 Kid, just walk over to third. It's yours anyway. No thirteen-year-old boy in America has the arm or the aim to throw out a base-runner from home plate. In Korea? Sure, those kids can ball. But not here, and certainly not in Chicago. Today, the only way to keep a thirteen-year-old American base-runner from stealing second is to load the bases. Therefore : It is the position of dennisotoole.com, its author, its affiliate sites, and its readers that no base-runner aged thirteen or younger should be allowed to take a lead off. If you disagree with this, go away. There is nothing for you on this website. There are plenty of places for people to hang out and be wrong about things, but here is not one of them. For someone who does not yet have kids, I watch a fair amount of Little League. I live two blocks from Welles Park, a four-diamond arcadia in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. Every Saturday and Sunday from late April until August, from early in the morning until early evening, the diamonds are full of games. So when procrastination, boredom or some blend of the twain starts to itch, I take a mosey. "Whatever the subject, a real critic is a cultural critic, always: if your judgment doesn't bring in more of the world than it shuts out, you shouldn't start." -Clive James in the current Atlantic  Photo: Stan "The Say Hey Kid" Musial receiving Medal of Freedom from some President neither mentioned nor alluded to in the WSJ book review discussed below. This past weekend, The Wall Street Journal ran a review of George Vescey's, “Stan Musial: An American Life.” Musial, aka the Yankee Clipper, was the first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals during the 1940's and 50's and one of the best hitters to ever swing the pine (which is not a sexual expression). The review ends thusly: Mr. Vescey sees his subject as having much in common with Dwight Eisenhower. The two-term president fell in the public’s estimation soon after leaving office... and the Eisenhower era itself was derided “for its--what? Complacency? Stability? Normalcy?” In our fractious times, the author says, “normalcy is looking good…” But to this Cardinals fan, Stan Musial calls to mind another president... TIME OUT. Can you guess which president the deputy book editor of the Wall Street Journal is about to compare Stan Musial to? Take a few minutes. Walk around the block, have a drink, make love to your woman: get your mind together, son. Because you will never see this coming. UN-TIME. ...of more recent vintage.... Clinton? ...who had a sunny disposition... Oh, I know: Ford. ...and was also inordinately good at his job. “Good at his job”? And a president. This is a trick question, right? A man who lived so long that he, too, drifted into the land of forgetting but left countless others who smile just at the thought of him. Ah, how true. To think of him is to smile... Wall Street Journal employees don't actually write this stuff, do they? They must have some special app that automatically makes any article, no matter the topic, turn into a paean to Ronald Reagan. I mean, they gotta. | About Dennis
Dennis O'Toole is a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime. He lives in Chicago. If you need to reach me, dial: denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail PERIOD CHARACTER co LETTER M. Categories
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