Hillbilly Exodus

 “Where ya bin, sonny?”

“Out back, Mamaw, sayin’ goodbye to the pig.”

“You ain’t really leavin’ now, is you”

“Yes, I gotta go, Mamaw. My future awaits.”

“But you could stay; the reverend Higgins said he’d git you a place in The Bucket of Blood Bible College. You don’t need to leave these hills.”

“I told you before, Mamaw, that Harvard is the place to be. All the rich folks’ sons go there. I aim to find one who’ll be my friend and take me with him when he starts his own company out in California.”

“And how are you goin’ to git to Harvard.? You gonna have to take one of those air-e-o-planes? I don’t trust me them flying machines. If you go to Bucket of Blood, you could stay here with the pig and take the bus over the mountain.”

“But if I go to Bucket of Blood, I cain’t make money to get us out of these hills.”

“But, sonny, I like it here, all convenient with the water pump just down the road.”

“Mamaw, when I’m rich, I’m a-gonna take you away from here and move you to —”

“To where, sonny?”

“To Ohio!”

“I just a-noticed. What’s that on your feet?

“Thems shoes”

“Shoes? Whatever for?”

“In the big cities the streets ain’t made of dust and it’s a-hard walking them.”

“I caint believe you’re really a-going. But give your Mamaw a big hug a-fore you go and tell her you love her.”

“You know I love you more’n anything for all you gave me. But one thing does bother me, though—why you didn’t give me a real first name, only just initials.”

 

Where Are You, Chico Carrasquel?

This past Monday, there surfaced once again the Annual Midsummer Abomination—Major League Baseball’s Home Run Hitting Derby.*

The Home Run Derby totally distorts what baseball (indeed, all sports) is all about—a test between offensive power and defensive resistance. Sports are trials, challenges—like climbing mountains. As George Leigh Mallory replied when asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, “Because it is there.” Consider soccer: the challenge is to put one more ball into the opposition’s net than they can deposit into yours. Your team must not only attempt to contrive an offensive threat to the opposition, but to prevent the opposition from mounting a decisive threat against your goal. It would be all so easy if you were the only team on the field, but as Jean-Paul Sartre has stated, “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

And the opposite team is not necessarily your equal. It is often the case that a less talented side will set up to manfully defend against an opponent of greater offensive prowess. If the more fancied side doesn’t prevail, its manager will often complain afterwards that the opposition “parked the bus,” a term coined by José Mourinho. Expressed here is the attitude that offensive skills shouldn’t be negated by defensive tactics. “Let us play how we want, you rascals!” But looked at from the defensive point of view, the proper response is, “If you’re so good, prove it! Try to break us down.”

In baseball, the game is not about serving up powderpuff pitches to be hit over fences. In a way, the essence of the sport was captured well over a century ago by Wee Willie Keeler: "Hit 'em where they ain’t." The offense tries to find holes in the defense, while the defense is alert to close the holes. Think of a shortstop going deep into the hole between short and third to snare a ground ball seemingly destined to be through into left field. 

*

Willie Mays, who died last month, was one of the outstanding talents in the history of baseball. He was a massive offensive threat throughout his 23 seasons in Major League Baseball. He hit 660 home runs. But out of all his feats perhaps what he is most remembered for is “The Catch.” In game one of the 1954 World Series, Cleveland Indian power hitter Vic Wirtz hit a massive fly ball to the deepest part of center field of New York’s Polo Grounds; Mays raced back to within a foot of the wall, made an over-the-shoulder catch, and, with cap flying off his head, swung around to throw a dart back to the infield.**

That is what sport is about: great defense against great offense. 

Without a defensive challenge, sport would be like taking candy from a baby—no kudos for that.

***

* Did you think I was going to say “the Republican Convention”? That’s the Quadrennial Midsummer Abomination.

** https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MiqbL39Fu4Q

Language Follies 15 (What's it all about, Umlaut?)

What’s Umlaut All About?

                                             Häagen-Dazs

                                        

                                     

What’s with all the fake umlauts? Are they supposed to evoke a feeling of exoticism, culture, individuality, or what? 

I hate the falseness, the fatuity of those efforts. I will never have any truck with their propagators. I would happily see them in Hölle. 

*

What is worse than a pedant?

Answer: a pretentious pedant.

My LFS (Least Favorite Scotsman) has been a regular commentator on Fox Network’s telecasts of the 2024 European Football Championship (The Euros, for short). The best way for me to inform you of why he is such an annoyance to me is to quote from a post by reader Cranston Bickle in The Guardian:

  

Every year I so look forward to these competitions until the day when it dawns on me that Fox has once more been given the task of broadcasting it. It’s an awful watch - normally in my animated state I should be shouting at the failed passes or lack of advancement by the England team, but I invariably end up shouting at the commentators for the awful pronouncing of player names, especially when for added spice they try and do it with the accent of the poor players homeland. It seems they’ve been given Rammstein CDs to learn German, pronouncing city names with the gusto of a Nazi prison guard in a bad 70s war movie. 

But the truly amazing thing about LFS, who chews delightedly on the Leipzigs and Gelsenkirchens of the world, is that like so many other British commentators he can’t seem to pronounce the “Copa” in Copa America correctly.

*

Today’s “Plus Ça Change” Report (or Republicans on the Mountain)

Cartoon in The New Yorker in 1963:

Six decades or so later:

A Trump tweet 

An offering from Jon McNaughton (“My art reflects who I am and doesn’t use nuance or shades of grey to make my point.”)

Of course, the major league suck-up governor of South Dakota joined in:

January 21, 2021

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Thursday said she gave former president Donald Trump a $1,100 bust depicting the president on Mount Rushmore last year because she knew it was something he wanted to receive.

Not to be completely negative, I offer here the opportunity for Trump to be depicted on Mt. Rushmore with the four great presidents: