Quote of the Day:

“Umpires would be natural Republicans–dead to human feelings.” –George Will, from Men at Work (1990)

TB stopped yesterday at the gas station to satisfy a craving for Hostess cupcakes. Nothing else would do. After I wolfishly devoured the treat I immediately felt the creeping approach of remorse. Not for the calories or the frivolous expenditure did I fret, but for the shame of loving such a processed, chemical filled and common delicacy. Other loved “foods” on my pedestal of shame are blonde Oreos with the Bronze medal and McDonald’s chicken McNuggets with Gold.

Color blindness is……staring intently at your Skittles in the best light possible to separate purple from red and green from orange so that the flavors can be enjoyed individually and in ascending order of greatness. It is slowing down at flashing single lights on two lane highways and then punching it if nobody is coming. It is pulling a suit coat from the plane at 1 am and realizing for the first time that you wore pieces from two different suits to trial that day.

I was listening again this morning to Dan Patrick’s show, my favorite on the radio. He had John McEnroe on. McEnroe thinks taking guns to nightclubs is stupid and should be illegal, but two year prison sentences for someone who hurts only themselves in the process is crazy. He’s right. You know, I think Mac would be great in politics. The idea of him failing to speak the truth, at least as he sees it, fails to compute.

Another hat tip to DP. His gang got on the subject of umpires and their antics behind the plate. They were joking how the visual examples of punch outs, ring ups and bow and arrow pulls made for bad radio. But I was cracking up. And I thought, “hey, if it makes for bad radio, it’ll make for terrible blogging.” So here you go. The animated ump is one of the subtle pleasures of the great game of baseball, and as I thought back to some of the great ones from both the big leagues and the little leagues I have seen, I really missed the pastime suddenly………Ozell……any of y’all remember him?

Bonus QOTD:

“The umpire must be quick witted. He may not, like the wise old owl of the bench, look over his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, inform the assembled multitude that he will ‘take the matter under advisement,’ and then adjourn the court for a week or two to satisfy himself how he ought to decide. No, indeed. He must be johnny-on-the-spot with a decision hot off the griddle and he must stick to it, right or wrong – or be lost.” – A.G. Spalding in America’s National Game (1911)