tagged w/ St. Louis Cardinals
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A Metaphor for America
By Dwight C Douglas
There’s nothing more American than baseball. We even seated a commission, way back when, to codify its American purity, even though experts now agree, she’s just the bastard child of the British kid’s game rounders. To this day, we perpetuate the myth that baseball was born in Cooperstown, New York. It was not.
Each year in October, as the leaves turn crimson and yellow, we look to baseball to reveal the best in a series of games to determine the world’s championship. We wait to see who will be the last man standing on the field, just like every society that has come before.
There are many childhood memories of Americans who connect themselves to one team, one player or one significant achievement in a World Series. We even take away lessons from these moments.
Once again it is time for America to see the metaphor within this game of men, where the moment of victory takes them back to those boyhood dreams; those positive moments of glee and merriment, when all was good. They can see those times of happy flights of fancy where they stand at an imaginary home plate and hit their fantasy baseball out of the yard to win the big game.
The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series for the 11th time in their history, but that isn’t the real story here. They are the metaphor for America; the comeback kids!
Lately, it seems we have become the punching bag for our own countrymen and women. At least once each day I hear someone say, “America is doomed!” - “Things are really bad!” - “The country is going in the wrong direction!” We have become a nation of nay-sayers and negative slobs. We should take the positive side and see what could happen if life was like baseball.
The St. Louis Cardinals were almost a dozen games behind the pack of teams trying to make the playoffs in late August. Knowing they only had a month to make up the difference, they got crackin’. They clawed and scratched and fought their way back into achieving a simple goal: a happy flight back home with a victory. And maybe this was just mind over matter, or some metaphysical trick conjured up by their lawyer-turned-baseball manager, or maybe it was just an example of positive thinking.
Congress is negative. Almost 99% of what they say is negative and most of what they say is said to sooth the 1% who fund the campaigns. The Republicans are negative most of the time, more interested in putting down Obama than being constructive.
The Democrats complain and whine about why things can’t be done, and then vote with re-election on their minds. The slate of misfit Republican candidates reinforces this “America is broken” theme and with all their airtime, people are starting to believe their America in decline dogma.
Are we really in decline? It reminds me of a co-worker from a small Asian nation who came to America to go to college and then stayed here to work when she graduated. She would always complain about how bad America and Americans are. Finally fed up with her rhetoric, I blurted out, “If America is so bad, why do you, stay here?” The irony was she was smart enough to know that America was her best opportunity in the world. Think about it, everyone wants to come to America. We have to build fences and walls to keep them out. READ MY LIPS: America is a great country, HELLO!
The St. Louis Cards are just a baseball team to some readers. But to me, they are America. If we just think about our country’s current condition as a low-ebb in the bio-rhythm of a nation, we can work our way out of this slump by believing we can do it. We should concentrate on the next happy flight with a win.
Occupy Wall Street is a positive movement. Most of us old hippies had given up on the stare-at- my-iPhone-disconnected-youth of today. Well, they’re reading their texts and tweets, and posting their responses to this insanity, and some actually get it. There is validity in what they are doing and everyone should praise them. They are protesting inequality. Isn’t that purely American?
If Obama could run the country like Steve Jobs ran Apple, we would probably we better off. If we just got up every morning and tried to do something positive without hundreds of pundits and critics picking at and over-thinking everything, things would be better. Even the Tea Party’s efforts to have us really face the music about how much money we spend is a good idea. However, their approach beyond that one issue is mostly just nuggets of deer droppings.
I want us to take our country back; back from this negative brainwashing that the pundits, politicians and the people of this great country psychologically regurgitate on everyone. It’s bad form enough for a parent to say to their little leaguer, “Don’t strike out” but even worse for the parents of the young slugger to say, “Hey kid, You’re are going to strike out!”
The St. Louis team showed us all, we can come back from anything. We are America. How can we be so proud of our troops, but be so negative about their employer? How can we be so proud singing God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch, but say such terrible things about her the next day?
Some will say the Cards won the World Series because they wanted it more. And that just might be the answer. In this next election for President, I am going to vote for the most positive person. I want a happy flight with a smooth landing into retirement. I love America and believe we will recover from this slump. We just have to be positive about the future.
Let’s pull off the impossible America. Let’s win the World Series. And then get up and do it again.A Metaphor for America
By Dwight C Douglas
There’s nothing more American... more
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http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=300417124
The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1 in 20 innings on Saturday night in the longest game in the majors in two years.
The game had 19 pitchers and lasted 6 hours, 53 minutes.
It was the longest game in the majors since Colorado beat San Diego 2-1 in 22 innings on April 17, 2008.http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=300417124
The New York Mets beat the St.... more
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Apparantly, the girl was there with all her classmates, one of whom may have been the spiteful type to put that girl through shame in a stadium of 48,000 fans in attendance.Apparantly, the girl was there with all her classmates, one of whom may have been the... more
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kozeki
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added this
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4 years ago
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