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But realize you've also re-proven the first law of modern life: sarcasm doesn't work on the Internet.
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Two days ago, Dr. D wrote an article, Konspiracy Korner. It contained 1,494 words glorifying baseball. At the very end of it, he tossed in a (very) little quip:
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Rigged games ruin the product. MLB's product is almost completely intact. Baseball isn't the best sport, not by a long shot, but it is likely to become the only sport left. In a roundabout way, that makes it the best sport.
Pitchers and catchers report shortly,
Dr D
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Exactly nobody laughed.
HEH! ... which, as you know too well by now, was greatly amusing for Dr. D.
Also, exactly nobody was pacified by the "coded" little wry smile at the signoff. Gary Larson wrote the 2nd-greatest comic strip ever penned, and he was buried in protests constantly. :- ) (As opposed to sprinkled with protests in 1 of every 500 comments.)
He chuckled about one of his "fails" and tediously explained the joke, finishing, "This one was obfuscated, unfunny, infuriating, and unintelligible. In other words, the perfect Far Side cartoon." Yeah baby.
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The comments to Dr. D's 1,494-word post focused on the critical 20 words in red. People were genuinely alarmed (lemme digest that idea for a second). One amigo asked, protectively: "Option A or Option B? Dr. D is being satirical, or he really doesn't like baseball?"
Dr. D gave up the game and quipped back: "Option C. Some people fail their Rohrshach tests."
Whereupon nobody relaxed; the feathers hit the fan at triple speed, then. It was awesome. We had a surgeon, a lawyer, a meteorogist, and their ilk confused about whether Barack Obama really believes in health care for the poor. Something is very cool about that; Dr. D has no idea what it is.
There have been (very occasional) times when I wondered whether SSI is right to encourage text-style smiley faces. Any such doubt has been forever removed. In fact, I'm going to learn a second emoticon now. You have only yourself to blame.
It's cool that we should all be so engaged with baseball and each other. :- ) Baseball, that Dr. D never underestimates. SSI and DOV, that's a different subject.
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So, 20 words that held baseball in insufficient reverence?, wound up hurting people's feelings a little bit. Dr. D lives to serve. He took the only course of action open to him: he wrote 1,322 words recommending that nobody watch baseball, ever again.
Truth hurts, baby.
;- )
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George Carlin once explained himself defiantly: I like my audience a little bit on edge. Well, sure, George: people (sometimes) laugh in order to relieve fear and tension. Carlin's shtick was threatening. If he had to poach a nervous laugh to break up the silence, he was glad to do it. Your pain, his gain.
About 15 degrees off that ... SSI likes for amigos to be, um, not threatened, but a little bit alert. Like a tennis player bouncing on his toes to return serve. We've been blogging baseball for 20 years, you understand. If it takes audio files, or an anti-baseball piece, or a link to Rupert Sheldrake, well ...
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Of course I love baseball. You can exhale now.
So, one tongue-in-cheek diatribe could convince you that we dislike baseball. This is silent, sparkling testimony to our Mask-like powers. With these powers we could cure hunger ... bring about world peace ... but first! Hold on to yer lug nuts! Let's do another four pieces on Justin Ruggiano. ...
The Far Side cartoon that started us off, above? Its idea seems to be that --- > people (such as Dr. D) put a little too much effort into things that don't matter quite as much as we think they do. Remember, you, the reader, spends a few minutes a day downloading this shtick. How much of Dr. D's life does he spend uploading it? Don't go there :- )
Baseball often goes into my daily thanksgiving journal, not as a quip, but as a comment on its place in the universe, its relation to the human condition. Tell you why.
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Stimulation vs Security
If human beings have 4-6 most fundamental needs ... two of them are (1) Security/Peace/Comfort and (2) Stimulation/Growth/Adventure. Everybody cares about their 401(k) account, and everybody needs to go someplace and see something new.
And there are two basic kinds of exercise.
One kind -- running stairs, swimming for personal records, racquetball -- takes your pulse over 125. Another kind -- powerwalking, yoga, easy bicycling -- keeps your pulse under 125. Once your pulse goes over 125 or so, you can no longer think straight.
But while doing yoga with your pulse at 112, or while walking the trail at 3.5 MPH, you can multiply 2-digit numbers in your head. Try that while gasping for breath.
These two kinds of exercise break down as follows:
| Type | Pulse | Example | Best characteristic |
| Intense | >125 | Running stairs | Lost sense of time (adventure) |
| Sustained | Yoga | Sense of peace & well-being |
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By analogy, a Seahawk game can create an intense experience. You can forget about the entire world, and time itself, as Colin Kaepernick drives the 49er's downfield in the NFC Championship game. (Actually, in Seattle you can lose yourself while watching some putz raise the 12th-man flag.)
Dr. D loves experiences -- good movies, 3-on-3 basketball, romantic time with his wife, sometimes writing SSI -- that suspend time. (Something was very wrong with that sentence. Gary Larson, baby.)
On the other hand, when watching baseball, we have plenty of time to think. And therefore plenty of time to be grateful that we're sitting in a park, that all is well with the world, that our lives are crammed with pleasant things.
Did you know that the word "Paradise" stems from an old word for "Park"? Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens created a "paradise" out of a contained area that was filled with leisurely, enjoyable things that created a sense of happy satisfaction. Archaeology hasn't revealed whether it housed James Paxton's pitching motion.
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There are no absolutes here. Sabermetrics itself is very stimulating, is it not? SABR is simply outstanding for growth, learning, for training in logic. All of you amigos, by virtue of your attention to The Art of Zen and Baseball, are in a never-ending university study.
Our minds ain't going to lose their sharpness while we -- in a supremely self-aware exercise -- debate whether baseball is a good use of our time.
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Without a doubt, baseball is the thinking man's sport.
As you know, there are many other things about baseball that, charmingly, lend themselves to profound thought. Sabermetrics in other sports don't deliver the same experience. The 2015 Seattle Mariners rotation is like a rainbow that presents its colors in daily carousel. The compartmentalized aspect of the matchups gives us a child-like clarity around which we can organize our enjoyment. We can savor the fact that today is Seth Smith day and tomorrow will be Justin Ruggiano day. On and on.
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Recreation that suspends time, such as 3-on-3 basketball, is one thing. Recreation that creates a profound sense of peace and well-being, such as 18 holes of golf on a sunny afternoon, is another thing.
Both are cool, but the second one is cooler. Peace and well-being are even more important than growth and adventure.
Now we're going to need another article,
Dr. D / Mr. Hyde
Comments
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Love it when Doc gets unpredictable. :-)
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Carlin was interesting to see live. The first time I saw him was in Bozeman, MT. About 1990ish. He was in the basketball arena with maybe 5,000 people in the audience. He did his opening bit while prowling back and forth in the front of the stage, scrutinizing the audience. He then spent the next hour and a half doing 15 minute bits on every large cross section of the audience. Rednecks with rifles hanging I the rear window of their pickups? They got it. Pseudo hippe Dead/ Phish heads? Ditto. Entitled white frat/sorority kids? Yep. Yuppie professionals? Check. Everyone in the audience spent 80%. Of the night laughing at everyone else and 20% of the night really uncomfortable, as he made fun of us. It was awesome.
I saw him several times after that and saw him do it each time. It wasn't the canned HBO special every night - he really tuned the routine to the audience.
So yeah, be provocative. Internet hypersensitivity be danged.
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Bart Giamatti's book on baseball was titled Take Time for Paradise. It included this:
TAKE TIME FOR PARADISE, Americans and Their Games
For the sport's participant, it is an experience of the constant dialectic of restraint and release, the repeated interplay of energy and order, of improvisation and obligation, of strategy and tactic, all neatness denied and ambiguity affirmed by the incredible power of the random, by accident or luck, by vagaries of weather, by mental lapses or physical failure, by flaw in field or equipment, by laws of physics that operate on round or oblong objects in their own way, by error in all its lurking multiplicity.
"In the main, I agree with the argument that sports can be viewed as a kind of popular or debased religion, in the sense that the most intense feelings are brought to bear or in the sense that sports may mirror whatever avowedly "sacred" concerns Americans do share."
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"For me, Aristotle focuses the lens.
The opposition is not between useful work and pointless (or non-utilitarian) sport, with sport in the modern world having lost its religious meaning and retaining as its only role to be a mirror of secular, modern life. The issue is not dualistic opposition between work and play. It is a progression from one to the other, from what is necessary to what is desirable, from the utilitarian to the liberal, or free; from what, as Sebastian de Grazia suggests, dignifies (work) to that which perfects (leisure).
The gods are brought back when the people gather.
The point is, sport is ceremony wherever you find it.
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And I was blindsided by your punch line. There's a moral in that somewhere :- )
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There was a considerable time that Carlin was my favorite comic - admittedly, before my sensibilities changed a bit. When you want to sharpen your live public speaking, that's who you study: comedians. The best of them are just unbelievable.
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There are like eight light bulbs in that excerpt you chose. (Sounds like an easy URL, exploring the passage.)
Thanks Terry.
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Giamatti was a serious classics scholar saved from arrogance by a great sense of humor. Lest we forget, as NL president he appointed professional sports' first official league physcist! I somehow don't see Selig doing anything like that.
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Jeff, your balance is a wonderful way to bring in the new year. Only I am curious what comic exceeded Far Side??? LOL!!
Thank you for your hard work....much appreciated!
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In music there is a term, rubato. Literally it means "robbed" in Italian, and one finds it quite often in classical music to indicate when a particular section of a piece is to be played with great freedom from strict tempo, usually to increase it's individuality and it's dramatic effect.
One of the things I find distasteful in most hip-hop music (I admit to being a complete snob in this regard) is the utter lack of rubato, the dominance of strict tempo and the triumph of beat over all other considerations. This speaks volumes about our times, in which one constantly feels a vacuous cacophony, an empty sameness which wants to squeeze all into the mold of a few trite, mindless slogans. The tyranny of the tepid effects of overly refined marketing has taken root. Business, faith, and politics these days requires efficiency and simplicity of messaging on a vast scale in order (seemingly) to succeed.
We need more rubato in life, in this world. There was a time when people understood this. People do still understand it, but those who seek to bend society to their own will, usually for selfish reasons but not always, demand conformity. Rubato is the throwing off of conformity.
I love Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky because their work breathes an incredible and expressive freedom. I love the music of the 1960's in which I grew up for the same reason. Sure, there were elements of conformity, but from the British Invasion to breakup of the Beatles there was a variety of sounds and invention that, looking back on it from today's vantage point, was stunning. It seemed every week a new band was breaking ground with a sound that had never been heard before. At the same time you had The Beatles doing Sergeant Peppers, The Beach Boys doing Pet Sounds, The Rolling Stones doing Aftermath, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson doing Motown, Jimi Hendrix doing his thing, The Who banging out their sound, then along come Crosby Stills and Nash, and Chicago, and I could go on and on and on.
I admit to severe culturo-centrism when it comes to the culture I was raised in compared to that of today. Sue me. I turn 60 this year. But somehow, Doc, reading your Far Side post triggered this reaction in me. I hear you. Be the agent provocateur, not in the same old boring way that such pseudo-provocateurs practice their craft these days for what they consider to be maximum effect. But for the sheer joy of doing so, and in so doing shed the gentrifying scales of our times.
Bravo!
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Actually can I wormhole you over to the New/Transition DOV? CLICK RAT CHEER
Just to keep it simmerin' a little bit - thanks Jeff :- )
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It lists these as the 12 great American strips. I dunno if they're just being anti-Eurocentric, by implying that strips from China and Togo deliver the goods as well as Calvin and Hobbes did.
I bet that some English strips are up to the task, though. Got no earthly idea whether non-American / non-British strips really stack up to Dilbert. Maybe they do.
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Had no idea.
What are MLB owners doing electing somebody like that?!
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Who knew you were such a music connoisseur? GREAT stuff.
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Don't think it's your snobbery here. Jack Black moaned, "the man ruined Rock too, with a little thing called MTV."
Yeah, I think musical groups have to have talent, and then method, and then finally virtuosity and aesthetic freedom. Eddie Van Halen -- the icon of "freedom" and chaos -- once said, about 2002, "I can still play everything Clapton ever wrote, note for note." First came the discipline.
Brian Setzer said, "a lot of 'stars' today think it's cool not to know anything, but that's just sour grapes."
Most of today's groups don't get into Stage 1, much less Stage 3. Who is the Pink Floyd of this decade?
+50
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If anyone is unfamiliar with the term:
A kōan (公案?)/ˈkoʊ.ɑːn/; Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng'àn; Korean: 공안 (kong'an); Vietnamese: công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and test a student's progress in Zen practice.
I figure you were going for "the great doubt part".
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That's impressive stuff.
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This should be front-paged somewhere. Absolutely stellar breakdown of society through the lens of music :)
And, if I may be so bold, I'm going to declare in no uncertain terms that your age has nothing to do with your appreciation of music. I'm 33 years old, and the only groups which 'spawned' during my teenage years that I still listen to are Crash Test Dummies (wonderful sense of humor and irony in their first two albums), Counting Crows (Adam Duritz' unpolished, morose laments, especially on August and Everything After, are as good as they get), and, occasionally, Pearl Jam.
Everything else I listen to is Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, and classical composers - first among them: Tchaikovsky!
Something did change a few decades ago in the music industry, and you hit on the major driving force behind it: conformity for (supposed) maximum appeal. But I think there's another side to that coin. When you have artistic media, there are two major components that I think have to be observed: (broadness of) appeal and (individuated emotional) impact. Appeal is definitely what drives the modern music industry, but emotional impact is what makes something classic.
I've argued for about fifteen years (yes, really!) that nobody will be listening to Madonna (or Lady Gaga) songs fifty years from now, but that Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Beatles will still get play (or at least covers) because there is a difference between mass market appeal and long-term emotional connectivity. The great composers, many of whom you listed, are STILL great centuries after their deaths precisely because of their ability to connect, emotionally, with the audience.
Wonderful, wonderful post, DaddyO. There's my morning cup o' coffee :)
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Thanks for the transfer. What don't you think of???? The man of so many conversations!!! Good job too!
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You gotta be the nicest guy in the world, you and Silent Panda. Must be the name.