Bokono-Christianity

Kurt Vonnegut’s greatest novel is Cat’s Cradle.  This is irrefutable.  While I am pretty sure I’ve read three Kurt Vonnegut novels, the only one I remember anything about is Cat’s Cradle.  So if you try to convince me a different one is better, you’ll be wasting your breath.

I got to thinking about Cat’s Cradle, of course, because of my bewilderment over the big fuss being made about Prince’s death.  Not Prince Fielder — I would understand a fuss over his death, but he’s not dead.  .188 is a morbid batting average, but no truly dead person could accomplish it. No, I mean the Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.  I never understood what people saw in his music while he was alive, and his death hasn’t cleared up matters any.

Not that anyone was waiting around for me to figure things out.  They went ahead without me in their millions to buy his albums.

I was also bewildered by my own sudden obsession to find out why everyone else liked Prince so much.  I paid Prince maybe two minutes of attention while he lived.  Maybe. Probably less. I’ve paid him at least an hour of attention since he died.  Part of that is easily explainable: finals start Tuesday and I am awash in grading. But a sudden keen interest in a dead artist with whom I have nothing in common  — why pick that out of the infinite possible distractions?

But then I discovered something:  Prince may have been part of my karass…  Wait. If you haven’t read Cat’s Cradle you neither know the calamitous peril of ice-9 nor anything about Bokononism, including what a karass is.  Oh, dear! Where to begin? Should I warn you about ice-9’s high melting point and the way it instantly transforms the molecular structure of any regular water it touches? Or should I teach you enough Bokononism to enlighten you and help you understand the rest of this post?

This post is already wandering dangerously.  We’ll just have to live with the risk that you might cluelessly drop some ice-9 into the ocean.  A karass is a group of seemingly random people cosmically/spiritually linked for no easily discernible reason.  I’d be tempted to say a member of your karass is recognizable when you sit on a plane next to a complete stranger with whom you immediately connect, except that would put the entire passenger list into my father-in-law’s karass, and I don’t think that’s possible.

Prince may have been in my karass because, in a world awash in intoxicants and keening for more, he (of all people!) was a teetotaller. As am I.

I was stunned to learn this.  According to Wikipedia, other members of this potential karass include (just listing men for now):

• George W. Bush and/or Mitt Romney (probably not both of them, not random enough),
• Joe Biden,
• Alice Cooper,
• Tom Cruise,
• Fred Rogers,
• Isaac Asimov and/or Arthur C. Clarke (probably not both of them — I’ll take Isaac),
• Steve Jobs and/or Thomas Edison and/or  Larry Ellison and/or Henry Ford and/or John D. Rockefeller and/or Howard Hughes and/or Warren Buffet (probably not more than one of them — I’ll take Buffett),
• Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III and/or Tim Tebow (probably not all three…I don’t know, it’s football, you pick)
• Cristiano Ronaldo,
• Albert Pujols,
• Don Bradman,
• Gandhi,
• Hitler,
• Mandela,
• Mugabe,
• The Dalai Lama,
• Putin,
• Abraham Lincoln,
• George Wallace,

and, of course

• Donald Trump and/or  whoever is in charge of ISIS these days (probably not both, I’ll take… blechh.)

This is not, as I had naively expected, a list of saints. My teetotalling karass is not some kind of secret Justice League. There are heros on the list, but they tend to be, well, trumped by villains.  Perhaps if Hitler had drunk he’d have incapacitated himself at some key moment, frustrating his ambition to take over Germany and saving Jeb Bush from having to strangle him in his cradle.

Anyway — I wonder if there are karasses in baseball.  But of course! There have to be! Dexter Fowler and the late Kyle Schwarber were both Cubs. But that surface connection proved tragically weak against the cosmic enmity between their karasses.  And why do former Mariners end up clustering on the Blue Jays, Rays, and Yankees? Because their baptism in Marinerism has put them into a karass!  Their lives will revolve around each other from here on out.

Let’s go karass-detecting, shall we?

Haviland: L, 2 – 4 (.167, .302, .250; 6.3 ip, 2 er).  Our EFL rosters could be karasses.  It sometimes seems like our players are unaware of their status in the EFL.  Does Paul Goldschmidt think about the effect on the EFL race when he goes 1 for 2 with 2 walks to provide a spark for the Dragons offense? When Goldschmidt sees Neil Walker’s home run on the out-of-town scoreboard, does he have an inexplicable urge to pump his fist?

Canberra:  W, 10 – 3. (.395, .452, .632; 6.3 ip, 2 er).  Chris Carter and Chris Davis share a first name, which they might think is a fun thing to have in common.  But according to Bokononism , those superficialities are meaningless, like having gone to the same college. There is really nothing linking fellow alumni at the fundemental lelevel, the quantum level you might say, lying just beyond the scope of our finest instruments.  But from where most MLB players sit, our league is pretty inconspicuous.  It would be hard for the Chrisses to see their joint membership on the Dragons’ roster — perfect for it being a karass.

Old Detroit: W, 2 – 1. (.219, .286, .375;  10 ip, 2 er)  Connecting with one’s karass mates is often a time of joy.  Imagine how much relief the pathetic Wolverine hitters would experience if they only knew that Corey Kluber (8 ip, 1 er) had their backs Saturday. I like to think Kluber had a warm feeling he couldn’t identify when he saw Manny Machado’s 2 for 5, or Yan Gomes’ 3 for 5 with a double and a homer.  Wait — he DID see Gomes’ work — it happened right in front of him.  Did they exchange an extra fist bump without really knowing why?

Portland: L, 5 – 9. (.278, .341, .389; 4 ip, 6 er)  It’s not enough for us to sit back and speculate about how players would feel if they knew about their EFL-rooted karass.  We need to see something in evidence, in the numbers or in their interactions. Like this one:  Chase Anderson pitched for the Brewers Saturday.  He as clinging to a 4-3 lead going into the top of the 4th. He has a runner on first and second with one out when Maikel Franco comes up. Anderson had just faced Franco in the previous inning, and got him to meekly pop up on the first pitch.  Clearly he owned Franco.  But in the fourth, with all those runner on, he grooves an 81 MPH changeup. Why?  Could it be he sensed in Franco a kinship, a partnership in some other grand joint enterprise… like the Rosebud’s bid to break the EFL’s Iron Rule of Oligarchy this year?  Well, see for yourself.  Notice how meaty that pitch is, right in Franco’s wheelhouse.  Notice how unperturbed Anderson looks.  Notice how the camera is on Anderson when the announcer says “That’s how you pick your teammates up!”  He sure wasn’t picking his Brewers teammates up.  So what teammates could he have been talking about?

Cottage:  W, 9 – 4. (.343, .425, .657; 1 ip, 0 er).  I consider the Anderson/Franco interaction, caught on video, to be pretty definitive that, at least in the case of the Rosebuds, MLB players share karasses consisting of their EFL teams.  Let’s pause in our karass hunting and consider the day Addison Russell had Saturday:  an OPS of 5.000!  That is the highest OPS possible!  He tied the record!  And he didn’t just pop a pinch hit homer and then go hide to preserve his accomplishment. Russell hit his homer in the second inning and then went to the plate 3 more times.  No, he didn’t hit four homers, but he did walk each time.  I don’t have time to look this up right now, but I bet there haven’t been many honester 5.000 OPS days ever.

Pittsburgh:  W 2, L 0 ; 15 – 9. (.406, .472, .813; 7.3 ip, 1 er).  Rubby de la Rosa came into Saturday’s game sporting an 8.44 ERA.  In 10.7 ip he’d allowed 10 er, for an 8.44 ERA. But Saturday he went 7.3 ip while giving up only 1 earned run. Why the sudden transformation?  Well, it was the first time all year he’d faced a team from Pittsburgh.  Not the Alleghenys, but everyone knows the Allegheny ownership is deeply infected with Piratophilia.  I’m not sure whether De La Rosa is in a karass with the rest of the Alleghenys, but he sure seems to feel the vibes coming from the Peak Allegheny.

Flint Hill: L, 2 – 3. (.167, .222, .208; 3.0 ip, 1 er). Scooter Gennett, that famous slugger, is the only bright spot from Saturday’s Tornados, and it’s not glaringly bright: 2 for 5 with a double.  It’s like all the wind went out of the Tornados — which I think is what would happen if you ever drop that ice-9 in the ocean.  Since it would transform water into ice-9 water, and raise its melting point to something like 114 degrees Fahrenheit, all the oceans would immediately freeze solid — and with only a small delay, so would all the rivers and lakes.  Within a couple of days the last rain would fall, and other than maybe an isolated aquifer or two, or water carefully preserved in bathtubs or water bottles, all the water on earth would suddenly be ice.  You could heat it to drink it, I suppose, but then the water in your body would freeze… anyway, either there would be no Tornados in the ensuing environment, or there’d be no one to be afraid of them, or both.

By the way, the picture of the stacked balls accompanying this blurb is a reference to stacks of cannonballs Vonnegut uses to explain ice-9’s molecular structure.  The problem is, I don’t remember if this stacking pattern was the good pattern for regular water, or the evil one for ice-9.  So don’t go out rearranging water molecules in this pattern until I can get back to you.

This concludes the public service announcement about ice-9.

Peshastin: “W”, 3 – 4. (.290, .313, .452; no pitching) Apparently the Pear pitchers partook from a pitcher of water polluted with ice-9.  Peshastin prevailed anyway, sort of, thanks to Kevin Kiermaier, who awakened from his early season funk. His OPS is up to .808, which is the area code for Hawaii – and that has to be a good omen, right?  (One of the tenets of Bokononism is to embrace foma — the harmless untruths that make you feel happy, strong, and peaceful.  That Kiermaier will now carry the Pears to peaks of perfection is either true, or a foma, so I recommend it to the Peshastin faithful.

Kaline:  “W”, 3 – 6. (.161 .257, .226; 7.7 ip 5 er).  Dexter Fowler… he went 2 for 4 with two doubles and a walk Saturday, a daily OPS of 1.600.  His season line is .385, .506, .692 — stuff we haven’t seen since Barry Bonds was still alive. This is alarming, folks, and I’m here to sound that alarm.  See, every karass has a wampeter — a central focus or purpose for existing. Judging from the evidence (or at least speculation) offered above, Fowler’s karass existed for the destruction of Kyle Schwarber.  That was its wampeter.  But wampeters can morph — so, for example, if one wampeter is accomplished, a new one can emerge.  Fowler is still very strong, impossibly strong, much stronger than can be explained by his medical or professional history. And his karass is without a target at the moment.  Guard your players well.

D.C.: L, 3 – 5. (.190, .261, .380;  9.3 ip, 4 er).  But Bokononism is not all menace and fear.  It has its moments of generosity.  Remember when I accidentally acquired Dillon Gee at the free agent draft?  I essentially gave him to the Balk in exchange for a player I can drop without a qualm because he’s playing in Asia now.  Gee produced 4.3 scoreless innings for D.C. Saturday.  I’m not saying I’m in Rob Bohall’s karass — that would probably be a conflict of interest.  But Dillon Gee might have been, and I merely the (clearly unwitting, ie, witless) vessel for him to find his true home.