In his poem, “Leisure,” William Henry Davies, the so-called “poet of the tramps,” famously asked the question, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”
For some weird reason, the Davies line came to mind when I read in last weekend’s newspaper that Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers had been fined $25,000 for a postgame rant against National Basketball Association referee Bill Kennedy, who also was fined by the league.
The Celtics coach claimed it was all the fault of Kennedy, who had stared at him, thereby provoking Rivers into his second technical foul and an automatic ejection from the basketball game. He said the official “stood there and stared me down and stared me down and goaded me until I turned around and said, ‘What?’ That’s when I got thrown out of the game.”
A spokesman for the referees union said Kennedy’s stare should not have been interpreted as one designed “to start some kind of disagreement, or goad [Rivers] into getting ejected. It’s just like, ‘Hey, enough is enough.”’ The union rep claimed that Kennedy then turned his back on Rivers and walked away, as he is trained to do.
Ah, the deadly stare that can cause millionaire professional athletes and coaches to morph into a bunch of pampered preschoolers sparring in the communal sandbox. Who can rationally explain its power to cause grown men to come unglued when they believe others to have gazed upon their countenance with undue diligence? A psychiatrist might, I suppose. But since I am not one, nor will I ever play one on television, I don’t expect to solve the mystery anytime soon.
The phenomenon is not confined to the world of sports. You can easily find yourself in big trouble if you focus too long on the strange dude seated at the end of the bar, offer more than a passing glance in your rearview mirror at the tailgating rage-fueled maniac behind you out on the highway, or, it is said, merely look a fellow pe-destrian in the eye while walking on a New York City sidewalk.
But somehow the no-stare code that is in vogue in professional athletics, where participants are, after all, merely playing a game in lieu of real work — often for more money than it costs to keep a small country afloat — seems more ludicrous.
Heading the list of aggrieved baseball players easily offended by an opponent’s scurrilous participation in such politically incorrect lookism would be Pedro Martinez, the talented but volatile major-leaguer who once pitched for Red Sox Nation and is now heading into the sunset of an exceptional baseball career.
As major-leaguers prepare to spit, scratch and stare their way through another season, baseball’s statisticians have likely lost count of the times that some opposition batter has confidently faced Martinez only to find a 94 mph fastball whizzing by his chin — payback for allegedly having had the audacity to stare too long at the pitcher after striking out in a previous time at bat.
In an ideal world, the hitter thus challenged might brush off the accidentally-on-purpose pitch and dig in even deeper to await the next one, perhaps while drawing the same conclusion as did the poet Davies: “A poor life this is if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”
But in the real world what happens is the manager of the opposing team orders his pitcher to retaliate by attempting to stick a high-and-tight fastball in the ear of a Martinez teammate in the next inning. This causes players from both dugouts to rush full tilt to meet one another in the middle of the infield, ostensibly to defend their honor by staging one of baseball’s notorious fake fights.
The melee will be followed in a day or so by hefty fines assessed by the baseball commissioner against the starer, the stare-ee and assorted teammates of both. Because the ballplayers are making so much money, the fines will have no effect whatsoever, and before long another sensitive stared-upon pitcher will have plunked another batter in the ribs and the process will repeat itself.
Game on.
BDN correspondent Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.