RSSby Dave Barry
This is the time of year when Americans make a sincere effort to care about the World Series, which determines which baseball team will be the champion of the entire world, except for the part of the world located outside
But the heck with that part. This is OUR national pastime, and that's why the World Series arouses our passion, even if we stopped paying attention to pro baseball some years ago, when it started adding mutant teams with names like the Tampa Bay Area Fighting Seaweeds.
Why is baseball our national pastime?
Because it is a metaphor for life itself. As
Yes, baseball is very deep, although this is not obvious from looking at it. If you don't grasp the nuances, baseball appears to be a group of large, unshaven men standing around in their pajamas and frowning, as if thinking: "My arms are so big that I can no longer groom myself!"
Yet show the same scene to serious baseball fans, and they will see a complex, fascinating, almost artistic tableau. Why? Because they have consumed huge quantities of the drug Ecstasy.
No, seriously, it's because these fans appreciate the subtleties of baseball. To help you perceive these subtleties during the World Series, here's a quick "refresher course," starting with:
THE ORIGINS OF BASEBALL:
Mankind has played games involving sticks and balls for hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile, Womankind had her hands full raising Childrenkind, but whenever she asked Mankind to lend a hand, he'd answer, "Not now! We have a no-hitter going!" That was true, because numbers had not been invented yet. Then, in 1839, along came a man named
BASEBALL TODAY:
Baseball today is very much the same as it was 150 years ago, except that, for security reasons, the games take place after the public has gone to bed. The rules are simple: Each team sends nine players onto the field, except for one team, which sends one -- the "batter" -- plus two elderly retired players called "coaches," who constantly touch themselves on various parts of their bodies to communicate, via Secret Code, the message: "Tobacco juice has corroded my brain into a lump of dead tissue the size of a grape."
The object of baseball is for the "pitcher" to throw the "ball" into the "strike zone." This is almost impossible, because the only person who knows the location of the strike zone is the "umpire," and he refuses to reveal it because of a bitter, decades-old labor dispute between his union and
Eventually, the pitcher throws the ball at the batter, in case the strike zone is located somewhere on his body. This is the signal for all the players to run to the middle of the field and engage in a form of combat similar to professional wrestling, except that sometimes professional wrestlers, by accident, actually hit each other. This never happens in baseball, where the last player to land a punch was Babe Ruth, who in the 1921 World Series, knocked out his own self. Instead of punching, baseball players fight by grabbing each other's shirts and exchanging fierce glares, as if to say: "You're gonna get a PERMANENT WRINKLE IN YOUR PAJAMAS, BUSTER!"
After nine "innings" of this, the team with the most "runs" wins. I don't know how the runs happen, because by then I'm asleep. But I sleep in front of the TV, in a rooting position. My body language clearly says: "I may not know who's playing, but if they don't win, it's a shame."
This column was originally published October 21, 2001
Just Say No to Big Moo
Dave Barry
While wandering around the supermarket, I eventually get to the Fatal Snacks aisle, and I realize that my wife has forgotten, for the 5,000th consecutive time, to put Cheez-Its on my list. So I buy a box. I always buy a big box, a box that could be used for helicopter storage. My thinking is: This should be enough Cheez-Its for several weeks
The Idiot's Guide to Art
Dave Barry
Whenever I write about art, I get mail from the Serious Art Community informing me that I am a clueless idiot. So let me begin by stipulating that I am a clueless idiot. This is probably why I was unable to appreciate a work of art I viewed recently
Why Men Can't Help It
Dave Barry
There comes a time when a person must toot his own personal horn, and for me, that time is now. A new book has confirmed a theory that I first proposed in 1987, in a column explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework
New Gift Idea: Vintage Worms
Dave Barry
According to an Associated Press story sent in by alert reader Donald O'Brien, biologists at Harvard University have "manipulated hundreds of genes to create roundworms that are sleek and trim." This is wonderful news for the literally millions of roundworms who suffer from obesity.
Get a Guillotine, Orkin
Dave Barry
Almost the first thing to happen to me when I moved to South Florida was that I got attacked by a fire ant. This was my own stupid fault: I sat on my lawn. I thought this was safe because I was from Pennsylvania, where lawns are harmless ecosystems.
The Army: Eat All That You Can Eat
Dave Barry
The U.S. Army is developing a new Combat Sandwich. Really. Army food technicians say this sandwich can remain edible, without refrigeration, for three years. Granted, that's nowhere near the staying power of those hot dogs they sell at airports, some of which have been rotating on their grills since the Lindbergh flight. But it's still impressive. I recently had an opportunity to field-test the new Combat Sandwich
A Fun-Free Halloween
Dave Barry
Uncle Dave was just having a flashback to the Halloweens of his boyhood, an innocent time when parents were far more relaxed and clueless about what their kids were up to. It turns out that we were violating many Halloween safety rules. In those days, we did not know about the importance of Halloween safety
(c) 2009 Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.