The Pecan Park Eagle

A Humble Jack Handey Remembrance of Father’s Day 2017

Deep Baseball Thoughts ~ with Apologies to Jack Handey

Back in the 1990’s, a fictional philosopher named “Jack Handey” published thousands of random thoughts on life that really were intended as little tickles upon our also randomly varied funny bones. The following are little more than a humble attempt to take aim again, this time upon the aspect of life that so many of us embrace as baseball. If none of them winch even a smile, just remember, none were intended to harm.

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When Yogi Berra said, ”It ain’t over til it’s over,” was he talking about the ball game or life itself? Either way, it makes sense, but so it does also make a connection when applied to a big credit card debt – or a bad case of diarrhea – or just about anything else that matters to us on a large or small term scale. Maybe Yogi was simply trying to remind us that some human discomforts all call for the utterance of the universal “harrumph”- it ain’t over til it’s over!”

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When you are a late inning reliever in trouble – and your pitching coach comes out to the mound to whisper, “make him swing at the ball, but don’t give him anything good enough to hit really well,” isn’t he just asking you to do what any Hall of Fame closer would d0 99% of the time under these same circumstances?

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Why do so many stadiums have those yellow lines along the top of seven to ten feet high outfield fences that make any batted ball that hits the yellow part on the fly a home run? When it only appears to happen, but the eyes are not sure, it seems we too often then have to go to the replay for five minutes to confirm or deny it’s status as a homer. – Wouldn’t it be easier to simply do away with the yellow line and call the balls that clear the fence home runs – and treat all those that bounce back on the field off the fence as balls in play?

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Aside from misunderstanding or disregarding the fact that making the All Star Game winner (2002-2016) the determining factor as to which league would have home field advantage in the World Series for so many years, what else did Bud Selig do to violate the integrity of the game, yet, still manage to leave himself a shoo-in first ballot selection for the 2017 Induction Class at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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“Buy me some nachos and Cracker Jack; Terry Francona craves seeds-in-a-sack!”

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We all smiled when our still grieving widowed Grandpa went trucking off alone to Minute Maid Park with his scorecard and money enough for a few beers with other Astros fans, but we weren’t smiling when he came home drunk the next morning with the pie-eyed old lady in the JR Richard jersey who would too soon thereafter become our first step-Grandma for about two months.

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Infield Sign says: “NO PEPPER GAMES. AND GO EASY ON THE SALT.”

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Remember forever the wisdom of our baseball elders. 20-game winner Ned Garver of the 1951 last place 102-loss St. Louis Browns put it this way: “Our fans never booed us. They wouldn’t dare. We outnumbered them.”

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Happy Father’s and Mother’s Day, Everybody! And among baseball fans, especially, we do mean everybody! And why not? It’s just an easy way to remind ourselves that, in baseball, the fans eventually get to pay for everything that happens in the name of our national pastime!

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Tags: Deep Baseball Thoughts ~ with Apologies to Jack Handey

This entry was posted on June 17, 2017 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.