Baseball Rituals

As we all know, watching sports in real time is a luxury enjoyed by men with no kids; highlights were invented for the rest of us. Nonetheless, I was somehow afforded the opportunity to sit down and watch the final two innings of the 2009 baseball season this evening.

I enjoyed this brief opportunity to watch two very skilled teams compete but I was struck but several prominent rituals I observed. Now, I don't know if I like rituals or dislike rituals but I can tell you that I am keenly aware of them when they unfold before me. This is especially true when it is unclear to me how the ritual began or why it has persisted.

What is it with the spitting? I know about the old tobacco ritual and understand how that was a prominent habit in the game for decades. Somewhere along the line I tried chew and I remember how it compels the need to spit. Today though, the tobacco is largely gone from baseball but the spitting has remained a part of nearly every player's between pitch routine. That strikes me as odd.

I guess gathering at the mound in a team embrace and hopping in unison is a pretty well entrenched ritual for celebrating a world series win. I have to say, it just doesn't seem spontaneous. It looks to me like the players do it because it is expected; perhaps believing that is what they are supposed to do. Perplexing ritual if you ask me.

I really don't get the immediate donning of championship hats and T-shirts as a celebratory ritual. I've played lots of sports and had many victories that were very important to me. I never once felt a natural desire to express my joy with head wear and I remain skeptical that a World Series win would trigger such an emotion. Somehow, the silliness and shallowness of a "Champions" hat does not belong in the same moment as the genuine and well deserved joy that is so clearly evident on the player's faces

Finally, and most importantly, I am shocked by the loser's ritual of sitting stoically in the dugout and watching the winner's tired charade. I know they are disappointed and I guess assuming a listless existence is probably a pretty natural reaction. Still, it shocks me that not once, has any player, manager, or coach from the losing team ever mustered the maturity to step on the field and offer a congratulatory gesture to the victors. When that happens, the man who does it will be an instant hero to me.

Cool Things with No Purpose - Part V

This cool thing is actually related to me.

The Blame Game

Contributed by Auggie
Proud member of the dwindling "never-been-sued" group
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We live in a blaming society, pure and simple. I’m not sure how it devolved to this point but negligent behavior is never the fault of the perpetrator, and accidents simply don’t happen. Every undesirable event can ultimately be blamed on a person or organization. This fact is clearly evident in the quantity and content of lawsuits that flood our legal system. There is purported to be a law against frivolous lawsuits, and lawyers could purportedly be disbarred for bringing such suits. But the frivolous lawsuit is a lot like Bigfoot – it’s never really been proven to exist.

I never cease to be amazed by the absurdity of lawsuits I read about. I believe you would be hard pressed to present a hypothetical lawsuit that could be deemed frivolous in the actual world. A hypothetical example I have often used when discussing the topic is this: If I went to the sporting goods store, purchased a baseball bat, and then beat myself to a pulp with the bat, could my family sue Hillerich & Bradsby? After all, the bat has a nice grip and it’s certainly made for hitting things. It’s “foreseeable use” as they like to say in the legal community.

I always thought of my hypothetical example as a sarcastic diatribe against our society’s pervasive and illogical pursuit of legal recourse. So imagine my surprise when I opened the paper this morning and read that someone had indeed sued H&B - and won! Not for the reason I described above, but on the spectrum of absurdity it’s darn close. The case involved the family of a 17 year old boy who was pitching in an American Legion baseball game when he was struck and killed by a batted ball. This is a sad and tragic story beyond words, but does that make the bat manufacturer negligible? Perhaps the family should go after the ball manufacturer as well, and even the organization that built the ball field. And the descendants of Nelson Doubleday could certainly be had. Honestly, I don’t know how any company dares to put any product on the market.

I’ll need to come up with a new hypothetical question to demonstrate how ludicrous I think our legal system is, but I’m no longer sure there are limits. Can I sue my neighbor for emotional distress if they don’t say ‘good morning’? Can I throw my dog out of a moving car and then sue the auto manufacturer for making windows that open? I would no longer be surprised if the answer to both is yes.

If anyone is offended or annoyed by anything I’ve written please remember, it’s not my fault.

Bellhops

I don't now what this says about me but I am sure it says something. I hate bellhops. Where did that word even come from?

I guess I don't really hate bellhops, I just hate being confronted by them. I know they mean well and it is their intention to help me but, for some inexplicable reason, I STRONGLY prefer to carry my own bags to my room.

Ditto for the whole valet parking concept.

Perhaps it is tied into my affinity for low maintenance people; I pride myself on being fairly low maintenance. Maybe all that unrequested help somehow undermines my self-image as an independent person. Like I said, I don't really know what it means, I just know that when I checked into my hotel today I found it annoying that a cheery bellhop snagged my bag from the taxi and whisked it to my room against my will.

Conference Room Comedy

Somewhere, in the conference room of a large corporation, I can imagine a certain ritual. The ritual is probably enacted a couple of times per year when the boss is on vacation. Elements of this ritual could block me from ever becoming President of the United States.

In my imagination, there is a group of workers involved in customer service. They are charged with improving the experience for callers who interact with the company's maddening, computerized phone interface. They survey customers, attend conferences where system improvements are discussed, and generally work to make the system better. They also review actual recordings of callers to gain insight into how effectively the system routes calls to the correct destination. To amuse themselves, they collect the digital audio files of particularly upset callers who lose their patience and go ballistic. They save the most prolific examples of exasperation and string them together in a "best of" collection.

I star in several of these recordings.

I imagine that, when the boss is away, they play these creations over lunch in the conference room and laugh until milk comes out of their noses. Perhaps they have a competition to see who can unearth footage of the most upset caller. It could be that such a competition has lead them to purposely build design flaws into the system in order to illicit entertaining reactions from callers like me. I wouldn't be surprised.

Since I am usually calm and rational at the beginning of these calls, I offer all sorts of definitively identifying information. This means that if I run for President and these recording air, there will be no denying that it is me making the calls. The voters will know that I can sometimes be transformed into a vituperative lunatic spewing the raunchiest, curse-speckled diatribe imaginable.

I know it's a computer on the other end of the line -- just a bunch of electronic circuits and silicon with no empathy or consciousness. I realize that exploding in violent anger is a complete waste of energy and shows a lack of intelligence and control. It is totally embarrassing but entirely effective in terms of processing my frustration.

On the other hand, I might be completely wrong. Perhaps "the people" can relate. Maybe they would feel close to the chain of command if they knew that the President might be in the oval office at any given moment, tormented with rage, whacking the receiver repeatedly on the desk, and using the loudest voice he can muster to scream at a computer.