Baseball Is America: Origins and History: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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© 2010 Victor Alexander Baltov, Jr.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/23/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4520-0488-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-0486-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-0485-3 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010904012

Bloomington, Indiana

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to George Joseph Minges

a.k.a. grandpa (1894-1976) whose metaphorical

dead hand from the grave provided historical baseball

information and guided the courageous composition of

controversial topics deep down in places we don’t talk about at parties.

His two all-time favorite players that coincidentally bear his

first and middle names, George Herman Ruth

and Joseph Paul DiMaggio Jr.,

are favorably acknowledged and honored in the writings on his behalf.

Grandpa Minges pictured as the proud papa of

his two WW II naval servicemen sons

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: In The Big Inning

Chapter 1.   Origin of Sport

Chapter 2.   Founding Fathers

Chapter 3.   Origins Of Baseball, Bat-And-Ball Games

Chapter 4.   Early Baseball in America

Chapter 5.   Religion in Baseball

Chapter 6.   Baseball Food and Cultural Associations

Chapter 7.   Eras of Baseball

Chapter 8.   Origin of the Field of Dreams and Its Players

Part II: Where Have You Gone, Joe Dimaggio?

Chapter 9.   The Life and Career of an American Icon

Chapter 10.  Why the Yankee Clipper Was So Special

PART III

Chapter 11.  A Few Good Men

Part IV: Be The Ball

Chapter 12.  Tech in Baseball

Chapter 13.  Unlock the Power of You

Chapter 14.  It’s Baked into the Culture; It’s Everybody

Chapter 15.  History of Enhancement

Chapter 16.  Common Law, Baseball Rules, and Penalties

Chapter 17.  What Is Enhancement?

PART V: THE PROMETHEAN PROJECT

Chapter 18.  The Promethean Aspiration

Chapter 19.  Reasons to Go Promethean, Is Promethean Un-American?

Chapter 20.  What Is Promethean?

Chapter 21.  When and How Did It Happen?

Chapter 22.  Promethean Mind-Set, Justification, and Defense

Chapter 23.  Role Models and Sensory Depravation

PART VI

Chapter 24.  Jaws (There Is a Shark in the Water)

PART VII: War On Baseball

Chapter 25.  America and Baseball

Chapter 26.  What Has Happened to Baseball?

Chapter 27.  Durand-Durand and the Misremember Hearings

Chapter 28.  Baseball Compared to Christmas—A Divided Nation

Epilogue

Introduction

Batting leadoff in the BASEBALL IS AMERICA trilogy, A Child of Baseball traces the metaphorical cleat marks of both baseball and America through the story of the author’s life. The equivalent of one full inning of a nine-inning ball game of life on planet earth was experienced by the author on or near a baseball diamond as a player or coach. The opening volume shares passionate stories from the good old days when the power of the ball cleared the chain-linked fence along with some fish stories. Keeping faith is a common denominator shared by baseball and fishing. A baseball and American history lesson beginning in the birth year of the author’s grandpa (1894) in the Cincinnati area continues through the author’s last amateur ball game played in the City of Palms (2005). Extensive adolescent diamond-time experienced by the author in both the progressive Garden State and the more conservative Sooner State fuels opinions. The book was intended to both entertain readers with satire and provide metaphorical pitch recognition of cultural crooked-looking balls so that bad things can be stopped from happening again and again and again. The past repeats in the future, and the future repeats the past! A Child of Baseball incorporates themes and lessons from the author’s four favorite baseball films: The Natural (1984), Bull Durham (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), and For the Love of the Game (1999). It also pits a culture war using concepts from the films Bull Durham (metaphysical) and Field of Dreams (supernatural) with the power of technology outstripping supernatural power on America’s diamonds. The deliberation process of the culture war in America and baseball is elevated to an intellectual level and captured in the competing ideologies of Freud (man is nothing more than Darwin’s Pride, and as a sexual being with uncontrollable impulses, he is a prisoner of his past, which can only be remedied through conditioning in the vein of Pavlov’s dogs) versus Frankl (man can make his own way regardless of the harshest of environments, including Auschwitz, because he has the uniquely human quality of free will and can resist impulses using his braking mechanism located in the orbital frontal lobe). The concept of the war of the Georges, Washington (Spirit of ’76) and its genuine prosperity, versus Soros (spirit of secularism) and its synthetic prosperity, is also tossed into the mix. The message is driven home that the secret to both America’s and baseball’s exceptional past success is tied directly to capitalism and its requisite Christian foundation. To reclaim the strike zone on the culture war front, instead of MoveOn.org, the rally cry is implied to be: Get back, get back; get back to where you once belonged—Jeremiah 6:16.

The initial volume explores the baseball food chain from top to bottom, with youth ball clearly not being a game for all beyond dad’s pitch midget-ball level (age eight and under). Once the kids take the mound at age nine and beyond, the narcissist curve ball, while causing physical damage to young lads’ wings, also segregates kids at an early age by instilling point-and-click development while simultaneously denying natural progression. Baseball is America’s game. It teaches a young boy how to be a good American or a bad American, as the case may be. By giving every boy a chance to exhibit the rugged individualism of the hypothetical Republican combined with the theoretical team spirit of the Democrat, baseball drives home the point that you need both to succeed. Baseball also fulfills both a boy’s and America’s manifest destiny of keeping score, the lifeblood of its capitalistic system. By not keeping score, boys are introduced to the nanny state mentality with socialism the first stop and communism the last stop!

The top of the food chain, Major League Baseball, is experienced in its different eras during American history and exposes the reader to the foundation of significant economic success enjoyed during the Synthetic Era under the reign of Durand-Durand. The Twisted Cross and Hammer & Sickle regimes, the sources of synthetic manhood, used its power out of hubris for performance enhancement so as to dwarf the inferior people. Baseball’s use of Communazi science and ideology should cause Americans to pause and reflect on our national culture and ask the question, What kind of people are we? The record is also set straight with respect to America being a Christian-founded nation with flaws in need of fixing as a result of never fully harnessing its potential. Christianity tightens the strike zone of behavior and is an essential element of the survival of free market capitalism. Synthetic Era America has abandoned any meaningful attempt to metaphorically throw more strikes within a defined strike zone, but instead has changed the strike zone of acceptable behavior and actions to nose-to-the-toes and wide.

The BASEBALL IS AMERICA trademark suggests that America and laterally baseball have become a bluer country (more liberal) with conservatism depicted as red on the perimeter. While some surveys suggest that 2010 America is approximately 2:1 conservative to liberal, cynically speaking, the definition of conservative has undergone major book doctoring. The #9 fielder’s spot (right field) on America’s value positioning scorecard has become unmanned because of getting lost in dead center field (#8 fielder’s spot on America’s value positioning scorecard). The left fielder (#7 fielder’s spot on America’s value positioning scorecard) has become so radical that he is stationed in the upper-deck portion of the left-field bleachers in foul territory. If America is such a conservative-leaning country, then why do we have such a cavalier attitude about the gruesome and horrific tortuous killing of over 50 million small undesired children? The clear and emphatic message from the Jewish Holocaust is never again! If America is such a conservative country, then why does it embrace the dogma of vicious anti-Christian Sigmund Freud with respect to sexuality and rejection of a major tenet of the Spirit of ’76, free will? If America is such a conservative country, then why does it have such a careless attitude with respect to illegal synthetic compound use for profit while going to great lengths to defend criminal behavior? If America is such a conservative country, then why does it aggressively minimize its traditional past (including its traditional baseball past)? The crystal clear reason is that the spirit of secularism has overtaken the Spirit of ’76 as America’s value system and, in the process, transformed America into the United States of Entertainment. The concept of conservatism derived from its Christian-founding principles has been shifted from a metaphorical right-field position to center field by the muscular secularization of liberal-cool conservative ideologies practiced by the NY, DC, and LA bubble cultures. We the people that reside in the great land mass areas of America’s playing field have conservative ideologies that stay outside the metaphorical white lines of play because they are not marketable for synthetic economic growth.

Baseball is a microcosm and representative of the greater American culture, serving the dual role of both its reflection and direction. Baseball has an ocean of history that makes it special, like America. Origins and History: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly maps where America, as part of planet earth, derives in addition to outlining the genesis of its Western culture. The source of both the game of baseball (tracing its lineage as a sport) and its ballplayers (descendants of Adam) is also explored. Baseball’s rich history, complete with a list of the author’s all-time Hall of Fame team, compiled of players whose character serves as a role model for America’s youth, is committed to in text. Controversy will abound with the selection of the sometimes naughty Bambino. Jidge was a lot of things, some not very good, but he was not a low-order cheater, the cardinal baseball sin in the author’s opinion. Even though the great hoops star Sir Charles declared that he’s not your role model, reality dictates that athletes and especially ballplayers are role models in a highly visible and graphic Information Age. Similar to the American political climate being highly correlated to the performance of its economy as reflected in its stock market numbers, American culture is highly correlated to the pulse of the baseball environment. The observation that Synthetic Era baseball is no longer a game, unless the game is shooting fish in a barrel, in the United States of Entertainment is investigated.

The humanist movement in America has harnessed the master race and gigantamania ideologies of the Twisted Cross and Hammer & Sickle regimes into America’s Favorite National Pastime. The combined ideologies have been repackaged with Unlock the power of you and Bigger, faster, and stronger campaigns void of one key element: transformational ethics, the ethics of conscience. After all, the source of cheating to win by remaking nature was harnessed and implemented under the watch of Coach Adolph himself and was stolen by Coach Joey when he liberated the concentration camps in 1945. It’s ultimately a battle between civilization (man is one step closer to Adam and the Creator) and barbarism (man is Darwin’s Pride and, therefore, one step closer to the chimpanzee). The creation of the man-child, a.k.a. the Promethean Project, invaded capitalistic America because the big bucks are in the entertainment industry, which baseball transformed into during the Synthetic Era. Without testing for the Fountain of Youth, the sage baseball fan might conclude that Durand-Durand has possibly gone All-American on performance enhancement. Human growth hormone (HGH) or DNA85 (first marketed by Genentech—ticker symbol DNA—in 1985) is made in America, while steroids, a.k.a. synthetic manhood, were first synthesized by German scientists under the Fuhrer’s watch in 1935.

The American entitlement culture thrives on a secular-humanist softball playing field, where stealing and cheating are simply redefined to mean strategy, or the competitive edge. It’s as crazy as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declaring terrorism acts to be man-caused disasters. The question raised demanding an answer in America is, Does a person (including ballplayers) have to practice secular humanism in the public square to make it big in Synthetic Era American capitalism, where the stakes are high? The baseball portion of the question can be answered with a resounding Yes! Every single ball game has had elements of a World Series of Poker card game, with all players dealing aces off the bottom of the deck when the cameras aren’t rolling and calling this madness fair because more or less everybody is doing it!

The humanism movement in America has spawned Generation Me, looking out for number one, the antithesis to the founding Christian principles of, first and foremost, looking out for each other. Americans who are riding the humanism strike zone, such as Durand-Durand, are leading the American culture as the winners that make the rules that the losers live by. The late Leona Helmsley was quoted as saying, Religion is for little people. Synthetic Era winners in American society practice secular humanism because it’s a great big strike zone and make the rules that the losers, a.k.a. the little people, a.k.a. we the people, live by. It’s the little people in America who are responsible for its greatness and are the ones being forsaken during the Synthetic Era. Are both America and baseball like the 1998 film starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow, A Perfect Murder, and just another married couple trying to work things out? America has become a ship without a rudder, being blown in the direction of the prevailing populist wind. Our sensory-deprived populist culture, where right and wrong are synthetic concepts, will follow anything in the majority de jeur. To reclaim the strike zone, the rudder must be reinstalled and the course set toward an American Dream and American exceptionalism that is populist. Baseball is, metaphorically, Joltin’ Joe rounding second base, and so is traditional America.

Bold, fresh titans like the Big O and the Pillsbury Dough Boy pitch around the strike zone by using softball terms like secular-progressives and progressives as safe havens. The author takes aim over the heart of the zone, the hitter’s sweet spot, with, metaphorically, former Houston Yankees teammate the Smithville Head Hunter whispering in his ear, Watch your lips, as the terms secularism (rejection of religion and its value systems), liberalism (a nonreligious view of moral philosophy), and humanism (man #1, God #2 or no God, no religion, grab life by the horns) are freely and interchangeably pitched, even though there is no safe haven when two or more terms combined. While use of secular socialism offers some refuge, running the metaphorical base paths of vocabulary becomes treacherous using the more traditional expressions in any grouping. Hypocrisy exists, however, in the cavalier use of the term pro choice, which supports gruesome cruelty to humanity along with intense human suffering. Similar in nature to cholesterol having both beneficial and harmful components, progressiveness in itself is not bad since progress is needed to better mankind and society. Progressiveness that is in harmony with the principles and values of the Spirit of ’76 has merit. It’s the unprincipled nature of secularism, liberalism, and humanism that is dangerous because it shapes a cheating culture. Examples of good American progress benefiting society includes Jackie breaking the color barrier in ’47, women’s suffrage in ’20, and the Civil Rights Act of ’64. All three events forced America to live up to the true meaning of its creed. In addition, America got wise to drinking and driving dangers and has been making progress in the right direction on cell phone usage while operating a motor vehicle.

There is no large megaphone in the baseball media tackling the mass cheating issue while demanding change and transparency such as, cynically speaking, putting performance-enhancing drug (PED) testing on C-SPAN. The sports media’s subliminal message is that normalized cheating is an integral part of the game and for fans to simply sound off, then move on and be happy. Synthetic Era fans have been spoon-fed 24/7 liberal-speak, with the Little O the standard-bearer who has expanded his liberal influence into the greater American culture. Fox Sports assumed an early role in ’95 with its dead ballplayer gag order, which invigorated Generation Me while fueling the minimization of the tradition of the game. This act, coupled with the 2004 Durand-Durand-mandated gag order with respect to discussing performance-enhancing drugs, was icing on the cake. They piggybacked on the benefits of the game brought about by the Live Ball Era of ’20, breaking of the color barrier in ’47, and free agency of ’77, and duplicated the reckless abuse of the capitalistic system in baseball initiated by the Evil Emperor after the ushering in of free agency. If the liberal sports media has been so smart during the Synthetic Era, then why were they pumping the massive fraud known as the long dong chase of ’98? Under the cover of synthetic righteousness, the media has supported Major League Baseball jamming its Synthetic Era brand of baseball down the throats of the fan base. Whenever a former Big League ballplayer, whether it be a Red Sox or Ranger, exposes the baseball brass’s Synthetic Era cover-up, the media never diligently pursued the truth because they are part and parcel of the massive fraud, acting as influence peddlers. Tolerance of athletes using illegal synthetics in sports is similar in nature to tolerance of legislative earmarks by our U.S. Congress. When is enough, enough on both accounts? Calling a favorite Big League player a drug cheat is politically incorrect, radioactive, and taboo. Harsh economic consequences should be expected from the synthetically righteous powerbase celebrating the crimes. As a result, the media tacitly defends lawbreakers and rule-breakers because the end product makes good theater. To remain silent, however, is an error of omission in the same vein, but not to the extent, of the accusations brought against Pope Pius XII during World War II.

The Pillsbury Dough Boy on his September 15, 2009, broadcast was way out in left field when mocking both Waxman’s investigation of Roidger and synthetic manhood, and Orrin Hatch’s desire to investigate Bill Belicheat. It demonstrates his lack of concern about the effects of the entitlement culture in America. He belly-aches about ACORN but fails to recognize the same pitch with respect to MLB and the NFL being representative of the greater American culture that enthusiastically supports a loose with the rules environment, not just ACORN. ACORN simply lacks refinement; they are not savvy. It drives home the point that the greater cultural issue during Synthetic Era America is that right and wrong are synthetic concepts! The sensitivity of calling out inappropriate conduct in baseball is rooted in its repackaging into the trillion-dollar entertainment industry (a significant percentage of GDP), which makes it too economically important to mess with. In addition, Synthetic Era baseball has promoted unparalleled harmony among players, owners, and the Commissioner while setting attendance records in the most aesthetically pleasing ballparks ever. It’s proof positive that winning and feeling good defines right in America, and it doesn’t matter how the same is achieved! Ends–means ethics, where the majority rules, are representative of the greater American culture where the stakes are high. America is in a cultural crisis because the character of some of its role model athletes is similar to ACORN employees, as supported by the left-wing sports media, which fails miserably in the areas of due diligence and gate-keeping; sports journalism is dead!

While the general consensus calls baseball’s mass use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs the Steroid Era or the Juiced Era, the author pitches the term the Synthetic Era. Not only are illegal performance-enhancing drugs man-made (synthetic) compounds, but the American culture has gone synthetic with its new moral code of political correctness (PC), a.k.a. synthetic righteousness. PC has decisively declared truth-telling to be socially illegal so as to not hurt anybody’s feelings. To combat the liberal-fascism, the author uses baseball-speak, which is completely opposite of the belly-feel, truthiness, or Rogerspeak of the PC brigade.

Awareness has been drawn to the fact that ballplayers have been committing felonies en masse. The gross double standard has enabled synthetic manhood to become the symbol of Generation Me in baseball, which has shaped the game. The Synthetic Era is a scourge on both America and baseball. The author brings the heat to MLB, not with the best #1 pitch of his youth but with words. With almost one third of MLB ballplayers from the Caribbean, where drug laws are different, and less than one in ten MLB ballplayers having black faces with English coming out of their mouths, where are we in American society? It undermines the entire concept of American meritocracy based upon use of human agency within the rule of law. Synthetic Era baseball has created a pet strike zone of principles and values reflecting those of the bubble cultures of NY, DC, and LA (with a Windy City stench). It’s not the best and brightest in many cases, but rather those willing to game the system and in the process discriminate against the race of the decent, those playing by the rules, an ideological Jim Crow of sort.

After the January 2010 earthquake, Americans learned that Haitians are predominantly of the Catholic faith but practice voodoo. Lack of a vibrant, free market capitalist system contributes to poverty, precipitating the loss of Catholic faith, creating a vicious cycle of hopelessness and lawlessness. Many Americans are Catholic in name only but practice a form of secular humanism in the public square so as to avoid being designated undesirable. Christian principles (based upon the behavioral model of the Savior who laid down the Sacrifice) with its voluntary behavior are essential for small government and the free markets to flourish. It’s a battle for civilization; political correctness (synthetic righteousness) versus utla (the Creator’s call to righteousness). When M. L. King Jr. proclaimed to judge humans by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, as a man of deep Christian faith, did he intend to define the meaning of character to include synthetic righteousness (metaphorically the quality of the sea robin, hardhead catfish, stingray, or bonito) or the biblical Romans’ description of righteousness (metaphorically striped-bass, redfish, great white shark, or yellow-fin tuna)?

There is a correlation between secular-liberal humanism and cheating in baseball. If a secular-liberal bent is not displayed, you may be designated as undesirable. The same correlation exists in the greater American culture. Baseball marks the time in American history; to that end, coupled with its correlation to the greater American culture, BASEBALL IS AMERICA! Baseball can be used to right the wrongs of society; a call to honor, whereby the American soul is saved through America’s Pastime. America, in fact, has become a bluer (more liberal value system) America through its history. Liberalism in America, with its nose-to-the-toes and wide strike zone of tolerant behavior, reflects this by allowing baseball to jump on the bandwagon. Liberalism in baseball sometimes equals cheating but has been redefined in softball terms and called strategy or the competitive edge. High performance with integrity is out of vogue. Similar to the author’s college coach’s declaration that those California kids invented baseball, the liberal bubble cultures of NY, DC, and LA act like they invented American culture. Baseball, over time, has provided American men a vehicle for employment and, during the Synthetic Era, an automatic ticket to affluence. But when you pull away the bed sheets, has the progressive movement that assisted in breaking the color barrier in ’47 really solved the slavery scourge it intended to bury, or is the modern progressive player nothing more than a repositioning of slavery into the hands of corporate America, employing ballplayers as high-priced slaves? The corporate philosophy promotes a single, forced moralistic view, tyranny by majority, requiring a complete surrender of soul and brain to the system.

Selling one’s soul to the devil and becoming, or acting like, an unprincipled liberal acts as a safe haven similar to a base in baseball. The result is the fine art of gaming the system. Synthetic Era baseball supports the Kendall finding with both feet that personal earnings are positively correlated with misbehavior. Mad Money’s Comrade Cramer openly and bluntly puts it this way: If you’re not willing to do certain things, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game. Welcome to the Machiavellian world of Cramerica. The discrimination is in the profiling; liberals are smarter and safer to invest in because liberals, being unprincipled, afford more wiggle room in jam situations. The Baby Boom generation has been screwing things up with powerful, unprincipled liberal people in positions of authority.

Why are Americans required to adopt an excessive metaphysical or worldly view to reserve a good seat on the bus of life? Liberalism in baseball has tacitly condoned lying, cheating, and stealing while operating within a strike zone of nose-to-the-toes and wide. It’s a life-style of doing things the easy way, metaphorically, a front dive in the pike position with a 1.4 degree of difficulty and scoring 7’s for a 9.8 composite score, while traditionalists are performing 2½ summersaults with 1½ twists with a 2.9 degree of difficulty and scoring 5’s for a composite score of 14.5, but not receiving credit for the degree of difficulty. In A Child of Baseball, the author discusses the collapse of his Houston Yankees amateur team being due to most players becoming first-sackers, resulting from bad wheels as a by-product of old age. America has become a nation of left fielders, out in left field and hell-bent on folding under its own liberal weight, drowning in political correctness. Doing the best one can do is not good enough in a culture demanding doing what it takes. Is the Synthetic Era American strike zone of behavior too broad to sustain the previous greatness enjoyed?

America is a nation of laws, according to the Father of His Country, the leadoff hitter on America’s presidential scorecard. In an American entitlement culture, the question raised demanding an answer is, Which American laws should Americans really obey and which Americans are required to obey them? Americans en masse have a cavalier attitude about breaking rules and committing felonies if they serve an altruistic purpose, as evidenced by Synthetic Era baseball, which tacitly condones game-fixing because the end product creates harmony within the corporate structure and puts seats in the seats. Similar to Congress, which has an arrogant attitude toward adhering to the U. S. Constitution, MLB is casual with respect to adhering to the rule of law. Illegal immigrants who sneak across America’s southern borders and thumb their noses at the American people are similar to ballplayers sneaking illegal game-changing substances into their bodies and thumbing their noses at law-abiding players, who metaphorically are riding in the back of the bus with Rosa Parks in ’55 and eating out at Mickey D’s. Liberals will bash America as a Christian country by playing the Jim Crow gotcha game; however, there is something very culturally wrong with tacitly approving a venue that routinely breaks American law and the rules of its own game. The Last Commissioner expressly stated steroids to be against the rules of the game in ’91. In ’92, the baseball brass ran him off. Are Americans so naïve as to equate the Georgia Peach’s sharpened spikes to gain a competitive edge with the typical Synthetic Era ballplayer committing game-changing felonies?

The use of illegal synthetics, a liberal tenet on the culture war front, born out of the ’67 Summer of Love ideology, has become an American Dream game-changer on America’s diamonds during the Synthetic Era. Their potency rivals that of arming Iran with nuclear capabilities in some instances. Even though ballplayers with tight lips and guilt-ridden faces parade around game after game, the madness will never stop until the American culture abandons its forward march toward secular-liberal humanism and conducts fair and balanced, transparent, year-round testing, cynically, on C-SPAN. The issue dogging both baseball and the greater American culture is the trust factor as it relates to the people in positions of authority.

The performance-enhancing drug raid by U.S. Marshals in Fort Bend County, Texas, on May 29, 2009, addresses the greater social issue in America where everyone wants to punish the supplier but nobody wants to change behavior. While some dealers will experience American justice and be handed down double-digit years of prison terms, the users, including ballplayers, do their thing to the cheers of the crowd. In 1989, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department had to outlaw wholesale and retail sales of redfish and trout, which in effect removed the supplier (restaurants and fish markets) from the system. The Coastal Conservation Association’s Save the Redfish campaign led to the prohibition of trawling for trout and the designation of redfish and speckled trout as game fish that could no longer be commercially fished. With no wholesale or retail market to sell to, commercial fisherman and illegal gill netters had no incentive to break the law. The BASEBALL IS AMERICA trademark is a Save Baseball campaign designed to change the behavior of the baseball brass, its players, and the fans to restore honor to baseball and laterally America. True to form, baseball has continued to exercise a gross double standard of justice by using altruism as the decision rule to keep Shoeless Joe and Charlie Hustle out of baseball and keep Big Macoid and La Genius in lawyer-ball. The subliminal message is crystal clear: that lying, cheating and stealing serving an altruistic purpose is okay!

Synthetic Era America includes a culture of frothing lunacy that supports vicious violence against small children and instead of calling it what it is—child abuse—they call it health care or choice. With respect to copulation between like chromosomes, vicious anti-Christian Freud controls the pet strike zone of behavior, inviting a steady diet of homophobe pitches in the metaphorical batter’s box of chin music. Both liberal values attempt to remake nature; therefore, it makes perfect sense to drag America’s Pastime into the mix with ballplayers remaking nature in the vein of the Twisted Cross regime with its obsessive pursuit of a master race of beautiful and athletic people. Similar to the indifference of shortened life span expressed by the pro-choice brigade, the reality of diamond boys’ nine-inning game of life being shortened at an alarming rate is explored in Origins and History: The Good, Bad and the Ugly.

Prior to baseball’s free agency period, beginning in the mid-’70s, fans knew who their team was, who their guys were. It was that continuity that made baseball so special. Laterally, America knew what America stood for and what made it so exceptional. The Evil Emperor bought the Bronx Bombers in ’73 from CBS for a paltry $10 million. The combination of free agency and extreme capitalism, void of social responsibility, caused baseball to transform from, metaphorically, a married couple continuously celebrating its golden wedding anniversary to just another married couple trying to work things out. During the same time, America has been regressing (cynically speaking, progressing) from a Christian nation to just a nation of citizens, and in the process, its behavioral tolerance has changed from Big Mo’s rule book strike zone to one that is nose-to-the-toes and wide. When is enough, enough in the United States of Entertainment? When is it time to stop the lunacy? The author’s frustration level with Synthetic Era baseball can be summed up in the title of an ESPN pro football segment: Come On, Man! The author is not a traitor to the game he loves but is going rogue by metaphorically taking on his own party. To those dissenters: Come on, man! There is strength in numbers, but there is greater power in leading followers who are comfortable not thinking for themselves. Are there any real baseball fans out there?

While the author longs for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world somewhere to be found, and if baseball finds its way to the ordinary world, will it learn to survive? Rare is the man who attempts to right the wrongs of society; rarer is the man who succeeds. The author takes his cue from M.L. King Jr.: Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter. Metaphorically, it’s the bottom of the ninth inning with the entire season on the line for American liberty. It’s complicated; fixing baseball and America from top to bottom could take a generation of time provided the burning desire for American exceptionalism exists. The author has never grabbed life by the horns and gone in the direction of his dreams to live the lie he imagined. He sidelined a lucrative real estate career to write books on blind faith, similar to Ray Kinsella plowing under his cash crop cornfield. Using the infamous dialogue from The Perfect Storm, metaphorically, he never plotted a course. I set the compass, I ride it.… We’ll be in Bermuda in no time.… This is my boat. We’re gonna ride this thing out, not for fun, for safety. Do what I’ve always done: go with the flow. A Child of Baseball was a good warm-up session in the bullpen; Origins and History: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, takes the field of play. In the keeping with the author’s pitching reputation of posting peek performances with the bases loaded and nobody out, numerous jam situations are initiated: Batter up!

Part I:

In The Big Inning

Chapter 1:

Origin of Sport

Everything worldly has a Big Inning, a genesis, or an alpha: the universe, planet earth, America, sporting events, people, rally monkeys, and baseball. The rally monkey, which is closely associated with modern baseball, has its origin in America’s Favorite National Pastime beginning on June 6, 2000. The cute little furry character, as we now know him, made his debut during an Angels game in Anaheim, California, at Edison International Field versus the Baroid-led Saint Francis Giants. Despite the most prolific statistical hitter of all times clubbing his 25th tater of the season, a solo blast in the third, and the Angels trailing by a score of 5-4 entering the bottom of the ninth, two video board operators, Dean Fraulino and Jaysen Humes, took a clip of a monkey jumping around from the 1994 comedy film, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, starring Jim Carrey, and superimposed the words RALLY MONKEY! on top of it. The Angels, having last licks, pushed two runs across the plate in the bottom of the frame off of Ace Closer Robb N to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. That’s what you call a Big Inning! To the knowing eye, the box score of that game, attended by 19,764 paid fans and played in 3 hours and 36 minutes, readily surrendered the truth.

Just like the rally monkey, which had its Big Inning, a.k.a. birth or genesis, at a baseball game, the game itself had a very distant ancestor some 2,776 years earlier, tied to the birth of competitive sport in the form of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece. There are a number of myths surrounding the origin of the ancient Olympic Games. The most popular legend describes Heracles being its creator, building the Olympic stadium and surrounding buildings as an honor to his father Zeus, after completing his twelve labors. Another myth associates the first Games with the ancient Greek concept of Olympic Truce: soldiers theoretically stopped warring with each other long enough to engage in peaceful battle. The Olympic Games were held every four years beginning in 776 bc, although scholars’ opinions diverge between dates as early as 884 bc and as late as 704 bc, through ad 394, making them the longest-running recurring event in antiquity. The early Games lasted for over a thousand-year period as a result of the sheer magnitude and splendor of the event. The sporting events were only one portion of an all-consuming extravaganza lasting for days on end, with the major focus being religious in nature. Sacrifices and rituals occupied as much time as the actual sporting events. The Games were dedicated to the head god Zeus, who was also the god of thunder and lightning. Even though there were many other sporting events held in other parts of Greece, the Olympic Games were highly revered because of the sanctity of Zeus. There was an incredible aura of tradition presiding over the games because of the location, Olympia, being the most sacred spot in the ancient world. In addition, there were peripheral things that rounded out the grand festival such as artistic happenings: new painters, new writers, new sculptors plus a total pagan entertainment package that included fire-eaters, palm readers, and ladies of the evening. As many as 40,000 spectators would travel by foot from all parts of Greece to take part in the spectacle. For example, the distance from Athens was approximately 210 miles, slightly less than the distance between the Big Apple and Capital City, the City of Angels and Sin City, or Big D and Space City.

Once at the Games, the visitors endured exceptionally harsh living conditions. Even though Olympia was a stunning place and very tranquil, its location was very isolated: an ancient Bridge to Nowhere. There was just a lone inn, which only the more fortunate people occupied. The remainder of the travelers either pitched a tent or resided on a choice spot in the open countryside, exposed to the elements. Since the games were held during the summertime, when the weather was incredibly hot and dry, nobody could wash or drink water from the two nearby rivers, which had dried up. People routinely collapsed