42 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 42 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 Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis. This excerpt is about the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.

The full and better-recorded salvo came late in 1800 and early in 1801, during the debate in the House of Representatives over the presidential deadlock between Burr and Jefferson. Since everyone knew that Jefferson was Hamilton’s implacable political enemy, the kind of elusive target who seemed to be put on earth by God to subvert Hamilton’s visionary plans for a powerful federal government, Hamilton’s strong endorsement of Jefferson as “by far not so dangerous a man,” who possessed “solid pretensions to character,” only served to underline his contempt for Burr. “As to Burr there is nothing in his favour,” Hamilton observed, then went on: “His private character is not defended by his most partial friends. He is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement…If he can he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure himself permanent power and with it wealth. He is truly the Catiline of America.”

This mention of Catiline is worth a momentary pause, in part because the reference is so unfamiliar to modern ears as to seem meaningless, and also because it was so familiar to the leaders of the leaders of the revolutionary generation as to require no further explanation. By accusing Burr of being Catiline, Hamilton was making the ultimate accusation, for Catiline was the treacherous and degenerate character whose scheming nearly destroyed the Roman Republic and whose licentious ways inspired, by their very profligacy, Cicero’s eloquent oration on virtue, which was memorized by generations of American schoolboys. No one in the political leadership of the early American republic needed to be reminded who Catiline was. He was the talented by malevolent destroyer of republican government.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.