Thursday, June 3, 2010

Lessons at bat

It has been more than 100 years since he first appeared in print, but Casey is still striking out. I realize it is possible (maybe even probable) that some one might not know who Casey is.  Casey is an imaginary baseball player on an imaginary team. The home team (our team!) is behind by two runs & has two outs.  There will be no more innings & there are two batters ahead of him, neither of them worth much.  But each of them player gives his meager all to get the Mighty Casey, the ringer, to bat.  Everyone relaxed, sure it was in the bag.

It seems there have been a lot of ringers in my world lately.  Politically, the Tea Party thought they had (& probably still have) the Republican nomination for the opening Senate seat in the bag.  Florida-Offshore oil drilling was an as-good-as-done deal less than two months ago. 

Back to our epic poem:  Casey makes his leisurely way to the plate.  The first pitch sings right by him.  The crowd goes crazy.  They are quite quite sure Casey was robbed.

As for me, here in real time, I somehow missed Rush Limbaugh's claim that eco-terrorists maybe were behind the oil spill.  I did not miss the far right leaning Florida legislature, either embracing this new Tea Party ideology or the old Let's Get Re-elected ideology, forwarding ever more bizarre legislation to the governor's desk.

Meanwhile in Mudville, Casey conceded that first pitch was just not his style.  The second pitch also, somehow failed to meet his criteria.  It did not fail to meet the umpire's:  strike two.

As for the rest of the poem:  Casey finally decides to get down to the real business of a batter, swings & strikes out.  Conservative Florida Democrats are coming out in droves for the newly independent, formerly Republican, current Governor/potential future Senator.  In the interest of courting those to the left, the center & even just a modicum to the right, much of the weirdness landing on Crist's desk is stalling  there.   As for the off-shore drilling, the former party poster boy is nixing that, too.

//You can watch the familiar version here or a better one here.  Happy Anniversary Casey!

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