COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #7

REALLY ROTTEN RESULTS

The general manager hired a psychiatrist for his star but slumping player, whose slump was costing the team a chance to compete in post-season. For a great fee, the psychiatrist broke confidentiality rules. That's how the general manager learned the emotional basis of the player's slump: beloved wife's adulterous betrayal to a threatened divorce extent, since there were no children. At great expense, the general manager hired a detective who located and paid off handsomely the wife's adulterer to abandon the wife. The payments to the psychiatrist, detective, and adulterer added up to financially ruin the ball team, whose owner fired the general manager. The distressed key player, despite his also distressed wife's profuse apology, partially but insufficiently recovered from his slump, and the team failed to make the playoffs. To top off a lousy season, the key player had to be sold off to partially alleviate the team's financial hole that the fired general manager had dug. The player hated being sold, and he never forgave his wife, so they divorced. Love down the drain. Such a lousy season for all concerned. Did any good come out of this? Yes, but only for the enriched psychiatrist, the enriched detective, and the enriched adulterer, who never did truly love the key player's straying wife. So we congratulate the gainers, while commiserating with the key player, his wife, the general manager, the team owner, the team's fans, and anyone else who needs consoling, including this story's readers, who stuck with such a downer, such a string of negatives, an altogether loser, losing all this time that could have been put to more profitable use. Sorry.

Marvin Cohen is the author of several books including Baseball The Beautiful (1974) and a former creative writing teacher at the New School. Marvin plays first base for Softball For The Love Of It.