6/6/01
Softball: Skeptic (The Circuitous Path Linking Disparate Worlds)
Dear People,
Congratz to all on last week’s sprightly and joyous yet somewhat competitively muted 20-11 exemplification of raw excellence
in pitching. I must confess that as my own team hobbled along with only two runs in the 7th, I was preparing to slip a concentrated tablespoon of Vick’s Nyquil PM into Chris’ Gatorade, lest his invincible knuckleball render my entire team a pitiful conglomeration of ego-eviscerated human flotsam. Fortunately, Mikey’s decision to switch pitchers after amassing a 15-2 lead rendered the plan mute, and indeed, it was such an exceptionally genteel act of aerobic mercy that I have vowed to reconsider my entire ethical stance toward the anesthetization of dominant enemy players.
In any case, and as most of you know, this Sunday, June 10th, is the 79th anniversary of the day that the magnificent Yankee centerfielder Whitey "Hound-boy" Witt was knocked unconscious by a beer bottle as he raced for a blazing hit heading directly to the center right field of the St. Louis Brown’s glorious Sportsman’s Park. Whitey spent a full day in a local hospital before joining his beloved Yankee brethren back in New York, but it is what happened in the days and weeks afterward that continues to gnaw at my innards.
Amazingly, the American League tried to downplay the incident, claiming that the bottle was not thrown by some sicko Yankeephobic fanatic, but rather had "fallen" into the field before the game started. The official line was that shards of the bottle ended up in the Wittmeister’s tiny little hippocampus only because he stepped on it while running, thus causing it to fly directly up and whack him in the noggin. Sadly, no arrests were ever made for this outrageous assault, and even more appalling, those Missourian slime-ball Browns would never apologize!
I realize that it’s now 79 years later, and thus the odds of bringing the drunken culprit to justice are admittedly diminished. Indeed, there is no visual evidence, and even if there were, I suppose that the Zapruder film would tend to suggest that movies don’t show much anyway. Perhaps. In fact, it’s possible that my fervor for justice is misplaced, and that Whitey did truly step on a discarded bottle, triggering an unexpected but perfectly plausible Euclidean moment. Yes, as I write these very words, I realize that my cynicism might be a curse in itself, and that if the authorities In Katmandu now say that seven members of the Royal family died when an automatic weapon spontaneously went off by itself, who am I to suspect otherwise?
Of course, in broad philosophical retrospect, objective truth is an elusive mistress, and I for one can only do my best to gauge and compare the epistemological probabilities. And when I do that in a calm and methodical manner, I can only conclude that it’s actually more likely that the Houndster somehow kicked that bottle into his own head than it is that an anthropomorphic machine gun went inexplicably bonkers. And therefore, there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 5:00, IF I get enough players by this Friday noon. So go ahead and make that commit, because I think you see where I’m going with this; That’s right, do it for Professional Baseball itself, whose historical integrity may be forever sullied, but whose ultimate institutional credibility remains still greater than the Nepalese government’s….Raymond
6/8/01
Softball: Quick
Dear People,
They’ll be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 5PM, and as of now there are still a few slots left. $1 for the field….Ray
PS: There are some missing photographs of various players that Frank was showing around at the last game. Please let me know if you know where they are.
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