Not finishing it had no real consequence. I don't remember that we had to do one of those "book reports." I guess that's why I figured finishing the book was optional.
One day in class, when the teacher thought we probably all should have finished it, the book was discussed. Go ahead. I don't care. Knock yourselves out. I didn't stay with it.
Listening to the smart Alec Lotharios try and impress the teacher, who I think was the attractive one, I realized I missed something very major about the book. I leaned over to the kid next to me and whispered, "you mean Hester and the minister got it on." I was now having non-reader's remorse. The kid leaned back and said, "you didn't read the book did you." How right he was.
Maybe because of that experience of not reading 'The Scarlet Letter' through to its conclusion, but forever knowing the gist of the story, I still get the biggest kick of lyrics in the musical 'The Music Man' when Professor Harold Hill proclaims he wants to meet a woman where "Hester earns one more A." You rascal, you.
It's already been mentioned somewhere in my postings that the NYT Tyler Kepner is probably the best baseball reporter in the nation these days. And while I may have been asleep at the switch when it came to Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale's bout of passion (the sex scene in today's movies) I'm not out to lunch when it comes to reading about the Houston Astros and the cheating scandal involving their stealing catchers' signs with electronic surveillance and tom-toms on trash cans. A high-tech/low-tech spy gambit.
Everyone has an opinion on the proper punishment, no different than what people think should happen to murders. The baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred is being roundly derided for his solution of a confession from the offending players. Something like catch and release in fishing.
Mr. Manfred feels that the shame of what they did, how it shows on the players' face, is punishment enough. A whole lot of other people do not agree. And it is keeping sports radio and sport channel talking heads with A LOT to talk about. There is always something, and right now, this is it.
In sports, there is always talk of putting an asterisk somewhere in the record books to denote special circumstances surrounding the stat. When Roger Maris was hitting 61 homers in a 162 game reason vs. Babe Ruth's 60 in a 154 game season, the asterisk, or dagger notation was nearly violently suggested. Babe Ruth was a deity, and you can mess with a deity.
My friend, who is a lifelong Yankee fan who started to absorb box scores in the '50s, and rooting for the Yankees because it pissed off his New York Giant loving father—goes ballistic when the stat of playoff homers is trotted out and Mickey Mantle's not number one anymore.
"Well listen you morons, Mickey's homers were ALL in the World Series. They didn't have playoffs then. The season was the playoffs." Of course he's right. Apples and oranges. But there's no asterisk or dagger.
Everyone expects there to be several instances of purposely hitting the the Houston batter with a pitch. Call it what you like, and warn about all you want, it's going to happen.
If Roger Clemens was an offended losing 2017 pitcher whose catcher's signs were stolen by the Houston KGB, you could surely expect Roger to drill one at someone's helmet and perhaps be the first player arrested for homicide committed during a game. No wonder the Huston players have long faces. They're targets.
If Clemens beaned Piazza over too many homers, think how he might react to being kept out of the World Series. Mickey Mantle always said you knew you were going to have to hit the deck when your teammate in the batting order ahead of you just put one over the fence. "You were going down."
Into the punishment fray comes Mr. Kepner, whose solution to the kerfuffle is nothing less than elegant and certainly worthy of some kind of award made to arbitrators. Know what you can't change. And Manfred's ruling is out there and is not going to change.
Few people know how to use an apostrophe properly. It might be the most widely misused punctuation mark ever. There are always the smug writers who tell us where the apostrophe should go when we reach Presidents' Day, or Presidents' Day, or Presidents Day. Forget them. Consider Tyler's elegance.
In today's NYT there is story in the sports section by Danielle Allentuck with the headline: Union Disputes M.L.B. Over Astros' Immunity.
Count on writers and editors at the NYT to use the apostrophe correctly. They went to college. But don't avoid Tyler's solution when at the end of his February 17th story he ends with the simple sentence.
"The Astros* play on."
And what letter does an asterisk start with? It's so simple it can make you cry.
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