Rhythm and baseball

As baseball begins its spring stretching, television channels begin breaking out movies like The Natural. It's a movie I've seen a dozen times, yet always find myself sucked in again. Although it's one of the most beautiful movies ever filmed, it's not the usual film ingredients that make me stick. It's the accurate depiction of some of the sport's more subtle rhythms.

Now, I know something about baseball. Lord knows it's not from playing experience. In honesty, I pretty much suck at the game. Still, it's part of me.

When I was a very little kid, my father was a minor leaguer. When I was a high schooler into college, I worked at a major league baseball stadium. Actually it was two jobs, one during the day and another during games. Together, it all left me with just out of toddler to just into adulthood memories that are so deep they sometimes only come when triggered accidentally, like an old song's lyrics which come to you out of the recesses although you haven't heard it in decades. Baseball's rhythms.

I think it's my ability to have those rhythms come on that separates me from my friends who have lost their affection for the game. They've gotten too accustomed to the speed of life now and can't let their heartbeats slow to baseball anymore.

But I still can catch the tap of cleats on concrete walkways as players go to and from dugouts strewn with paper cups. I still know the glove pop and bat crack not of the game itself, but of the special crispness of batting practice when the stadium is empty and the players full of just playing. I can hear post-game locker room chatter that is men behaving like boys. There's the pre-game preparation around the stadium, concession stands being loaded with ice from chugging carts where fans will soon mill. And there's the special sound of paper cups that once held beer and soft drinks clunking together as they're swept up in a cluttered, empty stadium after a game.

All together, they are much more than a multimillion dollar sport with too many drugs to get better or test invincibility, much subtler than egomania, much less regimented than the three hours or so from the national anthem to the eight and a half to nine innings. They are a tune that hasn't altered that much for decades and decades and has a direct tie to dirt fields and paper plates as bases.

It's the real rhythm of baseball. The tune that still has beauty.

Austin delayed

Austin city business seems to be in a wait-and-see mode lately. Be it solar energy or large land development or planning for future development, there's a lot of "let's talk about it later.

It's not just that leaders are waiting to see the income for conducting business. In fact, there could be many reasons for the rush to wait. The truth is in the cynical or trusting eye of the beholder.

Among the possibilities:

* After the last election having so much transparency and community involvement talk, the city council is giving more time to garner such and spread the word on possible actions.
* With another election coming up, including one for the mayor's spot, leaders are trying to let the next generation of council members be part of major moves and not have lame ducks be a driving force.
* With another election coming up, including one for the mayor's spot, candidates currently serving are avoiding potentially controversial decisions that could be fresh wounds for some voters and the deciding factor the election.

From this viewpoint, I'm not real pleased with any of those. From the bottom up, you're elected to serve, so serve. I voted for some of those currently on the council and expected them to fulfill their representative duties for the entire duration of their terms. And though there have been some rushed to judgement council decisions in the past, if community leaders want to be involved, they too have a duty to stay informed and to multitask, juggling several controversial issues at the same time. Slowing down bureaucracy so trailing complainers can stay on board doesn't get business done.

Yes, it's a tough stance. But governing is a tough job.

Facts

"And the stock market fell 500 points today due to the White House's actions."

I've never understood why the public is so gullible about the media, especially in business matters. The first question should be that if media members were so informed as to make such statements - and that is a statement, not reporting - wouldn't they likely be doing something else that makes a lot more money than journalism? And that's about everything.

There's no way to really know why the stock market moved. Yes, the highest profile thing that happened today may have been out of the White House. And China may have made a financial move. Or the bloggers may have rumored oil had run out. Or the computer-based investors may have just been cranky hung over and decided to dump stocks in volume. But to point to a single action driving the decisions of tens of thousands is simply ludicrous unless it is as big as airplanes crashing into the main financial buildings of our nation.

We are willing to be naive about so much "reporting." The size of a problem in China is said to be the worst in the world because the numbers are the highest. But isn't that probably influenced by the fact there is greater opportunity for those numbers because there are billions of Chinese? Or we so often hear how little people in some countries make per day. But we're trying to compare that to the United States. A reasonable meal here may be $5, but in that nation, it might be 50 cents. So, if they make a tenth of what an American makes, it's really even, not despicable.

The media is like a child. It needs boundaries. It will give you what you ask of it. You want front page Brangelina and octuplets and indicate you don't care how much money is pissed away in Iraq, the media will try and give it to you to draw numbers and make money. And if you're willing to swallow statements that lack logic if examined at all, the media is more than willing to take the easy way.

"The United States collapsed today because its residents were too naive to care."

Don't believe that one either.

Who do you know?

Or maybe the question is who knows you?

I'm not talking about simple familiarity or recognition. I'm using a deeper "know."

Through a variety reasons, some of which I understand and some of which I don't, I know hundreds and hundreds of people in the superficial sense. And am known by those types of numbers in the same sense. You know, recognize you in public places, maybe are able to place your name from some encounter in the past.

Yet I've come to realize very recently that I am pretty much unknown in the deeper version. I've been in this life for more than half a century now and there are maybe three people at tops who might know me. And I'm likely stretching that.

An example. I recently went to a birthday party for a one-year-old. Yeah, I'm much too old for the clowns-and-cake-smeared-on-the-face crowd. But I simply love children and their company. I've always felt if children and dogs loved you, you were all right and to hell with the rest. The rest, though, expressed almost unanimous amazement that I clung so tightly to such young ones. They seemed to believe I had no interest, patience or gentility to be that way.

I'm well aware a big portion of this is self inflicted. To say I've been guarded with my revelations is an understatement. I've been downright distrustful. But it hasn't been much of a challenge to be that way because I've almost never met anyone who probed, questioned or showed much of a curiosity.

Back to the three or so who might exist. They lack a pattern. Gender doesn't matter. Time around one another isn't a factor, one possibility I see about once a year, another once every decade. It's not long revealing talks that create knowledge either. There maybe a foundation there, but in general I think we just "get it" when it comes to one another.

Nor is it a trade. There are many more people I think I know, I understand and have vision of where they are and why. But I stay at about three.

Maybe I sometimes expect too much of human interaction. Maybe I've created impossible standards for uncommon connection. Maybe I'll just never know.

Mind control

I am brainwashed.

And I don't even realize it. Although that may be a critical part of being brainwashed. But in my earliest childhood, I was programmed with a constant barrage that has apparently never left me, although I've worked mighty hard at eliminating a lot of brain cells.

But from my earliest moments until the public school system began pounding something different into me, I've discovered country music was pumped into me like a drug that could be called back up at the strike of three chords.

I guess you could call them flashbacks. It happens again and again. I'll hear a Hank Williams Sr. song and wonder how in the hell I already know it. Or Buck Owens. A slew of compadres who would be true honky tonkers, back when those where dark places with deep red stains on the sidewalk from the knife fight du jour.

In retrospect, I can sort of see how it happened. A critical part was location. I sort of really grew up with my grandparents in the Texas Panhandle in the late 50s and early 60s. Although their little town's music was dominated by the high school band, it was only about 10 miles to the rough and rugged Pampa. There still stand lines of honky tonks. Only recently, I learned it was once home to, and exerted its influence upon, Woody Guthrie.

One of the major pre-six memories is of the big wooden stereo and turntable dominated by Eddy Arnold records. And for a nod toward an alternative lifestyle, I strongly remember Roger Miller's greatest hits. Songs about skating in buffalo herds and seasoned with what I only now know could be described as jazz scat and popping noises. But I most remember two things - how soothing Arnold's voice was and the sadness in the odd song on Miller's album, a tune about friends burying one of their own after a suicide. I learned country was yippee-ki-yay and hard truth all in the same package.

The other overwhelming influence was the road. No one flew back then although the distances between Texas towns were almost overwhelming. In those straight, dark gaps of highway there was usually only one radio signal to keep you sane or awake. And it was always country music. In the blazing afternoon begging to make it between Odessa and El Paso and in the pure nothingness of 3 a.m. while I slept and others drove between Wichita Falls and Amarillo. In my subconscious, country music was making a home.

I don't know what deep corners all that settled. I can't consciously access it. It only comes about when some radio station plays an "oldie" or a musician does a remake to honor an influence. But I already know the words and can predict the coming lines. Except I hear them crack through a huge wooden cabinet.

Greed and responsibility

Way, way back in the '80s, the phrase "greed is good" popped out of the movie Wall Street and was supposed to help us learn a good lesson.

What it seems we learned was that we agree.

This isn't going to be another diatribe about greedy CEOs salaries. I actually believe if a CEO is working to turn around a difficult company or makes one legitmately very successful, tens of millions of dollars isn't out of line. I'm more considering the bigger picture that got us in this more-than-difficult situation.

It was greed. And lack of responsibility.

Let's start with the lending industry. The first domino to fall in the current fiscal flameout was subprime mortgages, according to most. And it's the longest list of greedy, irresponsible people I can consider. See, the fault was, no one was responsible. The idea was to churn volume and the related dollars. Once you burned through the potential borrowers who had the wherewithal for the loans, then the pool became the less than deserving. But there was no reason for anyone in the chain of lending to hesitate, because they all just kept taking their share, selling off the loans and risk and forgetting the entire transaction. "I got mine," was all that mattered. It was a Ponzi scam of the largest proportions. Who couldn't have seen, as in all such scams, sooner or later the chain runs out?

I don't blame the big banks for all this process. I blame loan officers and processors and underwriters as a group who in their need to get their share and continue "business" just kept the scam going. They'd like to point their fingers at regulators who allowed them to do the work that way, but isn't that the old lack of personal responsibility?

And as long as I'm firing broadsides, let's take the automotive industry. Yes, it got staid and made bigger and bigger cars without really putting much effort to moving us toward conservation and new fuels. But I as much blame the unions who staff those manufacturers. When the corporate world greatly abused people, unions were a necessity. But do we believe that a high school graduate who crawled through school with an eye on the local plant deserves the types of salaries and benefits that the unions shoved down manufacturers' throats? By the way, don't ever look at hourly rates alone and think it seems reasonable. It is a necessity to factor in the cost of generous insurance, pension plans and extensive paid holidays to get the full picture of an employee's cost to a company.

A liveable wage is appropriate. But it should be related to your value to the process and your company, not the volume of people behind you threatening the company. That's playing to the lowest common denominator.

The 1970s got labeled the Me Generation, but it never seemed to stop. Baby boomers have a long history of acting individually entitled. And now the greed animal has grown strong on our lack of responsibility and is turning around in attack.

Why am I here?

Ever had a friend who had an opinion about everything? Well, that's me. At least I know it.

Over the years, I've fortunately been able to expel those opinions before I burst. Yes, sometimes in barroom debates, but also in a variety of published articles. Now with print seemingly only a few years away from children asking "what was print, Daddy?" I've had to seek an new outlet.

I've been around Austin for almost 20 years now, which makes me a mid-range old timer. I've been nosy about business and politics and the whys and wheres for most of that time. And too often I've used the usual venues of information gathering and been left with one more unanswered question or train of thought. So I'll come here to ask, and maybe answer, those questions. At the least I'll pose another train of thought.

Sometimes I'll do it angrily. I hope it will come across fairly often as I'm doing it with some humor. Sometimes it might seem fairly personal. Maybe it will create additional thoughts and questions.

But at least I won't explode from holding it in.