Dear People,
Congratz to all on last week's oddly stirring 21-10 display of compelling athletic elegance. While the score may suggest a certain competitive carnage that nearly screams out for a restorative fung shui, one should not forget that points, per se, are merely the irrelevant tangential asterisk upon which the history of aerobic excellence is inevitably played out.
In any case, with the recent passing of Joe DiMaggio, it may be time for our own community to take stock of where we are. We have undoubtedly soared to kinesiological heights that I never would have thought possible just two years ago, yet in all candor, its likely that only a handful of us will ever achieve the rarefied international stature that Joltin Joe had. Perhaps this is as it should be, given his true inimitable accomplishments as slugger, base runner and Mr. Coffee spokesperson. Still, I do wonder when the sports journalists will wake up and realize that within our own unaffiliated e-mail based East Bay Softball Confederation, no fewer than half of our core players have gotten base hits in at least 56 games in a row. No, as a people, we are too humble to insist that the Contra Costa Times send out an embittered stringer every time we break another record, but in a world where the only fair thing is to compare likes to likes, one cannot help but wonder if the thundering media indifference is simply because so many of us are Jewish. Ya know, it really makes me sad to write this, but it is a nagging suspicion that gnaws at my spleen.
Regardless, in celebration of the Yankee Clipper's life, there will be a softball game this SUNDAY, March 14th, at 2PM, at Kleeberger North, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning. True, this is 26 hours later than you have recently been used to playing, and for many of you, such a dramatic shift in scheduling causes feelings of insecurity and sorrow. I understand that. Yet I would gently remind you that this Sunday is also in fact the 120th anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein, the great German physicist who gave up a guaranteed stint as short stop for the 1904 Brooklyn Dodgers in order to pursue other stuff. So make that commit. Do it for Joe DiMaggio and Albert Einstein, two giants of our century whose remarkably similar lives are an uncanny reminder of the rarely understood synergy that shaped professional baseball and theoretical astrophysics...Raymond