The Nub

Hillary Clinton wondered Tuesday night whether Barack Obama was up to taking on “Latin American dictators.”  In earlier debates – and in a speech Monday - she had pinned the “dictator” label on the heads of two of the region’s avid baseball countries, Venezuela and Cuba.  Both sovereign nations, because of their socialist lineups, have been given outlaw-league status by the big hitters in our market democracy. 

Yet player-manager Hugo Chavez, suspect in Washington’s eyes for going to bat for Venezuela’s poor, is also demanding the our major league teams stop treating his country’s prospects like campesinos.  According to Edge of Sports columnist Dave Zirin (dave@edgeofsports.com), Chavez is requiring that teams provide their signed young players with a living wage and an array of employee protections. 

“Foul!” say the Yanqui team owners, who don’t like to see their master-slave setup sent to the showers.  They’ve begun, says Zirin, to pull their player-development programs out of Venezuela:

“.Already, the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres have cut and run…The hypocrisy is stunning…a multibillion-dollar business running roughshod over an entire nation with no accountability…shutting down (their) baseball academ(ies) for fear that the natives might demand business practices that might approximate the humane…Chávez dares demand regulation and the first instinct of the owners is to flee toward more exploitable ground.  Not only is Chávez right to pressure baseball to actually give something back, other countries - the Dominican Republic, in particular -should follow his lead.”

Johan Santana, Bobby Abreu, Carlos Zambrano, Miguel Cabrera, Magglio Ordonez: they’re just a few of the 50 or more Venezuelans playing in the majors now.  Then there is the White Sox’s fiery manager Ozzie (“Viva Venezuela!) Guillen.  For baseball to turn its back on Venezuelan talent would be as sensible as Washington turning its back on Venezuelan oil.

Pedro Martinez is Dominican with mucha frescura.  Newsday columnist Wallace Matthews tells why in terms Mets fans, especially, will understand:

“Martinez, fresh off the triumph of a good bullpen session, coyly dangles a feeler for a contract extension. Already, he has pocketed $42 million from the Mets, with another $14 million coming for 2008, and the next important game he pitches for them will be the first.

”He hasn't been able to complete a full season since 2005. He is coming off rotator cuff surgery and will turn 37 on Oct. 25, or just about the time the Mets expect to be in the World Series. Will Pedro be there with them? Not likely, considering his past two seasons. Still, he throws a few practice pitches past cardboard cutouts and thinks he is entitled to a raise.

”That, my friends, is chutzpah.”

Scott Swanay, the NYC-based statman whose successful projections last year propelled him into business as the Fantasy Baseball Sherpa, predicts that only two of six division winners in 2007 will repeat this season: the Angels and Cubs.  By Sherpa lights, that leaves the other four – Red Sox, Indians, Phillies and Diamondbacks – scrambling for wild card spots with the likes of the Blue Jays, Rockies, Braves, etc.  More detailed guidance from the Sherpa as the regular season approaches.   

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments to
dickstar@aol.com are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted 2/26/08)

The mainstream media notwithstanding, it is premature to conduct a post-mortem of the Clinton campaign.  But…there are lessons to be learned from what has happened to Team Hillary so far, lessons applicable to baseball as well as to politics:

Confidence based on experience and an aura of inevitability is counter-productive - it smacks of a sense of entitlement, antagonizing the public as well as underdog competitors.  The Mets lit a fire under the Phillies, and the Nationals and the Marlins with that approach in last season’s homestretch.  The certitude of victory exuded by the Clinton club early on did the same to Barack Obama and John Edwards and their fans.  Already in the Bush ballpark on issues of war and terrorism, the candidate stuck to safe, centrist domestic stances generally; she seldom tipped her cap to labor unions, for example, or the problems of low-income people.

One of Team Hillary’s bench players, Paul Begala, signaled a Billy Wagner-type warning before the Wisconsin primary.  Appearing on CNN, Begala complained, as did Wagner early in the Mets’ dive last September, about the team’s direction.  Where Wagner said his manager and pitching coach had not rested key relievers sufficiently, Begala said Hillary’s strategists had not let her start hitting to left to get the campaign untracked.

Clinton has already begun changing her swing; she might rally in Texas and Ohio, but she is playing under pressure to hit home runs in two tough arenas. 

This season will tell whether the Mets have learned, however belatedly, from their 2007 mistakes.  Wagner clearly is not taking any chances.  He’s already challenged Willie Randolph and Rick Peterson - calling them (with uncharacteristic diplomacy) “ownership” - to handle him with more care. “Ownership has to take care of (me),,, I don't have the ability I had five years ago.  I can still dominate a game.  I can still do my job. "But you can't overexpose. You can't go out there and throw meaningless innings. You have to be used in your element, in your role, and not abused."     

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When much admired/much disdained hitters like Ralph Nader and Louis Farrakhan comment on you as a candidate, it is hard to tell how their words will play.  That’s what Team Obama is probably still trying to determine two days after Nader and Farrakhan went public on the Democratic front-runner:

Nader (on Meet the Press): “(Obama) was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois (while)he ran for the state Senate....  Now he’s supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people.  He doesn’t have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli.”

Farrakhan (as reported by the AP):”Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama ‘is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better’.”

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Fox Sports tabs Eric Gagne, now of the Brewers, and former Met Carlos Gomez, now of Minnesota, as the two players under the most intense pressure going into the 2008 season.  Both have big shoes to fill.  Gagne is replacing Francisco Cordero as Milwaukee’s closer.  Gomez is in line to replace Tori Hunter as Twins center fielder.  Here’s what the two newcomers must try to match: Cordero, newly signed with the Reds, had 44 saves, second highest in the NL last year.  Hunter, now with the Angels, had 28 home runs, 107 RBI’s and a .287 BA. 

Is it possible Omar Minaya kept a straight face when he spoke to reporters of his “pride” in assembling Mets’ bench players?  With a recent history of Julio Franco, David Newhan, Anderson Hernandez, etc., Omar has got to be kidding.  His one good move was picking up Marlon Anderson after the Dodgers made the mistake of letting him go at mid-season.

As if you didn’t know: Grapefruit and Cactus League action begins in earnest tomorrow.

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted 2/22/08)

Baseball fans share their passion for the sport with Fidel Castro, a onetime college-level pitcher who just resigned after nearly 50 years as Cuba’s president.  For domestic political reasons – the Cuban exiles’ clout is strong financially and electorally – the U.S. has persisted in isolating the island nation, strangling its economy with a trade embargo.  That hasn’t prevented baseball, under Castro, from thriving at a close to major league level throughout Cuba.  There is free admission to games, large crowds, and signs on the outfield walls that proclaim ‘SPORTS ARE A RIGHT.” Stickball games are a familiar sight on hardtop playgrounds in Havana.

Hailed in South America as the world’s “only living legend” (“Most of us were peasants before Fidel came,” said an island cab driver, “no health care, no nothing.”) Castro once called George W. Bush a “fool” for trying to block Cuba, whose team went to the final, from competing in the World Baseball Classic two years ago.  Bush’s repeated calls for “free elections” in socialist Cuba are another source of derision on the island: “You call elections ‘free’,” said a Havana resident, “where you must have money to run and lots of money to win?”  U.S. hostility toward Castro made some sense while Cuba was a close ally of the Soviet Union.  But since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the country has been unaligned; Cuba’s only remotely subversive export are medical doctors to physician-starved areas of Latin America, a propaganda- as well as a humanitarian-plus. 

The mainstream media has offered lockstep support to Washington’s anti-Cuba stance, as have most candidates and office-holders at the federal level.  Asked by “Democracy Now’s” Amy Goodman, National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluth summarized the positions toward Havana of the three major presidential candidates:

“Barack Obama, of the three, has taken the most progressive position, although it’s still a very timid position.  He’s only called for opening up Cuban American travel, not broad US travel to Cuba…but he’s also said that he is willing to enter into a dialogue with leaders such as Raul Castro and others… Hillary Clinton’s position has been a politically calculating one, where she doesn’t want to give up a single exile vote in Florida, so therefore she’s basically adopted the same position as George Bush has on Cuba, that US policy will not change until there’s fundamental changes in Cuba…John McCain went to Miami recently…and basically bellicosely threatened, you know, US aggression towards Cuba and a hard line towards Cuba, if he is president.”         

 For some of us, the seventh-inning tributes Castro is receiving outside the U.S. are well deserved.  The best part is the former pitcher-turned-president hasn’t left the ballpark. 

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The Red Sox have landed seven players on Baseball America’s 100 Top Prospects list, the highest number of any of the 30 ML teams.  Two of the seven are familiar names - pitcher Clay Buchholz and centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.  The other five:  pitchers Justin Masterson and Michael Bowden, outfielder Ryan Kalish, infielder Jed Lowrie and first baseman Lars Anderson.  Two of five Yankees on the list - Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy - have already been tested successfully with the big team.  The other three are pitcher Alan Horne and outfielders Austin Jackson and Jose Tabata.  The Mets’ lone rep is outfielder Fernando Martinez, the prospect they wouldn’t give up to Minnesota for Johan Santana.  Two young players they did trade away - outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitcher Deolis Guerra – did make the list for the Twins.

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(Posted 2/19/08)

The Mets wanted to upgrade their product, so they raised ticket prices 20 percent to help pay to add the likes of Johan Santana.   The federal government is beefing up its military clout, but, unlike the Mets, the Bush team declines to go to the public to get the extra money it needs to do the job.  Instead, it proposes to cut programs like Medicare to pay for extra innings in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congressional Democrats, traditional champions of progressive taxation, have backed away from that populist game plan.  House Ways and Means coach Charlie Rangel gave a missed tax reform sign targeting upper-income players.  Neither political side went for it.  Until this week, the closest either of the Dem presidential finalists has come to embracing a t-word strategy was more a bunt than a full policy swing.  Barack Obama suggested raising the amount of income that is taxed to provide social security benefits “a little bit” above the present $97,500 ceiling..  Even that squib of an idea has been kicked away by his teammates.

Historian Howard Zinn notes in his “People’s History of the United States” how the Democrats joined Republicans’ anti-tax team, beginning with the Kennedy-Johnson era in the 1960’s.  At that time, the tax rate for highest-income earners was cut from 91 to 70 percent.  By the early 1980’s the top rate was down to 50 percent.  Then, according to Zinn, “in 1986 a coalition of Republicans and Democrats sponsored another ‘tax reform’  bill that lowered the top rate to 28 percent.  (As a result) a schoolteacher, a factory worker, and a billionaire could all pay 28 percent.”

It will be interesting to see how strongly Obama or Hillary follow through on their belated going to bat for progressive tax reform.  The first to do it in a sustained and specific way could gain a decisive - and, it says here, deserved - edge in the primary’s closing stages.   
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The edge Santana gives the Mets is double-edged for Willie Randolph.  He must know if his team doesn’t make the playoffs, at least, he won’t be around Metsville for the 2009 season.  But this year’s team will have a mediocre bench, at best, thanks both to a poor farm system and an unwillingness to spend on solid journeyman free agents.  So the Mets will be overly dependent on fragile players like Pedro Martinez, Orlando Hernandez and Moises Alou staying healthy.  They are close to irreplacable.  If, say, two of them are lost for much of the season, the Mets will be in trouble and Willie on his way out the door.

Let’s see how a rep of Red Sox Nation gauges the Yankees’ chances: the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo rates the Bombers this way - “The rotation will be a constant topic.  Andy Pettitte has much to overcome after turning in his friend, Roger Clemens, to Congress. That story might not be over. The Yankees are banking on two rookies, Ian Kennedy and Philip Hughes, to make major contributions at the back end of the rotation. They still don't know how Joba Chamberlain's career will unfold, but it appears he's staying in the bullpen for now. The Yankees want to build with youth, but they have an old lineup, which won't coincide with the young pitchers' maturity.”

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted 2/8/08)

Re Baseball’s (Curt) Schilling Theory- pitching stability equals success:  As applied to the Democratic presidential race, it signals a Clinton edge and trouble for Obama going into the late innings.   

Why?  Hillary is an established starter.  Her rhetorical repertoire - “We need a president who…” - is familiar, as are her centrist positions on most issues.  The what-you-see-is-what-you-get aspect of her delivery is a source of strength to hard-core fans.  And she has three “out” pitches – women, Latinos and super-delegates. 

Barack has the challenge of playing catch-up.  He must still work to solidify his status as a reliable ace.  He’s tried to do it thus far throwing nothing but changes, and the predictability has slowed his momentum. 

Thomas Edsall, using an academic’s verbal snapshot, captures Obama in midair after the Feb.5 contests: "’I was beginning to feel optimistic,’ said Notre Dame political scientist Darren Davis. ‘I bought into the fascination with Obama as the primary season went on.’  Obama's success winning support from blacks, independents, the college educated and young voters is ‘all well and good, but not significant enough to counteract the traditional Democratic base’." - (Huffiington Post)

Obama is under pressure to vary his repertoire, throw more hard stuff.  To do that means experimentation…and risk.  With his resources, however, it is possible to come up with what he needs: a perfect pitch.

One final point about Hillary’s edge; it has to do with her and Barack’s fan base:  Anyone active in NYC politics will attest to the reliability of adult female voters and the unpredictability of young people at election time.

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Schilling, as you likely have heard, may need shoulder surgery and lose at least part of spring training…if not the entire season.  The Boston Globe says the Red Sox even tried to void his contract for 2008 owing to the injury.

Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy puts the football Giants in iconic company in this doleful comment on their upset of the Patriots last Sunday: “It's not going to be much fun to be around your New York friends for a while.  This time the New Yorkers have the embraceable winners - like Joe Namath's Jets, Willis Reed's Knicks, and the 1969 Mets.”

A negative offshoot of the Johan Santana deal: the cost-conscious re-signing of Ben Johnson as a possible extra Mets outfielder.  Johnson hit an unprepossessing .271 in 53 games at Triple-A New Orleans in ’07.  An injury sidelined him for most of the season.  Omar, you should be able to do better.
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With pitchers and catchers due to report next week, let’s take a non-nostalgic look back at winter’s last non-baseball month. The record book – it says here, based on anecdotal evidence - indicates that January was the worst month for heavy colds locally in living memory.  Humorist Garrison Keillor, not long from an NYC visit, came down with his January cold on the West Coast and interviewed himself about it for Salon:

Q. Where did the cold start?  A. It began in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, around 1 or 1:30 in the afternoon at a restaurant… A cold rain was falling and I was having lunch with friends and suddenly the conversation slipped sideways… to a recent great awakening in their lives that helped them arrive at a union with God and to finally know themselves and find forgiveness…which is a lot to absorb while you're downing a big bowl of mussels and linguini.  My friends were leaning across the table and telling me I really, really ought to look into this, and I thought, "Well, this is what happens in places where there isn't enough snow." And then I felt that hot itchiness behind the eyeballs that signals the arrival of a virus. 

Recovering from January, we are off to a warmer clime for a week.  The Nub will be back right after the first spring training weekend.

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted 2/5/08)

“No cheering in the press box.”

That convention among baseball writers - to remain at least outwardly objective in coverage of teams on the field - should logically apply to political writers as well.  After all, on this Super Tuesday we are more aware than ever that the primaries are being covered like ballgames.

But headlines alone attest to the tilt toward one of the two teams in the Dem primary race:  “OBAMA CLOSES IN ON CLINTON”, “SUPER TUESDAY OUTLOOK: OBAMA’S SURGE”, “HILLARY’S LEAD AMONG WOMEN IS ERODING”, etc.  The cheering for Obama, even in Hillary’s home-state media, is a reflection of two things: 1) the conservative animus toward the Clintons; 2) the excitement generated by Obama’s appeal to young people, celebrities and newly energized political bystanders. 

If the analogy to sports holds, the enthusiasm can dissipate quickly with a few key setbacks.  Hillary was still ahead in the polls late yesterday and likely will remain so after the votes are counted tonight.  She has a projected lead in the delegate race in the 22 remaining states with primaries.  Furthermore, she has an experienced, top-tier organization prepared to grind out a successful march to the political world series.

All this is not to suggest that Obama will lose in the long run.  But, if he is to win, he faces the difficult challenge of maintaining the effectiveness of his inspirational message - and high level of avid public response - over the long haul.  The challenge is akin to one facing veteran baseball players.  In a collection of interviews with sports writers - entitled (not so coincidentally )“No Cheering in the Press Box”- former NY Timesman  Leonard Koppett is quoted as debunking a baseball cliché:  “It’s not the legs that go first,” he says in paraphrase.  “It’s the enthusiasm…” 

“No Cheering” contains another notion pertinent to sports and politics - the importance of keeping the entertainment level high in order to attract and keep fans.  Inspiration can wear thin as a diversion when the message is no longer new; normally inattentive converts can easily then revert to apathy.  That will not happen, it says here, to the comparatively hard-core, in-for-the-duration supporters of Hillary.  Their candidate will remain on message; her focused mastery of issues will surely make her formidable to the end. 

All the above notwithstanding, Perfect Pitch pollster Bob Sullivan sees Obama coming on strong: “The tide is moving to Barack.  America seems to be dealing with the legacy of its original sin by going for Obama.”
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The new conventional wisdom in baseball, thanks to the “Schilling Theory” (see Nub of 2/1/08), is that the more stable an original pitching rotation, the better the playoff chances of a team.  In the latest issue of Baseball America magazine, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick suggests a supplemental way of determining how well a team will do – check out the top two men in the rotation.

Crasnick is high on the Arizona Diamondbacks going all the way in the NL because of its top two – Dan Haren and Brandon Webb (total of 33-19 last season).  Here is how the top two stack up in the six acknowledged contenders in the AL and NL East:  Boston, Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling (29-15); Yankees, Ching-Ming Wang and Andy Pettitte (34-16); Toronto, Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett (26-15).  In the NL, Philadelphia, Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer (29-17); Mets, Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez (18-14); Atlanta, Tim Hudson and Tom Glavine (29-18).

The Yankees come out the best in that grouping because of the consistency - and especially the durability - of Wang and Pettitte.  The Mets come out the worst because of the fragility of Martinez.  If nothing else, this exercise might serve to check some of the Mets fans’ unrestrained optimism after the Santana trade.  

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(The Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments to dickstar.com
are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted 2/1/08)

The Mets needed a miracle, and got one.  Team Obama needs, if not a miracle, a dramatic surge of support to win the Democratic primary race.

The oddsmakers’ numbers for the 2008 NLEast and Dem presidential campaigns make favorites of the Mets and Hillary Clinton. With the presumed addition of Johan Santana, the NYM’s are considered the team most likely to replace the Phillies at the top of the division.  As for Hillary, the polling numbers indicate that, after next Super Tuesday, she will have locked up close to three-quarters of the delegates she needs to become the Dem nominee.

Democrats in the 22 states voting Feb.5 could upset the projection.  But, as of now according to consensus figures gathered by ABC, AP and the Washington Post, Hillary has 25 percent more delegates pledged to her team than has Obama.  And even if Barack inherited John Edwards’ pledged delegates, he would not match her early numbers.  Of the roughly 1,500 delegates left for voters to choose on 2/5, the Hillary people estimate - we’ve been told - that three-fifths will fall to them.  If that happens, she will have a total of approximately 1,500 of the 2.025 delegates that assure victory. All Hillary will need then is a third of 1,500 that will be up for grabs in the remaining 22 states holding primaries into early June.

An Edwards endorsement would certainly help Team Obama reverse the trend.  But Barack may have to do it without the (legal) shot in the arm Santana gives the Mets.

NYC-based statman Scott Swanay says Santana is worth five or six additional wins, enough to vault the Mets over the Braves, whom he says figure to be stronger than the Phils.  Swanay is no slouch; he picked the Phillies to win the NL East at the start of last season.

What can we who insisted it would never happen say about the Santana deal?  We misjudged how desperate the Twins were to get rid of their ace before spring training. 

Furthermore, we had no idea former Mets GM Joe McIlvaine, now a Minnesota scout, rated prospects Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey as high as he evidently did.  Other scouts say none of the four can be considered “can’t miss” major leaguers.   Had the deal included the Mets’ top prospect Fernando Martinez, it would still have been a coup.  That Minnesota accepted the four lesser lights elevates the transaction - it says here - from coup to miracle.     

Of course, by late this afternoon, if the Mets and Team Santana can’t agree on contract terms, the deal could collapse.  We’ll hold off congratulating Omar Minaya until we know the miracle is official.

Official, as of today, is the arrival of the first of nine straight baseball months.  Have you noticed that most people who kvetch about February suffer the misfortune of being non-ball fans?
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome.  Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)