WHAT, ME CHANGE? ARE YOU CRAZY!

Sometimes the pieces to a puzzle can come together in surprising ways. Take these pieces: Paddy Bauler, George Steinbrenner, Lou Piniella and Barack Obama. When you shake 'em up and position them together just so, you get a picture of why reform in America comes so hard. Stick with me here...!

Paddy Bauler -- a sleazy but popular old-time Chicago ward boss -- infamously said: "Chicago ain't ready for reform!" George Steinbrenner -- outspoken Yankees owner -- called down to Piniella his manager during a 1987 game with the California Angels: "I want you to make the umpires check the Angel's pitcher. He's scuffing the ball!"

Fast-forward to President Obama's mission to reform the health care system. Whether you agreed with him or not, you knew and he knew that getting anything reformed in this country is tough. But not always for the reasons given. Go back to the Yankee/Angel's game.

The Angel pitcher that day was Don Sutton who was notoriously known in the League for scuffing. He was a ball-doctor with a reputation in every dugout. So Piniella patiently explained things to his boss: "George, do you know who taught him how to cheat...? Steinbrenner didn't. "The guy who taught Don Sutton everything he knows about cheating is the guy pitching for us tonight! Do you want me to go out there and get Tommy John thrown out, too?"

See, here's the problem with reforming anything in this life. Everything is somehow connected to every other thing. Picture one of those human pyramids the cheerleaders make along the sidelines. If you find one of the cheerleaders isn't performing just the way you want, you could yank her out. And you call that reforming the problem. Only when you change one thing, all the other things change too. And, well, we just don't like change in our lives once we're used to something.

Call it the Law of Inertia or the Law of Paddy Bauler, but it ain't easy to revoke any law. Somebody just did. Now we're about to see how the pyramid reshuffles itself.

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