By MONTE DUTTON

The heat is here to stay. It’s July in earnest, and earnest, of course, leads to August. Soon the countdown to football begins. Once the players get accustomed to overheating, the fans will heat up, and the weather makes no difference in that.

The level of sportsmanship on the field is much higher than off it, at least in the parts of the world I frequent. If it were up to me, I would not recite a high-minded message on the public address. I would hand every fan a little card to put in his or her wallet with a simple reminder that the other team, not to mention the officials, is trying, too. The opposition is not inherently evil. Nor are the good guys (or gals) inherently pure. This old world has few saints and few sinners. Most are somewhere in between.

Charley Pride sang a song, written by Bill Rice, titled “Wonder Could I Live There Anymore.” The world is changing at a dizzying pace. Much of life is better; a good bit of it is worse. The best you can do is try in vain to keep up.

All-star events are worse, every sport, top to bottom. It’s called lip-synching in music.

Is there anyone on earth who doesn’t wish All-Stars still wore their own team’s uniforms? I didn’t think so.

When I was a boy, we played pickup football games and used an ingenious system to choose sides. We all had uniforms of various levels of protection. We’d just show up in someone’s yard or pasture, and everyone who happened to show up in a white jersey played for one team, and everyone in a colored jersey, any color, played for the other. A successful kick went over an electric wire, relatively straight.

It’s been a long time since it was fashionable to declare sports a microcosm of life, but it still is. I used to think sports suffered from a decline in fundamentals. Now I think life in general suffers from it. Whether preacher or teacher, salesman or mailman (Salesperson? Mailperson?), politician or clinician, integrity is in retreat, and loyalty means less. No one is treated worse than the loyal.

Salvation lies only in the young. The world hasn’t torn them down yet. All the old folks can do is install mirrors, stare at them and hope the kids can mend what they (we) tore down.

Kurt Vonnegut, John Prine, Bill Nye, Rod Serling, Jimmy Carter, Dolly Parton and the Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, tried to tell us. We like them. We just didn’t listen to them.

You know what else is a microcosm of life? Climate change. If the weather heated up as much as humanity, the oceans would be boiling.

Everything human is a combination of nature and nurture. The percentages vary on a case-by-case basis.

The phrase that best describes America and quite possibly everywhere else is “knowing just enough to be dangerous.” I love writing about young people because the world hasn’t messed them up yet. The young have always known just enough to be dangerous. They have an excuse.

Fortunately, every generation thinks the next one is crazy, which thinks the same in reverse. Merle Haggard asked “Are the good times really over for good?” 41 years ago. I hope there’s someone left to ask it 41 years from now.

The world can’t have too many team players, that is, unless they’re, uh, teaming up for something sinister.

I feel like I’m sitting here writing a latter-day Poor Richard’s Almanac. Fewer are wealthy, but they are very wealthy. Fewer are healthy, but they are very healthy. Fewer are wise, period. Wise has a hard time turning enough profit to satisfy the investors.

I admire the young in spite of being old. I feel more comfortable with black people even though I’m white. More and more women impress me even though I’m a man. More and more things make me laugh that others don’t find funny.

Wally and the Beaver didn’t grow up to rule the world. Eddie Haskell did.

You may find this depressing. It’s not clinically depressed. It’s depressed for a damn good reason. Next time I’ll try to activate my interior cheerleader. I’ve still got high hopes, high hopes, high apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes.

Fortunately, they don’t play all-star games every night.

I’d love for you to purchase the softcover edition of my baseball novel, The Latter Days, for a mere $11.99, but I’d also love for you to read it on your “device” for a mere $2.99. Worth a shot, don’t you think? You can find most of my books at MonteDutton.net. If you’d like to donate to the coverage here, send a check to DHK Sports, P.O. Box 768, Clinton, S.C.  29325 or become a patron of the site and, by extension, me.