Words in Bible but not my book & vice versa

(664 words)

The word sex doesn’t appear even once among the 783,137 others in the King James version of the Bible.

By contrast, I use the word sex 72 times out of 67,989 words that compose “The Last Baby Boomer.”

Something to think about for your Easter book purchases.

Just because there’s no sex in the Bible doesn’t mean Bible people weren’t getting some in the Biblical sense.

Of course, sex in the Bible was described by the archaic verb “begat.”

I couldn’t find a reliable word count, but one site says begat is used 97 times in the book of Genesis alone. Example from Genesis 11:13: “And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters.”

That’s a mighty skimpy obit for a guy who lived to be 403.

Heck, I remember reading the obit of an old town drunk last week and it mentioned all his social clubs, his moronic kids and where they lived and stated he liked to golf and watch Pirate baseball.

A pity he died during spring training.

I wonder if Arphaxad liked baseball and if during his 403 years he ever saw the Bucs win the World Series.

He may have.

Bob Nutting didn’t own the team back then.

Oddly, the Bible mentions love 210 times, but sin gets 578 nods.

It seems out of proportion for the Bible, but just about right for how things were for me on a really good weekend back in Athens, Ohio.

Those weekends were fun! Really fun!! Really, really fun!!!

My book uses 274 exclamation points, a number substantial enough to embarrass the author. In my defense, the book is populated by enthusiastic characters who say things like, “Buster ran to the hall, his heart pounding in his chest. ‘Dudash! Dudash! Get in here! Now!’”

I’m not proud of all the exclamation points, but I am pleased one of my characters is a woman who’s always summoned to run and has a name pronounced “DOO-Dash.”

Interesting fact: Typewriter keyboards did not include an exclamation point until 1970, which makes perfect sense because it was one year after the Rolling Stones released “Let it Bleed.”

Sources vary on how many exclamation points are in the Bible, but I found this comment from an inveterate bullshitter who said, “I am a speed reader and it only takes me about 10 minutes to read through the Bible, so I read through a Cambridge KJV and found three exclamation marks in the Old Testament, and one in the New.

“It is possible that I missed one, but I read very carefully, so I don’t think so.”

If that guy’s reading this blog, it took him 0.0000002 seconds to get this far.

I don’t think you could flip all 2,274 pages of the Bible in 10 minutes.

He must have skimmed over Revelations 21:8 that says:

“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and ALL LIARS, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.”

I have the same interest in learning speed reading as I do in learning speed sex, but I covet a lie as artful as his so I intend to steal his Bible speed reading lie, thus compounding the odds my afterlife will involve a snazzy cabana on the shores of lake of fire.

None of the following words that appear in my book are mentioned even once in the Bible: boink (7), discombobulate (1), bourbon (12), fart (7), pickle (2), kite (1), rocket (6) and tickle (2).

My book mentions Jesus 63 times; the Bible, 983. But the disparity levels when it’s noted I mention Jeff Probst once and the Bible does not.

So there you go, just a bunch of random numbers from sources that may or may not be credible. 

You can believe it or not.

Same goes for the Bible.

Related …

Let’s make the Bible fun to read!!!

When idiots pray

My Biblical confusions

1,001 words on word counts

Pull tab donations & the ‘Last Baby Boomer’

How to review ‘Last Baby Boomer’

Hoping for Game 7 extra-extra innings

(665 words)

I’m thinking of DVRing tonight’s World Series game 7 and watching just two pitches every night until the game’s concluded about four months from now.

See, I like to savor my baseball.

No matter who wins tonight, I lose. I’ll be without baseball until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training Feb. 18 (that’s 107 days, but who’s counting?).

But I recognize inherent flaws in my plan.

First of all, I’d have to avoid all sports news or risk getting blindsided with a spoiler of historic proportions.

Second, I could be settling in to watch two pivotal bottom-of-the-eighth inning pitches in late January and find the whole ingenious project ruined when my daughter deletes the game to make room for a “My Little Pony” episode she’s already seen 79 times but simply must see again. 

Third, I’d have to stop going to the bar where sports talk dominates, and if there’s one thing I need to help get me through winter without baseball, it’s bar banter.

I think I’m drawn to baseball because it’s maybe the most sublime waste of time man’s ever invented. 

Each of the 30 teams plays 162 games. That’s 2,430 regular season games, with about 40 October playoff contests. With 25 men on each roster, that’s about 121,500 human interest stories right there. Some players win, some lose. Some perform heroically, some can’t hit the cut-off man.

Throw in a supporting cast of inept managers, drunken fans, horny groupies and gaffe-prone team announcers and it’s like reading the Bible while some unseen organist plays “Take Me Out To the Ballgame.”

It’s a cornucopia of meaningless conversation. That’s something I relish.

So many conversations these days are like warfare. The combatants concede no ground and will talk/shout until their opponent either submits or dies.

People involved in baseball conversations are more philosophical and enjoy sprinkling their insights with trivia useful to other baseball people.

And unlike nearly everything else in life, baseball is barely troubled about how long it takes to play baseball. Some see that as a flaw. They are mistaken.

It is a virtue.

A baseball game could conceivably last forever. That’s why when I tell I tell my wife I’m going to attend a baseball game, she knows there’s a chance she might never see me again.

This would be different from what happened two years ago to a 53-year-old father at a Denver Bronco game. He said he was going to the bathroom — and just disappeared. There was no trace of him. No call. No hospital admission. No suicide note blaming Roger Goodell for ruining the NFL.

Thankfully, he was found about 100 miles south of Denver, alive and unharmed, five days after the game’s final whistle. No explanations were forthcoming so we’re left to assume the lines to the men’s rooms that night were just really, really long.

It’d be different at a baseball game. 

The longest game I’ve ever attended was 16-inning marathon in 1997 when the Pirates beat — who else? — the Chicago Cubs. We were there for 7 1/2 hours.

We had no intention of leaving, even though MLB rules cruelly require the teams stop serving beer after the 7th inning. At the end me and my buddies congratulated ourselves for having stayed mostly alert for the whole thing with only a couple of brief naps.

I invite you to read the top link below to learn stories of what happened in 1981when two minor league teams featuring future HOFers Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs played a game that lasted 33 1/3 innings.

My dream is to attend a baseball game that never ends.

In fact, that’s in some ways my idea of heaven. The green grass, the crack of the bat, the smell of the popcorn and all that glorious ballpark humanity.

Maybe that’s what’s in store for tonight.

Maybe we’re all about to be treated to one of the greatest baseball games ever played.

That’d be great.

I just hope I don’t snooze through the end.

Related . . .

A great day for baseball! Let’s play 2! Or 3!

The last angry man(ager): MLB’s replay mistake

Priorities: Work or cheap beer baseball?

I cry over commercials (farewell, Cap’n Jeter)

Roberto Clemente, Mr. 3,000

Taking pregnant women out to the ol’ ballgame

The long, true story of my epic Game 7 pool match

The white man who broke MLB's color barrier

(565 words)

I’ll be taking our 10-year-old to the 12:30 Pirate game today because it’ll simultaneously allow me to achieve two things foremost to my existence: one, have fun; two, brainwash my offspring into believing the old man was once wise and nimble-minded.

It’s easy for me to do today because I’m a student of the game.

I’ll tell Lucy stories of Pirate greats Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Honus Wagner and, of course, Jackie Robinson, eternally famous for breaking baseball’s color barrier.

The story of the hallowed Robinson is why I’m chagrinned I’ll be able to relate so little about forgotten Eddie Klep.

Eddie Klep was the Jackie Robinson of baseball 11 months before Jackie Robison became famous for being Jackie Robinson.

Klep broke the color barrier by being the first white to play in the Negro Leagues. 

It happened May 29, 1946, when he pitched seven innings for the Cleveland Buckeyes in what many sources say was an 8-6 win over the Chicago American Giants.

And that’s about the only relevant thing I know about this pale pioneer.

Sadly, the only other thing I know is — God help us — his life story was sold to Adam Sandler’s film company.

So that means, perhaps, sometime in the next 10 years we’ll see an entire movie that’ll play out like the fish-out-of-water Dexter Lake Club scene from “Animal House.”

“Can we dance wit yo’ dates?”

I read about Klep, who died in ’81 at the age of 72, in my go-to source for baseball minutia: The “On This Day in Baseball” feature that runs in wee print on the days when there’s leftover room beneath the newspaper box scores.

Fun fact for Pirate fans: It was 37 years ago today MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti permanently banned Pete Rose for betting on baseball.

I don’t think Rose should be permanently banned for gambling. I think he should be banned for having one of the worst hair cuts of any public figure for the last four decades.

Fun fact for non-sports fans: Bart Giamatti, about whom there is much to admire, is the father of actor Paul Giamatti, about whom there is much to admire (loved him in “Sideways” from ’04).

So many questions about Klep, who was born in Erie in 1918.

Robinson was mercilessly heckled with white fans — and opposing teams — making monkey sounds and screaming the n-word.

Robinson took it all and kicked historic ass.

Did anyone heckle Klep? Was he treated differently? And was he any good?

Most sources I see say he was 1-0, which percentage-wise would make him one of the all-time greatest pitchers. 

But the encyclopedic BaseballReference.com says Klep lost his only game, which percentage-wise would make him one of the all-time worst pitchers and thus a suitable candidate to start for the Bucs from ’93 through ’12.

But what about the man?

Was he trying to make a civil rights statement? Did he feel he’d done something significant? Where his fans called Klep-to-maniacs?

It is said he died of alcoholism in 1981.

What drove this man to drink?

Was it fear he’d be remembered? Or fear he’d be forgotten?

I’ll bet I know.

He had a premonition one day someone like Adam Sandler would be primarily responsible for telling his life story.

Related …

A great day for baseball! Let’s play 2 … or 3 …

Priorities: work or cheap beer baseball?

The Bucs, the duck and playoff baseball

I play centerfield

Roberto Clemente: Mr. 3,000

Pirates should sign Ted Williams (1918-2002)

(687 words)

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

— Rogers Hornsby, MLB HOF 1942 

That's the sentimental quote on SpringTrainingCountdown.com, the baseball-centric site that right now informs there are 42 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes and 17 seconds until pitchers and catchers report.

I love the Hornsby quote because it summarizes the seasonal longings I feel during the depths of winter. It’s particularly acute today because the temperature is minus- 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not here in Latrobe.

That’s the temperature deep inside all-time slugger Ted Williams’s frozen head.

I mention this now because I believe it’ll take about 42 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes and 37 seconds to thaw something that frozen and have it ready to suit up to pinch hit for the 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Williams’s remains are among 139 cryonically frozen dead human beings being — and 39 pets! — warehoused in the Scottsdale headquarters of Alcor, a company that one day intends to bring them all back to life.

It’s assumed they have champagne, too, chilled for the eventuality.

My guess is the MLB players union is litigating ownership to classify the former Red Sox, who died in ’02, on some kind of really extended injured reserve.

I’m surprised I don’t hear more about the deep-frozen body of the man admirers called “The Splendid Splinter.” He’s one of my favorite Americans.

He was in 1941 the last man to bat .400. He hit left, but threw right. He had 521 home runs, but “just” 2,654 hits. How did one of the greatest hitters in baseball — many still consider him THE best — miss the milestone 3,000 hit club?

He was a patriot.

He served with heroic distinction in not one, but two overseas conflicts. He was a Navy fighter pilot for three years in World War II, and later served three years in the Korean War where he received the Air Medal and two Gold Stars for valorous conduct during 39 missions.

He was astronaut John Glenn’s wingman in Korea and Glenn said Williams was the best pilot he ever knew.

So in the prime of his career, he lost six seasons to service. It’s not inconceivable he could have snagged another 800 hits, enough to put him among the top 6 all-time hitters.

Being in one hall of fame is historic. Williams qualifies for three: Baseball, aviation and fly fishing. The IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame features Williams for the many fly fishing records he’s held.

And he just seemed like this great boisterous guy. I remember ESPN airing an interview between him and late slugger Tony Gwynn — I loved Gwynn, too — about hitting and it was just so joyful, these two old pros swapping stories, bantering and laughing like the kids we all used to be. 

I think about Williams a lot this time of year. 

Because thanks to Alcor there’s still a remote chance I’ll get to meet him, even though he’s been dead 14 years.

Who’s to say Alcor might someday succeed in revivifying Williams and the others from their deep freeze?

That would be, well, cool?

It’d certainly give Williams the opportunity to be a future cinch for comeback player of the year. His comeback promises to be the greatest since Jesus Christ.

Or maybe Austin Powers.

And he’d look great in a Pirate uniform.

The off-season’s been tough for fans like me. The Cubs make some great moves, the Cardinals are always tough and the Pirates have done squat.

Adding a hall of famer — even a dead one — would warm the fans’ spirits.

It couldn’t hurt. Hell, the entire roster of the 105-loss 2010 Pirates played as if they’d all been cryonically frozen by — speaking of your walking dead — manager John Russell.

Even at minus-180 degrees, Williams is bound to generate more warmth than Russell ever did.

The fans would love to have someone as historic as Williams on the bench.

Me and my buddies would be his No. 1 fans.

Heck, there have been countless Opening Days when we, too, were frozen.

Related . . . 

I play Centerfield

Roberto Clemente, Mr. 3,000

A great day for baseball! Let’s play 2 … or 3 …

I hope I don’t die while the Pirates are winning and I hope the Pirates never lose

The man Maz turned into a Communist

The Bucs need Barry Bonds

Bucs win! What'll happen to Kang's interpreter?

(664 words)

Many loyal fans felt sentimental thoughts about a South Korean gentleman when our Pittsburgh Pirate clinched their third straight playoff appearance yesterday.

Me, I thought about two of them.

Of course, it was sad to realize our star infielder Jung-ho Kang wasn’t in the lineup for the victory and subsequent champagne celebration.

A superstar in the Korean Baseball Organization, the Pirates signed him last winter, a move that was greeted by disdain from those who didn’t think his skills would translate to American ball — not to mention those xenophobes who think Trump should build a wall between Korea and California.

Oh, how wrong were the skeptics. Kang’s became a fan favorite for his skills and demeanor.

Val and I were at the game last week when his season cruelly ended. Chris Coghlan of the Chicago Cubs made an aggressive slide into Kang to break-up a surefire double play. It broke Kang’s leg and tore some of the muscles with names too Latin for me to try and spell.

Many Pirate fans were outraged. They said the slide was dirty. They said Coghlan was deliberately trying to hurt one of their rival’s stars.

Kang said they were wrong. He said he forgave Coghlan. He said it was a clean play. He said he thanked the fans for their support.

Actually, he said none of those things.

We’re told through his interpreter, H.K. Kim, he said those things.

And that’s the man for whom I feel even greater empathy than Kang.

See, Kang is enjoying the fruits of an $11 million, 4-year contract. He eats at the finest restaurants and is enjoying the most posh care imaginable.

Kim? I had to look up his name. Most stories don’t even mention him. It’s simply, “Kang said through his interpreter.”

It’s like a story about Batman that doesn’t mention Robin.

I think Kim had the best gig in baseball.

One story said his duties were “to assist Kang with his life inside and out of baseball.” 

Given Kang’s paycheck, that’s a lot of latitude. He could be Kang’s food taster, pimp, financial adviser, dog walker, butler, caddy, mystic, chauffeur, etc.

Plus, I’ve always dreamed of having the god-like power of any interpreter.

If Kang was feeling down after a crucial strike out and the fans were mercilessly booing him, you could say, “They’re saying ‘Cheer up. We still love you!”

Kim has a vested interest in ensuring Kang enjoys having him around — and that he never learns a lick of English.

I’ve been interested in being a baseball interpreter ever since I heard the first thing Seattle Mariner teammates taught Japanese import Ichiro Suzuki to say in English was — and I’m going to sanitize this — “Kansas City in July is hotter than two rats making love in a sock.”

Imagine the bar stories you’d have for the rest of your life.

I thought about calling Pirate media relations about interviewing Kim to learn his plans now that his clubhouse neediness has been greatly reduced, but I know how that conversation goes:

“Your blog is called what?”

“It’s Eight Days To Amish.”

“What do you write about?”

“Well, I recently wrote about my theory that we could cure global warming by everyone simultaneously leaving their refrigerator doors open for an hour a day.”

“What else?”

“I wrote about how the world today would be different if Noah’d had a fly swatter on the ark.”

Click.

So I guess we’ll never find out about the ambitions and pastimes of the mysterious Mr. Kim.

He’ll be gone and one of the great stories of the year will have gone mostly untold.

Of course, I see an opening in his departure.

Kang may learn English, but none of yinz’ll ever get fluid in Pittsburghese.

I guess the best we can hope for is Kim eventually finds something as satisfying, that Kang heals and that the Pirates start getting hotter than two rats making love in a sock.

Related . . .

Mandela funeral: A babbling tower of sign language

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the KKK (not those ones)

The Bucs, the duck and playoff baseball in Pittsburgh

The man Maz made a Communist

I hope I don’t die when the Pirates are winning and I hope the Pirates never lose

Foul balls and the Baltimore riots

Who can help me quit caring so much?

(605 words)

I wonder if caring too much is going to kill me.

I care so much about so much.

Do you care that I care?

I care whether you do or do not.

I care the bees are disappearing. I read all the stories that say the bees are like the canaries in mines. Once they go, that’s it. We’re toast.

I care that prior to sensitive air monitoring systems many innocent canaries in mines were poisoned through no fault of their own. What a sad fate that was for so many sweet, lovely birds.

I don’t think she really cared, but I cared very much last week when an area school superintendent e-mailed and nonchalantly informed me a scheduling change meant she’d be canceling my Thursday motivational speech to her 150 teachers.

Gone was the tidy honorarium and the $1,800 worth of books she was going to buy for her teachers.

I care I’m still the kind of imperfect human who nurtures bitter intentions to exact petty revenge. I wish that wasn’t part of my make-up but, alas, it is. And I’ll be sure to let you know if I do something sly and dastardly to get even.

I care so much about my children. That’s mostly natural.

But I care about yours, too. All the children. I really do. Nothing breaks my heart like seeing a child with no chance. 

I care when I see so many people who don’t care one bit. I know all their carelessness can cancel out a lifetime of my really caring the hell out of things. The equation is patently unfair.

If I didn’t care so much about avoiding a lengthy prison term, I’d shoot all the miserable bastards.

Boy, do I care about the environment. I care that California is mired in a devastating drought and is becoming burnt to a crisp.

I care the EPA inadvertently released one million gallons of toxic water into the Animas River near Denver. Will I have to choose sides if the EPA decides it has no choice but to sue itself?

I care that it’s likely you’re working too many hours and I’m working too few.

I care that we’re living in times of such wanton disparity between the rich and the poor and so many people are fundamentally screwed.

I care that so many seemingly sensible people think the solution to all these troubles is to elect an irredeemable jackass like Donald Trump.

I care too much about things I understand are silly.

For instance, I care enormously whether on any given night the Pittsburgh Pirates win or lose.

In fact, it depresses me more when they lose or a key player like pitcher A.J. Burnett goes on the disabled list than it does when I hear a killer typhoon is zeroing in on some hapless Pacific island full of strangers I never met.

What’s wrong with me?

I care that people may misconstrue this arbitrary Monday post about how much I care into thinking I’m in a sour mood.

I’m not. I rarely am.

I just wonder if I care too much about so much that’s entirely out of my hands.

I care even though I know there’s nothing I can do about racism, injustice, gun violence, climate change, incivility, hopelessness, parental dementia, rising drug use, epidemic suicide among our vets, the Keystone Pipeline, distracted driving, male pattern baldness, ISIL, and the horrifying certainty America will likely for the next three decades be subjected to dozens of reliably awful new Adam Sandler movies.

We’re all going to die anyway.

So who cares?

I do, goddamn it.