Today is April 1 so here’s a warning; I’m going to fool you. I’m happy to announce that I’m totally over my Crohn’s attack. Today I ate breakfast, eggs Horvendile served on flatbread, and took my Donut Walk™. I’m back to feeling like a human being. I walked 3.58 miles. I stopped on the way home to buy potatoes. The key is that it’s not on the way home. It means walking perhaps an extra mile. I go there because a five-pound bag sells for only $2. You can’t beat 40¢/lbs potatoes. Not only did I get a free donut from Krispy Kreme and cheap potatoes, but I also found 11¢ on the ground. I suspect that the coin denomination with the most value on the ground is dimes. They are small, so easy to drop and hard to hear drop. Some might not consider it worthwhile to bend and pic it up. If you drop a quarter you know it. No way people drop ten times as many pennies as dimes or even twice as many nickels. I feel confident about this hypothesis.
Today’s mission was to program next week’s Gord’s Gold. I did. When I was done I listened to all the songs. I still get a feeling accomplishment when I hear what I programmed. I wish I more than an hour a week to program, but as that is all I have I can’t afford to play anything I don’t love. I don’t want to play anything people hear often anywhere else, but still play some recognizable music.
Today was supposed to be the first game of the baseball season, My beloved Mets versus the Washington Nationals. I have never disliked the team, didn’t call them the evil Washington Nationals, but I am mad at them. Why? Members of the team tested positive for COVID-19 and today’s game is canceled. Because it’s on ESPN not SNY I would have been able to watch it. I hate missing Met games, but I especially hate missing games that deGrom pitches; he is the best pitcher on the planet. The Mets also have the best shortstop on the planet, Francisco Lindor. They traded for him in the off-season and just signed a 10-year contract extension yesterday. They are paying him $341 Million for those 10 seasons but that’s deceptive. There is deferred money involved. Paying someone in the future is not the same as paying them now. It’s like the Lottery, If you win a $341 million dollar jackpot that’s spread over 20 years. If you want all the money today they give you less than half as much. It’s an annuity and the money earns interest over time and because of inflation future money is worth less than present money. $34.1 million for one year is one of the highest salaries today the odds are very much that it won’t be in 10 years.
I’m always bothered by people that object to how much baseball players make. Why would they rather the billionaire owners pocket the money? Someone said that Lindor is stupid for not accepting the Mets offer of $300 million. “How can anyone turn down $300 million. The answer is because they feel that they can play more. Lindor was right, he could get paid more. It’s not that people don’t understand the economics of baseball, it’s that they don’t want to acknowledge that baseball has economics.
Even though the Mets aren’t playing today it is still opening day for baseball and for the fans of every other team but the Nats the best day of the year. No matter how bad the team is they haven’t lost any games. There is still a chance, even if it’s miniscule that this is the year the team puts it all together wins the championship. The prospects all look like stars. The players coming off poor years will all bounce back. Your favorite play might break out just like you always knew he would. Every team still has new team smell. It’s better than Christmas, Passover, Independence Day, Halloween, and New Year’s Day combined. January 1 is an arbitrary start of the year, but Opening Day is the birth of a new season. Your birthday marks the not very special event of the sun being in the same place in the sky as they day you were born. The day of your birth is real, it’s the day you became real. Opening Day is the day your team becomes real. Let’s Go Mets! Play Ball! I’ve been writing essentially the same thing every year that I blogged. I love that Dan Bern feels the same way.
Wise Madness 