Word: talismans
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...HARDEST 'HITTER' OF ALL TIME. With these ghostly memories still in sight, how hard it is for the nostalgic baseball fan to come to peace with progress. Yet the truth must be acknowledged: the new Comiskey Park represents a hopeful beacon for the future of baseball. It is a talisman that the wonder of the game will survive this era of luxury sky boxes, insanely lucrative television contracts and pouty $4 million sluggers. "What's happening in baseball architecture is what you see here today," says architect Richard deFlon, who designed the new Comiskey for the HOK Sport group. "This...
Then what does that Grammy, a little gold-plated Gramophone on a pedestal, represent? A souvenir of a TV extravaganza. A talisman of mainstream commercial success. A bit of show-biz immortality that, since this is show biz, after all, is more tenuous and suspect than other varieties of eternal fame (anyone remember 1980's five-Grammy grand slammer Christopher Cross?). Sinead O'Connor is right: the Grammys probably do "respect mostly material gain." But in the words of a very prominent Grammy wanna-grab, we're living in a material world...
...makes it too, because he carries with him a kind of human talisman, an ancient named Colonel Sun, who bears every possible intimation of immortality. It becomes increasingly clear that the colonel's memory, while selective, goes back centuries, that Sun has a handy way with magic and, yes, an evil eye. He has a ready street wit too. When an earnest Californian wants to know his religious beliefs, he retorts, "If there were any gods, they would be on earth making us do their laundry for them...
...measure a baseball fan by his boyhood heroes. On the wall behind Fay Vincent's desk is the original artwork from Whitey Ford's 1953 Topps baseball card, a talisman of the bygone era when the New York Yankees symbolized success, stability and smug superiority. If Joe DiMaggio personified grace, and Mickey Mantle represented God-given talent, then Ford, the gritty little lefty ace of the pitching staff, was guile elevated to Hall of Fame standards. This quality is not lost on the baseball commissioner, who says with reverence, "He had the greatest pick-off move to first...
Irises, it seemed at the time, was the picture that saved the art market after Black Monday -- Oct. 19, 1987 -- when Wall Street plunged 508 points. Actually, the market was running quite high between the crash and the sale of Irises, but the painting was greeted as a talisman. Bond beefed up the security arrangements on the top floor of his headquarters in Perth to fortress strength and unveiled his acquisition -- the only Van Gogh in Australia -- to the press. "This isn't just a great painting!" he exulted to the cameras. "It's the greatest painting in the world...