Today is the anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. To put it in modern and tragic prose, "white man surpassed but upstart Negro". I heard it back then some 43 years ago and the way folks talk now, well.....
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 the major leagues.
Waite Hoyte, who was a NYYankee at the time, and my first employer, remembered that 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
Waite Hoyte, who was a NYYankee at the time, and my first employer, remembered that 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 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 the first of the year, 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 for 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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