Zero

It’s all about zeros. Turn your back and millionaires become billionaires and don’t even talk about trillionaires. Life has increased exponentially and left me still worrying about overdue library books.

A million seconds ago was August 8^th. A billion seconds ago, Bill Clinton said he was feeling our pain. A trillion years back, Neanderthals passed the baton to us Homo sapiens….which eventually led to Elon Musk and Donald Trump thus disproving the progression of our species.

A thousand million gives me a brain ache. It makes my hair hurt. Back in the 1950s my union negotiated a contract which would pay pharmacists $4.00/hour at the end of five years. I thought I’d be rich. At that time, the average pay was $2.00/hour. Now, that’s what I tip the man at the car wash.

Yes, I know, looking back is what old folks famously do, while Gen X, Y and Z look ahead. Who’s got the rosy lens and who sees through a glass darkly? It is too easy to embellish the past; it wasn’t so rosy then but, at least, it offers the illusion of clarity.

I am blind to the future, and the present is nearly opaque. My astigmatism helps me see the world at a slant, which is to say, absurd and askew. Few things compute. Zero which used to signify nothing, now multiplies to the beyond.

I have long had the habit of finding refuge in sports. It seemed fixed in time, impervious to the turmoil of the real world. Aside from a few changes in rules to align with fan’s sensibility it carried the aura of permanence. The sports section was a universe apart from the world of finance and politics. Not so now and probably never was the case. Teams, once family-owned, are now corporate toys.

The recent shenanigans with the ownership of the Dodgers are a case in point. Mark Walter, the team owner, has been cited by the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Federal District Court for infractions. His nefarious acts are under investigation. It calls to mind the close ties between corporate misdeeds and the government which has always been the untold story in sports franchises. The baseball term caught stealing takes on a broader meaning as billionaire malfeasance is uncovered. 

The malicious ignoramus on the throne has a nose for money. He smells those zeros. It has now become obligatory for the captains of industry to fork up a few hundred million bucks to gain his favor when his DOJ is probing one's corporate empire. The money flows at the speed of a click in this zero-sum game. The king is in the counting house counting all his money and the mogul may or may not get his honey.

All this is almost enough to shed my infantile obsession with sports, but not quite.

A few weeks ago, the story concerned Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA (world soccer organization), cozying up to Trump and nearly ousted by European members. At the heart of organized sports is money (I almost said crime).

Winning and losing on the field is just a micro version of the winners and losers in the scheme of billionaires. It’s all about buying and selling and adding zeros.