Go Orioles

    One of the main reasons why Uncle Jack has not been blogging much lately is that he doesn't have time and one of the main reasons he doesn't have time is that he spends so much of it watching the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. This may come as a surprise to some of his readers who might remember a piece he wrote about baseball a few years ago, to wit:

Dear Uncle Jack,
I have wanted to ask you a question about baseball for a long time but I had to wait for my husband to die, which he did, thank goodness, during a doubleheader last Saturday afternoon. If you want to know the truth he was dead for four hours before I even noticed which did not surprise me because every time he turned on the TV to watch a baseball game he would fall asleep immediately and he would not wake up again until it was over.
Except when I would try to sneak in and change the channel to Miami Vice or something he would open one eye and mumble "gottawatchaballgame" and as soon as I switched back to the game he would fall asleep again.
Needless to say I was forced to endure a lot of baseball during the 35 years we were married and my question to you is this: How could there be such a thing as insomnia in the world as long as there is baseball on TV? I would rather watch two communists play chess than have to sit there while a bunch of overpaid slobs stand around and scratch themselves and spit and wait for something exciting to happen which hardly ever does except when some bimbo runs on the field and starts taking off her clothes.
So if you are so smart maybe you can tell me what is so great about baseball that they have to put six games on TV every night.

Baseball Widow
Southern Shores

Dear Widow,
Uncle Jack's heart goes out to your departed husband who must have suffered greatly during his long and unfortunate marriage to such a sarcastic person as yourself. It is fairly obvious to Uncle Jack that you have not even tried to learn enough about the great game of baseball so that you too could understand and appreciate it as much as your late husband did.
Take the spitting, for example. If you gave your husband a chance he could have opened your eyes to the wonderful world of spitting in which there is never a dull moment if you know what to watch for. He could have told you about the various types of chewing tobacco which produce the almost infinite variety of spitting styles which trained observers like Uncle Jack and your late husband could use to glean valuable information as the game proceeded.
For example, Uncle Jack can tell you almost to the minute when a manager is going to change pitchers just by the amount of tobacco juice running down his chin. And if they have a good cameraman who knows how to move in close to the cheek area Uncle Jack can tell you if the manager is working on a gob of real Red Man or just some wimp-type chew that comes in little packets like Lipton's tea and tastes like Wrigley's spearmint.
And he can tell you it makes a lot of difference over a whole season if the manager is a real man who can handle a real chew or if he is some kind of sissy who goes for one of the designer brands. This is not something you can hide from your players for very long, especially when they are sober.
And there is a lot more to baseball than just spitting, too. If you know the game you can tell what kind of underwear a pitcher is wearing just by the way he handles himself on the mound.
Anyway there is a lot more Uncle Jack could tell you about baseball if he had time such as "hitting the cut-off man" which is so important that if a player cannot learn to do it right he might as well quit baseball and go into real estate just like everybody else.

Sportingly,
Uncle Jack

                                                            *********
      Well Uncle Jack can tell you that he is not the same person any more who wrote that sarcastic article about the beautiful game of baseball, especially as it is played by the Baltimore Orioles.  Ever since he moved to Baltimore last year and got his new 72 inch Samsung high definition TV and started watching the Orioles his life has taken on a whole new dimension.  He has pretty much given up reading which is no great loss because everything he has been reading lately is so depressing.
     It is true that the Orioles are undeniably the worst team in all of baseball and you would think that Uncle Jack would find that depressing, too.  But he doesn't.  During the first half of the season when they lost almost every game he had a lot of fun trying to predict what kind of bonehead plays they would make to lose each game and it never bothered him that they hardly ever won.  With his big TV he had a perfect view of all the action and when the Orioles players would make a spectacular boo-boo he would get to see it a half-dozen times from every angle on the replays and this helped a lot to take his mind off the unemployment situation and the war in Afghanistan and other depressing things like that.
     And now the Orioles have a new manager who must be using the right chew because the Orioles have suddenly begun winning more games than they lose which is also a lot of fun to watch.  Now Uncle Jack gets to guess which of the Orioles players will come through with the big clutch hit to win the game in the 12th inning or whatever and that is much more enjoyable than what he had to do before.
     Anyway Uncle Jack apologizes for not writing more blogs but now you know the main reason why.  Go Orioles.