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ON A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN SPRING TRAINING just outside the Mets’ camp in Port St Lucie, Florida, Major League Baseball commissioner Bob Manfred and God are out for a walk. It’s the commissioner’s first real talk with The Almighty, and he has three questions—one about the possibility of another .400 hitter!—that he’s anxious to ask. Needless to say, he allows God to dominate the conversation.
They chat about a variety of topics, and Manfred is surprised to hear how interested The Almighty is about handicrafts and the success of Etsy. When he feels the time is right to change the subject, Manfred turns to The All Mighty and asks, “Lord, when are we going to see the next .400 hitter?”
God smiles gently and answers, “Ah, my son, not in your lifetime.”
Dismayed, Manfred shakes his head, thinking to himself Say it ain’t so!
But instead of saying that, he politely asks his second question: “Well then, Lord, when are we going to see the next 30-game winner?”
Again God smiles, “Ah, my son, that too will not be in your lifetime.”
Needless to say, Manfred is dismayed. Finally, he asks his last and most realistic question: “All right then! When are the owners going to devise a fair and balanced system to divide the staggering income and wealth of Major League Baseball so that we can have parity on the playing field for the benefit of the fans?”
This time God looks dismayed and says, “Not in my lifetime!”
FEATURED IMAGE: This great shot of the Mets’ spring training field in Port St Lucie, Florida, was lifted from the article “A Mets Fan’s Guide to Spring Training in Port St. Lucie” by Chris Sidnam on Tumblr. This post is dedicated to my cousin and Godson, Michael “Trubbull Is My Middull Name” Umphred.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
