Saturday, December 31, 2011
The Last Leaf
Or actually, it may be the next to the last leaf, because there was one other one still on the cherry tree in early November, and to be honest I don't know which one fell first.And as far as I know, unlike O. Henry's short short, no awful and ironic consequences attended its fall. Just winter. Ho hum.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Killing the Ump is a Little Harsh
Some time ago, when it was warmer, I overheard a discussion in my morning coffee place debating the merits of the instant replay in baseball.
The rule of law proceeds this way, the testimony of sworn witnesses being argued against trials by fire or single combat or the ducking stool - to these we prefer fingerprints, DNA. We seek perpetually for markers of the truth.
No one would argue (I think) that baseball should hinge on an individual's subjective whim, how someone feels about something, but on the other hand the game is built on a social compact: what we have agreed to as a temporary nine-inning society is that the umpire embodies that flawed vision of human perfectability, the ideal judge. The parent we all desperately want to believe in. The Good Emperor. Justice and power.
And the deal we have made is that we will believe he truly calls 'em as he sees 'em without fear or favor, and however loudly we shout, however much dirt we kick up and invective we hurl as we are ejected, we are convinced he is only a fool, not a knave.
And foolishness has a random distribution in an indifferent universe. We can accept that as the order of things. But knavery - that the ump is in someone's pay or, more likely, trying to atone for an earlier bad call by a favorable one on this particular tag at the plate - that lets politics into the quantum dynamics of foolishness.
In the republican ocean of fact, we may not wish our broken raft to be towed to safety by the unappealable cruiser of imperial fiat, but on the other hand we have no great wish to be drowned.
The rule of law proceeds this way, the testimony of sworn witnesses being argued against trials by fire or single combat or the ducking stool - to these we prefer fingerprints, DNA. We seek perpetually for markers of the truth.
No one would argue (I think) that baseball should hinge on an individual's subjective whim, how someone feels about something, but on the other hand the game is built on a social compact: what we have agreed to as a temporary nine-inning society is that the umpire embodies that flawed vision of human perfectability, the ideal judge. The parent we all desperately want to believe in. The Good Emperor. Justice and power.
And the deal we have made is that we will believe he truly calls 'em as he sees 'em without fear or favor, and however loudly we shout, however much dirt we kick up and invective we hurl as we are ejected, we are convinced he is only a fool, not a knave.
And foolishness has a random distribution in an indifferent universe. We can accept that as the order of things. But knavery - that the ump is in someone's pay or, more likely, trying to atone for an earlier bad call by a favorable one on this particular tag at the plate - that lets politics into the quantum dynamics of foolishness.
In the republican ocean of fact, we may not wish our broken raft to be towed to safety by the unappealable cruiser of imperial fiat, but on the other hand we have no great wish to be drowned.
