Zito's Paradox

"If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in motion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the pitched ball is therefore motionless"

Christian Player-Products, on sale now...and then

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game...The big league games are too fast for the beginner and the newspapers don't help. To read them with profit you have to know a language that comes easy only after philosophy has taught you to judge practice.

Jacques Barzun, 1954

I've gotten so disgusted with baseball, I don't follow it anymore. I just see the headlines and turn my head away in shame from what we have done with our most interesting game and best, healthiest pastime.... The commercialization is beyond anything that was ever thought of.... Other things are similarly commercialized and out of proportion. But for baseball, which is so intimately connected with the nation's spirit and tradition, it's a disaster.

Jacques Barzun, 2008

Although reading our blog might not require the same kind of philosophical training that Barzun deems necessary for comprehending the sports page, we're not exactly floating softballs here. In fact, this post will probably razzle and confuse all you Bible-thumpers out there. But frankly, in America, you're in the majority and atheists like me are in a minority, so buck up.

Before reluctantly endorsing some good-old mass-consumption of this year's MLB playoff product, there's another commodity which the Big Show churns out, year after year after year, whose linguistic practices urge this particular baseball-language philosopher to analyze, before turning to some truly Pagan themes in the next post.

Biblical allusions (illusions?), archetypes, and allegories still circulate within the sewers of speech that snake through American Sports rhetoric. And this bothers me to no end. Even in an age of supposed secularism, lessons of a most punitive Moral Order persist. Language of the straight and narrow steeped for over a century in holy water sterilizes the playful spirit. Humorless, conformist narratives manufacturing humorless, conformist disciples.

On the field, in the sports pages, and across the baseball blogosphere the unending barrage of Christian discourse continues to assault our humanist dispositions.

Major League Baseball has become a worldwide leader in the manufacture and distribution of several lines of commercialized Christian products. The most ubiquitous of all is the Christian Athlete, often seen grazing on the grounds of $400 million ballpark castles and cathedrals across the country.

North American professional baseball has manufactured this type of player-product since its inception over 150 years ago (Christy Matthewson, pitcher, was known as The Christian Gentleman exactly 100 years ago).

Sometimes the product features a sensationalized, lost-then-found backstory about redemption and success through Faith (everyone's favorite example: Josh Hamilton). Sometimes the player opportunistically dons the mask of the Christian Athlete, only to cast it aside backstage (e.g. Reggie Jackson). But most of the time, the Christian Athlete is presented as completely and utterly normal.

Very few, if any Americans felt their stomachs turn as I did after the stoic journeyman pitcher, Ryan Vogelsong, came out of the metaphysical closet in his post-game interview by immediately attributing his 7-inning gem to the benevolent willing of "God".

The predictability of this player-product is its primary draw -- a familiarity device engineered to please the majority of those who consume such a product. For this particular player-product, television is still the ideal medium in which to be marketed. The Christian Athlete is groomed for television by sports psychologists, personality coaches, and media trainers: shown how to act, told how to talk, and handled with care. This is the flagship model, the traditional standard by which other, improperly functional models are contrasted against.


Indeed, the relative few number of player-products which do not comform to standardization are usually just ignored and permitted to operate as an anomaly -- something that doesn't fit in, even in the eyes of the casual observer. For, these players display none of the rituals or gestures that accompany the Christian Athlete. Their ironic a-conformity is made featureless by the rhythms and grammar of superficial television broadcasts; potential ambiguity is made mundane, insubordination is labeled as juvenile or childish behavior, and all expressions of independent thought or attitude are suppressed by their superiors.

The Christian Athlete, on the other hand, is instructed to keep silent on all matters pertaining to politics, society, culture, and anything else outside of baseball. Like a politician on the campaign trail, they have sacrificed personality for the appearance of professionalism. They are driven by the fear of possibly offending some potential consumer, somewhere. Everyone is a potential consumer of this player-product and should any unconventional characteristics be revealed about the prototype, yeegads! - some people might not like it.

The rote mechanical way in which the player-product has been programmed to respond to questioning will, however, often include one or more references to their Faith. Utilizing Christian language in the context of sport is an easy way to link the twin passions of blind faith and fanaticism together, rendering the consumer more easily manipulatable. It also makes the story behind each player-product a fundamemtally simple, yet mythically powerful one. Watch as the player-product transforms into a silent warrior, driven onward and upward by his Faith and the promise of unfathomable financial gains.

And MLB continues to engineer and streamline what it sees as its most marketble asset, falling strictly in line with Christian consumer preferences.

But the player-product also happens to be an employee, a worker with constitutional rights. And their employers are bound by labor laws which explicitly prohibit preferential treatment or hiring practices toward one religious group over any other religious or non-religious group.

This is called discrimination. We've seen it before in baseball in more malicious, cruel, and segregating forms. Now, it's more subtle and benign.

But make no mistake about it: from the Christian rituals staged at the ballpark (so-called Faith Days at our publicly-financed stadiums), the redundant gesturing performed by player-products right on cue (pointing to the sky, crossing onesself after each televised hit ot homer), and the vocabularies employed in the way Baseball Men talk about their trade ("I'd just like to thank God for the opportunity..." "We feel blessed..." etc.) we can clearly see the homogenizing effects of the discourse of Christianity, thriving in the sewerage running through the discursive regime of American Baseball.

When Baseball finally reaps what hath been sowed by Christian normalization, led as it is by political and financial forces of Capital, it will once again find itself behind the times, clumsily out-of-step with progressive forces of society, lurching along stubbornly and always feeling itslef the victim of unfair persecution. 

("Fair!? What the fuck, 'Fair'? Who's the fuckin Nihilist around here!?")

Is it harder to read James Joyce or Jim Joyce?

It's the day before Bloomsday and I'm getting ready by reading Ulysses where I last left off...last year.

You see, I've been reading the book for eleven years now. Slow and steady. Pausing to smell the roses. Reading it aloud and hearing the lilt of an Irish brogue. Mimicking it myself. And stopping when it got silly.


I'm getting the feeling more and more that the more I actually feel like reading Ulysses, the more I actually enjoy it.

No longer feeling obligated to trudge through this monumental masterpiece out of some self-imposed idea of earning my Irishness, I now freely enjoy it whenever I please.

Magically, that just so happens to be once a year. This time of year. Around June 16th. Or sometimes March 17th, I guess.

But what the hell does James Joyce's Ulysses have to do with baseball!!!???

I'm coming to that.

So, today I opened to page 383 of my Vintage International edition of Ulysses and started reading the first page of this new episode, The Oxen of the Sun. Then I started over. But then I stopped and started thinking of something else, so I started from the beginning again. I read the nearly full-page paragraph out loud, and silently in my head, to myself. Five or six times. Maybe more. A paragraph wrestling with itsef in an elevated vocabulary without relying on any punctuation.

Hard to read.

Which got me thinking about the man who wrote it and about the baseball umpire who shares the same name.


James Joyce....Jim Joyce



* * *

Reife des Mannes: das heisst der Ernst wiedergefunden haben den man als Kind hatte, beim Spiel

Maturity of Manhood: that is, to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child, at play

Nietzsche 4:94
Beyond Good and Evil




* * *





After watching last night's Perfect Game, by Matt Cain, I hope all baseball fans are also immediatley reminded of not only this season's other perfect game, but one of the three that were thrown two years ago; especially the one that never was allowed to be.


Armando Galarraga, DETROIT: June 2, 2010

I think about that umpire, Jim Joyce, and what compelled him to call "safe" at that very moment -- the final moment -- fully aware of the magnitude of such an outcome. But obviously failing to fully appreciate the spirit of the game, in the most profound sense.

Maybe it's more complex than that. A petty, vain man opportunistically exploiting a chance to be in the spotlight (to transcend the invisible authoritarian role they trained you to play) and cynically, instantaneously, reactively reacting, according to an impulse? A deep-seeded impulse for self-promotion, or schadenfreude, or just the reactionary mechanism of another knee-jerk umpire trying to show somebody up?

Well, the majority of mlb players are of the opinion that Joyce is the best ump of them all. An anonymous poll of 100 players found 53 voting Joyce as the best umpire in baseball; far more than the runner-up, Tim McClelland, with 32 votes. Not that I ever attribute much significance to any kind of poll, it just makes the story even more interesting.

His tearful apologies to Galarraga afterwards had to be expected, though, especially given the absolute incorrectnes of the call. But still, it at least makes us question if umpires might actually also be humans after all.

Strong men also cry.


All I know is this: Jim Joyce continues to umpire as a crew chief in the major leagues, while Armando Galarraga is apparently no longer good enough to pitch for any major league team.

The Big L: "What does it mean to be a man, Mr. Lebowski?"
Dude: "Dude"
The Big L: "Huh?"
Dude: "Uggh. I don't know, sir"
The Big L: "Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost. Isn't that what makes a man?"
Dude: "Hmmm...Sure, that and a pair of testicles."


I'm imagining the ways in which Galarraga's career would've changed if he'd been awarded his perfect game. He might still be pitching for the Tigers. A Detroit hero, the first Tiger to ever throw a perfect game.

Then I remember how Galarraga handled the whole thing. He brushed it off, saying "nobody's perfect."

Gotta admire that. Mainly because most of us would've been unable to contain our indignation in that situation; at least I know I would, even though I'm a reasonable dude. On the other hand, sure seemed like Galarraga displayed a disproportionate lack of cojones in his non-confrontational acceptance of the obviously terrible call.

Some will tell you he rolled over like a puppy, content with a belly scratch from the Commissioner's office. Others will talk about how Galarraga exemplified what it means "to be a man."

My response to the whole thing was like the sinking stomach effect you get from abrupt changes in gravity or whatever. It didn't feel natural. Neither the bad call nor Galarraga's reaction.


It's kind of frustrating as a fan, because Galarraga's also hard to read. I mean, he's out of a job now. And to be honest, it's not like he ever had the starting job locked down. He must've known this was as close as he'd ever get to greatness (no matter how temporary) or permanence (no matter how consistent). And yet he shrugged his shoulders like a Zen Buddhist at authority, or an older kid faced with the sudden but obvious ridiculousness of children playing his game. He wandered off into obscurity.


And so in speaking of obscurity, we arrive back at the book and this passage in Ulysses which is so obscure to me right now that I feel it best not to rush through it.

I'd rather just go play in the park.

Spring Fantasy: When Keeping it Real Goes Just Fine

With Spring Training just around the corner, the daylight lingers a bit longer these days amidst murmurings of fantasy baseball draft parties and strange new sabermetric leagues to join.

Fantasy baseball teams outnumber human beings, three to one. That means there are 21 billion fantasy baseball teams out there in cyberspace. You may wonder, "where'd you get that info?" and I'd hesitate to respond, for fear of being caught in a big fat lie. But then I'd muster up the strength to scream out such a specious statistic even louder, so as to appear supremely confident in my self-appointed position as Sole Possessor of the Truth. And you'd probably leave the room.

Then I win.

At least in this hypothetically twisted solipsistic worldview, I do. For nothing exists, at least not for certain, outside my own mind. Not even you, gentle reader.

Reality, then, is just a fantasy, conjured up by my own mind, which makes all fantasy just as real as anything else. Except for my own mind, of course, which is at the center of its own universe, and therefore the realest thing I can think of.

Fantasy baseball, it follows, is just as real as real baseball. Fantasy baseball is not to be taken too lightly. The drafting of each player lucky enough to get a spot on your coveted roster is a most ethical undertaking. This is not to say it is a dead serious practice bereft of joy and humor. But don't kid yourself for one second that there aren't uncomfortable undertones of indentured servitude lurking beneath every auction draft. Or manifestations of your darkest wish-fulfillment fantasies of being a major league owner, an ass-hole belonging to the 1%.

The question, then, is what kind of owner do you wanna be? What kind of players do you want to have on your team? What criteria will you use to evaluate each player, each human being, you seek to subject to a year's worth of statistical scrutiny?

Just remember: winning isn't everything.

Despite the sabermetrical, historical, and otherwise sensible reasons for drafting the most "productive elements" for your fantasy baseball team, I'd like to propose an alternative approach, one which is less predictable and boring, and has proven to be more gratifying, less de-humanizing, and equally successful as traditional methods. Wonderfully subjective, if not entirely solipsistic, this individualized approach will be sure to either break your heart or to bring home the bacon. Either way, you'll be keeping it real as a real fan of fantasy. And reality.

Here are three general guidelines for beginners:

• Watch some baseball games

It might seem hopelessly simplistic, but it needs to be mentioned. Whether you go to the ballpark, watch the game on the boob tube, or browse condensed games on the computer, a bit of participant observation goes a long way toward gaining an appreciation of each player's craft and style and personality. Ever seen Carlos Gonzalez glide and dive through the expansive outfield in Denver? Or witnessed Adrian Beltre hit mammoth homers from down on his back knee? Do you remember the balls-out play of folk hero Sam Fuld last year? Or the jubilant Jose Reyes inventing handshakes and dance moves in the Mets' dugout, ca.2007?

• Get to know who the players are as "real fantasy people"

I'm not talking about befriending these multimillionaires, but brushing up on some basic biographical information gives you a better idea of who these guys are in real life. Then again, I've never written any fan mail or dared inviting Chone Figgins out for tamales, so guess you could try that too. Reading the interviews they give, scouring the internet in search of political allegiances, personal beliefs, or religious affiliation (if you're so inclined) can be both illuminating and disillusioning; but keep in mind, most of these dudes are under-educated, affluent, all-too-human jocks.

• Set the bar high, set some limits

At the same time, having high standards for your team -- less in the sense of performance and more in the sense of personality -- helps create a deeper emotional bond to each of your players, while also contributing to the composition of your team as a work of art-in-progress. The fantasy baseball manager who wishes to see his/her own philosophies and principles and preferred playing styles best exemplified in his/her roster is making an effort to personalize the entire fantasy baseball experience to a degree that re-humanizes the depoliticized sphere of contemporary MLB, while making rooting for specific players an affirmative practice.

It's common knowledge that reprehensible players outnumber draft-worthy players, three to one (another stat that you need not question). The list of loathsome losers is an ever-expanding one and it changes every year. The difficulty in finding the diamonds in the rough (or the rough ones on the diamond?) should not be underestimated. From the limited number of likeable players there are then those who cannot even be considered fantasy-relevant. Omar Vizquel comes to mind. So the pool of cool players, who are also quality fantasy performers, who are also philosophically worthy of occupying a spot on one's fantasy roster, are limited indeed.

Resisting the temptations of the dark side, the quick and easy path, full of Diamondbacks and Yankees and Rangers, polluted by racists, fascists, and evangelical xians, will inevitably make things more difficult for me personally, as both a fan and a fantasy baseball G.M.

But resistance is not futile.

Resistance to the rising tide of conformity, in fantasy as in real life, takes a crazy kind of resolve and semi-solipsistic indifference to the pressured opinions of self-proclaimed "expert authorities" who insist on commodifying the language of the game and transforming players back into commodities, harkening back to the gray days of the dreaded reserve clause. Or who insist on destroying paradoxes.

In fantasy baseball, you can't always get what you need, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you want.

Resist falling for the clichés and pompous prognostications from major media outlets and instead try and decide yourself on which players you want to see on your roster. Following your fantasy team then truly becomes fantastic, as it ceases to be a dehumanized machine engineered for winning a fistful of dollars, and instead becomes a carefully-crafted collective of desirable players you actually enjoy rooting for. A realistic fantasy for the idealistic fan. Keeping it real while realizing it's just a fantasy, your fantasy, and not the real thing.

Fishy Dealings

I'm afraid my Copenhagen comrade's grim outlook for the National League in 2012 will prove prophetic, particularly when it comes to our two cherished teams: the Cubs - who are "reorganizing" this season (which, apparently, is not the same as “rebuilding”) - will be young, sloppy, mildly entertaining, and ultimately abysmal, while the Rockies... well, they just haven't done a lot this off season to warrant much attention. I’m sure, though, the Boone Kid will keep us posted on the progress of his Coors Field Crusaders.

And while I'd love to spill some proverbial ink on Epstein's latest moves, I feel compelled to comment on "those slick fucks" down in Miami.

First off, I'd like to thank Ozzie Guillen and his Florida fish for taking Big Z off Chicago’s hands, even if the Cubbies were forced to eat $16.5 million of the $18 million he’s owed in 2012. For every flash of brilliance displayed by Carlito over the years, there was an equal and opposite mental meltdown waiting in the lurch. And boy did he go out in a blaze of glory: in his final appearance as a Cub late last season, he served up five homeruns, was ejected for throwing at Chipper Jones, and finished by “retiring” after the game. Of course, now that he’s far from the accursed confines of Wrigley Field and soon to be throwing in balmier climes under Ozzie Guillen (his Venezuelan pal and paisano), Chicagoans should expect nothing less than a Cy Young-caliber year from their former ace. That’s just Cub luck. Vaya con Dios, Carlito...

In addition to picking up Zambrano, the Marlins have made a splash by signing a boatload of talent, which includes: a freshly-shorn Jose Reyes, fireball closer Heath Bell, the mysterious Leo Núñez (aka Juan Carlos Oviedo), and former Southside star Mark Buehrle. With Hanley Ramirez moving to third to make room for the incoming Reyes, along with a solid starting five and a formidable closer in Bell, the Fish have to be considered the frontrunners in the NL East. As a matter of fact, I’m sure no one would be surprised to see the Marlin’s walk away with yet another World Series trophy this year – as they seem to do in nonchalant fashion every few years, only to unload their roster and start from scratch the following season.

Here one might ask: But how can those tight-fisted Marlins afford to spend so freely in the offseason? Don’t they have to pay for that new baseball-only stadium built for the team this year?

The answer: No, of course not! You see, all the organization had to do was complain to the city that the team was losing money, threaten relocation, and then convince local politicians to use tax money to fund 80% of the cost of the $634 million dollar stadium (who needs schools and hospitals when we can have ballparks!), which is expected to generate loads of revenue for the owners. Slick indeed. Why, the deal between the team and the city was so slick that the SEC has taken an interest in the team’s financial records and the specifics of the stadium’s financing. Regardless of how that investigation turns out, though, the fact of the matter is that those wily Marlins will somehow have managed to field a team of state-subsidized multimillionaires to play baseball, which is certainly a neat trick. Oh, and as a token of appreciation for the city's generosity, the organization has officially changed its name from the “Florida” to the Miami Marlins, even adopting a nauseating new logo, replete with blasts of South Beach pastel. It looks like everyone walks away a winner.