 Why Do Baseball Player Spit So Much?
In high school I played
against Pete Rose. I was a catcher for Walnut Hills HS in Cincinnati
and Pete Rose played third base for our rival,
Western Hill HS He could really hit. Even before
he became famous, he stood out as the best hitter I
ever play against. And there were several
who became major leaguers. But we never got
Pete Rose out even once. In my highly forgettable
10 year career as a catcher, he was the only player who
would eliberately pull his bat back towards
me, so that I had to move back an extra foot or two
behind home plate. Our pitcher, thus, had
a poorer target. Rose did this, of
course, to intimidate. And that's what all this spitting is about,
too, except for the pitchers, who want to get that
extra spin on the ball. Basically, spitting is
done to appear tough and to intimidate. Maybe
it works among players. But I've been a
baseball fan for years and I've finally concluded
that the players who spit the most are usually
among the worst hitters. Course, I never had
that excuse.
Why do I care?
Surely, you've heard that the mouth is one of the dirtiest places in
the whole human body, if not the world. It's full of
bacteria and viri. Spit tobacco has long
been a big part of the culture of professional baseball.
Chewing it, we now know, is very
dangerous. Maybe, as much as smoking. It should be
banned.. Kids see it. And they do
it when they play. It's a not just a filthy habit, it
causes mouth cancers and rotten discolored teeth.
Evils of 'chew' stressed - Man without a face' warns
of cancer risk
A Media Blackout
The media won't touch the
subect. Why? It might be that the tobacco companies control
things.and need baseball to recruit new generations of
tobacco users. That's part of it. But I think
it also has to do with baseball being as American as apple
pie. Baseball is the "national pastime".
It's like Cooperstown, a shrine. And the media isn't
paid to be iconoclastic. They're more like
priests celebrating a high communion. So much silly
hypocrisy! They attack Barry Bonds
for steroids, which is good, but drop the ball when it
comes to spit tobacco.
 Too bad that Pop-Eye never played baseball; we'd
all be hooked on spinach
and healthy vegetables.
As in any musical composition, the second movement must be much lighter.
Baseball Joke
One Day the Devil challenged God to a baseball game.
Smiling God proclaimed, "You don't have a chance, I have Babe Ruth,
Mickey Mantle,
and all the greatest players up here".
"Yes", snickered the Devil, "but I have all the umpires." |
Then comes the dénouement.
The Spitin' Image
Our media does not know
how to ask the right questions. You never hear them asking
if George Bush is psychologically competent to
be President. Bush we know tortured little
frogs as a child, branded pledges at Yale and
made fun of a Texas prisoner on Death
Row who may have begged him for clemency.
This stuff is real. But nothing from the "liberal"
CNN, NBC, ABC or any other net work news, for that
matter. During his six years as governor
of Texas, Bush presided over 152 executions,
more than any other governor in the recent history
of the United States.
Bush maintained he
scrupulpusly reviewed the case of each inmate about to be executed.
Not true, according to Sister Helen Prejean in
the NY
Review of Books. "Only a cursory
review was made of Terry Washingon, a mentally
retarded man of thirty-three with the
communication skills of a seven-year-old.
Washington's plea for clemency came before
Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997.
After a thirty-minute briefing by (Alberto)
Gonzales, Bush checked
"Deny"...Gonzales's legal summary, however, omitted any mention
of Washington's mental limitations as well as
the fact that his trial lawyer had failed to enlist
the help of a mental health expert to testify
on his client's behalf. When Washington's
postconviction lawyers took on his defense,
they researched deeply into his childhood and
came up with horrifying evidence of abuse.
Terry Washington, along with his ten siblings, had
been beaten regularly with whips, water hoses,
extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts.
This was mitigation of the strongest kind, but
Washington's jury never heard it. Nor is there any
evidence that Gonzales told Bush about
it."
 Karla
Faye Tucker - a vicious double murderer who was executed
in 1998.
Conservative Republican columnist, Tucker
Carlson, wrote the following:
(Talk
Magazine, September 1999, p. 106)
"While driving back from the speech
later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a
double murderer who was executed in Texas
last year. In the weeks before the execution,
Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of
other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency
for Tucker. 'Did you meet with
any of them?' I ask.
"Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I
didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though
I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive
question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King
either when he came down for it. I watched his
interview with [Tucker],
though. He asked her
real difficult questions, like 'What would you
say to Governor Bush?' 'What was her answer?' I wonder.
"'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock
desperation, 'don't kill me.'
"I must have look shocked -- ridiculing the
pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed
seems odd and cruel, even for someone as
militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately
stops smirking".
Why doesn't the Fourth Estate ask the right questions? Bravo Michael
Last week I
saw Michael Moore slamming Wolff Blitzer and CNN
for not doing their job
in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Why are we still
there He demanded to know why it took them
so long to interview Cheney. Download
MICHAEL MOORE: "
hy don't you tell the truth to the American people? I mean,
I wish that CNN and the other
mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about
what's going on in this country,
whether it's with healthcare -- I don't care what it is. I mean,
you guys have such a poor track
record. And for me to come on here and have to listen to that
kind of crap.
"I mean, seriously, I
haven’t been on your show now for three years. The last time I was on,
you ran a similar piece about Fahrenheit
9/11, saying, “Oh, this can’t be true, what he’s
saying about the war, how it’s going
to be a quagmire, the weapons of mass destruction.”
You know, and why don't you start off,
actually, with my first appearance back here on your
show in three years and maybe apologize
to me for saying that three years ago, because it turned
out everything I said in Fahrenheit was
true. Everything has come to happen, everything I said.
I mean, I took you in that film to Walter Reed
Hospital, and it took three years before you or any
of the rest of the mainstream media would go to
Walter Reed Hospital and see what was happening
to our troops...
"And you’re the ones who are
fudging the facts. You fudged the facts to the American people
now for I don’t know how long
about this issue, about the war. And I’m just curious, when are
you going to just stand there and
apologize to the American people for not bringing the truth to
them that isn’t sponsored by
some major corporation? I mean, I’ll sit here for as long as it takes,
if you can do that for me."
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