Baseball Blues

At a recent visit to my doctor about a particular symptom
of stress and anxiety, the doc suggested that I take some
tests (you know how docs like to read test results). Upon
reading the test results, he concluded that there was no
big problem with me other than the physical carnage that I
call a biological body. Perhaps some psycological help
would do me well. So I consulted a "shrink" on this problem.
To my distress, the shrink was a Yankees fan. I'm of the
opinion that rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for
Microsoft. The "mind scrambler" referred me back to my
original doc. He suspected that the problem was genetic
in origin.

More tests followed. Sure enough, I've got a rogue "Baseball
Gene" from my mother's side of the family, and a tad from
my father's in laws. I have several uncles, as well as my
grandfather, in my mother's family, who were baseball players.
And some were pretty good, too. My uncle Earl played 18 years
in the minor leagues. My father said that Earl was the most
left-handed person he ever knew. "He even walks left-handed"
said Dad. Earl was a great "glove-man" who was so skilled
that he could play every position. "I've had enough 'cups
of coffee' with the Cardinals (St. Louis Cardinals) to fill
a coffee urn." said uncle Earl. He did teach me how to hit
left-handed and have a sharp eye for the strike zone. To
this day I have no patience for batters who swing at pitches
out of the strike zone...they almost always strike out.

The World Series is over and the Phillies "took home the
cake". There's a lot of confusion about the term "World
Series" in that many countries play baseball and don't
participate in the series. There is now a World Professional
Baseball contest that is supposed to settle that gripe. it's
contrived and doesn't really settle anything but "bragging
rights" between the participating countries.

As I understand the history, the original World Series was
an idea cooked up by the Chicago World newspaper...and the
original term for the competition for baseball supremacy
between the established National League and the upstart
American League, was the "World's Series."

In any case, the baseball season is played and done, and
I'm in a "blue funk". From my childhood days there was a
baseball game on the radio and/or TV every day, all
summer long. The season concluded just before Halloween.
It was a part of daily life as I was growing up. I think
the Ken Burns video tape series on baseball is the best
depiction of the history and reach of the sport played on
Elysian fields. He became so obsessed with the production
of the video that it ruined his marriage. Not even his
production of the American "War Between The States" could
do that.

I'm in sort of a vacuum, emotionally and sentimentally,
about what to do if there isn't a baseball game on. What
am I supposed to read about when I pick up a newspaper?
Politics? The economy? Weird things that people do to
each other? Where's my box-score on all this. Baseball
reduces life to its basic enjoyment of "Throw the ball,
hit the ball, catch the ball...and then decide what to
do with it."

If life could be so simple...not to say that baseball
doesn't have its own myriad complexities.

Yurz, Martin