MUNCIE, Indiana. A debate among Democratic presidential candidates that had become a snoozefest erupted into some of the testiest exchanges of the campaign season when host Chris Matthews asked each of the contenders if they would appoint Supreme Court Justices who recognize a constitutional right to watch the World Series.
Clinton: "There is no constitutional right to watch the World Series--none."
"If I am elected president, I will nominate strict constructionists who will not recognize a right to watch the World Series," said Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), "and I would go further and say there's no right to watch the League Championship Series or the Division Championship Series."
Obama: "So once the Cubs are eliminated, I have to stop watching?"
"That's such a glaring example of the politics of the past," Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.)replied eloquently. "Every man has an inalienable right to watch the World Series, even if he roots for the Chicago Cubs, who never make it."
Jack Nicholson
A constitutional right to watch the World Series was first suggested in the film version of the Ken Kesey novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nurse", in which Jack Nicholson, playing the role of Randle Patrick McMurphy, ignores a prohibition laid down by Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, and insists on watching the World Series.
"Counselor, are you saying I would be prohibited from watching a winner-take-all seventh game?
The right has not subsequently been recognized by federal courts, although it has been defended by law school professors with too much time on their hands and cited without authority by husbands across the country once their home team is eliminated. "Our forefathers fought and died for the right to watch baseball," asserted Ray Duncan of Florissant, Missouri. "Yes the Cardinals aren't going to repeat, but does that mean I have to watch a disease-of-the-week movie on Lifetime?"
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "I was hoping we could watch some ice skating for a change."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only female justice since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, has spoken critically of a right to watch the World Series in speeches to professional groups. "Republican appointees on the Court who claim to be strict constructionists suddenly get all loosey-goosey when it's about baseball," she said in a commencement address at the Judge Wapner School of Law in Burbank, California, last spring. "Whenever I want to watch ice skating they take the remote away from me."
ALAMEDA, California. HomeQuest Financial, a subprime lender that has been cited for loan and foreclosure abuses in a number of states, today announced that it would set up a charitable fund tied to individual performances in baseball's postseason play as a way to give back to homeowners who have suffered during the current housing market collapse.
"There's the hammer, it's going--going--gone!"
"We realize in retrospect that maybe we could have done things just a teensy bit differently," says HomeQuest CEO Martin Upchurch. "If we had known people weren't going to repay our loans, we would have charged them bigger fees upfront."
Don Larsen's World Series no-hitter.
Under the program, HomeQuest will donate $100 for every balk, $200 for every batter who hits for the cycle, and $300 for each no-hitter thrown during the post-season, beginning with today's NL Wildcard playoff game between Colorado and San Diego and ending with the final out of the World Series.
"Peavey's got a no-no going into the 8th. Don't jinx it by saying anything."
"It's a way for us to say 'Thank you' to all of those familes who vacated their over-leveraged houses peaceably so we didn't have to resort to extreme measures," Upchurch says. "We really appreciate it when we don't have to rent German Shepherds to secure our properties."
"That wasn't a balk. Clemens started to pitch, then got bored and went home to Houston."
But, a reporter asks, balks, no-hitters and hitting for the cycle are extremely rare events, meaning that HomeQuest's exposure is minimal at best. Does Upchurch really expect the dispossessed to benefit much from a program that is so narrowly tailored?
"Talk to the people in marketing," he says. "I'm more of a big picture guy."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
