Conversation with 'the Duke'

 Well Kid... here you are.

 I know, it's kind of embarrassing, living in this one room old hotel, cab driver... just can't seem to make anything work.

  That's you whining again, can't you see you can still make it work, you've got them where you want them.

   I do.

  Sure you do. You're Hollywood kid, you made a mess of your life but don't tell anyone that and they will never know. Don't let them know. Stand tall. 

  I don't know. I....

  First stop this I don't know crap. I don't know.. I don't know (uses a child's whiny voice to make fun of me) No one knows a damn thing! .. and what you know is a hell a lot more than your fellow chickens with their heads cut off Americans.. once proud people.

  I know I still have faith in the American People.

  Good for you kid because I am losing mine up here.

  I think we could use more of a can do attitude here, every one wants to leave it up to the government particularly now with our new President...

  Kid when stuff is wrong it's wrong. Throwing billions and billions of your own Hard earned

money taxed out of you is simply Wrong period. You have to give the devil it's due. The government must exist and we need one, it's the best damn system on the planet it's the People who aren't up in arms that are the problem, we have to get it back under control we must tame the beast. Kid.. don't get me started.

  Let the people know one thing kid when you destroy your own backyard trying to dig yourself out of your hole, when you dump all your problems on your Children to the tune of some $35,000 each, some thing is so off the track that I have to talk to someone even you, you whiny punk, yeah you Pilgrim you are in command of the

whole show I don't know how someone as weak a link as there might be, you, yes you, Pilgrim, got your role in this great play.

  John you are saying some powerful things to me I am humbled that you are talking to me.

  Call me Duke kid. You are just lucky kid. I was sitting with Sitting Bull, a true proud American up here and we were looking down on this crap going down in all directions. I get mad kid. 

    What do you mean though... 'you are in command'? I don't command anything.

    Yer damn life kid. You are a natural. Just walk proud, let life come to you.

    It's 5:08 in the morning I'll probably be a wreck again today, never enough sleep...

    Be a proud wreck kid, it's part of your charm.

    Life is hard.

    The hell it is, it sure as hell beats the alternative playing checkers all day with this old crowd up here.

     Get in there Pilgrim and treat your women more kindly whatever you do. That's really what it all comes down to. Don't be afraid of Loving someone. Heck I love every one of my women still even that hot headed little chiquita who tried to shoot me once. Maybe I wasn't so innocent as they said. (Chuckles.) Life is Life kid, take it easy... but take it.

    

   Thanks Duke, loved you in 'Stagecoach'.

  'Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

  

  

The Selig Era

 I love baseball. 

 Like almost everything else in our American culture, this country our USA. Like everything else forgive my exaggeration, (I am depressed) almost everything else, Baseball has been corrupted by greed.

  Why do our eyes continually have to be glued to A-Rod, Clemens, Ramirez on and on and on....?

   Why is their one man who still sits in charge of the whole sick thing?

   The man who was their when steroids began, who was their through the full scale jubilation of a million flashbulbs as Mark McGuire and then Barry Bonds ripped through Babe Ruth and Roger Maris records. Didn't we all know. I did, it didn't appeal to me the whole spectacle, their was something we all knew about those records and something we all knew about these substances, steroids. It was public knowledge.

  It was public knowledge and the man who ruled Baseball did nothing. He loved every minute of the sell out crowds, he loved every minute of the media frenzy. Big money isn't that what leadership is about?

  Then in the face of the truth as the weight of the fact that the world gradually wakes up to the fact that, no, cheating cannot be tolerated. It just doesn't work. How does the man responsible

for the sick show handle it? You do what politicians have perfected. Let's put together a commission or maybe an independent outside investigator find out who all those bad boys were who were giving our game a bad name. George Mitchell, the venerable one, a one time or was he currently on the Red Sox Board of Directors. Anyways hundreds of players were named in what seemed to me to be pretty much a witch hunt, no Red Sox players were named.

 Still it's not over.

 MLB did not have random testing for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs prior to 2003, though Selig circulated memos during the 1990s stating that the use of those drugs by players was strictly prohibited and could be cause for discipline. The players association declined to collectively bargain the issue at the time. <>