America’s Pastime: Naked

Perhaps the most egregious example of market manipulation came in 1896 when a Chicago-based confectioner introduced the All-Day Sucker to fans of professional baseball, which had made its debut twenty years earlier and had pre-dated the Battle of the Little Bighorn by two months. The chocolate-covered mealworm-larvae-on-a-stick cost a penny—roughly the cost of feeding a family of five for a week, unless actual food was involved in the equation. It (the candy) derived its name from the simple fact that it took an entire day to consume. By happenstance, that was also the amount of time it took to complete a single baseball game during daylight hours.

That, of course, was before television, a medium that shortened the game by eliminating groin-scratching, was readily available to anybody with a wire coat hanger, a roll of tin foil and something that may resemble the focus window on a Brownie camera.

We need not be reminded that history, as illustrated above, can be a tricky subject.

Recognizing the agony of properly recording the day’s events, a lot of respected historians with college degrees, and everybody at Fox News just make this stuff up. Anybody doubting the veracity of one’s reportage need only to check out any of the millions of factual entries found on Google. Fox, of course, is at a disadvantage because nobody there knows how to spell Google.

To illustrate how this works, merely enter firstmlbgamewithcandyandcuster’sseventhcavalry and your search will be rejected because apostrophes (‘) aren’t allowed. Remove the apostrophe (‘) and you’ll be directed to a cheap motel room in Valentine, Nebraska, via Trivago. (Be sure to have the chicken-fried steak.)

Rob Manfred was elected Major League Baseball’s first commissioner in 1900 when he ran on the promise to “make this game go faster.” Everybody except the fans was in favor of Manfred’s move to shorten the game. The players and coaches because they got paid the same amount of money one way or another. The fans were opposed to the move because Manfred had rid baseball of the All-Day Sucker, replacing it with ten-cent glasses of Brew 102, a crappy little beer named for a freeway that had yet to be built.

Obviously, Manfred’s introduction of the cheap, yet potent beer (40 proof) did not go as planned. In fact, most of the fans wouldn’t leave the ball parks until they were so plastered and foul-smelling that Manfred felt compelled to halt beer sales after the first inning which, as it turns out, was all the time needed to get smashed. Three years later, after conducting a series of focus groups hosted by Abner Doubleday, the Commish settled on nine innings to be the length of a regulation game, unless there was no clear winner.

It should be noted that the only thing Manfred hates more than the game of baseball is the crowd of people who go to the games. And okra. He hates okra. Oddly enough, Manfred works for thirty billionaire team owners who cannot fire him. Clearly, the owners inherited their fortunes. Nobody that stupid could actually earn that kind of money.

Manfred has toiled for more than a century to make baseball more palatable, i.e., something that is good enough to eat or drink. To whom, exactly? While palatable means something entirely different than appealing, it certainly does not to the fans who want the game to go into extra innings over the course of eight days. Beer sales would have to be increased, which doesn’t make sense as part of anybody’s argument.

The idiot Comish wants there to be clocks and timers, so nobody takes too long to throw a fastball. No scratching. No sliding. If one hits a single, he is awarded third base and a rainbow lollipop. An extra run is given if the runner skips home.

The singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the middle of the seventh inning will be replaced with “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” The Animals’ YouTube version will be played on the center-field Jumbotron. Unless Harry Caray comes back to life, in which case he’ll be featured on the Jumbotron singing the theme song used in Cologuard commercials.

Finally, after years of let’s-see-if-this’ll-fly attempts to improve baseball, Manfred announced that the term “foul ball” will take on new meaning this season when MLB adopts sheer (or, see-through) uniforms for its players. Managers and coaches will not be required to put their junk on display unless they want to.

I’ve offered many times to become commissioner of Major League Baseball—based on my life-long love of the game, my respect for its timeworn traditions and my delirious hatred of the DH (designated hitter). But I’ve got to hand it to Manfred. I never would have come up with his latest attempt to destroy the game: Bring Chippendale’s to Chavez Ravine.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Petti di pollo al burro (butter chicken)

I’ve dined on this signature dish from Sostanza and watched it being made in the tiny kitchen that divides the dining room and the bathroom. These notes are from the travel and food writer Elizabeth Minchilli. While not quite the same as eating it in the trattoria established in Florence, Italy, in 1869, it is damned good. Serves two.

1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 (7-oz.) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, lightly pounded to 3/4-inch-thickness
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. coarsely ground pepper
1/2 cup, plus 2 Tbs. cold salted butter, cut into pieces, divided

Take a pair of plump chicken breasts, lightly grill them over burning coals. Take the breast off the coals and while still hot dip in flour, then egg and set in a small pan filled with entire stick of melted butter to finish cooking.