The week ending on October 8 was an eventful week which may have consequences for every American as we travel down the road toward prosperity.  Three events took place, one involving a baseball decision and two others having local consequences.  But let us deal first with the baseball decision.  As you may be aware, the playoffs in the American League baseball season are currently taking place.  As it so happens, the New York Yankees were matched against the Detroit Tigers.  When all of the dust had settled, the New York Yankees were defeated by the Tigers.
I do not make a claim that I am impartial with respect to the outcome of Yankee games.  It all goes back to an evening of October 10, 1926 when the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees.  That was the Cardinals’ first appearance in the World Series.  On that occasion, the sixth game of the World Series was won by Grover Cleveland Alexander, who pitched a complete game.  Alexander concluded that with his age and the fact that he had won a complete game, there was no reason for him to hold back on his habit of drowning his sorrows or joys in alcohol.  So when the seventh game happened, it was widely assumed that Alexander had a hangover.
Early in the game, the St. Louis Cardinals had established a one-run superiority over the Yankees.  When the seventh inning rolled around, the Yankees were at bat and had at least one or two men on base, with the feared slugger Tony Lazzeri coming to bat.  Rogers Hornsby, the Cardinal manager, had called on Grover Cleveland Alexander from the bullpen.  Alexander, hangover and all, answered the call and struck out Tony Lazzeri.  From that point forward, the Cardinals held the Yankees scoreless and as a result the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in 1926.
My two brothers were old by my standards.  I was four years old that fall and one brother was born 13 years earlier and the other was born 12 years earlier.  The town of St. Louis was wild that night and my brothers were leaders in the cheerleading.  As a matter of fact, it is true that that evening was the very first memory that I have stuck in my head for all of these years.  So it is true that while I am not a Yankee hater, I do not wish them any success at all.
Last week was a three-game playoff involving the Yanks and the Detroit Tigers.  Home court advantage went to the Yankees, which meant that three games were played in Yankee Stadium and only two games were played on the Detroit home field.  Given all of the advantages of home field, the fact is that in 2011, as in the case of 1926, the Yanks were defeated. I know that in the natural order of things, the Yankees are always supposed to win but in this case, in October of 2011, the Yankees were defeated.  I view this as a major event in my long history of life.
 
The second event was really a non-event.  For several months, Sarah Palin teased the media by threatening to get in the race for the Republican nomination for president.  On at least three occasions, she rolled over candidate’s events by taking a bus tour to the cities where they were holding events and attracting attention to herself.  But last week, Mrs. Palin gave up the ghost of whether or not she would run.  I said this was a non-event because, in point of fact, she is not going to run in the Presidential election of 2012.
And so the media, which had become tired of Mrs. Palin’s teasing, reacted with a great big yawn.  The fact that she is not going to run failed to excite anyone.  On the other hand, I had looked forward to the 2012 election with a ticket led by Sarah Palin with Michele Bachmann being the vice-presidential candidate to complete the ticket.  But Mrs. Palin has dropped out.  Mrs. Bachmann’s performance on the stump leaves much to be desired.  Her performance in the campaign has resulted in a forecast of her getting somewhere around 4% of the vote.  So my hopes of the dream ticket of Mrs. Palin and Mrs. Bachmann were dashed to the ground.  And so I weep for the future of this country.
 
The third event that took place was also a non-event.  After months of teasing, the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, also announced that he too would not run after all of the teasing that had taken place.  I use the word “teasing” to suggest that Mr. Christie was leading the media on and that he knew in his heart that he had no intention of running.
Look at it this way.  Christie had an incumbent President who looks like he can be defeated.  The figures are astonishing.  The fiscal performance of the United States is horrible.  On top of this, Mr. Christie was assured of the ample backing of Republican donors so that he could manage the campaign in the months before next year’s election.  Yet Christie turned down the opportunity to run in the Republican primaries because, he said, he was not ready and his work in New Jersey is unfinished.  So, like Mrs. Palin, this essay celebrates another non-event.
The only way that I can come to grips with Christie’s failure to run strikes me as the lack of ball power, to use a term from the British Army.  For a number of months I was associated with the British Eighth Army during which I learned three songs.  The first was “When You Go to Karachi,” the second was “F… ’Em All,” and the third had to do with ball power.  I am certain that my readers cannot do without knowing the lyrics to the ball power song.  So here they are:

Oh mother, oh mother, I’d rather be dead
Than go to my grave with my maidenhead,
But alas, (softly spoken) I married a man who had no balls at all.

The chorus needs to be sung robustly, sometimes in eight part harmony.  Its words are:

No balls at all, no balls at all,
Yes, she married a man who had no balls at all.

The chorus of “no balls at all” is to be repeated perhaps four or five times before the song is finished.  It seems to me that Chris Christie’s decision not to get into the Presidential race reflects an absolute lack of ball power.
 
There you have three great events which ought to be unique to October 8, 2011.  There was the Yankee defeat by the Detroit Tigers, Mrs. Palin’s withdrawal from the race to become the President of the United States, and finally there was Chris Christie, a man who personifies bullying, showing that when the chips were down he demurred and fled to the bleachers.
I don’t know what all of this means.  At least we will not have the Yankees as our World Series champions, and we will not have Sarah Palin to tease us, and, furthermore, the bullying of Chris Christie may be a thing of the past.  It is for this reason that this essay has been entitled with a line from one of our patriotic songs calling for spacious skies.  Actually that line makes more sense when it is recalled that our future will not be marked by the domination of the Yankees and Mrs. Palin and Chris Christie.  We are a lucky country to have this turn of events.
E. E. CARR
October 9, 2011
Essay 584
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Kevin’s commentary:
First, the truth of the following statement was absolute: “I am certain that my readers cannot do without knowing the lyrics to the ball power song.” So thanks for that.
Second, essays like this remind me of how lucky I am to live in a world where Sarah Palin gets little to no attention on a regular basis. Perhaps this will change in 2016 but hopefully people will just giggle at her and ignore her that time around. A man can dream.