Journal of a Sabbatical

pitch back

June 17, 1997




Previous Entry
Journal Index

 

pitch back

These cats look serious!

Charla sent me a package with books wrapped in cat wrapping paper: Kirby Puckett's Baseball Games and A Century of Women Cartoonists by Trina Robbins. The Kirby Puckett book came with a baseball marked with thumb and finger prints showing where to grip the ball - for righties and lefties. It brought back memories of playing run the bases, keep away, stoop ball, home run, and other variations of baseball that don't require a diamond or a full complement of players. The book also describes drawing the strike zone on the side of a barn and playing strikeout. I know we played that but there were no barns nearby. One of the kids in the neighborhood had what was then called a "Pitch Back", a net with the strike zone marked on it. When you got the ball in the strike zone it bounced back at you cleanly. Single user catch I guess. Do they still have those?

The kids in my condo complex have resorted to playing baseball in the street now that the anti-basketball forces seem to have won. They literally play in the street - not the parking lot. The pitcher stands on the curb on one side and the batter stands across the street in front of the maintenance building where they keep the Kubota and the swimming pool supplies. First and third are in the center of the street. Second is on the grass of the common area where baseball was already banned because the kids wore base paths into the grass. This is suburbia! Surely there is someplace for these kids to play!

philosophy update

I ran into Philosophy Larry this morning. I immediately asked the salient questions: does Larry have a job and is there still a philosophy department. Yes, he has a job. There is a department but not a major. There's one more level of appeal to save the major and that appeal will happen today. It looks like there will be a philosophy department in the fall, but no more people will be allowed to major in it. One thing Larry said was how much he appreciated being able to talk this over with me from week to week as it unfolded. He actually thanked me. So, I'm of some use in the world after all :-)

title ix

For some reason, NPR has been making a big deal out of the fact that today is the 25th anniversary of Title IX - which for those readers too young to remember granted equal access to higher education for women. Not only is NPR making a big deal about it, but President Clinton even made some pronouncement about it. I think this is odd, mainly because people's memories are so short they don't realize that women were excluded from some colleges, law schools, med schools, and of course college sports within recent (well, recent for some of us relatively speaking) memory. In fact whoever was discussing this on NPR (it was either Ray Suarez or Bob Oakes - I'm not sure which) seemed incredulous when his guest told him that. Most people, if they've ever heard of Title IX, think it only had to do with access to college sports.

In the waning years of my high tech career I would often meet women engineers and executives who asked me how come I went to a women's college or how come I didn't go to [insert name of all male engineering school or all male liberal arts college here] and they are astonished when I tell them that [insert name here] wasn't co-ed in the 1960's. I remember once telling a colleague - with a touch of frustration in my voice - "I didn't have the same opportunities as you - Title IX wasn't passed til 1972!" In those olden days, even some colleges that were co-ed had quotas to limit the number of women. It's amazing to think of that now, things have changed so much.

Sometimes I get a little testy with the postfeminists who think feminism is a quaint cult about honoring our reproductive organs. I am thrilled that young women these days have equal opportunity at just about everything. I am delighted that my nieces will grow up in a world where they can grow up to be anything they want. I am glad that enough young women take their rights and opportunities so much for granted that they can write off feminism. Yet I hope and pray that their complacency won't allow these gains to be eroded.

 

Next Entry

Home