Monday 7/24/23
Numbers are replacing the understanding of the game of baseball.
As I've said, people get dumber and dumber. They think less and less, and when you think less and less, you lose the ability to think at all. Then you're just there, basically just bumping into things and that's the end of it, which isn't a lot different than stumbling into a heater and recognizing it's hot, but without consciously noting what that is in concrete terms. In other words, thoughts.
They become worse at seeing things for what they are, and we're getting to the point that they can't see anything for a fraction of what it is, let alone a totality. Society and culture can't jettison people, so they adjust by devolving. Society isn't concerned with the genius. Society is about making sure the moron is provided for. Good to go. And that way people--because most of them are that moron--don't get left behind. People make a choice to being a moron by never trying to be otherwise. And this is one thing they're good at becoming, and fast.
It's like no one is able to get a 65 to pass the test. So the requirement keeps going down so that enough people can. And you reach a point where all you need to get is a 12, and you can stay in school. That's what is happening in the world. Hell, it's getting to be that it's enough to show up in order to pass. The person who has the problem is the person who has mastered the material, knows it every which way, and proves it constantly in their words, actions, output. That's the person who has real problems and is ostracized.
The drooling quasi-literate who doesn't have a clue about anything? They're fine. Can be a nice ride, albeit one without any substance, meaning, value, or really a point, unless one is counting ease, but ease in what? Not being things? Hooray. But you can get a nice house and a car and people who will not be anything with you, though those relationships will also not really be things. But whatever.
Now, when an outfielder makes a play on a ball, it's summarized by his sprint speed. It's not about what he knows about the hitter from previous experiences, the route he took, the jump he got, the way he understood where the ball was ultimately going on account of the wind, his ability to gauge the spin the ball has and where that's taking it.
It has to be measurables, and it has to be numbers, which I would say have almost nothing to do with playing the game of baseball well or indicating that someone does.
How hard you throw or how fast you run mean little in and of themselves. They don't state a case, they don't mean anything when they're just presented as the end all. But people don't understand baseball and what's happening even in things as simple as sports, because they don't understand anything now and why it happens.
They want to tweet something, though, and they want to use as few words as possible, and it's even better if they can tweet something that's an image or a number. They can't think of words to say. They are always stymied by an inability with language. If you went on a dating site, you'd see that you could be there years, and you would never encounter one person--not a soul--who could say a single thing that suggested they had an intelligent thought that they could express. I mean a very low-bar type of intelligent thought, not something to shake your soul with the power of an epiphany. I have never seen anything different that couldn't have come from billions of other people, not one vaguely distinguishing clause. I've seen it but a hand full of times--less than twenty--in years of looking at social media.
So people actually now actively hate words and language, and they hate people who don't hate words and language. When you write something intelligent, people hate that, and if they don't hate you--though usually they do--there is no way in hell they don't fear you. Aren't intimidated by you.
They only times they aren't is when someone also struggles with language and is similar to how they are. Then they are comfortable and can be comfortable with you. When you write anything that's more than a line, people hate that. It can be two sentences, and it's treated like you have done something wrong. You are now bad. It's like you're a criminal. Further, it's like you've done something to them, and you've tried to hurt them. They treat it like you should be ashamed and should apologize, and it would be for the best if you went into exile, and they'd sign papers sending you there if they could. For the general good, and their good. People hate words. Their own failings and inabilities with words makes them feel inadequate. Lesser. The solution? Make words a bad thing. Get rid of them whenever possible. Make using them and using them well a cause for shaming and alienating. And it goes down to something as simple now as sports and baseball. Get rid of the words and having to use words. Get rid of thoughts and thinking.
They barely even have thoughts, save the way an animal has thoughts. A bird has the recognition that it's raining. That's similar to what people have with everything life. The recognition isn't unarticulated, by which I mean in a person's thoughts. The less you think, the less human you are. A human can cogitate and has free will. That's how a human is not like a dog, ultimately. But, cease to cogitate, and go along with what is around one's self simply because it is--which is to forfeit identity and free will--and the human becomes akin to the dog, save that dogs are not evil, base, selfish, narcissistic. They're dogs. They have most humans beat in those regards.
Now when I see baseball "highlights," it's all about sprint speed, or how many miles per hour the third baseman's throw to first was, which completely misses the point of baseball. Baseball is not about these things.
Phil Rizzuto, for instance, is one of the best fielding shortstops in the game's history. And even on routine plays, his throws from short would barely beat the runner at first. But they would. Which is no different if he gunned it there at 97 mph.
He excelled as a baseball player, with the assortment of subtleties that requires. On stacked Yankees teams, Rizzuto was arguably the most valuable player. Ted Williams thought so. And his rival was only a guy named Joe DiMaggio, and yet it was Rizzuto Williams cited as the reason those Yankees teams won and his Red Sox teams didn't.
Being a baseball player isn't being an NFL combine phenom. But that's all people can understand now. They see a number and they think--if you even want to call it that--"That's good because that is fast."
A complete distortion of how the game works. They don't even know what they're watching. They've translated it into this thing that it's not, and they're entirely missing what it actually is.
Greg Maddux threw, what? 90 mph, tops? The implication is that harder, faster, equals better, or else why is that the new highlight?
Do you know how awesome Greg Maddux was? Do you understand why he was awesome? You'd have to actually understand baseball to understand what made him awesome. What made him maybe the best pitcher ever. I wouldn't say he was, but he's pretty close.
Maybe the sprint speed was what it was because the outfielder got a lousy jump on the ball, doesn't read the ball off the bat well, took a bad route, and the number that is the stand-in for the not-so-hard play becomes what is tweeted and shared by half a million people who have no clue about a game.
