We would be remiss if we didn’t relate our experience as a baseball catcher one day in our teens. Man on second, we call for a fastball with two out in the bottom of the seventh (the inning of decision for kids) and ahead by a run. The young stud at the plate laces the pitch into left center. We throw off our mask and stand astride the plate, all 130 pounds of ourselves. The left fielder picks it up cleanly and fires to us.
The throw is high, we have to jump and catch and apply the tag in one motion. The man on second, a young Pete Rose, barrels in as we tag him on his back as he sends us flying. It is our one moment of glory. Few remain, we suspect.
We never heard a greater compliment than that delivered that day by a young lady with bad teeth, common in those days. “What a brave hind catcher.” We still see her and love her wherever she is. Are there still hill folk who call the catcher a “hind catcher?”
This is why we love this sporting life. The moment of a girl (we can’t divulge her name) telling you at 16 that you are brave has an exhilarating effect. It has lasted a lifetime.
But fear tries to poke its nose beneath the tent. So we are always in awe of the man in the arena, the guy or gal who leaves the tent without a care for battle.
How about the poor son of a gun from Pittsburgh who fouled the Butler fellow on a free throw rebound with a second on the clock and the score tied? He was reacting as all of us would do when we feel an athletic feat is called for.
Hold your head high, young man. We’ve all been there. We dropped a pop foul attempting a basket catch as a hind catcher, allowing the young batsman to get another pitch and drive in the winning run
”It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing." (The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway).
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Talkin' 'Bout My Generation
So we said to ourselves, “Selves, c’mon, man, give it up.” The torch must be passed.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
Confession: Despite being Papists, we’ve always preferred the King James version of the word of God.
All is vanity, baby. The aging A-Rods, Derek Jeters Kevin Garnetts and Johnny Vegas’s of the world will not miss any meals, but must bow to inevitable decline. Sure, supermodels, caviar and BMWs will be aplenty, but the ball game abideth. We believe there are folks with canes who wear hog hats in Fayetteville and hairy men in pink Red Sox hats and tank tops singing “Sweet Caroline” in Boston. The long suffering, while tuning in WGN, asked for tissues when the Cubs tanked in 1969. The young boy elated by pinstriper Scott Brosius’s home run in Game 5 cried inconsolable tears when a bloop single handed the 2001 series to Arizona in Game 7.
There is a Game 7 out there for all of us, even guys like us too dim to realize it until we approach those final innings. But hope springs eternal. Pitchers and catchers unlimbered in Florida and Arizona recently (a mystery: why not corner outfielders and utility infielders first?). And now we hear that Bernard Madoff has lost weight. He should write a diet book titled “Build a Ponzi Scheme, Always shoot 3 over Par Somehow and Go to Prison.”
The New York Metropolitans baseball club, owned by beneficiaries of Mr. Madoff’s ledger main, is now apparently searching for someone to take Babe Ruth off their hands so they can produce “No, No, Nanette.”
C’mon, men (the Wilpons, that is). Time to give it up. Sell the team and settle your debt to Mr. Madoff’s losers. The Metropolitans are losers, too, so what’s the beef?
Which brings us to our beloved Cardinals. Given the economic events of the last few years, it’s surprising that Albert Pujols thinks he can rule the elements, as a dear friend of ours says. The St. Louis club can win without him when he’s 41.
We just turned 25 last year, though we find some that dispute this. Retail sales were up less than expected last month and inventories were up. Expect the stock market to drop and utility infielders to demand a few million less.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
Confession: Despite being Papists, we’ve always preferred the King James version of the word of God.
All is vanity, baby. The aging A-Rods, Derek Jeters Kevin Garnetts and Johnny Vegas’s of the world will not miss any meals, but must bow to inevitable decline. Sure, supermodels, caviar and BMWs will be aplenty, but the ball game abideth. We believe there are folks with canes who wear hog hats in Fayetteville and hairy men in pink Red Sox hats and tank tops singing “Sweet Caroline” in Boston. The long suffering, while tuning in WGN, asked for tissues when the Cubs tanked in 1969. The young boy elated by pinstriper Scott Brosius’s home run in Game 5 cried inconsolable tears when a bloop single handed the 2001 series to Arizona in Game 7.
There is a Game 7 out there for all of us, even guys like us too dim to realize it until we approach those final innings. But hope springs eternal. Pitchers and catchers unlimbered in Florida and Arizona recently (a mystery: why not corner outfielders and utility infielders first?). And now we hear that Bernard Madoff has lost weight. He should write a diet book titled “Build a Ponzi Scheme, Always shoot 3 over Par Somehow and Go to Prison.”
The New York Metropolitans baseball club, owned by beneficiaries of Mr. Madoff’s ledger main, is now apparently searching for someone to take Babe Ruth off their hands so they can produce “No, No, Nanette.”
C’mon, men (the Wilpons, that is). Time to give it up. Sell the team and settle your debt to Mr. Madoff’s losers. The Metropolitans are losers, too, so what’s the beef?
Which brings us to our beloved Cardinals. Given the economic events of the last few years, it’s surprising that Albert Pujols thinks he can rule the elements, as a dear friend of ours says. The St. Louis club can win without him when he’s 41.
We just turned 25 last year, though we find some that dispute this. Retail sales were up less than expected last month and inventories were up. Expect the stock market to drop and utility infielders to demand a few million less.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Song of the Sporting Man
A friend of ours voiced a thought recently that has often struck us. To wit, “It’s a young man’s game,” which is why we play golf and doubles tennis rather than touch football anymore.
We envy men with theme songs to serenade them through this vale of tears: The Nazarene Jeter and strains of New York, New York; the saintly Brees aboard the City of New Orleans; the maple-leafed Crosby and O Canada, King James and the Cuyahoga (burn on big river).
Song and the sporting man are linked in a way that is poetry in motion (yep, it was Johnny Tillotson, he of telethon fame).
Though motion eludes the sporting man approaching his dotage, every now and then he ignores the doubtful knee and the looming obligation of completing the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle to aspire to the artistry of Tim Lincecum’s delivery or Ichiro Suzuki’s swing.
“C’mon, man,” get the legs moving, give it a try. There is nothing more dispiriting to us than the young man or woman who slothfully gives up and yields to the blandishment of the easy way out. Granted, talents are parceled out unequally and what few we may have decay with age, but that iron-clad fact of nature can’t keep us from seeking glory.
We will never find it at the plate, or under center, or in the crease, or behind the three-point line, but isn’t there a chant that we hear in our heads that keeps us shaving every morning and attending girls’ softball games.
Ours is: “G-o-o-d-e-y-e. Good Eye, Good Eye, Good Eye!”
We envy men with theme songs to serenade them through this vale of tears: The Nazarene Jeter and strains of New York, New York; the saintly Brees aboard the City of New Orleans; the maple-leafed Crosby and O Canada, King James and the Cuyahoga (burn on big river).
Song and the sporting man are linked in a way that is poetry in motion (yep, it was Johnny Tillotson, he of telethon fame).
Though motion eludes the sporting man approaching his dotage, every now and then he ignores the doubtful knee and the looming obligation of completing the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle to aspire to the artistry of Tim Lincecum’s delivery or Ichiro Suzuki’s swing.
“C’mon, man,” get the legs moving, give it a try. There is nothing more dispiriting to us than the young man or woman who slothfully gives up and yields to the blandishment of the easy way out. Granted, talents are parceled out unequally and what few we may have decay with age, but that iron-clad fact of nature can’t keep us from seeking glory.
We will never find it at the plate, or under center, or in the crease, or behind the three-point line, but isn’t there a chant that we hear in our heads that keeps us shaving every morning and attending girls’ softball games.
Ours is: “G-o-o-d-e-y-e. Good Eye, Good Eye, Good Eye!”
Saturday, February 20, 2010
This Lenten Life
The cruelest month? ‘Taint April, Mr. Eliot. It’s February in Brooklyn: bare trees snarling at us; snow still piled on the shady side of the street; surly young men with sweatshirt hoods shrouding their faces, looking like so many Unabombers; nervous young mothers and take-charge nannies clogging the grimy sidewalks, pushing strollers that wrap their young’ns in plastic; sad brownstones gray with a kind of bone-deep moisture; the endless analysis of NBA contracts, the hair-shirt advent of Lent (how’s that for mixing liturgical seasons?).
But there’s hope. Lent’s privations will lead to Easter. Tulips will bloom and bare trees will smile. The hooded swains will bare their heads to seek their Jills. The byzantine NBA will give way to the Amen Corner at Augusta National. Children will frolic in parks while radiant parents and caretakers enjoy a picnic lunch, leaving the sidewalks free for us surly old men on meaningless jaunts.
We know these things are true because a flock of millionaires and wannabes are at this very moment spitting sunflower seeds before heading to the golf course in the gentler winters of Florida and Arizona. We all would have been among them at one time if not for the indisputable fact that hitting a curveball is impossible in the real world. This feat requires a magical incantation passed down among a select few from Nap Lajoie and Wee Willie Keeler (“hit ’em where they ain’t) to Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols. Will Dan Brown reveal it in his next “Da Vinci Code” spin-off?
Forlorn as we are in this somber period, itching to take to the local muni track with yet another new swing and putting stroke, the boys of summer at winter training (hey, it ain’t spring yet) fill us with hope of life after death. They have convinced us to embrace each new minute of sunlight that appears with every revolution of the planet until the vernal equinox, an event for mourning because the hourglass is turned over and the daytime begins to dwindle ever so sneakily.
Before that day in June, we predict the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the 2010 World Series and Eldrick Woods will retire from golf to become a Buddhist monk.
But there’s hope. Lent’s privations will lead to Easter. Tulips will bloom and bare trees will smile. The hooded swains will bare their heads to seek their Jills. The byzantine NBA will give way to the Amen Corner at Augusta National. Children will frolic in parks while radiant parents and caretakers enjoy a picnic lunch, leaving the sidewalks free for us surly old men on meaningless jaunts.
We know these things are true because a flock of millionaires and wannabes are at this very moment spitting sunflower seeds before heading to the golf course in the gentler winters of Florida and Arizona. We all would have been among them at one time if not for the indisputable fact that hitting a curveball is impossible in the real world. This feat requires a magical incantation passed down among a select few from Nap Lajoie and Wee Willie Keeler (“hit ’em where they ain’t) to Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols. Will Dan Brown reveal it in his next “Da Vinci Code” spin-off?
Forlorn as we are in this somber period, itching to take to the local muni track with yet another new swing and putting stroke, the boys of summer at winter training (hey, it ain’t spring yet) fill us with hope of life after death. They have convinced us to embrace each new minute of sunlight that appears with every revolution of the planet until the vernal equinox, an event for mourning because the hourglass is turned over and the daytime begins to dwindle ever so sneakily.
Before that day in June, we predict the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the 2010 World Series and Eldrick Woods will retire from golf to become a Buddhist monk.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Decades
These are a few of our favorite things when the dog bites and the bee stings:
Mustard on scrambled eggs.
Marlboros, not the generic brand.
Parlays over straight plays (for entertainment purposes only).
Diet coke with a Big Mac and fries to keep our girlish figure.
The Meineke Car Care Bowl.
Directing the placement of the Christmas tree from a perch on the couch.
Christmas Eve shopping with the kids at the South Street Seaport and lunch at Wendy’s.
Paula Creamer’s beautiful swing and pink ball.
Laughing at ourselves when putts for double bogie lip out.
Faithful friends who are dear to us and gather near to us once more.
We are torn, torn we say! when it comes to remembering the last year of the aughts and reminiscing over a decade in this sporting life.
We learned to simulate playing golf, no small feat given our advanced age and lack of cocktail waitresses.
Our children, who advanced far beyond us in scholarship and athletic accomplishment.
Those who endured much with more grace and wit than can be measured.
The hound hotel, which can be a good place to go when the slings and arrows cloud the skies.
David Tyree’s miraculous helmet catch.
OU’s national championship against Florida State.
Boise State’s trickeration win against OU.
Of course, the 2004 Red Sox.
New Year’s resolutions are upcoming (six-pack abs are among them). Have yourself a merry little Christmas. We’ll muddle through somehow.
Mustard on scrambled eggs.
Marlboros, not the generic brand.
Parlays over straight plays (for entertainment purposes only).
Diet coke with a Big Mac and fries to keep our girlish figure.
The Meineke Car Care Bowl.
Directing the placement of the Christmas tree from a perch on the couch.
Christmas Eve shopping with the kids at the South Street Seaport and lunch at Wendy’s.
Paula Creamer’s beautiful swing and pink ball.
Laughing at ourselves when putts for double bogie lip out.
Faithful friends who are dear to us and gather near to us once more.
We are torn, torn we say! when it comes to remembering the last year of the aughts and reminiscing over a decade in this sporting life.
We learned to simulate playing golf, no small feat given our advanced age and lack of cocktail waitresses.
Our children, who advanced far beyond us in scholarship and athletic accomplishment.
Those who endured much with more grace and wit than can be measured.
The hound hotel, which can be a good place to go when the slings and arrows cloud the skies.
David Tyree’s miraculous helmet catch.
OU’s national championship against Florida State.
Boise State’s trickeration win against OU.
Of course, the 2004 Red Sox.
New Year’s resolutions are upcoming (six-pack abs are among them). Have yourself a merry little Christmas. We’ll muddle through somehow.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Stitch It Up, Doc
Recall the metallic taste and smell of blood? Seldom do middle-aged urban, sedentary adults experience it, but it is one of those startling sensations of childhood, when we are fearless and the physical world abruptly slaps some sense into us and it’s off to the emergency room for a stitch here and there. Needless to say, we and our offspring have been sewn up multiple times, only to be surprised when it happens anew.
The United States Department of Labor reported that employers shed far more jobs than anticipated in June and stocks beat a hasty retreat to the ER, much like Kev and his fellow sissies on the golf course today, who heard the rumble of thunder on the 18th hole and picked up their well-struck balls plugged in the squishy sod of Split Rock where the family Bronks used to live and the Battle of Pelham was waged in October of 1776. The latter “saved the revolution” according to the hole markers. We’ll have to look it up.
Times being what they are, this patriot wished for a shotgun in his bag to bag a family of “wild” turkeys clucking around a tee box, oblivious to the swack of titanium on Titleist as they pecked the ground for their daily bread. Oh well, probably would have sprayed buckshot at the Acela train speeding by on the outskirts and missed the plucky fowl, much like missing the fairway most of the showery day, requiring the services of a savvy lawyer.
The jobs data need a fast-talking spinmeister, too. All of the components – jobs lost, wages, hours worked, average work week – were inescapably grim. We won’t bother you with the particulars, but the anticipated recovery in the second half is thrown into serious doubt.
We remain hopeful, though. Not to put lipstick on a pig, but we remain enamored of the glamour of filthy lucre. It is our opinion that the choice between God and mammon (that is, excruciating destruction of wealth vs. happy days are here again) is a false premise. Listening to Wall Street “economists” bloviate on facts that are apparent to all but the illiterate is the equivalent of reading yesterday’s newspaper. Money supply growth and fiscal stimulus (and more to come until it works) will kick in.
No one will be blamed for taking money off the table (Kev wishes he had done so with his baseball picks last week), but the jobs report makes stocks cheaper. Which means we’ll get back in when they look too cheap. Now, where’s our shotgun? Dinner, like youth, must be served.
The United States Department of Labor reported that employers shed far more jobs than anticipated in June and stocks beat a hasty retreat to the ER, much like Kev and his fellow sissies on the golf course today, who heard the rumble of thunder on the 18th hole and picked up their well-struck balls plugged in the squishy sod of Split Rock where the family Bronks used to live and the Battle of Pelham was waged in October of 1776. The latter “saved the revolution” according to the hole markers. We’ll have to look it up.
Times being what they are, this patriot wished for a shotgun in his bag to bag a family of “wild” turkeys clucking around a tee box, oblivious to the swack of titanium on Titleist as they pecked the ground for their daily bread. Oh well, probably would have sprayed buckshot at the Acela train speeding by on the outskirts and missed the plucky fowl, much like missing the fairway most of the showery day, requiring the services of a savvy lawyer.
The jobs data need a fast-talking spinmeister, too. All of the components – jobs lost, wages, hours worked, average work week – were inescapably grim. We won’t bother you with the particulars, but the anticipated recovery in the second half is thrown into serious doubt.
We remain hopeful, though. Not to put lipstick on a pig, but we remain enamored of the glamour of filthy lucre. It is our opinion that the choice between God and mammon (that is, excruciating destruction of wealth vs. happy days are here again) is a false premise. Listening to Wall Street “economists” bloviate on facts that are apparent to all but the illiterate is the equivalent of reading yesterday’s newspaper. Money supply growth and fiscal stimulus (and more to come until it works) will kick in.
No one will be blamed for taking money off the table (Kev wishes he had done so with his baseball picks last week), but the jobs report makes stocks cheaper. Which means we’ll get back in when they look too cheap. Now, where’s our shotgun? Dinner, like youth, must be served.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Mortality
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” (W.B. Yeats, the Second Coming). Something stalks us, fellow boomers, and it isn't tryng to give us the comeback player of the year award. Popular culture contemporaries are checking out at a frightening clip.
Farrah Fawcett’s high point was as the pin-up girl at her most come-hitherest, despite her best efforts to grow into a serious actress. Michael Jackson’s impressive oeuvre came to be overshadowed by the bizarre personal life. Only Billy Mays’ entertaining sales pitches remain an authentic legacy, in our view. That’s all he did or apparently aspired to do. Here was a guy who could take his work, but not himself, seriously. Aged 62, 50, and 50, respectively.
“What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.” (Ecclesiastes, King James version).
(We are big on quoting better writers than ourselves today, one an Anglo-Irish poet contemplating the post-Great War world, the other some anonymous Israelite who concluded wisely that all is vanity).
We think these thinkers have something to offer the living who are still toiling, or playing, in Kev’s case, in the vineyards of this sporting life. Catastrophe and other minor setbacks lurk at every corner. Miss Market can look like Farrah Fawcett one day and Phyllis Diller the next, can do the moon walk then retreat to Neverland, can promise stain removal from your favorite shirt with OxiClean and you believe her.
We think this immortal is still on the side of the living. Durable goods orders and personal income data point to recovery, though the savings rate has soared compared to consumption. That transition could be wrenching, but is to be expected. Kev’s transition from genius to nitwit in baseball picks is similarly a shock, but not fatal. At least PALM keeps rewarding (forecasts of positive cash flow by year-end). F will survive. Still with NVAX but looking to take profits soon.
In the meantime, life treats us well. A beloved girl is a softball champion. The U.S. soccer team acquitted itself well in a valiant effort against the Brazilian juggernaut (though whoever passed out those plastic horns to the crowd should be brought up on charges)and Albert Pujols continues to amaze fans of the stumbling Redbirds.
It is hard enough to accept love handles as a fact of getting on in years when, in our heads, we remain 25, rich, witty and irresistible to all women, but the prospect of demise unsettles all but the sunniest of men. Saw a funny poster the other day: “My goal is to live forever. So far, so good.”
Farrah Fawcett’s high point was as the pin-up girl at her most come-hitherest, despite her best efforts to grow into a serious actress. Michael Jackson’s impressive oeuvre came to be overshadowed by the bizarre personal life. Only Billy Mays’ entertaining sales pitches remain an authentic legacy, in our view. That’s all he did or apparently aspired to do. Here was a guy who could take his work, but not himself, seriously. Aged 62, 50, and 50, respectively.
“What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.” (Ecclesiastes, King James version).
(We are big on quoting better writers than ourselves today, one an Anglo-Irish poet contemplating the post-Great War world, the other some anonymous Israelite who concluded wisely that all is vanity).
We think these thinkers have something to offer the living who are still toiling, or playing, in Kev’s case, in the vineyards of this sporting life. Catastrophe and other minor setbacks lurk at every corner. Miss Market can look like Farrah Fawcett one day and Phyllis Diller the next, can do the moon walk then retreat to Neverland, can promise stain removal from your favorite shirt with OxiClean and you believe her.
We think this immortal is still on the side of the living. Durable goods orders and personal income data point to recovery, though the savings rate has soared compared to consumption. That transition could be wrenching, but is to be expected. Kev’s transition from genius to nitwit in baseball picks is similarly a shock, but not fatal. At least PALM keeps rewarding (forecasts of positive cash flow by year-end). F will survive. Still with NVAX but looking to take profits soon.
In the meantime, life treats us well. A beloved girl is a softball champion. The U.S. soccer team acquitted itself well in a valiant effort against the Brazilian juggernaut (though whoever passed out those plastic horns to the crowd should be brought up on charges)and Albert Pujols continues to amaze fans of the stumbling Redbirds.
It is hard enough to accept love handles as a fact of getting on in years when, in our heads, we remain 25, rich, witty and irresistible to all women, but the prospect of demise unsettles all but the sunniest of men. Saw a funny poster the other day: “My goal is to live forever. So far, so good.”
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Here's Johnny
“I hold in my hands the envelopes. My 4 ½ year-old daughter Katherine Mary could tell that these envelopes are hermetically sealed. They’ve been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch since noon today. NO ONE knows the answers inside these envelopes, but you, in your mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers without even knowing heretofore the questions. Isn’t that correct, sir?” (Ed McMahon, courtesy of a CNN video).
“May an incontinent yak spray your poppy fields with ayatollahs.” OK, I made that one up, mixing up all sorts of mysterious visitors from the mysterious East while channeling Johnny Carson.
Mr. McMahon has gone onto his eternal reward, another sign that we baby boomers are limping to the finish line. Seems like yesterday that Leno slid behind the desk, only to yield it to O’Brien. When will St. Peter welcome the rest of us? It is certain he will, hopefully far into the future.
Just as certain is failure on the golf course. Fan-favorite Mickelson, Come-back kid Duval and Ricky Bobby (nee Barnes) had a chance to claim the United States Open Championship at waterlogged Bethpage, only to fall short on a Monday blessed with sunshine now and then. At least they replenished their Vitamin D requirement, in short supply these days in old New York.
Rather than conquest, failure was the motif at the public course in Nassau County, or is it Suffolk? I live in Kings County, on the same sliver of turf jutting into the Atlantic, and, as insular as I am, remain ignorant of political boundaries. Mr. Glover, hitting fairways and making putts, was far more much in touch with the ground beneath him than Kev, whose muddy, horse-barn smelling sneakers are still drying out.
‘Twas a day to remember. Saw Tiger Woods, not that big of a guy really, in all his glory. If he hadn’t teed off early on Thursday, he probably would have won. We shouted Boomer Sooner to fellow son of old OU and British Open champion Todd Hamilton, who responded with the Tuck Fexas gesture that is treasured on Commerce and Elm Streets in Dallas in October while the swells live it up in the Adolphus Hotel and throw TVs out the windows. Saw the ferocious, yet calibrated, swing of Bubba. And from merrye olde England, Mr. Fisher acquitted himself well.
All of this meant a day away from Miss Market, who refuses to be charmed. Our delicate relationship is, well, delicate. As is Kev’s baseball picking ability. Blew three games last night, one on a walk-off home-run. Oh, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts! We will bounce back, of this Kev is sure.
More importantly, there’s a softball game tonight in Prospect Park. We’ll laugh if we triumph and do the same if we smell the camel breath. Kind of like McMahon.
“May an incontinent yak spray your poppy fields with ayatollahs.” OK, I made that one up, mixing up all sorts of mysterious visitors from the mysterious East while channeling Johnny Carson.
Mr. McMahon has gone onto his eternal reward, another sign that we baby boomers are limping to the finish line. Seems like yesterday that Leno slid behind the desk, only to yield it to O’Brien. When will St. Peter welcome the rest of us? It is certain he will, hopefully far into the future.
Just as certain is failure on the golf course. Fan-favorite Mickelson, Come-back kid Duval and Ricky Bobby (nee Barnes) had a chance to claim the United States Open Championship at waterlogged Bethpage, only to fall short on a Monday blessed with sunshine now and then. At least they replenished their Vitamin D requirement, in short supply these days in old New York.
Rather than conquest, failure was the motif at the public course in Nassau County, or is it Suffolk? I live in Kings County, on the same sliver of turf jutting into the Atlantic, and, as insular as I am, remain ignorant of political boundaries. Mr. Glover, hitting fairways and making putts, was far more much in touch with the ground beneath him than Kev, whose muddy, horse-barn smelling sneakers are still drying out.
‘Twas a day to remember. Saw Tiger Woods, not that big of a guy really, in all his glory. If he hadn’t teed off early on Thursday, he probably would have won. We shouted Boomer Sooner to fellow son of old OU and British Open champion Todd Hamilton, who responded with the Tuck Fexas gesture that is treasured on Commerce and Elm Streets in Dallas in October while the swells live it up in the Adolphus Hotel and throw TVs out the windows. Saw the ferocious, yet calibrated, swing of Bubba. And from merrye olde England, Mr. Fisher acquitted himself well.
All of this meant a day away from Miss Market, who refuses to be charmed. Our delicate relationship is, well, delicate. As is Kev’s baseball picking ability. Blew three games last night, one on a walk-off home-run. Oh, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts! We will bounce back, of this Kev is sure.
More importantly, there’s a softball game tonight in Prospect Park. We’ll laugh if we triumph and do the same if we smell the camel breath. Kind of like McMahon.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Young Girls They Do Get Weary
One lesson Kev thinks he has finally learned as he approaches the turn to the home stretch is that you can’t tell people how to feel. Least of all Miss Market. Our pouting paramour will not succumb to sunny encouragement, snapping her feral fangs at the hand on her shoulder, laughing maniacally at such bromides as: “Hey, it’s not so bad,” or “Remember all the good times,” or “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover.”
You tell her that Pudge Rodriguez has now crouched behind the plate more times than Carlton Fisk and exhort her to do the same. You tell her that even the graceful, intricate – nay, beautiful – pitching motion of Tim Lincecum must lose a game now and then. To no avail. We must let her edge back to us in her own good time. Not helping her in this direction are the latest economic data.
Wholesale inflation was 0.2% in May. Higher energy prices offset a drop in food prices, according to the government. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy prices, fell 0.1%. At the retail level, inflation also rose just 0.1% last month.
Industrial production fell 1.1% in May to the lowest level in 11 years and is down 13.4% in the past year, the largest year-over-year decline since 1946. And capacity utilization fell to a record-low 68.3% last month, down from 69%. The Krugmanites have a point. This indicates much slack to be taken up before inflation becomes a problem, a condition much to be wished for.
Inflation and interest rates must rise to convince her she has pricing power again, but the mills of the gods grind slowly. We can’t tell her or anyone else how to feel.
Meanwhile (our fallback transition), stay with PALM. Much chatter about a takeover by industry giants looking for an avenue into the smart phone market. F still has value. Wait for GMGMQ to slip. Hoping NVAX catches fire again.
Wish I had taken the underdog Nationals against the pinstripers last night. Long Islander John Lannan outpitched the suspect Chien-Ming Wang, who nevertheless showed some gumption against the new “first in war, first in peace, last in the American (now National) league” team.
You tell her that Pudge Rodriguez has now crouched behind the plate more times than Carlton Fisk and exhort her to do the same. You tell her that even the graceful, intricate – nay, beautiful – pitching motion of Tim Lincecum must lose a game now and then. To no avail. We must let her edge back to us in her own good time. Not helping her in this direction are the latest economic data.
Wholesale inflation was 0.2% in May. Higher energy prices offset a drop in food prices, according to the government. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy prices, fell 0.1%. At the retail level, inflation also rose just 0.1% last month.
Industrial production fell 1.1% in May to the lowest level in 11 years and is down 13.4% in the past year, the largest year-over-year decline since 1946. And capacity utilization fell to a record-low 68.3% last month, down from 69%. The Krugmanites have a point. This indicates much slack to be taken up before inflation becomes a problem, a condition much to be wished for.
Inflation and interest rates must rise to convince her she has pricing power again, but the mills of the gods grind slowly. We can’t tell her or anyone else how to feel.
Meanwhile (our fallback transition), stay with PALM. Much chatter about a takeover by industry giants looking for an avenue into the smart phone market. F still has value. Wait for GMGMQ to slip. Hoping NVAX catches fire again.
Wish I had taken the underdog Nationals against the pinstripers last night. Long Islander John Lannan outpitched the suspect Chien-Ming Wang, who nevertheless showed some gumption against the new “first in war, first in peace, last in the American (now National) league” team.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Miss Piggy
Like Keats listening to the nightingale, “My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk.” But I am listening to the snorting and oinking of bacon, not the avian cluck of doom in recent years past. The influenza that originated with the porcine staple of subsistence farmers, such as my grandfather, who relented to my mother’s pleas and didn’t slaughter the pig she had raised in the depths of the Depression, has put us in the slop.
Given the panic infecting the markets, I fully expect to see pedestrians with surgical face masks when I venture out for my bacon (make that steak) and eggs this summery, un-flu like morning. But I got a shot back in the Ford administration when the swine flu alarum first sounded. Hope it took.
Miss Market can turn on a dime from seductress to you know what with lipstick. I don’t mean you, Gov. Palin. I look forward to your presidency and admire you for sticking up for everyone challenged by the mess we make of things. Plus you look as good as Obama in a tailored suit.
The day is not over, but I remain cheered. Unlike Keats, whose psyche (to which he wrote another ode) was absorbed with the fleetingness of youth, my gaze is fixed on tomorrow. I remain in the green, thanks to F and SLV. Even the redoubtable PALM refuses to bend. The only virus it fears is the one that could infect its operating system.
The airlines are suffering. NYT is down after Ms. Dowd’s wry farewell address to her profession on Sunday. Oil is dipping, but precious metals could be a refuge.
And Yankees’ fans, your ballyhooed pitching staff is suffering from walking pneumonia. I’m stealing home on them and I’m having a BLT for lunch.
Given the panic infecting the markets, I fully expect to see pedestrians with surgical face masks when I venture out for my bacon (make that steak) and eggs this summery, un-flu like morning. But I got a shot back in the Ford administration when the swine flu alarum first sounded. Hope it took.
Miss Market can turn on a dime from seductress to you know what with lipstick. I don’t mean you, Gov. Palin. I look forward to your presidency and admire you for sticking up for everyone challenged by the mess we make of things. Plus you look as good as Obama in a tailored suit.
The day is not over, but I remain cheered. Unlike Keats, whose psyche (to which he wrote another ode) was absorbed with the fleetingness of youth, my gaze is fixed on tomorrow. I remain in the green, thanks to F and SLV. Even the redoubtable PALM refuses to bend. The only virus it fears is the one that could infect its operating system.
The airlines are suffering. NYT is down after Ms. Dowd’s wry farewell address to her profession on Sunday. Oil is dipping, but precious metals could be a refuge.
And Yankees’ fans, your ballyhooed pitching staff is suffering from walking pneumonia. I’m stealing home on them and I’m having a BLT for lunch.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I'm Younger Than That Now
Where do original thoughts come from? Or, rather, where do the words come from that express the sentiment and truth that is inherent in every soul? The feeling that glues us all together and wonders and despairs at our fellows who roam outside of this gentle umbrella to feed on the carcasses of the weak and the sick?
In my dotage, I fear for the future, but am heartened by children, though I tear the decal off the top of my new baseball hat and gently curve the bill, though my blue jeans fit snugly (perhaps a bit too much) just below my belly button, despite my tendency to judge ladies and gentlemen by their inclination toward the designated hitter.
Oh yes, original thoughts. Are there any? Perhaps only scientists possess them. Lawyers rely on case law. Doctors refer to symptoms to diagnose what has been diagnosed in the past. Baseball managers call in the closer when up by a run in the 9th inning. The head coach orders a “prevent defense” in the waning moments of a one-score game. Writers usher in dramatic plot points to their screenplays. These are all things the prudent woman or man does.
How little does art imitate life. Life cares not a whit for the artistic spins we may desire to put on it, which may be why we love art so much. It must be an immense disappointment to the artist that all crumbles in his mighty effort to wring meaning out of this vale of tears. There, I just tried to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse!
But narratives persist. Even those outside of our lovely, late-empire American orbit have a story. The last few days have been filled with milestones. The killings at Columbine High School in Colorado (where an ex-girlfriend went to school), the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City (across the street from where I spent my journalism apprenticeship), and one good thing, the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, an event that defines the American belief in the future.
OK (no pun intended), I am a prisoner of my past, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (thanks, Bob Dylan; original thoughts belong to others).
Here's another one that stirs me to look to tomorrow. Fitzgerald, disproving my original conceit that art can't illuminate, wrote in an otherwise undistinguished story called The Swimmers: "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."
Which gives me that incurably optimistic outlook peculiar to Americans. Tony La Russa, despite having been found passed out, or something , at the wheel last year, has turned managing my Redbirds into a concerto, befuddling the Jerry Manuels who are reporters’ favorites but rely on folks who won’t slide because they might get hurt. Hey, Jerry, give it up. Put Sheffield in the lineup while he still has some pop.
Miss Market has been too kind to me lately. Goldman Sachs upgraded Ford and it soared. Faith in Palm’s new smart phone has kept it marching higher. Advanced Micro Devices advances and retreats but is still in the green as the semiconductor cycle looks to turn. Stay with them all, but don't confuse art with life.
In my dotage, I fear for the future, but am heartened by children, though I tear the decal off the top of my new baseball hat and gently curve the bill, though my blue jeans fit snugly (perhaps a bit too much) just below my belly button, despite my tendency to judge ladies and gentlemen by their inclination toward the designated hitter.
Oh yes, original thoughts. Are there any? Perhaps only scientists possess them. Lawyers rely on case law. Doctors refer to symptoms to diagnose what has been diagnosed in the past. Baseball managers call in the closer when up by a run in the 9th inning. The head coach orders a “prevent defense” in the waning moments of a one-score game. Writers usher in dramatic plot points to their screenplays. These are all things the prudent woman or man does.
How little does art imitate life. Life cares not a whit for the artistic spins we may desire to put on it, which may be why we love art so much. It must be an immense disappointment to the artist that all crumbles in his mighty effort to wring meaning out of this vale of tears. There, I just tried to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse!
But narratives persist. Even those outside of our lovely, late-empire American orbit have a story. The last few days have been filled with milestones. The killings at Columbine High School in Colorado (where an ex-girlfriend went to school), the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City (across the street from where I spent my journalism apprenticeship), and one good thing, the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, an event that defines the American belief in the future.
OK (no pun intended), I am a prisoner of my past, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (thanks, Bob Dylan; original thoughts belong to others).
Here's another one that stirs me to look to tomorrow. Fitzgerald, disproving my original conceit that art can't illuminate, wrote in an otherwise undistinguished story called The Swimmers: "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."
Which gives me that incurably optimistic outlook peculiar to Americans. Tony La Russa, despite having been found passed out, or something , at the wheel last year, has turned managing my Redbirds into a concerto, befuddling the Jerry Manuels who are reporters’ favorites but rely on folks who won’t slide because they might get hurt. Hey, Jerry, give it up. Put Sheffield in the lineup while he still has some pop.
Miss Market has been too kind to me lately. Goldman Sachs upgraded Ford and it soared. Faith in Palm’s new smart phone has kept it marching higher. Advanced Micro Devices advances and retreats but is still in the green as the semiconductor cycle looks to turn. Stay with them all, but don't confuse art with life.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Yankee Ingenuity
Is the ball juiced? Is there some mysterious wind current in the new Yankee Stadium that makes warning track power Ruthian? Home runs are on a pace to double the number hit last year in the House that Ruth Built. Word is the Steinbrenners are consulting the engineers who built the new palace to determine what might be going on. Is there some flaw in the façade that allows broken-bat triples and pop-up round-trippers? Or does the old horsehide come from the flank of Secretariat?
Doubtless, many missed Posada’s video-reviewed home run yesterday because they weren’t in their $2,500 seats, preferring instead to spend a day at the ball park munching on raw fish or savoring the filet mignon. I see this as a good sign. “Hey, kids, let’s go to Yankee Stadium and have lunch; we can always see the game on HD, which will show the players watching themselves on HD.”
I say it’s a good sign because it connotes a certain insouciance about the present and the future, a necessary ingredient for playing bogey golf (the best I can hope for at my advanced age), finding love and happiness, enrolling in that yoga class, enjoying the two hardy tulips that managed to bloom this year in my garden. I’m going with daffodils next year. I’m told they are hardy perennials, and I love the way they bow to you.
Times change, but fear and greed persist in all but the rare Mother Theresa among us, waxing and waning with whatever wind blows our way. Is greed, like the baseballs flying out of the Bronx, getting the upper hand now? Talk of "green shoots" is nudging the needle that way, but the survivalists and conspiracy sisters resist it mightily, hoping that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse come galloping to validate all the pork 'n beans they've laid up in the root cellar. My guess is they will be sorely disappointed. The bottom is in sight. The next tea party will be held not to protest the "the govment" (as Huck Finn's Pap complained), but the great inflation sure to come.
Key this week are first-quarter earnings reports and Friday’s release of durable goods orders for March and home sales data. If within expectations, the green shoots should grow a bit.
Though the market is taking a tumble today as I write, PALM and SLV are keeping me afloat. Avoid the usurious bankers. With the Fed Funds rate at zero and 25% on credit card balances, their means of making dough is exposed. The return to Glass-Steagall and “bankers’ hours” is coming. Paul Krugman tells me so.
Doubtless, many missed Posada’s video-reviewed home run yesterday because they weren’t in their $2,500 seats, preferring instead to spend a day at the ball park munching on raw fish or savoring the filet mignon. I see this as a good sign. “Hey, kids, let’s go to Yankee Stadium and have lunch; we can always see the game on HD, which will show the players watching themselves on HD.”
I say it’s a good sign because it connotes a certain insouciance about the present and the future, a necessary ingredient for playing bogey golf (the best I can hope for at my advanced age), finding love and happiness, enrolling in that yoga class, enjoying the two hardy tulips that managed to bloom this year in my garden. I’m going with daffodils next year. I’m told they are hardy perennials, and I love the way they bow to you.
Times change, but fear and greed persist in all but the rare Mother Theresa among us, waxing and waning with whatever wind blows our way. Is greed, like the baseballs flying out of the Bronx, getting the upper hand now? Talk of "green shoots" is nudging the needle that way, but the survivalists and conspiracy sisters resist it mightily, hoping that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse come galloping to validate all the pork 'n beans they've laid up in the root cellar. My guess is they will be sorely disappointed. The bottom is in sight. The next tea party will be held not to protest the "the govment" (as Huck Finn's Pap complained), but the great inflation sure to come.
Key this week are first-quarter earnings reports and Friday’s release of durable goods orders for March and home sales data. If within expectations, the green shoots should grow a bit.
Though the market is taking a tumble today as I write, PALM and SLV are keeping me afloat. Avoid the usurious bankers. With the Fed Funds rate at zero and 25% on credit card balances, their means of making dough is exposed. The return to Glass-Steagall and “bankers’ hours” is coming. Paul Krugman tells me so.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Earl Weaver's Logic
Investing, gambling, managing a baseball team or confronting a par 5 with water in front have this question in common: When does one pull the plug?
The common rubric in baseball management circles these days is the pitch count. Regardless of the score and situation, once a predetermined limit of pitches is reached, the starter must be replaced with a fresh arm to keep the former from suffering arm fatigue or injury, the prevailing philosophy goes. But this is cookie-cutter discipline. If the object is to win, the best players should take the field. And if the starter is breezing along, why insert an inferior player merely because the starter has thrown x number of pills? Life itself is fraught with unknowns, but this doesn’t prevent the stalwart commuter or mom with a baby carriage from crossing the street merely because they have reached their limit by successfully doing so 10,000 times without getting hit by a bus.
If one is inclined to wager, the common wisdom is to press when ahead and pull back when behind. But this is a loser’s strategy. In effect, the wagerer acknowledges his position and gives up, preferring to dig the hole a little, not a lot, deeper, holding out hope that he can chip away at the deficit. The courage of one’s convictions becomes pale imitation.
When faced with a water hazard on a long par 5, the golfer is faced with the decision to lay up or go for the green (in my case, if all went right, it would be the third shot, but for the more accomplished it might be the second). Discretion may be the better part of valor, but as a poker-playing buddy of mine used to say, “No balls, no blue chips.” Since it’s just a game, it seems silly not to make a Homeric attempt that could result in a birdie or eagle, the psychic rewards of which would dwarf a day of triple bogeys.
The casino called the stock market has been encouragingly resilient this past month. But is it time to take money off the table, just as the baseball manager removes an effective starter or the prudent golfer or gambler lays up or reduces wagers?
The economic data last week were not encouraging. Retail sales were lower than expected. Deflation was evident in the price indices. However, much of this had to do with the decline in energy prices last month. The “green shoots” alluded to by Obama and Bernanke and the profit reports of Citibank and JPMorgan tempered the macro news. Indeed, the New York Fed’s Empire State survey of manufacturing suggested things are not sinking as fast as they have been.
I’m not taking out Sabbathia, not laying up and not cutting back on the wagering front. Look for further gains in stock prices as confidence builds that the worst is behind. Conditions may continue to deteriorate, but at a slower rate, which presages a bottom in the economy. Equity prices rebound before the economy. Sticking with F, AMD, PALM. Consider some REITS, such as DDR, which may be cheap after the General Growth Properties bankruptcy.
Like Earl Weaver, I'm leaving Cuellar, Palmer, Dobson and McNally in. Meanwhile, in our half of the inning, the gun is loaded, as Weaver used to say, and I’m counting on a three-run homer.
The common rubric in baseball management circles these days is the pitch count. Regardless of the score and situation, once a predetermined limit of pitches is reached, the starter must be replaced with a fresh arm to keep the former from suffering arm fatigue or injury, the prevailing philosophy goes. But this is cookie-cutter discipline. If the object is to win, the best players should take the field. And if the starter is breezing along, why insert an inferior player merely because the starter has thrown x number of pills? Life itself is fraught with unknowns, but this doesn’t prevent the stalwart commuter or mom with a baby carriage from crossing the street merely because they have reached their limit by successfully doing so 10,000 times without getting hit by a bus.
If one is inclined to wager, the common wisdom is to press when ahead and pull back when behind. But this is a loser’s strategy. In effect, the wagerer acknowledges his position and gives up, preferring to dig the hole a little, not a lot, deeper, holding out hope that he can chip away at the deficit. The courage of one’s convictions becomes pale imitation.
When faced with a water hazard on a long par 5, the golfer is faced with the decision to lay up or go for the green (in my case, if all went right, it would be the third shot, but for the more accomplished it might be the second). Discretion may be the better part of valor, but as a poker-playing buddy of mine used to say, “No balls, no blue chips.” Since it’s just a game, it seems silly not to make a Homeric attempt that could result in a birdie or eagle, the psychic rewards of which would dwarf a day of triple bogeys.
The casino called the stock market has been encouragingly resilient this past month. But is it time to take money off the table, just as the baseball manager removes an effective starter or the prudent golfer or gambler lays up or reduces wagers?
The economic data last week were not encouraging. Retail sales were lower than expected. Deflation was evident in the price indices. However, much of this had to do with the decline in energy prices last month. The “green shoots” alluded to by Obama and Bernanke and the profit reports of Citibank and JPMorgan tempered the macro news. Indeed, the New York Fed’s Empire State survey of manufacturing suggested things are not sinking as fast as they have been.
I’m not taking out Sabbathia, not laying up and not cutting back on the wagering front. Look for further gains in stock prices as confidence builds that the worst is behind. Conditions may continue to deteriorate, but at a slower rate, which presages a bottom in the economy. Equity prices rebound before the economy. Sticking with F, AMD, PALM. Consider some REITS, such as DDR, which may be cheap after the General Growth Properties bankruptcy.
Like Earl Weaver, I'm leaving Cuellar, Palmer, Dobson and McNally in. Meanwhile, in our half of the inning, the gun is loaded, as Weaver used to say, and I’m counting on a three-run homer.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Pump Me Up
All the outrage about A-Rod allegedly taking steroids (as reported by SI) misses a larger point. How about all the little boys who died of pneumonia before penicillin? It could be argued that recovery from pneumonia with the benefit of antibiotics would be an unfair advantage against the ballplayer who managed to survive without the benefit of modern science.
Steroids and HGH and whatever a chemist comes up with next year should be available to anyone who wants to take the risk. Should someone not take Tylenol for a headache?
Please, baseball is too precious about this. Does football care that behemoths on their lines take substances that increase their strength and girth? Of course not. It should be up to them. If you don't want to do it, it's a free country. Find another line of work.
Just put a bunch of asterisks in the almanacs and get on with it. The world changes exponentially. If a pitcher adds a few mphs and a hitter doesn't increase his bat speed by the same amount, then it's unfair.
But life is unfair, and to dwell in a dream past is to live without penicillin. I guess we must, though. To do otherwise would incinerate the myth that we used to walk five miles in the snow to school. I did this once and nearly froze to death before a friendly motorist picked me up.
A-Rod and baseball, give it up.
Miss Market will make a repeat performance soon.
Steroids and HGH and whatever a chemist comes up with next year should be available to anyone who wants to take the risk. Should someone not take Tylenol for a headache?
Please, baseball is too precious about this. Does football care that behemoths on their lines take substances that increase their strength and girth? Of course not. It should be up to them. If you don't want to do it, it's a free country. Find another line of work.
Just put a bunch of asterisks in the almanacs and get on with it. The world changes exponentially. If a pitcher adds a few mphs and a hitter doesn't increase his bat speed by the same amount, then it's unfair.
But life is unfair, and to dwell in a dream past is to live without penicillin. I guess we must, though. To do otherwise would incinerate the myth that we used to walk five miles in the snow to school. I did this once and nearly froze to death before a friendly motorist picked me up.
A-Rod and baseball, give it up.
Miss Market will make a repeat performance soon.
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