Submitted by Philip R. Devlin.
“Deuces are wild in the big ballpark.”
That was one of Hall of Fame baseball announcer Red Barber’s signature catchphrases to describe a situation with two outs, two men on base, and the count on the batter was two and two in the “big ballpark,” i.e., Yankee Stadium. If Barber were alive today, he would no doubt delight in this Tuesday’s date of 2/22/22. (By the way, he died on the 22nd of October in 1992.)
Another person who might be delighted with this Tuesday’s date is Steven Tyler of Aerosmith who in 1994 wrote a hit song entitled “Deuces are Wild” apparently in reference to his girlfriend’s eyes:
”I love you ’cause your deuces are wild, girl
Like a double shot of lovin’ so fine
I’ve been lovin’ you since you was a child, girl
‘Cause you and me is two of a kind.”
Psychologists call the human ability to spot and to recognize patterns “apophenia,” but we should not get too carried away with our ability to recognize patterns, as other animals, insects— even viruses and computers— have this same ability. Numerology— the study of the patterns found in numbers— is a form of apophenia. Recognizing the palindromic nature of certain dates on the calendar such as November 11, 2011 (11/11/11) and February 22, 2022 (2/22/22) are examples of numerology.
The recognition of patterns such as in palindromic dates can be entertaining or fun and even very insightful and interesting, as in studying the Fibonacci sequence of numbers in nature, for example. However, taken to an extreme, apophenia can be a sign of psychiatric dysfunction such as in schizophrenia or conspiracy theorists who claim to see connections where they don’t really exist— a sad reality of our times.
Nevertheless, we humans seem to delight in dates such as 2/22/22. One news report recently references a Justice of the Peace in Las Vegas who is marrying people for $22 on 2/22. She is fully booked; in fact, news reports concerning marriages occurring this Tuesday abound. It seems the traditional Saturday nuptial ceremony takes a back seat to the power of numbers! I wonder how many will say “I do” at 2:22 in the afternoon of 2/22/22?
