And yet another day at sea - Guest Speakers

There is an art to being an entertaining speaker. I can’t do public speaking at all, but that doesn’t prevent me from evaluating others.  We have guest speakers daily, on a wide variety of topics. One lady’s presentation was billed as, “I worked for 30 years for the Sultan of Brunei, then the richest man in the world.” I figured a woman working in Brunei for the Sultan, especially back in the 50’s or 60’s, would have some spellbinding tales to share. If she had them, she kept them to herself. How someone who had lived in such an interesting place, with interesting people, during interesting times, could be so boring – was in itself an accomplishment. Just by accident, it seems like she would have come up with at least one good story. Each story would start and lead endlessly nowhere except to the next dull story. She must have said “I, me or my” 1057 times during the course of the hour long lecture. If she got a free cruise for those talks, at best she earned an inside cabin on a weekend cruise. On the other hand, Art Howe, a baseball player, coach and later manager for the Oakland A’s spoke today. I am not even a sports fan and seldom knew the people he was talking about, but his stories were entertaining. For example, he was asked, “What do you say when you go talk to a pitcher on the mound?” He related a story about when he had a pitcher on the mound at the ballpark in Cincinnati. At that particular park when anyone hit a homerun they set off fireworks.  His pitcher threw to the first guy at bat and bam – a homerun. Fireworks went off all across the stadium.  The second batter walks up; the pitcher throws the ball, bam – another home run – lots of fireworks.  He starts to call the bullpen for a new pitcher when the third batter comes to bat, bam - a home run, even more fireworks. He says to his coach, “Quick go to the mound and talk to this guy until I can get another pitcher up here”. He said he turned his back to the field to call the bullpen and when he turned around the coach, pitcher and ump were all laughing. Not thinking the situation funny, he asked the coach when he returned, “What did you say to him”? The coach replied, “I just told him to try to stall a while the fireworks guys needed time to reload “.  Then he told about his first game when he finally made it to the “Big Leagues”.  His first time at bat he hit the pitch – sort of a lob that was caught and they were able to make a triple play.  His second time at bat  – he hits the ball, they caught it and they made a double play. So his first game in the Big Leagues, two times at bat and he had caused his team 5 outs.  He walked dejectedly back to the dugout – and the coach said, “It’s alright son – at least you’re improving”.  His next topic is “Money Ball”, the movie. I liked the movie and can’t quite imagine him being, as portrayed, the cranky manager. I’ll let you know if it is worth reporting on or maybe even if it isn’t, but it is just a slow day at sea.