The Nub
July 2008 Archive
(Posted
7/31/08)
Despite the sizzling pennant races in five of six divisions and the simmering presidential election campaign, baseball and political fans have reason to be hot under the collar these days. In both fields, facades that obscure tawdriness are stirring up resentments.
We’ve learned this week that behind the shiny promotional shell
glorifying the new Yankee Stadium, is another in a series of boondoggles: the
apparent misuse of tax-free bonds through overvaluation of land involved in the
project. The higher the estimated
value of the land, the more money that can be raised through bond sales. The city has agreed to letting the
bond-buyers receive tax-free repayment with interest. That’s good for the Yankees and
investors but represents a loss in tax money that could help improve
Meanwhile, the Yankees have failed to make good on a $1.6 million commitment as part of a sop to the community for, among other depredations, destruction of 22 acres of parkland. On a day when both the feds and the state were bearing down on the Yanks for their anti-public behavior, the team announced that, belatedly, it was meeting a fraction of that commitment in the form of grants to 15 local youth groups. That story received big play in the Daily News, which printed not a line on new developments in the tax-free bonds story, a story News columnist Juan Gonzales broke a day earlier. The NYC media, with few exceptions, have been content to report on the stadium façade, not the negative stuff behind it. As for the politicians who rubber-stamped the project, they’re playing dodge-ball: Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, for example, repeatedly declines to comment on the deal (according to Gonzales). Bronx Dem Party Chair Jose Rivera said, in effect “Don’t ask me” about what’s happening. “If the people we put in place are not doing their job, they need to be fired.”
The façade of legality Congress and the media have allowed the Bush Administration to hide behind in the name of anti-terrorism has appalled, not only many Americans, but much of the world. Author and journalist Jane Mayer documents the damage in her book “The Dark Side”. After laying out Team Bush’s policy of “deliberate cruelty… (including) the…sanction(ing of) coerced confessions, extrajudicial detention and other violations of individuals’ liberties” in an article in the NY Review of Books, Mayer describes the global consequences in sobering terms:
“The war in
- - -
If the Mets don’t obtain a solid roster addition by 4 this afternoon, it will likely be because of the following addition Fred Wilpon sees when looking at his player payroll: Moises Alou $8.5 million, Orlando Hernandez $6 million, Luis Castillo, $6 million. That’s $20.5 million out of Wilpon’s pocket this season for a handful of games each from Alou and Castillo, and none from Hernandez. Can the owner be blamed for saying to Omar Minaya “We’ve got to go with what we have. Enough is enough.”?
The Yankees have a passel of long-term
injured of their own. But Brian
Cashman clearly has been allowed to
spend to get the players he felt the team needs to compete for the world
championship. Having traded Kyle
Farnsworth for
Could Manny be talking himself out of
(Posted 7/29/08)
No better time to appreciate how everybody loves the idea of an even playing field. Everybody, that is, but the people who run baseball. And the country’s power elite. Funny, how they mirror each other, isn’t it? It’s no secret that, despite our land-of-opportunity lip service, the national economic playing field is skewed – income inequality wider than it has ever been. In the MLB, on the days leading to July 31, the rich teams reach out and get richer for the season’s homestretch; the working class teams deal stars to save money and look to another day.
How big has the national economic
losing streak been for have-nots?
The federal minimum wage, which went up to $6.55 an hour this month, is
three-and-half dollars less in real
(adjusted for inflation) terms than it was 40 years ago. The great progressive journalist Murray
Kempton gave the simplest explanation of what lowered income levels over those four decades; he spoke
impromptu on the subject shortly before his death in 1997 at an
“When I was a young reporter,” he said, “elected officials responded to their constituents. Now, I’m an old reporter and elected officials respond to their contributors.” That’s all he said. What he didn’t have to add: the influence of money had turned too many of our political hitters into bat boys for the big guys in business.
Fans fortunate enough to live in
high-income MLB neighborhoods like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles,
find this period - when what had been a largely even field is realigned to favor
a few well-heeled teams - exciting.
“The best time of the year,” some misguided ESPN savant called it. Not if you live in
The teams likely to be most
affected by last-minute upper-income deals are the two with the lowest payrolls:
Rich
Get Richer (cont.): The Yanks, who
saw Mike Mussina retrogress last night, seem on the verge of adding
“Adding
Washburn would cost the Yankees a minimum of $14 million in salary through 2009
-- ahem, New York's deep pockets are on the verge of striking again -- and that
alone should induce Mariners general manager Lee Pelekoudas to keep Yankees
counterpart Brian Cashman on speed dial. The broken Mariners can use the savings
and a low-level prospect they would get from the Yankees far more than they can
use Washburn if they don't deal him...
“ So
score another for the Yankees, who, if Manny
Ramirez’s latest
midseason mental break in Boston continues very much longer, have every tool now
to bypass the Red Sox and close in on Tampa Bay in the AL East.
“
It was a chancy proposition, the Mets making the playoffs while remaining overly dependent on Fernando Tatis, Damian Easley, Endy Chavez, etc. Now, with starter
John Maine’s future availability in doubt, it’s Mayday for Omar Minaya.
Mark Teixeira could decide who
wins the NL West. He’ll be traded
this week, the Braves say, and the consensus is
Angelic Augury? In the previous four years, the first team to reach 60 wins made it to the World Series. The LA Angels were the first to reach that milestone this year. Were the season to end now, the Angels would have to get by any two of either the Rays, Red Sox or White Sox to get to the grand finale. A big challenge that could even be bigger if the Yanks and Tigers push their way into the playoffs.
(Posted 7/26/08)
The surging Yankees on the mind this weekend, for reasons good and bad: First, the bad: the sentimental hype about the Stadium’s final season is sickening. The team could have invested in renewal of the existing ballpark and made possible survival of what is an authentic sporting shrine. Instead, fans are supposed to cheer the coming of a glitzy new suburban-friendly stadium with its plethora of corporate boxes, higher ticket prices, etc. And we’re all expected to ignore destruction of 22 acres of precious parkland needed to make way for the taxpayer-subsidized extravaganza. The general media applause for what’s happening is a prime example of the “con” in conventional wisdom.
On the other hand, led by Joe
Girardi and Derek Jeter, the Yanks on the field exude class. With his quiet intensity, Girardi kept
the team on an even keel through early struggles; he maintains the same
commanding composure now. Jeter
continually exhibits the “aura of refined casualness” - something he shares with
his bi-racial political counterpart Barack Obama. Incidentally that phrase – another way
of saying “comfortable in his skin” - was used by an Israeli reporter this week
in describing Barack Obama during his visit to a village near
The benefits Barack gains from the Jeter-Obama connection has been noted here often. Columnist Frank Deford amplifies the idea in the latest Sports Illustrated:
“Look, maybe Obama would be the
Democratic nominee if there had never been a Frank Robinson… and a Derek Jeter. But I really don't think so. I think the black athlete has,
ultimately, made a deep, if subconscious, impression on whites. He's been heroic, of course. But beyond that, it's he who's had the
chance to show whites that he can be congenial -- just folks, just like the
white guy next door -- and that he can demonstrably lead people, yea, even to
championships. This evolving comfort factor for fans must have eased the path
for Obama with voters.”
- - -
In the third inning Thursday afternoon, it almost seemed as if SNY’s Ron Darling had a line in to Jose Reyes, leading off first base against the Phils’ crafty Jamie Moyer. Moyer had thrown over twice when Darling said it would be a good time for Reyes to go: “Few pitchers throw over to first three times.” Reyes went on the next pitch; he stole second and eventually scored the Mets’ first run on David Wright’s single.
After the 3-1 victory that put his team in first place, Jerry Manuel sent an implicit SOS to Omar Minaya for offensive help: “The way our team is hitting, every game is going to be close. I’m hoping the middle of the order catches fire.” Best guess on whom the Mets could land before Thursday’s inter-league trade deadline: KC’s Jose Guillen. Why? The Royals, now out of the AL Central race, might like to unload Guillen’s big contract and not demand any of the Mets’ few attractive prospects in the bargain.
(Posted 7/24/08)
A serendipitous mid-summer skim of the still-tentative lineup for the 2009 NYC mayoral race.
Leading off, alphabetically and also as first to take the field, is Queens Councilman Tony Avella. As befits a leadoff man, Avella seems to be always in motion, making the rounds of the city’s political bases. He started running, and seemed to be everywhere, more than a year ago. At the same time, he’s managed to attend to Council business, his attendance record at last published count was more than 96 percent, best of the legislative bunch. Avella’s stance: populist, on the side of communities opposed to what they consider to be over-development. His problem: his game has not attracted enough money so he can take it to another level.
Batting second on our scorecard is the lineup’s number two fundraiser, Comptroller Billy Thompson. Billy, adept at taking advantage of fielding errors, has reached base through aggressiveness recently against the MTA (for deferring several capital programs), the Sanitation Department (for deficiencies in its vacant-lot cleanup program), the Department of Aging (for insufficient oversight of senior centers) and the Department of Education (for slow response to complaints about school buses). The sometimes-long-after-the-fact nature of Thompson’s audits and complaints has prevented him from scoring big with the media and public. But as a player both well financed plus respected by the political establishment, and the lineup’s only African-American, he will clearly be competitive.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn earns the customarily productive third spot in the order because she attracts more favorable press than Thompson, despite the part she played in the city’s slush fund rhubarb. That was the game in which the Council bigs earmarked discretionary dollars whose existence was kept secret. Recent Quinnipiac poll numbers suggest that Quinn has overcome the bad buzz thrumming from the scandal. She finished tied with Thompson in that survey. The impact of Quinn’s status as the lineup’s lone openly gay member is still to be played out. But the fact that she has a fan in Mayor Bloomberg can’t hurt.
The clean-up batter, pro-tem, is Congressman Anthony Weiner, who could have forced a runoff in the 2005 Democratic mayoral primary. The party owes him for leaving the field to Freddy Ferrer then. Weiner is the only mayoral player to have already maxed out in money raised for the primary campaign. The success of the congressman’s financial pitch may connect to his being more centrist than both his lineup-mates and most party activists. His piddling supply of progressiveness may provoke much noisy opposition. But no one will dispute Weiner’s status as the most intense, engaging and witty of the top-tier candidates.
Well, Brooklyn BP Marty Markowitz may disagree with part of that judgment. Marty, an antic charmer in his own right, has been penciled in as the lineup’s fifth hitter on the strength of his surprisingly strong support in the Q-poll. He finished third behind Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. The commish would presumably run as a Republican, vying with supermarket slap-hitter John Catsimatidis. Perfect Pitch’s public opinion guru, pollster Bob Sullivan, says Kelly should be placed deep down in the lineup, near our all-but-invisible Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. Many New Yorkers, Sullivan says, will not forget that Kelly skippered the repressive tactics used to clamp down on anti-war marchers several times in the past years and also on demonstrators outside the Republican Convention in 2004.
Sullivan and teammate agree that the above lineup card can be thrown out if State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo decides to go for mayor as his father did three decades ago. Unlike Mario Cuomo, who lost to Ed Koch, Andrew figures – as of now - to have a big edge in the field on the basis of his strong record as AG. Should the young Cuomo run, Sullivan believes Weiner could give him a battle. But there’s no doubt the congressman would have to cede his spot as clean-up hitter in the race.
- - -
The Mets have reason to settle for a split of their two
games with the Phillies and to welcome a possible rainout today. Pedro Martinez has left the team, owing
to his father’s death in the
The Mets have won 12 of 15, but it’s the streaking Yanks
who are playing great ball. Seldom
have two contending teams played so contrastingly as the NYY’s and the Twins
during their three-game series at the Stadium. Total score: NY 25,
Winning seven straight, the Milwaukee Brewers have moved to within a game of first in the NL Central. When ownership sprung for C.C. Sabathia earlier in the month, some people thought it presumptuous of the team to think it could overtake the Cardinals, much less the Cubs. The Brewers’ three wins in St.Louis suggest they knew what they were doing.
(Posted
7/22/08)
When asked by a journalist during the Depression how he could justify his large salary, Babe Ruth reportedly said something like “Nobody on somebody’s payroll is paid too much.”
The size of employee salaries - the amount employers consider their workers to be worth - often becomes an issue in a slumping economy (or when a highly paid player goes into a slump). If jobs are not eliminated, hours on the payroll are reduced. Upper-level people are affected, too, but it’s the working masses who take the biggest hit. In our trickle-down system, most of those at the top - corporate executives, managers, shareholders and the corporations themselves – are cushioned from the shock of drastically lost income.
International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff talks of the “moral responsibility” corporate owners and managers felt in the post-World War II period for employee well-being. With the coming of market democracy abetted by business-oriented government and a corresponding decline of unions, the executive and managerial class began treating their workers as - in Omar Minaya’s phrase - “inventory players”; that is, replaceable parts.
Pfaff, an Iowan who lives in France, a social democracy
where unions are still strong and employee solidarity a source of political
clout - wonders how our system became so skewed: “I
would be interested to know,” he says, “the moral and
social argument for privileging stockholder and management interests over the
interests and contractual claims of employees…Is the survival of a particular
corporation… a superior public interest to the well-being of its past and
present workers?
”Does this additionally mean that management which
mismanages nonetheless possesses a claim on the corporation and its assets
superior to that of the employees who suffer the direct consequences of this
mismanagement?”
The answer for the moment is dismal, yet
cautiously hopeful: the unequal market-driven system will remain in place until
we elect - perhaps as early as next November - public servants pledged to
reestablish the respected place of employees in the corporate
order.
- -
-
While the Mets have been winning 11 of 13,
the Yanks have returned to their contending place in the AL East order, taking
nine of 12. This may be the
only time this season when both local teams are clicking, and at home.
The Minnesota Twins are one of five teams in
the bottom quarter of the ML payroll list that are legitimate playoff
contenders. The Twins are notable
because they lost three key players - Johan Santana, Carlos Silva and Torii
Hunter over the winter – and now comprise mostly modestly paid
player-employees. Nevertheless,
Even with the loss of Jorge Posada, the
Yankees have sufficient depth so the addition of Richie Sexson may well be all
the dealing they’ll do between now and the end of the month. The Mets’ glaring lack of depth seemed
to preclude their making a major deal.
But Jerry Manuel says he thinks Omar Minaya is ready to pull the trigger
on a trade that would bring a name outfielder to team. The careful Manuel would be unlikely to
put Omar on the spot if a deal wasn’t in the offing.
Ten days before the inter-league trading
deadlines, 20 of 30 teams are within single-digit games of the top of their
divisions, meaning they have a right to think of buying instead of selling. Only six games separate the top four
teams in the NL East, eight-and-a-half in the NL West, with defending league
champion
(Posted:
7/17/08)
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez reminded us the other day of bush-league
behavior by fellow ML ballplayers.
In 2006, players, teams and even some fans greeted the World Baseball
Classic - our national pastime’s first truly global tournament - with
disdain. It was a disruptive
distraction, they said, causing too much spring training time to be lost, and
exposing participants to the risk of injuries. The performance of the
Jeter and Rodriguez now say they are looking forward to the second WBC next spring to redeem American “pride.” The hope here is that a more positive attitude toward the Classic will be catching; that the public, like the teams, will be more accepting of, not only the change in baseball routine, but of the way things are done, generally.
We like to think of ourselves as a proud people, but clearly it is
egotism, rather than pride, that diminishes us. Our self-involvement and anti-otherness
have surfaced lately as a result of something Barack Obama said at a meeting in
“I
agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying
about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need
to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can
your child become bilingual? We
should have every child speaking more than one language.
“You
know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English,
they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to
“I'm
serious about this. We should understand that… if you have a foreign language, that is
a powerful tool to get a job. You
are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we
should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age,
because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5,
or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me.”
For those sensible remarks, Obama has been accused of being an elitist, of seeking to make Spanish our official language, etc. Not that many Americans seek to discriminate against Spanish. They resent the prominent use of any other language in this country. This indiscriminant attitude extends on the political field to the targeting of terrorists. The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein says Obama makes crucial distinctions between groups like al Quaida and Hezbollah while the Republicans lump several disparate groups together:
“Obama says one of
the clear distinctions between the Left's approach to terrorism and the Right's
approach to terrorism is that the Left wants to limit the scope of the conflict,
while the Right wants to expand it.
So though it was only al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11, Romney and
Giuliani and McCain and plenty of their colleagues want to zoom out from al
Qaeda to terrorism, and from terrorism to Islamic extremism. Rather than this
being an effort to hunt down al Qaeda, it becomes a war to hunt down al Qaeda,
destroy Hezbollah, eradicate Hamas, overthrow Saddam Hussein, change the regime
in Tehran, crush the Muslim Brotherhood, and confront Syria.”
Thus, says Klein (and by implication,
Obama), the Republicans would have us girding to take on militarily a massive
part of the Muslim world.
- -
-
If you think the Yanks and the Mets have
holes as the crucial half of the season begins, consider the plight of Joe Torre
and his LA Dodgers. Columnist Mark
Whicker, of the Orange Country Register, offers this rundown of LA
problems:
“Surely
the Dodgers could have foreseen their 46-49 record – eighth-best in the National
League – if they'd known that:
•Rafael
Furcal would play only 32 games. He's still eighth on the team in total
bases.
•Andruw
Jones would devolve into something almost satirical. His OPS (on base average,
plus slugging percentage) is .513. Lance Berkman, Chipper Jones and Albert
Pujols are all over 1.000.
•Brad
Penny would win only five games and get hurt.
•Clayton
Kershaw, the ace in the hole, would have to be played so early in the season and
then hidden back into the deck.
•The
offense would score seven fewer runs than
Add
the fact that Jason Schmidt still isn't ready to begin earning the $47 million
he got last year, and you have an apparent Code Blue
situation.”
Stat city:
Teams with fewest errors – (
Mets: 63 errors; 9-13 one-run games; 7-4 extra
innings
Red Sox: 55
errors; 14-16 one-run games; 4-2 extra
innings
Yanks: 50
errors; 17-11 one-run games; 3-2 extra
innings
(Posted
7/15/08)
A spate of disappointments – political as well as athletic – stand out at the symbolic halfway point of the baseball season. The Seattle Mariners and Cleveland Indians have seen their pennant pretensions disappear. Chuck (Where’s Charlie?) Schumer has emerged anew as a living disappointment, a label earned this time for, among other things, his chutzpah use of the d-word: he uttered it in describing the work of at least one player he helped put into power.
It was right-leaning lefthander Schumer, you may remember, who cast a decisive committee vote that eventually installed Michael Mukasey as attorney general, replacing Alberto Gonzales. Schumer made an effective pitch for Mukasey, saying he would be an improvement over torture-enabler Gonzales (whose appointment in 2005 the senator supported and called “encouraging.”) Mukasey “is the best we can hope for,” Schumer said last year, adding that the AG nominee had persuaded him he was prepared to overrule the White House on water-boarding and executive privilege. When the new attorney general reneged on that alleged promise, Schumer called it “disappointing.”
Then, last week, after Mukasey told senate investigators he would not pursue the possibility of politically motivated prosecutions by his federal attorneys, Schumer upped his verbal velocity: he said he was “very disappointed.”
Charlie’s pitch through the years - described by one
puzzled centrist as containing “no consistent set of principles…(except)…to
follow the way the wind is blowing” -
has dismayed NY progressives since his election to the upper chamber in
1998. He voted to give Bush war
powers in 2002, then declined to
say a single public word about the deceitful conflict in
to designate that country’s revolutionary guard a terrorist organization.
“You have to be careful” is a favorite Schumer feint when caught in a decision-making pickle. One occurred last week, fed regulators saying a letter of concern written by the NY senator triggered a disastrous run on a California bank. His critics on the left found this to be a rare time to be less-than-disappointed with Schumer. For once, he had not been self-protectively careful.
- - -
Nobody asked, but…
Mets fans would be wise not to let the team’s pre-All Star surge give them playoff illusions. Why? Even in a weak division, a team dependent on bargain-basement/unproven fill-in’s like Fernando Tatis, Argenis Reyes, Robinson Cancel and Nick Evans cannot be counted on to compete like champions against opponents tougher than the Giants and Rockies.
That caveat notwithstanding, Omar Minaya deserves another rare commendation from this corner: He had the vision to install Jerry Manuel as Willie Randolph’s second-in-command, and to hold on to Mike Pelfrey during the Johan Santana negotiations (although it may be the Twins wanted no part of the pre-season Pelfrey).
Sentiment fans will dismiss but Fred Wilpon may share: “You
don't want to be in the situation where you wake up one morning and Johan
Santana has won eight games all season and you owe him $150 million.”
- Mark Lerner, principal owner, Washington Nationals on
strategy vis-à-vis free agents.
The Yankees,
five-and-a-half games from the wild card lead, are at least even money – it says
here – to qualify for the playoffs that way. They have the depth of quality personnel
(unlike the Mets) to leapfrog the Rays, Twins and A’s. The Red Sox can match the Yanks in fire
power and exceed them in starting-pitching effectiveness. The Sox are a hairline-click away from
being a top-of-division lock.
Collective disappointment of the half-season: the five NL West teams, all under .500.
(Posted
7/3/08)
Two cautionary baseball tales for Barack Obama – one from the east, provided by the Philadelphia Phillies, the other from the west, courtesy of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Both teams entered June, comfortably ahead of their main rivals in the NL East and West divisions. The D-backs proceeded to lose 16 of 27 over the month, letting the well-under-.500 Dodgers stay close. The Phillies won only three of their last 14 games in June, giving renewed hopes to both the sub-.500 Mets and Braves.
Most polls showed Obama with a double-digit lead over John McCain at the end of May, a lead that by the end of June had shrunk to a consensus six points. A prominent player on the NYC political field who was an early supporter of Obama said during that May-June period: “I hope he hasn’t peaked too early.”
The downward spiral began as soon as it became clear Barack would be the
Dem nominee. Detailed poll results
then apparently presented Team Obama with a dilemma: whether to switch strategy
or stay the course. A
“Obama is running as the ‘change’ candidate, and while
that would seem to be advantageous, positioning in an election to replace an
unpopular incumbent, there is risk in advocating more change than perhaps
Americans would be comfortable with. To the extent that McCain and the
Republican Party can paint Obama as looking to make too great a departure from
the status quo, they can make McCain seem like a safe
alternative.
“The
USA
Today/Gallup poll asked
Americans how concerned they are that Obama would go too far in changing
policies that Bush has pursued. About half say they are concerned,
including 30% who are very concerned.”
For the time being, Team Obama obviously thinks it can at least stabilize the poll numbers by winning over worried swing voters with its switch strategy. As for longtime supporters, the Obama team believes they won’t go anywhere, despite dismay over the changes in what their candidate is saying. Progressives are using another “dis” word – disgust.
Here is what the Philadelphia Inquirer is saying about tomorrow’s big day for baseball and other holiday events:
“This
year,
- - -
“After having so much success for so many years,” asked Gary Cohen on SNY last night, “is it hard for someone like Pedro to adjust to what he’s going through?” Pedro Martinez was giving up four runs and five hits in the first inning of the Mets-Cardinals game. Replied Keith Hernandez ‘It’s hard not to channel the negativity.” Pedro’s body language bespoke lack of confidence. Cohen wondered aloud when the time would come to concede that Pedro wasn’t going to return to anything close to his old form. From the the grave faces of Jerry Manuel and pitching coach Dan Warthen, watching from the dugout, it looked like that time has arrived. Cohen reminded viewers that the Mets have still not won a game where they’ve fallen more than two runs behind: “That’s amazing.” he said, “considering how late it is in the season.”
The Yankees’ bats revived last night, thanks to
Broadcasting from
(The Nub will take
a pre-All Star break over the next week-and-a-half,
returning
the day of the game, 7/15)
(Posted 7/1/08)
Charlie Rangel, number three hitter on NY’s Congressional team, has a baseball-like answer when asked how he feels about his political teammates moving to the center. “You want to win,” he says. “You count the votes, and if you see you’re one short, you move.”
Sometimes numerical “wins” on
issues like war-funding and foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) look like
defeats to the party’s activist base.
Rangel took a positive half-swing at that idea yesterday during a
breakfast organized by the
The House Ways and Means chair did not try to speak of Barack Obama – although he did go to bat for the party’s presidential nominee (“As president, he could bring us health, peace, education – good stuff.”) But Rangel did say he thought Hillary Clinton – of whom he was an early supporter – deserved serious consideration for second spot on Obama’s team: “Sixteen million votes she received (in the primaries) added to his 16 million. It makes arithmetical sense to me.”
Perhaps not surprisingly,
right-of-center commentators are also making the case for Obama to choose Hillary as his running
mate. Columnist Michael Goodwin put
it in this dismissive way in the Daily News: “While those shifts (away from
left-of-center stances) are probably necessary to reach a general election
audience, they undercut (Obama’s) claims of a new kind of truth-in-advertising
politics. So, if he’s going to act
like a
- -
-
Twice now the Mets have shown vital signs in series against the Yanks only to sink back into lifelessness when returning to NL play. Things were so bad last night in St.Louis that Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez on SNY put together what could have been a verbal epitaph for the team. What has happened, Cohen wondered. “I’ve been on teams where when the pitching was good, the hitting wasn’t,” Hernandez mused. “They can’t get it together.”
Over on YES, there was hope. When, trailing
Stat city: If baseball had a one-month season, and
the month was June, the champions would be the Detroit Tigers, 19-8. Not far behind:
It’s clearly too soon to for Mets
fans to consider Johan Santana (7-7, 3.01) a disappointment. He has a half a season to show he’s much
better than a .500 pitcher and perhaps lead the team into legitimate
contention. If you’re a Twins fan, on the
other hand, you have to be ecstatic about the performance of one of the four
players
Dugout Banter (“The Nub”) | Home Plate | Barnstorming Skills
Scouting Reports
Copyright 2007 Perfect Pitch Communications