Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Weather and Baseball

 

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Like the weatherman promised, we did record our first freeze of the season last night, but just barely.  It was 32° at dawn, and the “official” low temperature (at the WeatherBug station at Copeland Elementary in Huffman) was 31.4°.  We didn’t come close to the upper 20s local forecasters were promising.

The weatherman is never right.  Well, almost never.  Close, but no cigar.  Still we watch them religiously and plan our lives accordingly.

I once had a manager who told me with a straight face “I was a terrible technician, couldn’t fix anything, but I was such a nice guy that nobody wanted to fire me.  They finally promoted me just to get me out of the field.”  Even if that were true, outside of entertainment, politics and sports, I doubt that very many people in the real world fail their way to success.

Honey spent her career in hospitals; a medical technologist whose lab tests and cross-matches had to be right, every time, or somebody’s life could literally be in jeopardy.  Even in the copy machine business, if I had been wrong as often as the local weather guy, I would have soon been out of a job, and/or the company I represented would have failed.

Still, weathermen aren’t the only people who get rich by failing.

Giancarlo (Mike) Stanton has a career batting average of .288 – that means that he fails to get on base over seven out of ten times that he comes to bat.  Still, yesterday he signed a contract with the Marlins that will pay him an average of $25 million a year for the next 13 years.

I do not begrudge him the fantastic salary - a baseball player, like a work of art or a pair of shoes, is worth whatever someone is willing to pay.

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