Rusty Saber: World Series proves 'it ain't over until it's over'

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

The time has come to tie up a few loose ends. You know how it is, loose ends are there, like hanging chads on Florida voters' ballots, demanding to be tied up. So be it.

Two loose ends are related to the recent Rusty Saber about the World Series (Nov. 4-10). The nature of my weekly deadline caused me to write the column during the World Series; however, it appeared after the World Series was over.

At the time, I said that one of the things about baseball that I like is the lack of a clock. Unlike "faster moving'' sports, time never runs out. No matter how far behind a team may be, a come-from-behind victory is never impossible. Improbable, perhaps; impossible, no.

Baseball fans know that the San Francisco Giants were ahead of the Anaheim Angels by five runs in the top of the seventh inning of the sixth game. If the Giants won, they would win the World Series. The game was thought to be over. Champagne bottles were being uncorked in the Giants' dressing room for the victory celebration. The room was encased in plastic wrap to protect it from the bizarre rite of victory where grown men celebrate by dousing everything, including each other and any visitor or TV announcers in the dressing room, with champagne.

As most fans know, the party was canceled. The Angels made a miraculous comeback. They won that game and went on to win the seventh game. It was the Angels who poured the bubbly. Once more, I quote Yogi Berra: "It ain't over until it's over."

Again, before the baseball column appeared, an article in the Wall Street Journal affirmed that I wasn't talking through my hat when I asserted that hitting a baseball requires more hand-eye coordination than any other athletic feat.

Dr. Stephen Lisberger, professor of neuroscience, University of California at San Francisco, said that hitting a baseball is one of the most complex tasks one can imagine. Hey, you read it here first! He goes on to say that a ball traveling 90 miles an hour reaches home plate in less than half a second (400 milliseconds).

A player must "see the ball, processing images and information in the visual cortex. He must decide whether to swing in about 200 milliseconds."

I now know why my baseball career ended before it began. I know why I swung the bat at about the moment the ball landed in the catcher's mitt. Shoot, my brain-eye-hand coordination was a couple of milliseconds away from a baseball career. I was another case of "good field, no hit."

Better make that "just fair field, no hit."

This column is written in the wake of election day. Words fail me well, they almost fail me. My speechlessness is due to the reprieve from wall-to-wall TV and radio political ads.

Listening to all of these political ads, one could assume that all candidates are so good they can walk on water. They have spent their entire lives working and fighting for common people; they need our vote so they can keep on fighting for humanity.

All candidates, as depicted by their opponents, are vile ogres who want to punish the elderly; close the schools and make laborers of children; close the hospitals; starve half the population; and probably are behind the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Granted, many attack ads are produced and paid for by political parties and special interest groups, not the candidates. Truth be told, I don't think many voters care who paid for them.

It seems to me that this election has produced an unusual amount of these "my opponent is a sleaze-ball; I'm an angel" ads.

The experts tell us that these attack ads work, and once one uses them, the opponent must respond. If that's true, I'm not sure what it says about voters, but I don't think it says anything good.

Now all the loose ends are tied up, until more become untied.