Hot Shots with Bald Spots

Over at the Patrick Finley Memorial Fantasy Baseball League website, the video is called "We are Sparta." But the illusions fall away the greater the distance, so I think over here I will label it, "God, We're Old."

Shall I not then (and you know I shall) quote the final lines of Tennyson's "Ulysses," a poem describing how the great adventurer, returned home after the end of the Trojan war and his great and terrible journey --but not happy to be home safe: old and bored, those Siamese twins -- decides...


How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life.

.... and chooses to reembark with his old comrades, giving the lie to Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion."

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

You can almost hear the scrape of the walkers as those ancient mariners limp down the dock. I dare say you note the resemblance.