LINE OF SIGHT

I had season tickets to the San Francisco Giants for over 20 years. My seats were in row 29, in the section behind home plate. I still remember the time I invited a former Major League ball players to a game with me. He was Kevin Maas who used to play for the New York Yankees. Two things happened that taught me a lot. One was that near us several other former major league ball players were sitting, watching the game with their families. I did not recognize any of them, but Kevin Maas sure knew them, and they all knew him. They kept coming up to us and saying hello to Kevin. They were all friendly. If he had not been there, I would have had no clue about this. It was an important reminder that sometimes there are very interesting people and things all around us, but if we don’t know then we don’t even notice.

The second thing that happened taught me that Major League ball players are nothing like the rest of us. At one point Chad Zerbe came in to pitch. He had been pitching well, so I was expecting good things. But after about two pitches, Kevin leaned over toward me and said: “he is raising his finger on his throwing hand when he throws his slider. They will pick up on that and start hitting him hard.”  I had a pair of binoculars in my bag, so I used them and focused on his pitching hand. I could not notice anything. Frankly, his hand looked mostly like a blur. But Kevin was right, the other team began hitting him, hard. I thought, perhaps, that Kevin was just toying with me, because I definitely could not see this. But then, the next day, there was a report in the paper that Chad Zerbe had been sent back to the minors, to work on his mechanics. I then realized that Kevin did see something, the other team saw something, and so did the pitching coaches for the SF Giants.

I still have no clue regarding what exactly Chad Zerbe was doing, but I had to realize that other people, with skills I could not even imagine, saw this very clearly.

This reminded me of a comment by Mike Krukow, an announcer for the Giants. He talked about how Barry Bonds would point out something to his teammates, but none of them could see what he was talking about. Bonds could see it, he could not understand why everyone else couldn’t see it, and the result was usually a home run.

I have learned that when people say they see something I don’t see, I just listen. Sometimes, they are just wrong. Sometimes they are delusional. But sometimes they are right, and we ignore them to our peril. Today, we have some very smart people saying the evidence of election fraud is overwhelming. We have other, supposedly smart people, saying they are wrong, and this is delusional. Not everyone who believes there was election fraud is an idiot. Not everyone who says there was no fraud is an Anti-Trump bigot. I believe that we are already on a path where the truth of this will become impossible to ignore one way or another. I personally think the fraud happened, primarily because the system was so obviously flawed that it was a recipe for fraud.

There are many people telling us that wearing masks helps prevent catching and spreading COVID. There are other people who say this is nonsense and masks do almost nothing. It is impossible to tell, because along with the mask mandates were drastic lockdowns where people stopped interacting with each other. I am reminded that the American Indians were devastated when they started interacting with Europeans, not necessarily because of guns, but because Europeans had diseases for which the American Indian had no immunity. Europeans did have a lot of immunity, so these diseases did not make them very ill. However, they literally killed American Indians.  This was a reminder that yes, one can avoid certain disease by being isolated, but being isolated also makes it very difficult to experience life.  A lot of people are quickly figuring out that the cure is worse than the disease. There are few things sadder than to see someone afraid to live for fear of dying.

A lot of important things are starting to come into focus. Things that we ignore are coming into our line of sight. Ultimately, truth is the best disinfection and while this is coming at great cost, ultimately the result will be worth it. Remember that our entire system of government was only possible when people realized not only what was wrong with the current system but were willing to learn from mistakes and create a whole new kind of government, a government of the people, for the people, by the people. Truth is always truth and truth will always prevail; it is just sometimes out of the line of sight.

TDM