9/15/04

Softball: A Circuitous Road to Nader’s Redemption

Dear People,

There was an unusually taut moment in the 8th inning of last week’s game, in which Jay Z found himself on the mound, defending my team’s razor-thin 12-12 lead with two out, bases loaded, sweet ‘n’ cuddly Nanci Pecker at the plate and big’n’burly Michael Davey on deck. I mention this because I have always said that softball is a swirling aerobic metaphor for all of life’s great aphorisms, such as "Everything is Trade-offs" or "Knowledge is Power" or "This is so Totally Unfair."
In any case, I do think of that painful question of trade-offs, since the Jaymeister had to weigh the brutal competing risks of pitching to Nanci (2004 stats of a .170 batting average, 6 singles, 0 doubles, 0 triples, 0 home-runs and 13 hits that have failed to clear the unofficial 5-foot line) VS. walking her, in order to face down Michael (2004 stats of .540 batting average, 37 singles, 29 doubles, 9 triples, 27 homeruns and 12 shattered shins with 4 resulting lawsuits, all dismissed without prejudice).

For reasons that may seem counter-intuitive from a risk-yield perspective, Jay walked Nanci and forced home the go-ahead run, but fortunately for my team, he did hold the Daveynator to a 1,200-foot Grand Slam on the very next pitch. Alas, we still lost, 18-14, yet the simple fact is that I honestly don’t know if throwing strikes to Nanci would have actually resulted in a somewhat less calamitous inning. Maybe, maybe not. The point is, that kind of talk is in the realm of what-ifs, pure theory and parallel aerobic universes, and while you may all snicker, I believe that both Ty Cobb and Emanuel Kant had it right when they suggested such speculation is the death of reason.

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with some juicy speculative prognostication, and since I happen to have a pervo attraction to really close calls (recreational, electoral and otherwise), I would like to reveal the salacious contents of a political wet dream that I recently had:

---Lurch (Kerry) takes every state Gore took in 2000, + New Hampshire and Nevada, giving him 269 electoral votes total.

---President SwaggerButt (Bush) takes every other state, except that his win in Colorado is concurrent with a simultaneously passed and immediately effective proposition which changes the state constitution by having these fine and frisky Mountain People allocate their 9 electoral votes as a proportional percentage of the popular vote.

---Colorado thus gives the Little Bush Boy 5 votes (not 9), and Senator Charisma 4 votes (not 0), which thus shifts the electoral college from a 269-269 tie (which would have sent the election to an unsightly fate in the House of Representatives), to a 273-265 Kerry victory.

---Bush immediately litigates, claiming the Colorado amendment is unconstitutional since Article 2, Section 1.2 states that only state legislatures, not the people, can decide how a state’s electors are selected. Kerry argues in compelling defense that Bush’s claim is specious horseshit, since the Colorado legislature legitimately delegated that authority to the people in their propositional procedures.

---The Colorado Supreme Court backs Kerry, but on appeal to the US Supreme Court, the same five results-based jurisprudential hyper-hypocrites who stopped the 2000 recount in Florida (Slimeballs Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas as well as Bozos Kennedy and O’Conner), vote to overturn the Colorado initiative, thus putting the electoral count back to a 269-269 tie.

---On January 6th, 2005, the nation’s 538 electors gather in Washington DC to cast their votes for President. In a magnificent denouement of exquisite political theatre, a Republican West Virginian elector whose been making curious noises for months, a certain Richie Robb, casts his vote for Nader instead of Bush (breaking no Federal or State law), thus swinging the electoral college vote back to Kerry, 269-268-1.

---This obviates the need for a vote in the House of Representatives, and thus two weeks later, Lurch takes the Presidential Oath in DC and SwaggerButt returns to Crawford, Texas, where he immediately enrolls in a remedial English class at the local community college.

Yes, it was only a dream (or a vision, or a hashish-triggered episode), but after crunching the most recent poll numbers, I now believe there is a 5% chance of this scenario actually playing itself out over the next few months (at least the Colorado part). You read it here first, and therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Raymond


9/17/04

Softball: Useful

Dear People,

There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, and as of now, there is ONE tiny little slot left.

Please bring $2 for the field, which for this week only includes a complimentary Estonian-Navajo bilingual dictionary, complete with full phonemic transcriptions and an assortment of salacious party jokes, lovingly presented in both tongues…Raymond 845-7552

Sunday Morning Update 10:09 AM


Just got back from Codornices/It is heavily puddled in a couple areas, but it is not officially closed and I think it’s playable (basically)/If grumbling turns to rebellion, we may be able to flee to Kleeberger/Life is risk/Retreat is for pussies/See ya At 11…Raymond


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