Baseball!

George Carlin was good when sputtering obscenities to challenge restrictive regulatory rules or fuming about the corporate world's hostility to an informed and critically reflective citizenry. But he was at his best when tracing the quirks and oddities of language, playing with words, and celebrating our historical national pastime.

That's my view, anyway, offered again as football comes around to disturb my peace. The loud tailgate party outside my classroom window went on all afternoon Thursday!

But I'm going to try and not speak of this again 'til the last out is recorded in the October classic. Meanwhile, I urge you to read Gladwell and enjoy George.

marching in

Saints 31, Colts 17. I know just how you feel, Colts fans, and I offer sincerest condolences-- even though I am on public record as having picked this result. Rest assured, the sun will come up tomorrow. I've suffered more than a few of "my team's" losses in the Big Game through the years. It hurts more to share the loss, the earlier the attachment was formed... just as the thrill of victory is ever-more ecstatic when you can trace your allegiance to a time when you did not understand that it's only a game. Childhood is a time of intense loyalty and faith, for excellent evolutionary reasons. Is it worth it? Is it a good model for how to think about victories and losses in life generally? I don't know. 


I do know that we all want to be in that number, and that we all can't be, any more than we can all be above average. Alas.


But wait 'til next year, and get ready for Spring Training.

Go Blue!

Grades are in! Time for a little fun...

For you football fans, in case you missed the big announcement in the Onion:

SOUTH BEND, IN—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Savior of All Mankind, and current defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State, said Monday that He would not accept Notre Dame's 3-year, $5.6 million offer to coach the Fighting Irish. "I love Notre Dame and respect their football legacy, but no matter what you've accomplished before coaching there, once you're a Golden Domer, the expectations, frankly, are unrealistic," said Christ, whose family has been involved with the university since its founding. "I've had people turn on Me before, and it really put Me through hell. But even more importantly, I've made a commitment to stay with the Blue Raiders through 2015."

tackling misconceptions

I find that many are still misinformed about the injury problem in football, thinking improvements in padding, helmets, and other gear will adequately address it. Again, it's typically not the hardest hits that do the greatest harm.

"Contrary to popular belief, a concussion is not a bruise to the brain caused by hitting a hard surface. Indeed, no physical swelling or bleeding is usually seen on radiological scans. The injury generally occurs when the head either accelerates rapidly and then is stopped, or is spun rapidly.

This violent shaking causes the brain cells to become depolarized and fire all their neurotransmitters at once in an unhealthy cascade, flooding the brain with chemicals and deadening certain receptors linked to learning and memory. The results often include confusion, blurred vision, memory loss, nausea and, sometimes, unconsciousness.

Neurologists say once a person suffers a concussion, he is as much as four times more likely to sustain a second one. Moreover, after several concussions, it takes less of a blow to cause the injury and requires more time to recover."

And, there's a culture in football at every level of admiring and rewarding players who refuse to be deterred by concussion and other "minor" injuries. The NFL is finally acknowledging this problem, but whether it can be fixed is doubtful.

Read more about it here. (And here's something completely different.)

And when you're tempted to watch the NFL mayhem tonight, or whenever, consider instead checking the MLB network's schedule. Gaylord Perry is hurling spitters right this minute on channel 199 here.

summer of '84

For all my football fan friends who are moping about the Titans' loss to the Colts this afternoon: it's not too late to tune in, on the MLB network cable channel, to the fabled "Sandberg" game between the Cubs and Cards, June 23, 1984. It won't turn out well for "my team" but that's ok, nobody will incur life-threatening internal injury either.

I loved that lineup: L. Smith, O. Smith, W. McGee et al... and I love hearing Bob Costas and Tony Kubek doing the Game of the Week together again, too. What's especially weird, btw: I can recall exactly where I was when this game was "live": on my Dad's living room floor, during an extended summer visit. Really seems like yesterday. There were no Titans then, and hope was still alive for Fritz Mondale.

And now Ryno's an old grampa, with his plaque in Cooperstown and with all his marbles intact.

MVP(x3)

NEW YORK — Albert Pujols was unanimously voted National League MVP on Tuesday, becoming the first player to repeat since Barry Bonds won four in a row from 2001-04. Pujols received all 32 first-place votes...

Warm up that hot stove, pass the pumpkin pie, and speak to me not of pigskins! Now how many days 'til Spring Training? (About 80, I think.)

That's a lot of downs, but my football boycott continues.

Vince who?

baseball versus football

My colleague and I had a good time yesterday taping "In the Middle," a public access television interview show produced on our campus and scheduled for broadcast on Dec. 26.

Responding to a question about how we go about introducing students to philosophy, we hit upon an interesting cleavage in our respective approaches. "I ask them what they're worried about," said my colleague. Philosophy on her view is the systematic, critical interrogation of the worrisome dimension of life.

I took a different tack. "I tell my students what William James told his: philosophy is just an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly." And, I added, it's also an attempt to think clearly about our hopes and dreams and delights, not just our worries.

"Well," said my colleague, "that's because you're a happy pragmatist."

"And you're a Peircean," I retorted.

It was all in good fun, and in fact it's got us talking about a collaborative project in which we will explore our different wings of the pragmatic corridor in a very applied way: we'll consider the respective merits and liabilities of baseball and football. (She's the football fan.) Stay tuned...

losers

The local NFL franchise has sunk to a new low, after a blowout loss to the Pats that extended their season record to 0-6. Perfect time for thoughtful Titans fans (I know there's at least one, my colleague) to confront Malcolm Gladwell's stiff-arm challenge to the sport's very legitimacy. The spectacle and drama of it all is engaging, sometimes (as when the home team actually wins) even compelling. But...

But the brutality is undeniable too, as data continues to accumulate: the incidence of football-related injury, especially brain injury, rivals that of boxing (1 in 5 boxers will sustain dementia). And the sheer ugly barbarity of it rivals that of Michael Vick's old passion. The dogs of the gridiron, like those of the ring, got game.

And we like to watch.

Happy feet

Football's back, the gaudy/violent spectacle of which makes some people very happy. Good for them. Personally, I pay no attention to football 'til baseball's done. I'll get back to y0u on the subject in November, after the Cards have taken the Yanks in six. (It'll be interesting if it happens; Older Daughter won't know who to root for.)

But I did appreciate this little appreciation of the game and all it represents from Amy Davidson, who reports that the Steelers' Hines Ward is the happiest man in football. Good, somebody needs to be. I actually am a Hines Ward fan, ever since I learned that he (like me) was a Randy Pausch fan.

Davidson gushes about Thursday night's Titans-Steelers opener:

At some point in the pregame show, between the Black-Eyed Peas shouting “Mazel Tov!” and Tim McGraw singing about Rosa Parks, Dolly Parton, and the Crimson Tide (it made sense), the spectacle, as well as the game, began to feel enormously appealing. There’s nothing wrong with letting a certain sort of All-Americanness wash over you."

I guess not. I'm sticking to one national pastime at at a time though, thanks.

But speaking of feet, the New Yorker also takes a bemused look at the Zappos happiness ("zappiness") franchise. The online shoe retailer's C.E.O, Tony Hsieh, turns out to be a fan of our next author in the Happiness class:

Soft-spoken and introverted, Hsieh has become an unlikely business guru: a young philosopher prince of the middle-management set, to whom he is fond of distributing an annual “Culture Book” of warbling testimonials collected from Zappos employees, as if it were the Gideon Bible, and recommending titles on the science of happiness, like “The Happiness Hypothesis,” by Jonathan Haidt, and “Happier,” by Tal Ben-Shahar. He is also writing a book of his own for Grand Central Publishing, tentatively titled “Delivering Happiness”—“a combination of talking about Zappos, the culture, core values, and the science of happinessss,” he said, stretching out the word. For Hsieh, happiness is a quantifiable quality that seems synonymous with “calm.”

“Generally, I associate drama with negative emotions, and I want to experience positive emotions,” he said.

Me too, me too!