Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 79 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.
Today’s book is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift. This passage is from Gulliver’s trip to Brobdingnag, a land of giants.
It is the custom, that every Wednesday, (which as I have before observed, was their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes, dine together in the apartment of his Majesty; to whom I was now become a favourite; and at these times my little chair and table were placed at his left hand before one of the salt-sellers. This prince took pleasure in conversing with me; enquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe, wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his judgement so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said. But, I confess, that after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country; of out trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the State; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroaking me gently with the other, after an hearty fit of laughing, asked me whether I were a Whig or a Tory. Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the main-mast of the Royal Sovereign; he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur…
Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.
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