Practicum of Nightmares

Oh, my, it’s 2023! Seems like only yesterday that it was 1983. Tom Seaver was reacquired by the New York Mets that year—returning to the town and the team where he belonged and should have played his entire career. Gearing up for the new baseball season that winter, it was exciting to imagine my boyhood hero on the mound at Shea Stadium again and finishing his illustrious career in a Mets’ uniform. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Seaver pitched for the 1983 Mets all right—and reasonably well for a thirty-eight-year-old coming off an injury-plagued year—and then was gone with the wind once more, courtesy of a front office faux pas of epic proportions. Wow, that was forty years ago and—may I just say—things ain’t what they used to be.

Tom Seaver has passed away. Shea Stadium is a memory. And baseball players are signing contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Aaron Judge put his John Hancock on a nine-year deal with the Yankees worth $360 million. When he broke Roger Maris’s single season home run record last year, a fan caught the ball. Some people opined that this man should have given the ball to Judge. He would, after all, be showered with largesse for this unselfish act: a couple of signed bats and balls and a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Ikea for starters. But the fan in question was not about to pass up an even greater windfall. Reports are that the guy turned down $3 million dollars for the record-breaking orb, putting it up for auction instead. It sold for half that figure! Just sayin’: I would have jumped at the $3 million figure—taken the money and run, as it were. But let’s face it, fans pay a premium now to watch sports, whether at the ballpark or via cable TV and such. Why couldn’t Judge—in this instance—offer to buy the ball for a fair sum? I realize that it might be something of a hardship to get by on $357 million over the next nine years, but we all make sacrifices at one time or another.

In 1983, I was attending college. Speaking of which, the University of Southern California has recently cast asunder the word “field,” because of—drum roll please— “racist connotations.” The word will be replaced by “practicum.” Yes, hearing the phrase “field trip” could very well trigger a student and turn him or her or zir into a blithering bowl of Jell-O in search of a safe space.

Anyway, this is the world of 2023. Joe Biden has even joined the fraternity of presidents with classified documents in places they shouldn’t be, including alongside his Corvette in his locked garage in Wilmington, Delaware. You can’t make this stuff up. Seems to me that this is further evidence that our last two presidents were unfit for their jobs. It would be nice to think that we will get past this perpetual insanity on too many fronts to count. I wonder what the country and world will be like in 2063? Looking on the bright side, I won’t be around to find out.