Stealing Bases…Something for Nothing

“There comes a time in every man’s life, and I’ve had plenty of them.” Casey Stengel

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We’re about to say goodbye to football after the conclusion of Sunday’s big boast-off day. Are we saturated yet? But then again, is football like a federal bureaucracy, perpetually there? Let’s move on to a more interesting sport that ennobles ‘stealing’ as a benefit.

Baseball…what a game! It’s the closest thing to life as man can ever devise.

They’re many reasons why… not the least of which is being able to steal something with impunity and get into baseball’s equivalent of the Books of Life. With skill, stealing bases can result in a bronze statue on the front lawn of some stadium.

I like baseball because it’s slow. Like life, it’s mostly preparation and periodic execution. Here’s the picture:

The pitcher stands on the mound, massaging the ball. The catcher signals him with a finger. He nods, looks at first base. A runner taunts him, leads off a few feet, then a few more. Decision time. He stretches, cocks his arm and zings a 98-mph fast ball 60 feet to a brown, 12-inch leather target. The runner commits, sprints 90 feet towards 2nd base. The crowd leaps to its feet and screams. In less than the time it takes to say, “Holy Mother,” the catcher fires a rocket ball to the 2nd baseman. A cloud of dust erupts ~ the runner slides in, the throw is one second too late. Safe! Another stolen base, another statistic. The crowd sits down to its beer and p’nuts, waiting for the on-deck hitter. Life begins again.

Stolen bases began in 1871. They’re the infrequent thrill that enlivens an otherwise lethargic game of skill, teamwork and strategy. The record for the most stolen bases in one season is 138, held by Hugh Nicol in 1887. The record for the cumulative most stolen bases is 1,406, owned by Rickey Henderson.

Like life, baseball has its peculiarities and its proclivities, both good and bad. It teaches young men odious habits that aren’t socially acceptable, like publicly hustling private parts while being broadcast to millions on TV. What kind of mentor is this? But at the same time, it adds camaraderie and discipline, valuable lessons of life.

To make matters worse, the game allows tobacco chewing and spitting on the field. What kind of signal does this send to onlookers? Speaking of spectators, will somebody please ban attendance without shirts? What’s that about … modeling for Wal-Mart?

Back to stealing bases. Imagine ~~ something for nothing! That’s what stolen bases are. Journalists like to think in metaphors. What a wide array of images come to mind when exponentiating the concept of stealing bases. It’s a crack in time when serendipity slips through, seizing a fleeting opportunity, or exploiting a situation or outrunning the hovering winged chariot of time. It’s a high-five moment.

Who will ever forget stealing a kiss on an elevator? Or stealing someone’s thunder? Or stealing the show? Or stealing a furtive glance and sly wink? These are the stolen bases of life.

Life, like baseball, has a beginning and an ending. Baseball can’t be defaulted out or quit in mid-game voluntarily. It must continue, win or lose, until the bitter end. In 2007, the Texas Rangers whipped up on the Baltimore Orioles, 30 to 0, the standing record of embarrassment for any major league team. Life has other options and other rules, some kind, some not.

As spring practices are about to begin, let’s remember the wisdom of the baseball old timers:

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Satchel Paige

“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” Babe Ruth

And finally, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Yogi Berra

Batter up!



Bud Hearn
January 31, 2020

Palliatives, Placebos and Outright Denials

“For thirty years my mother pretended she was moving. My mother survived things she hated by pretending she was leaving.” Faith Shearin

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It happens every new year, this urge to purge, to rid myself of the superfluity of living and get down to the real meat and potatoes of life. Forget the garage cleanout. If you have a garage you know that drill. What to do with all that extraneous junk boggles a sober mind. You leave it as you find it.

This year I’m bent and determined to differentiate between stuff that keeps me going and stuff that simply empties my wallet every week or so. What stuff? Why, pills, elixirs, supplements and other tinctures that promise relief from all known and imagined ills of mankind. Palliatives, placebos and denials.

Did you know that supplements track the alphabet? Vitamin A, B, C, D, etc. right down to ‘Y’ for yarrow and ‘Z’ for zinc. We can’t escape these little addictive additives that promise so much. But do they deliver?

You already know that life is a narrow path, a tightrope with no net, a delicate balance in that parenthesis between two darkness of birth and death. Somehow, I have managed to fortify myself with these promises of longevity. Our cabinets and drawers overflow with palliatives, placebos and denials.

I have to admit I don’t really know what works and what doesn’t, so I keep up the same regimen over the years. Oh, yeah, we all know a little something about palliatives. The very word means ‘cloak.’ They can be anything from cod liver oil to the new Colorado herb of choice, CBD, now sold proudly at your local pharmacy.

The job of palliatives is to relieve pain or alleviate a problem without dealing with the underlying issue. We take a lot of palliatives, and to date a stout slug of white whiskey from somewhere in the swamps might be the best thing going for relief from arthritis pain.

Now placebos are another thing altogether. These little goodies are inert, so-called ‘medicines’ used for psychological effect. They trick the brain into believing they’re what they’re not, a lot like what we all do when we put on a public face. They’re the next best thing to believing fairy tales and taking magic carpet rides.

I had a business partner once who was quick to borrow but slow to repay. The foundation of his raison d’etre was pretense. He lived a life of fiction, fed by placebos of imagination. One day he had to re-up a loan that required his wife’s signature.

I asked her how they handled the massive debt. She shrugged and answered, “Fine champagne when things are good, but when reality returns, we simply curl up in a fetal position on the floor and whine.” Such is the nature of placebos…balloons often burst.

Placebos are more prevalent than we imagine. I had a friend with a big business. Had folks running over one another on the thick pile carpets of his office. I commented that he might be over-staffed, to which he agreed. But, he said, I’m making money and I don’t know which ones to fire. Placebos…money for nothing.

Let me ask you, “Where would we be without things to dull our existence?” Think about it, it’s hard to look facts in the face and agree with them. What’s better than taking a nice cruise somewhere and forgetting the whole thing? Illusion is one of those make-believe placebos so easy to love.

Louis Jenkins wrote that in Sitka, Alaska, people name all the sea lions Earl. It’s because they’re the favorite food of orca, the killer whale. It tosses the creatures into the air and swallows them whole. But before long a friendly, bewhiskered face bobs to the surface. It’s Earl again, the people say, he escaped the whale.

Jenkins concludes with these words: “Well, how else are you to live except by denial, by some palatable fiction, some little song to sing while the inevitable, the black and white blindsiding fact, comes hurtling towards you out of the deep?”

I started with words from Faith Shearin about her mother. Here’s how she concluded her mother’s denial existence: “(Mother’s) Alaska was a blizzard of privacy and imagination, its borders hidden or revealed by the snow drifts in her mind.”
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So here I am, evaluating my alphabet soup of palliatives, placebos and looking hard for any signs of denial. Not that I’m opposed to some level of denial. Existentialism is a good substitute.

Want to know how much progress I made? Nothing was tossed, not even King Vita-Man. Listen, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.


Bud Hearn
January 10, 2020

The Kitchen

It’s a new day, a new year and a brand-new appetite. Yeah, a few last-year’s scraps remain. So what? Let’s begin. Where? In the kitchen where every day starts.

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Why the kitchen? What’s a better ‘good morning’ than sausage sizzling in the pan, Mr. Coffee percolating, biscuits baking and black-eyed peas boiling? Yes sir, we’ll soon be serving up a batch of something hot.

But patience is required in the kitchen. Nothing good is cooked up quick, like in the microwave, unless you’re interested in the frozen dinners packaged by factories for the hurry-up crowd. It’s wisdom to allow the simmering have its perfect work.

So today let’s start with last-year’s leftovers, the good, the bad, throw ‘em in the pot, stir in some laughter and see what pot-luck recipe comes out. Laughter sets the tone. There’s plenty of time later for personal agenda and listening to the latest horde of suspect sages spouting out prognostications of things to come.

Already the 2020 ‘clear vision’ concept is cliché. Let’s dispense with it now. It doesn’t take much sober thinking to know that the important things will remain. Life is not one big rush, one grand scheme where everything is dependent on one big issue. Things change daily, every second something new. Think about it…86,400 seconds in a day. We shouldn’t complain about opportunities, no matter who gets elected this year.

We forget, as Dr. Crane says, that “Every day is a new life. Every evening is a day of judgment, every morning a resurrection. The past is God’s; the future is ours.”

The dog is looking at me funny. Wants his morning walk. I tell him it was a late night. He doesn’t care. So we cut up some good-boy treats, harness up and take off up the road for adventure. Every day something new, like life. Adventure with every sniff of grass.

He’s a big dog, bad about getting on a sniffing trail. When he gets hot on a trail, I feel like I’m water skiing, him the boat, me the skier. He drags me over trails of yesterday’s raccoons and deer. I have followed trails of lesser importance than these.

Have you ever tried to communicate with a dog on a trail? It’s hard enough to communicate with people. It does no good to scream. He doesn’t care what day it is, what year it is or what you think. He’s focused. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only now. What a life.

The grass is full of smells, the trees loaded with squirrels and doggie playmates everywhere. All things are new if we had 2020 vision to see it. In an hour we’re back at home where the kitchen air is thick with smells of food. This is the way to begin any day, especially 2020.

Here’s a poem by Barbara Crooker called ‘Home Cooking.’ Poetry is interpretive—it reads us as we read it. It’s a pretty good way to cook up this first Weakly Post as we begin a new year:

“Let me stir up a batch of something hot,
Beef stew or red bean chili, something simmering
Just below the boil. You let me know if it needs
More seasoning, more spice. Let me spread
Some butter on your cornbread, darling;
let it soak into all the cracks. Let me fill
Your glass with something red and juicy.
The oven is hot, and all the burners
are glowing. If you can’t take the heat,
then get out of my kitchen. But
if you need to take the chill off, baby,
I might be able to dish a little something up…”

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So, out with the old, in with the new. And whatever recipe you dish up for 2020, darling, I hope it’s hot and spicy. Happy New Year


Bud Hearn
January 3, 2020