On Cubism and Diamonds

Ballplayers.  Modern art.  I had a lack of understanding of both. 

 

This Red Sox-Rays series spotlighted the perversions.  Bad baseball.  The monstrosity last night that went until midnight.  The monstrosity last Saturday, with bad umpires.  “Good at-bats,” according to Chip Caray.  Where the hell did he grow up?  His dad never would call these things good at-bats.  Or his grandfather. 

 

The Ivy League comes to baseball, for profit.  People trying to turn a game into a science.  There was such a thing as over-educated.  The new general managers were as bad as the skipper who over-managed, never ready for extra innings.  Overpaid and now over paying. 

 

The State of the Union:  When there were no other for-profit businesses left.  Kids who were in it just for money.  Owners, agents, the adults just here for money.  For the money.  George Bush had served the game about the time of this revolution to modern art. 

 

Hitting!  The game was supposed to be about hits.  Not walks.  These games were not supposed to take 5 hours.  These people were killing the game.  Quality starts, my eye!  I wished these guys would try some speed, not just performence enhancement drugs. 

 

Could we get a health care plan for baseball, Obama?  McCain?  For everyone.  Speaking of the negative campaign season, Andy Warhol comes to baseball and it was lasting more than 15 minutes.  A lot more than 15 minutes. 

  

Where have your gone, Joe DiMaggio?   Or those who actually played for the love of the game!  Hall of Famers, the Grand Masters, spinning in their graves over what the Theo Epsteins had done to the baseball.  They had both become the same, baseball and its players, and  modern art.  The prices paid.  And no one had a clue.  

Hey Norton!

You never heard much about the Ed Nortons of the world any more.  But I am sure somewhere in my city people are descending into the sewers to do what Ralph Kramden’s old neighbor, Ed Norton, used to do.  Whatever that was. 

 

I don’t know about you, but I always felt a sense of embarassment about my own raw sewage.   Sewage for the most part was invisible unless you had the misfortune of living with someone who was a three dimensional contributor to a toilet that overflowed.   And in a world with an ever increasing population, the career of the Ed Nortons of the world had a growth potential that I wished my current investments had.    

 

Up until now there has been a romantic sense missing in the world of raw sewage since the Jackie Gleason Show went off the air.  I come from a family where the mother had large say in the way vacations were spent.  And because of that influence we were never really bush people.  You know, campers who simply “go” in the bush.  Ever since toilet training, everyone in the family liked to flush quickly and give little thought beyond the blessings that had come with running water.  No one really knew where the running water ran.  Call it insouciance.

 

There was an article in the Boston Globe on July13th about what those Boston Brahims and those people from Beacon Hill called “waste disposal.”  It was in Boston on Beacon Hill where business people first learned sewage goes down stream.  I suspect I was a lot like those Brahims, not really concerned about downstream when it came to raw sewage.  In Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s article, she did care about raw sewage and wrote a piece about sewage being “a neglected treasure.“ When the Red Sox, the Celtics and the Patriots were winning, now there was hope that even raw sewage could be elevated.   

           

With the abundance in raw sewage, I now saw the day in the future when our motor vehicles will be propelled like our human bodies.  By human waste.  The gang at MIT should be working on a car that used these family by-products, the nutrients of raw sewage, where in the future the gas tank could be filled up closer than your father ever imagined.   Call it by-pass surgery for those in the futures market as oil traders. 

In a world of rapidly diminishing resources, not such a bad idea.  And large families might come back into vogue.