| Kirk Gibson Seconds after the Famous Home Run |
That's background. Here's the point. A couple of brothers, Chad and Doug Dreier, just paid at auction--are you ready for this?--$575,912 for the bat* Gibson hit the homer with. As if that were not enough, they bought his jersey, too. That was a mere $303,277, his batting helmet ($153,388), plus the National League MVP award and World Series trophy for another $155,871. All that totals up to a tidy $1.2 million.
Now what's your definition of decadence? This fits mine. For you see, some people inhabit a perpetual playground no matter what's happening in the rest of the world and the other people in it. I don't know, this kind of conspicuous consumption somehow just doesn't seem right to me. Can't exactly say why, because ofttimes the general public ends up benefiting from the acquisitions of private collectors. Still . . . You're free to disagree.
*only the second highest amount ever paid for a bat. The one that Babe Ruth used to hit the first home run ever in Yankee Stadium went for $1.265 million in 2004.
6 comments:
That's the one! The home run Gibby hits to win in '84!!!
I remember where I was (outside), what I was doing (listening to radio and weatherstripping bathroom window)and yelling for joy!
I like your flow on this.
However, remembering how I danced in the darkling (it was after sunset) daisies (in the flower bed outside the window)when the Tigers won (under the tutelage of Sparky Anderson), it is the fortunate ones who have the ability to be in a perpetual playground, to be able to dance when the spirit moves them.
The slaves of consumption that spends thousands on sports bric-a-brac sadly attempt to play, but all they can do is to feebly try to build a playground................
bigger and better than anyone else's........
and I think such attempts end up pretty much like Michael Jackson's Neverland.
Of course, I don't remember a Gibson HR connected with the Tigers, where I do know he played for several seasons. And yes, I think at the levels we're discussing consumption does become a competition. For the rest, it's just keeping up, no?
I find it so unusually bizarre...
It is not like a potlatch where one feeds people and spreads wealth and good cheer and what not.
I don't know. It seems as if the consumers in question see consumption as their best and foremost means of communication.
It may become a competition, but in its essence it seems a sad attempt at "play" using the only things available in their impoverished imaginations.
It is a sad attempt at play, and a failed attempt, because it never manages to jump out of the realm of the mundane everyday world.
This is a very interesting theory. As always, you see facets invisible to others.
I agree that people use consumerism to try and communicate to others what kind of person they are. But is that a conscious decision people make, or a by-product of the fact that since our country began we've been inhabiting consumptive culture?
Probably the latter.
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