Advice from a Know-it-All

Top picks this week:

Thank heaven for little girls. We have one who makes the sun rise.

Arkansas’ wild pigs (+7) will cover against Alabama’s lumbering elephants.

You know what? Slap us if we say “you know what?” again.

Re-read “The Great Gatsby.” We guarantee you’ll find something new.

Ring Lardner’s “Alibi Ike.”

DO NOT practice putting. You’ll use up all the good ones.

Respect the animal kingdom when choosing, for entertainment purposes only, football teams. We find that Homo sapiens mascots generally prevail over lower mammals.

Homo sapiens vs. Homo sapiens is tougher. See Michigan State Spartans vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish last week. The artful Aegean pulled a Mediterranean fast one on the discombobulated domer of Our Lady du Lac.

September in New York. Who has it better than us? You can still wear shorts and perspiration is but a memory.

Girardi to Cubs. Randolph to Mets. Torre to Cardinals. OK, it’s a stretch, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Heard it on the radio.

Coolest Beatles’ song: “P.S. I Love You.” No, wait, it’s “I’m a Loser.” Hold on, it’s “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl.” What about, “And Your Bird Can Sing”?

Best new band: “New Grass Country Club.” Join the club!

Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love (Got a soft spot for Robert Palmer and his lipsticked gals).

Spectrum Analysis

I don’t wish that I had Jesse’s girl. I wish I had the Philadelphia Eagles’ Michael Vick’s legs. The son of a gun can still gallop like a Labrador, with memories of dangling pit bulls dancing in his head. Got to hand it to him. He’ll start next week. Andy Reid knew what he was doing when he hired the guy.

And forget about the blind side, Alex Barron, the right tackle for America’s team, all but strangles a defender and ends the game as time expires, nullifying a seemingly winning touchdown pass and enriching those of us who took the Redskins for entertainment purposes only.

Which brings us to a new thesis – the color kingdom. Taking the color of passion – red – seems to work. You’ve given roses to your significant other to express your undying love. The football REDskins of the NFL and the REDbirds of the senior circuit of the MLB worked in tandem last night, for entertainment purposes only. Why don’t they walk Pujols whenever he shows up in the batter’s box?

Greens and blues are out. From now on, we are taking Boston and St. Louis of the MLB, San Francisco, Arizona, and Kansas City of the NFL , OU, Nebraska, Stanford of the scholar athlete football league (can’t take Ohio State – scarlet isn’t red). Jets and Giants are cast into the darkness, unless they make it to the Super Bowl and a decision must be made.

Am I abandoning the animal kingdom? But no! From out of nowhere comes the Canadian Football league, which features 12 men, numerous moving parts and ways to score. Keep an eye on these hosers.

In other words, life is random and we must have a code to live by and not be deterred by the girl who throws us over or the putt that goes awry. After all, Dustin Johnson won the BMW Championship yesterday after losing the PGA Championship by grounding his club in a bunker that he didn’t know was a bunker.

Wear crimson and cream on Saturday and flee the stock market. Y'all are doomed except for those who accept the color kingdom.

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.

Lingering in Summer

Soichiro Amaya of the Hiroshima Carp recently climbed a wall and stood on it to snag a would-be home-run ball. Spiderman bowed to the reporters in the after-game interview. We used to catch carp in the Chikaskia River near Blackwell, Kay County, Oklahoma, with our grandfather and threw them back. The rascals were too bony to filet and fry up, Grandpa said.

It seems the recovery from the Great Recession and the Middle East wars are rivers full of carp and few edible crappie. As the stimulus runs out of steam, so does the economic engine chugging along the track of history. We are usually an optimistic sort. The girls are still in their summer dresses. Six-foot putts still occasionally rattle into the cup. Surly old men still order the king of beers. Young men still return to school seeking PhDs in medieval literature. Look out Chaucer, you’re about to be dissected again.

But Americans are waking up to the fact that the age of dominance is fading. We depend on the kindness of strangers – for instance, the Chinese who bought our bonds to fund our feckless adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the dismal economic data of late – home sales, employment, durable goods orders, not to mention the hottest summer on record in New York (Con Ed probably made a killing, but to be fair avoided blackouts) – the tendency to be optimistic is under attack. Yet we must. Why does Rice play Texas as JFK said in Houston? Hey, the Owls covered the spread.

For entertainment purposes only, we picked no winners at Saratoga this weekend. Quality Ride proved he is a fine animal by winning the Woodward after missing the Derby. Such fragile beasts, ankles as skinny as ours, supporting chests and haunches that bespeak power and desire. They are said to be dumber than pigs, but they inspire awe, much as human beings do, though we are also probably dumber than pigs.

After a night of restless sleep and a dreadful round of foozled drives on the golf course in the state park at Saratoga, where a friend of ours learned we saw the same Crosby, Stills Nash and Young concert on a rainy night, we came romping home to old New York.

All is not lost. We picture ourselves atop that Japanese baseball wall with Mr. Amaya, snaring victory from the jaws of defeat rather than the other way around.

Oh yes, heard the cicadas still chirping. Summer lingers.

Ode to Summer And Fall

I hear the cicadas humming their love song, their lives soon to end. As boys in Texas, my brothers and I used to catch them, tie a string around them and let them fly at the end of the tether as we walked around the neighborhood. It marked the waning days of summer, long after Little League season ended.

I see my blonde sister in her teenhood, her hair tinged green from chlorine after hours in the pool.

I see Bob Gibson hitting an inside-the-park home run and Vada Pinson of the Reds, or were they the Red Legs back then?, knocking himself out against the wall at Busch Stadium 1 in 1965. At least that’s what I remember. Have to find the scorecard some place.

I feel the tug of fall as my brow cools and my children head back to school, full of expectations of glory, as well they should.

I thank the Good Lord that I have potable water when it seems the world is awash in what Coleridge said: “Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink; water, water everywhere and nor a drop to drink.”

I look forward to college football and the religious experience of rooting for the Laters (as a good friend of mine calls them) to beat Florida State and Texas.

Enough “I’s.” Summer is dying. Had some pumpkin bread the other day and “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Mr. Keats pointed out, will soon be upon us.

And the Yankees, BREAK ‘EM UP.

Their Flag to April's Breeze Unfurled

The day before we entered this vale of tears Bobby Thomson fired the shot heard ‘round the world. Not the one at Concord that Emerson immortalized:

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."

No, it was the one Mr. Thomson of the New York Giants cracked over the left field fence at Coogan’s Bluff to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a playoff game for the senior circuit pennant. We have felt a strange connection ever since we became cognizant in early boyhood of our place in baseball history, which leads us to coin a phrase – a day late and a dollar short.

We’ve run our race, as Paul said in his second letter to Timothy. Yet we take solace in Brett Favre (how do you pronounce his name?) writing another chapter. Or Eli Manning kneeling like Y.A. Tittle, bloodied warrior.

Mr. Thomson passed away the other day, and so did a piece of our life. Ralph Branca, who threw the fateful pitch, is still with us, but is surely to join his friend in glory soon. Days defy us. Years eat us up. Decades doom us. We only wish to tell our sons and daughters that once there were Giants, like Mr. Thomson, the embattled farmers at Concord and Mr. Tittle kneeling in the end zone with blood streaming down his bald noggin.

Apologies to Emerson and the young men who serve and die.

C'mon Man

Why do ladies and gentlemen bother with silly games? Why does Rice play Texas (as it used to in the old SWC)? Why does the sun go on shining (as Skeeter Davis sang)? Ask me why and Tell me why (as The Beatles sang)? Because, as Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us.”

Is there any sillier game than golf?

A club with a blade rested in a bit of dirt thought to be a random piece of scalped carpet and Dustin Johnson was consigned to the dustbin instead of a chance to raise high the Wannamaker trophy as PGA champion.

The son of a gun was corralled by some sunburned guy and told that he broke some rule by grounding his club in a hazard that had no rake and had been trampled by the crowd outside the ropes. C’mon, man. If this had happened on the first day to some unknown you wouldn’t have heard a peep.

Oh well, life is not fair and golf is what it is. We just play for fun and have no illusions about our ability. But this seems particularly unfair, given the prestige, not to mention the do-re-mi at stake. As we’ve pointed out before, Our Father sendeth his rain on the just and the unjust.

Meanwhile, take the over in every Canadian Football League game (for entertainment purposes only).