WHAT PART OF NO...
by Bryce Martin

What part of no do I not understand? I am glad you asked.

No Pepper.

No Haiku.

No Masse.

The above are three areas of masterful art I grew up with that are no longer welcome in this world. In addition, and more importantly, all three have the word �no� in front of their action to drive home the point in no uncertain manner. The �no� is quite definite. (And, purely offered as an aside, �No Haiku� is the only one of the three that is a sentence and not a fragment.)

I can see reasons to eliminate haiku and masse, which I will discuss later, but I never imagined the game of pepper in baseball would be outlawed and declared taboo and fall by the wayside. (I am being redundant to show emphasis.)

Yet, pepper, the baseball variety, for all practical purposes is gone, or is, at least, being shown the door. I can explain pepper to you if you are not familiar with the exercise, but your best bet would be to buy, rent or borrow the series of videos titled Baseball: A Film, by Ken Burns. It is a boxed set of nine (Nine, get it?) There are snippets of old time ballplayers playing pepper, tossing the ball behind their backs and generally having a grand old time with it. It is the baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters tossing the ball around in warm-ups at the free throw circle to the strains of �Sweet Georgia Brown.�

I remember Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates using a 40-ounce bat and holding it with one hand to conduct pepper sessions. He and his teammates did it the same way we sandlotters did it. A few players would form a semicircle and toss the ball to a batter at close range. The batter peppered the ball back off the bat, where it was handled as best one can handle a short-range missile and it was quickly tossed back to the batter, who peppered another shot, and so on, fastly. It was supposed to be a good warm-up, one to improve hand and eye coordination. It was usually done around the backstop area.

Major League baseball parks today boast �No Pepper� signs around the home plate region. Some say the little game tears up the turf. Others say a ball might fly into the stands and injure a paying customer. I do not know the real reason. I do not see how there could be a real reason.

If you ever tried to submit poetry for publication or to enter in a contest, you would usually see the two-word sentence that served as a warning: No haiku. Haiku is a 17-syllable poem made up of 5-7-5 lines, and is considered by many to be so lowbrow as to not deserve merit or attention, much like the split infinitive I just tossed out. I did not disagree. I mean who would not aspire to higher poetry.

Masse is just a fancy French word that means �Don�t rip a tear in my expensive pool table cover.� The technique of masse involves a method of striking a cue ball off center where it will curve around one ball to hit another. The problem with this is that you have to elevate the butt of the cue stick until it is almost perpendicular with the table and, while the other hand forms a bridge not supported by the table, you strike down on the cue ball. As you might be able to picture, there is a good chance that the tip of the cue stick will keep going and damage the green cover.

As a kid growing up, I never quite understood every single no spouted by all the grownup sorts. I still do not.

TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "As ragged as the last rose of summer."

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