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"Life of Pi"

So I was looking around my room to find something (that had a possibility of being) rhetorical and I finally settled on the shelf next to my bed. On it are some of my favorite books, a sort of way to calm me down were I to be feeling stressful throughout the year. One of those books is Life of Pi. If you’ve read the book, hopefully you’ll see where I’m coming from with this post. If you’ve never read it, I suggest you check out my other blog this week.

In summary, the protagonist, Pi Patel, is lost at sea after a huge ship carrying his family and all of their possessions sinks at sea. Pi’s father owned a zoo in their native India, and upon moving to Canada, is forced to bring a majority of the animals with him on board the ship. When it sinks, so do the animals.

What makes the story interesting is that Pi survives for 227 days on board a lifeboat. Accompanying him, also having managed to reach the lifeboat, is a tiger and, at least for some time, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena.

After he finally finds land, Pi begins to explain his tale. Not only is it unbelievable that managed to survive the whole time at sea – but he claimed to do so with a fully grown Bengal tiger aboard. After people don’t believe Pi, he revises his story to them – replacing real life people with the animals that he used as characters in his story. He rationalizes it by saying that although the second version is more believable, it is unexciting and people do not want to hear it.

“And so it is with religion,” he says.

The rhetoric in this is pretty plain to me. The author, Yann Martel, makes a distinct point to his audience. As a reader, you spend the entire story believing that the animals on board with Pi are real – and even after an alternative is suggested, you want them to be.  People do the same thing with religion. They may like a story, but discredit it as inconceivable, and therefore not true. Personally, I’m one of the hypocrites that Martel targets, I want the animals to be real, but do not believe in any religion. The irony, then, is that the author makes you realize this paradox about yourself – rooting for Pi and his animals, yet also holding a double standard.

Regardless, Life of Pi is absolutely my favorite book.

Turning Pro

This week’s blog is about the rhetoric of becoming a pro athlete. I know that I’ve already talked about the rhetoric of being pressured as a phenom, but what about the ultimate goal of those “student” athletes.

With stars like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant who leave straight from high school to go to their respective professional leagues, what kind of message does that send to today’s youth? Though those two examples are extreme, the amount of times that it happens really isn’t that small.

Think about the Major League Baseball draft – oddly enough (and against statistical advice) most teams draft high school players. Personally, I know three kids that got drafted before any of us went to college. Those three guys all went on to college (in baseball, you can deny your drafting and go to college anyway), but it isn’t always the case.

The NBA started seeing what they thought was too much of this “lack of higher education” and so they made what people now call the “one and done” rule. Quite simply, the NBA now requires that before declaring eligible for the draft, draftees must play one year of college basketball. Football has a similar rule (you need to be at least an academic junior).

In baseball, though many suspect a similar ruling coming, there is not yet one in place. Just two years ago the Washington Nationals drafted a 17 year old for instance named Bryce Harper, heralded as the next big thing.

The controversy in all of this, like many things, deals with the money involved. Say you’re a kid from a family who needs the money, how can you turn down millions guaranteed in your rookie contract, to go to college for a few years while your family still struggles to get by? This is the argument that many of the kids are faced with.

Unfortunately, because playing careers don’t last forever, and many of the athletes turn out to be busts, they are left with an inadequate education. Because, this last part is unforeseeable, it is why the decision is so hotly debated. More than anything else, the people whose careers end up not working out, often terribly regret their decision to forgo school. And they become the biggest advocates for education over immediate immersion into professional sports.

America's Pastime

Maybe this post is a little bit of a stretch but, Ben, I’m aiming to have this work under the umbrella of “civic life.”

But, I think it does… or at least, I think it should.

I’m talking about baseball. It’s opening day! Why not?

I love baseball. In reality, there are few things that I have a greater passion for, and it easily makes my top ten (and I’m including family on that same list). My senior year research paper was on baseball. Not just the basics, not just the history, not even just well-written passionate ranting – I wrote about why baseball is so much more than a sport to the American people.

Maybe you have your doubts. But I’d love to take anyone up on the argument. There’s a reason it’s called “America’s Pastime,” and believe me, it’s far more than just another a cliché. It’s been a constant in this country at times when nothing else has. In fact, during World War II, FDR told the commissioner of the MLB to keep the league running – because the country needed it. When I found that out, it blew my mind, but I realized the truth in it. After September 11^th, George Bush threw out the first pitch of Game 3 of the Diamondbacks Yankees World Series. It was in New York, not long after the attacks, and it was a perfect strike.

I remember watching. I was eight, and I could feel the meaning behind it.

Of course, baseball is far more than something to keep us together during times of crisis. It is full of life lessons, and can be anything that you need it to be. Say you’re a big math person, you learn with numbers and formulas. Baseball can be there for you – it is a game of statistics, strategies, and odds. But say you’re the person of abstract, numbers mean nothing to you – you need the creativity. Well, baseball can be there for you too. It’s fluid, quirky, full of superstition, passion, and youth.

It’s America’s sport. It’s there for the die hard fan. And it reaches out to the most unlikely of places. That’s the beauty in it.

As we prepare for this first weekend of the 2012 season, I hope you find time somewhere along the next six months to sit back, relax, and soak it in. Because I think we could all use a little more baseball in us.