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[Actually submitted to, and
unsurprisingly spurned by, the New Yorker -- even though it
was double-spaced per Their antiquated submission standards.
Hrmph.]
[etc.] First Serial Publication Rights [*]Though readily reducible by 110 words if the
second
paragraph is deemed superfluous
To at least give the appearance of being gracious losers, it seems only right that the New Yorker should address a pressing need of its neighbors to the north. For now that the Boston Red Sox have finally prevailed in a World Series, their fanatics, followers, and even just adherents, clearly must have a new Hopeless Cause to bemoan if they are not to be bereft of their "identity". (The author, by the way, can be deemed a committed adherent, though not a commitable one ... or "true fan". I.e., he only pronounces it "thuh Sawks" in jest, since his abiding fondness for the Sox was acquired, not inborn -- over the course of having lived some 30 years in what he still wistfully refers to as the RealWorld now that he's in exile in Lotosland, under virtual house arrest as an evil nicopariah. Indeed, when asked where he grew up, he invariably replies "Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting at age 17", since that's when he first went to the RealWorld, to attend what he then thought of as the World's Finest Trade School.) Fortunately, the very coverage of the, shall we say in deference to our nominal primary audience, unexpected victory contained within it a splendid candidate new hopeless cause. For when the "sports journalists" all too predictably immediately hounded poor Bill Buckner about whether he felt better now that "the curse" had been exorcised, he, rather predictably, said no. Now, given that said sports journalists -- a/k/a the mediaocrities [sic] and/or the jockocracy -- were the primary promoters, and even creators, of Mr. Buckner's misery, it seems only right that the new hopeless cause for "the Red Sox nation" should be to force said mediaocrities to clear his name: Project Reha-Bill-itation. Think about it. They Haiged him. Which is to say, as a convenient way of creating at least a whipping boy if not indeed a demon, to sell more papers/fill more airtime, they blithely ignored the context of Buckner's fielding mishap in the sixth game of '86 Series and focused exclusively on the grounder's making it through his legs. Technically, the only difference between that and leaving out the then-Secretary of State's "the Vice President's on his way and" before his "I'm in charge here at the White House" (in the further context of having just stated that "the enemies of the United States" should not assume Reagan's shooting had left us in disarray) in '81 is that Bill Buckner is apparently a far nicer guy Al Haig. Well, that and the fact that it was the non-sports mediaocrities who went after ol' Al. Now, whether or not you subscribe to the notion that it was in the nation's best interest to besmirch General Haig's reputation lest he eventually become President himself, it's still the case that it was a dirty trick. I happened to have been in Washington D.C. on the day of the Reagan shooting and happened to have been driving from one appointment to another, with the car radio on, at the time his remarks were broadcast live. And in context, to my certain knowledge, he simply was not saying that he was taking over, as the mediaocrities later gleefully implied, he was just saying that the country was not in disarray. In Buckner's case, as you can tell if you study the videotapes carefully, the immediate context later ignored by the jockocracy was that the grounder was bouncing along fairly high until it hit the bare ground, after which it "didn't come up". Indeed, although the tapes are far from unambiguous, it's at least arguable that it hit the very edge of the grass, a known source of problems, rather than the bare ground, right before its bounce-pattern altered. In other words, it arguably took what the sports-mediaocrities are fond of calling "a bad hop". And that's not his fault. Not to put too fine a point on it, there's even more context that was ignored and/or distorted. At the time, there was a great outcry as to why Buckner was still in the game, since it was customary for him to be replaced in the late innings because of the state of his legs and ankles. What the mediaocrities always overlooked, however, is that the "defensive replacement" was himself a second baseman by trade and Buckner was inherently a better first baseman, it was just that at his age and in his physical condition going the full nine innings seemed too much to require of him. Manifestly, on this occasion the manager preferred to stay with the better first baseman. It's worse than that, though. Make that "the idiot manager", because Buckner would have been spared the subsequent embarrassment had he been pinch-hit for earlier as he should have been when a particularly nasty left-handed pitcher was on the mound and Buckner, a left-handed batter, came to bat with runners in scoring position. Apparently, said idiot manager -- whose name I can't be bothered to remind myself of -- thought the three-run, if memory doesn't serve a fault, lead at the time was adequate and let Buckner stay in against a pitcher -- again, I can't be bothered to dig up the name -- who predictably overmatched him badly. Idiotic choice. And that's not second-guessing: I have a clear recollection of thinking at the time that he should be being hit for. So in the fuller context, Buckner shouldn't have even been in the field to make the error ... and in the immediate context, a charitable official scorer could well have deemed it a bad hop not an error anyway. Nor is the notion that he should have been pinch-hit for merely my own fancy; I actually met one of the star players of the previous generation of the Sox socially, several years later, and he agreed that it was a bad mistake not to go for the additional "insurance" runs by lifting Buckner for a pinch-hitter. The Cause, then, is manifestly just: Buckner was jobbed. Is it also Hopeless, as it must be to fill The Need? Of course it's hopeless. Contemporary journalism is so concerned with Form and so indifferent to Content that not only will "the print media" seemingly never print real sentences in real paragraphs any longer -- insisting on short sentences and short paragraphs in the apparent conviction that that's what their "demographic" demands -- all "the media" are so averse to admitting error that, for one favorite example, I couldn't even get my second-rate little local paper to apologize in print for repeatedly calling Errol Morris "Earl Morris" even after he won the Best Documentary Oscar this year, much less for some four months before. (It happens that Errol's late elder brother was a close friend and esteemed colleague of mine in the mid-60s and so I have known him since he was 19, even though we're out of touch now so I couldn't get him to make a fuss with said pissant local paper, unfortunately.) To mention just one other particular favorite instance of "media" erroracknowledge- ment-aversion, so as to have both the sports tie-in and an electronic medium, there was also the extremely annoying time several years ago when the Golf Channel ignored my e-informing [sic] them, complete with pointers to pictures on a proper hatter's web site, that what they kept miscalling Payne Stewart's "characteristic tam-o-shanter cap" after his untimely death wasn't a tam-o-shanter. (It was actually a driver's cap, or even a "Hogan cap"; it was essentially oval, tams are essentially round.) And just as with Errol's name being Errol, not Earl, that was a point of fact, not a question of what they call it Over There, as it was with his Ammurikun mediaocrities-denominated "characteristic knickers" ekshully being "plus-fours" to the Brits. Why, for all I know, even the New Yorker might not be willing to print real sentences, or at least my real sentences, even though I'm not accusing them of having made an error, and this too might never see the dark of print. So getting the jockocracy behind Project Reha-Bill-itation is clearly out of the question. Yup, sports fans, we got another Hopeless Cause. Go for it. And may you have better luck than I at getting any ink or electrons from the sports mediaocrities in its pursuit... |