Neither Nor

Since Jockish is going to stay defunct for the time being, and since The Classical isn’t around yet to reject this thing outright, here’s me trying to scratch that “blab about sports in an amusing way” itch, in reaction to Tony LaRussa’s “funny” comments regarding Moneyball, courtesy of retired Tampa-area math teacher Dolores Costanza. (Don’t mind that I might’ve forgotten the “amusing” part.)

When I was younger, things were so much simpler. A man had to work for a living, with his hands, under the auspices of Mother Nature, not in some concrete box pressing buttons on a computer for some foreign country’s benefit. Your mailman was a friendly face that you saw every day, the kind of affable fellow you could share a glass of chilled milk and some fresh apple pie with and not feel threatened. He was not some portly troll dressed in unbecoming shorts and ghastly black socks that would crassly waddle up to your stoop and leave you catalogs selling untoward things like lingerie or high-heeled shoes.

And math – oh! Wonderful, glorious math! You could show children the sublime beauty of the Phythagorean Theorem, or teach them how to divine the factors of a four-digit number, and they would be transfixed in awe at the seemingly magic sigils that the teacher would conjure upon the chalkboard. I suppose I have let that cat out of the bag. Yes, once upon a time, when I was much younger, I was a math teacher. For nearly three decades, I was a math teacher at Wentworth-Higgins Elementary, in the fine city of Tampa. It was a wonderful experience, being able to shape the minds of impressionable young Americans! And one such young American is the reason I’m writing this essay today.

I must have been a spry and vigorous forty-eight years of age, wandering the aisles of J.J. Newberry’s for some epsom salts one lazy late spring afternoon, when I first saw him. He was a rapscallion, that Anthony LaRussa. There he was, out on the sidewalk with his shoeshine kit and his rakish jet-black hair, trying to scrounge up enough change to catch the State Theatre matinee. He was eight if he was a day, and he was having a dickens of a time getting anyone to stop and take him up on his offer. So, after kind Mr. Wilkinson rang me up and sent me on my way, I went over to the young little man and gave him a shiny ten-cent piece. And I’ll never forget what happened next.

After snatching that dime from my hand without so much as a thank you, he pulled out this bundled red checkered kerchief. From the jingle-jangle it made, I knew it was brimming with the fruits of his labors. And I was correct! I watched him poke around in that pile of money for a good minute or two. He must’ve had at least three dollars in there, good enough for a matinee every day that week, and some freshly popped popcorn as well. So you can imagine my surprise when Anthony suddenly started crying! I knelt down beside the young man, with tears streaking down his quickly-reddening cheeks, and asked him what he was crying about. And he said that he didn’t have enough money for the movie!

Well! I was so taken aback by Anthony’s incorrect assumption that I actually laughed aloud! And I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Here was this enterprising young man with more money than he knew what to do with, and he thought he was destitute! Finally, however, the novelty of this circumstance faded, and I saw him gazing upon this crazy lady laughing at his unfortunate circumstance. So then I tried to explain to him that he was actually wealthy beyond his wildest imagination (assuming, of course, all he could imagine was a picture show and maybe an ice cream float. But he was as stubborn as he was industrious, and wouldn’t take my claims as the truth that they were! He even insisted on arguing the contrary vehemently, kicking at his shoeshine box, tossing his polishing brush down the street. It was quite a tantrum. Finally – and I still, to this day, don’t know why I actually did this – I bribed Anthony. I said that, if he would let me take him to the movies this fine afternoon, and for an ice cream soda afterwards, I would show him why he was wrong. You have never seen a young man’s eyes go from glowering to glowing so quickly!  Perhaps it was that I saw a bit of myself in his unyielding insistence, or perhaps I simply wanted to.  I cannot say one way or another.

I also cannot recall the feature we attended, but I do know that chance encounter signaled the beginning of a beautiful – and wholly platonic, I assure you! – friendship. That afternoon, and every Wednesday afternoon for the next three months, we would meet and talk about my favorite subject: mathematics. Granted, I let Anthony talk as well. He was quite fond of the base-ball, a sport that I had little time or patience for. Still, I did not want to begrudge him his exuberance, so I let him prattle away about this player or that team, politely nodding along as he breathlessly recounted plays he heard on the radio with such animated glee! I can only hope that I was able to project a scintilla of such passion as I taught Anthony about the building blocks of mathematics.

When we began our weekly sessions, I had trouble telling Anthony how two dimes and a nickle equaled a quarter; when we finished that summer, however, he was able to calculate the area of a multi-sided polygon without removing the milkshake straw from his mouth! It was an astonishing transformation, and one that I was proud to be a part of. However, after that summer, I never saw Anthony again. I do not know whether he moved, or one of his parents didn’t like the idea of him spending time with someone so much older. But, whatever the reason, those magical months were the only moments I had with the young Anthony LaRussa.

That is, until many years later, when I happened to hear his name and voice on a television. The hair wasn’t quite as ebon as I had remembered, and he had certainly gotten older, but I could recognize that disagreeable shoe-shine boy anywhere. And from that moment on, I endeavored to follow his every move within the sport of base-ball, even at my advanced age – an age I will hope none of you kind readers will ask me about, thank you very much! Which is why news of his most recent outburst has upset me so! It’s not so much the profanity (though I can only imagine the filth hiding behind those pound signs!), but the wanton ignorance that bothers me so.

All this talk about taking the square footage and diving it by pi – first of all, you would need to multiply by pi in order to find the square footage of any spherical object. And besides that basic error, what he’s espousing there is nothing more than pure nonsense, and it’s dangerous for someone in his position of influence to be so careless with the facts, and especially with the figures. Mathematics, like any tool, is an implement that needs to be used with caution, with care, and with respect. And especially since in base-ball, mathematics are so paramount and such a part of its being, that respect should be given without hesitation. It saddens me to see my little man forget the lessons that I taught him those many years ago. I can only hope he sees the error of his ways, and remembers a much more innocent time, when he didn’t even know that the two dimes he had to rub together equaled twenty cents. For shame, Anthony! For shame!

Dolores Constanza lives in Clearwater, FL, with ten cats, and an iguana named Euclid.