Baseball is for People Who Are Not Bored Easily

Baseball is a sport that doesn't need its romantic fans to defend it. And it is a sport for the romantic. It was America's pastime when America was romantic instead of cynical. I wonder if football is the cynics sport. I believe I could make a case for that, but that's neither here nor there.
Baseball is not in need of defense because the reason for which it's critics balk is totally subjective. How many romantic ways can one write that Baseball is boring? At least the romance employed by Baseball enthusiasts, is multifaceted, if not nuanced, and even at points objective. All the talk, the humor and hyperbole, by baseball's critics puts one thing on display. They think Baseball is boring. How can I persuade them that it is not boring? The fans of baseball can wax eloquent, and speak poetically about the ins and outs of baseball's intricacies, but if it's boring it's boring. Besides rhetoric is a lost art. An attempt to transfer enthusiasm may be the best method of persuasion.
The difficulty with Baseball in particular, when trying to persuade through enthusiasm, is that the enthusiasm which exists for baseball is an enthusiasm of knowledge. In other words, you have to know it to appreciate it, and you must know it on a deeper level in order to really know it. Furthermore, to appreciate it truly, to make the leap from hater, to tolerater, to spectator, to appreciater, and finally to enthusiast, you have to experience it existentially. And in all of these moves/leaps, essentially qualitative leaps, words can only build to a level of persuasiveness allowed by the subject. The critic must want to be baseball enthusiast.
So I'm not going to go the route of poetic persuasion away from the opinion that Baseball is boring. Even if it can be shown that a majority of Americans are under this opinion, I am of the opinion that a majority is not a synonym for a truth. In short, what you mean to say is not that it is boring, but that is bores you. Despite everything I said. I will still make an attempt to defend baseball against the accusation that it is boring. This is why it doesn't bore me.
When you see a pitch, I see the result of a thought out decision. A decision based on data, the empirically recorded data of the strengths and weaknesses of both the pitcher and the batter. When you see a pitch, I see a pitch count which plays into the pitcher's decision about what to pitch. When you see a pitch, I see a no one on base, or 1 man on, 2 men on or the bases loaded. When you see a pitch, I'm not only checking the pitch count, or the guys on base, but how many outs there are, and how the defense is defending the particular hitter, and what the manager for the hitting team is telling the hitter to do based on the situation, and the statistical data. And that's just one pitch. Nevermind a discussion of the home run, the squeeze play, the bunt, the steal. Or watching every pitch on its ways to a potential perfect game. Or a brewing confrontation at the mound.
Of course there is the esthetics of baseball culture. That's the area most defenders of baseball swim to. I like that too. But I've nearly exhausted the reasons for not going that way. And you may never understand the culture, the appeal of a ballpark frank, and the smell of a freshly cut ball field, the smell of summer, and a manager getting thrown out by an umpire, the sound of a ball smacking a glove. These are just little things that make us enthusiasts giddy about the whole thing. That's just us. We're quirky that way. But with so much packed into every pitch. With the fate of the entire game hanging on every single pitch, and the time to contemplate that fate, you cannot say that baseball is boring. Maybe you can say that contemplation is boring. But contemplate that for a second and realize that you cannot be bored and contemplating at the same time. If you realize that your bored, then you've acted, and for a second have by focusing on your boredom occupied your own mind, and are therefore, not bored. Baseball, for those willing to go beyond the surface is not any more boring than life itself. Perhaps many think life is boring. Perhaps that's why many prefer football...
Man, I am a snob.

Final Thoughts on Lebron James

If there is one thing I've never about that Lebron, its that he's bad in the clutch. In 2006 (I think) I watched him score 25 points in a fourth quarter comeback against the defending NBA champion Pistons. In 2009 I saw him nail a three-pointer at the buzzer in game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Magic. I've seen him takeover games and single-handedly win them for the Cavs. (With the Cavaliers posting less than 20 wins this year, one wonders how many games Lebron himself won? Is that not clutch? I can't remember one game I watched in which I thought... "man Lebron really blew that one." I do remember two games last spring though, when Lebron gave up. It wasn't an outright, intentional, lay down and die affair, but it was obvious that Lebron had somehow lost his motivation to play. After the Heat ousted the Celtics last night James himself even said that a lot of his emotion came from the fact that he had finally gotten over the hump of the Celtics, the team that beat his Cavaliers in the second round last season. He admitted that he saw no way for the Cleveland roster to match up with the Celtics roster. He saw no foreseeable championship in Cleveland. He had waited seven years, and signed two contracts and had not gotten the pieces to beat the Lakers or the Celtics, hell, even the Orlando Magic. The point is to win the NBA championship. He had lost trust that his organization would ever be able to complete the puzzle to win him a championship, and you have to give it to Lebron, what he wanted was a championship. He took less money to get it. Put in this light, his departure from Cleveland is justified, and done with no less motivation than the best of us would have if we departed one job for another. Talk Show host Colin Cowherd illustrated this point well when he compared Lebron leaving Cleveland to a lawyer leaving a bad firm. He also pointed out that lawyers get to pick their first job, and that Lebron had to go to Cleveland. He had to go to the "bad firm.", and was for all intents and purposes loyal to it. I feel for Lebron. I really do. I feel he should have the right to play for who he wants to as a free agent. That's what a free agent is. And we've all heard the argument that it wasn't THAT he left, but HOW he left. There's some merit to that argument, but having psychoanalyzed myself as a Cleveland fan for the past year I've determined that while the way Lebron made "the decision" had an effect on the level of my animosity, I would've have been greatly disappointed either way. For while I believe that Colin Cowherd's analogy has merit as a defense for the decision, and I never want to be part of the fanbase that makes Lebron feel shackled to a municipality called Cleveland, which I think he sincerely loves, and respects, and sincerely regrets the way everything went down, and while I didn't take his decision personally, I will say that as a Cavalier fan that I wished that Lebron James was not only about winning a championship for himself, but wanted to win one for Cleveland, the city of the Superbowless Browns, and the Indians, who despite their magical run in the 90's lost two world series, and are without one since 1948. If anyone could have sympathy for a sports city such as Cleveland. It was Lebron James. Now it may be a lame argument to say that he should've stayed for the sake of local sympathy. I understand that in the bigger context of his personal legacy that to ask Lebron to stay for Cleveland sounds absurd, but what doesn't sound absurd, assuming that this kind of egotism is tolerable, (it apparently is not only tolerated, but sympathized with, and encouraged), is to make a case that Lebron's legacy would be significantly more legendary if he did stick it out like Jordan and bring championships to the Cleveland Cavaliers, rather than join a superstar in Miami, and manufacturing championships through personal agreements made during the Olympics rather than through blood, sweat, and tears. Again, I understand why he did what he did. And maybe we should applaud the postmodern/generation x athlete. This vision of Lebron James being Cleveland's Michael Jordan was actually in my heart and mind since the minute he was drafted. He just never got his Scottie Pippen. Here was hoping that my favorite player felt the same. Here's the disappointment in discovering that the feelings were not mutual. There are weaker individuals in character than Lebron James, to be sure, but they are not Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Kobe Bryant. Maybe Lebron's way of thinking is a better way of thinking than those guys in the long run. Maybe we'll just have to get used to the utilitarian oppurtunist athlete? But why? Why? Why did the city of Cleveland have to be the ones that paid for the revolution?

Lenten Lessons

So here's what I know about lent:

You give up something during Easter season in order to realize something deeper about your life.

I'm embarrassed that after I celebrated it this year that I am not able to articulate it any better than that, so I sit her blogging on my second day of using facebook again not sure if I celebrated lent at all.

What's equally as disturbing is that I'm not sure that I should've kept Lent. I'm not a Catholic. When I told a Catholic friend about me kept Lent, he knowing that I am not a Catholic, said, "You're not a Catholic." And he seemed offended. But for what's it's worth, the following was my justification for keeping it, at least in my own head.

Even though I am not a Catholic, I feel that I am a part of the history of Christ that has been unfolding in the history of the church of which Catholicism and Protestantism are a part. I look at lent the same way I look at fasting. Fasting to me seems to be a really good thing because denying ourselves seems to be a really good thing. It focuses our attention. It has the ability to show us something about ourselves we might not have seen because of the habitual lifestyles we lead. A facebookless Matt is a different Matt than a facebooking Matt. And giving up facebook is a way for Matt to figure out if he really needs facebook to be a better Matt. Discipline in general seems to have more positives than negatives. A disciplined life is a happy life in my estimation, and it takes practice and discipline in order to be disciplined. Fasting is also counter-intuitive, but then so is discipline, so I think maybe happiness is counter-intuitive. But this makes sense. Think about what we would become if all we did was pursue our immediate impulses. I think our lives would suck. I think. Lent is an opportunity for us to discipline ourselves to discipline ourselves. And to continue speculating, perhaps in turn teaches us how to commune better with God, since it takes discipline to do that.
Alas, that being my justification as a protestant keeping Lent, I may not have done so as a Catholic. I suppose to some degree that's okay, but you Catholics out there are free to tear to me to shreds on this one. I'm standing in the middle of the street. I'm not moving and you're coming down the street on your two-wheeler, maybe you have a bat-pod. I'm not moving, so hit me if you like. I'm a target.
Anyway, if I haven't learned anything about Catholicism, or the significance of Lent, I have learned something by giving up facebook. And I tend to believe that my experience was spiritual.

I'm not sure yet if the distance I felt from my relationships had anything to do with facebook, but I am already starting to see the connection between my lack of facebook and my lack of feeling connected with my friends. I mean that's not a difficult connection to see. But what I wonder is if this is really sad and I'm addicted to facebook in an unhealthy way, or if I am just a human living in the technological age, but still human and need to be connected. Perhaps part of the problem is that there are not many things that I connect with people about. I like difficult things like philosophy, theology, religion, sports, and 20th century American novels, and stream of consciousness weirdness. Facebook was a way for me to wax eloquent with a witty status or something and get a response, a connection from a friend.
Perhaps this is just classic overthinking. But here's a thought that's a little more universal maybe. Is the feeling of being connected through facebook human connection, or is it superficial? If my feeling unconnected is a result of not being connected to facebook, and I begin to feel better now that I'm on facebook, shall I as a modern person question the possibility of true human connection in my lifetime? Well, maybe I better not go that far. I am married and feel extremely connected to my wife and in more ways than sexual. But the real question is; if I should conclude that my lack of connection was due to my fast from facebook, should I think twice about getting connected again? The broader question being asked, which is totally another post is; what is modern man, and should he fear his machines and technics? Are they merely giving him a different way to express his drive for human connection, or are they giving him a totally superficial experience and alienating him altogether? Or... are we alienated either way and doomed to a life of anxious desire for a connectivity we cannot completely understand or fulfill?
In the end, my lenten experience brought me know closer to understanding Lent, Catholicism, or the plight of modern man. But it did heighten my awareness of the reality of existing as a modern man and brought some of the questions that were sitting by the punch bowl, in the dark, away from the dance floor to the dance floor. And I think it was a valuable experience then, since these questions seem very urgent and relevant.

Existential Christianity

Existentialism is the doctrine that existence precedes essence. But is existentialism defining it's own essence before examining its existence? This apparent contradiction is only problematic if we locate the problem in the definition. But perhaps the problem is in the label, existentialism. The axiom; the a priori, of the ideal in question is that existence precedes essence.

When we think in terms of existence and not essence we find that existence presents problems of which essence thinking could never conceive, and therefore never solve, and our existence problems are real. However, what if they are not real? How would we know that our existential experiences are real? Surely we cannot discover their falseness by examining them according to essence, that realm which cannot conceive of existence problems in the first place? How shall it have the answer to a problem of which it cannot conceive? The philosophy of essence is an hilarious Holiday Inn commercial.

Some of you are begging for examples of an existence problem that cannot essentially be addressed. That's another post. Ha. What I find interesting is the claim that the existence precedes essence paradigm is the one under which the ancient Jews and the Jewish cult called Christianity operated; the claim that God's law was not the handing down of universal principles, but instructions concerning how His redeemed culture is to live, that is exist in a surrounding and yet unredeemed world.

That existentialism is now associated with atheism is unfortunate. I for one feel as if it has been hijacked. And when we find conservative Christians dismissing the published thoughts of more moderate Christian thinkers as the "brooding existentialism put forth as Christianity" I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against the table. Sure, existentialism bears an atheistic form, but its main prognosticator, Soren Kierkegaard, argued for an existence paradigm in order to save Christianity from being swallowed up by a humanistic worldview. I will not fall into the trap of saying that existentialism is essentially Christian, but I think pointing out that existentialism as we know it, that is, the consistent use of an existence thought paradigm, was originally thought in relation to Christianity in order to avoid Christianity's death at the hands of the essence paradigm is noteworthy because as I have discovered at this point in my life, existence driven Christianity is what makes the most sense to me.

That folks should confuse existentialism with atheism, relativism, or the denial of any abstract truth, or the affirmation that all truth is contextual is an unfortunate misunderstanding. But that's another post too.

What Should We Do Today?

I walked into my favorite coffee shop and the first thing I saw was a headline that read, "Maybe 10,000 Dead". I thought, "This is terrible." This coming after a discussion with a friend about the book of Job. It all made me feel awfully self-centered because if it is true that 10,000 Japanese folks were killed, that means that there are perhaps scores of thousands of people hurting in Japan today. I am only one person here in the United States, and unless I am ridiculously self-conscious I'm doing pretty good. (Truth be told as a "Westerner" I am almost definitely too self-conscious already.) And now the more I write the more this inwardness; this inward approach to the whole topic sickens me, as if what is going on in Japan is not really happen, as if the earthquake is not real. There is no reason for me to be any less shaken in my faith about the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear explosions, than if something tragic happened in my personal life. But to take it a step further, and not to be overly cynical (trust me this post is going somewhere), all of these people, and all of us, are heading toward the same fate in the end. Given, most of us may not lose so much all at once as have many people in Japan this morning, (or it would be evening for them)but we will all lose. It's only normal for these things to affect our faith, if we have any. My main point so far is to say, if we're willing to think about it deeply, and it usually takes these catastrophes to make us think deeply about it, the whole thing can seem so absolutely absurd, but at the end of the day, regardless of the fact that it's unnatural to be as broken about the Japan earthquake, as the Japanese themselves, and certainly to some degree it would inappropriate and insensitive to purport to be; the other side of the coin is that we share a common humanity with them, a common experience, though perhaps variant in degree, of living in a world of suffering with a conscious that whispers to us that it ought not be so. To put the questions in blunt terms; "Given these sorts of "natural" disasters, why believe in God? And why should it take a personal tragedy to make us ask the question?
On one hand there is no easy way to handle it, and on the other, to try and explain in with abstract words seems both insensitive and impossible. But I have always said that faith exists for such a time as this. I don't believe this to be a comfort, nor the answer that anyone wants to hear, but I do believe its the truth, and the only thing I can say. No, there's one more thing I can say. People of the Christian faith believe that God became a man and suffered as a man, and that this is the universal atoning sacrifice for sin, but also that we now know that we have a God who knows what's it's like to suffer as a human, and now we can come to Him on terms as a human. We can say to God, "Why?!" We can explain how absurd this all seems. And we know that rarely is it the case that God answers our questions directly, rarely telling us what we want to hear, but always telling us what we need to hear, and to me He seems to be saying, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" How is God perfect? How did He fulfill all things? He shared in suffering. His incarnation and crucifixion were not only the end and climax of our Christian story, but also the beginning. He died as our Savior, finally, but also as our example for eternity. I think it would be very pious but finally un-Christian of us to continue to speak eloquent thoughts about God's love to one another, and never show God's love. Recall James , where James tells us that faith without works is dead faith, and to be doers of the word, not merely hearers. So what should we today?

Just for Fun

Just felt the need to be philosophical you know? Which really for me is not something I always take too seriously, its more of a hobby than anything else. I guess my level of seriousness depends on the topic, and the topic on my mind which is about to fall on this blog post is not one I really take very seriously. But it is fun, at least for me.
The discussion starts as all good discussions do, with a question; what does it mean to be a fatalist? If everything happens according to plan, always, and if your were not keenly aware of the plan, which we evidently are not, otherwise we would all agree on the plan, and there would be no need for a discussion about fatalism, since its opposite could never even be conceived, then given differing situations and a confusing existence, the world is not at least completely predetermined, because, in summary, if it were, the whole discussion would be impossible.
So there is free will? The only problem with free will is that if it is our decisions which determine our "destinies", (whatever that means)and evidently under a free will mode of things, there can be nothing but chance, how do we make a wise decision? What is a wise decision if it is all free will and chance?
There are "patterns" which we observe in nature, and our experiences. The existence of a pattern would most definitely compromise an absolute stance on free will, for a pattern explicitly undermines chance.
The question would then be whether or not these patterns we observe are real or illusory, inherent, or contrived? It's possible we invent patterns in order to go on living, in order to deal with the absurdity of total free will and chance. But this in no way affects our ability to "make sense" of things, it only throws into question, what "making sense" is, as it is apparently at least trying to make sense of things. At least that's what we thought was the point of all this chatter thus far. But if we need the patterns, and we can't possibly know if they are illusory or contrived, why not act as if the patterns exist in order to go on living? The clearest thing to me is that if you're a fatalist, you believe in either a mean fate, or a dumb human, whether this human is dumb because she is absurdly pessimistic, or because she assume too much about God, and if your a "free willer", what threat is a fatalist to your obvious free will anyway? And the most profound clarity is the clarity that before you at every single instance, great or small, there is a decision to be made.

Lyrical Musings III

A Regressive Code of Morality (The Rise of Absurdity)
Carbon copy twisted destinies
Tied knots on top of withered ephiphanies
Cramped neatly folded inside
To get a cozy moment just in time for
The unapathetic
Dramatic exeunt tonight

They don't know what they want they just want to know who's not as
happy as they are
They don't want to be who they are they just wonder who they're
supposed to be
But if they could be me
They'd be
No different

A corrosive exotic mess layers the floor
Reeks nasty now confess you don't want anymore
But cheerful you give your stony brow away
To stewards wroth with nothing nice to say

They don't know what they want they just want to know who's not as
happy as they are
They don't want to be who they are they just wonder who they're
supposed to be
But if they could be me
They'd be
No different

Talked to a mistress so fair
Talked to a martyr who cared
Talked to a manic so proud
Talked to a maiden so loud
Talked to a Christian with doubts
Talked to a Christ-child on clouds
Talked to a foreigner
Friday talked to a freed slave.


Experience
Compelling invitation
And a great expectation
And I suppose I can stay
But if you weren't here I'd go
And if you weren't here I stay away
And the audio goes
Goes on and on
And the audio goes
Goes on and on

Securely committed
Measured and fitted
And I suppose I'm good
But if you didn't smile I'd change
If you didn't frown I'd stay the same
And the video goes
Goes on and on
And the video goes
Goes on and on

They told me you were just a vision of a movie I'd seen more than
twice
They told me you were just a song
That I couldn't get outta my head
Well there's just somethin bout a movie that just makes me wanna go
There's just somethin' bout a song
That makes me wanna sing.