All four years that I played softball for Freeport High School (go Jackets!), our rivals were the Sabres of Ford City. Seemingly every season, the results of our head-to-head matchups determined the section winner.
What I remember about our opponents, was they had purple pin-stripe uniforms, they presented themselve with an aura of hard-ass-ness right down to some of the players carrying cans of snuff in the back pocket of their uniforms. If tattoos were "a thing" then these lovely ladies would've had full sleeves and one catcher with whom I had a brief altercation would've sported a Mike Tyson-like face tattoo. Charming.
I'm not suggesting it....they cheated. Their home field had a distinct advantage: the first and third base lines were trenches with the baseline strateigcally placed so that the ball would stop rolling nestled into the side of the moat on the baseline. Of course, everyone on the team would bunt. Upon being bunted the ball would just stop dead while the fielder ran to dig it out of the baseline gutter.
Recent news stories lead me to think about those Sabre cheats (grudges held long over thirty years stick). Of course, there are the Houston Astros who are notorious in the world of sports cheats. They are the team who had an elaborate system of stealing signs between catcher and pitcher and by banging on a garbage can (I'm not making this up) would convey to the batter if the next pitch was going to be a fastball or something off speed. The quality of a big league hitter is such that knowing what pitch was coming could nearly guarantee a hit. The Astros won the Series in 2017. A couple of years after the fact news of their scheme was revealed, they got busted, the manager fired and not one player was suspended nor fined. Grrrrrr..........
To squeeze a lot of lemon juice into that paper cut, the Astros are currently playing for the American League Championsip and the team they are contesting, the Boston Red Sox, are managed by Joey Cora, who was instruemntal in creation and execution of the cheating effort when he was the bench coach for the Astros....sigh... At least my beloved Buccos suck honestly.
In the passing on of General Colin Powell an article in the Washington Post shared a recent interview Bob Woodward had with Powell. Woodward shared that a student in a journalism class asked him, "What does the truth accomplish?" Powell replied to Woodward, "This is scary. You just scared the hell ouf of me if this is what our kids are saying and thinking."
A trench where a baseline should be on a softball field for a high school that no longer exists is one thing. Yet, questioning the power of truth....yikes!
As our institutions weaken and facts become as random as the political leanings of whomever is posting or tweeting them, we are in serious trouble.