A BARTERING EQUIVALENCE Marvin Cohen
After the last game, Ian Parfrey and I happened to be let off the same car, into the same subway station, aimed for the same C train. But I descended the stairs too slow, causing him to miss the train he would have made if he hadn't waited for me. It cost him an extra 5 minutes till the next train came. This is like I cost him a double or triple if he hits it into the gap with me on first and I can't make it past second base. Since time is money, and he's busy, I asked him how much I owed him for the 5 minutes between trains. Unlike a hard-nosed businessman, he didn't charge me anything except this contribution to our website. Thus the barter system is still informally alive in a social economy that shows good will pitching a meatball strike to a forgiven batter whether he can respond to the opportunity or not.
Showing posts with label COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS. Show all posts
Monday, April 9, 2012
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #8
AN IMPROVE-THE-WORLD SCHEME, PUT INTO PLAY BY A BALLPLAYER FORCED INTO RETIREMENT
The ballplayer had reached the end. But he hadn't reached for it -- it came to him, of its own accord unhelped by his reluctance to call it quits.
They had to rip his uniform off his back, but despite a recent bath, the uniform and his skin had joined stuck like the inside-outside layers of such a selfsame fabric that cloth and flesh unpolarized between nature and artifice.
Retirement was like starting out on a new non-career as a whole new rookie, whose statistics were blank on the page yet.
He had amassed, through a near-hall of fame career, steadily increasing salaries to the tune of a well-heeled fortune. How could he reward the earth for the lucrative power of his unasked-for body?
By devising an improve-the-world scheme. There was a plague of suicide-bombers all over, killing innocents. How to dissuade such rampant slaughterers? By disillusioning them of unrealistic expectations of there being a heaven as an after-death payment for sacrificing their lives in the self-same explosions that deprived others of the same precious substance.
Using his career-earned millions, the now-retired ballplayer hired eminent scientists from nations friendly to all suicide bombers, to create a well-documented group scientific Proclamation to be read by future volunteer suicide bombers to the effect that suicide doesn't pay off, since death instantly ends consciousness so that even if there was a heaven it couldn't entertain the senses of anyone who died, since those senses had no more existence.
Self-death was certainly a foolish move, declared the Proclamation. It would also end the chance of changing your mind about killing yourself once the deal had done itself, since death offers no second chance.
So, the Proclamation asked, what's the point of ending your life by suicide, since nothing will reward such a deed, it proclaims its do-er as by definition the quintessence of an absolute loser. "Wise up," the Proclamation said. "If you kill yourself, what's left? Nothing, and nothing has no heaven to reside in, no matter what the real-estate market at the time offers to anyone at whatever income at his or for that matter her disposal, such as the case may be. Let's be realistic. Even if heaven were conceivable, your death by suicide leaves you with no mind left to live it up there, to enjoy the non-available heaven to the hilt.
"Don't be a delusory fool, tilting against windmills. The odds for a productive afterlife stand at a million to nothing. At those odds, what's in it for you? From the self-interest point of view, the nil you gain amounts, in practical terms at any currency, to no gain in sum total. That's all you get, for all your efforts in pulling off a successful suicide bombing. So as scientists, we advise you, for the sake of your lives, not even to TRY suicide. As you'll never see, it makes no sense. So what's the point of that? We, the undersigned of this Proclamation, have devoted our lives to science; and what you've just now read concludes our joint professional findings. If you dare not to respect our opinions, that's your business. But if you want to stay in business, take our advice and wise up, before it's too late. If it's too late, you'll have no regrets, but is that a consolation? Don't fool around with death, it's too risky -- but you'll never find out."
The retired ballplayer paid the scientists for their Proclamation, which he had printed in leaflets in all the appropriate languages, to distribute among future would-be suicide bombers wherever they still existed. Then he sat back, with the future balancing itself.
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.
The ballplayer had reached the end. But he hadn't reached for it -- it came to him, of its own accord unhelped by his reluctance to call it quits.
They had to rip his uniform off his back, but despite a recent bath, the uniform and his skin had joined stuck like the inside-outside layers of such a selfsame fabric that cloth and flesh unpolarized between nature and artifice.
Retirement was like starting out on a new non-career as a whole new rookie, whose statistics were blank on the page yet.
He had amassed, through a near-hall of fame career, steadily increasing salaries to the tune of a well-heeled fortune. How could he reward the earth for the lucrative power of his unasked-for body?
By devising an improve-the-world scheme. There was a plague of suicide-bombers all over, killing innocents. How to dissuade such rampant slaughterers? By disillusioning them of unrealistic expectations of there being a heaven as an after-death payment for sacrificing their lives in the self-same explosions that deprived others of the same precious substance.
Using his career-earned millions, the now-retired ballplayer hired eminent scientists from nations friendly to all suicide bombers, to create a well-documented group scientific Proclamation to be read by future volunteer suicide bombers to the effect that suicide doesn't pay off, since death instantly ends consciousness so that even if there was a heaven it couldn't entertain the senses of anyone who died, since those senses had no more existence.
Self-death was certainly a foolish move, declared the Proclamation. It would also end the chance of changing your mind about killing yourself once the deal had done itself, since death offers no second chance.
So, the Proclamation asked, what's the point of ending your life by suicide, since nothing will reward such a deed, it proclaims its do-er as by definition the quintessence of an absolute loser. "Wise up," the Proclamation said. "If you kill yourself, what's left? Nothing, and nothing has no heaven to reside in, no matter what the real-estate market at the time offers to anyone at whatever income at his or for that matter her disposal, such as the case may be. Let's be realistic. Even if heaven were conceivable, your death by suicide leaves you with no mind left to live it up there, to enjoy the non-available heaven to the hilt.
"Don't be a delusory fool, tilting against windmills. The odds for a productive afterlife stand at a million to nothing. At those odds, what's in it for you? From the self-interest point of view, the nil you gain amounts, in practical terms at any currency, to no gain in sum total. That's all you get, for all your efforts in pulling off a successful suicide bombing. So as scientists, we advise you, for the sake of your lives, not even to TRY suicide. As you'll never see, it makes no sense. So what's the point of that? We, the undersigned of this Proclamation, have devoted our lives to science; and what you've just now read concludes our joint professional findings. If you dare not to respect our opinions, that's your business. But if you want to stay in business, take our advice and wise up, before it's too late. If it's too late, you'll have no regrets, but is that a consolation? Don't fool around with death, it's too risky -- but you'll never find out."
The retired ballplayer paid the scientists for their Proclamation, which he had printed in leaflets in all the appropriate languages, to distribute among future would-be suicide bombers wherever they still existed. Then he sat back, with the future balancing itself.
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.
Monday, April 5, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #6
POSTERITY SCORNS ITS FAME-SMITTEN SUITOR
So the long-retired ballplayer dies. His egocentric ghost tries to grab posthumous fame-mongering admiration from the current generation of fans and players. Well, good luck to that enterprising ghost, who hires a live-wire publicity agent, who sends long-ago statistical reminders to all the media outlets: which fails to make an impression enough to get printed notices, because when alive the ghost client's major-league career topped off at mediocre. No fielding award, no hitting award, no post-season appearance, add up to forgettableness, especially given the current generation's attention-span disorder, creating the phenomenon known as oblivion. The ghost's egocentricity is grandiosely way out of its depth in trying to rouse remembrance of long-ago non-heroics. None of his contemporaries is alive to contribute any remembering, so historical archives would have to be pointed out, which gathers total indifference among callous posterity. For that old ballplayer to try to fame-hype a career via his wealthy ghost's hiring a "look-down-the-ages" agent, just doesn't seem to work. Death is ignoble enough, but to add a deficiency of fame glory to the dirty dust of coffined skeletal decay is what you'd call "piling on," unanswerable by death's smothered passivity. So the ghost flees, and nothing's left, except the hired agent who takes his commissioned fee, unmerrily, to the bank.
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.
So the long-retired ballplayer dies. His egocentric ghost tries to grab posthumous fame-mongering admiration from the current generation of fans and players. Well, good luck to that enterprising ghost, who hires a live-wire publicity agent, who sends long-ago statistical reminders to all the media outlets: which fails to make an impression enough to get printed notices, because when alive the ghost client's major-league career topped off at mediocre. No fielding award, no hitting award, no post-season appearance, add up to forgettableness, especially given the current generation's attention-span disorder, creating the phenomenon known as oblivion. The ghost's egocentricity is grandiosely way out of its depth in trying to rouse remembrance of long-ago non-heroics. None of his contemporaries is alive to contribute any remembering, so historical archives would have to be pointed out, which gathers total indifference among callous posterity. For that old ballplayer to try to fame-hype a career via his wealthy ghost's hiring a "look-down-the-ages" agent, just doesn't seem to work. Death is ignoble enough, but to add a deficiency of fame glory to the dirty dust of coffined skeletal decay is what you'd call "piling on," unanswerable by death's smothered passivity. So the ghost flees, and nothing's left, except the hired agent who takes his commissioned fee, unmerrily, to the bank.
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.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #5
HARD TO WRITE ABOUT SUCH INFLEXIBLE SOFTNESS. A SUSPENDED STORY, UNRESOLVED
A ballplayer's impotence was to be kept secret, off the record. All the sports writers were in the know, but their sportsmanship of fair play kept their computers silent on this embarrassing subject. The ballplayer was well liked and respected. No journalist would break this benevolent conspiracy of silence about the ballplayer's chronic curse: the inability to get it up, not just keep it up, despite women's frantic but silkily sexy maneuvers to remedy his stubborn condition. Even women who were sex therapists tried their hand, but still, the ballplayer's shrunken bat never attained the requisite size to hit a line drive.
Medical science was put to the test--or testicle. Nothing worked. The ballplayer was a good fielder, a good hitter, a valuable member of a competing team. But gossip columns were silent about this eligible bachelor's non-linkage with the prominent or not name of any girlfriend.
An aspiring young sportswriter was about to be fired for writing not only dull but uninteresting articles covering the local team that the impotent ballplayer happened to be on. This desperate sportswriter's only chance of saving his job was to betray the unlucky ballplayer's sacred secret, thus breaking the code of silence that his colleague journalists had loyally held to. All the other journalists would jump in once the iron curtain was broken, like a snapped condom that allows sperm to rush through unhesitatingly, in a merry stampede that tramples the holding-back philosophy in riotous frenzy to give the sweet id something to pin a celebration on.
The ballplayer's shame would become common knowledge not just to the baseball community but to the vulgar celebrity world beyond, giving the public a new victim to play with while dangling merciful compassion before the bloodshot squints of his eyes.
The young sportswriter about to be fired would suffer contempt for breaking rank with his colleagues, but not ostracized from the hard-won journalistic profession. He and his wife were poor and expecting twins. Losing his job would be a sheer drop into poverty, as well as ambition assassination. His editor had dangled temptation that had irresistibility prominently embossed on it.
This story's writer ran out of potency to forge an ending. His typing fingers are all mushy soft, in low-pressured droop. He couldn't keep it up. But unlike the ballplayer, at least he was able stiffly to start what failed to be sustained to a spell-binding orgiastic length that keeps children hammered out with the bat to counter the spin the world puts on every wickedly pitched ball from its bag of mixed tricks. That's how the spinning world turns, challenging men's bats to keep it afloat with children batted out hard in collision with battered wombs.
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.
A ballplayer's impotence was to be kept secret, off the record. All the sports writers were in the know, but their sportsmanship of fair play kept their computers silent on this embarrassing subject. The ballplayer was well liked and respected. No journalist would break this benevolent conspiracy of silence about the ballplayer's chronic curse: the inability to get it up, not just keep it up, despite women's frantic but silkily sexy maneuvers to remedy his stubborn condition. Even women who were sex therapists tried their hand, but still, the ballplayer's shrunken bat never attained the requisite size to hit a line drive.
Medical science was put to the test--or testicle. Nothing worked. The ballplayer was a good fielder, a good hitter, a valuable member of a competing team. But gossip columns were silent about this eligible bachelor's non-linkage with the prominent or not name of any girlfriend.
An aspiring young sportswriter was about to be fired for writing not only dull but uninteresting articles covering the local team that the impotent ballplayer happened to be on. This desperate sportswriter's only chance of saving his job was to betray the unlucky ballplayer's sacred secret, thus breaking the code of silence that his colleague journalists had loyally held to. All the other journalists would jump in once the iron curtain was broken, like a snapped condom that allows sperm to rush through unhesitatingly, in a merry stampede that tramples the holding-back philosophy in riotous frenzy to give the sweet id something to pin a celebration on.
The ballplayer's shame would become common knowledge not just to the baseball community but to the vulgar celebrity world beyond, giving the public a new victim to play with while dangling merciful compassion before the bloodshot squints of his eyes.
The young sportswriter about to be fired would suffer contempt for breaking rank with his colleagues, but not ostracized from the hard-won journalistic profession. He and his wife were poor and expecting twins. Losing his job would be a sheer drop into poverty, as well as ambition assassination. His editor had dangled temptation that had irresistibility prominently embossed on it.
This story's writer ran out of potency to forge an ending. His typing fingers are all mushy soft, in low-pressured droop. He couldn't keep it up. But unlike the ballplayer, at least he was able stiffly to start what failed to be sustained to a spell-binding orgiastic length that keeps children hammered out with the bat to counter the spin the world puts on every wickedly pitched ball from its bag of mixed tricks. That's how the spinning world turns, challenging men's bats to keep it afloat with children batted out hard in collision with battered wombs.
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.
Monday, March 1, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #4
ABOVE THE LAW OF GRAVITY. INTRODUCING BETWEENNESS
The Law of Gravity was lawfully convicted of a crime so bad, I'm not allowed to reveal it here. May the reader's frustrated curiosity forgive me. The court made him pay an unspecified fine, and his other punishment was to be suspended for a crucial play in the deciding seventh game of the world series that coincidentally was to be played the very following night, between the Cubs and the Tigers. I'm not kidding, these things do and can happen. Anyway, to continue: It was the last half of the ninth inning, with the Cubs ahead, five to four. There were two outs with the potential tying run on first and the potential winning run at the plate. Speaking of tension!
Yes, the world series was in the balance. Excitement was at a frenzied height. That moment, two new records were set for television-watching, one nationally and one internationally. A breathtaking suspension, unreleased in its mounting intensity, worked its way through heart attacks. Audience suspension reflected the Law of Gravity's suspension, by court edict, that was about to be enacted, on the field itself. The Tiger batter lifted a towering fly ball toward the distant bleacher barrier, just far enough to be indeterminate whether it would be a game ending homer or a game ending catch by the outfielder, who waited with an anxiously upheld glove eagerly wide open in professionally concentrated anticipation.
Under suspension, the Law of Gravity was legally helpless to enact itself, so the well-batted ball kept its suspended height at that undetermined length of play. It seemed like a mathematical puzzler from on high. How would it be measured? By an expert professional measurer whose airborne skills were put into play by an instantly rented helicopter put into service only for this occasion, but whatever the expense it was by all measures worth it.
Was it a game winning homerun or a game winning put-out? Or to put it another way, was it a game losing homerun or a game losing out? That depended on whose point of view it was. It's not an absolute world, it's a relative world. Beyond dispute, you can depend on this, by all absolute means.
The outcome? I leave the faithful reader in a bewilderment of suspense, which I share with him, so we're in the same boat, or in this case helicopter. My apologies that this twisted enigma remains unresolved through authorial indecision, or sadism, or abrupt bloodless withdrawal, or sheer disinterestedness, having made my point, though it's a blunt point, now a diffused point, spread out into just bland blankness, ended with cowardly or bored indifference, a let-down; or an abandonment of the writer-reader contract, which I never signed anyway, so it too is hereby under suspension, like an eternally lofted fly ball poised between win and loss, between two teams, between the bleacher section and the playing field, in that world-compelling area of Betweenness, much commented and debated upon.
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.
The Law of Gravity was lawfully convicted of a crime so bad, I'm not allowed to reveal it here. May the reader's frustrated curiosity forgive me. The court made him pay an unspecified fine, and his other punishment was to be suspended for a crucial play in the deciding seventh game of the world series that coincidentally was to be played the very following night, between the Cubs and the Tigers. I'm not kidding, these things do and can happen. Anyway, to continue: It was the last half of the ninth inning, with the Cubs ahead, five to four. There were two outs with the potential tying run on first and the potential winning run at the plate. Speaking of tension!
Yes, the world series was in the balance. Excitement was at a frenzied height. That moment, two new records were set for television-watching, one nationally and one internationally. A breathtaking suspension, unreleased in its mounting intensity, worked its way through heart attacks. Audience suspension reflected the Law of Gravity's suspension, by court edict, that was about to be enacted, on the field itself. The Tiger batter lifted a towering fly ball toward the distant bleacher barrier, just far enough to be indeterminate whether it would be a game ending homer or a game ending catch by the outfielder, who waited with an anxiously upheld glove eagerly wide open in professionally concentrated anticipation.
Under suspension, the Law of Gravity was legally helpless to enact itself, so the well-batted ball kept its suspended height at that undetermined length of play. It seemed like a mathematical puzzler from on high. How would it be measured? By an expert professional measurer whose airborne skills were put into play by an instantly rented helicopter put into service only for this occasion, but whatever the expense it was by all measures worth it.
Was it a game winning homerun or a game winning put-out? Or to put it another way, was it a game losing homerun or a game losing out? That depended on whose point of view it was. It's not an absolute world, it's a relative world. Beyond dispute, you can depend on this, by all absolute means.
The outcome? I leave the faithful reader in a bewilderment of suspense, which I share with him, so we're in the same boat, or in this case helicopter. My apologies that this twisted enigma remains unresolved through authorial indecision, or sadism, or abrupt bloodless withdrawal, or sheer disinterestedness, having made my point, though it's a blunt point, now a diffused point, spread out into just bland blankness, ended with cowardly or bored indifference, a let-down; or an abandonment of the writer-reader contract, which I never signed anyway, so it too is hereby under suspension, like an eternally lofted fly ball poised between win and loss, between two teams, between the bleacher section and the playing field, in that world-compelling area of Betweenness, much commented and debated upon.
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.
Friday, February 26, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #3
THE EARTH IS NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR A BASEBALL
Is a baseball a small-scale replica of our immense earth-ball? Gladly no, because of the latter's uneven circumference, with all its inverted protrusions and eccentric surfaces. Were a baseball to emulate this, the result would be a luck-over-skill imbalance. The ball would dipsy-do, skeetering like a whiffle-ball, skurving like a frisbee, in uncalculated bounces, like a football fumble that brutes re-dive for in out-of joint double-takes, making for duplex photos. Pitchers may thrive on this, but fielders, batters, and catchers would suffer finger-blows and toe-knockabouts, plus knee-implosions and elbow malfunctions, not to mention vanity dips. So please, earth, don't give baseball-manufacturers any weird ideas. Let a baseball be round by geometry, rather than a plaything to cruel gambles of chance, setting loose such unsportsmanlike chaos that anarchy would rumble hysterically over the old ball game. Even the foul lines would wander astray from their assigned positions. Demented umpires would run out of coins to toss, creating planetary freefall in the cosmic stock market. The crumbling firmament would lose its earthball-bearing, and the world series would not be played that year. Mere football would stick its crooked tongue out, mocking baseball's hairline display of dignity. Sacrilege! Get earth's orbit back on its slot. Let pure geometry preserve a sanitary roundness in our classically stitched baseball, which glistens in the sun's applause and plays fairly with the howling moon under the serenading arcs.
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.
Is a baseball a small-scale replica of our immense earth-ball? Gladly no, because of the latter's uneven circumference, with all its inverted protrusions and eccentric surfaces. Were a baseball to emulate this, the result would be a luck-over-skill imbalance. The ball would dipsy-do, skeetering like a whiffle-ball, skurving like a frisbee, in uncalculated bounces, like a football fumble that brutes re-dive for in out-of joint double-takes, making for duplex photos. Pitchers may thrive on this, but fielders, batters, and catchers would suffer finger-blows and toe-knockabouts, plus knee-implosions and elbow malfunctions, not to mention vanity dips. So please, earth, don't give baseball-manufacturers any weird ideas. Let a baseball be round by geometry, rather than a plaything to cruel gambles of chance, setting loose such unsportsmanlike chaos that anarchy would rumble hysterically over the old ball game. Even the foul lines would wander astray from their assigned positions. Demented umpires would run out of coins to toss, creating planetary freefall in the cosmic stock market. The crumbling firmament would lose its earthball-bearing, and the world series would not be played that year. Mere football would stick its crooked tongue out, mocking baseball's hairline display of dignity. Sacrilege! Get earth's orbit back on its slot. Let pure geometry preserve a sanitary roundness in our classically stitched baseball, which glistens in the sun's applause and plays fairly with the howling moon under the serenading arcs.
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.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #2
FROM THE START, A NON-COMPARISON
The batter hits a slow roller and manages to beat it out. His momentum carries him 30feet beyond first base. He gets no credit for those extra feet. Compare safely getting to first base with football's goal of getting the first down. The runner succeeds not only in getting the first down but 6 yards more, and furthermore he gets extra credit to the tune of those 6 yards. Isn't this inter-sport comparison unfair to baseball? Shouldn't the batter, beyond getting to first base successfully, get extra credit for his momentum-driven extra 30 feet?
In a word, no. What's the moral? To each his own. Don't let borders get out of hand, or foot. To each its zone. Remain territorially distinct, don't blur rules.
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.
The batter hits a slow roller and manages to beat it out. His momentum carries him 30feet beyond first base. He gets no credit for those extra feet. Compare safely getting to first base with football's goal of getting the first down. The runner succeeds not only in getting the first down but 6 yards more, and furthermore he gets extra credit to the tune of those 6 yards. Isn't this inter-sport comparison unfair to baseball? Shouldn't the batter, beyond getting to first base successfully, get extra credit for his momentum-driven extra 30 feet?
In a word, no. What's the moral? To each his own. Don't let borders get out of hand, or foot. To each its zone. Remain territorially distinct, don't blur rules.
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.
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