Winning streaks, sunny days, my wife agreeing with me, not hitting a bridge opening en route to work, my son both recognizing and concurring with my logic, my Maltese unfailingly depositing his bodily secretions onto the wee-wee mat, my market holdings trending upward: The abovementioned mark matters I would appreciate marching along in a procession of continuity ad infinitum. Unfortunately, there exists a pesky, universe-bound phenomenon known as “the law of averages.” Worse, this nettlesome precept dances outside the domain of all known polities; it persists as an ungovernable aspect of life that mortal beings, irrespective of their efforts, cannot legislate; it has made and squandered fortunes.
Indeed, the law of averages is baked into the cosmos but is no more predictable than galactic event horizons or exploding dwarf stars, and yet it endures as a law humans cannot resist tinkering with… or so it goes.
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Today is February 12th. If you are a baseball fan, you know what that means: pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training. To commemorate the 2025 season, I’m reposting an old blog. So please bear with me.
A Game Like No Other
The most widely attended sporting event of the 19th century was a baseball game played between a New York regiment, and one comprised of multiple regiments. The contest took place in Hilton Head. It was estimated that 40 thousand people had gathered to spectate.
Along with items concerning the Civil War, Harper’s Weekly began reporting on results of baseball games played during down times between battles. To combat the sinking morale and privation experienced during the war, soldiers played baseball. Before long, generals wrote to other generals: make sure your troops are playing baseball. Troops of the North taught the game to their Southern counterparts. After the war, a game played primarily in the nation’s northeast corridor exploded. There were thirty amateur teams prewar. That number swelled to two hundred shortly after the war. The Civil War hastened baseball’s popularity and The Great Railroad Boom provided the infrastructure that helped it spread.
Baseball is the only game where the defense possesses the ball. All other team sports – football, soccer, hockey, basketball, rugby – are a simulation of one another; they feature a rectangle with a goal at each end. One could easily imagine the objective. But baseball? What could take place on such an oddly configured plane. One would need to see it to understand the “what” and the “why.” It is truly a grand old invention!
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Below is a link from the blog Faith Works. Irrespective of one’s stance on faith and prophecy as it may pertain to modernity, it’s a worthwhile read.
Project Blue Beam: The Coming Deception and the Prophetic Warning.
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