"The universe is nothing but stories"
--a possibly very paraphrased anonymous quote
My name is Thornton and I'm a baseball addict. I almost beat the addiction in 2010, wasn't aware the San Francisco Giants were close to getting into the post-season playoffs until about 2 weeks before they did. I had a conversation with a cashier where EYE was the "expert" on the multiple ways the team could extend their season. It was strange.
They got to and won the "World" Series. One of the KNBR radio (and tv) announcers said on-air one day, of the 2010 season, "It's torture!" That became the slogan for the season, and that slogan has returned for the 2011 season.
The real torture is that the word itself is being used to describe a game played by adults earning millions of dollars. We've tortured ourselves in Amerikkka with our attitude about torturing people to get information from them so we can "win" a "war on terrorism". The torture of anyone is a worse crime than ALMOST anything anyone may have done. It sucks us all into a mental hall of mirrors that reflects poorly on our Amerikkkan Dreams about what and who we think we are.
"Our" governments, state and national, torture us with Budget Brawls, budget cuts, promises and threats of more of the same, and many people have joined the rest of us with no jobs, no homes, and no ability to trust anyone who says they can help us get back in the saddle.
We've said it before, we'll say it some more. Some who read these words think WE'RE TORTURING THEM, from comments we've gotten on this website. Yeah, right.
I'd like those commenters to give up everything my POORMagazine sister Ingrid DeLeon has. I'd like them to walk every day in the shoes of a Vietnam war vet we recently met at a First Tuesday Newsroom. "Papa Bear" is his nickname. He is a victim of George W. Bush, who demanded that some Vietnam vets with documented disabilities have their cases reconsidered, an act which put Papa Bear on the streets. Papa Bear is tortured every day by the memories of what his country asked him to do.
POOR Magazine Elder Skolah "Bad News" Bruce Allison is also a Vietnam War vet, with memories just as nightmarish as Papa Bear's. Baseball isn't torture, unless your city has been "asked" to spend millions of dollars to build a stadium, torturing the city budget while the team owners could easily pay their own way.
San Francisco went crazy the night the Giants won the 2010 "World" Series. I watched the big screen set up across the street from City Hall until I realized that no matter how the game ended, getting home would instantly become...torture. I got home just in time to see the last pitch of that game.
What followed was hours of loud ear-torture craziness. People seem to have developed a bottomless leg thirst for pleasure in the reflected glory of millionaire game plaers, Bay To Breakers elite marathon runners, stars dancing on tv, etc.
What I love most about baseball is the stories. If you read my article GENTRIFUCKATIONS OF THE SOUL, we don't believe in story (herstory or history) enough, we don't believe in truth enough, though I didn't put it exactly like that. POOR Magazine's Tony Robles is all about the stories the old manongs tell, Tiny is constantly writing a new chapter in the story of what it means to be Daughter of Dee.
The San Francisco Giants recently got rained out of Chicago, winning a game called in the 6th Inning, not playing the next game. I listened to the KNBR "Midnight Replay" of the shortened game. The radio talkers spent the entire delay-before-the-calling-of-the-game doing nothing but what Tiny calls "Talk/Story", telling stories about baseball players. I loved it. Baseball is at its best when Talk/Story rules.
So are we.
Can people just have fun with each other and/or their families without watching millionaires and billionaires spend the money they throw at them to entertain them with a game?
The National Football League owners and players are in a lock-out war over how much money rookies and veterans get paid, and how much more money owners get to keep. The NFL, MLB (Major League Baseball) and other sports leagues have tortured their fans this way, and KNBR has reported that the television networks are busy planning all-college-football on tv when the football season starts because they expect the lock-out may still be in place.
Perhaps the answer is no, we can't just have fun with each other, we're all addicted to this spectacle of money and gazillionaires? Thinking about it can be torture. Not thinking about it is worse.