I was having a quite time at the Club that time Forgot. I saw him coming through the doors but he saw me first. It was my acquaintance Freddy the Ferret who approached, dressed to spill, as if propelled by a mixture of dynamite and adrenalin. His attempted subtle whisper amounted to an injection of a small, unwanted cup of spittle in my ear. As usual it was Ferret at his obtuse best. “The Major Leaguers are in the Emerald City and they are controlling the game.” As usual I had little idea what the Ferret was on about or on at that time. He hissed urgently again, “The NBL man…the big stick boys are here to play and I’m not in the same postcode pilgrim!”
It appeared Ferret was in a fix. An occasional colour piece scribe for the Daily Dread, Ferret found that the NBL (NBL for those who don’t know or couldn’t care less is the National Baseball League) were trying to screw down local press to their Yanky squirrel grip media rules. You know the stuff – yes you print and publish what we want or you don’t get anything. Apparently the legal eagles for the Dread and the Drone were playing home ground advantage but still Ferret couldn’t get a word in anywhere.
The Arizona Diamondbacks and the LA Dodgers are to play each other baseball on Saturday and Sunday in Sydney…..yawn. They say 80,000 people have bought tickets. The dearest tickets are $498 (Platinum) and the penny dreadfuls in the Trumper Concourse – among the hot-dog wrappers and tats are a pricey $89. That’s fine by me. It’s important that stupid people pay a lot of cash to get an education in how stupefyingly boring the game of tip and run is.
Of course the Major League Baseball group and franchises need a dollar to pay the performers. Clayton Kershaw who slings the bean for the Dirty Dodgers will earn a tidy sum of $93,150 and 68 cents every day for the next 2,556 days. That seems reasonable to me. You might argue that’s the equivalent of around 2,500 school teachers for a year but you would be missing the big point. Clay entertains. Teachers teach. Move on Madge.
Despite Ferret’s lean word count the other agencies have had no trouble in sycophantically spewing forth liberal column inches of froth and gee-whiz. Stories about the game, the stats and how miraculously the hallowed turf of the SCG has been transformed into a baseball stadium crowd the front sports pages and lead television coverage. Our young sports journos who have sucked on the teat of Fox Sports for far too long cannot conceal their tumescent wetness for a game of rounders.
However, just 287 kilometres down the M3 there is another game playing. Our game not some dopey bunt, run and spit game. It’s the final of the Sheffield Shield between the NSW Blues and the Western Warriors at Manuka Oval. A noble game. I know this for a fact because my mate Banker rang to tell me he was sitting down watching the game today. He went on to say that it was an open gate affair so it it’s obvious none of the 22 lads were going to earn $93K for the day.
The final of the Shield has been sent packing to Capital Dulltown because some indolent fool at the Cricket Ground Trust thinks that the SCG must stand for Some Clever Gold. Sadly the only person who will find gold in their pan is Munster Murdoch’s Fox Machine as this is patently a marketing exercise with little regard for growing the game here. Which in a way is a mixed blessing. The only contact the Dodgers and Diamonds have had with kids was at a photo op at Bondi. Arhh the imagination of the PR machine and the complicity of a dumbed down media.
Instead of day at the SCG where every kid from across Sydney and surrounds could come into the SCG and feast on a day of cricket or two we have a couple of games of bunt and run between two overpaid bunches of backy chewing bumsters. It just does’t add up. In fact the players of this turgid game cannot add up themselves – former yankee catcher,Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical”.
crumbbumsandclowns 
Goooooood
Sent from my iPad
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Yes we already have a feast of sport in the emerald city – the Ranvet Stakes at Headquarters – the Tiges thrashing the Rusties and the dish lickers – why the root would you want to pay a shekel to see a low circus?
A superb piece!
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Thanks Miner Major
MARCH 22, 2014ARTICLE 2 OF 12
Cartoon: David Rowe UNRudd and the global revolution
MARK LATHAM
Since Kevin Rudd resigned from Parliament, there has been a steady trickle of reports that he wants to replace Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General of the United Nations. The former prime minister’s recent, highly successful peace-making mission to Russia has added to speculation he’s about to take the top international job.
But how do we know if these stories are true?
I’m sceptical because they lack the trademark elements of Ruddism. Rudd doesn’t just replace people; he deposes them with ruthless efficiency.
I won’t be convinced until I see Laurie Oakes with breaking news on Channel Nine: “In secret meetings at the UN last year, Ban Ki-moon tried to take money off the world’s pensioners and polio victims.” I also want to read newspaper columns by Troy Bramston and Peter Van Onselen in The Australian, claiming “Ban Ki-moon has lost the support of senior figures in the European right faction”.
For further reassurance, I need Simon Benson at the Daily Telegraphto report on how “half the UN Security Council has deserted Ban Ki-moon in favour of Rudd”.
That’s the Kevin Rudd I know and love: on the phone feeding scuttlebutt to journalists. Kerry-Anne Walsh could start work on her next book, The Stalking of Ban Ki-moon.
Dysfunctionality
There are many reasons for supporting Rudd’s push. The United Nations has a reputation for dysfunctionality, making Rudd an ideal candidate for Secretary-General. Nicola Roxon and Julia Gillard could provide character references, confirming how his management style is a perfect fit for the edifice on East 42nd Street.
Imagine the programs Rudd could introduce globally. With climate change representing the great moral challenge of our time, more needs to be done to insulate homes and cottages around the world.
There’s an army of Pink Batt contractors in places like Bangladesh and Tuvalu waiting for Rudd to unlock their expertise.
Likewise, the international community desperately needs more school halls. Why worry about the lack of trained teachers and literacy skills in the Third World when KRudd has so much experience in building assembly halls and playground shelters?
His candidature would also be an opportunity to re-energise Labor’s faceless men. The only one who seems to have something to do these days is Bill Shorten. The rest have disappeared back into their factional burrows and sinecures. With the Ruddster running for the UN, it would be a chance to get the band back together: undermining Ban Ki-moon and stitching up the numbers for a bloodless coup.
The faceless men are well-qualified in certain parts of the world. Joel Fitzgibbon, for instance, is a big fan of the Forza Italia Party, giving him the head job in winning over Mediterranean votes. Likewise, Kim Il-Carr shares a unity ticket with North Korea on the benefits of interventionist industry policy. His policies for the Australian automotive industry have achieved results identical to manufacturing in the Hermit Kingdom – a genuine affinity.
The hardest nation to win over will be China, especially after Rudd called them “rat-f—ers” in Copenhagen and blew his lid during his ranting Chinese YouTube video.
Late swing
But he’s a master of securing a late swing in the Oriental vote. After all, the last person to come over to Rudd’s side in the June 2013 ALP leadership ballot was Penny Wong.
Tactically, the faceless men can do it. They just need someone to replicate the role of Simon Crean – a useful idiot willing to blow things up on Ban Ki-moon. This is a task for Chris Bowen: to scour the international political community and identify someone as hapless as Crean. Several candidates stand out: Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, and Anthony Weiner in New York are two.
Call me sentimental, but I long for the days when Tony Abbott made speeches about “the Sussex Street death squad executing leaders in the dark of night”. Potentially he could make them again, this time at the UN General Assembly.
With many others in the media, I miss Rudd. The flow of leaks out of Parliament House has dried up. There’s hardly anything left to write about. The cheap, easy space-filler of a Labor leadership story has evaporated. For the first time since the 1998-2001 Parliament, the ALP looks like electing a leader and letting him go to an election.
It’s an appalling display of stability and cohesion, frustrating the media’s ability to recycle leadership stories.
Redundant
Most of the press gallery now feels as redundant as a Holden or Qantas worker. Oakes hasn’t had a decent yarn since the middle of last year. In researching their columns, Bramston and Van Onselen have been forced into reading policy papers and Hansard. Even Benson has been seen studying a pile of documents thicker than a form guide.
For no other reason than keeping the media in work, Rudd needs to white-ant Ban Ki-moon and take the top job.
Peter Hartcher could syndicate his Sydney Morning Herald column worldwide, briefing a global audience on the innermost (off-the-record) thoughts of Secretary-General Kevin. As tensions rise in the Ukraine or emergency food is needed in Africa, Hartcher will be the first to know about the imminent UN response.
Here at Relativities, we wish Heavie Kevvie well, hoping he can pack up his sauce bottle of programmatic specificity and head to the Big Apple. He could be the first secretary-general to visit Scores nightclub, not that he will remember much about it.
All fair-minded, patriotic Australians will be cheering him on.
I certainly am.
As Ronald Reagan once said, “Sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Leaker”.
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So relieved that the rumours of you being smothered by a posse of angry fat people seem groundless.
You up for a catch up soon?
Warren
Good one Rob.
Are you in town this Saturday. Or are you in Honkers with the rest of the rabble?
If you are around, are you keen for a stake on Saturday?
de
No mate Honkers rates a long second to Parklea markets in my book – I’m on home duties – I’m currently flat-out pulling down all the Dodger bunting off the stands at the SCG and in spare moments counselling the faux tip and run fans who now realise that they have wasted their hard earned Harry Nash on a fourth rate circus. I just tell them it could have been worse they could have invested in Chameleon Mining with Backdoor & the Beids. Steak sounds good.
Baseball is vastly inferior to the great game of cricket!!