No loyalty in baseball? I'm not so sure.

Mr. Gerber has made a compelling argument that Dottie did not purposely drop the ball in the last inning of the AAGPBL World Series, but I remain unconvinced. I’m not going to fight him about this, though, because truthfully I can’t make up my mind about it. However, I am going to take issue with his last statement, the underlying theme of his argument, that Dottie loved the game more than she loved Kit.

When taking the whole movie into account, the answer to this question is painfully obvious: Kit meant immeasurably more to Dottie than baseball did. Dottie did not want to play professional ball at all, she was only persuaded to sign up so that Kit could make the team as well. That is not how someone who was driven by a passion for baseball would act, not even a little. Her husband was over seas, she had nothing really tying her to her home preventing her from playing, and she still would only join up at her sister’s urging.

We again see Dottie’s lack of commitment to baseball when her husband returns from the war in the middle of the playoffs. Not only does she entertain the notion of ditching her team to go back to Oregon, she actually does it! It is only miles down the road that force of her commitment to the Peaches pulls her back to the team. If she truly had the passion for baseball that Dick claims she had, she would have gotten her husband tickets to the remaining games and would have tried to go home with him after game seven, as a champion, without any hesitation. But she wavered. Chase Utley never would have wavered.

Gerber says that Kit wanted it more than Dottie, and that enabled her to jar the ball loose. He’s half right: Kit did want to win the Series more than Dottie did. But this was because Dottie was never really all that interested in winning it at all. If Dottie had really wanted to win she would have had the ball in her glove, not her bare hand, and would have put the tag right in Kit’s face.

Time and again we see Dottie putting others ahead of herself: she joins the league for Kit, she puts her dream life on hold for her teammates, and, finally, she drops the ball for her sister. And yes, I’ve convinced myself of this in the last five paragraphs.

But anyway, there’s one more pressing concern that I have here: why on earth were the Peaches not playing a no-doubles defense? The outfielder never should have let Kit’s liner go over her head, it’s inexcusable.

(Sticking with a theme) There's no loyalty in baseball!

My magnificent insights have been recently absent from this blog. My apologies, but I was busy drowning in yuletide and adopted Pagan rituals for the better part of the past two weeks.

Since I got a chance to catch up on Gimp's prolific posting, I was inspired to try and resolve a near-two-decade-old debate.

I'll go ahead and blow my argumentative load up front and then defend myself, because based on some in-person discussions about this topic, what I have to say is going to shock and upset many of you.

Here we go: Dottie Henson didn't drop the ball on purpose at the end of A League of Their Own and you should be happier about this than the alternative.

There is basically one two-pronged counter-argument to this irrefutable statement: that Dottie didn't care about winning and that she loved her younger sister Kit too much to see her devastated.

Bullshit.

First, to the point that she didn't care about winning. This is absolute, unadulterated crap. We're talking about Dottie Henson here! Dottie who loved the game so much she was player-manager during Jimmy Dugan's season-starting bender. Dottie who left a comfortable life on a farm in Oregon to try and play professionally (with Kit at her side, admittedly). Dottie who played even while she was worried about her husband fighting overseas, and the same Dottie who then put her dream life with her husband on hold to come back to play in Game 7! She got her husband back from war, starting driving home, and then made him turn the friggin car around so she could go play the game. And now you're gonna try and tell me she didn't want to win? Again - - bullshit.

And you really think Dottie threw the game because she felt bad for Kit? Did Dottie feel bad for Kit when she rifled that line drive right over Kit's head in the top of the 9th. Fuck no she did not! Couldn't she have much more easily thrown the game while she was at the plate rather than wait for the off-chance that her sister would run through the stop sign in the bottom half of the inning? And she definitely didn't feel bad when she told Ellen Sue the best way to strike out her beloved sister in the bottom of that inning.

And Dottie is a professional baseball player, but I guess since she's a woman it's heartwarming that she might throw the game for her sister's sake. If you were an Indians fan in, say, 1995, would you be OK if Sandy Alomar dropped the ball at home so Robbie Alomar could win one for the Blue Jays? I think everyone in Cleveland would be rightly calling for Sandy Alomar's head! You can't pull that shit! You know how much Harvey Bar revenue she would have blown if she tanked that game? She would've sent Mr. Harvey into another Diabetic shock after he comforted his blubbery ass with another case of Nutty Harvey Bars.

And for those of you that are comfortable with this sister love scenario, let me leave you with this lingering question. If Dottie loved her sister so much that she needed to violate the trust of her teammates, fans, and the baseball gods so that bratty fuckin Kit could win, then why were they incommunicado for the next 4 decades?! If Dottie loved Kit so much you'd think she'd pick up the phone and ask how being a World Champion is (and I only use that phrase to try and steal the meaning back from the Phillies. Fuckin Phillies.).

The truth of the matter is that Kit wanted it more, Dottie got surprised by a sudden play at the plate, made a ballsy play on it, and got beat. The end. In fact maybe she was so shocked that her younger sibling bested her that that's why they didn't talk for damn near half a century.

And why did they finally get back together? Because Dottie loved the game so goddamn much she went to Cooperstown to relive the memories. She loved the game way more than her sister. Fact.

Amen I say to you...

I’m starting to think that maybe some people may have missed the point of what Jesus was all about. This article is a pretty clear case of that. Apparently this divorced woman, Rebecca Hancock, is dating another guy, and her church, the Grace Community Church, isn’t too happy about it. So they’re going to do what any responsible, tax-exempt organization would do: publicly shame the woman because Jesus wants them to.

Unless this woman ends her relationship with whoever this guy is, her sins will be announced to the congregation. Evidently, this happens fairly frequently. The church is defending its actions by saying they are merely doing what Jesus instructed them, cherry-picking a bible verse, Matthew 18:17, which says, in part, “tell it unto the church.” (KJV)

I looked up Matthew 18:17, because, well, it seemed inconsistent with Jesus’ whole message. My understanding of Jesus’ teachings is essentially “don’t be an asshole, even if you think you can get away with it.” This church has gotten something else out of it all. Well, judging by the rest of Matthew 18, not to mention the rest of the Gospels, I’m pretty sure my reading comprehension skills are better than theirs.

Matthew 18 is a pretty long chapter, and has a lot of moral commands in it. It opens with Jesus answering the question of who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. The answer, as I’m sure most of you remember from CCD, is he who humbles himself like a child. Jesus goes on to say that whoever accepts the child accepts him, and that those who offend a child would be better off drowning. Now, this might be a stretch, but when I read this I interpret child to be representative of anyone who can’t really defend herself, like Ms. Hancock. Jesus is basically saying here, and throughout the Bible, that by looking out for those who cannot look out for themselves you are doing His work, and if you’re not doing this you’re fucked.

Eventually Matthew writes the line that this church is basing their assholery on. But if you read it in context, you can see that they’re really manipulating Jesus’ words. Matthew 18:15 says, “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault…” It then goes on to say to talk to him with two or three witnesses, and if that doesn’t work to “tell it unto the church.” I think the key part of this is “against thee.” This woman has done nothing against the church, they’re just a bunch of self-righteous dickbags. I think that the more appropriate verse for the church to base its actions off is John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Seriously people, if you want to be an asshole, fine, I’m not going to try to stop you. Just don’t use the words of people that are better than you to rationalize it.

Sex-linked traits

School got canceled due to an overnight storm of freezing rain. I was under the impression that my sordid and unbalanced relationship with snow days would relent after having received a college degree, but last night I employed every superstitious trick I'm aware of to try and will this snow day. It was probably my 1/64 Blackfoot heritage that allowed my inside-out underwear slumbering snow dance to succeed.

But, long story short, I'm home for the day with very little to do and no one to make bad decisions with. So I'm watching Comedy Central. And I'm upset for women everywhere because I still haven't come across a female comic that I find remotely as funny as her male peers. Never. Not ever. And if I did chuckle at a joke from a comedienne, I was grading on a curve.

I like to think that I keep my misogyny quiet, but I can't explain this one away. Amidst my ennui, though, I think I can somewhat rationalize this. As far as I'm aware, all female comics who find their way on to a network comedy special are over or near the age of 35 and either never married or recently divorced. The only other group of people that are this homogeneous are illiterate West Virginians.

It's pretty remarkable when you think about it. And herein lies why my TV is currently muted. There is a quiet desperation in every joke, as if even the time it took to tell the joke was a precious waste of her depleting estrogen and deteriorating ova; a self-effacing humor that more often elicits the sort of uncomfortable laugh you might produce if a man without a left arm repeatedly made jokes about being "all right."

But then again it might just be that men are smarter. That's always a possibility.