabies who don’t know their hip from their elbow. We are a surly old man, but keep our nails clipped and take our hat off indoors. Which is nice.

We are in a dark place, though Nick Swisher did us a favor by hitting the walk-off homer against Baltimore and assuring the run line win for the O’s , for entertainment purposes only. Which is also nice.

Take Mississippi State over Auburn (pick ‘em), and in the NFL New Orleans -5 over Minnesota, for entertainment purposes only, tonight. Must go with old OU -7 against Seminoles on Saturday, for entertainment purposes only.

In any event, entertained we shall be.