the_nub_dec.html
December 2008 Archive
NY’s
Likely Political Rookie of the Year in ‘09
“The envelope, please, Governor
Paterson.”
“The next
U.S. Senator from New York
is…Joe Torre!”
That’s a
fanciful choice to replace Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton –
one of
13 “interesting people” – suggested by the New Yorker’s Hendrik
Hertzberg. He calls the names on Paterson’s
political list of potential
choices as “strikingly unimaginative.”
It’s doubtful that Torre has maintained a New York residence
that he may
have once had, just as it is unlikely that another from the Hertzberg
list,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has maintained his long-ago NY residential status. But Hertzberg’s game seems to be to justify Paterson’s probable selection of
Caroline
Kennedy: she is the only one on the governor’s list, Hertzberg says,
“that
qualifies as even marginally adventurous.”
It says here
that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo or Nassau County Executive Tom
Suozzi (for
whom we’ve worked in the past) would, based on their experience and
records, be
excellent choices. But both have a
gender-disadvantage - many believe the seat Clinton holds should be handed on to
a
woman. There’s a further sense that
Cuomo (like his predecessor Eliot Spitzer) has made himself almost
irreplaceable as AG. Most agreed in 2006
that gubernatorial candidate Suozzi had everything going for him except
timing:
he had chosen to go to bat against Spitzer, the widely acclaimed
“Sheriff of
Wall Street.”
As for the
three most frequently mentioned Congresswomen in the mix - upstater
Kirsten
Gillibrand, Manhattan and Queens Rep.
Carolyn
Maloney, and Brooklyn’s Nydia Velazquez - they would, under ordinary
circumstances, have much to recommend them: Gillenbrandt is a bright
new face;
Maloney has 16 years of experience in the lower chamber, and Velazquez
is the
rare Latina in federal elective office.
But none of them can match the illustrious name – the obvious
star power
– and access to money that Caroline offers.
There’s all that, and the fact that, until she came out for
Obama last January,
the 51-year-old daughter of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy had avoided
making enemies with political clout. She could be the “rookie of the year” in 2009
that Sarah Palin might have been in 2008 had she sparked Team McCain to
victory
in the presidential contest.
Had
the timing and other contingencies
worked out, Joe Torre going to the U.S. Senate would not have been
far-fetched. After winning four World
Series in five years in 2000, Torre was popular enough - downstate
anyway - to
succeed in joining another major leaguer, Kentucky’s Jim (No-Hit) Bunning, in
the
upper chamber.
- -
-
Anyone paying
attention to the affiliations of the 84 minor league all stars listed
last year
by Baseball America
could
not have been surprised by the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays as an AL power in ’08. The Rays owned seven of the stars chosen from
the six minor-league levels (nine position players and five pitchers at
each
level). That was more than other team
could claim. This year, three teams -
the Cardinals, Indians and Padres - placed six players each on the
all-star
rosters to share the distinction of having the most apparent blue-chip
farmhands
in baseball. They will bear the kind of
watching next season the Rays should have received this year.
Watching
39-year-old
Brett Favre run out of steam as the Jets’ season winds down should be a
cautionary lesson for baseball GMs.
Pitchers like Andy Pettitte, who will be 37 this June, are
especially susceptible
to late-season fatigue. Look what
happened to Andy last season, when, after a terrific start, he had to
settle
for a .500 W-L record (14-14). It’s a
lesson Brian Cashman may not yet have learned; Mets fans can hope Omar
Minaya
has, at last.
(Posted: 12/20/08)
Iraq’s Billy Wagner
of Political Counter-Spin
Mets fans remember the
pre-Santana-signing period a year ago
when Billy Wagner low-bridged the team’s “things-are-looking-fine” spin. “We’ve lost the 13 games that Tom Glavine
won,” he said, “and let go a catcher (Paul LoDuca) who wanted to win
more than
most guys. I think there’s reason to be worried.”
Shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi is the Billy
Wagner of political counter-spin. His
brush-back interruption of the Bush news
conference in Baghdad sent a clear
message to
the world: “Don’t believe the hype about things being fine in Iraq
as George
W. heads for the showers.”
A feature of Team Bush’s last season has been
a run of stories about how
the game in Iraq
is being won. Typical was this account
last winter in USA Today about progress a year ago this month: “U.S. deaths
were at their lowest levels since
the 2003 invasion, civilian casualties were down, and street life was
resuming
in Baghdad.”
Then, in April, Bush’s field manager General
David Petraeus reinforced a
series of “Surge-is-working”media reports: “Levels of violence and
civilian
deaths have been reduced substantially,” he told a panel of
senators.
“Al-Qaeda
Iraq
and a number of other extremist elements have been dealt serious blows."
And just the other day, the Washington Post
ran a story by its syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, which
suggested
our “hav(ing)
turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at
the epicenter of the Arab Middle East
into an
ally.”
It was not only the toss of the shoe that
exposed the new-friends-in-Iraq
myth; al-Zaidi’s words as he threw - “This is from the widows, the
orphans and
those who were killed in Iraq” - brought home the horror of what Bush’s
unprovoked pre-emptive war has produced.
And why our efforts to make Iraq a trusted democratic
ally will
never succeed.
More than a million Iraqi civilians are dead
as a result of the war –
that’s the stat reported by British sources - and another million felt
they had
to flee the country. The symbolic empty
shoe will be part of Bush’s legacy. It’s
a disembodied image expressive of what could be his epitaph -
pronounced in
2003 by historian Howard Zinn: “He has no respect for
human life."
The Mets wisely did no more than ask Wagner to
cool it in the future
(which he never did). The Iraqi
government would be equally wise to give al-Zaidi no more than a slap
on his
pitching wrist. All Iraq - indeed, the Arab,
and the
entire world - is watching.
- -
-
Baseball America’s
annual review of the minor leagues contains a possible clue as to why
the
Yankees have deemphasized their dependence on farm system call-ups and
reemphasized paying big bucks for big-time free agents.
The Yanks had only two players - Brett
Gardner, at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, and catcher Jesus Montero
at low
Class A Charleston, SC - among the 84 all stars chosen from the six
minor-league levels this past season (14, nine position players and
five
pitchers at each level). Last year, they
had five, led by Edwar Ramirez and Ian Kennedy.
The Red Sox, who placed three players among the 84 all-stars in
2007,
had four this past season, headed by outfielder Chris Carter, at
Triple-A
Pawtucket, and pitcher Michael Bowden, at Double-A Portland, ME..
The Mets, who
have continually insisted that their farm system is better
than it looks, gave a speck of credence to that claim this year. The team went zero for 84 in 2007; not a
single all-star belonged to the Mets. This
year, they placed pitcher Brad Holt of Brooklyn on the Short-Season
A-league
all stars, and shortstop Wilmer Flores of Kingsport, TN,
on the Rookie League
stars. The NYMs, who finished 27th
of 30 in organizational standings (overall W-L at the six levels) last
year,
edged up to 25th in 2008. The
Yankees finished at the top of that category both seasons.
The Red Sox went from 12th in ’07
to 9th in '08.
(Posted: 12/16/08)
Errors Many of Us Miss
Errors of omission, the kind that don’t
show up in the box
score: an infielder’s failure to cover a base to force a runner, an
outfielder
letting a catchable foul fly fall because he thought it was curving
into the
stands.
In politics, such errors only show up
if we’re paying
attention. Team Bush launched a blistering
offense against the legal way the game was played in the U.S. There was a great outcry from spectators,
media people and officials close to the field.
But the players who could have turned things around and made a
key error
of omission instead were hardly noted.
Similarly, the Bush-ites arranged a
$700 billion bailout for
certain Wall Street teams, using public dollars. Again
came the protests of observers, followed
by yet another crucial error of omission by players who should have
been alert.
The reckoning is coming too late to
stop some of the
excesses, but in time to emphasize the identity of those ultimately at
fault,
those who failed to make the possibly game-saving plays.
In a double-header on Bill Moyers’
Journal the other night, leadoff
man Glenn Greenwald of Salon reviewed in striking words what we already
knew in
an unfocused way: Team Bush’s offense,
he said, was “a declaration of war on the
whole idea of law itself, on the idea that our political leaders are
constrained in any way by the limitations of the American people
imposed
through our Congress.”
We
expected those limitations to be imposed, he
said. Instead “Congress
(became)
virtually invisible, impotent, powerless, by its own accord, almost
voluntarily…We
need Congress to reassert itself in terms of how the government
functions.”
In the second
spot, Moyers had Georgetown
U. economics professor Emma
Coleman Jordan
address the error connected with Team Bush’s early bailout. She said when Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson went to bat, he hit what should have been an easy force-out: “(Paulson)
believed that by fixing the problem at the top,
by giving the money with trust to his peer institutions on Wall Street,
the
money would trickle down in the form of lending to consumers and
businesses.
And the economy would be restored. And so that way of thinking
dominated his
decision making…
“The
facts (contradicting that belief)…. clearly on display
were simply ignored.”
After scoring
what she called “the highest officials in the
land” for “less-than-capable” decision-making, Coleman Jordan
referred
to the more egregious error of omission, the second, committed by
players in
the House and Senate: “I have to ask a question of accountability
for our elected officials. You've got to
step up and do more to make sure that there is proper oversight before
you let
the money go out the door.”
The
bipartisan failure to step up should be noted. Although
the Congressional lineup was
top-heavy with Democrats, the Republicans could have stopped the
majority from
going along. Team GOP has shown it can
slow the game up in its anti-Labor stance over the auto industry
bailout.
-
-
-
Balks from the Box Seats (re previous Nub):
“I
am pretty sure (Bush)
will be remembered more for leading the country from fiscal stability
into a
massive recession with gargantuan deficits, rather than for his ability
to
prevent terrorist events.” -
Hedge-Fund
manager
“I think
the
notion of credit for Bush that there has not been another terrorist
attack is
wrong…These things come in almost every country with long intervals; in
the US,
it was more than eight years between early 1993 (the first attack on
the
WTC) and 9/11/2001.” - Health Affairs Consultant
“The
Yankees don't win because they
have more money. They win because they use the money they have to
build
better teams that in turn let them attract fans who generate more money
which
they use to build better teams, etc. By contrast, President Bush
inherited a strong franchise, wasted his capital and left without a fan
base.” - Member, NY
State Judiciary.
Could there be a
connection between
the heavy hit Mets boss Fred Wilpon may have taken in the collapse of
friend
Bernard Madoff’s investment firm and the loss of the team’s interest in
signing
a top-tier startng pitcher? The guess
here is the answer is no; before the Madoff story broke, the Mets were
already
into their penny-pinching mode. The talk
now is of their signing moderately priced Randy Wolf (12-12
with San Diego
and Houston
in
’08) to join a rotation of Johan Santana, Mike Pelfrey, John Maine and
Jonathan
Niese. Three of that five are not going
to scare anybody. If Oliver Perez is
re-signed - a 50-50 bet, according to Omar Minaya – the pitching
outlook will
be brighter, but not by much.
(Posted:
12/13/08)
The Tale of Two Georges
Before the
year that signaled
their retirement ends, let’s check the record book on two Georges with
baseball
and other things in common – George Steinbrenner and George W. Bush. One has already stepped down from his
seat
of power, the other will make his departure official next month. A skim of how they performed shows this:
Both led
baseball teams, of course
– Steinbrenner as owner of the Yankees from 1973 to this year, Bush as
co-owner
of the Texas Rangers from 1989 to 1994.
Both were Republicans and both ran afoul of the law, one
seriously.
Steinbrenner was convicted in 1974 of making illegal contributions to
President
Nixon’s re-election campaign and of obstruction of justice, a felony. He was spared a jail sentence and paid fines
instead. In 1976, Bush was arrested in Maine for
driving under
the influence of alcohol. He forfeited
his license.
Bush batted
1.000 when he went to
the plate in presidential contests, going two-for-two.
Steinbrenner teams won 10 pennants and six
World Series titles while he was in charge of the Yankees.
Both men held power against a backdrop of
unpopularity; each became associated with the phrase “evil empire.” Bush lost broad support for misleading the
country into the Iraq
invasion and acting to condone torture in the war on terror and curtail
civil
liberties at home. Steinbrenner was
booed, first, for buying all the best players, then for meddling in the
on-the-field running of his ballclub, frequently hiring and firing
managers,
etc.
In the end,
however, Steinbrenner
earned the respect of fans, players and even members of the media. Until this year, the Yankees had qualified
for the playoffs for 13 straight seasons, and between 1996 and 2000,
they won
four World Series titles. The team has
missed
that type of success this decade. As for
Bush, there was a major accomplishment on his watch that must be
acknowledged,
even by his detractors: After 9/11, the country remained untouched by a
second
terrorist attack. Like Ronald Reagan, on
whose watch Communism collapsed in 1989, Bush may be remembered,
however
grudgingly, for that single achievem
-
- -
The Yankees have returned to George S’s policy of buying the
best players available…and it has people in Red Sox Nation worried. The Globe’s Nick Cafardo saw the
Yanks as formidable even before they
signed A.J. Burnett:
“They
have always been on an island by themselves in terms of what they
can afford. They have tried to scale back that approach, trying to go
the farm
system route, but at the end of the day they revert to what they do
best - they
buy the best available players...The Yankees will now have a formidable
rotation with Sabathia at the head…Watch out.”
There’ll
be plenty of time to lament the lack of quality position
players filling holes in the Mets’ roster, so for today let’s hail the
good job
Omar Minaya did in landing Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz. Aaron Heilman may vindicate his early promise
as a starter with the Mariners, and Joe Smith may develop into a
reliable
relief specialist with the Indians. But
what they gave the Mets won’t be missed.
Endy Chavez is another story; he had spark as a sub – he could
run and
field, and hit enough. The Mets’ loss -
admittedly minimal - is the Mariners’ gain.
Two of the three minor leaguers dealt to Seattle may be heard from again:
first
baseman Mike Carp hit for moderate power - 17 HRs - and average, .299,
at
Double-A Binghamton last season. High
Class A third baseman Ezequiel Carrera was organizational leader in
triples -
12 - while batting .263 for St.Lucie.
The Mets are adding two Mariner marginals as part of the deal -
relief
pitcher Sean Green (4-5, 4.67 ERA) and outfielder Jeremy Reed (.269, 18
doubles, two HRs in 97 games).
-
o -
(Posted: 12/9/08)
Obama Needs
Fortified Bench to Make Crucial Plays
Bench strength: In politics as in baseball, it
separates
winners from losers.
The re-election of Saxby Chambliss in Georgia’s
Senate playoff last week means Team Obama will fall short of the
strength
needed to nail down a victory during crucial legislative plays. The Dem president’s team will have to recruit
the equivalent of one, two or (if Independent Joe Lieberman doesn’t go
along)
three rental players to have the numbers - 60 -to force a vote on a
bill that
will clinch the win. The rentals will
have to be recruited from a small group of free agents playing with the
GOP. The two most likely are Maine’s Olympia
Snowe
and Susan Collins, both of whom hit to all political fields.
Outside GOP rental possibilities are Pennsylvania’s
Arlen Specter, whom NY Times columnist Gail Collins sees as a
potentially
erratic addition to the Obama bench (“’Moderate and ‘deeply, deeply,
deeply
politically pragmatic’ are not precisely the same thing.”) and Ohio’s George
Voinovich. The Nation’s John Nichols
thinks the survival instinct may persuade the pair to play ball with
the Dem
team, if needed: “For
Specter and Voinovich, both of whom face what could be difficult 2010
reelection races in states that were won by Obama, it may be hard to
say no to
the president.”
The
name of the game: filibuster-blocking. Team
Obama knows its success will be
determined on how effectively it scores in that competition.
Hot-stove speculation about Hillary
Clinton, key member of
Team Obama’s core, is, well, heated. On
one hand, Israeli-affairs scholar Aaron David Miller is quoted in the
National
Journal as saying “Clinton's sensitivity
to
domestic politics may discourage her from pushing Israel
as well as the Arabs toward
concessions for progress.” On
the other, Robert Scheer predicts in
the San Francisco Chronicle that Hillary “will
leave her mark (as secretary of state) by
exploiting her pro-Israel creds to complete President Bill Clinton's
once
promising Mideast peace initiatives to finally provide the
Palestinians, and
Israelis, with viable states.”
- -
-
At this point, the chances of the Mets providing their fans with a
team good enough to make the playoffs
are slim. Why?
A shortage both of productive second-line
players and of a willingness to compete - that is, spend the money -
for more
than one top-tier free agent. No one
describes how puzzling it all is better than the Star-Ledger’s Dan
Graziano:
“If
you're the Mets, with your own TV network and a
beautiful new ballpark set to open in April, why be conservative? Why
let
yourself be priced out of Sabathia, Burnett and Lowe? Why fall in with
the
teams claiming the poor economy as a reason to hold back this
off-season and
see how the market develops?
“The Yankees
aren't holding back.
The Red Sox aren't. They're making plays for Sabathia and Mark
Teixeira, the
biggest names on the free-agent market. These are the big-money teams,
and the
big-money teams set the market -- they don't wait for the market to
come to
them. The Mets are a big-money team too.
They just don't act like it.”
-
o -
(Posted
12/6/08)
Team Obama May
Change U.S. Anti-Chavez Stance
Johan Santana…Carlos Zambrano…Francisco
Rodriguez…Magglio
Ordonez…Bobby Abreu
Those are some of the more than three
dozen Venezuelan major
league players. A peripheral,
just-off-the-black, benefit of Barack Obama’s taking over Team USA
is
the possibility Johan, Carlos, et al will no longer feel their
nationality is
frowned upon here for political reasons.
Team Bush didn’t like Venezuela’s
democratically elected skipper Hugo Chavez, mainly because he guided
his
country from the left side of the political playing field.
Six years ago, the Bush-ites were implicated
in a failed right-wing effort to force Chavez out of the game on his
home
turf.
Since then Chavez has considered the U.S.
government no friend and in a
speech at the UN called Bush a “devil”.
The tension between our “market democracy”and social-democratic
stances
spreading in Latin America is hardly
new. The yanquis,
we know, have meddled in the
region’s internal affairs since the late 19th century.
What is new is the near-unanimity with
which the U.S. media –
led by the NY Times and Washington Post - have echoed the government
line, much
as they did in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
The media’s latest anti-Chavez line drives came this week when
Hugo had
the Chutzpah to call for something NYC residents have been denied - a
repeat referendum on term limits. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald calls our press’s
consistent prejudicial parroting a disgrace:
“To
this day, Chavez's hostility towards the U.S. Government
(just as is
true for the hostility of Iranian and Cuban leaders and many others) is
depicted as proof of his dangerous extremism and irrationality -- even
his
mental instability -- as though American attempts to dictate who
governs other
countries will generate anger and resentment only among the Primitive,
the
Crazed, and the Evil. More generally, discussions of our own role
in
spawning anti-American sentiment around the world is still more or less
off
limits in mainstream discourse… And our political and media elite
continue to
bastardize language to justify whatever we do, with ’democracy’ meaning
’a
government that follows U.S. dictates regardless of how it gained and
maintains
power,’ and ‘dictatorship’ meaning ‘a
government not beholden to U.S. dictates even if they were
democratically
elected’."
Indeed,
speaking positively about their native land seems to be off-limits to
the
Venezuelan major leaguers, who maintain a prudent silence about
politics. The onetime exception: voluble
White Sox
manager Ozzie Guillen. Five years ago,
on leading his team to a World Series title, Guillen expressed his
national
pride before a U.S.
television audience. After
congratulating his team, Ozzie said with emotion: “Viva
Venezuela!”
-
-
-
When he
signed a five-year contract to be Mets GM four years ago, Omar Minaya
was
promised he would not have to share power with VP Jeff Wilpon, who had
undercut
Jim Duquette, Omar’s predecessor. That
promise apparently no longer applies after the two straight late-season
Mets
collapses. True, Minaya has been granted
a four-year contract extension, but Jeff, the boss’s son, has made
clear that
he and father Fred will be looking over Omar’s shoulder from now on. One reason: the four-year, $25 million
contract the GM gave to Luis Castillo, a deal Joe Sheehan of Baseball
Prospectus calls “the worst idea of Omar Minaya’s career.”
Jeff
Wilpon hinted at the dilution of Minaya’s authority the other day when
he
sought to quiet concerns about the Mets’ inactivity on the free-agent
and trade
fronts: "Omar
is comfortable with where we are…He's on the phone all of the time with
the
other GMs, trying to set things up ... He knows where he's going and
where he
wants to go. We're going to let him do
that."
Post-script
to the lead story: Actor and baseball
fan Sean Penn interviewed Hugo Chavez for The Nation magazine. Penn reported he needed a translator, but…”
On the subject of baseball, Chávez's
command of English soars.”
- o -
(Posted
12/2/08)
Bloomberg's 'Hidden Ball Trick' Not Working
Former NYC schools chancellor Frank Macchiarola
calls it
Mike Bloomberg’s “hidden ball trick.”
The “ball” is the back-room jawboning managed by the mayor in
connection
with the city’s giveaways to the Yankees for their new stadium. Mike sent pinch-hitters to press a
quid-pro-quo
demand for a free luxury suite, which the city received after agreeing
to grant
the Yankees an add-on goodie - 250 free parking spaces in a
municipally-leased
lot.
The mayor distanced himself from the
tawdry deal-making,
just as he hid behind Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff when in 2005 the city
tried to
win public approval of a West Side Stadium by linking the project to a
far-fetched bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.
This time, one of Mike’s new-stadium stand-ins gave away the
trick: “This is a big issue to the mayor,”
he said,
during e-mail exchanges with the Yankees.
Thanks to some digging by a team run by
Westchester
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, Mayor Mike can’t hide from the major role
he’s
played in defraying the Yankees’ construction costs to the tune of
hundreds of
millions of taxpayer dollars. As one
example of indirect financial help, Team Bloomberg got the IRS to let
the
Yankees float $942 million in tax-free bonds.
Only after that favor did the team consider turning the luxury
suite over
to the city.
By begging handouts, the Yankees,
baseball’s richest
franchise, have tarnished their gilt-edged image. But
the PR hit the team has taken is nothing
compared to the depth of Bloomberg’s self-inflicted wound.
Polls throughout most of his seven years in
office showed him scoring consistently high in trustworthiness. His stadium hidden-ball moves plus his devious
stance on extending term limits have surely undercut that strength.
Village Voice columnist Wayne Barrett
offers a measure of
how badly Bloomberg has hurt himself. He
called Mike “the best mayor…I’ve covered in 31 years.” Now, says
Barrett, “he’s
also the worst.” Here’s how Barrett sums
up what has happened to the once “best” mayor:
“The Bloomberg who came into office as
the
anti-politician, promising to transform city government, has been
transformed
himself. Some of us liked him precisely because his wealth insulated
him from
the kind of horsetrading that diminished his predecessors. But seven
years
later, Bloomberg has…proved himself to be a master politician, as
hungry for
power as anyone we've ever seen…”
A master politician from the era of the French
Revolution –
Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand – could have been speaking with
prescience about the
Bloomberg of 2008 when he said: “The most difficult farewell is the
farewell to
power.”
- -
-
Keeping the Thanksgiving
spirit alive in the baseball world, the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo and
his
statman Bill Chuck offer these expressions of gratitude for good things
that
happened in the 2008 season on behalf of players, teams and fans who
experienced those things:
“1. Mark Buehrle is
thankful
for throwing 34 double plays this past season, the most in the majors,
and the
White Sox are thankful for Buehrle, because in 218 2/3 innings, he
committed no
errors. 2. Trevor Hoffman
is thankful to umpires who called 70.3
percent of his pitches strikes, the highest percentage in the majors.
3. The
Rays are thankful to Akinori
Iwamura,
who in 627 at-bats only grounded into two double plays, the fewest in
the
majors. 4. The Yankees are thankful to the 4,298,655 fans who
attended
their games, the most in the majors. 5. The Diamondbacks are thankful
for
catcher Chris
Snyder, who in 112 games made no errors. 6. The
Brewers are
thankful for left fielder Ryan
Braun, who in 149 games
made no errors. 7. Phillies starters are thankful to Brad Lidge,
who was 41 for 41 in save opportunities. 8. Orioles pitchers are
grateful to Nick Markakis and his AL
outfielder-leading 17
assists. 9. Braves fans are thankful to Chipper Jones, who hit .399 in Atlanta, the highest home average of
any
batter in baseball.”
- o
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(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
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