Today marked a first in my blogging life: I received a phone call over a blog/comment string. I find myself wondering if this blogging can still possibly be a good venture, . How far will the debate go, I wonder. How deep do our ideas run?
I've arrived at the conclusion that I must be addicted to politics. Like a Rubic's cube, it's a puzzle that I keep trying to put together. Sometimes I even get three colors in a row, or have a whole side monochromatic. But always it bogs down in the human factor. There's no logic to history, and few have ever succesfully predicted the turns that humanity takes. It's not knowable. It's like death that way.

I'm writing this in an attempt to articulate what is a source of discouragement for me. I see such an enormous divide of opinion everywhere, all around me, all of the time. Everyone thinks the country's fucked (the whole world might be), but the blame is always on someone else. In film production there is an identical phenomenom, whereby the crew blames production, production blames the actors... Has it always been this way?
My friend Tim Bratt, who worked as a criminal lawyer in San Francisco would tell me how ugly that scene is. It sounds as if everyone is lying: Cops plant evidence, defendants intimidate witnesses. There are parties who would attest that there is not a single legitimate conviction in the American penal system. Everyone of our institutions is in question: I've even noticed the Simpsons is becoming more strident as it attempts to hold a mirror up to America. I sense something of an urgency in the shows creators, to get across the message that things are not all right.

I believe that I manifest, through politics, every random factor of my life experience. I am like a party of one, looking to form a coalition. I've decided the best way to do this is at a municipal level. I'm a property owner, and I'm a California resident. I'm not going to go on a campaign to clean up the parks in Baghdad. I've decided to become a volunteer. I am entering the machine.

For myself, as far as all this Bush/war/orange-alert/homeland security stuff goes, I'm finding the best policy is to stay calm and stay informed. People on all sides of me are using words like jackboot and *Herr President* when refering to the commander-in-chief.
And I find myself wondering if they could be right. My instinct does not seem to suggest this. My hackles do not rise when I pull up to LAX and security stops to ask me if I'm bringing anything to the airport I shouldn't be.
"Because if you're not." She said winking. "I'll let you go."

I really am done rocking politics on filbert. It's all going to be about baseball now. After all, sports the only thing people can agree on in this county. It's the great American compromise.

But there's something underneath this truce which unsettles me.

I don't know if it was broadcast nationally, but there was an interesting feature on KPCC a day or two ago, about the future of the head-first slide in baseball.
It seems the Major leagues is looking into discouraging the practice, as it has the potential for season-ending injuries. The most common such injury is jammed fingers (owww!), but of course the player's eyes, nose, teeth, mandibles and orbitals are seriously imperiled when he hurls himself face first at the bag.
So why do they still do it? This was the question the reporters asked some guys who were running a youth baseball camp which had workshops on the face-first slide. The answer they gave seemed to keep with the notion that baseball is a metaphor for life: If you want something bad enough: Dive for it! If your finger gets busted along the way - so be it.
The guys who were giving the baserunning seminar where quick to point out that they are not neccesarily encouraging the head-first slide for the kids in the camp. Instead they want to teach them how to go about it safely (or at least the safest way possible). It was stressed that the most important factor in succesfully sliding face-first into the bag is confidence. The feet-first slide they pointed out, can oftentimes be adequate, but sometimes you have to be a little hungrier.

But on a more fundamental level, the trainer pointed out, the head first slide represents the true spirit of a champion. He mentioned players like Pete Rose and Len Dykstra; guys who weren't neccesarily born gifted with a graceful, athletic body. They're the guys who made the head-first slide famous, because they will put nothing ahead of scoring the run, and winning the game. These are the players who make up for their natural shortcomings with pure ferocity and will.
As far as Pete Rose goes, I always though *charlie hustle* was the best nickname in the history of baseball - and I still think basebal, above all other professional sports, manages to come up with the best nicknames. From "the bambino" to the "big unit", baseball players are the most folkloric figures in sport.

The guy who will risk broken bones in order to steal a base, according to the camp trainers, is the guy you want on your side.