Getting to Second Base

I just had a neighbor pretend not to see me and cross a street he wouldn’t otherwise cross to avoid an encounter. Sometimes the man likes to gab; sometimes he doesn’t. I kind of felt dissed, but then I do the same thing from time to time and have done it to him on more than one occasion. I also witnessed New York’s Finest flag down a GrubHub delivery guy on a motorized scooter. I overheard two officers asking him if he had the vehicle’s title. The answer was no, apparently, and his wheels were confiscated on the spot. One copper hopped on the thing and made a beeline to the precinct just down the block. The obvious loser here: the GrubHub customer awaiting his breakfast.

It’s rather insane in these parts with all the electric bicycles and scooter variations buzzing—entirely too fast—in the streets and on the sidewalks. It’s common knowledge that many of these contraptions are unregistered and illegal. Part and parcel of the times we live in, I guess.

While on the subject of the not especially uplifting here and now: Major League Baseball inaugurated another season this past week. Does anybody really care anymore? Once upon a time on opening day, April 6, 1973, the New York Mets and Tom Seaver bested the Philadelphia Phillies and Steve Carlton at Shea Stadium. Tug McGraw got the save in a 3-0 victory. I recall watching the game on WOR-TV, Channel 9. Left fielder Cleon Jones hit two home runs that day and went three for three, collecting sixty percent of the team’s hits. On the must-watch post-game show, Kiner’s Korner, venerable broadcaster Ralph Kiner asked the man of the hour if he ever recalled hitting two home runs on opening day. Cleon wasn’t a prolific home run hitter, never hitting more than fourteen in a season, so I thought the question silly—and I was only ten years old. The opening day hero nonetheless answered, “I don’t remember hitting two home runs in any game!” Questionable questions and malaprops were all part of Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner’s charm. And, by the way, the game was played in under two hours. Imagine that!

So, here I am almost fifty years later. I could never have envisioned then what the game would be like now—it’s decidedly worse on countless fronts. Putting a man on second base to commence extra innings is beyond absurd. It’s not baseball. The Academy Awards is likewise a mere shadow of its former self. The Will Smith slap heard round the world was the icing on the cake, the nail in the coffin, as it were, of what once was something to behold—an event with star quality and winners based on merit, not some cockamamie identity-equity algorithm.

Recently, I read where a college professor was suspended for saying that people get offended too easily nowadays. Point made there. A poll found that sixty-five percent of college students are afraid to speak their minds on campus. Just sayin’: You might want to consider investing your money in something other than a higher education. There are protests in universities of symposiums on the First Amendment! Freedom of speech is controversial on campuses and a lot of other places as well—scary stuff. Staff at publishing houses are throwing in with censors, too. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s prospective memoir even generated controversy with Simon & Schuster employees petitioning to quash its publication, claiming that it made them feel unsafe or some such baloney. Pence was branded a bigot—how original. Personally, I would give the groveling sycophant the benefit of the doubt on that charge and just not buy his book. As for the all-too-common unsafe clamoring, it’s an over-used cudgel that the woke wield to suppress opinions with which they disagree. Honestly, I can’t believe that the mere notion of publishing Mike Pence’s book would make any rational adult shiver in his or her boots.

Then again, I wasn’t being taught substitute pronouns “ze” and “tree” for “him” and “her” in Mrs. Rothman’s kindergarten class. When I chance upon lists of alternative pronouns, I think of—for some strange reason—mortal Darrin Stephens’ unsuccessful attempt to cast a spell on his witch mother-in-law Endora: “Yaga Zuzi, Yaga Zuzi, Yagi Zuzi Zim.” But thank heavens it’s April and the snowperson in the yard is no longer frozen hard. Thus, I am free to dream of Cleon and zis two home runs in that simpler snapshot in time.