*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***
At The Old Ball Game - By Edward L. Daley
July 29, 2004
Even with a couple of cheater's steps off the pitcher's rubber working
in his favor, John F. Kerry, in front of a sold-out crowd at Fenway
Park, couldn't manage to throw the first pitch of Sunday's Red
Sox/Yankees game across home plate. Of course, the junior Senator from
Massachusetts, and king of excuses more lame than his throwing arm, had
a good reason for bouncing the ball well short of his target. "I held
back" stated Mr. Kerry when questioned about his (as Arnold
Schwarzenegger might say) girly-man attempt.
Apparently he was concerned about the safety of his catcher, a National
Guardsman named Will Pumyea who had just returned to the United States.
"I tried to lob it gently" Kerry added, which is certainly
understandable considering that Mr. Pumyea is a veteran of both the
Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Heck, you certainly wouldn't want to risk
injuring such a man with a baseball thrown with enough velocity to
travel a whole 726 inches, would you? I'm sure the 23 year-old vet was
grateful to the good Senator for sparing him the pain and humiliation of
trying to handle the awe-inspiring force behind one of John's famous
split-finger fastballs.
But enough with the sarcasm... John Kerry's denial of so obvious a
failing is typical of the way he prefers to deal with uncomfortable
questions concerning his own shortcomings. Instead of simply 'fessing up
and allowing the electorate to see that he's a human being, capable of
imperfections just like the rest of us, he chooses to deny any error on
his part, no matter how conspicuous and inconsequential it may be.
Either he's an idiot or he takes the average voter for one, and I'm not
sure which is worse.
I do know that when a public figure of Mr. Kerry's proportions fails to
toss a baseball more than sixty feet, and then implies afterward that he
was worried a warrior like Will Pumyea may not be not capable of
catching a throw requiring only slightly greater force than he (a 60
year old public official) has mustered, he's lying through his teeth. I
also know that John Kerry is capable of throwing that same baseball many
times harder and farther than he did on July 26. He underthrew that ball
like a wussie, not because he couldn't get it to the plate or because he
was concerned with the welfare of a young war veteran who's been trained
to eat guts for breakfast and ask for seconds. No, he lame-ducked that
pitch because he was afraid to take a chance and put some real backbone
behind it!
By the way, it has recently been reported that Senator Kerry seemed to
have been rooting for the New York Yankees at one point late in the game
this past Sunday, although those claims may prove to be bogus. Still,
one has to wonder how he would react if confronted with such an
accusation today. Judging from past statements he's made concerning
claims of a similar nature, one could opine that he might say something
like this: I rooted for the Red Sox... BEFORE I rooted against them.
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Edward L. Daley is the owner/operator of the news website The Daley Times-Post.