Baseball Fanatic Buys a Car

I’m at a used car dealer, listening to a sales pitch, while imagining myself to be standing in the batter’s box. I think to myself: This salesman is throwing me a curveball. He’s telling me that he’ll let me have the Maserati that I’ve been fancying, for the price of 500 Chinese Dollars. “It’s a bargain,” he says. I talk him down to 466. “Deal,” he says. We shake hands, and I sign the paperwork. On the side of the office wall hangs a large mirror, in which I happen to catch a glimpse of myself: I look like Kirby Puckett when he was fielding all those allegations of abuse. I look like Jose Canseco when he was in trouble for using anabolic steroids. I look like Darryl Strawberry after all the drug-and-sex addiction, at the point when he hit rock bottom and became an evangelical born-again Christian. I look like a groupie from Bull Durham (1988), a film that I haven’t even seen — I’ve only heard of it (I think I read a spoof of it, in Mad Magazine, when I was young). — No, I take all that back: I actually look like Ty Cobb, who broke every record in Major League Baseball while conducting himself with politeness and gentility. 

After leaving the used car dealer’s office, I walk over and stand at the driver’s side of my Maserati. I now imagine myself at home plate, looking out at a packed stadium — the fans in the stands are doing the wave. I raise my arm and point North-Northwest, specifying my intended direction of travel. I now look just like Babe Ruth, not only because I’m a power slugger (my penchant for hitting home runs completely changed how the game is played), but because I’m also the Yankees’ best bunter and an excellent outfielder. — So I drive my car off the lot, heading in the direction that I indicated a moment ago. And the crowd goes wild.