Public Service Announcement

A top Trump Administration official managing a $250 million advertising contract to “defeat despair and inspire hope” amid the coronavirus pandemic excluded celebrities seen as critical of President Trump. The Administration ultimately approved only 10 celebrities to participate in a PSA program: actor Dennis Quaid; gospel singer CeCe Winans; singer Marc Anthony; Hasidic singer Shulem Lemmer; Mehmet Oz, known as the television doctor Dr. Oz; country singers Billy Ray Cyrus, Miranda Lambert and Garth Brooks; former basketball player Dwyane Wade; and singer Enrique Iglesias.

- -- taken from the Washington Post, Oct. 30, p.A9

Open. A Zoom call format, with ten faces appearing in ten squares.

Quaid: Hi! I’m actor Dennis Quaid. You might know me from films like Great Balls of Fire, D.O.A., and my remake of the Hayley Mills blockbuster, The Parent Trap. But I’m here with my friends to tell you to keep your head held high during this pandemic, particularly to allow better air flow during your intubation. That’s our message today -- to stay positive, to defeat despair, and to keep hope alive – no, no, I mean, stay hopeful, that’s it. And I’ve brought some friends with me to help me share that message. Let me ask one of them to tell you all about it.

Lemmer: Shalom! Do you know me? If your tenth kid isn’t named Menachem, you probably don’t. I’m Shulem Lemmer, the first Hasidic singer to be signed to a major label! And I’m here to defeat despair, the Hasidic way! For example, if you can’t go to shul during this pandemic because large gatherings of people lead to “superspreader” events, don’t despair! Start a riot! Set fires, make angry remonstrations – anything to inspire hope. And if you see a fellow Hasid whom you think is conspiring with notorious anti-Semites like Governor Cuomo, beat the despair right out of him! Like the great Rebbe of the Middle Ages, Maimonides, said in his Guide for the Perplexed, “Boo-yah, motherfucker!”

Quaid: Thanks, Shulem, and Mazel Tov. Say, how about a medical opinion? And who better to turn to than my friend, Dr. Oz!

Dr. Oz: Hi, I’m Dr. Oz. People accuse me of an “egregious lack of ethics.” They condemn my show for addressing such important medical issues as whether heaven really exists or my contention the apple juice you give your kids contains arsenic. The British Medical Journal found that more than half of the recommendations I made on The Dr. Oz Show had either no supporting evidence or contradicted medical research, meaning that almost half of them were just fine!

But enough about me. Let’s just say I’m a leading pseudoscientist, and that’s OK, because COVID is a pseudodisease! Just ask the Trump kids! It’s time to be hopeful and positive – remember, we’re going around the bend, in more ways than one. By the way, have you put on a few extra pounds during this pandemic while you’re trapped inside? Why not buy a weight loss product? I personally recommend it!

Quaid: That’s great, Dr. Oz. At a time like this, responsible medical opinion is so important. Say, how about a little music?

Lemmer: Sure! Let me sing one of my favorite numbers, Avinu Malkeinu –

Quaid: Thanks, Shulem, but I was thinking instead of my special friend, Billy Ray Cyrus.

Cyrus: Hello everybody! It’s me, Miley’s Dad – you know, the ass-in-the-air girl? -- and I thought I’d sing one of my only greatest hit for you today!

You can tell the world I never wore a mask And say I liked to hang in a crowd

You can tell your friends just what a fool I've been And laugh how I’ll end up in a shroud Me and all my pallies we go to all the rallies

And laugh at all the dopes who take care The doctors all delude ‘em but then I cough up sputum

And struggle while I try to suck air

So don't tell my lungs My achy breaky lungs I just don't think they'd get the word And if you tell my lungs My achy breaky lungs That’s one more immune case for the herd!

Quaid: What a toe-tapper! Say, who doesn’t like basketball? Let’s hear it from NBA star Dwyane Wade.

Wade: Hello, I’m basketball player Dwyane Wade. I’ve won three NBA Championships and have been on thirteen All-Star teams and eight All-NBA teams. And I’m here to remind you that all NBA Players, Black and White, dedicated this last season to ending racial oppression and redressing the murders of men of color by militarized police. It’s as simple as this -- Black Lives Matter – just like the lives of LGBTQ+ kids like mine matter. And now, over one in every thousand Black Americans has already died of this disease, according to the American Public Media Research Lab. As Coach Rivers said, “we keep loving this country, but this country does not love us ba—”

Quaid: We seem to be having technical difficulties with Dwyane’s microphone, but at least that will give him more time to shut up and dribble. Perhaps we can turn to gospel star CeCe Winans.

Winans: Praise God! I’m CeCe Winans, and I pray you and your loved ones are safe, and you’re defeating despair. And remember, if you get the COVID and die of it, you’ll be going to a better place. Well, some of you are --

Quaid: Gosh! We seem to be all out of time, and I bet some of you want to get back to watching Wheel of Fortune! So remember, don’t despair, stay hopeful, and if you decide to wear a mask, good for you! And if you don’t, that’s your right as an American! Because it’s that concept of “freedom” that’s made this country what it is today! Am I right? Bye!

The Ferryman

“Well, here’s another customer. Step right up, step right up, that’s good, Sir. Don’t be shy, you’re in the right place, no worries. Hermes bring you here? Nice guy, isn’t he? Sure he is. Step aboard, that’s right, mind the gap between the pier and the boat…that’s right… very good. I’d tell you to take any seat but there are no seats, are there? Heh, heh, my little joke. Ferry must be popular as it’s standing room only. Heh, heh. Like I said, my little joke.

“Alright, then. Welcome to the Styx River Ferry, my name’s Charon, I’ll be your ferryman tonight – well, it’s always night, isn’t it? We’ll be departing the uncharted, western edge of Greece in just a few moments and should be arriving in Hades, where your soul will reside for all eternity, in about…oh…twenty minutes, but who’s in a rush? Am I right? The water’s calm today like it always is and even though it’s rather dark and foreboding out it should be pretty easy going for our crossing today.

“But before we push off, I just want to mention a few rules for your safety and comfort. First, please keep your hands inside the boat. We understand the temptation to touch the River Styx’s inky black water, but doing so is not only fatal to man or beast – not your concern right now, I understand – but bodes poorly for your coming judgment. Second, no flash photography, please. I mean, what good is flash photography going to do you? Who are you going to show the picture to, anyway? Am I right? Of course, I am. And please note that there are no life preservers on our boat because you have no life to preserve, do you? Heh, heh. My little joke.

“So, let me push us out into the river…there! That wasn’t very hard, was it? Now, I need to ask you for the fare. Just a few coins, we prefer Grecian obolos but we’ll take whatever you have, except plastic – we don’t work on credit around here, as you can imagine, and the service charges are rather high. No money, you say? Of course, you have money! No, no, not in your pockets, no sense looking there. Here -- reach up and touch your eyes. That’s right – you see? A coin on both of them, and they were put there to give to me! Plus, they keep your lids closed – no one likes eyes popping open during the viewing, do they? Of course they don’t. OK, give them here, very good. Much easier to see now, isn’t it? That’s what everyone says. Now check under your tongue…that’s right. You see? There’s another. Same thing. Give it here…very good.

“Well, it looks like you’re alone this trip, which is good for you, because this little boat can get awfully crowded if I’ve got souls lining up waiting to make a crossing. And a boatload of tormented souls, they make quite a ruckus, believe you me. Oh, the wailing, the anguish! And they haven’t even gotten to the other side yet. Many of them will end up enjoying beautiful Elysium, but still, how they go on! But you look like a pretty calm chap, isn’t that right? Am I right? Are you a pretty calm chap? I thought so. I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Besides, what’s the use?

“Now, on our right, I’d like to point out an interesting feature. You can see a distant ray of sunshine through the menacing clouds and inky blackness. Can you make it out? Those are the Elysian Fields I just mentioned, where benevolent souls will live out eternity. You, Sir? Oh, don’t ask me, I’m only the ferryman. My job is to drop you off at the shore of Hades and then you’ll make alternative transportation arrangements to Elysium or Tartarus, depending on whatever the case may be. But I hear it’s very nice, very nice in Elysium. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Well…if¸ of course.

“So, how do you like being dead so far? Nervous? Oh, don’t be nervous about it. After all, you lived a good life, didn’t you? I’m sure you did. Just looking at you, you’ve got smooth hands and all your teeth, so you must have had an easy time of it. Tell me, what did you do before you passed? A hedge fund manager! Well, I’m sure a great reward awaits you! You were a good person, am I right? You were? Out there hedging every day or whatever it is you do. Chaired the annual dance committee at the country club? Very nice, very nice. Community

service, everybody likes that.

“That wailing noise behind us? Just a lost spirit, searching for eternal rest, Sir. Poor thing -- well, he didn’t have the fare, did he? Oh, now, I don’t know if I’d say it was cruel. It’s just like in your previous life – I mean, no dues, no table at the country club dance, same thing isn’t it? Truth be told, after about a hundred years of tormented wailing, I’ll usually let them on if I have space that day. But it’s not my doing – if his family didn’t bury him with the right currency like yours did, he should take it up with them. Some people just have trouble with rules, if you ask me.

“So…any children? Really – a boy and a girl! Well, that worked out for you, didn’t it? And where are they? Oh! The boy’s in a FARC camp in Colombia? Fighting for Communist insurgents? Well, I’m sure it is opposed to everything you’ve ever stood for -- I can certainly sense your disappointment. My, my, when did he go there? That long? Hmm…well, that shows a strong social commitment. I’m sure that will redound to your benefit, a good upbringing like that. And your daughter — oh, I’m sorry. No communication at all? Very sad, yes, Sir. Somewhere in Berlin you say! Well, that must be very exciting for her. Well, you must have been a good father, I’m sure – you can’t always tell by how things turn out, can you? I don’t think you have any worries at all.

“Me, Sir? How long have I been doing this? Oh, ever since I can remember. Or forever, same thing. Heh, heh. My little joke. It’s steady work, and I get to be outside, and you meet all sorts of people. And I like the quiet time I have alone on the way back, although now and then you get an Odysseus or Orpheus looking to hitch a ride back. Oh, poor Orpheus! He was so sad, having lost Eurydice, you couldn’t cheer the poor guy up. But it was his own fault, wasn’t it? You know the story – no? Well, too long to go into now. Speaking of which – on our left, you can see some fiery red lightning piercing the ebon night off in the distance. Yes, that’s right, that’s Tartarus, where the damned will enjoy – if that’s the right word -- eternity. Fearful place, I hear tell. Me? No, never been, no interest -- rivers of fire, that sort of thing. I just stick to the boat, Sir.

“Well, I’ve been chatting my head off, haven’t I? Hope your ride hasn’t been too uncomfortable. But we are very near our destination. In fact, if you listen, you can hear Cerberus barking, the famous three-headed dog who guards the entrance to Hades. No, Harry Potter got the idea from us, Sir.

“We’ll be docking in just a few moments. Is there anything else I can do to make your voyage more enjoyable? No, there usually isn’t. I’ll just take us up to the dock – my, those dogs are loud, aren’t they? – here we go. Well then, thanks for riding the Styx River Ferry, my name is Charon and I’ve been your ferryman today. Please mind the gap between the pier and the boat when disembarking. And that’s a good rule in life, isn’t it? Mind the gap. Heh heh. My little joke.”

Happy Halloween!

Baseball's Secret History

Baseball’s truncated season ends this week with the World Series, an event of great interest to we baseball fans and absolutely no interest to everyone else. Perhaps non-fans might develop an interest in the National Pastime by learning about some of the previously unknown artifacts from baseball’s long and celebrated history. Or, if they don't, they could share this with a baseball fan and resume their sad, baseball-less, lives.

Item 1. Dizzy Dean’s Tarot Cards

Everyone knows Jerome Hanna “Dizzy” Dean won 30 games for the Cards in 1934 to propel the famed St. Louis “Gashouse Gang” into the Fall Classic against the Bengals of Detroit. But his interest in tarot? Let “The Wild Horse of the Osage,” hot corner specialist Pepper Martin, tell the story:

Ol’ Diz might have been a hillbilly, but he had his mystic side, too, an’ he never traveled without them tarot cards. We wuz on the train to Detroit when he consulted them cards as to how to pitch to the Tiger line-up, which wuz loaded with big guns like Gehringer, Cochrane, Goose Goslin, and that big sheeny Greenberg. So Diz takes out his deck of the Major Arcana an’ he closes his eyes, spits, makes a sign, and says “Greenberg!” an’ then he draws The Fool, then Temperance, then The Devil, and then The Hanged Man, an’ he says, “I knew it! Curve ball for strike one, a slow one for strike two, then the heater an’ he’s struck out!’ An’ in the third frame of the first game, Diz was holdin’ a 3-1 lead with two gone an’ Cochrane on third an Gehringer on second, an’ he fanned the big Jew on just them same pitches! Go look it up!”

Item 2. Ty Cobb Mechanical Coin Bank

The ever-competitive Cobb held on to every dollar he ever made as resolutely as he did his bat while accumulating the highest lifetime average in the history of the game, .367. This 1908 Ty Cobb version of the then-popular “mechanical penny banks” capitalized on his both his fabled fielding prowess and his parsimony -- place a penny in his glove, and The Georgia Peach “throws” it into a waiting first baseman’s mitt. Moreover, true to his cantankerous nature – inherited from his Ma, who shot Ol’ Ty’s Pa one night and then claimed it was a case of mistaken identity -- the bank could be fitted with a small caliber bullet to catch unawares the larcenous interloper who turned it over without first flipping the bank’s secret “don’t steal” signal switch, resulting in one heck of a “time out.” Caught stealing, Cobb style!

Item 3. Cap Anson’s Gall Stones

Anson, a repugnant racist and the best player of the 1880s, was the first man to collect 3,000 hits, batting a towering .399 as player-manager in Chicago’s 1881 campaign. But did you know he did it while suffering from a debilitating case of gallstones, which were presereved in a jar after surgery? Anson later described the affliction as being as painful as getting plunked in the brisket by Cy Young’s hard one. Absent the malady, Ol' Cap surely would have legged out one more base-knock to reach the magical .400 mark! And the ceaseless agony no doubt played some role in Hall of Famer Anson’s grumpy boycott of competing clubs who put Black players on the field, leading to the Negro’s 60-year hiatus from Big League Action!

Item 4. Casey Stengel’s 1912 First Edition Copy of Remembrance of Things Past

True baseball fans know that the Old Perfesser graduated from Western Dental College in Kansas City in 1912, one year before he won the starting center fielder’s job for the Brooklyn Robins, and the same year Marcel Proust published the first of the thirteen volumes of his literary classic. But how many know that, after being selected as dental school valedictorian, Casey was gifted by his fellow cuspidrilles with a leather-bound first edition of that same first volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu? The dog-eared volume, inscribed to ‘Charles D. Stengel, with kudos, from his classmates,’ was Casey’s constant companion on the road in a five-decade baseball career.

Casey's third sacker, Dr. Bobby Brown, shared his love of literature. As Bobby tells it: ‘Case was sitting in the dugout one day, holding that Proust book in his lap -- he was never without it, you know -- when Yogi comes by and says, ‘So, Casey, how’d that book on helping your memory finally turn out?’ and Casey winks at me and turns to Yog’ and says, with that famous twinkle in his eye, 'I can’t remember.’ I thought Woodling and Bauer would bust a gut laughing!”

Item 5. Hitler’s Baseball Glove

As war clouds grew over the Atlantic in the late 1930's, a group of prominent Americans led by Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg encouraged Hitler to court American public opinion. To make their case, they sent him a baseball glove in the hope of stimulating an interest in the National Pastime on the part of the cantankerous tyrant. While war ensued nonetheless, the Fuhrer grew fond of the mitt, a Tris Speaker model, once invoking the great center-fielder when joking to a friend “The Grey Eagle comes to the Eagle’s Nest, no?”

Many a sunny afternoon at Berchtesgaden would be whiled away with the Furor tossing the horsehide pill with ‘Baseball Annie’ Eva Braun. Ol' Adolf's plan to form a playing nine at the German High Command took a nosedive, however, when first-sacker Rudolph Hess jumped the Club to barnstorm rival England. ‘That’s why free agency is so detrimental to baseball,’ the diminutive despot is said to have remarked.

OSS certificate of authenticity included!

Item 6. Satchel Paige's Birth Certificate

Leroy Robert ‘Satchel’ Paige claimed to have won over a thousand games in his Negro League career before he cracked the color line in 1948, going 6 and 1 for the pennant-winning Indians and winning the Rookie of the Year Award. But how old was he? He claimed to be born in Mobile, Alabama in 1906, but some historians put the date at 1905, or even 1904 or 1903!

The discovery of Paige's actual birth certificate ends the debate; Ol' Satch was born in...1875! Blessed with a youthful appearance and a spry agility earned by years of stoop labor, Paige broke into The Show not at 42, but 73, a remarkable athletic achievement.

Former Tribe manager Lou Boudreau wasn't surprised. ‘Ol' Satch used to get these envelopes from the Social Security Administration each month. I'd ask him what they were, and he's say 'They's actuarial tables, Mr. Lou. I'm tryin' to calculate what might be gainin' on me.' I guess Satch put it over on all of us!’

6 and 1 at age 73! Imagine what Ol' Satch might have done if he'd been good enough to make it to the big leagues in his prime!