By Edwin Cooney
As one monitors 2011 America, it is pretty easy to reach the conclusion that quite a majority of us are “fed up,” “sick and tired,” and generally incensed about both the present and the likely future that await us.
One of the most constant threads that runs through every generation is the tendency to yearn for “the good old days.” Even as most Americans welcome the conveniences that have made much of life so handy and even indulgent -- since, say, 1990 -- almost everybody seems certain that America’s future is bleak indeed! Predictions of our doom range from our becoming “a banana republic” or perhaps a colony of India or China to a possession of some Middle Eastern Muslim potentate.
Some are sure that America is about to go broke because it has surrendered to illegal immigration, secularism and socialism. Some are absolutely certain that America is about to go broke because its industrialists have abandoned the nation for cheaper labor abroad thus depriving working Americans of their traditional income. The problem, as I see it, is that no one has a clear vision of tomorrow. In short, the question is where do we go from here? What is there to look forward to?
The late Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson, two-time Democratic presidential candidate in the 1950s, used to tell of the time he got into a taxi and the cabbie asked him why he’d run for the presidency in the first place. When he responded “Why not?” the cabbie replied, “Well, if you run and you’re elected, then you’ve got nothin’ to look forward to!”
Have Americans always had something to look forward to? A peek back across the years might provide perspective:
1776 -- The Declaration of Independence is passed: we look forward to winning the war.
1781 -- Victory at Yorktown: we look forward to establishing a government.
1789 -- The Constitution had been ratified: we look forward to governing.
1803 -- Jefferson had just purchased Louisiana: it will take us a good one hundred years to settle all that land and realize our “manifest destiny" (as it will be called in 1845) -- wow!
1869 -- The Civil War is over and the modern era of mass industrial growth has arrived, signaled by completion of the Continental Railroad. “Good God!" -- There’s so much to do!
1917 -- We had settled the frontier. Now President Wilson says we’ll have to fight this European "war to end all wars" because it will save the world for Democracy: Okay, Woody, we can do it if you insist!
1933 -- This Depression is terrible! Will FDR’s “New Deal” experiment work? We must eagerly wait and see!
1945 -- The boys are back from World War II: now there are people to educate, careers to establish and, best of all, a bunch of new babies to create. Let’s call ‘em “baby boomers.” This will be fun!
1961 -- JFK says it is time to get “moving again with vigor” -- Of course, we can beat those "Godless Communists" to the moon. Just watch and see!
1981 -- Now that the Vietnam War is over and we’ve gotten rid of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Carter, it is time to reform with Ronnie and Nancy. Let’s apply a combination of old economic principles and tough business efficiency and we’ll build “a city on a hill.”
2001 -- Ah nuts! Okay, we’ll save the world from Osama Bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein -- Crime never pays. We know what to do with bad dudes like these.
2008 -- Oh, my God! GWB has let business run amuck again. He insists we taxpayers have to bailout big banking and big business. Will our new president Barack Obama fall in line?
2010 -- Health Care is expensive and Obama wants the taxpayer to pay for it? What will they want from us next?
2011 -- Despite the fact that the White House is still theirs, the Democrats are divided. Meanwhile, the hungry Republicans certainly hate Obama more than they love us! -- Where do we go from here? What is there to look forward to?
For each of these events, resolution involved less than noble occurrences and anxious times. Each era had its villains and its heroes. There were those who regarded the challenges faced in each new crisis as sins of the latest reckless and disrespectful generation. So, what’s next?
Does President Obama’s idea of building a strong solar Green Energy industry while at the same time reorganizing health care and financing infrastructure reconstruction make sense? Will you let it quicken your pulse?
Does the GOP’s plan of continued tax relief to those they insist are the only ones who can legitimately finance prosperity -- the rich -- give you that essential self-confidence?
If only we can steady our nerves and cool our fear driven anger, the wholesome answer to our future will drop into our laps like autumn apples.
The answers we anxiously seek can be found in the gifts of tomorrow. Each tomorrow possesses three magical gifts. They are: more dispassionate information, a greater perspective based on ever increasing knowledge of our resources and opportunities, and that vital wisdom to make the best possible choices.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
ABRAHAM LINCOLN--AMERICA’S GREATEST HISTORIC NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT
By Edwin Cooney
Last Thursday, April 14, 2011, marked the 146th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln may be a martyr, but he was far from being a “saint,” political or spiritual. He would never have been comfortable with absolute purity or perfection! He was much too plain and practical a man to become too lofty, but some height -- political and legal, of course -- was necessary if he was to be an effective servant of the people. Thus, the six foot four prairie lawyer sought and won the highest office in the gift of plain-spoken “folks.”
Over the past few months, I have spent many hours reading of President Lincoln’s life and times in preparation for a two-part lecture I delivered which focused on Mr. Lincoln’s major presidential decisions. These decisions included: Lincoln's insistence that if a war was to occur, the South would be the aggressor rather than the victim; his willingness to overlook some of the pretences of cabinet members in their attempts to control him; his decision to suspend habeas corpus and thus deny “speedy” trials of men who were sabotaging the president’s efforts to secure the city of Washington and the State of Maryland for the Union; the president’s decision to disallow General John C. Fremont’s 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation; and finally, the evolution of the president’s decision to issue his own Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 which would take effect on January 1, 1863.
His genius was in what he foresaw. Many asserted it was silly and outrageous for Lincoln to declare emancipation of a people he didn’t control while at the same time allowing for slavery in states that never abandoned the Union. It didn’t make sense unless you understood what Lincoln understood.
The South would destroy itself by not coming back into the Union and the crucial slave states that remained in the Union would become a political minority once victory over the South had occurred. Thus, emancipation was not only moral but practical! As head of the executive branch of the government, he couldn’t constitutionally outlaw slavery, but as Commander-in-Chief of the army in wartime he could recruit blacks as soldiers and issue the wartime orders that dealt with “enemy property.” After all, didn’t the South consider blacks to be property and wasn’t property the legitimate issue during most wars?
Abraham Lincoln never ran away from either of his professions, lawyer or politician. However, like every other red-blooded American politician, he would defend himself against political attack. Lincoln’s face was, like the rest of his physique, long and boney — a long way from being even close to handsome. Thus, on the campaign trail when he once was called “two-faced,” he responded by asserting to an audience: "Now I’ll leave it to you…If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
Then it was Good Friday and Easter weekend -- the first peaceful Easter in four springs. Abraham and Mary Lincoln chose to attend Ford’s Theater. Just after 10:30 p.m., while his bodyguard John F. Parker, innocently (if recklessly) slipped away to have a drink or two while the Lincolns were safely in the theater, along came the angry and vengeful John Wilkes Booth.
Suddenly, this imperfect man with clear political and even spiritual foresight was no more. As his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (once one of Lincoln’s biggest detractors) so eloquently and tearfully put it: “Now he belongs to the ages!”
There are two aspects of that night of national bereavement which you may find interesting.
The Lincolns were accompanied to the theater by Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris. Actually, Clara Harris was Rathbone’s stepsister, but they could marry since there was no blood relationship between them. On July 11, 1867, they did marry. However, there was tragedy in the marriage.
The couple had three children, one of whom, Henry Riggs Rathbone (1870-1928) became an Illinois Congressman. In 1882, Rathbone was appointed American Consul at Hanover, Germany. There already was some indication of Rathbone’s declining mental health. However, Rathbone’s mental health deteriorated completely on December 23, 1883 when he threatened the lives of his children and stabbed Clara to death. He would spend the remaining 27 years of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane in Germany.
Closer to the Lincoln legacy are the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets. For some mysterious reason, this information wasn’t released until April 12, 1976, but here is what they found: two pairs of spectacles, one chamois lens cleaner, an ivory and silver pocket knife, one white (slightly used) Irish linen handkerchief with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch fob without a watch, a new silk-lined leather wallet which contained a pencil, a Confederate five dollar bill, news clippings about unrest in the Confederate army, an article about the 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation, the 1864 Union Party platform (the name given the Lincoln/Johnson 1864 national ticket), and an article on the presidency by author John Bright.
To his family, “humble” prairie lawyer and politician Abraham Lincoln left an estate valued at $111,000.
To the people, who elected him president and to their posterity, he reinvigorated Jefferson’s “promissory note of equality” which Dr. Martin Luther King and others insisted upon “cashing in” exactly 100 years later!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Last Thursday, April 14, 2011, marked the 146th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln may be a martyr, but he was far from being a “saint,” political or spiritual. He would never have been comfortable with absolute purity or perfection! He was much too plain and practical a man to become too lofty, but some height -- political and legal, of course -- was necessary if he was to be an effective servant of the people. Thus, the six foot four prairie lawyer sought and won the highest office in the gift of plain-spoken “folks.”
Over the past few months, I have spent many hours reading of President Lincoln’s life and times in preparation for a two-part lecture I delivered which focused on Mr. Lincoln’s major presidential decisions. These decisions included: Lincoln's insistence that if a war was to occur, the South would be the aggressor rather than the victim; his willingness to overlook some of the pretences of cabinet members in their attempts to control him; his decision to suspend habeas corpus and thus deny “speedy” trials of men who were sabotaging the president’s efforts to secure the city of Washington and the State of Maryland for the Union; the president’s decision to disallow General John C. Fremont’s 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation; and finally, the evolution of the president’s decision to issue his own Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 which would take effect on January 1, 1863.
His genius was in what he foresaw. Many asserted it was silly and outrageous for Lincoln to declare emancipation of a people he didn’t control while at the same time allowing for slavery in states that never abandoned the Union. It didn’t make sense unless you understood what Lincoln understood.
The South would destroy itself by not coming back into the Union and the crucial slave states that remained in the Union would become a political minority once victory over the South had occurred. Thus, emancipation was not only moral but practical! As head of the executive branch of the government, he couldn’t constitutionally outlaw slavery, but as Commander-in-Chief of the army in wartime he could recruit blacks as soldiers and issue the wartime orders that dealt with “enemy property.” After all, didn’t the South consider blacks to be property and wasn’t property the legitimate issue during most wars?
Abraham Lincoln never ran away from either of his professions, lawyer or politician. However, like every other red-blooded American politician, he would defend himself against political attack. Lincoln’s face was, like the rest of his physique, long and boney — a long way from being even close to handsome. Thus, on the campaign trail when he once was called “two-faced,” he responded by asserting to an audience: "Now I’ll leave it to you…If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
Then it was Good Friday and Easter weekend -- the first peaceful Easter in four springs. Abraham and Mary Lincoln chose to attend Ford’s Theater. Just after 10:30 p.m., while his bodyguard John F. Parker, innocently (if recklessly) slipped away to have a drink or two while the Lincolns were safely in the theater, along came the angry and vengeful John Wilkes Booth.
Suddenly, this imperfect man with clear political and even spiritual foresight was no more. As his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (once one of Lincoln’s biggest detractors) so eloquently and tearfully put it: “Now he belongs to the ages!”
There are two aspects of that night of national bereavement which you may find interesting.
The Lincolns were accompanied to the theater by Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris. Actually, Clara Harris was Rathbone’s stepsister, but they could marry since there was no blood relationship between them. On July 11, 1867, they did marry. However, there was tragedy in the marriage.
The couple had three children, one of whom, Henry Riggs Rathbone (1870-1928) became an Illinois Congressman. In 1882, Rathbone was appointed American Consul at Hanover, Germany. There already was some indication of Rathbone’s declining mental health. However, Rathbone’s mental health deteriorated completely on December 23, 1883 when he threatened the lives of his children and stabbed Clara to death. He would spend the remaining 27 years of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane in Germany.
Closer to the Lincoln legacy are the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets. For some mysterious reason, this information wasn’t released until April 12, 1976, but here is what they found: two pairs of spectacles, one chamois lens cleaner, an ivory and silver pocket knife, one white (slightly used) Irish linen handkerchief with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch fob without a watch, a new silk-lined leather wallet which contained a pencil, a Confederate five dollar bill, news clippings about unrest in the Confederate army, an article about the 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation, the 1864 Union Party platform (the name given the Lincoln/Johnson 1864 national ticket), and an article on the presidency by author John Bright.
To his family, “humble” prairie lawyer and politician Abraham Lincoln left an estate valued at $111,000.
To the people, who elected him president and to their posterity, he reinvigorated Jefferson’s “promissory note of equality” which Dr. Martin Luther King and others insisted upon “cashing in” exactly 100 years later!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, April 11, 2011
“TELL ME! TELL ME! PLEASE TELL ME TRUE!"
By Edwin Cooney
A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an article by military attorney Ward Boston who bitterly complained about a “cover up” concerning Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty on Thursday, June 8, 1967 during its Six Day War with Egypt.
Cover ups have been all the rage in America since President Kennedy‘s assassination and President Nixon’s “Watergate Caper."
Of course, everyone wants -- or says they want -- “the truth” all the time.
“Did you, my lad, deliberately spray ink on sister Susie’s white sweater?”
“Susie, did you cheat on that math quiz as teacher insists?”
“Is it true that Churchill deliberately let the German Luftwaffe bomb Coventry?”
“Did FDR know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor?”
Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, as I understand it, on the above public questions, but first let’s examine the value of “the truth.”
How valuable is the truth to you or me on any single occasion? Can the truth in fact be far more damaging than strengthening? Is our “entitlement” to the truth a guarantor of a healthy existence?
Fortunately, there are few among us who are comfortable believing that their wellbeing is best served by a lie. There are, however, occasions when “less than the truth” is essential to one’s outlook. Sadly, it is often necessary to withhold the truth about the presence of catastrophic illness especially from young children and elderly adults. Even in matters of the heart, while a lie may be emotionally toxic, it might be better to delay the truth about one’s feelings for a potential partner until the relationship is more mature or until outside factors more clearly verify what direction the relationship is taking.
Like its cousin Logic, Truth -- with respect to the circumstances -- is the evaluation of what to do about difficult situations. Truth and logic are too often considered the sole legitimate tools in determining the best solutions to modern problem solving. “Why?” you may ask. The answer is simple, but also a bit disconcerting. There are small truths and big truths—even more, there are very often many truths about a situation all clamoring for attention.
Then there’s that wonderful observation by President Kennedy of which I’m very fond:
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic…”
Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, Polish Intelligence gave Britain and France the German’s Enigma Intelligence Codes which it had broken into as early as 1932. Thus, British Intelligence knew the truth about a lot of German military activities in advance. Hence, there is the question of whether the British Government knew in advance about the devastation that was about to be visited on the people of Coventry -- that night from hell -- in November 1940. Thus, an element of truth can be vulnerability! That particular air attack might well have been a German test to determine whether Britain had its Enigma Code!
As to the truth about whether FDR knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I insist it’s the wrong question. What could FDR have done about it if he’d known? He could hardly stop it. I insist that if he’d known, he’d have never let those battleships sit there, targets for years of Japanese resentment against America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the time he was a lad, simply loved boats too much. Furthermore, he loved the U.S. Navy having, in a way, inherited the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy from his fifth cousin Teddy Roosevelt. The right question has to do with the wisdom and effectiveness of FDR’s foreign policy toward Japan up to December 7, 1941.
Ward Boston, the military counselor, insisted that LBJ and Robert McNamara deliberately buried his original findings about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. He may well have been pining for the wrong truth. The pride and fate of at least four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, Egypt and Israel) were all at stake. Two of these nations had nuclear weapons and competing interests. Add to that the prestige and complexities of four intelligence services that relied on rumor and circumstance to justify their value to these four governments during wartime and you have disasters anxious to happen. In short, LBJ and McNamara may well have been dealing with truths far more significant than the mere existence of prejudices pro or con.
Since truth is the product of integrity and integrity is one of the most vital of human traits, I offer this piece of unsolicited advice: all truth seekers should be certain that their search for the truth will be both nurturing and just to everyone with whom it’s shared!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an article by military attorney Ward Boston who bitterly complained about a “cover up” concerning Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty on Thursday, June 8, 1967 during its Six Day War with Egypt.
Cover ups have been all the rage in America since President Kennedy‘s assassination and President Nixon’s “Watergate Caper."
Of course, everyone wants -- or says they want -- “the truth” all the time.
“Did you, my lad, deliberately spray ink on sister Susie’s white sweater?”
“Susie, did you cheat on that math quiz as teacher insists?”
“Is it true that Churchill deliberately let the German Luftwaffe bomb Coventry?”
“Did FDR know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor?”
Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, as I understand it, on the above public questions, but first let’s examine the value of “the truth.”
How valuable is the truth to you or me on any single occasion? Can the truth in fact be far more damaging than strengthening? Is our “entitlement” to the truth a guarantor of a healthy existence?
Fortunately, there are few among us who are comfortable believing that their wellbeing is best served by a lie. There are, however, occasions when “less than the truth” is essential to one’s outlook. Sadly, it is often necessary to withhold the truth about the presence of catastrophic illness especially from young children and elderly adults. Even in matters of the heart, while a lie may be emotionally toxic, it might be better to delay the truth about one’s feelings for a potential partner until the relationship is more mature or until outside factors more clearly verify what direction the relationship is taking.
Like its cousin Logic, Truth -- with respect to the circumstances -- is the evaluation of what to do about difficult situations. Truth and logic are too often considered the sole legitimate tools in determining the best solutions to modern problem solving. “Why?” you may ask. The answer is simple, but also a bit disconcerting. There are small truths and big truths—even more, there are very often many truths about a situation all clamoring for attention.
Then there’s that wonderful observation by President Kennedy of which I’m very fond:
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic…”
Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, Polish Intelligence gave Britain and France the German’s Enigma Intelligence Codes which it had broken into as early as 1932. Thus, British Intelligence knew the truth about a lot of German military activities in advance. Hence, there is the question of whether the British Government knew in advance about the devastation that was about to be visited on the people of Coventry -- that night from hell -- in November 1940. Thus, an element of truth can be vulnerability! That particular air attack might well have been a German test to determine whether Britain had its Enigma Code!
As to the truth about whether FDR knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I insist it’s the wrong question. What could FDR have done about it if he’d known? He could hardly stop it. I insist that if he’d known, he’d have never let those battleships sit there, targets for years of Japanese resentment against America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the time he was a lad, simply loved boats too much. Furthermore, he loved the U.S. Navy having, in a way, inherited the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy from his fifth cousin Teddy Roosevelt. The right question has to do with the wisdom and effectiveness of FDR’s foreign policy toward Japan up to December 7, 1941.
Ward Boston, the military counselor, insisted that LBJ and Robert McNamara deliberately buried his original findings about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. He may well have been pining for the wrong truth. The pride and fate of at least four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, Egypt and Israel) were all at stake. Two of these nations had nuclear weapons and competing interests. Add to that the prestige and complexities of four intelligence services that relied on rumor and circumstance to justify their value to these four governments during wartime and you have disasters anxious to happen. In short, LBJ and McNamara may well have been dealing with truths far more significant than the mere existence of prejudices pro or con.
Since truth is the product of integrity and integrity is one of the most vital of human traits, I offer this piece of unsolicited advice: all truth seekers should be certain that their search for the truth will be both nurturing and just to everyone with whom it’s shared!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, April 4, 2011
BASEBALL — THE REALM OF ETERNAL HOPE
By Edwin Cooney
As the smell of fresh mown grass and the sound of bat against baseball replace the sensations left by Jack Frost, there exists in the land a new optimism.
In 1954, the French-born educator Jacques Barzun observed (in part) that anyone who wanted to understand the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. There are millions of Americans, of course, who are less than fanatical about our “national pastime.” Nevertheless, many of baseball’s elements such as symmetry, balance and equity are widely prized by every American (with the possible exception of your angry significant other or mother-in-law!). Hence this last weekend, the activities of less than a thousand professional baseball players, coaches, managers, general managers, and corporate owners have been at the center of focus for close to 300 million Americans.
Our fascination for this game that wasn’t really invented by Abner Doubleday is generally drawn from three sources: our fascination with symmetrical and analyzable statistics, our need for benign drama, and our fascination with the cultural and human dynamics of life. This third source of energy is what, more than anything else, draws this fan to baseball.
As I’ve written before, from the moment I discovered that Dizzy Dean, the great Cardinal’s pitcher, hated school, and that one of baseball’s greatest hitters, Ted Williams, hated to wear a necktie, adult baseball players became as real to me as my real life twelve and thirteen year-old friends.
The realm of baseball certainly has no monopoly on the best or the worst of human attitudes or actions, but somehow it places them in a special perspective.
You and I, understandably, have come to believe that the most satisfactory part of playing professional baseball for the player has to be the incredible salaries these highly skilled athletes receive. However, if we’re to believe the testimony of one Sanford (Sandy) Koufax (born Sanford Braun on December 30th, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York), the most satisfying part of playing major league baseball occurs off the field and has only peripherally to do with money. According to the exceedingly handsome and erudite former Dodger lefthander, the most satisfying part of playing baseball occurs during those fifteen minutes with teammates in the winning clubhouse after winning the World Series.
Roy Campanella, the late great Brooklyn Dodger catcher, once observed that although it is a man’s game, “…you have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living!” Thus, even with all of the essential statistical and socio-ethnic analysis the game is subjected to these days, the actions and characteristics of its players give baseball its richness.
Superstition is traditional in baseball even extending to salary negotiations. Take the case of former Mets pitcher Steven John (Turk) Wendell. Flaky Turk had a thing about the number nine. Since someone else had uniform number nine when he joined the Mets in 1997, he asked for uniform ninety-nine. Three years later, when the Mets offered him a ten million dollar three year contract, he objected. He asked for one penny less than ten million dollars and received $9,999,999.99.
Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn was a fierce competitor. Wynn would work himself into a ferocious hatred for batters by imagining that the seventeen-inch area of home plate was his personal office. Only he, Early (Gus) Wynn, had the right to work in his office. Any batter with the temerity to swing a bat through Wynn’s office was definitely subject to what old time pitchers used to call “chin music” -- a brushback pitch.
Back in the 1960s, two of the game’s mightier men were Steve Hamilton, a six foot seven inch Yankee reliever, and Tony Horton, a six foot three inch first baseman with the Cleveland Indians. Hamilton, a left-hander, occasionally used to throw what he called a “folly floater” especially to big right-handed power hitters. The ball, ever so slowly, would float toward the plate causing overanxious power hitters to swing prematurely inevitably missing the pitch. They’d ultimately strike out embarrassing themselves in the process. One day, Horton challenged Hamilton to throw that pitch to him at least three times when he was at bat. If he struck out, he’d crawl, in front of the thousands attending the game, back to the Indians dugout. Hamilton threw Horton three “folly floaters” and Mr. Horton kept his word.
As is life, every baseball season is packed with the unpredictable, the unimaginable and sometimes the unfathomable.
As for Jacques Barzun, the 103 year old distinguished man of letters, a 2003 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, and the 2010 recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, my guess is that if he’d become a ballplayer -- we’d know him simply as Jack Barnes!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As the smell of fresh mown grass and the sound of bat against baseball replace the sensations left by Jack Frost, there exists in the land a new optimism.
In 1954, the French-born educator Jacques Barzun observed (in part) that anyone who wanted to understand the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. There are millions of Americans, of course, who are less than fanatical about our “national pastime.” Nevertheless, many of baseball’s elements such as symmetry, balance and equity are widely prized by every American (with the possible exception of your angry significant other or mother-in-law!). Hence this last weekend, the activities of less than a thousand professional baseball players, coaches, managers, general managers, and corporate owners have been at the center of focus for close to 300 million Americans.
Our fascination for this game that wasn’t really invented by Abner Doubleday is generally drawn from three sources: our fascination with symmetrical and analyzable statistics, our need for benign drama, and our fascination with the cultural and human dynamics of life. This third source of energy is what, more than anything else, draws this fan to baseball.
As I’ve written before, from the moment I discovered that Dizzy Dean, the great Cardinal’s pitcher, hated school, and that one of baseball’s greatest hitters, Ted Williams, hated to wear a necktie, adult baseball players became as real to me as my real life twelve and thirteen year-old friends.
The realm of baseball certainly has no monopoly on the best or the worst of human attitudes or actions, but somehow it places them in a special perspective.
You and I, understandably, have come to believe that the most satisfactory part of playing professional baseball for the player has to be the incredible salaries these highly skilled athletes receive. However, if we’re to believe the testimony of one Sanford (Sandy) Koufax (born Sanford Braun on December 30th, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York), the most satisfying part of playing major league baseball occurs off the field and has only peripherally to do with money. According to the exceedingly handsome and erudite former Dodger lefthander, the most satisfying part of playing baseball occurs during those fifteen minutes with teammates in the winning clubhouse after winning the World Series.
Roy Campanella, the late great Brooklyn Dodger catcher, once observed that although it is a man’s game, “…you have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living!” Thus, even with all of the essential statistical and socio-ethnic analysis the game is subjected to these days, the actions and characteristics of its players give baseball its richness.
Superstition is traditional in baseball even extending to salary negotiations. Take the case of former Mets pitcher Steven John (Turk) Wendell. Flaky Turk had a thing about the number nine. Since someone else had uniform number nine when he joined the Mets in 1997, he asked for uniform ninety-nine. Three years later, when the Mets offered him a ten million dollar three year contract, he objected. He asked for one penny less than ten million dollars and received $9,999,999.99.
Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn was a fierce competitor. Wynn would work himself into a ferocious hatred for batters by imagining that the seventeen-inch area of home plate was his personal office. Only he, Early (Gus) Wynn, had the right to work in his office. Any batter with the temerity to swing a bat through Wynn’s office was definitely subject to what old time pitchers used to call “chin music” -- a brushback pitch.
Back in the 1960s, two of the game’s mightier men were Steve Hamilton, a six foot seven inch Yankee reliever, and Tony Horton, a six foot three inch first baseman with the Cleveland Indians. Hamilton, a left-hander, occasionally used to throw what he called a “folly floater” especially to big right-handed power hitters. The ball, ever so slowly, would float toward the plate causing overanxious power hitters to swing prematurely inevitably missing the pitch. They’d ultimately strike out embarrassing themselves in the process. One day, Horton challenged Hamilton to throw that pitch to him at least three times when he was at bat. If he struck out, he’d crawl, in front of the thousands attending the game, back to the Indians dugout. Hamilton threw Horton three “folly floaters” and Mr. Horton kept his word.
As is life, every baseball season is packed with the unpredictable, the unimaginable and sometimes the unfathomable.
As for Jacques Barzun, the 103 year old distinguished man of letters, a 2003 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, and the 2010 recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, my guess is that if he’d become a ballplayer -- we’d know him simply as Jack Barnes!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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