Space, time and trajectory

The Yard wants to toast all of the classes of 2020.  Being part of the class of 2020 is the rock star designation for your diploma and tassel. Unfortunately, it has been the worst of graduation seasons for this class.  Graduating college is exciting and all that follows before what comes next.  High School graduation is a seminal moment in most of our lives.  What comes next is still at least 90 days out and most times years away.  The high school senior is at the top of the heap for that magical summer following commencement.  For the next 90 days after the walk, whatever is happening next is not happening now.  Other stuff is.  I did graduate in 1975 so that perspective refracts through a Pink Floyd prism. What a bummer of a summer for these graduates? For Senior Ditch Day, do the kids get together on a backchannel Zoom meeting when they are really supposed to be Zooming to Coach Skeese Chemistry lesson? John Krasinski did a nice job with the virtual prom on You Tube but if you cannot leave the house, how does one stay out all night? There are potential stories and the milestones that can occur on that night.  Zoom cannot carry the emotional freight to the finish line.  It might be a nice time for reflection this summer, but hedonism was a lot more fun and there is a lifetime of reflection ahead.

The mayor of Las Vegas Carolyn Goodman has made her position on the casino closure maniacally clear.  It made for good TV but not much sound reasoning. It is chilling to see the strip completely closed except for the sanitation crews scrubbing the place down.  Her crazy lady rant with Anderson Cooper did call attention to the insanity of closing a billion-dollar industry for COVID-19 which has infected less than 5,000 and killed less than 250 in Nevada at this time. The slot machines are sanitized down to the wingnuts. The strip will survive but there is another tier of gaming establishment that so far did not get bailed out like Caesars did.  Dotty’s is one of these venues.  Their revenue is 95% from video poker and alcohol.  Smoking is required and we hear Dotty’s has some of the best secondhand smoke in the entire valley.  The Governor’s lockdown orders have kept Dotty’s closed but we believe the virus wants no part of that place.  Those customers have already cast caution to the wind about death and disease a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  Ironically,  Bella’s Hacienda Ranch in Wells, NV got their CARES grant approved. Bella’s brothel services were considered nonessential, but she is getting assistance to help Bella and the ladies weather the storm.

In previous lamentations, the absence of baseball in this whole pandemicky thing is most trying.  The potential of this Dodger team was going to be fun and we hope it still happens.  Baseball has always been a unifying force in the history of this nation.  There might not be a more important inflection point in this country’s history than right now.  The games may need to be played initially before television audiences only.  The players are going to have to take a haircut on their salaries that are in part derived from the turnstiles and concession stands.   Salaries are paid per game played by the team.  All salaries were based on fans in the stadiums and 162 games.  The collective bargaining agreement does not cover pandemics that interrupt the schedule. Reality is looking like it may be August start, play 100+ games and go to the playoffs.

Baseball was not in session when Jackie Robinson day was celebrated nationally on April 15, 2020.  The celebration was muted with the shutdown.  It was in the news but all of the planned festivities to be shared across the nation were suspended along with baseball.  Jackie famously broke the color barrier for Major League baseball.  He could have easily broken into the NFL with his two UCLA teammates, Woody Strode and Kenny Washington.  Strode and Washington played less famously for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946.  Regardless, they all took risks at a time when the government offered scant protections for blacks.  Baseball fought integration but finally relented. The National League was the first to embrace these talented athletes who had been banned based solely on the color of their skin.  Over the two decades that followed Robinson breaking in 1947, fifteen of the next twenty MVP awards in the NL were won by African Americans.  Integration changed the trajectory of baseball forever.  It is shocking to think that eighty years after the Civil War, people of color were first allowed to play in an MLB game.  The Negro leagues had historic talents who never got to play in our national past time. It is hard to comprehend these historical truths in this time and space.

And it is a strange time and space that we are all in these days.  Two things we seem to have plenty of are time and space.  When physical interaction with other humans is parsed, the amount of time that is made available is quite remarkable.  With smart phones, Zoom and other social media, we can remain spatially apart while staying connected at a digital level.  We were already evolving in that direction and the coronavirus just changed the trajectory.  What it will look like when we come out of the other side, no one can know.  It will be different, and the differences will be revealed disruptively to our norms.  Hopefully, there are lessons learned, antibodies discovered, and a vaccine developed from this event horizon. The fictional dystopian dramas that have entertained us on the big screen, invaded our homes screens in real time these past several weeks.  There has been expansive creativity shared and heroism displayed that reinforces our human persistence.  Opportunities will arise as we emerge from our collective cocoons. We are in it to win it! Clutch those you hold dear when safe to do so.  Get ready to launch!

Out and about: Please make sure that we all tip the shit out of all our servers when we get back to being served.  Hail to all of the people that bring us food, and drink, who cut our hair, who provide us our services. Their “in-shelter” lost revenue is lost forever.  

Dark Star and Cocoon

These past three weeks, the country has been slowly collapsing into our homes like a dark star, sucking in all of the light while compressing the energy.  It is rolling blackouts as the fire bells ring.  New York sounded the alarm first for the incoming virus that was already here.  Broadway shutdown on March 12 furloughing thousands.  Broadway generated $1.8 billion annually for 15 million patrons in 2019.  Nevada closed all of the casinos on March 18 furloughing hundreds of thousands casino workers and entertainers.  The economic losses are in the tens of billions.  On March 18, Florida officials announced they were keeping the beaches OPEN over the Spring Break weekend. Florida finally furloughed 142 lifeguards, shuttered seven Dairy Queens and Moon Doggies surf shop.  Then all those spring break revelers went home to infect their friends and families.  Florida has now closed their borders and does not want New Yorkers coming down to escape NY.  Florida officials also maintain there is a no pee zone in the Municipal pools.

March Madness being cancelled was painful at the Yard.  The tournament consumes our minds for a month or more.  Stories are earned.  Legends are born and a champion emerges.  It was not to be.  Wimbledon one of our favorite tournaments in tennis was cancelled.  Fortunately, Wimbledon had pandemic insurance.  Tournament officials took out a policy 20 years ago and are getting paid $141 million for not holding this year’s tournament.  No matches, no people, no winners except Wimbledon. Not their fault and whoever voted to take that policy out probably took heat at the time.

The suspension of Major League baseball is especially painful at this time.  Baseball is the elixir that has healed this country in the past.  In January of 1942, FDR issued his famous Green Light Letter that green lighted the 1942 baseball season during WWII.  President Roosevelt said, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.” The fans had a brilliant season with the Cardinals taking out the defending champion Yankees 4-1 after losing game one.  Twenty-three-year-old Ted Williams appeared in his third All-Star game and finished second in the MVP voting.  He would leave after the season to fight in WWII for the next three seasons.  The greatest generation would emerge, and baseball’s popularity remained unchallenged for decades.

After 9/11, baseball shut down for a week.  The first professional sporting event in New York after the attacks was the Mets hosting the division-rival Braves in the midst of a pennant race. With the Mets trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the 8th, Mike Piazza stepped into the box for his fourth and final at-bat of the night and went deep for the go-ahead two-run homer.  It was a magical moment for NY.  The Yankees would eventually carry the city all the way to the World Series.  Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and the Arizona D’backs would deny the story book finish but baseball helped the city heal.

Since FDR’s bold declaration that this nation needs baseball, this nation has responded.  In 1942, baseball was the only game in town.  There were early versions of the NFL and the NBA, but these sports would not emerge nationally until the 1950’s.  Baseball was already popular in 1942.  Babe Ruth had put baseball into the mainstream consciousness a decade earlier.  As Jane Levy asserts in her book The Big Fella, Ruth was the first real celebrity in this nation.  He was baseball’s rascal and ambassador.  He manipulated the media like a Kardashian.  There were many more NY newspapers in the 1920-30’s and getting to Ruth was competitive.  Baseball was roaring down the tracks and the Babe was driving the engine.  With the popularity of the sport, the coverage in the sports page were expanded.  Baseball had statistics, storylines and characters.  The public ate it up and when the newspapers figured out how to publish photos of these icons, the paparazzi were born.  President Trump is sounding like he is ready to declare his own Green Letter.  Not sure if that is the right move in this time and space but someone is going to need to put a toe in the water in May.  I am trying to determine whose hand I might take a chance and shake and when.

Baseball has been this nation’s national past time since there was such a thing.  It has been mine since the late 1960’s.  I inhaled that sports page every morning before my father could, much to his chagrin.  I usually spilled cereal and milk all over it and never put the section back together correctly.  My father was not a fastidious man and I had already lapped his overall interest in mainstream sports by the time I was eight.  So, he let it go.  Oh, how I harken back to the days of those glorious LA Times sports pages in the day.  Jim Murray you were the best.  The Sports Page today is a discussion on when sports are coming back, the NFL Draft, and This Day in Sports. I have not been on ESPN in a month.

This past week one of the all-time greats Hall of Famer Al Kaline passed away. In 1968, the powerful St, Louis Cardinals played the surprising Detroit Tigers in the World Series.  The Cardinals had future Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda.  Cardinal Curt Flood who would later challenge the reserve clause that lead to free agency was their All-Star centerfielder.  Kaline was the only Tiger from that Tiger team to make the HOF. Atlanta Braves legend Eddie Matthews was on the roster at the end of his HOF career at the end of the bench.  The Cardinals had the pedigree and the superstars.  Bob Gibson’s ERA for 1968 was 1.12. He had 28 complete games in thirty-four starts.  In 2019, the entire MLB had 46 complete games.  The Cardinals were the defending WS champions and the hated ones for Yard youth.  We rooted for the Tigers. 

The Tigers had the personalities if not the fame.  Denny McClain was the last 30 game winner winning 33 that season.  He would be out of baseball by 1971 and eventually end up in prison. Gates Brown had a very wide stance and a powerful swing that was imitated by a former life- long friend who become known as Gator.  Jim Northrup had 21 homeruns that year and four were Grand Slams.  He hit his 5th in the WS and a game winning triple in Game seven against Bob Gibson.  Mickey Lolich was Detroit’s portly #2 starter who was demoted to the bullpen in August of 1968.  Lolich would be the WS MVP rallying the Tigers from a 3-1 deficit in October.  Lolich would pitch three complete game victories in the WS.  He and Bob Gibson battled for nine innings in Game 7 with the Tigers prevailing.  

We hope it all gets back to some degree of normalcy in May.  Sports might be the elixir even if the fans are not there.  As the worm emerges from the cocoon a beautiful butterfly is born, so may the economy. Or maybe that was the worm that went down with the last shot of tequila on Easter.  Regardless, be smart, be safe and be ready to hit the gas when the light goes green.