A Perfect Game

If you like baseball and like philosophy — and who that likes one of these can fail to like the other — you’ll enjoy A Perfect Game: The metaphysical meaning of baseball by David B. Hart. A sample:

I know there are those who will accuse me of exaggeration when I say this, but, until baseball appeared, humans were a sad and benighted lot, lost in the labyrinth of matter, dimly and achingly aware of something incandescently beautiful and unattainable, something infinitely desirable shining up above in the empyrean of the ideas; but, throughout most of the history of the race, no culture was able to produce more than a shadowy sketch of whatever glorious mystery prompted those nameless longings.

The coarsest and most common of these sketches—which has gone through numerous variations down the centuries without conspicuous improvement—is what I think of as “the oblong game,” a contest played out on a rectangle between two sides, each attempting to penetrate the other’s territory to deposit some small object in the other’s goal or end zone. All the sports built on this paradigm require considerable athletic prowess, admittedly, and each has its special tactics, of a limited and martial kind; but all of them are no more than crude, faltering lurches toward the archetype; entertaining, perhaps, but appealing more to the beast within us than to the angel.

Happy as a camper

Timothy Noah says we’re the same person now that we were when we went to camp.

People (like myself) who didn’t enjoy camp tend to have a problem engaging in organized activities of all kinds. Later in life we often become criminals or sociopaths. The more respectable among us often become journalists. If we’re extremely bright or creative (or aspire to be), we may become writers or scholars or artists. The common thread is an outsider mentality. A self-flattering analysis, I know, but such is my privilege as author of this article.

Some people hated camp so much that they made their parents bring them home. These people should not be confused with the outlaws described above. There is nothing outré about not being able to endure summer camp. The come-and-get-me set grow up to be neurotic and needy. These are people who can often be heard on C-SPAN’s early-morning call-in program Washington Journal, filibustering from a time zone still blanketed in predawn darkness, until the host says, “Please state your question.”

In my case, as a camper I was klutz/nerd, so I think he’s right. I won the award for neatest camper — as in best at making my bed. I still have the award, too, as if you needed reassurance on that part.

Even now, 55 years later, I feel humiliated remembering my trial before camp-wide kangaroo court for stealing sand from the beach. It wasn’t my fault — the beach set me up.

Linkage

Joe Posnanski on What 600 Homers Means. A lot less than it used to, he concludes.

And The Big Picture shows some recent work of Mother Nature.

In the past several months, powerful storms have wreaked havoc in many places, torrential rains in central Europe and parts of China, tornadoes in Australia, Montana and the American Midwest, and strong thunderstorms across the northeast. Now, as Tropical Storm Bonnie makes landfall in Florida and heads into the Gulf of Mexico, oil cleanup is being suspended, and the final “kill” operation is delayed for at least one more week. These storms have been destructive and deadly, but beautiful and awe-inspiring at the same time. Collected here are a handful of photographs of stormy skies, lightning strikes and storm damage from the past several months. (37 photos total)

Books are a mystery to me

Nora found that reading about Raymond Chandler earlier — today is his birthday — made her reminisce. Fortunately she shared her book-loving memories with us.

The basement of my childhood home was lined with plank boards and cinderblocks (painted white so they didn’t look quite as cinderblock-y) to house all of the books that Dad and Priscilla owned. Periodically, I would poke through their collection looking for something new to read. One day, and I can’t remember how old I was at the time, I stumbled across my father’s mystery books. I’m pretty certain that my first read was a Nero Wolfe novel, and I quickly made my way through Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald. In middle school, I decided to expand the collection and went on a hunt for more Nero Wolfe. In high school, I focused on Travis McGee. In college, eBay was my friend and I found lots more to read.

I have a few memories that make me smile when I think of my mystery collection:

  1. Driving cross-country with a girlfriend in 2001. She was bored with the drive itself, so I passed her one of the Lew Archer books. She read it quickly and asked for more.
  2. Going home from work one extremely rainy night in DC. It was POURING. I exited the subway train, my head buried in Condominium (John D. MacDonald). Just as I approached the escalators to head up to the street, I heard the thunder boom and saw a huge lightning strike above me. I had reached a particularly climatic part of the book and the storm sounds scared the living daylights out of me. Terrified, but wanting to read more, I decided to wait out the weather. I stood in the Metro station for another hour and read. Eventually my roommate showed up and asked me what I was doing. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. At that point, I tucked my book in my bag and the two of us ran home as fast as we could. (Didn’t do much good — we were soaked when we got home!)
  3. When Jason and I first moved to Denver, I found a fun used bookstore in the Highlands. I picked up 5 or 6 new-to-me mysteries and read them all right away.

And of course, my favorite part of this story is that my parents always told me that I was named after Nora Charles from The Thin Man. Boy, I would have been Nick. Dog, I would have been Asta. 😉

Redux post of the day

First posted here three years ago today.

Dollar Days

In Bohemia, in what is now part of the Czech Republic, there is a town called Jáchymov. When the town was part of Bavaria, it was known in German as Sankt Joachimsthal or in English as Joachimsthal. The town was named for Saint Joachim who, according to some sources, was the maternal grandfather of Jesus.

In 1519, the local sovereign, Count Schlick, began striking one-ounce silver coins in Sankt Joachimsthal. These coins became known as “Joachimsthalers” and then simply “thalers.” The pronunciation changed as the term passed into other languages — dahlers in northern Germany, dalers in Dutch, dallers in English. By 1700 the accepted English pronunciation was “dollars” and the term everywhere applied to any one-ounce silver coin.

After 1497 Spain minted a silver coin called reales de a ocho or pieces of eight (they were valued at eight times the underlying coin, the real). Because the pieces of eight were similar to the thaler, they often came to be called the Spanish dollar. They were the first world currency, and were common throughout the Americas including the English colonies.

Eager still to abandon many things English, on July 6, 1785, the Continental Congress unanimously “Resolved, That the money unit of the United States be one dollar.” The following year the Congress further declared that, “The Money Unit or Dollar will contain three hundred and seventy five grains and sixty four hundredths of a Grain of fine Silver. A Dollar containing this number of Grains of fine Silver, will be worth as much as the New Spanish Dollars.” The decimal system for sub-dividing the dollar was adopted from the French on the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson.

Spanish coinage was legal tender in the United States until 1857. The pieces of eight, of course, are the source for two-bits, four-bits, six-bits, a dollar (the coins could be and were actually cut into eight pieces).

The American currency is based on Bavarian, Spanish and French precedents (and Mexican silver).

Today, July 23rd, ought to be a national holiday

On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thereby invented the ice-cream cone. He is one of several claimants to that honor: Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Fornachou, and David Avayou all have been touted as the inventor(s) of the first edible cone. Interestingly, these individuals have in common the fact that they all made or sold confections at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. It is from the time of the Fair that the edible “cornucopia,” a cone made from a rolled waffle, vaulted into popularity in the United States.

Library of Congress

July 23rd

Daniel Radcliffe is 21 today.

At the other end of the acting spectrum, Gloria DeHaven is 85.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is 74. Ginsburg (76) and Scalia (73) are older; Breyer will be 71 next month.

Actor Ronny Cox is 72. Cox, a Cloudcroft, New Mexico native, is perhaps most famous as Lt. Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department, but he has more than 120 credits listed at IMDB.

Don Imus is 70 today.

Woody Harrelson is 49. Harrelson was nominated for best actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won one Emmy for playing Woody on Cheers.

Saul Hudson is 45. He’s better known as Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is 43.

Alison Krauss is 39.

Raymond Chandler was born on July 23rd in 1888.

His parents were Irish, and after his father left the family, his mom moved them back to Ireland, and he grew up there and in England. He moved back to America and settled in California.

He wrote pulp fiction about the city of Los Angeles and a detective there named Philip Marlowe. Chandler’s first novel was The Big Sleep (1939), which sold well and was made into a movie in 1946 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall — William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay. Chandler wrote seven more novels featuring Philip Marlowe, who became the quintessential “hard-boiled” private eye, tough and street-smart and full of wise cracks. In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Marlowe says: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Best line of the day

“Dear Apple Customer,

“Apple recently announced that iPhone 4 customers who purchased an iPhone 4 Bumper are eligible for a full refund.

“As of today, we have automatically processed your refund.”

Email received this evening from Apple.

Makes me happy. I am completely satisfied with the iPhone and I like the bumper and $30 saved is $30 earned.

And nothing required on my part.

What’s in a name?

Z

That’s what’s in a name in Major League Baseball. Z.

There are 1,200 ballplayers on major league rosters (40 per team — 25 are active at any given time). The most common surnames are Rodriguez and Hernandez with 15 each. There are 14 named Gonzalez and another 14 named Ramirez. 12 are named Perez, 11 Sanchez, 9 Lopez, 7 Martinez, and 5 each Chavez and Valdez. (That 107 out of 1200.)

There are 14 Johnsons, and 9 each Jones and Anderson. Currently there are just 8 Smiths, but it is the most common name in baseball history.

Some factoids.

Just 11 Spanish surnames account for one-quarter of all the people in the Western Hemisphere.

Approximately one-third of all major leaguers are from the Dominican Republic or Venezuela.

I can remember when Latino ballplayers first made it to the big leagues and announcers pronounced Martinez as Martin-ez.

July 22nd

Bob Dole is 87 today.

Oscar de la Renta is 78.

Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 76.

Tom Robbins is 73 today.

He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2009)

70. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?

One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and Don Henley of The Eagles all turn 63 today

Author S.E. Hinton is 62 today. She was born Susan Eloise Hinton.

Growing up, she loved to read, but her biggest dream in life was to be a cowboy. So she wrote a couple of books about cowboys, and then when she was 15 she started working on a book called The Outsiders. She wrote and edited much of her novel during her junior year of high school, the same year that she got a D in her creative writing class. The Outsiders was the story of two rival gangs, based on the gangs at her high school in Tulsa — one of them was a group of kids from working-class families, the other, children of rich families.

The Outsiders was published in 1967, during her first year of college at the University of Tulsa. It became one of the most popular young adult books ever, selling more than 14 million copies, and continues to sell hundreds of thousands each year.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 55.

David Spade is 46.

Selena Gomez is 18 today. She started in show business on Barney & Friends at age 7.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995.

Amy Vanderbilt was born on July 22nd in 1908.

Idle thought

Poor Shirley Sherrod. I see now she wants to meet the president to talk about race. Next thing you know she’ll want a talk show gig.

Hon, it’s not about you.

This story is about the news media. It’s about “journalists” who don’t check their sources, either because they are incompetent, or much worse, because they are malevolent in using anything to promote their political agenda.

And, to a lesser extent, it’s about politicians, who cowed by the news media, fire people without due process.

It’s about our broken systems.

Best line of the day

SHIRLEY SHERROD: Well, working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t.

AUDIENCE: That’s right.

SHERROD: You know, and they could be black, and they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people — those who don’t have access the way others have.

From that part of her speech NOT shown on Fox.

July 21st

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Reno, the only woman attorney general of the United States. She is 72.

… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 67.

… of actor Wendell Burton, 63. Burton was Liza Minnelli’s boyfriend in The Sterile Cuckoo.

… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 62.

… of Yusuf Islam, also 62. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. Much of his life he was known as Cat Stevens and he sold 60 million albums. Stevens wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest,” a hit for four artists, most recently Sheryl Crow. In 2006, he returned to music after nearly 30 years; his new stage name is Yusuf.

… of Mork. Robin Williams is 59. Williams has been nominated for the best actor Oscar three times without winning. He did win the best supporting actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

… of Jon Lovitz. He’s 53. Fresh!

… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 42.

… and of C.C. Sabathia, 30.

Ernest Hemingway was born on this date in 1899. He died a few weeks before his 62nd birthday in 1961. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” The New York Times has an extraordinary wealth of reviews, articles, interviews and other material collected on Hemingway.

Marshall McLuhan was born on this date in 1911.