100 Not Out
100 Not Out
There is this intriguing young man named Travis Bazzanna who was the number one pick in all of baseball last year, and who was chosen by the Cleveland Guardians and given a $8.9 million dollar signing bonus to play for them. What makes Travis unique is he represents the first Australian-born player picked in the first round and the first second baseman chosen in the top spot. As of now, Travis has already been promoted to Cleveland’s “Double A” Akron team to begin his first full year with the club.
The twenty-two-year-old Bazzanna, known affectionately by his Oregon State teammates as “Bazz”, was immersed in the game of baseball by his father, Gary, whilst still a young lad in Sydney. In the land of cricket where according to Brian Hamilton of The Atlantic – “He was the baseball kid, per local shorthand, in a country without many of them”, Travis excelled in the other bat and ball sport helping his New South Wales teammates to become Baseball State Champs, and Bazzanna representing his country in the 2022 under 23 year old Baseball World Cup.
The six foot one hundred ninety-six-pound young man, though, credits his youth playing cricket for setting the foundation of his current success. He was his team’s wicket keeper (catcher), the only position permitted to wear a “mitt”, as well as their opening batsman. In an “innings” in the game of cricket, which might last days, if you are caught out “cheaply” IE: for not many runs, there can be a long wait until a player gets another opportunity to bat. Therefore, Travis learned quickly to recognize “pitches”, as in where they start and where they are going to end up. He has spent his young career totally focused on perfecting every impact of the game of baseball, and with all the information available to him, he’s reported as saying, “I go up with a clear, confident mind and a plan to better that pitcher.” This approach has certainly worked as he currently holds eight Oregon State career records.
Travis isn’t the first “Ozzie” to play professional baseball in the United States. Joe Quinn gets that designation for his time playing between 1884 to 1901, the latter years being associated with the Cleveland Spiders. And despite Bazzanna’s time in his native country playing both cricket and rugby, he is not considered one of Australia’s elite cricketers. The greatest cricketer of all time, Sir Donald Bradman, had a legendary batting average of 99.94 and remains to this day unmatched. Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh were tenacious batsmen, and one can never forget the crucial captaincy of Allan Border during the Australian cricketing years of dominance (1990’s thru to the 2000’s). Those were the years when I was introduced to this fascinating sport and became an avid fan, albeit with the archrivals, The New Zealand Black Caps. One can’t make a list of Australian cricketing greats without inadvertently missing out men of well-deserved mention; Dennis Lillee, Glen McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, and the list could go on and on.
I have purposely not mentioned an Australian cricket icon until now. Shane Warne was an extraordinary spin bowler (pitcher) for Australia during those same heyday years. Whether a bowler is barreling down the pitch to heave the ball as hard as he can toward the batsman or a spin bowler who skips and hops, pretty much in one place, before tossing the ball so that it resembles a butterfly in the air, the main goal of a bowler is to establish “line and length”. Line referring to the placement of the ball in relationship to where the batsman is standing. Length is determining where in the pitch (dirt) to bounce the ball so that it lifts up on the batter. Combining the right line and length gives the bowler the best chance of either getting a swing and miss from the batter and possibly dislodging his wicket or inducing the batter to nick the ball as it passes through to the wicketkeeper for a “caught out”. Shane Warne introduced to the cricket world his “googly”, which he would throw with the fingertips of his right hand. He would aim the ball so that it would possibly land in a crack or seam of the hard-pack dirt surface causing even more uncertainty of where his delivery would end up. Needless to say, Warne was one of the most effective bowlers in cricketing history.
A batsman playing cricket has an entirely different approach to the game. Most require several deliveries before they settle in and feel comfortable at “the crease” - home base if you will. The batsman’s goal is to get a feel of what the bowler is offering and then begin to methodically score runs for their team. Their first plateau is to collect fifty runs, and then they set their sights on getting a 100 not out next to their name on the board. I’ve always felt it unfair that once a batsman scores a “50”, there’s no other record of achievement for him unless he carries on and records 100 runs. In other words, a batsman given out with 97 runs to his name simply gets a “50” in the summary of the game - not much different I guess, than Bradman’s aforementioned average being 99.94 instead of being rounded up to 100.
Batsmen don’t stride to the crease with a mindset of scoring one hundred runs but batting for as long as they can and scoring as many runs as possible. Enter the kiwi batting legend, Martin Crowe who made his test match debut at the age of nineteen against Australia in 1982. Crowe recorded seventeen 100’s and eighteen 50’s throughout his career but is best known for his top score of 299 in Sri Lanka in 1991, which remains today the high watermark for a New Zealand cricketer. Travis Bazzaman who was born in 2002 wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s eye in 1991, but that same Martin Crowe mental grit that had him settled in at the crease and determined to score as many runs for as long as possible, is evident in this young man.
I can tell you of someone else who is currently 100 not out and displaying this same mindset to settle in at the crease for as long as possible; Donald Trump. That is, of course 100 days, but still looking very comfortable in the White House with no intention of leaving anytime soon. Here’s an inventory of Trump’s trophy achievements to date, and no, this is not an exhaustive list.
He promised to root out DEI and in doing so, all federal agencies have removed “offensive”, but albeit cultural identities. Oh, and universities are being singled out one at a time to conform to Trump’s and Maga’s agenda or risk losing all of their federal funding
Large law firms who have previously represented anti-Trump clients are being picked off one at a time as well. Forced to choose between their short-term bottom line and their principles, many firms have agreed to a heavily Trump-favored conditioned “deal” where they thought their one-off offer of millions of dollars of pro-bono representation for his personal causes has actually morphed into Trump strong arming these firms to do his legal bidding for as long as he chooses.
Pressure directly from the White House is being applied onto the country’s various “Non-Trump” media board rooms to remove correspondents and anti-Trump reporting. If backroom strong arming doesn’t achieve his desired result of shutting down any resistance to his will, then he calls upon his aforementioned pro-bono lawyers to file frivolous $10 billion lawsuits on his behalf.
“Tariffs” is a beautiful word according to our leader. It appears in his desire to re-shape the world’s economic and supply-chain order, he has placed tariffs on 100 countries, even uninhabited South Pacific islands. Then, the tariff threat was called off, only to hold the world markets in suspense for 90 days until he feels the time is right to upend the world’s economic well-being. Bottom line, we are going to wear the economic burden of an aberrant policy that only Peter Navarro would love.
The stock markets around the world have already expressed their opinion of Trump’s economic policies. The deep dive flirting with “bear market” territory resembles that last witnessed during the Great Depression. The problem here is that few folks who actually survived the Great Depression are alive today to vividly remind us of the results of this folly of an economic policy. Here’s the kicker – many of the Trump supporters last year voted for him in the hope he would make the economy better for everyone. It appears only billionaires, like Elon Musk, are going to be benefactors.
So, enlighten me, who cast their vote for Trump last year in support of Canada being chastised to become our 51st state and Greenland threatened to be subsumed, much like Russia has been doing to the Ukranian people? There’s not enough space to recount all our international allies who now view the USA as potential enemies, and certainly no longer a beacon of democracy and freedom.
Now you see them, now you don’t! Another popular Trump platform was to beef up our nation’s borders and deport the criminal illegal immigrants. Sounds like a popular policy until innocent people begin to be abducted and disappear, some even admittedly mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s most notorious prison. Edicts from Federal courtrooms, even the Supreme Court, have not made a bit of difference in these “disappeared” people’s situation. To make matters worse, plain-clothed vigilantes are posing as ICE agents and arresting any brown-skinned person they come across. I’m not making this **** up! Bottom line – in today’s America – anyone could come up missing at any given time.
But our democratic government finds its strength in shared, counter-balancing power of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. However, in case after case where the executive (order) overreach has been ruled unconstitutional, our Republican Congress acquiesces in its power to be a check on unrestrained power and our courts are left to simply inform the Trump administration, “Don’t do that!” - all the while fearing their judicial courtroom will be defunded and erode out from under them like sand in an outgoing tide.
There are many other gold-gilded trophies on the mantel in the Oval Office, over one hundred thousand fired federal employees and many shuttered federal agencies and departments to name just a few. And despite 59% of Americans in a recent poll stating that Trump has made their lives worse, Donald Trump is taking a victory lap for all that he has achieved in his first 100 days in office. Putting aside how he has changed this country, as in with a firehose of disinformation, destruction and a desperate overreach for power, give Trump credit for implementing many of the Project 2025 policies in record time. If ever there is a Presidential Hall of Infamy, he’d be a unanimous choice as the first inductee. What is becoming obvious to many after this 100-day period is that his thirst for power, vengeance and total domination is insatiable.
However, by focusing totally on Trump and Musk with his chainsaw antics, we are taking our eyes off the ball, and Travis Bazzanna can attest that this is not a good approach if you are intent of seeing yourself through this difficult innings in our country’s history.
I personally am recalling how Stephen Covey introduced me years ago to his “Paradigm Shift” theory. It was a career-changing concept then, and it helps me put things into perspective now. In short, if the changes from these past 100 days alarm you or have personally affected you, remember that Donald Trump and his sycophants are only implementing what the majority of Americans wanted him to do last November. Get This! MAGA existed long before Trump happened upon the national political scene. Early on he was in search of a cause that would usher him into the White House, and he found it! A vast number of disaffected Americans who yearned for America First policies that most times harmed those who were needy and those who do not adhere to the white supremacist male philosophy. For decades, their deep-seated prejudices were held in check by a culture which frowned upon openly discussing such topics in public. With Donald Trump, all that changed and it became even better, as Trump became the embodiment of all they held dearly, though privately, all these years. You want to know what a paradigm shift looks like? The angst some Americans have felt since Trump’s election should not be confined to what the President is going to do next, but that millions of Americans agree with what he is doing! A recent poll of independent voters who confirmed that they had voted for Trump, when asked if today, would they do so again, each and every one of them said yes! Many had concerns over his handling of the economy or deportations, but even with their reservation, they would vote for him again. Get This! This is the face of America; unfiltered, unvarnished, unveiled.
What about the tens of thousands of Americans who are out protesting each week and on actively coordinated weekends, millions of Americans show up to protest what’s been happening in their lives and to this country? Well, we know Trump is a transactional, bottom-line businessman, or so we are led to believe. If I’m in the White House and I count two million people who hate what I’ve been doing, I look at the other side of the ledger. There are roughly 350 million people in this country. Anyone could surmise that there are hundreds of millions of people who either support him or just don’t care. The most recent polls show, though, that at least 59% of the people disapprove of what Trump is doing. The question becomes then what portion of America will acquiesce, Hitler/Germany style, and what portion will remain silently concerned or abhorred at what he is doing, and what portion of our country will actively resist, which will then leave us with those who are diehard Trump supporters to the death? The last time a President’s approval rating was as low as Trump’s after his first 100 days, was FDR’s third term, which occurred in the heart of the depression. What eventually transpired from these dire polling results? FDR was elected to an unprecedented fourth term of office.
The facts are Trump after 100 days in office is “not out” and more importantly, he is looking as confident as ever in completing his mission to implement the Project 2025 mantra. If Trump were a cricket batsman, he is looking to remain at the crease for as long as possible, and for those who are counting the days for the expiration of his term, think again!
Thinking beyond here and now, we are only one year out from the 250th anniversary of our country’s accepted birthdate. All those years ago principles were put in place, checks and balances hammered out by our founding fathers who sought to project a constitutional democracy into the future. Their fear of an autocratic dictator is what motivated them to draft a governmental statement that would recognize the rights and freedoms of the citizenry. And just like a cricketing batsman who is poised at 249 not out, our country will not be simply accredited its 250th anniversary if one year shy, we must acknowledge that as a country, we are not a constitutional democracy after all but prefer the whims of an autocratic dictator.
Nobody can predict the future, but while I still have the freedom to watch Travis Bazzaman play locally, that’s what I intend on doing. I want to see what the good side of “100 not out” looks like.