Modern Ball

I love baseball and as a rule am not fond of the new. Anything new, although if it's worthwhile I have been known to warm up to it. I don't live entirely in the Twentieth Century; I think radio is here to stay.

There are those baseball fans who consider themselves purists to a far greater degree than myself. I don't like the designated hitter and I hate the free runner on second to begin extra innings. Yet the folks I'm speaking about like to play the game by very old school rules. It's common to find teams who play according to the rulebook of 1867 and even earlier. They assert that it's a better game. 

Um, no. The modern game with its speed and greater defense and livelier baseballs is a far greater game. The batter (sorry, 'striker') directing the pitcher (I forget his old timey name) what type of throw he'd like? Not really challenging, I would argue.

Of course, the game then was predicated on putting the ball in play, so there is that. If the old rules are what the participants like, all right. It can even be quaint to hear the fielders yell, wrong hander!, when a lefty comes to bat. But after that? Give me modern ball. It is a better game.

Low Tech

I ran into something completely unexpected during my travels this week. A hotel I spent a night in didn't have USB ports for recharging my electronics, the cell phone I always carry, my Kindle, and laptop.

Such amenities have become so common that I had not bothered to pack a three prong plug in adapter. Everyone has those recharging ports, don't they?

I'm not knocking the hotel, honest. Everything else was more than satisfactory. Then, too, they certainly aren't obliged to cater to my every whim, despite the capitalist dragon which stirs our hearts to entitlement. I simply never expected a lack of what seems to me a standard these days.

I got around such trivial issues because my techy things hold power for significant periods of time as well as with the use of car charging adapters. But I confess my initial reaction was, What? They don't have those?

But it isn't all about me, is it? That's twice this week I've had that lesson hurled at yours truly. I'm beginning to think it's a message.

Monday morning philosophy

I didn't see the Grammy Awards last night, not one minute. There are few current TV shows which I watch, and even those I tend to miss and have to pull up On Demand. And even then I get behind.

Just the same, I don't feel as though I miss anything important. There are days where I believe that everything is simply passing fancy. I don't mean that as a bad thing either, nor do I mean it in any particularly judgmental way, or to be a downer. I'm just not impressed by fads. And far too much of what goes on is, in this or any time, exactly that: a fad.

I prefer the timeless to the current. Give me baseball or golf or curling ahead of cornhole. Tolkien means more to me than Game of Thrones because he speaks to the big questions. I doubt that Game of Thrones does, although to be fair I haven't seen a second of it, as is my wont.

I get more out of reading C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man for the thirtieth time than I expect I would get from reading the first thing by a current author, though to be fair I don't pay much attention to current authors either. Unless, that is, they tie into Lewis or Tolkien. That is a small and relatively unknown faction.

We tend to make our current times too important. That's understandable enough: they are our times, they are the times we live in, and to that point they are necessarily important. Still, where they don't interact with the timeless, if they aren't seen as part of a bigger picture, I wonder how truly important they are at all.

There's bit of (perhaps) heavy philosophy for you on a Monday morning. Have a good week.