David Moo, ridiculed anime voice actor and head bartender, works Wednesdays and Fridays. David is well known in the greater Park Slope area among civilians and service industry folk for his creative and precise cocktails, not for Xellos on The Slayers: NEXT and The Slayers: TRY. He is known even less for his wit and wisdom, the topic of this haphazard new Aantiks series, Lessons from Quarter Bar.

This past Wednesday, or was it last Friday?, I was blessed with a sneak peak at David’s new cocktail, You And Me, a play on umami as well as a little liberal counterculture news. ‘The Baffler’s Back!’ raves the Chicagoist in a bland fanboy post. The news was broken on the 24th by some news organization, honestly breaking news doesn’t matter at all anymore, that ‘Thomas Frank is reviving The Baffler, the beloved left-wing magazine of business and culture he started in Chicago in 1988.’ I stole the words in quote from The Observer which provides a quick, informative read to get you up to speed on this cult mag.

David had subscribed to first incarnation of The Baffler, as had a beautiful, married Brazilian girl sitting at the bar with her boyfriend. They gushed over its return providing me and my drunk compatriots with the facts: Frank had criticized our new found prosperity under the Clinton administration – buy now, pay interest – and the budding consumer culture that left no room for any other culture; The old mag was published sporadically, the new mag would be published twice per annum; Frank was from Chicago.

Doesn’t sound terribly counterculture does it? We all put a healthy amount of hot air into the ‘American culture of excess’ balloon. The media doesn’t though. While The Baffler’s critical pronouncements have become mainstream ideas, we still lack an authoritative, or organized, voice dedicated to this particular cultural theme. Hence the exhuming of The Baffler.

David seemed excited about The Baffler 2.0, though I didn’t get a chance to really quiz him on it – my bar mates didn’t quite understand the gravitational pull of the mainstream on fringe ideas (the mainstream is a blackhole, hehe). He made it a point to characterize the mag as counter/fringe culture with a self awareness of its own mainstream mutability. Much of what David talks about is well crafted and thoughtful, but he said this with a hint of pain in his voice. Typically there is alternately fire, love and muted condescension in his voice, but seldom real pain.

Ideas are like summer thunderstorms, hundreds of bolts of electricity arcing from an ether of clouds illuminating your own musings, before you are again left in a long drought with no complementary or supplementary flashes falling from the sky to complete your angle or turn you around. Twitter struck with a June 24th tweet from @BBHLabs asking its followers to discuss the rise of #fringeadvertising signaling the medium’s death at Adbuster Culturejammer HQ. Creative twentysomethings now scoff at older admen wtih such disdain that they forget what the true power of their creativity is. Not only is their power true, but it is great. Uncle Ben’s (Spiderman not rice) words will never be lost on our generation: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. (I’m trying to make sure the clarity this storm brought for me is not lost but attaching something rather weighty and mainstream.)

Are we to rely on old men like Thomas Frank to bail out our culture? Blogging, twittering and Facebook status updating these ideas does not a revolution make. Publishing a magazine, actually fucking publishing a magazine is way harder than blogging, has a weight and tangibility that I’m afraid the Internet does not. Even if the writing on the Internet were to get to a 9th grade level, it still seems an unlikely springboard for a modern “renaissance”. We can write creative copy,  put Patrick Ewing in a Snickers commercial, and continually polish an already shiny Apple, OR we can write about things that really matter to each of us. Possibly, in the process, spending less time in the office.

As such, I’m inspired to talk a little baseball with you. A couple of weeks ago, I was catching a Sunday Night Baseball game between the Dodgers and Cubs with one of my sports handicapped friends at Toby’s Public House. The Dodgers were pummeling the Cubs at the friendly confines of Wrigley field so we weren’t too wrapped up in the game, at least my buddy, who is a mild Cubs fan, was not. He was chatting with the bartender about the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade, which took place this past Saturday, when I saw a sharp ground ball hit to the right of the veteran Cubs first baseman Derrick Lee. After making a diving stab, D Lee threw to second base to get the lead runner. As he is making this throw I think to myself, will the Cubs pitcher, a middle reliever whose name escapes me, be agile or smart enough to cover first for the 3-6-1 double play? He doesn’t and the play is over with the batter reaching on a fielder’s choice.

As overly cerebral as I am, watching or playing sports is like putting on an oversized suit, my head becomes smaller and my body bigger. My mouth begins to run out of control. Any pain I feel dissipates. Any anxieties plaguing my decision making are forgotten as my thighs and calves swell. I’m ready for action. The possibility of a 3-6-1 double play has put me in this state and my buddy takes notice. “What happened?” he asks searching the television screen for answers.

Naturally he is not impressed by the play. “Yeah, I wouldn’t expect the pitcher to get to first, I mean, how can he even make it there?” I raise my empty for a refill and explain the mound is closer to the first than home and that pitchers are trained to cover first on any ground ball hit to their left (towards first base). Getting no reaction, I realize I shouldn’t have expected one. This is fairly esoteric baseball stuff. Well, prepared to be enlightened.

Baseball is all numbers. Pitcher = 1, Catcher = 2, 1B = 3, 2B  = 4, 3B = 5, SS = 6. Outfielders aren’t important for this discussion. So a 3-6-1 double play starts with the 1B, makes a stop at the SS, and is realized with the pitcher. Typically, double plays are 4-6-3, or 6-4-3. Rarer, but still common double plays are 5-4-3 (AROUND THE HORN!) and are personally my favorite. A 5-4-3 requires the ball to travel 180 feet, 90 feet from third to second and another 90 to first. As does a 3-6-1, so I was and still am a bit perplexed as to why they are less common.

My hypothesis is relying on a pitcher to complete a double play is contrary to the old baseball axiom to never force the play, to take the safe out and make sure you don’t keep the runners in motion. A fairly mundane conclusion to this inspired post, but it is the pure skill and excitement of a 3-6-1 DP that is to be cherished. Not only does the ball need to go 180 feet, but the SS must avoid a maliciously sliding runner to make an especially accurate throw to a pitcher who has a normal sized glove and little practice picking the ball out the dirt on an in-between hop. (!) Lucky for me, this weekend’s Boston Red Sox game broadcast on FOX gave me the pleasure of seeing one completed by, of all people, the ancient knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. Thanks Baseball Gods! (who were also smiling on the Cubbies this weekend)