Live and Learn

Michele and I went out shopping for groceries today.  Too bad Salvador Dali couldn’t come with.  He would’ve loved those surreal aspects of our little trip.

 

Like, how is it possible for the streets to be all but empty and the supermarket parking lots pretty much full?  At some point, all the cars have to trade places, no?  Well, we did, going from street to space to cart, never once taking off our gloves.  Let me note here that a collision between shopping carts could’ve unleashed a chain of events too horrible to contemplate.  I maneuvered down aisles past people with zombie eyes, and about as much color in their faces.

 

I also maneuvered down aisles picked clean in sections.  Forget about toilet paper and bottled water.  I must’ve missed the part about how the Coronavirus starts with diarrhea followed by drought.  We also appear to have returned to a world based on canned foods.  Strange times, indeed.

 

It’s probably a good thing the Coronavirus didn’t get incorporated into the storyline for “The Shawshank Redemption.”  I mean, how would Morgan Freeman run a black market for an entire prison?  An economy based on toilet paper instead of cigarettes?  Mr. Whipple would’ve been nominated for an Academy Award.

 

Just for fun, I went down the magazine aisle where, lo and behold, they had all three of my baseball magazines.  Not only that, they also had the January/February issue of Baseball Digest, that publication “for love of the game since 1942.”  And here I thought it had gone the way of The Sporting News and The Baseball Register and Who’s Who in Baseball.

 

There were some nice stories, including one on WAR that had this gem: After the 2012 season, a team analyst for the Tigers came up with a WAR formula that valued Gold Glove second baseman Darwin Barney (an average hitter at best) over Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera.  As the saying goes, figures don’t lie, but figurers do.

 

Another nice feature was a listing of all the baseball people who had died in 2019.  Bill Buckner I knew about, Barry Latman of the ’59 White Sox I didn’t.  The same goes for Jean Buckley; Betty Carveth; Lillian Faralla; Helene Machado; Helen Smith; Joyce Steele; and Margaret Wigiser, all members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

 

Thank you, Baseball Digest, for letting women ballplayers break the glass ceiling, if just once in passing.