dimaggio and braud

On May 15, 1941, New York Yankee outfielder Joe DiMaggio began a 56-game hitting streak — the centerpiece of a legendary career transcending baseball and immortalizing DiMaggio. Sunday, Marist High infielder Kayla Braud concludes a prep softball career with her graduation — a day after she will attempt to defend her team’s state championship and extend her own streak to 103 games.

Make no mistake: Kayla is an elite athlete heading to a powerhouse program at the University of Alabama. She’s a young woman of great talent who possesses a work ethic that values sacrifice, discipline and effort. But these are the very qualities that define Kayla off of the field and demand that her community — Marist, Eugene, Lane County and Oregon — applaud Kayla for what her own immortal record actually represents.

Joe DiMaggio’s brother Dominic wrote Joe’s epitaph: “Dignity, grace, elegance personified.” A fitting description, also, of Kayla Braud the student and Kayla Braud the athlete.

Billy Ferrari, AP English teacher, Marist High Skule, Eugene, OR
Eugene Register Guard June 4, 2009


Mr. Ferrari’s Marist High School English class today

Good morning, class. I know your assignment over the weekend was to reread the essay you wrote about The Catcher in the Rye by Holden Caufield, oops sorry, I mean J.D. Salinger (aarrggh! why is that so hard for me to remember?!) in October and the essay you wrote about Chaucer’s, I mean Shakespeare’s Hamlet in February and to try to integrate the insights therein regarding selfhood, self-determinacy and the illusion of free will.

The plan was that students would voluntarily read sections of their essays and we’d have a class discussion based on your individual essays. But I’ve changed my mind.

[Heckler: How can you change something you don’t have?]

I want you to sit at your desks quietly and write essays comparing and contrasting the 1941 hitting streak by former New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio and the 2009 hitting streak by Marist High School Spartan Kayla Braud. Discuss at least seven similarities between Yankee DiMaggio and Spartan Braud and if time permits, discuss a difference.

Please excuse me while I go to the teacher’s room to watch reruns of fake University of Oregon students dressed in excruciatingly tight groin-and-thigh-revealing-knickers engage in homoerotic interpersonal contact while ostensibly trying to kick a dead pig over an elevated and horizontally situated piece of aluminum.

Dear Mr. Ferrari,

Thank you for providing yet another example of what a stupid Catholic moron you are and an opportunity to communicate my opinion of your AP English class and this pisspoor excuse for an educational institutional that my Catholic nutcase sperm and egg donors forced me to attend instead of allowing me the privilege of attending a school with an evidence-based curriculum collaboratively designed by educators and parents such as 4J or Bethel. [I realize the phrase “Catholic moron” is redundant and I apologize for my lack of pithiness.]

[to be completed at a later date]

Sincerely,

A student

P.S. What did the priest say to the altar boy?

Mmmm….ass!!!!!