the_nub.html
“Politics
and
baseball. Interesting blog…called ‘The
Nub’ on perfectpitcher.org.”
-
Boston Globe
“I’ve
been reading The
Nub with much delight, and learning from it.”
- Bill Moyers
(Posted 4/26/08)
Attention, ladies and gentlemen, now
pitching questions at
the political plate, southpaw columnist E.J. Dionne:
“Will
younger voters
or older voters set the tone of the campaign? Will past divisions over
race and
religion reassert themselves, or will the electorate decide to push
them aside
in the interest of a new 21st-century politics?” - Washington
Post
If
those are the potential game-deciders in the
Democratic presidential contest – and there is good reason to think
they are -
the prospect of victory has paled, it says here – for Barack Obama.
Anyone familiar with politics and
baseball knows that,
though alike in many ways, they differ on the basis for how victory is
achieved. Major league teams need regular
injections of youth to establish a winning tradition.
Candidates for higher office know that
dependence on young voters is almost always misplaced.
Why?
The young are blessed with - or prey to - distractions: dating,
new
jobs, weekend trips, summer vacations, etc.
They have historically lacked the follow-through possessed by
older
voters in whom the political habit is ingrained.
With the coming of warm weather, there
is a sense that the
early enthusiasm of the young for Obama has cooled.
He is no longer the new thing in their lives;
they’ve moved on. Returns in Pennsylvania and Ohio
show that the votes of the under-30s came nowhere near matching those
of the
white working class Democrats, once the party’s base.
An early sign that Howard Dean would not go
all the way in the 2004 Dem primaries came when he was asked at a NYC
event how
he proposed to reach working people in the party. He
said he was depending on supportive labor
unions for help in that effort.
If Obama, like Dean, fails to make
personal, common-ground
contact with white lower-middle-class Dems, he could see Hillary snatch
the
nomination away in the 11th hour as John Kerry did early in
the ’04
contest from Dean. It could happen if
the Obama campaign continues to sputter, setting up a seismic shift in
the super-delegate
votes. Hillary could trigger that shift
by making this persuasive case: not only did Obama fail to win the
national
popular vote, he couldn’t reach the party’s difference-making bloc of
older supporters,
either.
The contest is certainly far from over
for the front-runner
in pledged delegates. But Obama, no
longer propelled by a popular groundswell, has a series of big
challenges to
meet if he is to stay ahead to the end.
The tests begin, a week from tomorrow, in Indiana
and North Carolina.
-
- -
The Mets, losers of five of their last six, have a problem
similar to Obama: overdependence (since
there’s no alternative) on the few young players they possess. The two-three-four pitchers in their starting
rotation - John Maine, Oliver Perez and Mike Pelfrey – are 26 (almost
27), 26
and 24, respectively. Pelfrey is still a
sporadic work in progress. Maine and Perez
have
established themselves as spiritual creatures of Robert Lewis
Stevenson, author
of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” One
doesn’t know when either of the pair are pitching whether it’s the good
Doc Maine or his alter-ego, the bad
Mr. Maine,
who is on the mound. The same applies
(only more so) to Doc Perez
and Mr. Perez. It’s obvious the Mets can
go just so far – not much beyond .500 - with one non-schizophrenic starter, Johan Santana. The
outlook becomes no brighter looking
toward the return of Pedro Martinez. We
all know he may be finished. As for
Orlando Hernandez, it’s impossible to gauge at this point what he has
left. The Mets can only hope it is more
than the
team’s fading first baseman.
Vignette: Tom Glavine was encountered
at Penn Station at 11 last
night, surrounded by his wife and four or five lively boys. “How did the Mets do?” he was asked. “They got killed,” one boy said.
“Two hits,” the ex-Met said, shaking his
head. “It was terrible.”
Stat City: The Yanks, with pitching problems of their
own, are a respectable eighth among the 30 MLB teams in hitting for
average -
.265; the Mets slipped from 14th to 20th, after last night’s debacle, .252. The Red Sox are first, at .299.
In team pitching, the Mets are a surprising sixth
in ERA – 3.61. The Yanks and Red Sox are
28th and 24th, respectively – 5.38 and 4.98. The top MLB team in ERA – the Oakland
Athletics, 2.94.
“Politics
and
baseball. Interesting blog…called ‘The
Nub’ on perfectpitcher.org.”
-
Boston Globe
“I’ve
been reading The
Nub with much delight, and learning from it.”
- Bill Moyers
(Posted 4/19/08)
Jimmy Carter is a big Atlanta Braves
fan. Since he knows his baseball, the
former
president surely knows how hard it is for players who have had glory
years in
another city return there and be booed while playing for their current
team. Think of Johnny Damon going back
to Boston and Jason Giambi to Oakland.
In his effort to stop Mideast violence,
Carter has been
snubbed, if not booed, by the Israeli government, on whose behalf he
worked for
peace with Egypt
while president in the 1970’s. The
reason: Carter, again on a peace mission, met this week with officials
of
Hamas, the democratically elected Palestinian government Israel
considers a terrorist organization. Just
as some of the local media in Boston
and Oakland
said the booing
fans were off-base, so the Israeli newspaper Al Haaretz (batting for a
popular
majority who support talks with Hamas) took this swing at the Ohlmert
government:
“When an outside
observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in
international affairs, sees (the injustice) in the system of separate
roads for
Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel's control over
Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued
settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and
signed. (Why is this) a matter that
cannot be accepted(?). The interim political situation in the
territories has
crystallized into a kind of apartheid that has been ongoing for 40
years…In the
peace agreement with Egypt, 30 years ago, Israel agreed to "full
autonomy" for the occupied territories, not to settle there.
”These promises have been forgotten by Israel, but Carter
remembers…In
terms of results, at the end of the day, Carter
beats out any of those who ostracize
him. For the peace agreement with Egypt,
he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.”
Here
at home, Carter has been razzed by both Democratic presidential
candidates for
taking part in the Hamas meeting. Barack
Obama, who received an implicit Carter endorsement last week, told
Jewish
leaders in Philadelphia
on Wednesday he had a “fundamental disagreement” with the former
president on
the issue. Neither candidate swung at the
hot potato of Israel’s
settlement activity in the West Bank;
nor did
it come up in the widely booed ABC-TV debate Wednesday night.
- -
-
Coincidental
with Passover, herewith an unofficial list of Jewish major leaguers: Brad Ausmus, Houston; Ryan Braun, Milwaukee; David Eckstein, Toronto;
Gabe Kapler, Milwaukee; Scott Schoeneweis, Mets.
Incidentally,
Eckstein, who played on two different World Series teams – the Angels
(’03) and
Cardinals (’06) - thought he was in line to be signed as a free agent
to play
second for the Mets. Omar Minaya gave
Luis Castillo a four-year deal instead.
As of this morning, Eckstein is batting .290, Castillo .222.
The
Mets’ Aaron Heilman never wanted to be permanently assigned to the
bullpen. He is making the case for being
relieved of his relief role. His line so
far this season: In 11.1 innings, Heilman has given up seven runs and
eight
hits, of which three have been HRs. He
has walked seven on his way to an ERA of 5.56.
Significant
stat dept: The Yankees are 24th,
the Mets 26th out of 30 in coming through when runners are
in
scoring position with two outs. The Mets
are batting .177, the Yanks .186 with two-out opportunities.
The
Globe’s Gordon Edes had an interesting anecdote and observation in the
paper
around the time of the midweek Red Sox-Yankees series:
Sean
Casey, on toppling over at second base, his helmet
falling over his eyes, Wednesday night:
“I was having a great time when I
fell. I go to [Derek ] Jeter,
'Can you get an (All Points Bulletin)out on that sniper?' He's like,
'Hey, Case, don't worry about it, nobody's watching this game tonight’.”
“Mike Lowell's disablement (says
Edes) is a reminder of how important health is over the course of a
season. The
Sox did not lose a single position player to the DL last season and won
the
World Series…Depth is important, underscoring the value of having a
Sean Casey
when Mike Lowell did go down.”
-
o -
(The Nub is a team effort skippered
by Dick Starkey. Comments to
dickstar@aol.com are welcome. Previous Nubs can be found by clicking
below.)
the_nub archive
