For those of you who are, at the core, philosophers, I give you these words from Blaise Pascal:
" It isn't enough to show up. You have to play the game. ( my translation of " old french" ).
I think the Yankees have heard so much about their invincible line-up, that they believe the headlines. When they score, they assume the other team will roll over. When they score 10, they go home.
Last night we learned that this perfect team, breaking a new record every at bat, can lose to a loser. It seems the " statisticians " are becoming more inventive; " the Youngest rookie ever to hit two three run homers in a Texas city north of the Pecos river...."
"Only Micky Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Terras Bulba have before done what Torres and Andjuhar did in the fourth inning last night.....stumble over first base while entering a home -run trot, after hitting back-to-back rookie dingers..."
Can we all please come back to reality? It is demoralizing to lose 4 run and 5 run leads in the same game. It shows that our pitchers have no one's back, and that our hitters get satisfied and shut down.
It also has created a pestilence of fear that Clint Frazier and others will soon be shipped away for a 3 month contract of a guy with shoulder problems.
So our individual game win streak is over.
Our consecutive series' win streak is over, as well.
And now the few remaining gems in our farm system are at risk.
It is time for the Yankees to put down the newspapers and read some philosophy.
" If you intend to win, you have to work at it."
I have to agree with our newest contributor Vivici.
ReplyDeleteWinning is hard. And sometimes you have to have outside help.
I'm just sorry he had to be such a dick about it.
Doug K.
Well said DK, well said.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we risk ruin listening to a religious zealot like Blaise. He was a great mathematician until he found god(s). After that he couldn't add 2 + 2.
ReplyDeleteMonsieur Pascal tortured me in college. Or at least studying his work did.
ReplyDeleteSadly, he is best known for the vapid and shallow "Wager" that bears his name. A more unchallenging, easily disproven religious proposition may not exist. All of his worthwhile mathematics and thinking came before his religious "awakening."
ReplyDeleteI am hardly surprised that two of the most malice-disfigured wraiths on this list take take potshots at one of the most original and profound thinkers in the Western tradition. It would worry me if they somehow professed an affinity for him.
ReplyDeletePascal was far from a "religious zealot." His professions of faith were a prolonged wrestle with doubt, anguish, suffering--a quest for meaning and redemption in a dark world. His famous wager is not declaration of dogmatic metaphysical certainty but a fragile investment of hope in the possibility that the human condition is something more than sound and fury signifying nothing. It is the theological equivalent of probability in mathematics (a field in which he was a pioneer)--an implicit affirmation that you can hope or even trust in divine redemption but that you cannot with any certainty "predict" it--cf that other great theorist of uncertainty, The Master.
There were few more honest and unsparing explorers of the realities of the human condition in Western philosophy--in many ways he is a harbinger of the existentialist sensibility. He is known to have exerted a profound influence on Camus, an atheist, although not a militant or dogmatic one. As Adam Gopnik wrote in a critical essay on Camus in The New Yorker,
"Sartre’s move toward Marxism, and toward the French Communist Party, oddly mimicked that of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s seventeenth-century 'wager' in favor of Christianity: the faith might be true, so why not embrace it, since you lose nothing by the embrace, and get at least the chance of all the goodies the faith promises? In Sartre’s case, if the 'social ideal' never arrived, at least you had tried, and if it did you might get a place in the pantheon of proletariat heroes. This reasoning may seem a little shabby and self-interested, but to those within Pascal’s tradition it seemed brave and audacious. (Camus called Pascal 'the greatest of all, yesterday and today.')"
And for those who find their deepest sense of identity in following sports in general, baseball in particular, or, even more trivially, a particular group of monkey-suited mercenaries hired by this or that capitalist enterprise, a perusal of Pascal's reflections on "divertissement" might instill a ripple or two of self-recognition and some much-needed perspective on life:
http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html
I think of Pascal now as a unit of pressure. Or at least part of a bar.
ReplyDeleteI think of puckered as a void surrounded by a muscle. Confused about how to get to SOSH or more likely banned from them.
Indiquez exactement où vous avez été insulté ici "premier".
ReplyDeleteSinon mange de la merde et meurs.
As for Rufus T. Shitfly's predictable outbursts of knee-jerk malice and dumbass illiteracy (he should have used "qui" in place of "ou"--probably used a mechanical Internet translation machine because he's too fucking stupid and uneducated to do it himself):
ReplyDeleteQED
How to recognize Rufus T. Shitfly if he ever crawls out of your toilet or septic system:
ReplyDeleteshit fly
1. A small fly with triangular wings that crawls out of drains in the bathroom and breeds in septic systems.
2. A greenbottle fly of the kind that frequents fecal deposits.
Indiquez exactement où vous avez été insulté ici "premier".
ReplyDeleteTu ne peux pas. Par conséquent, vous êtes un menteur.
Par conséquent, mangez de la merde et mourez.
Exactly Rufus. Could not have said it better.
ReplyDeleteWinWarblist--you can't say anything coherent, because you're drunk. Now post something, my little bitch, or you'll be in serious trouble.
ReplyDeleteI bet you have giant pepperoni for nipples
DeletePuckered's pepperoni nipples!!! Yaayyy!!!
DeleteRufus T. Shitfly is a glutton for ridicule. He posts the same nonsensical pseudo-French message--trying to show he knows French when he's obviously using a mechanical translator--and ADDS to the grammatical mistakes in his first post, attesting to his munificent stupidity and illiteracy. To wit:
ReplyDelete1. In his first rendering of pigeon French, he mixes up two different verb forms, employing both the informal "tu" form and the more formal "vous" form: "Indiquez" in the first paragraph, and "mange" and "meurs" in the second paragraph. AND he uses "ou" where he should use "qui."
2. In his second inept attempt at convincing the world that he knows French, he manages to put everything in the formal "vous" format, but adds an unnecessary article of the kind used only by dufus Americans, not real French speakers, who would say, "vous etes menteur," not "vous etes un menteur."
Rufus T. Shitfly--champion dolt of the blogosphere.
In his two comments of fractured pigeon high-school French, Rufus T. Shitfly makes two references to eating shit--hardly surprising, since that is the preferred cuisine of the shit fly, a delicacy he craves at the first rumble of hunger.
ReplyDeleteHere are a couple of illustrations. Here's a painting Rufus had commissioned of him and a an unnamed lady friend enjoying a leisurely Sunday al fresco brunch at a local sewer:
https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/shit_fly.html?sti=lj4avchgihz75blg2f|&mediapopup=41678371
And here's a lovely family portrait of the entire Rufus T. Shitfly family enjoying Sunday dinner together:
https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/shit_fly.html?sti=njwlnltod4myc2wpsh|&mediapopup=94101691
When you pleasure yourself, from your Mother’s basement on a dial-up connection, do you prefer Vaseline or a cheese grater?
DeleteAsking for a friend?
Indiquez exactement où vous avez été insulté ici "premier".
ReplyDeleteTu ne peux pas. Par conséquent, vous êtes un menteur.
Par conséquent, mangez de la merde et mourez.
We just take some time to acknowledge the tweet of the day
ReplyDelete"The only slider Levine has hit is of the cheeseburger variety"
Priceless,
See what happens on a day when there is no Yankee baseball?
ReplyDeleteYeah, sure, 'Phonso, Puckered is a prince amoung people on game days.
DeleteDrunken/Killer Doc Warblist--It's gratifying to see you functioning as my little bitch out here. That's your only solace in your drunken, lonely, desolate life--your little crumbs of obedience to me. Now post again, my little bitch, and I mean now!
ReplyDelete"Amoung," Drunken/Killer Doc? Is that illiteracy or drunkenness at work? I expect better of my little bitch. Now post again, bitch, but this time without advertising your illiteracy.
ReplyDeleteAnd this juvenile "Yaayy!!" stuff, my little bitch. Is that the best you can do? Cheering on your sock-puppet selves? I know you've probably considered suicide as an antidote to your terminal despair. I won't discourage you--because you're a murderous incompetent, a threat to people's lives, a slime "AMOUNG" slimeballs.
ReplyDeleteNow post, bitch.
I think Alphonso was referring to the French illiterate and turd gourmand Rufus T. Shitfly and his tag-team partner, the psychotic drunken killer doc (AKA my little bitch). Just my guess--explication du texte.
ReplyDeleteBy the way--I have a photo collection of Rufus T. Shitfly's wife feasting on dog turds. Will post later if I have time.
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