1. At Georgia O’Keefe show I visited yesterday at the De Young, the taped tour featured a recitation of Emerson’s famous “transparent eyeball” passage, from “Nature” (1838) — I am nothing, I see all” which made me glad to have been an English major — Ingles — and makes me wonder the difference between re-reading intense ideas 30 years later versus solving problem sets again. I have been re-reading and re-thinking Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” for instance.

(A man interrupts me, somewhat politely, and asks me directions to a watchmaker/”monetary” company located, according to search-functions, very nearby, and I am somewhat miffed by, even with reading glasses, not quite seeing the small print on the business card, speaking of eyeballs — I have allotted myself two hours to tap on keyboard and try to organize 0s and 1s and no crooked figures, little blots of electronic inks, ideas, words, which appear insignificant but keep me going, although Einstein or Whitman or Ginsburg or someone who presumably would know said all our actions and words (and perhaps thoughts) are important, could move mountains, by the butterfly effect and chaos theory; I’m trying to get to baseball game)

2. On my reverse commute this morning, before doing exactly 41 pieces of laundry, KQED had a disturbing talk about Venezuela, and 29 dead there so far in this recent bout of unrest. Since death of Hugo Chavez, rise of Maduro and I’m not sure what else. But I am carrying a stack of trading cards, including a 1959 Topps Chico Carrasquel, Baltimore Orioles shortstop, from Caracas, and the 2013 (last year’s) Who’s Who in Baseball, with lifetime records of 775 players, and Miguel Cabrera, 2012 Triple Crown winner, of the Tigers, from Maracay, on the cover. I am jonesing to buy the 2014 book but only groped it at the 5 and Dime (di me, “give me”) yesterday. Maybe I will take a break from by tap tap tapping and plunk down the 10-spot for the newer 775 bios and photos. I would estimate that each book has about 100,000 facts and figures to ponder, for those that see patterns in such. I am planning to flip thru the book and make a list of players as of 2013 from Venezuela — although I know there is probably a quicker way to merely glean the info, and have written about such (VZ beisbol) before.

3. 29 is the leap year number for the 2nd month. It is a prime number. It is 2 more than the number of consecutive outs required for a perfect game, and probably someone once lead the league in homers with such a number, I could probably suss out, but in this case it is the number dead according to the radio of people in Venezuela over this current set of problems. I am guessing, by a factor of four or more, that we have helped produce that many more Venezuelan beisbol millionaires than there are protest-dead, but it makes this knee-jerk liberal wonder what we could do better, spreading around the wealth and turns at bat.

I want to outdo with Thad Jones Mel Lewis 1974 Potpouri album cut, a cover of Stevie Wonder “Don’t You Worry About a Thing” recorded or manufactured and marketed out of Philly but with a distinctive clave Latin tinge, flutes, and a stellar cast, that was playing on KCSM when I got back in my car post-wash-and-fold-and-counting and this handy doo-hicky let me learn that pretty durn e-z-like, compared to when I used to call in to ask what was playing.

I will hopefully, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, San Francisquito Creek, not too far from here, very near where I pretend to sleep and do sleep, add those names of our diamond heroes. Like

Bobby Abreu, of Maracay, who just celebrated his birthday 40 (but may not be in the league, since I am using last year’s book, and had 2,437 hits thru 17 seasons including 2012;

Jose Altuve, also of Maracay, 228 hits;

Alexi Jose Amarista, of Barcelona, VZ, 74 hits;

Elvis Andrus, Maracay, 628 hits plus 11 more in the World Series;

Gregor Blanco, de Caracas, 279 including 96 for World Champion Giants;

Jose Cabrera, the Tribe ss, of Puerto La Cruz, 717;

aforementioned Triple Crowner Cabrera, of Tigers, 1802;

Miguel Cairo, of Anaco, 1044;

Alberto Jose Callaspo, of Maracay, 680; and I admit some of these guys I don’t know what name they go by; I am taking in most cases a quick glance at the tiny mugshots which usually include a team logo on cap;

Ezequiel Manuel dare I say “Manny”? Carrera, of Guiria, 89;

(and I also admit it does feel weird that I am passing by Vernon Christopher Carter of Redwood City, California whose place of birth is a stones throw, or realistically about 500 big leaguers lined up along El Camino, like a Joan Brown site specific piece; that would be interesting to try to line El Camino with Big Leaguers and see how many throws it would take to go from Santa Cruz Avenue to the Redwood City hospital; maybe we can do this in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Portola Expedition, coming in 2019 (from 1769 trek), stage some weird Latin baseball players relay of “cut off” men. Maybe it could dovetail – -and now this is entering classic Plastic Alto plasticity — plasmicity it took three tries before spellchecker let me have my weird way — with my yearning to honor Gregg Rolie, who founded both Journey and Santana bands, went to high school in Palo Alto (Cubberley) and whose best discs on Vinyl and this is how my brain works, can still be found at Redwood City’s Record Man store; I daydreamed of inducing Brian Ho the organist to arrange jazz versions of Santana and Journey songs, the ones penned by Rolie, as compared to actually bugging Rolie about trying to honor him here; maybe Suzanne Warren, I ran into yesterday, here on Santa Cruz Avenue, MP, and we posted for a selfie (“Selfie Arts Admins Takeover” working title) can help with that, she being a piano player and teacher and former City of Palo Alto cultural  programmer; will edita with Chris Carter detes, beyond 71 hits, for A’s, at 1B and OF; N.B.: okay, search engine claims distance from British Bankers Club in Menlo Park to Record Man in Redwood City is 3.4 miles, which I will round to 18,000 feet, divide by 200 feet to produce rough measure of needing approximately 90 to 100 MLCOUs — major league cut off units — to produce  a fairly safe chain of ballplayers able to relay a ball, faster than a speeding bullet train, or certainly faster than SamTrans, up the avenue, to celebrate Daniel Descalso Day / Portola’s Expedition @250 in South San Mateo County, give or take a few more guys if we want to go all the way to the Courthouse and Museum, depending on avails of Gregg Rolie and The Record Man, who in my head are medleying into an Aerosmith tune, “Dream On”).

edita to add, one minute later: ok, in the real world and not Plastic Altlandia, baseball fans immediately knew that Chris Carter, a big, right-handed first baseman, had been traded to Astros where he hit 29 home runs but struck out a league-leading 200 plus times, most ever by a righty; although born in San Mateo County, a 500-cut-off-man throw from Palo Alto, he signed for the big show after leading a Las Vegas high school team to a state championship, so probably does not merit inclusion in local Hall of Fame, but will keep my all-seeing transparent transcendalist-wanna-be eye on him, especially for preserving my 29 theme.

more from our beisbol friends al sur:

Ronny Cedeno, Puerto Cabello, 565;  not related to Cesar from D.R.)

Endy Chavez, Valencia, 714; which would be fantastic if it were homers;

ok, Daniel Descalso, born in Redwood City, October 19, 1986, while I was a senior at Dartmouth, did attend St. Francis High here and is considered a local boy making good, if you permit another digression; had 180 hits in first 302 games, for St. Louis;

Alcides Escobar, Lasabana, 475;

Eduardo Jose Escobar, Villa de Cura, 30; (which would be a good place to stop, if I were even lazier and short-spanded;

Jesus Miguel Flores, Carupano, Venezuela, 226 hits for the Nats;

ok i’m gonna stop at Salvador Perez of the Royals, making 29 players, or first 29 field-players alphabetically from two seasons ago, according to Who’s Who’s 98th year, who by the way, out of their 1115 Broadway office, NY, NY 100 10 are selling back issues, including 1977, 1976 and 1971, for $85 each, for those of you adding and not deleting your baseball junk, although I admit I still have not said much very substantial about why I am thinking about baseball or beisbol and only pretending to think hard about economics and politics and current events, and ladies standing in line for cooking oil and corn meal or was it flour. How could major league baseball, office of the commissioner that is, do more to spread American values in these places? Is it enough to help these 29? Meanwhile, in a way that only connects in my brain, I noticed that a Dartmouth classmate named Todd Bean was reported to be working in Amsterdam, South Africa and other foreign theaters promoting soccer values or at least an app, TOVO (Dutch or Afrikaner for “total football”, maybe affiliated with famous Ajax Academy, and I think of Ed Burns who years in the Commish Office, was involved in growth of league per se in Dominican Republic, maybe traveled to Venezuela as well. Hoping also to leave room to measure distance from here to Redwood City and divide by 300 feet, to calculate this new measure “cut-off-men”. Also noted Dan Nava big leaguer from same Redwood City and Heywood, who is son of a Dartmouth guy. Noting also that Pablo Sandoval, “Kung Fu Panda” from Puerto Cabello, is a few stops past our minyan, even with 636 hits in his first 571 games at the press-time, and a cool .303.

edit to add, and I’ve been here about 90 minutes, length of a soccer match, and three fourths of the way thru my free parking, and one coffee cup, I was amazed to see that there were about 30 1959 Topps Chico Carrasquels on the leading online marketplace, most for about $2, depending on condition.

I shall return to go from the 15 or so players I’ve honored here to the 29 I was sort of hinting I would list (which is less than if I had gone thru the whole book, including pitchers, and listed I am guessing about 50 players).

I want to also see the latest from New York Times (since I am paying them 50 cents a day already).

edit to add, same setting: most of the Times coverage is from about a month ago; I should check the list of speakers on today’s Forum show with Michael Krasny, or tune in for its re-broadcast or check for an archive version. Not sure if “29 dead” is current or old news. A Times report also talks of a local “beauty queen” “Miss Tourismo” who was killed, plus twitter feeds, her last pictures on her cellphone, photo of her holding a sign which I could read but not quite interpret, and 7 comments. Jennifer Preston reporting on Genesis Carmona.

Here is the info from KQED page:

At least 29 people have died in Venezuela in clashes between the government and opposition groups. Violence between police and those protesting high crime, inflation and shortage of supplies under President Nicolas Maduro have been escalating since last month.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

More info:

• Venezuela: A Month Of Unrest And Forecasts Of More (NPR)
• Venezuela In Turmoil For Lack Of Flour, Milk And Diapers (NPR)

In terms of randomly mentioning Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” my take on it is that it is not about protest in the street but about speaking truth to power and either demanding more from leadership or asking them to “move on”.

after the rain delay and checkpoint 19, now at the nifty free wireless spot at Cogswell Plaza, site of soon to be revived nooners:

Freddy Jose Galvis, Punto Fijo, Venezuela, 43 hits in 2012 for Phils;

Carlos Gonzalez, Maracaibo, 648;

Carlos Gonzalez of Colorado hit a 2-run homer into McCovey Cove on Friday, April 11, 2014

Franklin Rafael Gutierrez, Caracas, 618;

Jesus Antonio Guzman, Cumana, 153;

Gorkys Gustavo Hernandez, Guiria, 30 hits;

Jonathan Alejandro Herrera, Maracaibo, 204;

Omar Rafael Infante, Puerto La Cruz, 1,021 safeties;

Macier Izturis, Barquisimeto, another guy who parked for the offseason at 714 hits;

Jose Manuel Lobaton, of Acarigua, with 44 hits and almost as many stops between Idaho Falls of the Pioneer League and Tampa Bay;

Jose Celestino Lopez, of Barcelona, 215, for the Mariners, Rockies, Indians and White Sox, before turning Japanese to be a Giant-Yomiuri for 2013, it would seem; he also signed with the Marlins organization briefly, getting back to what I was implying about more than 100 pieces of information you could get per player, if you were so inclined; in the case here, the grid is like 18 by 14, which is almost three hundred little factoids, plus five footnotes about transactions, his place of birth, birthdate, bats right, throws right height and weight, over 9 years;

Victor Jesus Martinez, of Ciudad Bolivar — where I would just guess they pay pretty close attention to potential revolutions and brouhahas — a catcher for Cleveland and Detroit Series teams, with 1,298 hits before sitting out 2012, after six times on disabled list since 2000. Godspeed to VJM wherever he is now;

Jesus Alejandro Montero, of Guacara, 154 hits;

Miguel Angel Montero, of Caracas, I am presuming unrelated, although they are both catchers, 581; aka Miggy the Microwave;

So that is our starting lineup of 29 Venezuelan current and recent former baseball players, glossed briefly in lieu of thinking any harder about what is actually happening in their homeland apropos of leadership, conflict and dissent. God bless the Americas.