Hedlinoos

Ruminations on the crazy people we are, by a retired teacher/musician. Can't get the "requests" out of my system after years of barroom/lounge/restaurant/party gigs mining 100 years worth of the musical mother-lode.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Pete Rose

So Pete Rose wants players punished for using steroids.

Let me just pause a moment to let that sink in. Is this "the pot calling the kettle black," or what?

Truly, I feel sorry for Pete Rose. Actually, I felt sorry for Pete Rose when everybody else thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.I felt sorry for him because his only thought was of baseball; that is, until his second thought was of gambling. He ate, drank, and slept baseball, and became "Charlie Hustle" to generations of kids. But he was a most incomplete person. Why, because he ate, drank, and slept baseball. He knew nothing else, enjoyed nothing else, and hoped for nothing else.That kind of life is the narrowest, to put it mildly.

There are many Pete Rose types around today. Their parents push them out on to ballfields, soccer fields, hockey rinks, gyms, and even ski slopes. Their cultural I.Q.'s are below the humanity line, and their understanding of the world around them is equally lacking.There is a price to pay for this: the athlete, sometimes wishfully referred to as a student athlete, heads out into life an incomplete person, and after his dreams are done, has nowhere to turn for fulfillment; the price society has to pay is that these people often have an influence on others, establishing empty-headedness as a model to be admired and imitated. When these student-athletes find their way into colleges to enhance "the program", they are coddled through their eligibility for four or five years, until they are no longer useful; no follow-up , no after-care, no pension for their services, nothing. And the A.D.s run the University, as the tail wags the dog.

Need I mention, these athletic types become voters, or worse, non-voters. Of course, there are exceptions: athlete-graduates from the few selective schools, and high-quality success stories from kids who just had great families to direct them.lf, however, you want to know if this assessment is close to the truth, just tune in to the end of any ballgame, and listen to interviews: can you understand what most of the players are saying? I can't.


Punny thing for today:

LaCrosse.......is it a)a city in Wisconsin
b) a betrayal of trust, among thieves, or
c) a way to beat somebody's brains in without being arrested?

toodle-oo 3.29.06

5 Comments:

At 9:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah yes, I remember learning the phrase "Bush League" at a very early age and associating it with Pete Roses' lack of class and no frills kill or be killed attitude. He had sheer will and grit, but not the type that you admire...just brute force. There was never anything graceful about him or unique other than his will to hit, run, filed, and win at any cost.

It is that same need for buzz that did him in, in the end. Gambling is part excitement/strategy and part addiction. Those who can see from a strategic standpoint as a challenge can calculate the inherent risk and factor that into their approach. These people usually live to see another day. The others, like poor old Pete see it as pure risk or a thrill ride, usually ending up in unhappy families, ruined careers, and a debilitating need to surrender to the subconscious, leaving reasomn or foresight in the dust.

So like a Greek tradgedy, the vey thing that drove him to success, took it away from him in the end. Maybe people will start to see that this persona/style is worth emulating, or better yet not worth the wager.

Crinkle

 
At 9:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

correction to the editor: should be "is not" in the last paragraph.
C

 
At 9:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It just goes to show you how some people can lie, cheat, steal and bowl people over on their way to getting what they want, and STILL believe they have some kind of moral highground. Fundamentals. Fundamentalism. Fun - duh - mental. And what horrendous hair!!

 
At 6:50 AM, Blogger Larry Grogan said...

Outside of the world of garage rock, bowl cuts are a sign of mental defect.

 
At 3:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think that his indignation about steroid use is smokescreen to get people to overlook the gambling. (Which serious baseball people never will.) Is there any doubt that if these types of steroids were around back then that this clown would have used them too?

 

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