The Toy Department

The game played between the lines is often ruled by the one between the ears.

Maybe Brooks Conrad, the Atlanta Braves’ second baseman who committed three errors night before last -- the final one a fatal scoot through the pet-door of two legs -- summoned his inner Bill Buckner, allowing the Giants by the bay to score the winning run. Keep the glove on the ground and the butt low, son, then let it hit you in the chest if it bounces up.

We are all doomed in the end, but it’s different being doomed in this sporting life. Conrad, who could have written “Lord Jim,” (which another Conrad did) had to sit and watch the Turner tomahawks fall limp yesterday. His only choice is to vanish to a fishing village in Mexico, if not as a vagabond in the Pacific or a ranch hand on Buckner’s Montana spread. Or to soldier on, and say “Oh well.”

We know how he feels. In our dotage, mistakes loom large. We are continuously amazed by the ability of our brethren homo sapiens to shake it off and move on. See Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the blue dress and black socks. But those are of a different ilk than Mr. Conrad’s, whose only sin was to fail in something as unimportant as a sporting event – the toy department as we used to call it in the newspaper trade.

When the stage is small, one can slink off to his or her lonely room, fire up a Marlboro and browse through Golf Digest while Turner (he of the tomahawks) Classic Movies plays “The Public Enemy” late at night. One can while away the sleepless hours improving his or her James Cagney or Joan Blondell impersonation.

Falling asleep with the television screen flickering, we dream of a wayback machine in which Mr. Peabody and Sherman intervene in history and set things aright, saving us from ignominy and regrets.

Hold your head high, Mr. Conrad. You’re not going to miss any meals, though you might need to find another profession. Failure on the field of athletic endeavor is the key to victory – for the other side. Those of us on the smaller stage of softball in the park, the municipal tennis court and the local golf course know this and keep our day jobs. Keep ‘em if you got‘em.

The October sun appears ready to grace us with another day in shorts and golf shirts. Got to work on keeping the glove on the ground and the rear end down. Practicing putting is strictly forbidden.

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!”

Fail Safe

Failure is an illusion. “Be not proud … for thou art not so,” John Donne said of the ultimate failure.

In the late, great Supe 44, the crucial decision wasn’t Coach Sean Payton’s onside kick at the beginning of the second half, which led to a score. It wasn’t Tracy Porter jumping the route (as the football mavens say) in front of Reggie Wayne, which led to a game-sealing pick six (as they also say).

No, the big moment for the fleur de lis of New Orleans vs. the horseshoes of Indianapolis was going on fourth down and goal at the two near the end of the first half – and failing. The Colts were exultant over their goal-line stand. Yet their doom was sealed. Be not proud.

The horseshoes curled in their cocoon. Why didn’t Manning and company get aggressive and throw the ball downfield to get a first down? Instead, they went three and out and punted, giving the holy ones a short field and a resulting field goal – the same number of points they would have corralled if they had not gone for the touchdown, kicked off and given Manning and company a perfect chance to increase their lead.

The rest is history, as the experts say.

Sometimes the singular failures that mark our lives mask the sweeter things that follow. The girl who guffawed when we asked her out because she smiled a certain way, yet a great love with another followed. Going for broke from behind the trees only to end up with a mere 10 yards and still make par. Then there was the truly momentous decision to poach in a doubles tennis match and send a sure winner out beyond the line and win the game on a double fault.

Here’s to failure! We wish we could have been on Bourbon Street Sunday night.

They Don't Write 'em Like That Anymore

“Green grass ‘round my window
Young leaves that the wind blows…” (Green Grass, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, 1966).

Oh fuggedaboutit. Kev’s trash-strewn Brooklyn thoroughfare sprouts nothing but vile rap lyrics at decibels that make us want to join the NRA, secure a shotgun and blast several engine blocks while blaring Petula Clark from our cute little Sony boom box. “Don’t sleep in the subway, darling,” would be our “hasta la vista, baby.”

But we realize it’s a free country. We ended our popular music infatuation around 1969, extended by a Steely Dan and Allman Brothers habit in the 1970s, and so acknowledge we have become a cranky old man standing athwart history and yelling, Stop! Yeah, I’m feelin’ groovy all right.

Let’s be clear. We’re usually an optimistic sort, and will return to that sunny clime soon enough. For now, we slog through a slough of despond, imploring Miss Market and our zen-like putting stroke to return. Anthony Kim and Hunter Mahan must be going through the same thing, watching the red-shirted master of the universe roll in a 20-foot putt on 16 for the winning margin. Not to mention Andy Roddick, whose serve wasn’t broken until the 30th and final game of the fifth set at the All England Club. As a wise friend of mine has noted, guys like Eldrick Woods and Roger Federer “command the elements.” The rest of us must live with our imperfections. They are legion. Roddick’s defeat was foreshadowed as early as the second set, when he flubbed away a 6-2 advantage in the tiebreaker. Mahan’s 62 was only a tease. He foolishly warmed up on the range for a playoff.

The “green shoots” rally now must face the earnings reporting season beginning this week. And the employment data – not only the payroll losses but the shrinking workweek – point to a different kind of recovery. “Broke, disgusted, agents can’t be trusted,” as the Mamas and Papas intoned (told you we are trapped in the sixties), the American consumer isn’t going on a spending spree this time around. Don’t buy the market. Stick with what we used to call on Wall Street, “special situations.” PALM, NVAX, F, and consider airlines now that oil prices are fading. We’ll be looking for others and will report back.

Luckily, the Hess station next door saves us 45 cents on cigarettes. But we think we’ll soon have to start rolling our own.

Summertime

Put away the long pants, sweaters, windbreakers, hunched shoulders and sneering cynicism. Forget the calendar. Summer is here. Time to gorge on golf, bask in baseball, tone the tan, pick the ponies, tweak the tennis serve, pen poetry, marvel at Miss Market and indulge in any other alliterative activity that makes the heart soar and shoves the blues to another season. Fly me to the moon.

Scolds who wish the profligacy of the United States in recent decades will visit yet more plagues on the citizenry have seen their best days. They will be left behind, scowling and snorting about “kids these days” while the car stereos blare obnoxious “music” and the car companies, insolvent or not, jockey for position to provide a carapace for one man’s insistence to share his entertainment with the rest of the world walking by.

Auto sales last month were better than expected, even for GM. They were down year-on-year, but up significantly from April. Pending sales of existing homes ratcheted up for the third month in a row in April, according to the National Association of Realtors. Oil rebounded late to close a couple of pennies lower, but it’s fast closing in on $70 a barrel. China keeps growing. To feed itself it must.

Green shoots are showing buds if not flowering, though skies remain menacing. To come tomorrow is the ADP data on layoffs, and on Friday the May nonfarm payroll numbers from the United States Department of Labor will help clarify things.

The arguments for and against recovery are as contentious as the never-ending contretemps among pinstriper fans over whether Joba Chamberlain should start or be the setup man for Mariano. Will a collapsing dollar and rising interest rates sink the USA, or will fiscal and monetary stimuli restore American vigor? Both outcomes are plausible, but for now summer seduces me. Staying in equities and commodities, those things we use to build things, seems the more summery outlook. And we are nothing but summery now after seeing the promised land by breaking the sound barrier of 100 on the golf course.

In the meantime, got a tee time at Dyker Beach on Thursday. Anyone who would care to join me will see a new putting stroke perfected on the living room rug that insures birdies – that’s right, birdies, not par. It’s summer and the fish are jumpin’. Catch ‘em if you can.

Animal House

Economists embrace mathematical models because they offer the illusion of authority. And indeed they are right to stick with the rigor of numbers. Facing facts and manipulating them into an algorithm that predicts the future is the truest avenue open to men and women. We only have our history to draw from. Past encounters and experience inform our decisions, wrong as they may turn out to be.

Kev’s “dog “ theory has taken a beating this week at the old ball game, but Miss Market has been a fierce lioness. She is a hungry mommy, intent on feeding her kittens (or is it cubs?), her mate and herself, enabling Kev to feed his brood and keep Mr. Landlord happy. In short, she is an animal.

In a speech today, the Dallas Fed president, Richard Fisher, patted himself and his colleagues on the back with the remark that monetary policy had succeeded in reigniting “animal spirits” in the strivers and sportsmen who toil in the fields, golf courses and streams of these United States of America. This is what is called going out on a limb. There are many who see only darkness and cave-dwelling ahead.

We may have shot errant arrows at ball clubs that escaped our hunt, but we spy an antelope, or ibex, or some kind of antlered beast brought down by our loving mate for protein-loving investors. Let us feast.

PALM’s Pre phone will be much coveted. After Sprint’s exclusive arrangement expires, Verizon and ATT will pounce to offer this rival to Apple and Research in Motion. PALM is volatile, but wait until Christmas sales take off. Ford is a stalwart. Buy oil (green is good, but dinosaurs died for a reason). We can’t predict the future, but try we must.

Anything can happen. When was the last time both catchers (masks in place) and both managers were thrown out? It happened today in youbetcha Minnesota in a game between the bloody hose and the twinkies.

And by the way, Zambrano was right to protest in his demonstrative way. I’ve done the same thing when blowing a three-foot putt or a second serve. We are animals with spirit after all.

The Past Perfect and the One to Come

The only cure for the golf addict trapped in the frigid northeast for several months is a set or two of tennis indoors. Similar skills are required, eye on the ball, etc., with the exception that the ball is moving and tennis is a sport, while golf is essentially a target game -- like darts or bowling.

One does, however, get the ecstatic "pure" feeling from a well-struck tee shot or forehand, much like the sweet kiss of bat on baseball that drills a line drive up the middle (for those of us who remember that feeling from Little League days). It is the memory of effortless execution, an almost magical outburst of art and science that makes the object to be struck vanish with astonishing power and speed that keeps all duffers, hackers and weekend softball players returning to the courses, courts and diamonds in hope of recreating the exquisite moment of perfection. It is as close to God as the sportsman gets.

Indeed, because perfection is so infrequent, its attainment is so much more tingling. It surprises me that artists such as Tiger Woods or Rafael Nadal do not get bored since perfection is so routine. What satisfaction can there be (other than pecuniary) when the outcome is largely predetermined? These men are wired differently than you and me. Perfection must have a different definition for them.

As for me, the blissful moment of one perfect stroke is worth a thicket of breakdowns regardless of the score. Now if I could just put two of those moments together in a row.