James M. Redwine

Rudyard Kipling

Baseball vs. Football

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“If a woman’s just a woman but a good cigar’s a smoke” (Rudyard Kipling), football’s just a game but baseball’s who we are. Or, as my friend and favorite song writer, Randy Pease, sang about baseball (and life), “Maybe I should quit but that’s a hard thing to admit, God, I love this game.” Randy honed his musical skills when he took a break from his studies at Oklahoma State University where I also found pursuits other than the prescribed curricula. Another Cowboy that Randy occasionally played guitars and sang with in Stillwater, Oklahoma was a songwriter named Garth Brooks who also loved baseball. I wonder if he ever made the big leagues? For as Garth, Randy and the rest of us frustrated would-be major leaguers eventually accept and as the protagonist in Randy’s song knows, “our playing days are numbered and our fastball’s lost some speed” but we aren’t quite ready to “hang up the cleats and mitt.” On the other hand most of us, not Tom Brady of course, have no angst about leaving the sweaty football pads hanging in the dank locker room while we are still a ways from our porch swings.

Baseball is not just America’s Past Time it is America. It is a grimy catcher’s mask and miraculous or stumbling catches in left-center field. It is come from behind in the bottom of the ninth and lessons learned from games that should have been won. It is sweat and spit and grief and grit and all that makes us glad to endure heat and aches. Boys and girls and men and women of all ages can and do play baseball and softball; not so much football once high school fades.

Baseball affords fathers and mothers a parent’s greatest satisfaction, being asked by their adult children for advice. No kid over fourteen seeks football insights from their folks but even aging children who may question a parent’s sanity on matters of politics, music or religion still occasionally rely on mom and dad on how to hit a softball or play old folk’s league shortstop. As a parent slowly rocks and questions decisions she or he once made, when their grown offspring return to ask the best way to use a pinch hitter the cobwebs seem less opaque. On the other hand, no post-teenager cares what a parent thinks about a statue-of-liberty or a flea-flicker trick football play.

So, we can continue to pretend we understand football’s pass defense coverage two and can continue to yearn for our adult children to ask us to explain it and other football errata or we can thank baseball for keeping us in the real game. But I’ll let Randy finish the column because he is a fine writer of both prose and song lyrics:

“Although the song is on the surface about baseball, it’s really about life and how we should love our lives even when it beats the crap out of us nearly every day. In baseball, even the best hitters get on base only three times out of ten. Such is life. It’s full of disappointments and heartbreaks. But there’s always that hope the next at bat you’ll knock the ball out of the park. And baseball is a sign of spring – new grass, new life, renewal, redemption. It represents the hope that comes with a new season. And it poses a tough question: Can I still play or is it time to hang up the cleats and mitt?”

 

Lyrics to “I Love This Game”

♫ My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League.

I’m thirty-four years old.  My playing days are numbered.

I can’t control my curveball, and my fastball’s lost some speed.

 

I’ve been knockin’ ‘round the minors since I got out of high school,

signed my first pro contract on my seventeenth birthday.

From Burlington to Birmingham to Charlotte I have traveled,

But the White Sox never called, and I stalled in Triple-A.

 

Chorus

I love this game.  I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game.

 

I won fourteen games one year, led the league in shutouts.

Several of the pro scouts told me I was on my way.

But I hurt my arm in Lynchburg.  Doc said it was a pinched nerve.

And I swear that ever since, sir, it’s never been the same.

 

Chorus

 

I love this game, I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game

 

Coda

Maybe I should quit.  Hang up the cleats and mitt.

God I love this game.

 

My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League. ♫

 

© I Love This Game

Randy Pease Decaf Music 1998 (BMI)

To Those Who Dare And Care

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As with much of our philosophy we can thank the ancient Greeks for the concept of the Phoenix, something (or someone) who rises from the ashes of defeat to be even better than before. Or as we all remember our parents attempting to convince us, we learn more from defeat than victory. This provides scant solace at the time of a loss or an embarrassment but most of us eventually see the validity of wisdom born of hardship and the shallowness of temporary acclaim.

It is likely you are already aware that Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919) among many others have already written about these concepts and certainly more presciently than I. Kipling in his poem If advised his son and the rest of us:

“If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and
Treat those two imposters just the same, ….
Then you will be a man my son.”

Teddy Roosevelt in his thesis, The Man in the Arena, wrote of greatness born of failure:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Naturally, winners of elections are justly elated and losers are hurt and depressed. I have lost an election and have won some. What I discovered was my loss and my victories had less to do with me than with the vicissitudes of a fickle electorate. Most voters had no idea who I was and both the victories and the loss were mostly happenstance.

On the other hand, for our democracy to endure someone has to be willing to suffer the slings, arrows, and expense of running for office. So, to all those who cared enough and dared enough to seek to serve the rest of us, both winners and others, I say, Thank You!

Don’t Tread On Her

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Should you be among the vast legions of loyal Gamut readers who read and preserved last week’s column you will no doubt have committed to memory the conversation between our contemporary Adam and Eve, ergo Jim and Peg, concerning the glories of spring.

Unfortunately, another of those readers was Peg. Usually she just types up my burnt offerings as rapidly as she can without deigning to take the slightest note. However, since her name was mentioned she actually read and was not amused by last week’s “Fair and Balanced” exposition of hers and my differing approaches to the Earth’s yearly awakening. Peg has demanded a retraction in lieu of filing a lawsuit or worse.

I spent at least five seconds resisting her unreasonable and incessant demands then remembered what Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) wrote:

The Female of the Species

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other’s tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

(Thanks to my friend Sam Blankenship for directing me to this warning.)

Anyway, Gentle Readers (at least of the male persuasion), I am confident you will agree with me on two points: (1) Peg was dead wrong; and, (2) I would be foolish to say so!