John Phillip Sousa, our "march king" actually wrote a march in honor of our national game of baseball. Aptly named "The National Game" it was written in 1925 on the 50th anniversary of major league baseball. Waite Hoyte, who was a NYYankee at the time, and my first employer, remembered the Sousa band playing in Yankee Stadium before a baseball game. His (Waite's) signature theme song - played before every one of his broadcasts - was El Capitan - another Sousa March and his favorite. As a kid we played ball for hours; entire afternoons, radio in the window of a neighbor's house with the Reds game...each of us with a favorite player that we adopted as "me" ... I was Hal Jeffcoat. ... I could have picked more wisely. The games were endless but tomorrow was picking up where we left off. Patience. Left field is the only field that isn't an automatic out (if we were short of players)..no curves..pitcher or catcher is also first base for throw outs.
I sometimes wonder what has become of such knowledge and associations
No offense meant but we have a plethora of ballplayers - a virtual gaggle of them - that about things like the Sousa Band - or perhaps the Boston Pops or Opera in the Park - well "ships in the night" comes to mind. This is the immediacy aspect of our age and it has spilled over onto everything we touch. We can't wait until the Sousa Band pulls into town and actually, we cannot wait. We want it now - like that silly girl in Willie Wanka.
Because we are such a "want:get" society we front load that ratio as well. There is no sense planning down the road because we can want:get in an instant and be satisfied.
In 7th grade, in an old old school house that was nearly 100 when I went there, we had a woodworking shop in the basement. Home Ec was across the hall and twice a week went down there for an hour and made stuff. I made a bird feeder and a chess board in one year. The chessboard was easy. After a few months of mechanical drawing I could lay it out in a front/side/top view that was completely accurate. It took only a few passes on the table saw, some glue, and a good system of joints to make it work. The bird feeder had a 45 degree slope to the roof - and therefore supports. Again the the drawing board, figuring out the angles so it would be right and not tipsy..edges flat against each other...amazing. 9 months work. 2 projects.
Now look at congress. Last minute in and expecting a miracle overnight. They didn't get to work soon enough or down to business fast enough and we are all going to be, come Tuesday, left with a smelly bag of dead fish...no polite way to put it. They expect an I-Pod download with the solution all in place and forget that they just bought the song this afternoon. Now it is all speed and "I can download a song faster than firemen can race up three flights of stairs". How stupid.
A requisite or running for or serving in Congress must be that you have to start a baseball game on Monday and finish it in 2 months of 8 hour days. You have to know something about music or art or anything literate and the work must have taken more effort than America Idol (IDLE???) to produce.
More than anything they would need to play ball....make some rules that are fair to all the players...and for pity's sake, stop whining when the umpire calls you out.
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