194. Humane Feelings and Conceptual Order

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Violations of conceptual order can dizzy us.  I was dizzied by the Olympic Committee's ruling that let Oscar Pistorius, with his metal feet, compete against normal people.  If you finished ahead of him would you be proud?  Would you say, "Look at me, I beat a man with artificial legs"?  If behind would you be embarrassed ("Oh my, I got beat by a cripple") or would you be indignant ("Not fair, he got a spring from the metal")?  In the end you'd be wondering, I think, if you could call what you had just been in a "race."

Such violations can also amuse us.  I laughed when in News of the Weird, under the heading, "Unclear on the Concept," I read of the priest who said that though he had committed rape he didn't use a condom because it was "against church doctrine."  Concerning sin, I presume.  Sin?

And occasionally they outrage us.  I was outraged when I read the New York Supreme Court's justification for its ruling that the former man, Renée Richards, could play on the women's tennis circuit: he was "now female" on the "overwhelming medical evidence" that he had the same genitals as the others.  There the court is, brows knit over Richards' genitals, while his already developed male muscles, the reason the U. S. Tennis Association (who fought the ruling) had conceived a separate circuit, are ignored.  Men obviously play tennis with their penises.  "None here, boss."

My outrage deepens as I see Richards taking her muscles to the Lahoya Women's Tennis Tournament and, as Wikipedia has it, "crushing the opposition."  And (in my imagination) feeling satisfaction. "Wow, I really blew Nancy away.  The club champion!"

But that's not the end of the outrage.  I go so far as to be outraged by those who don't regard the New York Supreme Court's ruling as an outrage.  To the author of the Wikipedia entry on Richards it "was a landmark decision in favor of transsexual rights.  Through her fight to play tennis as a woman, she challenged gender roles and became a role model and spokesperson for the transgender community."

I think I am not the only one who will feel the ground giving way under him here.  The loss of meaning in our words — "winner," "loser," "competition," "race"— sucks us down.  Something in our conceptual substratum has given way.  How do we get out? 

I suggest we start by distinguishing a game from a party.  A party is something you throw for other people's satisfaction.  You want them to be happy, and have a good time, and feel good about life.  You are expressing your altruism.  That's what Judge Ascione and the Wikipedia author are expressing.  They are welcoming Richards to the party of general humanity.

A game, on the other hand, is something you play for your own satisfaction.  You want to win, and be superior, and feel good about your abilities.  You are expressing your egoism.  

Rules follow from the need for satisfaction of the ego.  A group of young adult men asks, "What stipulations must we make in order to be able to say, happily, 'I'm better at this than you are.'"  Whole categories — children, handicapped people, old men, women — are excluded because it's no fun beating them.  They know they are going to lose before they start.  These rules parallel rules to exclude those who are winners before they start.  "Well never be able to say, 'I'm better at this than you are,' if those types — golfers under 50, male wrestlers, heavyweight boxers — are allowed to play."  Games are necessarily contests between peers.

So the test is, "Can I happily and legitimately say, 'I am superior'?"  Activities that don't pass this test must be called something other than "games."  If not "parties" then "ceremonies" maybe, or "entertainments," or "exercises," or "promotions," or "treatments."

That's logic, that's order, that's the mind coming to the aid of the emotions.  And what happens to it when it comes to something like the Special Olympics?  Satisfaction of the ego is out the window.  This is altruism.  Humane feeling takes over here, and ought to take over.  But that doesn't keep the word "game" from losing its meaning — along with "winner," "loser," "competition," and "race."

If you try to maintain those meanings, if you stick up for conceptual order there, you are properly rebuked. "You are as bad as the Wikipedia author.  You close your ears to the claims of the heart as he closed his eyes to the claims of the head."  You, found deficient in humane feeling, are embarrassed.

Yet (and this is what gets me) in that stadium, as in every stadium where our unthinking hearts go out, you are embarrassed by demanding what can save the day elsewhere.  Say the American people are asked to join a "war on communism," and attack it "only ninety miles away" in Cuba.  You point out that "communism" is an abstraction and that you can't "war on" (concretely kill) it.  People who fit words together that way can get you to do dumb things, as in the Bay of Pigs.   Or, with the "war on terrorism," in the Middle East.  Thank you, thank you, picky English teacher, for pointing that out.

So, argue for conceptual order in the political arena and you are a hero.  Argue for it in a Special Olympics stadium and you are a monster.

"A monster because you lack what makes us human.  Humane feeling is what makes us human, right?"

No, reason is what makes us human.

We've gone from quandary to quagmire.  We can't let the reason quit putting our concepts in order.  That would leave  beliefs in a pile of their own, separate from consequences. Inferences in one pile, evidence in another.  An ends pile and a means pile.  A life viewed as a bunch of piles can't be lived.  On the other hand, a life without humane feeling is not worth living.  Oi.

193. "No, Mr. President, I'm doing better."

 

Dear President Obama:

I have a place in one of those successive generations of Americans that you referred to in your State of the Union Address as "doin' better" — got more education, made more money — than the one preceding it.  And if my Congressman asked me, in a hearing, "How are you doing now?" I, knowing that this was Congress and the occasion formal, would have said, "I am doing better." 

I am used to the slouching of "ing" words in colloquial speech, accept it in campaign speeches, and admire it in speeches that win uneducated people to a good cause — as many of yours have done.  But last night you were delivering the State of the Union address to the United States Congress.  I think they, on that formal occasion, wanted to hear what you are "going to do," not what you are "gonna do."

One of the ways I am doing better than my uneducated forebears is in my choice of words for my audience.  I went to college and was taught by my Freshman Composition teacher that "when you want to be taken seriously by an educated audience you speak and write as educated people do" — that is, formally for formal occasions and informally for informal occasions.

I know that our notions of formal and informal have been scrambled lately, and that men in high office have led the way.  It might have begun with a President from your own party,  "Jimmy" Carter.  But I'm not asking Presidents to return to three names.  And, as long as they don't ask people in my Appalachian area if they're "doon better," I'm not asking them to change their campaign style.  I'm just asking that they pay a little closer attention to what "better" means.

Yours very sincerely,

Roland Swardson

192. Baseball Pain (13). On the Rack.

 

 

You want to know pain, Philadelphia fans?  Here's pain.  It's extra innings at home, so all your team has to do is score one run.  One run, the game's over, and the pressure is on the other contending teams.  Your team has seven innings in which to do this.  They don't need a big hit.  They don't even need a hit.  All they need to get that run in, most of the time, is to avoid striking out or popping up.  Just put the bat decently on the ball.  And they can't do it.

While they seem to be able to do everything else.  The Reds' pitchers, Maloney, Ellis, and Tsitouris, hold the Pirates scoreless for fifteen innings.  The fielders back them up beautifully.  League-leaders, as both pitchers and fielders, playing their expected game.  But what is it when they bat?

Here's our catcher, Don Pavletich, up in the bottom of the eleventh.  Two singles and a perfect sacrifice bunt have put men on second and third.  He strikes out.  Here's our shortstop, Leo Cardenas, up in the bottom of the thirteenth with the bases loaded and one out.  He pops up.  Finally here's Deron Johnson, our cleanup hitter, our RBI leader, up in the last of the fourteenth with the bags loaded again with one out.   He strikes out.

And we wouldn't even have been in this position if we had taken advantage of so many good chances in the regulation nine innings.  Fourth inning.  Chico Ruiz leads off with a single.  Bunted over to second.  Steals third!  That Chico.  Here we go.  Maloney's in his groove — and oh man when Maloney is in his groove you are not going to touch him.  Not on that night.  (Five one-hitters and two no-hitters he's going to pitch in his career.)  All he's going to need is a run.  One run.  Our Musial, our Mays, our Ruth, Frank Robinson, is at the plate.  He pops up.  Now it will take a hit, not too unlikely with Deron Johnson stepping in.  He strikes out.

That is the way it's going to go.  Eighteen men are going to be stranded on the bases, fourteen of them in scoring position.  By the end of the game, after midnight, we will, counting the preceding day's shutout and the last eight innings of the last game against the Mets, have gone 33 straight innings without scoring a run.  In the last 25 of those innings we will leave 29 men on base, 25 of whom will have been in scoring position. 

That gives you an idea of the pain in Cincinnati.  For the pain in the surrounding area, out beyond a hundred miles, add in the pain of waiting — while the static clears, while Hoyt pulls himself together, while the over-ride for station identification runs its course. Then, after the wait, in how many living rooms: "God Almighty, that runner didn't score!"  Twenty-five different times in two nights you would hear that. 

Pain is unreliably recorded, as physicians who try to get their patients to self-report their pain on a 1-10 scale well know.  But provocations to pain, like pressure on a nerve, being measurable, are reliably recorded.  Here our latter-day statisticians tell us, through their Leverage Index (how much pressure is on the player at bat — which reads out as anxiety in the fan, and his eventual pain), that in the bottom of the ninth, the Reds' first chance to end the game, the LI number for each successive batter went 2.22, 3.22, 2.88, 4.32.  When Don Pavletich came up with two outs and men still on first and third it went to 4.90.  In the eleventh it went from 3.34 to 6.38, the runners dying at second and third.  Pretty much the same in the thirteenth and fourteenth innings, with a 5.80 in there.

The graph of Philadelphia pain shows no single game at all comparable to this.  The closest one, the 1-0 game where Ruiz stole home, did have a higher LI in it (7.02 when Ruben Amaro came to bat in the ninth) but nothing like the repetition here, the pounding on the sore spot.  Amaro struck out and their game was over; our man struck out and we had to go through it three more times.

Maybe it's not until you add in the season pressure that you'll see Cincinnati pulling away.  The Reds are given a second chance.  St. Louis miraculously loses two to the Mets while we win one.  Tie again.  Only now there are only two games left.  Each game is so crucial.  Our ∆POFF number, showing the difference the game will make in our season — is 44.6.  Way beyond anything Philadelphia has seen. 

You've got pain possibility of the highest magnitude here, only now it's going to be pain with irony.  We're playing Philadelphia.  The great losers.  They're out of it now, mangled, on their way from the emergency room to their beds.  The last guys in the world you'd expect to put up a fight.

Well, it's still living drama for us, and here we go, a run in the first and two more in the sixth and, with Jim O'Toole in his groove it looks like we've got it.  We enter the eighth with a win expectation (WE, see http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/) of 94%. 

What we Cincinnati fans need is a pain gauge on our arms.  Like a blood pressure cuff.  Something the pain umpire could see.  Thomas, single.  Rojas, walk.  Taylor, single.  Callison comes up and the LI is up to 3.42.  Add that to our game anxiety, the base for every batter, and you get 47.88.  Off the charts.  Acting manager Sisler brings in Billy McCool, our Billy, our savior down the stretch.  He strikes out Callison!  Billy McCool.  Billy McCool.  We roll the name with love.  One more out now, Billy.  Richie Allen.  FAI still up there, at 47.33.

Well, why drag it out.  Allen triples, Johnson doubles, and Philadelphia, that mangled snake, leads 4-3.

Our ninth inning was made for those whose universe has a place for malice.  There could not have been arranged, in the rotation of batsmen, a combination of names more likely to raise our hopes than "Pinson," "Robinson," and "Johnson."  Or set us up for three deeper jabs of pain.  Pinson grounds out, Robinson grounds out, and Johnson strikes out.  Just when we thought we had had all the downers we could bear the fates — gods, the universe — lift us up so we can be dashed to the ground again.

Where this leaves us in the pain competition I frankly am not sure.  I don't want to claim too much.  I admit that Philadelphia suffered longer.  But I think that Cincinnati suffered so intensely in those last few days that the total, the area under the curve, must be close. 

Try picturing the graph.  Remember that Joe Morgan, in the eyes of Bill James (the father of the new baseball statistics), beat out all the other second basemen by having just two years, 1975 and 1976, way beyond anybody else's years.  The Reds' 1964 graph will look like Morgan's graph.  Two tremendous peaks put him on top.

191. Baseball Pain (12). Doubts in the Torture Antechamber.

Now a look at baseball torture.  Or will it be a look at baseball nuts, torturing themselves? 

If that's what it is I shouldn't be rolling the drums, I should be chuckling, as Mike Schmidt did (in the one conversation I've ever had with a ballplayer) over this radio fan of his in Philadelphia who went into the bathroom every time he came to bat — because that's where she was when he got a hit in an earlier game of this series she oh so wanted to win.

"She was in a lot worse shape than we were," Schmidt said, admitting that yes, there was player tension but going on to point out that on the field you weren't ever hanging on the outcome.  It was right in front of you, whether you had or had not made the play.  This poor lady with the transistor in her ear had a space in which she could imagine all kinds of horrors.

That's the way it was with the nuts who lived right in their team's city.  If you lived 150 miles away, as I and a high proportion of Reds' fans did, you had the additional strain of uncertain reception.  If your town station weren't carrying the game, as happened often, you had to pick it up from WSAZ Cincinnati, which came and went — meaning that in every crucial situation it went.  And opened, thereby, a larger space for horrors to rush into.

I don't know what the proportion of nuts to normals was on the Burger Beer Baseball Network but, by its size (it stretched well into West Virginia and all the way down to Alabama), I think we can say we're looking at plenty of them.  We're clearly talking major, Philadelphia-level strain and pain here.

And I don't think we have to concede any points for intensity.  The towns carrying the broadcast were for the most part towns on rail lines leading not just to Cincinnati but to a terminal only a few blocks from Crosley Field.   Fans could, with a bargain excursion ticket, ride in on the B&O from West Virginia, walk over, see a doubleheader, and be back by bedtime.  They could do the same, I'm sure, from Tennessee, or southern Indiana, or eastern Kentucky.  (Remember, there was no major league team in Atlanta then.) Do that a few times and (I'd say from my experience among them) you were as nutty as any fan in Price Hill, Cincinnati's baseball-nuttiest suburb.  (Pete Rose grew up there.)

All right, for a nut moments of uncertainty fill with heightening strain.  On this night coming up (or in the chamber we are about to enter) there are going to be x number of nuts in x number of towns along those rail lines glued to transistors (television? then? ha!) that are failing, moment after moment, to give them certain news of what is happening.  I can tell you what they are getting in those moments.  Like after they hear, "Rose leads from third.  Here's the pitch," they will get, "SHU-SHU-shu-shu, SHU-SHU-shu-shu."

And if that isn't enough, add this: the voice they are waiting for, the voice that will end the uncertainty, is that of an old ballplayer.  He's learned his trade, he's as impartial as he can be, he's trained himself to stay cool behind the mike, but at moments of high tension he's back on the bench.  Three words you'll get, a grunt, and then, "Oh no, he dropped it!"  A worse uncertainty.

And if that still isn't enough, add this.  Out beyond a hundred miles, and depending on the sky wave, there may be nothing but SHU-SHU-shu-shu, SHU-SHU-shu-shu for a whole minute.  Those out at that range have learned to read through the shu-shu.  If there is loud cheering, and they listen closely, they can pick it up.  It goes ye-AY, ye-AY and comes through at a different rhythm, discernible as the shu-shu dwindles.  When it does this after they've learned that they have a man on third they know that he has scored and, if it's the ninth inning or after, they know that they have won.  The strain ends, anxiety turns into relief and pain turns into pleasure.

When the ye-AY, ye-AY does not come through they feel pain and look forward to continued anxiety.  The pain may be the greatest of the game or, if it's a pennant-decider, the greatest of the season, but its moments won't be those of the greatest strain.  Those will be the moments when the poor nut can't tell whether a cheer is coming through or not.

The thing is, the nut knows all this when he turns on the radio.  What he's in for.  Can you see how that will increase his pain, like an exponent or kicker?  It cinches the pathology.  He's deliberately doing this to himself.  He's crazy, he knows it, he knows everybody knows it, and if they don't he's now going to demonstrate it by submitting himself, publicly, to a play-by-play of this absolutely crucial game with the Pirates.

190. Baseball Pain (11). Pain by the Number.

 

Who will have bragging rights to suffering in 1964?  It's a race.  At the moment, the morning of September 28, Philadelphia fans are way ahead.  They have lost seven straight and each loss, each failing batter, each weakening pitcher, viewed against a scoreboard showing the unfailing advance of the Reds (nine straight) and Cardinals (five straight), has stabbed them with increasing pain.  It has gone on for a week — ever since Chico Ruiz stole home.

They, in 1964, felt it; we, in 2013, can put numbers to it.  The pain any failure — in the field, on the mound, or at the plate — gives a fan depends on how much it can do to his team's chances of winning the pennant.  We now know (from http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_standings.asp) that Philadelphia's chances (POFF) have dropped from 96.3% to 19.0% in the course of seven games.  We can see exactly how much difference each game makes.  We can also see (www.baseball-reference.com/) exactly how much difference each play makes in the game.  We are ready to put a gauge on the poor fellow sitting in Veteran's Stadium.

Say it's September 26.  He has just seen second baseman Tony Taylor drop the throw that would have gotten one out and maybe two.  The play dial (LI) shows 5.63 units of pain.  The game dial (∆POFF) shows 17.1 units.  We have a number, 22.73, that we can use to compare the pain he feels at this moment with the pain his brother in Cincinnati will feel at his moments of suffering.  On a graph of the whole week we can see his maximum pain and, in the area under the curve, we can see his total pain.  We can see how both compare with the pain in Cincinnati — or in any major league park since 1903.  Whatever hell our subjects are in, mathematically we are in a paradise.

And today we are looking down on a first-place team that, after a day to rest following its late-night celebration at the airport, is about to begin a three-game series with a so-so team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, facing Bob Friend (won 12, lost 18) in the opener.  The game will change their probability of winning the pennant by 21.5 percent.  Game anxiety is a lot higher than it was (1.8) when the fans settled down to watch them start the season against the Colt .45's.  And the pain felt after a play or misplay then?  Never higher than 4.23'

OK, here we go, first inning, Rose singles.  Count on Pete.  Go right at 'em.  (Rose will go 3 for 5 in this game.)  Ruiz bunts him to second.  Pinson singles and we've got Robinson, our big man, coming up with two on and one out.  Here we go.  Get to Friend early.   Robinson grounds into a double play.  Oh, pain.  How much?  Gauge shows 23.4. 

Robinson comes up again with two on and one out in the third.  He'll do it this time.  He flies to right.  Pain a little greater.  (23.7 — it's later in the game.)

Then in the sixth inning, for the first time, anxiety on the defensive side.  A brute force pitching performance, that's what it looked like we had.  Billy McCool, no brute, no Bob Gibson, just our Billy, had stepped in and shut out the Pirates.  One hit they had, over five.  Now an opening single.  Followed by a single.   A test for our rookie.  He throws a wild pitch!  Men on second and third with nobody out in a nothing to nothing game that clearly was going to be a squeaker.  Can't imagine a tougher test for a twenty-year-old.

OK, the infield draws in. (So, at the price of bad coverage, they can hold the runner at third.)  I imagine that Deron Johnson, the only English-fluent veteran in the infield, has come over from first base to talk to him, to steady him.  He goes back and McCool is alone.

All a fan can see, with his anxiety near 24, is two straight batters grounding to the shortstop, with the runners forced to hold at third while he gets the out at first.  All he knows, of the important things, is that McCool didn't pitch wild or walk anybody.  (Hits?  Good hitting can get them, whatever the pitcher does.)  But the fan saw enough to see character.  "Guts!  Billy's got 'em.  Our Billy."

So the fan goes into his half of the sixth feeling the pleasure of relieved anxiety.   And a glow of anticipation.  A run now and the Pirates, defenders of the whole pack of pursuers, have just nine more outs.  Mr. Guts gets 'em and those guys are in big trouble.

But no soap.  We produce a fly ball, a strikeout, and a popup.  In the seventh we get one two-out single.  Off Bob Friend.  He's good but he's not this good.  While Billy is back blowing the Pirates away.  Then in the last of the eighth Robinson opens with a double and the glow lights the park.  Deron Johnson, our clean-up man (who would knock in 130 runs the next year), flies to center.  A downer but here's Johnny Edwards.  Line drive to left with a ticket on it: "single."  Robinson takes off for home, carrying the winner but Bob Bailey races in, makes a shoestring catch, and fires the ball to second, doubling Robinson.  Ah jeez.

In the ninth Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski break into McCool for two runs.  You could feel it coming.  And you knew we weren't going to be able to do anything about it.  Which we weren't. 

Meanwhile, over in Philadelphia, the fans were listening to the Cardinals push the Phils further and further away from the now necessary counter miracle.  Entering the game with a 9.5% POFF their ∆ was only 5.9 (there's not much room down here) and their anxiety index during the game got no higher than 8.86.  Since that is also an index of subsequent pain (when the anxiety is realized — i.e., when your worries come true) we can see that Cincinnati is gaining very rapidly on the suffering front.

189. Baseball Pain (10) The Fiends Gather in Cincinnati

By September 28 the Reds are the story and their problem, you may remember from Baseball Pain (9), is to keep their dying manager from becoming the story.  The big story, the one fans like me want running in the players' minds, is the pennant story, which is a game-by-game and play-by-play story.  If Reds players see Hutchinson's image when they're making a play, if they see themselves making it for him, if they admit into their bodies any extra adrenalin, they'll screw it up.  That's baseball wisdom (which you should assure yourself of — as by rereading the aforementioned post — before going further into this Cincinnati excitement).

Oh the excitement.  The last time the fans had seen the Reds they were six and a half behind the Phils and were packing up to play three in the Phils own park.  The only reason they weren't seven and a half behind is that they had just pulled off a miracle at Crosley, coming back from six runs behind to beat the Cardinals 9-6.  From the low point in the fourth inning of that game they had gone on, after shaking Philadelphia with that 1-0 Chico Ruiz victory, to win the next two in that city and then win five in New York.  Now they were coming back to town one full game ahead of the Cardinals and a game and a half ahead of the Phils with five left to play.  It was a town where the leading radio station now (by my memory) identified itself as "WLW Cincinnati, home of the first-place Cincinnati Reds."

When the plane from New York landed in the small hours of the morning it couldn't get to the gate.  People were all over the ramp.  The mayor was there ready with a speech but he couldn't give it, the crowd (estimated at 10,000) was so boisterous.  And in the crowd, feeble as he was (he would be dead within six weeks), was Fred Hutchinson, bearing the long wait while they figured out how to deplane, then making his way to each player, congratulating him, giving him a hug.

This is the man the Reds' players, on the field, have to keep out of their minds.  You don't have to have followed my lectures on baseball wisdom in earlier posts (172, 173) to see how difficult that is going to be.  It's the difficulty of holding firm against distraction in any important operation where the force of distraction is uncommonly high. Reefing a sail in a storm, changing a diaper in a tantrum, tracking a torpedo boat in an attack, all demand the self-control the Reds are going to have to show in the next five games.  If they look at any ball coming toward them off the hitter's bat or out of the pitcher's hand as a ball they have to do something special to, for the sake of Fred Hutchinson, they will have failed.  If they succeed, if they look at the ball as they would look at it on any night, with any manager, in any season, from any position in the standings, they will have succeeded.  And we, if we measure success not by the achievement but by the force of the distraction, will be free to rank their power of self-control with that of any radarman in a naval battle.

All right, we close followers of the team knew this was going to be tough but we didn't know, from a player's point of view, just how tough.  I didn't know until I read Doug Wilson's book, Fred Hutchinson and the 1964 Cincinnati Reds, and was able to see Hutchinson through pitcher Jim O'Toole's eyes.  Hutchinson had come up to him in the crowd: "He looked terrible" O'Toole told Wilson.  "His eye was sagging, you could tell he was having a hard time just walking, he was in a lot of pain.  That's one sight I'll never forget.  Here it is two in the morning and this guy who can barely walk or see.  That's how much he loved the fact that this was his team."

Understand that the sight of a declining Fred Hutchinson was nothing new to Reds' players.  And that, apparently, they had mastered the sight.   The figure on the bench?  The changes, the gauntness?  "In the game let it say nothing at all to you.  Keep your eye on his signs."  Then, after he has gone into the clubhouse, or, finally, is just sitting in the stands in civilian clothes, they have seen to it that he is gone from their minds too.  Or so — on the evidence of their play, that nine-game winning streak — I imagine it.  They have silenced the voice that says, "Get this one for Hutch."

 But then, in Wilson's interview with O'Toole, the voice, the very voice, broke through, and I realized what a close-run thing it was going to be.  At the end of his recollections of Hutchinson at the airport, O'Toole said, "I thought, 'God, we've got to win this thing for Hutch.'"  Oh no, Jim, no.  Hang on just a little longer.

So that's the way we're going into the last five games.