#6 Baseball

 Listening to the 2025 World Series was sheer joy!  It brought back memories of the last decade of my father's life. Dad had an irregular heart beat in an era prior to pills resolving that irregularity.  Thus, his last eight years were life after a stroke  from which he beat the odds and while invalid, he lived a good remaining life.  Yet his eyesight was mostly gone.  Was it a result of the stroke or from an hereditary gene that caused macular degeneration which is what I was diagnosed with as the 2025 MLB Playoffs were in progress.  

I have inherited AMD and am at intermediate stage - dry.  I am now part of a German developed (and in use in Europe since 2018.......only approved for use in the US this past March) non-invasive program involving infrared spectrum lighting for which I have completed the first 9 of 27 sessions I will undergo this year.......and I am optimistic that programs like this, while they will not cure my predicament, will slow down and limit the degree of blindness that I supposedly will encounter.  Yeah, I do recognize that my eyesight has deteriorated - that's why I made an appointment to see an eye doctor in the first place!  But based upon current research in the field, I am very, very optimistic that I will still be able to bicycle ride and read my weekly print copy of the NewYorker for a long time to come and I sure as hell am not going to limit my activities now........and that included going to the Dodger's World Series Parade in down town Los Angeles on Monday morning after that Saturday evening 7th game from Toronto.  LAPD estimated that a quarter million people, based upon last year's parade, would attend this year.  Post parade analysis:  a million showed up for a morning of joy, love and peace..........at least ICE had the common sense not to do anything that day.........

OK - The Dodgers repeated, coming behind and winning spectacularly on the road in Toronto.  Last year the Dodgers won the Series and the very next day they were feted with a victory parade starting at LA City Hall with an approximate attendance of 200,000.  Last year was easy.  This year was difficult - very difficult, indeed.  And with an extra day to feel how extraordinary it really was, a whole lot more people than just me were lured downtown in a feeling likely felt by the children of Hamlin as the Pied Piper lured them to his festival........dammit, we had to go!!!!!

If my iPhone is correct, I walked 11,382 steps that day.  I left home at 8:50am and found 13 others - young, financial types from my 'hood.  We boarded what was then an empty Metro E Line car.  By the time we had gone to 4 more stations, our car was full - all wearing something Dodgers.  It was a carnival in that car - what a joyeous crowd......'fuck work that day.....let's party!' 

Getting off at 7th Street, DTLA was difficult at best at 10am.  It would have been impossible an hour later.  Yet I successfully 'negotiated' the crowd and was content to find a place on Hope at 7th where there were street vendors selling bacon dogs at $10 a dog....next to a $5 a can Modelo beer vendor........Hey, this was a mixed crowd all mingling together, throwing footballs back and forth across 7th Street that was blocked for crowd control by LAPD which did a spectacular job at handing a crowd 4 times larger than anticipated.....but did anyone have to worry?  Hell No!  This felt like going to a tail gate party prior to a ballgame at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.....or like going to a Dead concert in the 70s - life was simpler then, the crowds were smaller an passive.....and while in San Francisco at all events, the smell of weed always seems to be in the air (which it is not at Dodger Stadium).......but a Dodger Parade in DTLA is not at Dodger Stadium - the food was affordable in the street, the smell of cannabis was prevalent and a better party atmosphere (far better!) prevailed on the streets through the early afternoon, after the 6 busses with Dodgers atop, waving and taking pictures of a joyous  Series crowd that they probably would never ever experience - unless the they played for the Dodgers in future years and they'd win the Series in that future year.