A simple idea can get complicated
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- February 26, 2022
- 861
Like baseball itself, life seemed much less complicated when I was a younger man, a time when I realized just how lazy I could be.
And how easily I could get away with it.
To more fully understand this not-so-unique character defect, it should be noted that given the right circumstances, I might never have learned to shave in the first place.
Why, you might wonder.
Because, I would gladly reply, it was simply too much work.
Dad was an electric shaver man, and that was entirely understandable, his having come of age during the Great Depression, a time when candles served as home illumination and most cooking was done over smoldering trash heaps.
Well, I exaggerate for effect, but the point remains valid.
Folks did without because there was less available, if you follow me. Ostentatious was just another four-syllable word for putting on airs, and that, obviously, wasn’t how it was done, not in proper poor families who didn’t think themselves poverty stricken.
I once felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, a bromide of the day went, and then I saw a man next to me who had no feet.
Metaphors like that tend to give me a headache.
Why, you might wonder.
Because, I would gladly tell you, they’re too much work.
You’re probably sensing a pattern developing. Stay tuned.
So on or about my 15th birthday, instead of getting a basketball hoop in the driveway, which was my wish, I got an electric razor.
Talk about a letdown.
Aside from the whisper of a moustache above my upper lip, my face was as hairless as a baby’s bottom, as smooth an expanse of pubescent landscape as the dark side of the moon, complete with craters of pimples yet to come.
The problem with shaving with that buzzing black and silver convenience was the few strands I had ready for shearing grew back quite quickly, and they were, in a word, bristly.
You have to understand that other guys in 10th grade were shaving daily and were able to grow the most remarkable sideburns, hirsute reminders that despite what it said on my birth certificate, the best I would ever be able to sport would be the ones that were called, derisively, “garage door” sideburns.
Why, you might wonder.
Because, I would gladly reply, you could lift them up and down.
When the time came and I found myself in college, I soon went back to basics and began shaving with twin-blade razors and foaming cream that promised good luck with the ladies. Alas, Gillette had never been to Notre Dame in the early '70s, a place and time when guys outnumbered girls by a 7-to-1 majority, meaning no matter how handsome you might appear in your dorm room mirror, you were playing a sucker’s game and were doomed to Friday nights alone.
As well as Saturday and Sunday and, well, you can guess the rest.
I believe it was fall 1975 when I first came up with the idea that married my love of baseball with my shaving habits. You might remember that World Series, the one that featured Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and the Boston Red Sox, the one made famous by Carlton Fisk’s home run in game six.
After it was over and the Reds had won it all, I remember experiencing a sense of deep loss, knowing it would be five months until meaningful baseball would be played again. This created in me a desire to mark the time with a gesture that combined creativity and laziness … and what 20-year-old English major could resist such intense temptation?
Thus, I decreed to myself, I would cease shaving until those magic words — “Pitchers and catchers report” — echoed through the land.
And that’s how it’s been ever since, which is why, as of this writing, I’m dealing with a rather unhappy wife. She’s never been a fan of my annual avoidance of the clean-shaven look, believing it to be akin to mixing accordions into “Layla” or filling in the Grand Canyon with Styrofoam pellets and burning tires.
“But it’s not my fault,” I’ve told her over and over again.
Why, you might wonder.
And I’ll gladly tell you.
It’s because Major League Baseball is currently engaged in what’s being euphemistically termed a “lockout” but what is, in point of fact, a desire not to have me shave ever again. Ridiculous, I know.
Still and all, in a game that rewards failure — go 3-for-10 for 20 years and you’re in Cooperstown — it’s time to cut your losses.