Winning the World Series can be worrisome
OVER a week ago, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
Major league baseball in the United States has apparently never seen the irony of elevating their championships to a global level when only American teams are allowed to participate in them.
The World Series has no other countries taking part but no one in the US seems to think that might be a tad strange.
On the other hand, Clint Eastwood does not find it strange that the National Rifle Association (NRA) reacts ferociously to any liberal attempt to restrict the sale of automatic weapons to Americans because it might impinge on their constitutional right to bear arms.
On a point of historical trivia, I don’t mean to nitpick about the US constitution but I believe that old Benjamin Franklin actually meant the right to “bare” arms, that is to say, the right to wear short sleeved shirts in any kind of weather.
But I was talking about the World Series, wasn’t I?
The championship has plenty of noble tra- ditions associated with it. Actually it was one main tradition: enough beer to float the Queen Mary. The tradition consists of the winning team – the Boston Red Sox – being given a rousing welcome as they parade through the streets of Boston while the exuberant fans hurl full beer cans at them.
That’s almost as strange as Eastwood’s defence of the NRA, don’t you think?
Fans of winning baseball teams in the US believed in two things. They believed in baseball and they believed they would have another beer.
That was why many Red Sox fans were hung over after the team’s triumphant parade through the streets of Boston last Wednesday. Team manager Alex Cora was busy dodging beer cans but not before one actually struck him on the head. At least half-dozen fans were sorting out legal issues stemming from arrests.
For some arrests, the police didn’t even have to conduct a breathalyser test. A college freshman was immediately arrested after he pleaded: “I swear to drunk I’m not God.”
There was one unexpected casualty during the revelries. And it was the Cup itself. The well-established traditions of day drinking and throwing full cans of beer up to revelling champions as their vehicles passed by resulted in the trophy taking a high hard one to the base of the Commissioner’s trophy.
In his jubilation, Patrick Connolly, a college freshman, hurled a full beer can at the winners. It struck the tram manager. Connolly was charged in Municipal Court with being a minor in possession of alcohol, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon – I told you so said Alcoholics Anonymous – and being disorderly.
But, why had the Bostin Red Sox won in the first place?
The answer lay in the fact that the team had an overachiever’s share of left handers in its midst.
The reasoning went like this. There are two hemispheres in the brain, a right one and a left one. The right one controls the left side of the body while the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body.
All these are scientific facts. What it proves is that only the left handers are in their right minds all the time.
And that was why the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.