Baseball is on my mind this morning. It's my favorite sport if you don't count football, basketball, golf, soccer, and full contact sex. I watched one inning of a game last night in which the home team had a two run lead and needed only to register three outs to win. After getting two of those outs while allowing one man to reach base, the pitcher was faced with this dilemma: the man at the plate was a pretty good hitter. The man in the on-deck circle however, was a gentle giant who brought groceries to the poor, helped old women cross busy streets, made daily visits to hospitals to give sick children hope, collected and found good homes for stray cats and dogs, gave 30% of his salary to charity, read to blind people on off days and had a birthmark on his shoulder that spelled out the word "hero." As a baseball player he was always among the league leaders in home runs, runs-batted-in and "clutch" hits. It was, therefore, imperative that the pitcher deal with the batter in front of him. Make him hit the ball, somewhere, anywhere. There is a better than two in three chance it will be caught. But absolutely, positively, by NO, let me say it again, by NO means should the pitcher walk this batter. I mean throw underhand if you have to, but get the ball over the plate. As I and 80 million people around the world screamed, "Don't walk him, don't walk him," the pitcher walked the batter.
What happened next was inevitable. In the poem, Mighty Casey strikes out. In real life, it doesn't happen that way. In real life, the hero strides to the plate and is heroic. The opposition had the chance to dodge this fate and blew it. There is no sympathy for them, only lessons learned. Especially this one: Never walk the guy batting in front of a guy with an S on his chest. It just doesn't pay.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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3 comments:
Ah, but it does pay, win or lose. That's sports. The ones that don't get paid are the teachers who can't get those athletes to score well on tests.
Golfers only get payed if they play well enough to make the weekend cut. I like that. Of course teachers deserve more money. On the other hand, can they hit the high hard one? (Nevermind that. I know what you and your brother will do with "high hard one" to work with.)
That's not entirely true. They have endorsements and some get paid just for showing up. Not that I want my lessons brought to you by Staples...but we need to get our priorities straight!
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