Good Morning, Charlie - What’s Good Today

A Good Thing - The Reds were two-hit by the Snakes on Sunday and then went right out on Monday and did the same back to the Giants. Wade Miley, Tejay Antone, and Lucas Sims tooks their turns on the bump and each looked on it like a hornet on a omelette.

A Bad Thing - Some cops in Westerville were called because a dude was sleeping in his car. The cops showed up, put him in the back of the car, and took him to St Ann’s hospital. Then - you won’t believe it - somehow (the article does not specify) the fella got a gun so the cops had to kill him. “Just let the community know this is another example of this type of thing could happen anywhere” said the police chief.

It could happen anywhere, friends. And to anyone. Well, not anyone. But you know.

A Way Jam Thing - I fear Shohei Ohtani in the way I fear the inevitability of my mortality. The complete and ecumenical nature of his baseball talent invokes breathy legends told and re-told around campfires and on cave walls.

Much has died away from this world in the last year. People, most importantly, my god, so many souls, but so have many dreams, hopes, and beliefs. The old gods of the world proved unequal to the nightmares of our new millennium, and so must not we now create new ones to replace them?

Shohei Ohtani looks around this ashen hellscape and calmly mutters “I am your god now.” And I gotta say I think we should give him a chance. This ain’t fishes and loaves or nothin’ but sit here right now and try to tell me this man is not goddamn miraculous.

Another Blasphemous Thing - The Athletic went around asking folks about Joey Votto. He seems rightly deified by his colleagues. If for whatever reason you do not have a subscription to The Athletic yet I’d recommend attending to that here directly because you are gonna wanna read this.

I could go on and on about Joey Votto, but here’s just a little thing - Joey is almost always the smartest person in whatever room he walks into and it’s clear that he is quite aware of it. This kinda thing can have a profound effect on a person (just look at what happened to Ted Cruz) and the ways they habitually interact with other people. It can make you bitter if you focus too much on how stupid everyone else is. Or you can quietly do your best to make yourself the best you can be in whatever you do and show the world through your words and deeds how they can also work to make themselves and the world better.

And he does it all with the classic humility and self-effacing humour of a Canuck.

It’s pretty clear to me that Joey Votto has been successful in whatever he applies himself. How fortunate that he chose to apply his unique genius as a hitter for my favorite baseball team.

I wish Joey would run for Senate #SendVotto22

An Actually Serious Insane Thing That I Have To Be Serious About For A Second - The country seems to be a bit panicky about the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. Please, don’t panic. It is fine. The frequency of the scary side effects is incredibly low. This pandemic has killed a lot and among the dead is the sense that we as a society have any clue whatsoever how to assess risk. Or more to the point, we hear way too much static and it’s really hard for us to figure out who the real experts are and what exactly they are saying.

If you are reading this blog and you are the kind of person who makes important life decisions based on things you read on blogs like this, then I advise you to get the JJ vax if it is offered. Get the first one you can get your hands on. ASAP. All three are jam.

One Last Dumb Thing - Aforementioned toilet monster Ted Cruz and a few of his drinking buddies (slaughterhouse wastewater, not beer) are introducing legislation to end MLB’s anti-trust exemption. I’m no constitutional lawyer or whatever but seems to me all this is is the GOP pushing legislation specifically, overtly, and exclusively to punish political opponents. That sounds like a pretty bad thing to me.