Curse of habitually overthinking minor details

The newspaper story on the day after San Francisco Giants baseball player Barry Bonds had tied Babe Ruth’s major league career home- run record at 714 contained one of those small nuggets of information that tend to leave a reader wishing for just a tad more detail.

The sports page article described how Bonds had hit a pitch from Oakland Athletics pitcher Brad Halsey over the fence at precisely 1:32 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Saturday, May 20, 2006 to tie the Babe for second place in career homers behind Hank Aaron, who hit 755 during a 22-year major league career that ended 30 years ago.

“Bonds turned on a fastball and sent a baseball marked B-71 – for the purpose of authenticity – soaring toward right field,” the Los Angeles Times story reported, and I’m sitting there reading that and thinking, “Whoa. What is wrong with this picture?”

That Major League Baseball would want to authenticate the baseball is understandable. Retrieving it from the fan who had caught it in the right field stands likely would be an expensive transaction, and if the ball is destined to wind up in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., or in some other important collection it probably ought to be the real deal.

But that begs the seemingly numb and/or naive question: How did the authenticators know that Bonds was going to drive that particular baseball out of the yard? Suppose he had fouled off the pitch, say, and old B-71 had landed in the upper deck behind home plate, authenticated to a farethewell, but no historic home run ball. What then?

The answer, I suspect, is that Major League Baseball had a number of baseballs marked for the anticipated event, using different numbers – B-71, B-72, B-73, etc. – and the home plate umpire had made it his business to know which ball was in play at any given moment when Bonds was at bat.

But that’s only a guess. The newspaper story left readers in the dark in respect to the details of authentication, and those with overactive imaginations (we know who we are) were free to imagine scenarios in which a bogus baseball might wind up at Cooperstown.

Such temporary confusion illustrates what can happen when a person over-thinks a situation. Many of us may do far too much of that, I’d wager. Like the old joke about the little kid who asks how a thermos bottle knows when to keep a liquid warm and when to keep it cold, we are innately curious as to what makes things tick. Rather than go on about our business and just accept the fact that through some mystical process we are not privy to the thermos can be counted on to do the job at hand, we become Deep Thinkers In Search Of Truth.

Exhibit A: Earlier this week I was speaking with a chap who lives in God’s country to the north, where he rather enjoys the challenge of attempting to outsmart the weeds that like to call his lawn their home. He told me about a seemingly magic fertilizer potion he uses that destroys dandelions and other weeds, but leaves the grass flourishing, and he showed me the result of several early-morning applications on his well-manicured grounds.

The stuff seemed to have worked to perfection. Hardly a dandelion could be found, and the few withering specimens remaining appeared to be in the business of permanently vacating the premises. The hawkweed was toast, and the crab grass had moved and left no forwarding address.

Good show, I said. But tell me, my dear fellow, just how does the stuff you spread on the lawn know how to differentiate between the good guys (the blades of legitimate grass) and the bad guys (the weeds), and make the former prosper even as it consigns the latter to certain death – all the while keeping things a brilliant Aroostook County green?

I could see that I had him there, his upturned palms and shrug of the shoulders indicating as much. As in the case of the little kid trying to figure out the secret of the thermos jug process, it’s best not to over-think such puzzlers, he assured me.

Fine, I said, but allow me a nosy reporter’s follow-up question: How is possible that a guy can drive a big old mowing machine squarely through a patch of dandelions, ostensibly cutting the damn things off at their kneecaps, only to see half of them mockingly spring back up in his wake?

Some things are better left unexplained, the wise man counseled.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.