the_nub.html
(baseball and politics,
politics and baseball – 10/29/07)
Some years ago, on a softball field in Albany, the
Executive Chamber team was
playing the final game of its season as darkness was falling on a
September
evening. As the third out was made on
the agreed-upon last inning, a voice pleaded through the gloaming: “One
more
inning.”
Raise your hand if you didn’t hope for
at least one more
game as the season ended last night.
November, December and January are the non-baseball months. To have three additional days tacked on that
period of deprivation is hard. We’ll
have to make do with hot stove chatter.
Of course, we’ll have baseball
analogies to help carry us
through the dark months. Where would politicians, as well as ourselves,
be
without them? At an appearance sponsored
by City Hall news monthly last Friday, NY Lieutenant Governor David
Paterson
was talking about partisan tension in Albany,
and how it complicates the task of doing the people’s business.
“It shouldn’t be that way,” said Paterson.
“Back around 1908, there were three famous Chicago Cubs
infielders,
immortalized as ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance.’ (“These are the
saddest of possible words/Tinker to Evers to Chance…”) They
were a
great double play combination. They
hated each other, but worked together, nevertheless.
That’s how government should operate.” It
doesn’t work well, in part, because the men who make up the lineups
have too
much power. They – the legislative leaders
- can punish their players who don’t follow orders by walloping them
where it
hurts – in the wallet. So there is seldom
a publicly beneficial crossing of party lines, Paterson says, no coming together in
the Tinker
et al tradition.
- -
-
Tim McCarver made one of his patented prescient
calls in the
Red Sox fifth last night. He said he
wouldn’t pitch to Jason Varitek with runners in scoring position and
Julio Lugo
and Jon Lester due up next. Sure enough,
Varitek singled in what could be called a decisive run to make the
score 2-0.
News of Alex Rodriguez opting out of
his Yankees contract
came midway through the game, a reminder of how the Red Sox and Yanks
seem to
be going in opposite directions.
Whom to believe?
While the Daily News, among other media outlets, were indicating
Joe
Girardi had the inside track on the Yankees managerial job, Peter
Pascarelli on
ESPN Radio said he thought the new NYY manager would be Don Mattingly.
The Red Sox are reportedly ready to
re-sign Curt Schilling
and Mike Lowell, the Yanks
Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada.
The Mets?
They’re supposedly looking at
free agents-to-be Geoff Blum and David Eckstein!
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/26/07)
Not long ago, a marketing outfit
engaged in evaluating the
presidential candidates said this about Barack Obama:
“Obama is like
the Chicago Cubs – intriguing and beloved by the casual fan,
but with few championships to show for it…(His) relative inexperience
on the
national stage shows…”
Some observers
think the Cubs would match better with the Red Sox than the Rockies,
who have to deal with the same inexperience rap as does Obama. A savvy analyst on the website Red Sox Talk
sized
up Colorado
this
way:
“Youth
and
inexperience (should) work against the (Rockies);
if they get into trouble, I think their youngest pitchers will fall
apart
pretty quickly… Just as Cleveland
clearly
buckled in the last three games, Colorado
runs the same risk because of their collective inexperience. If they
get off to
a great start, the Sox could be in trouble; but if we start well, it is
over.”
Obama seems to
be
casting himself as a Clinton
clone, matching her cautious approach on nearly every question. As a consequence, some commentators are
calling him “Bush Lite.” The Rockies would love to be able to match the Red
Sox in
pitching, offense and bench strength. If
Colorado
is
to win it will take the energetic abandon the young team displayed in
getting
to the Series. That’s a long-shot game
plan that could work politically
for Obama as he plays catch-up ball vis-à-vis Hillary.
Say It Isn’t So,
Charlie: The NY Times quoted Charlie
Rangel yesterday as saying “Nobody likes (Hugo) Chavez.”
The story concerned a Bush Administration gambit
to improve trade relations with Latin American states in the Venezuelan
president’s bailiwick. Rangel, House Ways
and
Means Committee honcho and a progressive icon, knows the people of the South Bronx like Chavez.
Hugo has arranged for his state oil subsidiary Citgo to supply
fuel oil
at reduced prices to that poor neighborhood and others in the U.S.
frost belt. Rangel surely also knows that
poor
Venezuelans appreciate Chavez for the social programs he is financing
with oil
money. Rangel may believe that
Chavez turned off many Americans when he called George Bush a “devil.” That could be true, but many others thought
Hugo had the right idea expressed in a Latin-emphatic way.
Humorist Garrison Keillor is slightly
more subtle than
Chavez in saying what he thinks of Bush, whom he calls the “current
occupant”: “The
Current Occupant…is a
relaxed, easygoing, self-accepting guy whose old retainers love him for
his
self-effacing modesty, a wonderful trait, but when you are incompetent,
it is
not so wonderful as, say, a little more intelligence might be. He is heading for the short bus of history
where Earl Butz and Spiro Agnew ride.” -
Salon
Sports Illustrated’s Jon
Heyman believes Joe Girardi has at
least a 50-50 chance of succeeding Joe Torre as Yankees manager. He says Brian Cashman has canvassed his
operations people to see if they feel as he does: “Cashman…will…make
a
recommendation to the trio of Steinbrenners and other Yankees bosses…
The word
(i)s that Cashman's recommendation will likely be accepted as the new
manager…
if (so), Girardi's chances to upset the favored Mattingly may be real. The ‘baseball ops’' people, presumably
including Cashman, were actually said to have favored Girardi if a
change were
made early in the season when the Yankees got off to a dreadful start.”
The
Candlestick Park-like weather must have gotten to Jon
Miller, who does Giants games during the season as well as ESPN work. He opened radio coverage of last night’s
Series game in Boston,
saying “San Francisco Giants baseball!”
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/25/07)
“The evil
empire extends its
tentacles…into Latin America.”
One
can imagine variations of that baseball-related lament
being quoted in much of Latin America
today,
with George Bush embodying the “empire” instead of George Steinbrenner.
You’ll remember that when the phrase
made headlines five
years ago it referred to the Yankees signing Cuban defector Jose
Contreras to a
four-year, $32 million contract. Red Sox
president Larry Lucchino was complaining about Steinbrenner’s
willingness to
spend whatever it took to get the best free agents.
How times have changed: witness the $103
million Boston
agreed to pay out to add Daisuke Matsuzaka to its starting rotation.
Bush, in the role of Boss of Bluster,
warned Cuba
yesterday that it better play ball with the
Yanquis or Team USA
would get out its bats; another in a series
of threatening swings the empire has
made toward Iran, Myanmar,
etc.,
as well as the Castro regime. Boss George
and his fans in Florida don’t like
signs that Cuba
will maintain its current game plan and
continue a working agreement with upstart Venezuela.
Cuba
is responding to Bush the way the Yankees did to the Red Sox in 2002: “Suck it up; we’re not going to change to
please you.”
- -
-
Arizona’s Eric Byrnes, working the
Series
on Fox’s pre-game team, raved last night about the Rockies’
youth, power, defense, emergence as genuine potential champions. Then he picked the Red Sox in seven.
Tim McCarver, as it became clear game 1 was shaping up as no contest: “What’s another word for ‘dominant’? I’ve left my thesaurus home.”
He was talking about Josh Beckett, but the
word certainly applied to the Bosox.
Putting aside that Boston has a
better team
on paper, Salon’s King Kaufman (who perversely picks Colorado
to win in seven) gave the best explanation yesterday as to why the Rockies lost last night and, still hurt by the
stupid
playoff schedule, will probably lose three more before the Series ends:
“Even
if there were such a thing as momentum in baseball, even
if the Rockies really could count on playing well today just because
they
played well yesterday, it wouldn't matter because the Rockies
didn't play yesterday. Or the day before
that. Or the six days before that.
“They’ve
been idle for a major-league record eight days. There
are pitchers scheduled to start games in
this World Series who weren't born when the Rockies eliminated the Arizona
Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series.
“The Rockies have been
standing
still, the very opposite of momentum, while the Red Sox have been
reeling off
three straight wins…and they only had to sit for two days.”
Although it likely kills most NY baseball writers
to admit it, the Yankees
didn’t treat Joe Torre badly, after all.
Torre has explained that he didn’t consider the “insult” of the
incentive-laden
contract offer a personal one; it was generic, insensitive to team
dynamics. He has further explained that
he considered the salary offer acceptable; it was only its guaranteed
duration
of one year rather than two he didn’t like.
So the herd-attack on the Yankee brass was unjustified. The organization is owed an apology here, and
from all but a few commentators. An
exception: Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman.
-
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.)
politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/24/07)
It was Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo
Durocher who said
“Nice guys finish last.” He said it in
1946, when his team was in first place and playing the New York Giants,
who
weren’t doing so well. He pointed to the
Giants and their manager Mel Ott in the visitors dugout.
“All nice guys,” he reportedly said by way of
preface. “They’ll finish last.”
There are a lot of nice guys among the
several
presidential candidates. And The
Politico’s Roger Simon says Durocher was right – it’s the opposite
image they
should be cultivating if they want to win:
“The Iraq
war has become a symbol of
strength misdirected, strength misspent, strength squandered. And the Republicans suffered for it in the
congressional
elections of 2006. But strength
remains
a critical factor in this presidential election.
Take a look at the Democratic side. Which
candidate projects the most strength? That’s
easy: Hillary Clinton. She is so
relentless about projecting strength she will not admit even to human
error… Early
on, some of her backers worried that she was not likeable and warm
enough on
the stump; her campaign decided that was secondary to her being
forceful, firm
and tough.
Barack
Obama projects healing and unity on the stump. He
is cool. He is cerebral. He
is sincere. He wants to bring us
together...This is not a
strength message. It is a peace message.
It is a typical Democratic message. And Hillary is beating Obama in the national
polls by more than two to one.
“(On) the
Republican
side. Rudy Giuliani continues to lead in
the national polls. His theme has not
changed from day one, and his theme is strength…Mitt Romney radiates
competence
on the stump. He is smart and he is
friendly. But you look at him and you
think: CEO. You do not look at him (yet) and think: commander in chief. He is running fourth in most national polls.”
-
- -
Giuliani did not need to
strike a
tough pose in Boston
yesterday when he announced he’ll be rooting for the Red Sox in the
World
Series. “I am an American League fan,”
he said, promising he won’t change his story if he gets to Colorado during
the series.
“Old
vs. new.
“Big payroll vs. small.
“Red Sox Nation vs. the
forgotten time
zone.
“Mitt Romney vs. Tom
Tancredo.
“If you'd tried to come
up with the
greatest possible contrast in the World Series, you probably
couldn't have done any better than Sox vs. Rox on
Fox. It's the Dr. Seuss Series.”
- Rocky Mountain Times columnist
Dave Krieger
-
- -
President Bush is on a winning streak as he
persists in claiming
to be above the law when involved in “defending the nation.” Jeb Rubenfeld, Yale professor of
constitutional law, says the Senate ought to insist that Michael
Mukasey,
Bush’s nominee for attorney general, put an end to that
authoritarianism:
“(Since
1803) the Supreme Court has enforced that laws
trump presidential authority, not the reverse…As a minimum prerequisite
for
confirmation…(the) nominee should be required to state plainly whether
the
executive branch or a federal statue is supreme when the president and
Congress…clash…
“If Judge
Mukasey cannot say plainly that the president
must obey a valid statue, he ought not to be the nation’s next attorney
general.”
- New York
Times
-
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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/23/07)
Leading off today is pinch-hitter
Michael Scherer, who
covered the Republican presidential debate Sunday night for Salon while
keeping
an eye on game seven of the ALC. Here
are highlights of his report:
“Fox News
anchor
Brit Hume…opens the latest Republican debate by boasting that it
will be ’seen
and heard’ on Fox News Channel, Fox News Radio and FoxNews.com. He does not mention that almost no one will be
watching or listening…because right now the Fox Network is broadcasting
Game 7
of the American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox
and
Cleveland Indians. Fox has effectively
stolen its own audience from itself.
“Fox News
Sunday
host Chris Wallace,,, wants to start a fight. He
tells… Rudy
Giuliani that… Fred Thompson thinks he is a softy –
‘soft on
abortion, ’ ’soft on gun control’ and a
lousy conservative. Giuliani.,, does not
take the bait. He just talks about his
accomplishments in New York.
“Wallace
turns to Thompson,,, The tall man goes ballistic on
Giuliani. ‘Mayor Giuliani believes in
federal funding for abortion… He's for
gun control. He supported Mario Cuomo, a
liberal Democrat, against a Republican who was running for governor’….
“ All hell breaks
loose. Giuliani,,, finally decides to
attack
Thompson, for standing with Democrats on tort reform ‘over and over
again’ Giuliani (also) says Thompson
‘has never had
executive responsibility.’
“First commercial
break. Over on
the Fox Network, it's still the bottom of the first, Manny Ramirez
singles to
left center, scoring Dustin Pedroia from second. One
to nothing, Red Sox.
“We're
back…Wallace introduces the Hillary Clinton round. He
begins by telling Romney that Fox has a
poll that shows Hillary Clinton would whoop his ass by 12 points if the
election were held today. ‘Is Hillary Clinton fit to be commander in
chief?’ he
asks. The crowd screams, ‘No!’ in
unison…Romney rides the Hillary hatred. ‘She
hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't
run a state. She hasn't run a city. She has never run anything. And
the idea that she could learn to be
president, you know, as an internship, just doesn't make any sense,’ he
says. Wow. This
is a low blow. Romney has just evoked
the image of an intern in the Oval Office while discussing Hillary
Clinton…
“Second
commercial
break... Two out in the top of the third. The debate will be on again
soon. It's hard to change the channel
back. Really hard. But
democracy matters. There is a job to be
done. Somebody has got to do it…
“(A half-hour later) It's over.
Say what you will about the Fox News Channel, but at least they
limit
their debates to 90 minutes. It's the
top of the fourth at Fenway, three to nothing, but the Indians have a
runner in
scoring position. It's anybody's game,
even though most of America
thinks they already know who will win…”
-
-
-
It says here the only reasonable bet going into the World Series is
that the
Rockies’ string on seven straight
post-season
victories will end. As to who will win
the best four of seven, our advice: bet the house on Boston, but not
the land on which it sits.
Another look at comparative payroll stats: Red Sox, $143 million; Rockies, $54 million.
The Globe’s Nick Cafardo points out that a
comparison of the
performances of Boston’s GM and his
counterparts
with the Yanks and Mets is odious for the NY execs: ”In big
markets such as Boston
and New York
the general manager's job is judged by whether you make it to the World
Series. Yankees GM Brian Cashman is
home trying to find a manager and figure out the future of his team. He
failed
this season. Omar Minaya is trying to
figure out the epic collapse of the New York Mets. He
really failed this season. Theo Epstein is getting ready for the World
Series
against the Colorado Rockies.
He succeeded.”
- 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.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/22/07)
One rival at the top of its game, the
other…
From a hometown perspective, the
comparison is not between Boston and Cleveland.
The Red Sox’s emphatic comeback into the World Series coincides with
disarray
in Yankee-land. The contrast - one
organization clicking, the other confused – is peculiarly painful at
this point
in the waning season.
A friend who’s made a successful career
working for various
sports leagues once described baseball team owners as a strikingly
boorish
bunch. The performance of the Yankees
brass in dealing with Joe Torre exemplifies what the friend was
alluding
to. The lack of sensitivity toward the
man who was the respected face of their organization for 12 years was
breathtaking…and typical.
The tawdriness extends to the team’s
new stadium project. While the Red Sox
were setting aside a controversial
Fenway-replacement plan, the Yankees went ahead with their equally
dubious
project. They pushed for and received
from the city 22 acres of public parkland and $795 million in subsidies
to
facilitate construction of their stadium.
The deal exemplified both the riding-roughshod arrogance of the
organization and the lowly-taxpayers-be-damned attitude of a shamefully
large
number of elected officials. (See Nub of 7//23 on perfectpitcher.org).
Then, recently
an advocacy group called Good Jobs New York accused the Yankees of
misspending
tens of thousands of dollars of city-provided “stadium planning” money
on
frivolous items. The
Yankees denied the charge, part of a revealing
report hinting of team hubris by NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer.
Meanwhile, there is the manager muddle. By inviting Joe Girardi and Tony Pena to
interview along with Don Mattingly for the job of Torre’s successor,
the organization
is signaling that the would-be heir apparent no longer owns the
priority he
once seemed to have. We shouldn’t be
surprised, therefore, if Mattingly, linked closely to the scorned and
scornful
Torre, is bypassed. Should Donnie M not
make the cut, the validity of the decision aside, there is sure to be a
further
PR fallout, with blame laid at the door of clumsy leadership.
- -
-
Misleading PR of a deadly serious nature emanates from the
Department of Defense. That’s the charge
leveled by Conn Hallinan, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus. The subject is the count of Iraqi dead:
“The
DOD (says) the United
States does not track
civilian casualties. As former commander
General Tommy Franks put it, ‘We don’t do body counts.’
“But
testimony in the recent trial of U.S. Army
snipers… indicated the generals indeed do body counts. In
a July hearing at Fort Liberty,
Iraq,
Sgt. Anthony G. Murphy said he and other
snipers felt ‘an underlying tone’ of disappointment from their
commanders when
they didn’t rack up big body counts… When the snipers started setting
traps to
lure in unsuspecting Iraqis, the kill ratios went up and the
commanders, he
said, were pleased.
“The
choreography the Bush administration does around
casualties is aimed at…cover(ing) up one of the worst humanitarian
crises to
strike the Middle East.”
-
- -
Cleveland
third-base coach Joel Skinner had to feel a sneaky sense of relief when
the Red
Sox began their late-game rout. His
failure to wave Kenny Lofton home with what would have been the tying
run in
the seventh inning looked for a few agonizing minutes like it had blown
the
Indians’ season. Even the normally
imperturbable Eric Wedge was seen by the TV cameras to wince after the
hold-up.
Was there surprise in Cleveland
when the predictable happened in Boston
last night? Apparently not: A prescient
headline
in yesterday’s Plain Dealer said “FANS FIGHT CREEPING DOOM AS GAME 7
LOOMS”.
An Indians victory would have been
doubly satisfying for
anti-Red Sox progressives. Not only
would it have knocked the favored Sox out of the Series, a matchup
involving
two lesser markets, Cleveland and Denver, would have insured low
TV-viewer ratings
for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network. As it
is, Rox-Sox should be an attractive show.
- 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.)
(baseball and politics, politics and baseball -
10/19/07)
Until yesterday, Joe Torre was part of a
baseball/political “left-hanging”
club that also included the St.Louis Cardinals and MTA chair Peter
Kalikow. Torre spoiled the triad symmetry
by rejecting
the disrespectful Yankees offer to return.
Joe may wind up with the Cardinals, who are waiting for Tony La
Russa to
decide if he wants to return as manager.
Kalikow? He’s one of more than a
hundred appointees of Governor Eliot Spitzer and his predecessor George
Pataki,
waiting to fill or vacate government positions. In Kalikow’s case, he’s
being
replaced by a humdinger, no, a (H. Dale) Hemmerdinger, appointed by
Spitzer
four months ago.
The overall delay in vacancy-filling,
which dates from early
in the year, is the result of a long public feud between Spitzer and
Senate
team leader Joe Bruno. Spitzer is
involved in a rebuilding effort that centers on the Democrats taking
control of
the Senate. Bruno is said to resent this
brush-back aimed at a bipartisan live-and-let-live stance that has
clearly been
in effect in Albany
for decades.
The Yankees seem only shakily prepared
to live without Torre. Said one allegedly
well-connected fan last
night: “They’ll give Mattingly a
shot. He won’t work out, so they’ll fire
him.” The Cardinals have the advantage of owning the contract of La
Russa’s
pitching coach Dave Duncan for another season; Tony has said, at least
half-seriously, he would go wherever Duncan
does. Chances are, therefore, that La Russa, rather than former manager
Torre, will
be back with the Cardinals next season.
It feels as though the Indians are no
better than 50-50 to
take the Red Sox, now that the ALC is returning to Fenway
Park, with Boston needing only a game to tie the
series
at 3-3 (and Josh Beckett possibly waiting in the bullpen).
No argument that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver
set the standard as game announcers, and McCarver was right to hammer
Manny
Ramirez for not running out his tie-breaking near- home
run-turned-single. But why did the
dynamite duo spend so much
time discussing what Manny meant by his “Not the end of the world”
remark the
day before the important game? Seemed a
simple,
straightforward, and indisputable statement (especially since neither
the Yanks
nor the Mets are involved).
-
- -
The French don’t like baseball – too little action, too many
longeurs – but they do like the good
life, and know how to lead it. They have
better food, drink, health care, day care, etc. and more free time than
just
about anybody. We have every right to
envy them. Instead, at least in the media, we read “It isn’t
right;
they can’t go on like this.” That’s the
message of op-ed columnist Roger Cohen in yesterday’s NY Times: “Hallelujah,” he says, to a proposed program
of American-style reforms: a cutback in unemployment benefits, later
retirement,
possible reversal of the 35-hour work week.
The reforms may be inevitable. But, meanwhile, some non-economists among us
who once lived for extended periods in France say we should be
cheering
the labor-union-led resistance to the effort to make them more like us. How dismaying it would be to find Paris (and
the French) had changed if, given our steadily-weakening dollar, we
could ever
afford to return there.
-
- -
Raise your hand if you find the Native American caricature
on the Indians’ caps and uniforms embarrassing.
If you raised it, you have company.
Here’s Salon’s King Kaufman: “Is it too
much to ask that
outrageously racist caricatures of peoples on whom this country has
perpetrated
genocide be retired? The answer is no, it's not too much to ask.” And Jonathan
Zimmerman of the Christian Science Monitor:
"How
can we profess equality of all Americans, then mock the first Americans
in our
sports teams?" The
answer: We can’t. Next question: Which
team will be the first
to do something about it
As memories of early playoff games
recede, one image endures
– Joba Chamberlain trying to pitch with bugs swarming around and
clinging to
his neck. Word out of Cleveland is that a local
ornithologist tried
in vain to get through to Jacobs Field by phone. He
wanted to make officials aware that the bugs
were “midges” who would be attracted to, rather than repelled by the
insecticide
spray covering Joba’s exposed parts.
Yankee fans are welcome to believe that, had the expert
succeeded in
reaching someone, the result of the game, and series, would have been
different.
- 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.)
(politics
and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/18/07)
While baseball fans focus on Cleveland
and the possible crowning tonight of a new AL
champion, political people are attending to Iowa, where 2008 presidential
scorekeeping
will begin in less than three months. If
Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney can vindicate their poll numbers by
winning the
Iowa Caucuses, they will have gained a big edge as the primaries in
other
states unfold. Hillary leads Barack
Obama by an average of three points and John Edwards by five in the
latest
polls. Romney leads Rudy Giuliani and
Fred Thompson by an average of 10 on the Republican side.
Hillary has been steadily gaining
ground on Obama and
Edwards while Romney has benefited from slippage in Rudy’s poll
standing. Although the two leaders look to
be good bets
to finish first, David Yepsen, veteran political reporter for the Des
Moines
Register says, like the Indians against the Red Sox, neither candidate
should
take victory for granted. Yepsen lists
reasons why Hillary’s (and Romney’s) apparent lead may be less than
meets the
eye:
“Many Iowa
caucus-goers are professional
undecideds. They've been told so often they are important and that
their
decision counts that they've come to really believe it. So,
they take their sweet time watching
debates and the way candidates conduct themselves before making a
choice.
”The Iowa
Poll shows 25 percent of them have actually met a candidate. (Which
also means
75 percent haven't - yet.)
”In Iowa, Clinton leads the Democratic pack
with 29
percent of the vote. That means 71
percent of the likely Democratic caucus-goers in the state want someone
else to
be their nominee, are undecided or have enough concerns about her not
to
commit.
”Of those Democrats who've decided
on a preference, 53 percent say they could still be persuaded to change
their
minds. On the Republican side, it's 67
percent.”
-
-
-
How do Mets fans feel about the Joe Torre situation?
Well, one of them thinks the Yanks should
re-sign him while half-hoping they don’t.
Why the quasi-contradiction? A
managerial
change would give us all something to talk – and write – about. One speculative explanation for the delay (in
addition to the money issue): the Yankees brass are trying to
orchestrate the
passing over of Don Mattingly and the naming of Joe Girardi or whomever
in as graceful a way
as possible.
With money pitchers Josh Beckett and
Curt Schilling
scheduled to pitch the next two games, the Red Sox could easily be even
with
the Indians this weekend. But Boston
Globe columnist Bob Ryan says, if the worst happens, the Red Sox Nation
should
not begrudge Cleveland
fans their moment of rejoicing:
“These
people have waited 43 years for a Cleveland team to be
champions in anything…For 34 seasons, from 1960 through 1993, the
Indians were
relentlessly awful, and if you don't believe me, how else would you
describe
the circumstance of finishing above fourth once (a third in 1968)
during all
those years?...
“C'mon. The Marlins have
won twice. The Diamondbacks have won. The Rockies
might win. This is fair? You got yours three years ago. If
these fans wind up getting theirs, please
remember there are a lot worse clubs to lose to than the Cleveland
Indians.”
In case you missed it (as did we): The Braves have “announced that they’ve cut
ties with (Andruw) Jones.” That’s
according to Salon’s Jon Heyman. Now if Andruw would only move to the American
League.
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/17/07)
It was supposed to be a double sweep. After the Red Sox won the opening game of the
AL championship series last Friday,
Democratic
fans northeast of Boston
talked of winning both a special Congressional race and the league
title on the
same day. And yesterday, Dem candidate
Nikki Tsongas kept her part of the bargain.
The widow of U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas defeated Republican Jim
Ogonowski
by a 51 to 45 percent margin. Meanwhile,
the Red Sox, fell to the brink of being swept out of the playoffs by
losing a third
straight to Cleveland.
Tsongas’s victory didn’t come easily. Ogonowski, brother of one of the pilots
killed on 9/11, scored in the high-income Fifth District with a strong
stance
on immigration. Voters found his support
of Republican-style tax cuts less persuasive at a time when newly
released IRS
data showed that the wealthiest among us earned more than a fifth of
the nation’s
income. .
Tsongas created the biggest stir in the
campaign by saying
she would vote for withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Iraq
within nine months. Furthermore, she
said she was “shocked” by the unwillingness of several Democratic
presidential
candidates to make similar commitments.
Tsongas is immediately replacing Democrat Martin Meehan, who
retired. She plans to cast her first
House vote later in the week to override President Bush’s veto of the
bill to
expand children’s health care coverage.
-
- -
Ex-Met Paul Byrd used slow stuff and single and
double-windups to keep the Bosockers at bay for five innings last night. That was long enough for his teammates to get
the measure of Tim Wakefield’s knuckleballs.
The Indians’ seven-run uprising in the bottom of the fifth felt
like a
decisive shift in the series momentum.
How about them Rockies
–
the first team in nearly three-quarters of a century to win 21 of 22
after
September 1. Ex-Met/Yankee/Red
Sox and current Diamondback
Tony Clark said it best: “There
comes a point in time when a team is no longer hot,
they're simply good, And I think that's
what we saw with Colorado."
Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd has had to
endure seven years
of famine before his team began their fall feast. Salon’s
Jon Heyman reviewed the lean years
that led to this year’s jelling of youth and low-salaried experience in
a talk
with O’Dowd:
“O'Dowd's
one of the
smartest people in baseball, and one of the best prepared. But he suffered a lot for seven years. Part of
it was the park, which the club ingeniously neutralized with the
humidor. But
part of it was also an early attempt to spend to win that went awry
when Mike Hampton and Denny
Neagle weren't what they hoped.
The reaction to those mistakes was to cut back, way back. And while
it's
working, O'Dowd isn't taking bows yet. "We had gotten to the
point
where we were so far underwater with our revenue model, we had no
choice but to
do it.''
Cleveland’s Mark Shapiro is another GM who has
had to bring
together a winning team on a tight budget.
He was asked by the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo what it would be
like to
have the money at the disposal of Yankees GM Brian Cashman; the
specific
advantages that kind of money gives an organization.
“The
easiest answer I can give you is there's likely a different
tolerance for risk in every phase of your operation…it would impact the
draft,
major league decision making, free agents….I'd seek additional outside
resources and the best resources possible…take every incremental
advantage you
could possibly take.”
- 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.)
“Politics
and baseball. Interesting blog…called
"The Nub" on perfectpitcher.org”
-
Boston
Globe
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/16/07)
Alex Rodriguez and Hillary Clinton have
at least one thing
in common: they want their fans to know
that they’re acting these days for strategic reasons and not
necessarily
because it’s how they feel. A-Rod has
let agent Scott Boros make his case for leaving New York if the Yankees don’t pay
him more
than the average $25.2 million annually he’s already receiving. Rodriguez himself says he likes NY and
lets
the matter rest there. Hillary has voted
in support of a Bush Administration measure stepping up our
confrontation with Iran. Her backers explain privately that she’s
doing it to shore up her national security credentials in anticipation
of the
general election.
Yankee fans and Democrats are supposed
to be understanding. They should want both
luminaries to be
successful. As a
financially-happier-than-he-is-now
Yankee, A-Rod might be expected to have more monster years like this
one. And success for Hillary will mean a
Democratic president. How bad can that
be? But the strategies are questionable,
it says here, because, in A-Rod’s case, the Yankees can be successful
without
him. The only indispensable pinstripers
are Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter. If
Rodriguez allows Boros to deal him to a non-New York team, he loses
millions in
additional money that accrue to his playing in the country’s
communications
center, endorsement dollars that could well exceed the total he makes
playing
elsewhere.
As for Hillary, she must know she is
not indispensable; as
of today, almost any of the Democratic candidates could beat a
Republican for
the presidency. At the same time, polls
show she is more likely than the others to prompt swing voters to
support a
Republican. That means her present
course, which risks pushing progressives to cast a protest
vote on Election Day, unnecessarily offers
the GOP a glimmer of hope.
Indeed, many Republican observers
believe Hillary would
serve as a batting tee for Rudy Giuliani to swing his way to the
presidency. Columnist Robert Novak uses
some faith-based statistics to support that point of view in the
Chicago
Tribune:
“Apart
from being the lesser of two evils against Clinton,
Giuliani seems to be the positive choice of millions of religious
Americans.
“In an
aggregation of 1,690 interviews with Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents in four Gallup
surveys during August and September, Giuliani led with 27 percent (to
Fred
Thompson's 24 percent) among those who said they attended church once a
week.
Even more startling was the result of interviews with adult voters
without
regard to party preference. Among
churchgoing Catholics, Giuliani led with a plus-38 favorable rating
(trailed by
Sen. John McCain with a plus-29 and Clinton bringing up the rear with a
minus-9).”
- -
-
It is perhaps time to heed the “DESTINY” signs flashed at
Coors Field last night. The many fans in
the East who’ve been anticipating a “Rox-Sox” World Series are halfway
home. The problem for Boston, of course, is that the
Indians are
playing as if destiny belongs to them, as well.
Playoff-related quotation that has
never been truer: "It's kind of
ridiculous playing at 1:30 in the morning.'' -
Cleveland’s
Trot Nixon, after game 2 (quoted by
Salon’s Jon Heyman)
The
regular 2007 season will not die, as these stats, cited
by Newsday’s Wallace Matthews, remind us:
“On May 29, the Yankees
sat at
21-29, 14 1/2 games behind the Red Sox. They were headed for the most
spectacular failure in the history of sports. On the same date, the
Mets were
33-17, five games ahead in first place, headed for another
Secretariat's Belmont
of a divisional
race.
”But in the rest of the season, the Yankees went 73-39. The Mets went
55-57,
crumbling like a sand castle in the final week of the season, at home,
against
three teams with a combined record of 222-264, with payrolls of $30
million,
$37 million and $90 million.
”And you want to say the Yankees were a bust? What exactly does that
make the
Mets?
-
o -
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effort skippered by Dick Starkey.
Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome. Previous Nubs can be found
by scrolling below.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/15/07)
For local baseball fans who are
Democrats, “dynasty” is a
dirty word. There’s Bush 2 in the White
House, with the nightmare he has created for anyone who cares about the
country. There’s Wilpon 2, Jeff, son of
owner Fred, who was responsible for the Mets’ bleak Art Howe period,
played an
important role in the Scott
Kazmir-to-Tampa Bay
debacle, and who still has – God help us! – a big say in how the team
is
run. And now there are Steinbrenners 2
and 2a, Hank and Hal, who apparently will have major input in the
decision to
keep Joe Torre or turn managing the Yankees over to Don Mattingly, Joe
Girardi,
Tony La Russa or even Bobby Valentine. Hank and Hal may represent the undoing of Don
M’s chances. Word from Tampa is that
they are less enthusiastic
about a Mattingly succession than is their father, whom they might
persuade to
go for someone else. While hoping for
the best, there’s reason for Yankee fans to fret: the dynastic
precedents in
Washington and Queens are far from
reassuring.
- -
-
Do you think George Bush reassured the world when he said
last week (not for the first time) “This government does not torture
people”? Said Jimmy Carter: “Head-slapping,
simulated drowning and frigid temperatures (are
torture) if you use the international norms of torture as has always
been
honored…But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we
don’t
violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say
we don’t
violate them.”
Where
does Fox Cable News pundit Bill O’Reilly stand on this
and related issues? Here is the way he
addressed them, posing a question to his audience about a hypothetical
John
Edwards presidency: “[W]ould
you
support President John Edwards? Remember,
no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured
overseas
terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone
surveillance without a specific warrant.”
O’Reilly’s
anti-civil-libertarian stance prompted this
rejoinder from Salon’s Glenn Greenwald (who monitored the Fox program
in which
the statement cited was made): “Who
could even fathom an America
plagued by habeas corpus,
search warrants, and a military that fails to beat, freeze and
mock-execute its
detainees? And nothing is more sacred to core American values than
branding
other countries' armies as ‘Terrorists’."
- - -
Self-fulfilling prophesy dept: Confirming
the conventional wisdom that
eastern baseball fans have little or no interest in playoff games
involving
western teams, the TV people schedule Colorado-Arizona contests in
Phoenix at a
time when most would-be viewers on this coast know the games will
finish long
after their bedtimes. Friday night
at
11:30, the Rockies and D-Backs had
just
completed the fourth inning. Viewers got
a brief respite last night: the game ended around midnight. Tonight, the Rockies
and D-Backs figure to finish - the game, and maybe the series - at 1
a.m. at
the earliest
Calling it as one sees – and hears - it (even at the risk of sounding racist):
Dusty Baker’s acceptance of the three-year contract to manage Cincinnati
prompts the thought that he’s a
better manager than baseball announcer.
He, Tony Gwynn and Joe Morgan lack both edge and wit as
sportscasters. They all seem overly
zealous to avoid giving offense and somehow incapable of sharing real
baseball insights.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver
could have been
writing about the over-the-hill Mets and the up-and-coming Rockies
and Diamondbacks when she composed these lines:
“The old
players hang on
to their smarts, their prowess
as long as they can
while the luminous young
keep
showing up,
so swift, so quick,
with such light in their eyes
and such beautiful swings.”
- “The Poet Goes to Fenway”
- 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.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/12/07
Webster’s lists “artful, skillful” among secondary
meanings of
the word “political”. Don Mattingly made
an effective political statement after stories emerged linking Tony La
Russa to
the possibly soon-to-be-vacant Yankees managerial job.
Mattingly told reporters what they already
knew, that he would like a chance to manage.
One of the results: a NY Times headline “AS FRONT-RUNNER,
MATTINGLY IS
ON DECK”. The rapport Mattingly had
built with the media people served to nudge La Russa out of the news,
at least
for the day.
What will be decisive, of course, is
whether Mattingly
remains a favorite of George Steinbrenner.
If the Boss chooses him over Joe Girardi, it may well be because
the
2006 NL manager of the year lacks the political skills owners consider
essential in their employees. Remember,
Girardi lost his managerial job after publicly admonishing Marlins
owner
Jeffrey Loria for hollering at umpires. Speculation as to why Paul Lo Duca probably will
not be asked back by the Mets centers on his political shortcomings,
specifically that he “shoots his mouth off.”
And we all know that Billy Wagner would be gone if the Mets had
someone
else to be their closer. He made
impolitic statements all season about Willie Randolph, and who can
forget his
late homestretch outburst to New
York
magazine (for which he was required to apologize to Rick Peterson and
Willie
Randolph): “We've
been throwing four
innings a night - for months! Our
pitching coach has no experience talking to a bullpen. He
can help you mechanically, but he can't
tell you emotions. He has no idea what
it feels like. And neither does Willie. They're not a lot of help, put it that
way."
Politicians are trained to be
political in what they say and most of them are masterful in their
avoidance of
giving offense. But every once in awhile
they do what Dennis Kucinich did when not invited to participate in an
American
Association of Retired People (AARP) -sponsored Democratic debate on
health
care. He attacked both the sponsors and
three of his fellow candidates:
“Millions
of trusting AARP members have bought
Medicare-supplemental and prescription drug insurance plans from AARP,
believing
that they were getting a good deal. It
turns out, however, that AARP is taking a $4 billion cut by steering
its
members to profiteering private insurance companies trying to
capitalize on
fear and confusion.
“The fact that Senators
Clinton,
Obama, and former Senator Edwards are pushing plans to keep the
for-profit
private insurers in business and in control may explain why they (were
invited)
to participate in the debate.”
Author and former UN weapons
inspector Scott Ritter has long
been impolitic about U.S.
hostility toward Iran. On CommonDreams.org this week, he suggested an
overriding reason for our aggressiveness:
“America’s
interest in dominating the Middle East…
is
driven almost exclusively by the energy resources of that region…
Iranian oil
and gas represent a critical part of the future economic growth of the
world’s
two largest expanding economies, Chinaand India. By
leveraging its control over Iranian energy
production… the United States
is positioning itself to be able to control the pace of economic
expansion in China
and India,
a capability deemed vital… to (our)
national
security… “
- -
-
Dave Campbell made an interesting point on ESPN Radio’s
coverage of the Rockies-D-Backs game last night. Noting
that six of nine starters on each team
were homegrown, he said the success of young, inexpensive players may
mean less
money will be offered free agents this winter.
Teams will be more inclined to give prospects a serious chance. He praised the scouting and development staffs
of both teams, staffs that could surely use an upgrade in Mets-land. .
Reminder of the rule that usually works
at playoff
time: the team with the fewest former
Mets goes all the way. By that
measure,
the Red Sox with zero ex-Mets should win their second World Series
title in
four years. Of course, it looks like the
Rockies, who have now won 18 of 19,
may have
something to say about that.
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/11/07)
Back when the “Miracle Mets” won their
first world
championship (1969), the euphoria in the city was credited with helping
Mayor
John Lindsay win re-election and recognition as a presidential prospect. The Lindsay experience suggests that a
presidential hopeful today could get a significant boost from
association with the
latest successor to the ’69 Mets.
The candidates from the four remaining
playoff locations –
John McCain, Arizona; Mitt Romney, Boston; Dennis Kucinich, Cleveland
and Tom Tancredo, Colorado
– all have various degrees of connection to their teams.
Realistically (and
regretfully),Kucinich doesn’t have a chance
of making the presidential cut, nor does his Congressional colleague
Tancredo. But,
if Rudy Giuliani fades as his Yankees did, McCain and Romney could be
neck-and-neck finalists in the Republican primary, whether or not their
teams
go all the way. Whichever of them is
perceived
as the more authentic baseball fan might just gain the tiniest of edges. Who would that be? On
the basis of admittedly sparse evidence:
McCain. Romney made a telling, and
somehow characteristic error when he failed to acknowledge a Red Sox
moment
during a campaign stop. The Nub is indebted to Dan Lamothe, who calls
himself
the “Red Sox Monster”, for catching Romney’s inauthentic baseball
moment on a
YouTube video. Here is how Lamothe
reported the catch:
“That
appears to be… Romney, without a damn clue what music is playing in the
background at a campaign event in Iowa
last week.
“The
song? ‘Dirty Water’ by the
Standells, an anthem for Red Sox fans that is played at every home game
at
least once, and also appears in the gaggeriffic Sox film, ‘Fever Pitch.’
“Mitt:
You had my vote as
governor when you first ran, but that is it. If you can't be bothered to know the basics of
New England sports culture, you are dead
to me. You
hear me? Dead!"
- -
-
Ernesto (Che) Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary acolyte
of Fidel Castro, died 40 years ago this week, far
from his Cuban mentor. Columnist Robert
Scheer says Che’s execution
by the CIA in Bolivia
has
contributed to the dramatic political changes now under way in Latin America:
(Che)
was… skeptical that the kind of socialism that truly
served the poor could survive in just one country; hence,
he died attempting to internationalize
the struggle….Killing Che was a big mistake, as his message was spread
more
effectively by his execution than by his guerrilla activities…
“In
Latin America…
political leaders he helped inspire are faring better than those
coddled by the
CIA. Daniel Ortega, whom the CIA worked
so doggedly to overthrow, is the elected president of Nicaragua.
Almost all of Latin America’s leaders are
leftists, some more moderate than Che (as in Brazil),
and others as fiery as the guerrilla (in
Venezuela),
but all determinedly independent of yanqui control…
“On Monday, Che’s death
was marked, in the Bolivian
village where he was killed, by Bolivian President Evo Morales, who
proclaimed
his movement “100 percent Guevarist and socialist,” which hardly
registers as a
propaganda success story for those favoring CIA assassinations. They turned a failed-and flawed-guerrilla
fighter into an enduring symbol of resistance to oppression.”
– San Francisco
Chronicle
- -
-
Chien Ming Wang isn’t ready to be
an ace? That’s what Larry Bowa told
Michael Kay on ESPN Radio (according to SI’s Jon Heyman).
The Yankees clearly have to hope Joba
Chamberlain or Phil Hughes mature quickly, and that Andy Pettitte
returns next
season. But, oh, wouldn’t the Mets like
to have any one of those four in their ’08 rotation!
Two
Nubbites, Jerry Skurnick and
Scott Swanay, wrote, in response to an item earlier this week about the
Republicanism of nearly all ballplayers.
For some it may be a mindless family thing, they said. But most players favor the GOP, they
suggested because Republicans consistently support tax cuts. An obvious point that should have been made.
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/10/07)
The
only ongoing hardball game left in town is of the
political variety. The man on the mound
is tossing explosive brush-back pitches aimed at showing up a system
rigged to
protect players and keep power comfortably divided.
The pitcher is Wayne Barrett, the Village
Voice’s ace who is in a political reporting league by himself.
In an article in last week’s Voice,
Barrett reported on “The
Truth Behind Troopergate,” the subtext to the “charge that…governor
Eliot
Spitzer tried to plant a story about Senate Republican leader Joe
Bruno’s
state-subsidized travel.” What’s really
happening, says Barrett, is a convulsive response to “the first real
challenge
to (Albany’s)
insider-party game in modern history.”
The game involves a mutually agreed-upon sharing of power, a
willingness
on both Democratic and Republican sides to let the Dems control the
Assembly,
the GOP the Senate. This arrangement, in
effect for 80 years, is now in danger of being upset by Spitzer. The governor’s concerted effort to gain
Democratic control of the Senate is, in Barrett’s words, “an
electroshock to the
state’s political culture”, as much to his own party as to the
Republicans.
What Barrett has disclosed in devastating detail is the
state’s bipartisan near-equivalent of
the Black Sox scandal, except that this scandal tainted the political
game for
the better part of a century.
-
- -
George Steinbrenner, it says here, would be terribly ill-advised
to let Joe Torre go in favor of Tony La Russa.
But if, as seems likely, Torre will soon be gone, his successor
should
be Joe Girardi. Talk of La Russa coming
to NY suggests that Torre’s former heir apparent Don Mattingly is out
of the
picture. Nothing against Mattingly, but
that means the way is clear for the Yanks to snap up Girardi, the 2006
NL
manager of the year, before he goes elsewhere.
Mets post-mortem (cont.):
The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo relays a report of a trend among
successful ballteams, epitomized by those that the made the playoffs: “The
Angels have the most
homegrown players on their roster with 15, followed
by the Rockies and Diamondbacks (14),
the Yankees (11), and
the Cubs and Phillies (9). The Red Sox
trail the pack with seven.” How many
homegrown players would the Mets have had?
Five at most: Carlos Gomez, Aaron
Heilman, Lastings Millidge, Jose Reyes, David Wright.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lob
from Left field: “The
Democrats treat the Israeli-Palestinian crisis,
which is by far the greatest cause of anti-American sentiment in the
Arab-Muslim world, as if it were a municipal garbage-jurisdiction
dispute in Peoria.
The Bush administration is doing almost nothing
to
prepare the ground for the November peace summit, a window-dressing
exercise
destined to go nowhere. But none of the
major Democratic candidates seems to care. None has
insisted that Washington and Tel Aviv must put final-status issues on
the
table, even though without that stipulation the talks are doomed to
fail, with
potentially grave consequences for Israel,
the Palestinians, the region and U.S. interests. Certainly none has dared join that raving
radical, Colin Powell,
in suggesting that Hamas must be a part of
the
negotiations. No one endorses Hamas' use
of terrorism -- but just as after 9/11, the fetishization of terrorism
as pure
evil is preventing America
from acting in its own interests.” – Gary
Kamiya, Salon
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Budget-related reminder for fans looking for a
team other
than the Red Sox to support: In the
playoffs payroll league, the Diamondbacks have done the most with the
least,
spending just over a third of what Boston
paid out. Colorado
is close behind Arizona in the
bang-for-the-buck department, with Cleveland
not too far up the line. No disrespect
meant to Red Sox Nation.
- 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.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/9/07)
We were reminded last night that
baseball is better than
politics in one respect: the better team usually wins. No hanging chads, outrageously unfavorable
court decisions, the baseball result usually comes out right. Cleveland
had superior pitching, timely hitting.
The Indians deserved to win, and they did.
On the subject of merit, here’s a cheer
for Curt Schilling,
the Red Sox pitcher many New
York
fans love to hate. He
was brilliant Sunday, shutting down the
Angels. But Schilling deserves greater
praise,
it says here, for being a standup guy politically: he urged voters to
support
George Bush in 2004 and says he will vote for John McCain in 2008. Some of us may quarrel with his judgment, but
how can we not admire his willingness to risk alienating baseball fans
who
disagree with his choices?
Jim Bunning, now a U.S. senator from
Kentucky, and the late Wilmer
(Vinegar Bend) Mizell, a former congressman from North Carolina, were
two
ballplayers who became political success stories (Republican, of
course), but
not until after their on-the-field careers were over.
Al Leiter was an exception like Schilling: while still an active
player, he
expressed public support for George Bush and Republicanism. KC's
Mark
Sweeney and Jeff Suppan, then with the Cardinals, signed an anti-stem
cell
research ad aimed at a proposed bill in the Missouri legislature. Kudos to
them as
well, despite disagreement on the issue.
If we ask why
ballplayers opt out
of political involvement, the answer is they’re just like most of us. The great majority of Americans, we know, have
no use for politics. People working in
the 2004 presidential campaign heard similar refrains, whether from
leftist
college students or conservative Republicans:
“It won’t make any difference whom I vote for”, “Nothing will
change.” A now-retired politically minded
ballplayer
quoted by Jeff Pearlman on ESPN estimated that 98 percent of
ballplayers were -
are - Republican “without knowing why.” One
reason for their - and our general political inattentiveness – is
easier to
trace. “In a
two-party system,” explains
historian
Howard Zinn, “if both
parties
ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.”
-
- -
For some of us, it wasn’t until the fourth game pitching
matchups were announced that we realized the Yanks were in serious
trouble. Chien-Ming Wang on three days
rest? Or Mike Mussina?
Those are shaky reeds this October. True,
ex-Met Paul Byrd, who would be
starting for Cleveland,
didn’t scare anybody. But he did the
job.
Misery-loves-company
dept:
Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote this epitaph to
the
Phillies’ season after their sweep by the Rockies: “ The
Phillies struck out a total of 26 times in these three games. They had
a total
of 16 hits and scored a total of 8 runs - most of them in a 10-5
blowout. The Phillies scored five of their
runs on solo
home runs, testament to their inability to get on base and stage
rallies.
“In
years to come, if
this group of Phillies goes on to great things, this series will be
remembered
as a difficult learning experience. If
not, if it's another 10 or 15 years between postseason appearances,
this
spirit-sapping series will be thought of as a great opportunity lost.”
This
is NOT sour grapes: To be swept in the first round of
the playoffs is almost as bad as just missing the playoffs (same
applies to
teams losing in the first round of NCAA basketball tournament). It’s a rule.
- 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.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/5/07)
The weather was as hot as the Indians
in Cleveland
last night. The still-summery temperatures
in the
northern half of the country are good for baseball, but bad for the
environment. The temperature in Philadelphia
yesterday was
in the 80’s, compared to the 70’s at Jacobs Field. The Weather Bureau
says it
will be close to 70 in Boston
tonight. The Yankees have reason to
expect a mildish evening when they host the Indians Sunday night.
Meanwhile, the NY Times reported this
on its op-ed page yesterday:
“The Arctic
ice cap melted this summer at a
shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even
the
most pessimistic experts of global warming.”
And
last week, members of a House Committee looking into the
problem closer to home heard a worrisome first-hand report from a University of Alaska ecologist.
The McClatchy Newspapers filed this story on
the testimony:
“The
higher temperatures mean that permafrost will melt,
(Glen) Juday said, simply because the sustained temperatures needed to
keep it
frozen no longer will exist. His most recent studies show that higher
temperatures have led to more tundra fires; when tundra burns, it
releases a
tremendous amount of stored carbon dioxide. This year alone, 100,000
acres of
tundra burned, Juday said…further concentrating greenhouse gases and
contributing to global warming…” – Erika Bolstad
The Bush Administration continues to be skeptical about such
warnings,
encouraging skepticism on the part of people like us, more interested
in baseball
than in environmental activism. Per that
interest, who doesn’t know what happened in Cleveland last night?
If you were watching, or listening, you’ll
remember when confidence that the Yanks could – would – handle the
Indians in
the game and the series took a hit.
Jorge Posada, batting in the fifth; score 4-3, one out, bases
loaded and
a 3-0 count. C.C. Sabathia seemed to be
on the ropes. But he threw a series of
tough pitches that Jorge couldn’t get around on, finally striking out. You knew then the Yanks were in a battle that
might end badly, after all.
Colorado and the Phillies head for
games
three and four in Denver with the Rockies up, 2-0. Ex-Met
Kaz Matsui, whom NY paid Colorado
to take from them, hit the game-turning grand slam and finished a
single short
of the hat trick. The Phils obviously
have their work cut out for them at Coors Field. The
Cubs, also behind 2-0, will at least be
home in Wrigley’s friendly confines. But
let’s face it: barring a momentum shift, we’re looking at an
all-Western
Division NL championship series.
-
- -
Back in the realm of real-world problems, humorist Garrison Keillor
has some
advice we might take to heart on the long weekend:
“As the
dollar falls and the price of oil rises and the auto
business heads south and the housing market shudders and suddenly
nobody is
quite sure how much the house is worth and the slow-motion disaster of
Iraq grinds
on and on, the Arctic ice cap has shrunk by a million square miles, …
we'd
better start learning to enjoy long walks in the woods, apples and
flirting, all
the God-given pleasures. We face
uncertain times.”
- Salon
-
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.)
(baseball
and politics, politics and baseball – 10/4/07)
“Anything that is one-sided in this country is
wrong.”
- Jackie Robinson testifying at
Curt Flood’s challenge of baseball’s reserve clause
When Jackie Robinson uttered those
words 37 years ago,
corporate control of the news media had not reached the level of
concentration it
commands today. The diversity of news
sources made for variety in the media marketplace. In
the public sector, Buckley v. Valeo – the
Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited amounts of money to be
used in
political races – was six years away (1976).
The power of lobbyists, therefore, to influence legislation was
still comparatively
in check.
As an eventual result of Curt Flood’s
principled challenge
to the reserve clause – he sacrificed what was left of his athletic
career for
the good of other major and minor leaguers – baseball players were
liberated
from being what he called “well-paid slaves.”
But, owing to laws relaxing the rules on media ownership as well
as
political fundraising, the “one-sidedness” at the core of Flood’s
complaint has
flourished.
States the U.S.
government considers unfriendly are obvious examples – North Korea, Iran,
Syria, the part of Palestine ruled by Hamas,
Cuba, Venezuela. Seldom is heard (or written) an encouraging
word about any of them in our media.
Domestically, while corporate and government success stories
abound in
our press, it is rare to read about unsafe working conditions,
inadequate
health care, the plight of our underclass, in general.
Perhaps the most one-sidedly maligned
subject, related to
our domestic problems, is taxes. Polls
have shown the public is favorably disposed to investing in public
services
through taxation. The catch is the tax
must be perceived as fair, proportionate to what a person can afford. Such a tax has been a non-starter, by and
large, everywhere since corporate money began influencing elections,
thanks to
Buckley v. Valeo. William Greider
provides a grim assessment of the situation in his book “Who Will Tell
the
People? The Betrayal of American
Democracy”:
“For those who blame
Republicans
for what has happened and believe that equitable taxation will be
restored if
only the Democrats can win back the White House, there is this
disquieting
fact: The turning point on tax politics, when the moneyed elite first
began to
win big, occurred in 1978 with the Democratic Party fully in power and
well
before Ronald Reagan came to Washington.
Democratic majorities have supported this great shift in the tax
burden
every step of the way.”
- -
-
The Yankees have a big finance-related burden as they meet Cleveland
tonight: as the
playoff team with the highest payroll, they must advance at
least to the
league championship round. You’ll
remember that when Detroit
eliminated them in the first round last year, the outcry in NY was
almost as
loud as the one heard this week over the Mets’ collapse.
The Red Sox, Angels, Cubs and Phillies are
other teams in the high-payroll tier among those in the final eight. The Diamondbacks, five from the MLB bottom,
have spent the least among the eight to get as far as they are now.
Colorado,
the one visiting team to win in yesterday’s playoff openers, scored the
potentially biggest victory of the three.
The Rockies will go home for two games in Denverno worse than even with the Phillies.
And they are tough in their home park.
They swept both the Mets and the Yanks at Coors Field this
season. Boston
can throw Josh Beckett back at the Angels in the fourth game of that
series
Monday: bad news for LA. The Cubs will
see Brandon Webb again next Tuesday, if their series with Arizona goes
five games.
Paul Byrd, Tony Clark, Cliff Floyd, Kaz
Matsui, Doug
Mientkiewicz: those are the five ex-Mets appearing in the playoffs,
with Cleveland, Arizona,
Chicago, Colorado
and the Yankees, respectively. It says
here that, through the years, the team or teams with the fewest ex-Mets
have
had the edge over the others on the way to the championship. By that measure, the Red Sox, Phillies and LA
Angels should do well. The Angels do
have a slight handicap, however: their regular centerfielder is former
Met Gary
Matthews. An injury has sidelined him
for the playoffs. Arizonahas a minor burden, too:
pitcher
Yusmeiro Petit is a former Mets farmhand.
-
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.)
(baseball and
politics,
politics and baseball – 10/3/07)
“A child did not die.”
Amid votes in Congress virtually
justifying aggression against
Tehran
and the
talk of bombing in pursuit of the “terrorist” Iranian Guard, the
phrase, heard
on WNYC’s mid-morning public affairs program, sounded ominous: like the Bush Administration defending another
preemptive warlike strike.
Not quite: the sentence was uttered as
part of a therapy
session for grieving Mets fans conducted by host Brian Lehrer. The theme embraced by many callers came from
Tom Glavine, who said after the game Sunday that the loss did not
devastate
him. It was, after all, just a game.
Our government’s game
vis-à-vis Iraq
is clearly approaching a critical
time. Disunified Congressional Democrats
face a revised Bush-Cheney strategy of depicting the Iranian threat no
longer in
nuclear terms, but as one that jeopardizes the safety of our troops in Iraq. Salon’s Gary Kamiya says the majority Dems,
having muffed a chance to stall the new roll-up to war several months
ago, are
surely aware they must act now:
“They
know that Bush is engaging in exactly the same kind of
propaganda campaign against Iran
that he did against Iraq,
with "explosively shaped charges" replacing the "mushroom
clouds" that Saddam Hussein was going to release… And they know that
war
with Iran
would be a disaster. That's why last
March the Democratic leadership proposed a resolution that would
prevent Bush
from attacking Iran
without congressional authorization. But
when –( according to the) neoconservative New York Sun… –‘a group of
conservative and pro-Israel Democrats’ objected, the Democrats caved --
in
effect, putting the decision on whether to launch a third Mideast war
in Bush's
capable hands.”
- -
-
The contrast in
baseball strategy between Omar Minaya’s reliance on ultra-veteran
imports – Glavine,
Orlando Hernandez, Moises Alou, Jose Valentin, etc. - and Brian
Cashman’s
decision to stick with his mix of veteran regulars and youngsters made
for
interesting reading during the roller-coaster season.
Many writers – most egregiously, Mike Lupica
of the Daily News – were quick to hail the Mets as the city’s new top
team and
label the Yanks as passé. We now
know -
if we didn’t already - that a productive farm system is an essential
ingredient
in helping a team like the Yanks persevere to the playoffs. Mets fans can only hope their team learns from
the results of the contrasting approaches.
The heartbreak among Mets supporters Sunday afternoon was matched
Monday
night in San Diego when Colorado scored
three in the bottom of the
13th to beat the Padres and ace closer Trevor Hoffman, 9-8. Here is how San Diego Union-Tribune columnist
Tim Sullivan reported the wrenching climax:
“For
the second time in three days, Hoffman was unable to
protect a lead that would have meant a wild-card playoff berth for the
Padres. For the second time in three days,
Padre fans
were left to wonder if the law of averages has finally tilted against
their Cooperstown closer.
“’I'm
having a hard time expressing myself right now,’
Hoffman said. ‘I wish I could, but I can't after what happened
tonight.’
“Heath
Bell, Doug Brocail and Joe Thatcher pitched
heroically for the Padres in relief of (Jake) Peavy. (Scott)
Hairston, who has been a key
contributor during Milton Bradley's many absences, temporarily
positioned
himself to join the club's small pantheon of postseason heroes, very
close to
Steve Garvey.
“That
it could all came undone with a player of Hoffman's
pedigree on the pitcher's mound is a reminder of how humbling baseball
can be.”
Playoff predictions from fearless Manhattan-based stat man Scott
Swanay: The final four will be the Phils
and Cubs in the NL, the Red Sox and Yanks in the AL.
The World Series will pit the Phils against the Yanks, winner to
be
identified after the first two rounds are over.
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball,
baseball and politics – 10/2/07)
“You go to
war with the army
you’ve got, not the one you wish you
had. “ – Donald
Rumsfeld, December 2004
“You play with the team
you have.”
– Willie Randolph, September 2007
In retrospect, the admission that the
army in Iraq
was not as
well equipped as it should have been marked the beginning of the end
for
Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary. As the
promoter of “shock and awe”, he proved himself strong on
carnage-causing
dazzle, but a failure when it came to the pedestrian basics of
protecting a
military occupation force.
Willie Randolph’s failure – it says
here – was in not
allowing for the vulnerability of the roster at his disposal. When things were going well, he blithely
quasi-conceded games the team could have won.
One example: In early May, the
Mets went into Phoenix
and took the first three of four games from the Diamondbacks. On Sunday, May 6, he fielded a lineup studded
with benchwarmers that couldn’t score runs.
Result: an unnecessary – but ultimately costly - 3-1 loss. That happened more often than it should have
throughout the season.
Whereas Rumsfeld had no one to blame
but himself for his
team’s shortcomings, Randolph
can – as, indeed, his statement implied – attribute responsibility to
the Mets’
architect Omar Minaya. Under ordinary
circumstances, that would be dangerous.
But Willie’s good fortune is that he has two years left on his
contract. And the Mets brass have
demonstrated that, although they don’t mind spending money in spurts,
they are
basically penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Chances are that, even if someone like Joe Girardi turns out to
be
available, the Mets will stick with Willie, at least for another year.
- - -
The future of U.S. labor unions has
become more
precarious as a consequence of last week’s UAW-GM agreement. The pact, deducible from a report by Michael
Barone, is part of the fallout from NAFTA and other international trade
agreements:
“Thanks
largely to the healthcare and retiree benefits, GM's hourly labor costs
in the United States
are about $75, compared with about
$50 for Toyota
and other non-U.S. companies.
“Last
week, even before the (United Auto Workers) strike, the union agreed to
let GM
offload its $51 billion in retiree healthcare benefits to a trust fund
for a
$35 billion payment. The settlement
after the strike allows GM to offer more buyouts to older workers and
hire new
workers at lower wages; pay increases are limited to a couple of
lump-sum
payments. The jobs bank -- in which GM pays laid-off employees not to
work --
will be pared way back.
“Why did the UAW agree? Because GM made it plain that if it didn't,
it would shift more production to plants abroad, from Mexico to China. “ - U.S. News and World Report
- -
-
True to their late-season form, the Colorado Rockies
displayed everything the Mets lacked - resiliency, spark, spirit – in
winning
the single game that decided whether their season would continue last
night. The San Diego Padres fought
valiantly; Jake Peavy, their ace, didn’t have it so they had to try to
win with
minimal offensive fire power.
Former Met Kaz Matsui – given away for
nothing to the
Rockies – started Colorado’s
first-inning and final 13th-inning rallies with doubles. The climax came after two other ex-
Mets, both relievers, distinguished
themselves in different ways: Heath Bell
- traded to the Padres for Ben Johnson (.271 at New Orleans) - held the
Rockies
hitless and scoreless for two-and-two-thirds innings; Jorge Julio,
looking the
way he did in NY before being traded for Orlando Hernandez, yielded the
Padres’
two go-ahead runs in the top of the 13th.
The final Mets touch came by indirect
association: Trevor
Hoffman looked to be as sure a bet as Tom Glavine to stop the
opposition in a do-or-die
encounter. The line on San Diego’s legendary closer: three runs, three hits in a decisive third of
an inning. Final score: 9-8.
The Rockies
will meet their
mirror image in the Phillies, starting tomorrow. It
should be the feature NL playoff show,
approximating Yanks-Cleveland, Red Sox-Angels in the AL.
Sorry about that, Cubs and Diamondbacks.
- 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.)
(politics and
baseball, baseball and politics – 10/1/07)
Last Wednesday, Hillary Clinton
inadvertently reminded many
Democrats why she’d be tough to swallow as head of the party’s team. She said that, in the event of a Yankees-Cubs
World Series, she would root for both teams, alternately.
(She wisely made no reference to the Mets in
the hypothetical series context,)
It was vintage Hillary as a hedger, as
someone who straddles
tough questions like the war and the future of the U.S.
military presence in Iraq. Whatever the reservations of those Dems, Clinton’s game
plan is
clearly working in the party as a whole while runner-up Barack Obama
can’t get
his untracked.
Neither
Barack nor Hillary has
taken strong liberal positions in the campaign, in particular on
questions
concerning Iraq or Iran.
Pointing to a Senate measure endorsing military action against Iran as a defining moment, Yale
professor
David Bromwich says it's the "how" the two have disappointed
progressives
- one with a vote, the other absenting himself - that is partly
responsible for
Clinton's
growing lead in the polls:
"It is
baffling that a man who
spoke (against provoking Iran)...could
not find the time or the resolve to cast his vote in a conspicuous test
for
authorizing war on Iran.
This seems to be one more demonstration of Obama’s tendency never to
take a
step forward without a step to the side...His own message about Iran
has...been muffled, wavering, experimental.
"With
Hillary Clinton, we know where we stand. (Last
week) she voted to bring the country a serious step closer to war
against Iran.
And
she did so for the same reason that she voted to authorize the war on Iraq...
She suspects the media and voters will show more trust for a candidate
who
supported than for one who opposed the war...If she wins the
presidency...she
believes she can manage...affairs more prudently than George W. Bush.
“Hillary
Clinton is consistent. Every move is
calculated, her actual intentions are masked, but the total drift is
easy to
comprehend. It is not so with Obama. How can he expect
anyone to
back a man who will not back himself?” - Huffington
Post
- -
-
Mets fans, look on the brighter side:
You had “meaningful games” through the last day of the regular
season
and will be spared the indignity of having your team dismissed in the
first
round of the playoffs. You can now
ponder a suggested team epitaph for the 2007 season:
“WE NEEDED
REINFORCEMENTS, NOT
RETREADS ”
Who knew
that the media applause
Omar Minaya received last winter for declining to meet the salary
demands of
Barry Zito would encourage the Mets to think they could put together a
successful pitching staff on the cheap?
But that’s apparently what happened.
It might have worked
had there
been a pitching-productive farm system. Then
there was…but let’s not get into
finger-pointing now. There will be
plenty of time in future weeks to review what went wrong and who fell
down on
the job.
Although
neutrality is – or should
be – the norm when non-Eastern Division teams try to knock each other
off, it
will be hard not to root for the Colorado Rockies to defeat the San
Diego
Padres in today’s wild card playoff in Denver. Colorado
came on in the homestretch like the Phillies, winning of 13 of 14 final
games. The Padres, hampered by injuries,
couldn’t win enough to keep their Matt Holliday-led pursuers at bay. A selfish reason to tilt toward the Rockies: If they
win, they will meet the almost equally hot Phils in the playoffs’ first
round.
- -
-
Some late post-game
analysis of
the meeting last week between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and
Columbia U. President Lee Bollinger: "Ahmadinejad
was playing to global public opinion, and though he lost some PR points
for
incoherence and general bizarreness of message ('In Iran, we don't have
homosexuals'), he gained some for coming off as a bit more mature
than his
prissy, infantile host. ('In Iran, when you invite a
guest, you
respect him,' Ahmadinejad observed dryly.)
"Bollinger,
meanwhile, was playing to a different audience...show(ing) the media,
alumni,
concerned Jewish organizations and a raft of neoconservative pundits
that he
was no terrorist-loving appeaser of Holocaust deniers. In a
narrow sense,
both...achieved their goals. Ahmadinejad showed that he could be
dignified in the face of crass American bullies, which will play well
abroad...And Bollinger showed that he can be a crass American
bully,
which, in our current political climate, is what passes for
'courage'." - Los Angeles Times (Rosa Brooks)
- -
-
Kudos
to Manhattan-based stat man Scott Swanay for picking the Phillies and
Cubs to
win in the NL and the Red Sox and Yankees to make the AL playoffs.
Not many prognosticators did as well.
- 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.)
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