"for love of the game"

One of the two athletic endeavors I enjoyed during my adventurous youth was bicycle racing.
The other, was baseball.

Little league, Babe Ruth league, a dubious flirtation with double-A ball, pick-up games wherever I could find them and finally, corporate ball.

I love the game.

There was never anything more sublime than anticipating the start of a game at my position in center field at the end of a summer day as dusk fell into night and the stadium lights came on.

Anyway, not long ago I drove a friend out to Northside Drive, here in town, for her annual visit to WomanKind. I knew full well she'd be an hour or so and I also knew that right next door to that colorful complex of doctor's, accountant's and insurance offices was the Clayton Sterling/Rosa Hernandez Complex of 4 baseball diamonds and 1 softball field. But I'd never really scoped it out so, knowing I'd have a little time to kill that afternoon, I took the opportunity.

Now, I've played on sandlots, public park diamonds, in minor league stadiums and even on the roof of a 20 story building in mid-town Manhattan. (a corporate league thing)

I even got out at center field at the old Yankee Stadium a time or two (the house that Ruth built); not as a player of course but goddamn, was that place a cathedral!

My point is, I've seen a few ball parks in my time and I think, that for younger ball players, these 5 diamonds are real gems.

Say what you like about our city government, we've gotta give them credit for creating and maintaining these ball-fields and managing the leagues, programs and clinics for very nearly 800 aspiring major leaguers from the ages of 9 - 16.

Kudos Key West!

collectibles

I've been thinking about collectibles and antiques for the last couple of days, since I received and e-mail from a guy who's trying to sell his "classic collection" of Playboy magazines dating back to the '70's, for 300 bucks and, I could check it out on Craigslist.

So I did and sure enough he had 3 knee-high stacks of magazines and I had to wonder, if he cared enough about the "articles" in Playboy to keep them in "pristine condition" and safe from his wife for 40 years, what would make him want to sell them now, for such a desperately small amount of money.

Just for grins and giggles, I scrolled down the Craigslist "collectibles" page a little more and you know, the girlie magazine dude was nowhere near alone. Also for sale were collections of Haitian Bottle Art, a Pepsi Cola Phone and an Atocha coin, 50 DVD Porn movies, a Spiderman cookie jar, a Neptune Fantasy Barbie (whatever that is) and the complete season of 1969 Topps Baseball cards (including that year's world champion Mets) in "EX condition".

It didn't surprise me that there was so much stuff for sale, people are always trying to sell their stuff, but that it was all priced at desperately small amounts of money,
said something.
It was a marketplace of people parting with any and everything of intrinsic or emotional value to them for a miserably few extra bucks.

While my sentimental right brain was asking, "why would anyone sell off the treasures that define them for 30 pieces of silver?", simultaneously my practical left brain was screaming, "it's the economy, stupid!".

Sure I know as well as you do, for all but the Wall Street bankster bonus babies, cash is gettin' harder to come by, (and in my opinion, we ain't seen the half of it yet) but what does it say about us as a culture when, at the first crunch of crisis, we start selling off the things we hold most dear, the treasures that bring our hearts and minds a little pleasure, the stuff we picked up along the way, that helps us remember where we came from?