Competition Tatters, Competition Matters

I had a couple of sports related conversations with my father in-law (FIL) this past weekend.

1.       Pete Rose

Me: he’s a piece of shit that doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. He was a great hitter.

FIL: He was a great hitter who belongs in the Hall of Fame even though he is a piece of shit who bet on his own team.

2.       Golf Pro retires so as not to break a course record set by Arnold Palmer

FIL: knows a golf pro who is killing it one day on a course and the caddy tells him “by the way, if you keep playing well, you are going to set the course record.” So the pro asks who owns the record and is told Arnold Palmer. So instead of tanking his round, decides to retire as a pro prior to finishing the round…so as not to set the course record.

Now my FIL intimated that this really shows you the pro’s respect for Arnold Palmer.

I think it is just the opposite. And I reference the above mentioned piece of shit in my reasoning.

Now, regarding Pete Rose:

I asked my FIL, “why doesn’t professional wrestling earn as much as the NFL?”

The answer is because the fans, the people who shell out the dough, believe that there is genuine competition in the NFL; that men compete and that the men and team that want and work and toil and bleed and endure the most…win.

While the WWE and the NFL share entertainment value, the income difference alerts you to the fact that the belief in genuine competition, matters, a lot. Billion = a lot.

So this brings me back to Pete Rose, the piece of shit. Baseball, and all of its history, matters, for the same reason, that people believe there is genuine competition.

Pete Rose ensured there wasn’t.

He bet on his own team.

Please don’t be a sap and ask whether to win or lose.

Fair enough, what does this have to do with the golf pro?

Well, the reason a golf course record matters at all, be it held by Arnold Palmer or Saw Palmetto, is again, competition…one man trying his hardest against another man or woman or satyr or whatever.

But now you have Joe Blow “retiring” because of his respect for Arnold Palmer when in fact it is the most disrespectful act.

Imagine (like Kant would have us do) if every golfer that went up against Palmer, tanked or retired or half-assed it. We wouldn’t appreciate Palmer, we wouldn’t think that he was great, that he overcame nerves, that he had mettle or grit or determination or was a winner or anything like that.

Competition matters people.

The Pete Roses of the world and the golf pros who retire when they are about to break a record, do a disservice to competition.

Competitors WANT to earn it, they want nothing handed to them, they need not ill-gained records and shun anything less than the best from their foes.

So don’t be a dick, try your best.

“I’m happy for you banana.”

Fuck Joshua Ferris.

Fuck him and his words and his sentences and his paragraphs and his book The Unnamed.

I have cried reading books. I have laughed reading books.

But never before have I said, out loud, “oh god” in shock while reading a book, tears streaked on my face, whimpering in my office on my god damn lunch hour.

So fuck Joshua Ferris.

For stringing me along through The Unnamed, there with David as he can’t help but walk away, quite literally, from the wife he truly loves; the wife he knows was there for him year in and year out when he needed her at all hours. And when she yells at him, pleads with him all you had to do was come back! when she found another, he says:

“I’m happy for you banana.”

Fuck Joshua Ferris. I don’t’ need this shit. I don’t need these emotions, I don’t need these feelings. I don’t need this, I know Ferris has read Heidegger when he writes in The Unnamed “this was being in the world,” turbulence.

And on my lunch hour!

The Unnamed is a modest meditation on the mind-body problem and an even smaller meditation on god but it really isn’t the point as the, wait for it, soul of the book is between the people.

Be you matter, be you mind, you need others. Be they matter, be they mind.

Yes you.

Are you Fortunate?

I turned my father in-law onto Joe Bonamassa at some point and he was able to see him recently in concert and raved about him. 

I was able to see Joe Bonamassa, on a weeknight, for very little money, at a very small club in Athens Ohio that held, I’m terrible at approximating these kinds of things so I’ll give a wide birth and say, between 500-1000. There really wasn’t a bad seat in the house. 

Consider that Bonamassa is a world-class guitarist and can fill venues to 20,000. 

I was very fortunate.

I’m not done. I was also able to see the Derek Trucks Band there. Twice. I was able to see Charlie Hunter there, again on a weeknight. I was able to see Koko Taylor there, Tab Benoit, Paul Thorn. 

How did this happen?

A man was taken hostage. 

What!?

Yep, in 1985. A guy named Terry Anderson. 

“He was the longest-held of the American hostages captured in an effort to drive U.S. military forces from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.”

He received a settlement of, reportedly, 26 uh-million, and from it, opened a blues bar…in Athens Ohio…where I lived and breathed. 

Mr. Anderson had to file for bankruptcy. 

All this just has me wondering, what does it mean to think that you, or me, or Terry Anderson is fortunate?

 

What if fortune, or luck if you like, is a zero sum game?

The Mootest Distinction

On my drive into work today I imagined myself being interviewed and being asked about my view on what it means for something to be natural or unnatural because I had explored the natural/unnatural topic in a very successful novel.

And in the interview I said that there is nothing unnatural and there were audible gasps from the crowd. I guess we were live in front of a studio audience.

And the interviewer asked me to explain because he or she (as long as it is someone hip and cool) was incredulous.

And I say: “here is what I mean, a square circle is unnatural. It can’t exist based on the definitions of squares and circles. Same goes for the laws of physics, thermodynamics and so on.”

“Consider,” I’d say “someone living in the Pleistocene, surviving on a day to day basis: killing what it eats, not being eaten, open to the elements but,” I’d say “learning to control fire.”

“Now what if you could take Mr. or Mrs. Pleistocene and take him/her through the future and the first thing you do is light a match in front of them. Magic! Just imagine the grunts of incredulity. Next show them a muzzle-loader and shoot a Mastodon from 400 yards. Dead! Dinner is served. Then sit them in a model A car and drive through streets lined with tall buildings using arches and then stop your drive at the airport where a jet takes off and flies in the sky. Inconceivable! They would grunt uncontrollably and you would put your earbuds in and select a song from itunes and walk off into the sunset.”

“So you see,” I’d say “natural/unnatural is the mootest (I’d coined the term in the very successful novel) distinction.”

The host would look at me with all the content of a student of Socrates and every audience member would smile and I’d say:

“The future is unnatural to the past and a square circle is the least of our concerns.”

My next novel would fail miserably.