God’s on their side

It’s been a stressful week. It was mid-afternoon on Sunday before I

knew the Angels had won the home field advantage in the divisional

baseball playoffs and would be going head-to-head with the Yankees on

Tuesday. Meanwhile, the National League wild-card was up for grabs

even later on Sunday, and while all this was going on, the San Diego

Chargers were destroying New England down the road a piece, and

Newport Beach was launching its centennial celebration.

I’ll have to admit that instead of hanging out at the Newport

Dunes, I was glued all day to my TV set. I kept telling myself I

would catch the next centennial event and that changing stations

dozens of times to keep up with three simultaneous games is excellent

exercise for mind, body and soul. Besides, I’m even older than the

Beach Boys. If they had brought in the Glenn Miller band, I might

have felt a lot more guilt about not going.

If you’re not into baseball and the nomenclature confuses you, it

would be wise for you to shift to the Forum page right here,

especially if “In Theory” is playing today and you want to know God’s

position on the play-offs. If that’s your motive, I can save you

research time and trouble by telling you that God -- being a God of

justice and fair play -- is coming down foursquare on the side of the

Angels. What other possible choice could She make?

And don’t let any do-gooder tell you that God doesn’t choose sides

in sporting contests. That may be true for high school games, but

when an opponent is the New York Yankees, the epitome of evil, the

side of goodness is quite clear. In that situation, God -- as Albert

Einstein once remarked -- doesn’t throw dice.

Never before, in the 100 years or so that I’ve used baseball for

therapy to navigate the vicissitudes of everyday life, have we come

down to the last day of the season with the playoff winners still

undecided and playing each other in the final games. It’s a bit of

irony that the Angels, recently in the greatest jeopardy, were the

first to clinch a spot. They come into the playoffs rested and with

clear heads. And I won’t be around to help push them to the next

level.

I’m writing this on Monday because, in a bit of unfortunate

timing, one of my closest friends is celebrating his 80th birthday

this week in San Francisco, and Sherry and I will be there; then it’s

on to Mendocino to visit another set of old friends. Presumably I

will find TV sets along the way, and God and the Angels will dispose

of the evil Yankees, so I can try to hustle tickets to the division

championship when we get home.

But the birthday has led to another level of stress. In the

division of labor in our household, I mindlessly agreed to take over

the job of buying cards -- not just for birthdays but for all

occasions. And in my wife’s extended family, occasions seem to show

up almost weekly. So selecting appropriate cards has made dishwashing

look like a walk in the park. Choosing a card for my friend

celebrating his 80th was no exception.

Over the years that I’ve been charged with this chore, I have

become painfully familiar with commercial greeting cards in a growing

variety of venues. Two lessons stand out: The cards don’t change much

over the years so that they now all look relentlessly familiar to me,

and subtlety and simplicity are avoided like the plague. Humor tends

to body parts and the president of the United States.

Never have I seen a president ridiculed as mercilessly in greeting

cards as the current George Bush. True, he invites it with his broken

prose style, but it isn’t nearly as funny on birthday cards any more.

If greeting cards are any measure, respect for the office of

president is going down the tubes along with Bush’s poll numbers, and

irreverence sometimes approaches cruelty. So I’m left with body parts

as an alleged source of humor.

The other stressful part of selecting greeting cards is the

difference in taste between my wife and me. For my 80-year-old

friend, I picked out the picture of an old but quite healthy-looking

man holding a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other, and wearing a

gold chain around his neck. Inside, it said simply: “Live your

dreams, Happy Birthday.” I thought it was very funny; Sherry was

appalled. So she’s out shopping for a card that will probably say

something unctuous like hang in for another 80, and I’m thinking

about trying to sell my card on eBay.

As if these matters aren’t stress enough, some back page items in

last week’s newspapers make me thank God for baseball. Two examples

will illustrate.

First, O.J. Simpson returned to Southern California as Exhibit A

in a horror-themed, pre-Halloween convention. On the 10th anniversary of his acquittal on charges he had murdered his wife, he traveled

from his Florida home to sign autographs at $5 a shot in a Northridge

mall. In a massive understatement, Simpson told reporters that his

appearance was “kind of unusual.” His table, fittingly, was placed

next to a promo display for a slasher movie featuring severed heads

and limbs.

Then we have the progressive state of Florida, which just struck a

new blow for the protection of its citizens by putting a gun in the

hands of the next driver who feels threatened because he thinks you

cut him off on a Florida highway and wants to tell you about it. Or

shoot it out with you. The new law extends the concept of a person’s

“castle” to personal space in a car or anywhere else he or she is

entitled to be, where they can now meet “force with force” -- as they

see it -- with a gun.

There are two major league baseball teams in Florida with highly

volatile players, managers and fans who frequently feel threatened in

their personal space by umpires. That’s not an immediate problem

since neither team is in the playoffs, but the possibilities are

mind-blowing.

Not this year, though. The Angels have God on their side.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.