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 3/25/08)
Pop quiz: What
do the
Mets and Barack Obama have in common?
Answer: Both
-
according to savvy birddogs - bring strong story lines to the plate.
Whether
their tales of trial and (in the Mets’ case) error
end happily we’ll know later in the year.
What we can ponder now is the articulated notion that having a
story
helps; it gives a candidate or a team an edge against less-advantaged
competitors.
Michael Waldman made the case for Obama’s
saga in
The American Prospect:
“Of all the
things he
has done right, none may be more important than the fact that he has
told far
and away the best story - a story perfectly keyed to the current moment
in
history. As Obama tells it, the country
is held hostage by a political class that sows partisan and cultural
division,
making solving problems ever more difficult, while the country yearns
for a new
day of unity. As the youngest candidate,
the only post-boomer candidate, the only bi-racial candidate, and the
one
candidate with a preternatural ability to obtain the good will of those
who
disagree with him, he can bring all Americans together and lead us to a
future
built on hope.
“Your own
reaction to
that story may be a quickening of the heartbeat, or a disgusted ‘Give
me a
break.’ But there is no denying that many,
many people are willing to sign on to it.”
For whatever reason, Hillary Clinton
has elected not to make
her story central to her candidacy.
Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who tracks campaign messages,
made that
point on Bill Moyers’ Journal not long ago: “It's a
very strong narrative…(a)coherent biography that she could be using
right now
to answer some of the charges to which she's vulnerable.”
As for the Mets and their narrative, baseball’s
super-statistician Bill James said this in a Time magazine interview:
“I would have to say the
two best
teams in the National League are the Phillies and the Mets.
And if you had one team to beat, it
probably would be the Mets. (Johan)
Santana
has added to what was already a very good team, plus you have Pedro (Martinez)
probably coming
back and being of significant value this year. Plus
it's a team that's got a strong story line.
They have to try to recover from what
happened to them last fall. So there are
a lot of things going there.”
- o -
(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 3/21/08)
With government playing the money game out of the baselines, it’s
hard to
follow the action. One of the better
scorecards has been turned in by the London Daily Telegraph:
“The
poor sub-prime mortgages were split up and merged
with other kinds of debt and then repeatedly sold on….The whole system
- driven
forward by investment bankers…resulted in an arms race to devise the
most
sophisticated schemes and ways of cutting up the different kinds of
debt...(with the result) no one knows who owns the bad debts, trust is
destroyed and even top bankers have to admit that they have no idea
exactly how
the system works.” - London Daily
Telegraph
The rough-and-tumble may be confusing the bankers, but not Lenny
Dykstra. “Blood on the streets, dude,”
he’s quoted as saying in a New Yorker article this week.
Dykstra, who helped lead the ‘86 Mets to the
team’s last world championship and the ‘93 Phillies to the World
Series, has
become an A-Rod-rich day trader and an unlikely expert on economic
moneyball.
Lenny never went to college but learned as his
baseball
career ended that real money in the capitalist league is made through
investing; salaried workers, mere employees, can’t expect to do nearly
as
well. Exhibit A: big-time investment
teams being given a free pass by the feds while those at another level
are left
to duck high, hard ones.
Lenny, whom Mets fans loved for his
aggressiveness, invests
the way he played. He takes his trading
philosophy from financial hall-of-famer Warren Buffett:
“Be
fearful when others are
greedy; be greedy when others are fearful.”
Dykstra’s post-baseball success at the
greed/fear game leaves some former fans less
than totally gratified. He began his
rookie period in business by opening a chain of car washes in California.
They did well, but Lenny didn’t
like it when the minimum wage of his workers rose.
So he sold out. Lenny: forever a
hero, but not quite a role
model.
- -
-
Red Sox player rep Kevin Youklis is a role model; he led
the Sox in their job-action to get the team’s coaches and staff extra
pay for
the trip to Japan. The effort - consisting of a threat to call
off the trip - worked. Afterward,
Youklis talked about the edge provided by collective action and the
need for
attentiveness when important issues arise: "The
reason there was a problem is because the coaches aren't
backed by the Players' Association… So they don't have anyone
negotiating for
them other than what we tried to do… Players Association and Major
League
baseball and the Red sox talked it over and resolved it…A lot of
players don't
know what goes on…We have some guys here who really care and get
involved. One thing we need to teach these
young guys
is to get involved and understand."
(Quoted by
the Globe’s Nick Cafardo)
The
unusual rash of spring training
injuries has left several teams less formidable than they figured to be
a month
ago. The
Tigers may have taken the most damaging
hits. Jim Leyland lost his main set-up
men Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney for months rather than weeks. He is still trying to patch together a sheath
of replacements.
Then
there’s this unconventional
quotation from an unnamed scout who talked to SI’s Tom Verducci about
how
sluggish Miguel Tejada and the Houston Astros look: "They've got a
chance to be pretty bad."
- o -
(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 3/18/08)
In the aftermath of St.Patrick’s Day,
there’s a barrage of
political and baseball blarney being batted around.
President Bush says he’s “optimistic”
about the
economy. Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson assures us that, despite the present crisis, the economy is
“resilient.”
Mets VP Tony Bernazard insists that
those who badmouth the
team’s farm system are off-base: “We’ve
got
talent…Our scouting department has done a tremendous job.”
As most of us, know, saying something
is true doesn’t make
it so. That’s especially the case about
the economy when food and fuel prices are soaring and the dollar’s
value is
plummeting; all that amid what the NY Times describes as a “devastating
crisis
of confidence” in the financial markets.
The Mets, who did not have a single
player among the 84 minor
league all stars selected by Baseball America in 2006, matched
that
unenviable record last year. That is,
even before they gave up four of their top prospects for Johan Santana,
the
Mets still came up empty at the six minor league levels, from Triple-A
down to
Rookie League. So much for the scouting
department’s “tremendous job.”
The Times’ heavy economic hitter Paul
Krugman says for the
Feds to do their job in stopping the rally toward recession, “the
important
thing is to bail out the system, not the people who got us into this
mess..(implicated)
shareholders…bondholders…executives.”
Investigative slugger Greg Palast has a
provocative
perspective on the bailouts so far:
“(Last
week, Ben) Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its
history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion
dollars to
guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The
deluge of public loot was an eye-popping
windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two
million families to
the brink of foreclosure.
“Up
until (last) Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician
who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’
bordello: Eliot Spitzer. Who are they
kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately
tied.”
While
hailing new Governor David Paterson (with whom Perfect
Pitch was involved briefly a decade ago), it says here that the
departed Eliot
Spitzer has much to be proud of. NY’s
Environmental Commissioner Pete Grannis put it best: “He was a bright,
combative man, and that's what the public expected of him.
Here was a guy willing to go into battle,
take the gloves off and fight for what he believes in. You don't run
into that
very often." - (quoted by
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne)
-
-
-
The Tampa Bay Rays led the 2007 Baseball America minor
league all stars list with eight players.
Minnesota had six, the Yanks
and Padres
five each, the Reds, Rockies and
Braves four. Two other teams besides the
Mets placed none:
the LA Angels (at the top in 2006) and Houston.
The results suggest that the Twins, Yanks
and Padres will have solid reinforcements ready to help should they be
in the
playoff race next September. They
further suggest that Tampa
Bay will not be an
AL
East doormat this year.
- o -
(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 3/14/08)
Attention,
please…to this lineup of political bench jockeys
who, as viewed from our dugout, have hit high, hard issues on the
button:
“(Spitzer’s) behavior
was not
really any more wretched than messing around with a young and
vulnerable White
House intern who didn’t even get paid for her efforts, yet Bill Clinton
survived that one, whereas Spitzer was presumed dead on the arrival of
this ’news’.”
- Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com
“When
candidates…unanimously
promise to strengthen military readiness, they together reinforce the
dominant
American myth - that an extravagant social investment …in armed
power…offers…escape from the… dread that comes with life on a dangerous
planet.
That such investment only makes the planet more dangerous matters
little, since
the feeling of security, rather than actual security, is the goal.” - James Carroll, Boston Globe
“The new
doctrine said
it is necessary that America
be the dominant world military power so as to keep international
society ‘secure.’
The 9/11 attacks soon supplied the
specific occasion to exercise this supposed responsibility...But
does…this
activist, interventionist, militarized foreign policy consensus, meant
to
change international society, by persuasion when possible but by force
when
necessary (have any credence)?”
- William
Pfaff, International Herald Tribune
“(Bush should)
know that millions of Americans who don't
want to die in a repeat of 9/11 also don't want their country to
torture people
- even if it's in an attempt to stop a terrorist plot. These
are people who grew up being taught that
torture is un-American; that it's what happens to people in despotic
nations -
not in the land of the free. To see
their hypocritical president equivocate about what is or isn't torture
is not
just disheartening, it's tragic.” –
Philadelphia Inquirer editorial (unsigned)
“Hamas is a reality
that, however
distasteful, is not going to go away. Any
peace deal reached without Hamas is doomed to fail. The
only question left is how many more people
are going to die needlessly in Israel,
in Palestine and in Iraq
before Israeli and American
leaders begin to deal with the world as it is, not as they wish it to
be.”
- Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com
-
- -
The Yankees-Rays flap over rough play would be silly
were it not for bones already broken and the risk of further injury if
the hard
feelings persist. Salon columnist King
Kaufman is a fan with an interesting perspective on the pros and cons
of
playing all-out every moment of every game:
“Which
would you rather have: Bobby Abreu in the lineup after
shying away from the fence in pursuit of a double, or Aaron Rowand on
the
disabled list after going face first in pursuit of an out? Are two
bases and an
out worth two weeks on the shelf? Is a
single run worth it?
“Bill
Walton says that John Wooden used to tell his players never
to dive for a loose ball. The injury risk was too high, the legendary
UCLA
coach believed. Just go play defense. Basketball teams get more
possessions
than baseball teams get scoring chances, but the idea's the same, and
that
Wooden had some pretty good ideas.
“By the
way: I'd rather have Rowand and his bloody nose, and I
love home-plate collisions. But nobody
pays me to win ballgames.”
The
talk of the AL West is the improvement of the Seattle
Mariners. With a one-two pitching punch
of Felix Hernandez (14-7 last year) and ex-Oriole ace Erik Bedard
(13-5), the
M’s - led offensively by the great Ichiro - are considered ready to
give the LA
Angels are run for the division title.
How seriously is Seattle being
taken in
southern California? Orange County Register columnist Mark Whicker
issued this warning (with Mets-like overtones) to Angels’ fans:
“Seattle's pitching is
at least the
equal of the Angels, (Orlando)
Cabrera (traded to the White Sox) will be impossible to replace, (Kelvin) Escobar is a major problem, and the
bullpen, shaky last year, has not improved. They can still win because
of their
depth, but I don't think it's a lock.”
Status report on two alumni of the Mets
system: Deolis
Guerra, one of the four players traded to Minnesota for Johan Santana, has
been sent
to the minors after impressing the Twins in three Grapefruit League
appearances. Guerra will only turn 19
next month. Veteran Edgardo Alfonzo,
meanwhile, still has a shot at hanging on with the Rangers.
- o -
(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 3/11/08)
Pre-Game Banter:
Eliot Spitzer has to hope that his
team, and the Dem fans, stand
behind him. If they don’t, the self-styled
“Steamroller” and former “Sheriff of Wall Street” has worse job
security than
Willie Randolph.
At spring
training
time, hope for the Mets and the 29 other MLB clubs is spelled h-y-p-e. Team executives and managers are allowed to
express bogus optimism (“These injuries are a
blessing in
disguise; we can watch players who never would’ve been able to show
their stuff
”). Such obvious
folderol
goes unchallenged by beat writers. Why get on the wrong side of people
you’ll
be dealing with over a long season?
A similar reticence by the press is not
going to help
Spitzer. But it surfaces often in the
political training exercise leading to the presidency.
Example: the flap in the U.S. media over a
Scottish journalist’s balk at striking the word “monster” from a
scorecard of
her interview with Barack Obama advisor Samantha Power.
When the word describing Hillary Clinton
slipped out, Power said quickly it was “off the record.”
“You didn’t stop in time,”said journalist
Gerri Peev, to the annoyance of Obama supporters as well as a
surprising number
of media people.
MSNBC’s soon-to-be deposed Tucker
Carlson, no Obama fan, took
Peev to task for not heeding Power’s request.
Here is a transcript of that part of the interview, posted by
Salon’s
Glenn Greenwald:
CARLSON:
What -- she wanted it off the
record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you're interviewing
wants a
quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn't
you do
that?
PEEV:
Are
you really that acquiescent in the United States? In
the United
Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle
that's
decided ahead of the interview...If
(someone) makes a comment and decides it's a bit too controversial and wants to withdraw it immediately after,
unfortunately if the interview is on the record, it has to go ahead.
Greenwald says Peev’s
remarks point up the deference of the
American press to the powerful. Where she
acted properly, he says, many of her U.S. colleagues would have
done
differently: “It's
extremely likely…that had Power
been speaking to a typical reporter from the American establishment
media, her
request to keep her comments a secret would have been honored. In one of the ultimate paradoxes, for American
journalists -- whose role in theory is to expose
the secrets of the powerful -- secrecy is actually their
central religious tenet, especially when it comes to dealing with the
most
powerful. Protecting, rather than
exposing,
the secrets of the powerful is the fuel of American journalism. That's how they maintain their access to and
good relations with those in power.”
- -
-
A
refreshing non-hype moment on SNY the other day. Ron
Darling caught comparative broadcast-booth
newcomer Kevin Burkhardt making a rookie mistake. Burkhardt expressed
ultra-enthusiasm
for outfielder Angel Pagan, who is vying for a spot on the Mets. Pagan was batting over .400 after the first
few games. Darling told Burkhardt
he shouldn’t gush over Grapefruit
League performances, noting they seldom have anything to do with how a
player
performs when the season starts. “That’s
one of the things a manager always has to keep in mind,” said Darling. He didn’t have to add “And you should, too,
Kevin.” Darling thus qualifies to join
the competition to replace the departed Joe Girardi as the most
interesting
baseball announcer heard in the NYC area.
Doug Mientkiewicz had a
nightmarish 2005 season with the
Mets, injured much of the time and underappreciated by both manager
Willie
Randolph and the press. When the season
ended and he was not re-signed, Mientkiewicz was quoted as saying he
didn’t
care; he had no interest in returning to NY and the Mets. Now, having been dropped by the Yankees - he’s
signed with the Pirates - Doug M is singing a different tune about his
last NY
experience: "Of
course I'll miss it,” he told the Globe’s Nick Cafardo.
“Who wouldn't want to wake up every morning
and drive to Yankee Stadium?"
- o -
(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 3/7/08)
It’s clear: John McCain is the Colorado
Rockies of the
presidential playoffs; his team will be super-well rested going into
the
electoral world series. Who will be the
equivalent
of the endurance-tested Red Sox, Team Clinton or Team Obama?
If the baseball analogy holds, McCain’s
challenger will be Clinton.
Like the Red
Sox, who fell behind 3-1 in the best-of-seven AL Championship Series,
Hillary
was on the brink of elimination before Tuesday’s contests.
She came back to add two electoral-vote rich
states to the big ones she’s already won.
Along with her list of key wins in New York,
California, Massachusetts
as well as Ohio and Texas,
she is likely to add Pennsylvania
on April 22. Since electoral votes,
rather than delegates, are what count in the political world series,
the
outcome in a close primaries finish could be foreordained: Team Cinton will have given the 795
superdelegates the rationale to make Hillary the nominee.
Political writer Marc Cooper puts the
matter, allowing for
the pro-Obama delegate math, succinctly:
“There
is no plausible scenario in which Clinton
can win the nomination. At least not
democratically…(Nevertheless) the more steely-eyed amongst us…would do
well to
psychologically prepare for the nomination going (to her).” - Huffington Post
Amid the escalating violence in the Mideast, it
will be
interesting to see whether either Democratic player takes a rhetorical
swing at
the following story dating from 2006 but only surfacing now, or whether
it even
receives mention in major U.S.
news media:
“Vanity Fair
has obtained confidential documents,
since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare
a
covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of
State
Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams,
to
provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by (a
Fatah agent in
Gaza) and
armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give
Fatah the
muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led
government from
power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
“But the
secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American
foreign
policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the
U.S.-backed
Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.” (VF
April edition, reported by David Rose)
That
punitive move, aimed at undoing the results of Hamas’s
election victory, has all but doomed Bush’s peace initiative. In the words of Mideast
negotiator Aaron David Miller: “You cannot make peace
with half of
the Palestinian polity and go to war with the other half.”
As for Bush’s strategy
toward Hamas, the NY
Times quoted a research fellow at the Palestine
Center in Washington, DC,
describing it this way: “You just cover your
ears, close
your eyes and pretend they don’t exist.”
- -
-
“We
invested very, very heavily in
our scouting and player development systems.
Both have improved dramatically.
We have a lot of great young players who give us the nucleus to
be a
competitive team for years to come.” – Dodgers owner Frank
McCourt
Catcher
Russell Martin, first
baseman James Loney, third baseman Andy LaRoche, outfielders Andre
Ethier and
Matt Kemp and pitchers Chad Billingsley and Jonathan Broxton are
prospects who
have graduated to being good young major leaguers.
The Yankees have a similar player-development
success story, as do the Red Sox. The
Mets?
Well, there’s Jose Reyes and David Wright, right? Otherwise…Last December, Omar Minaya said the
reason the Mets had few promising young players was they were “good
citizens”;
that is, they abided by the commissioner’s draft-payment guidelines and
lost
blue chippers as a result. The other
day, Omar had a new explanation as to why the Mets are old and
injury-prone: New York fans are impatient with
younger players, he
said. In the next breath (almost), he
said he had “never seen so many injuries.”
Thanks to Newsday’s David Lennon, here
is how the Mets
lineup stacks up healthwise three weeks from opening day:
Jose Reyes (SS)
........ healthy
Luis Castillo (2B) ........ OUT -- knees
David Wright (3B) ........healthy
Carlos Beltran (CF) ..... OUT -- knees
Carlos Delgado (1B) .... OUT -- hip
Moises Alou (LF) .........OUT -- groin
Ryan Church (RF) ........OUT-- concussion
Brian Schneider (C) ......OUT -- hamstring
Johan Santana (LHP) ... pitching today, so presumably OK
Now a look at the
projected bench:
Ramon Castro (C)
........... healthy
Ruben Gotay (SS) .......... OUT -- ankle
Damion Easley (INF/OF) .. OUT -- ankle
Endy Chavez (OF) ........... OUT -- hamstring/ankle
Marlon Anderson ............. OUT -- bruised chest
Where McCourt has reason to say he expects
the Dodgers to make the playoffs this year and in future seasons, Fred
Wilpon
is dreaming – it says here - if he thinks his current old team will
make it
“deep into the post-season.”
- o -
(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 3/4/08)
March Madness: The political contests
moving toward their
climax today in Ohio and Texas give a
broader meaning to that college
basketball term. And two columnists have
connected it to baseball. The NY Times’
sharp-hitting
Gail Collins likens Hillary Clinton to Pete Rose, who starred for her
hometown
Cincinnati Reds. And syndicated veteran
Richard Cohen compares Barack Obama to Roy Hobbs, hero of Bernard
Malamud’s baseball
novel “The Natural.”
Here’s how Collins puts it: “When I grew up in Cincinnati, we
always
rooted for the players who worked really, really hard, not the ones who
were so
talented they made everything look easy. If
Hillary were a baseball player, she’d be
Pete Rose…”
We
remember Pete for always running to first base after
drawing a walk, for bowling over a catcher to score in an All-Star game. He had few tools - couldn’t hit for power, no
great arm, didn’t have speed - but he gave 100 percent on the field. The same can be said about Hillary these
days; she has not been blessed - it turns out - with a talented
strategic team,
and she never had formidable speechmaking tools. But,
despite falling behind, she’s remained a
tough, hard-working competitor. And, as
John Edwards’ ex-aide Joe Trippi said the other night about whether
Hillary could
overtake Obama: “I would never say never.”
(Now, PBS)
Says Cohen: “Of course Barack Obama
has
something to do with (Hillary’s faltering).
He’s a phenomenon, a political version of Roy Hobbs….”
Anybody
who remembers “The Natural” (if not the book, then
the movie starring Robert Redford), will recall that Roy Hobbs lost his
magic -
the bat “Wonderboy” - at the end. The inevitable connecting
thought: How long can Obama maintain his
spell over
the public and the media? How long
before “Change You Can Believe In” begins to spawn skepticism instead
of hope? Those Natural-based questions
might add up to
a good omen for Hillary, except that we all know Pete Rose ended badly,
too, because
of his betting problems.
The best consensus guess on the overall
result of today’s
contests: With Obama’s media-encouraged momentum slowed, Hillary will
do well
enough in Ohio, if not Texas,
to remain in the race at least until the Pennsylvania
primary next month.
- -
-
Spring training has hardly begun, but the unusually long
list of more-than-trivially injured players is growing daily. Following are among those considered doubtful/unlikely to be ready opening day: Eric
Chavez, 3b, and Chad Gaudin, p, Oakland;
Kelvin Escobar, p, LA Angels; Alex Gonzalez, ss, Cincinnati; Orlando
Hernandez,
Mets; Brad Lidge, p, Phillies; Omar Vizquel, ss, San Francisco; Joel
Zumaya, p,
Detroit.
Carlos Delgado and his bad hip might soon be added to that list,
which would
leave the Mets with a gigantic hole at first base.
Right field is already a shaky position, not
because of Ryan Church’s concussion. When Willie Randolph was asked if
Church
was his right fielder, he said “for now.”
Sounds like all would be forgiven if Omar could get Lastings
Millidge
back.
From the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo this double-barreled salute to
to a
rookie’s potential: “What a sweet swing this kid Evan
Longoria (Tampa
Bay third baseman) possesses…Former Sox
utilityman Eric Hinske has a
chance to stick with the Rays, but his best shot is if Longoria doesn't
make
the team. ‘That kid is phenomenal,’ Hinske said. ’He's
the real deal. You're going to be
hearing a lot about him over the years’. “
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