Whitman Takes A Swing At B-Squad

The great poet Walt Whitman is reported to have said, “Baseball will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them larger physical stoicism.” He claimed the sport would “tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.”

I had to look up dyspeptic and found that it meant someone who was morbidly despondent or gloomy. And I thought, baseball is supposed to relieve me from this? Exactly how is it going to achieve that task? A larger physical stoicism? Me? The Bricker? Have you seen me at the plate? Gloomy? Have you seen the score lately?

I suppose there are some who believe in the magic of baseball. But what about Baseball's younger and stupider cousin played on Wednesdays in North Minneapolis? Just who is going to stand up with a pithy quote about E-League ball--home of high spirits and limited athleticism? I've been searching the web for almost an hour and I can't find one pithy quote that sums up this game, let alone the five-year experiment we fondly call the B-Squad.

Let's face it: the web is useless. It neither satisfies our hungers, nor calms our fears. Google is an illusion that stretches over our daily lives and makes us feel like there is a grand plan and it only takes the right sequence of keywords to really grasp the knowledge required to be smart, funny, wise, talented, loved by others.

I'm telling you I've tried them all, and honey it's just page after page of junk. The very best thing you run across in hours of searching the net is a pittance—a shopping list by a French teen ager, the prices of homes in Arizona, a picture of a smiling dentist in Tallahassee, an advertisement for T-shirts with swear words on them. Not much to work with when your goal is to describe the softball game you participated in.

So there was no guidance for this recap on the net. The notes from the bar were pretty incoherent. Something about a "true agonizing yellow dog times" and "Meadows Symposium--staring Ted Mondale!" Phoebe took some pictures but I couldn't get them downloaded in a format that my computer would digest (thank you EarthLink!). I do recall going out of doors and filling my lungs with oxygen. I'm also pretty sure that Zin won the cape.

Whitman also claimed that baseball would “Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us...” Perhaps this is what I am experiencing. Some sort of healing process that eventually leaves one blessed and ready for the season's final game.