Baseball

American Presidents, Andrus, Baseball, Biden, Britain, FDR, Lincoln, Obama, Politics, Reagan, Reapportionment, Truman

Action This Day

Posted on by christian

The (Almost) Case for Unilateral Action

In September 1940, just in front of the election that would make Franklin Roosevelt the first and only third-term president, FDR engineered an audacious deal with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

In exchange for gifting 50 aging, World War I vintage U.S. destroyers to the besieged British, Churchill granted the American president 99 year leases on a number of military bases in the Western Hemisphere. The destroyers for bases deal was loudly condemned by FDR’s critics who called it a raw presidential power play. As critics correctly pointed out, Roosevelt acted on his own motion, going behind the back of Congress to cut his deal with Churchill. History has for the most part vindicated FDR’s power play and many historians think the U.S. actually got the better of the deal.

The 1940 action by Roosevelt may be one of the greatest examples of a president acting unilaterally, but our history is replete with similar examples of presidential action on a unilateral basis. One of Theodore Roosevelt’s gutsy unilateral moves as he was nearing the end of his term created millions of acres of forest preserves – today’s National Forests – and protected the Grand Canyon. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was an act of presidential leadership that is almost universally praised today, but at the time the Great Emancipator cut Congress out of the loop and acted alone.

Now come criticism of Barack Obama’s unilateral action to order the end of deportations for certain young people who might otherwise be sent packing for being in the country illegally even as they have gone on to get an education, or work in order to become contributing members of our society. Critics charge the president acted for the most transparent political reasons or that he acted unconstitutionally or that he has now made legislative action on immigration more difficult. That last charge seems a particularly hard sell given the inability of Congress to act at all regarding immigration, but the real beef with Obama is that he acted alone.

Jimmy Carter used presidential action to protect the environmental crown jewels of Alaska, an action that ultimately forced Congress to get off the dime on that issue. Harry Truman informed Congress, but did not seek its approval regarding his 1948 decision to desegregate the U.S. military.

Of course all presidents overreach, but most do so by acting unilaterally in the foreign policy field, and that a place were unilateral action is often decidedly more problematic, at least in my view. It may turn out that Obama’s immigration action will be successfully challenged in a court of law or the court of public opinion, but don’t bet on it. I’m struck by how often in our history when a president has taken a big, bold step on an issue were Congress can’t or won’t act that the bold step has been vindicated by history.

The American people have always tended to reward action over inaction. Ronald Reagan’s unilateral decision to fire striking air traffic controllers near the beginning of his presidency in 1981 is a good example. Now celebrated, by conservatives at least, as a sterling example of a president acting decisively in the public interest, the decision was enormously contentious at the time it was made. Now its mostly seen as an effective use of unilateral action by a strong president.

The early polling seems to show that Obama’s recent “dream act-like” action on immigration is widely accepted by the American public. The lesson for the current occupant of the Oval Office, a politician who has displayed little skill in getting Congress to act on many issues, might be that a little unilateral action on important issues is not only good politics, but good government.

George W. Bush got this much right about the power of the presidency: the Chief Executive can be, when he wants to be, the decider on many things. The great Churchill frequently demanded “action this day” in his memos to subordinates. The great wartime leader knew that power not used isn’t worth much; but action properly applied is indeed real power.

 

 

Andrus Center, Baseball

Steroid Era

Posted on by christian

Not Guilty as Sin

So the Rocket walks and baseball’s long twilight struggle with performance enhancing drugs slips slowly, slowly away, while the real guilty parties are still very much at large.

As Mike Barnicle, one of the few people who will actually admit to liking Roger Clemens suggested this morning that the government failed to convict the big right-hander of lying to Congress because the line-up for those guilty of that offense is just too long.

Of course most everyone thinks Clemens did use the stuff, but 12 jurors obviously thought lying about it was the sports equivalent of “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman.” And besides, why nail the Rocket when everyone else it seems was juiced, too? There is even a website devoted to the steroid era. You can look up your favorite abuser.

It’s time, in the view of this baseball fan, to call a halt to more federal government efforts to prosecute these cheaters. They deserve – Clemens, Bonds, McGuire, Palmeiro and all the rest – the judgment of history more than the judgment of courtroom and I say that as one who believes the cornerstone of our justice system is the simple act of telling the truth.

So now the discussion turns to whether Clemens, Bonds and others will get the hallowed pass to Cooperstown. I’m of two minds on the Hall of Fame question. On the one hand, these guys cheated and sullied their own and the reputation of the greatest game. On the other hand, if Roger Clemens was pitching with an unfair advantage then guys were hitting against him with the same unfair advantage and perhaps we should leave it at that. Call it the baseball law of all things even out.

And there is this: like most revered American institutions, baseball hasn’t exactly displayed a historic level of purity that would compare the locker room or the area between the lines to a convent. The game has been dirty in one way or another since African-Americans couldn’t play it at the ultimate level, since the Black Sox threw a World Series and before Curt Flood broke the no-free-agency strangle hold of the owners.

One reason we love this game is that baseball is a window into the larger American experience. Our history is full of scoundrels, cheats and nasty, greedy owners. Ty Cobb, just to name one scoundrel, is in the Hall and my mother wouldn’t have let him in the house. And maybe the steroid era is just the unavoidable late 20th Century response to the larger society’s fixation with the notion that a pill – or an injection – is available that will fix everything from your erectile dysfunction to your depression.

Want to hit a few more home runs? While there may be a few nasty side effects, the fences are reachable. You half expect to see the commercials during the network evening news. “I’m Roger Clemens and when I need a little something extra…”

Sport has imitated life.

The real villains of the steroid era, of course, really aren’t the Rocket or Bonds or McGuire, but the owners and traffic cops of baseball who looked the other way or elected to bury their heads. Remember the juice-stoked McGuire-Sosa home run competition in 1998? Most of us ate it up. So did Bud Selig.

“I think what Mark McGwire has accomplished is so remarkable, and he has handled it all so beautifully, we want to do everything we can to enjoy a great moment in baseball history,” said the Mr. Tough-on-Drugs Commissioner.

The fans – yours truly included – loved those big bashers. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our lust for strikeouts and the long ball. We all share some responsibility for celebrating accomplishments that we can now so clearly see really were too good to be true.

I don’t vote for the Hall of Fame, but if I did I’d mark a ballot for Clemens and the arrogant Bonds, too. They were dirty, but so was so much of the game. Here’s hoping the owners and their lackey commissioner really have taken the steps necessary to clean the game. But as for wiping the slate clean in the steroid era, well that’s for the fans of baseball to reckon with.

Twenty-five or 50 years from now when we look at the record book we won’t need an asterisk to tell us that for a few juiced up years the game was played by players with skills enhanced beyond all reason and unfairly so. Such a realization is now a part of the game that we still love.

Baseball is bigger than Roger the Rocket or Barry the Jerk. Always has been. A bunch of pumped up, big ego players and greedy owners can’t kill it even though they have tried over and over again. Baseball is like the country. With all its faults, it carries on and on.

 

Andrus, Baseball, Christie, Economy, FDR, Pete Seeger, Politics, Romney

House of Morgan

Posted on by christian

Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Manage

A little over one hundred years ago J. Pierpont Morgan ran much of the world’s business from an elegant office at 23 Wall Street in New York. The investment and commercial banking operations that J.P. oversaw financed railroads, mining, energy, steel and insurance companies. Morgan was big, so big that when the U.S. economy was on the verge of tanking in 1907, Morgan put a wad of money on the table and saved the day.

In the days before “too big to fail” became part of the national dialogue, the House of Morgan literally was too big and too powerful to fail. Morgan was the banker to the robber barons of the Gilded Age and as such earned the scorn of many a progressive politician. By the early 1930’s, with the old man, J.Pierpont dead since 1913, the House of Morgan finally got its comeuppance. The Glass-Steagall Act, also known as The Banking Act of 1933, passed the Congress, was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the big banks, particularly The House of Morgan, had to separate investment and commercial banking. Glass-Steagall was a clear cut response to The Great Depression and the widespread belief that reckless speculation by some bankers had played a contributing role in the international economic crisis that began in 1929.

It’s worth noting that the Glass in Glass-Steagall was Sen. Carter Glass of Virginia one of the old-style southern conservative Democrats who dominated Congress during much of the New Deal period. Glass, a newspaper editor by profession, served in the U.S. House of Representatives, helped write the Federal Reserve Act and then served as Treasury Secretary under Woodrow Wilson. Franklin Roosevelt wanted the tough, no nonsense, very conservative Sen. Glass to come back to the Treasury in 1933, but Glass preferred to stay in the Senate and devote his attention to improving banking regulation and modernizing the Fed. In short, Carter Glass was an expert legislator in these areas who applied decades of experience to sorting out how the federal government – and this guy was no big government liberal – ought to regulate banking.

American banking was governed by Glass-Steagall until 1999 when the Clinton Administration led the charge to eliminate the last visage of the New Deal-era regulation that separated traditional banking activity – loans, credit cards, deposits – from the substantially more speculative and riskier investment banking that centers on underwriting securities. Then-Treasury Sec. Lawrence Summers called the elimination of the 1930’s law an “update” of old rules, which would create a banking system for the 21st Century. Just how is that “update” working out so far you’d be smart to ask.

Enter Jamie Dimon the man who now presides over the 21st Century firm that J.P. Morgan invented in the 19th Century. Dimon, whose bank lost at least $2 billion recently by speculating in what are not incorrectly called financial “bets,” will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on June 7th to provide, as chairman Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) said, “a better understanding of this massive trading loss so we can take the implications into account as we continue to conduct our robust oversight over the full implementation of Wall Street reform.”

Sounds like Congress is finally set to get to the bottom of all this risk taking by Wall Street banks, but wait, don’t bet the house payment just yet.

So far Dimon’s explanation for the big losses his firm suffered has been what we might call the “we were stupid” defense. This from the guy universally regarded as the smartest operator on The Street. Dimon has called the trading – bets more precisely – on extraordinarily complex corporate-bond derivatives – hope Sen. Johnson knows what those are – a “terrible, egregious mistake” and he’s humbly admitted JPMorgan Chase has “egg on our face.”

Dimon is displaying excellent crisis management skills by admitting the obvious, his bank screwed up, but he is also the guy who has repeatedly condemned the Wall Street reforms contained in the Dodd-Frank legislation. That legislation, passed in the wake of the most recent economic collapse, stopped well short of re-imposing the kind of controls that once existed with Glass-Steagall, but Dodd-Frank nevertheless earns the widespread scorn of most Wall Streeters as well as conservative politicians beginning with Mitt Romney. Romney has condemned the JPMorgan risk taking, but also says he’ll work to repeal Dodd-Frank.

Here’s a guess – call it a policy bet – the Dimon appearance before the Senate committee will involve a great many speeches both chastising big bankers and federal regulators, but nothing much will change. Dimon will gracefully sidestep any real responsibility for the betting errors, in part, because everyone knows that even the smartest guy on Wall Street can’t possibly keep track of all the esoteric trading his minions are engaged in across the globe. Many commentators will again bemoan the reckless greed that drives the kind of speculation JPMorgan and its competitors engage in but, when all is said and done, legislators will not be able to tighten the regulatory screws on the excesses of Dimon’s firm and other banking houses, because they too have placed a bet. The Congress – both parties – are gambling that continuing to woo the campaign financial largess of Wall Street, while not engaging in real regulatory reform won’t continue to imperil the American economy. I hope they win the bet, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

Two things to know from the messy details of this new Gilded Age: vast amounts of money is being made by what can only be called the wildest, most uncontrolled speculation since J.P. Morgan reigned on Wall Street and, through all the months of anguish and pain that followed the financial meltdown in 2008, not a single Wall Street player has had to face the legal, let alone the moral, consequences of the kind of reckless behavior that Jamie Dimon says put egg on his face.

The New York Times reports that the fellow who made a bundle while JPMorgan was losing a bundle is Boaz Weinstein, an aggressive hedge fund manager – he made $90 million last year – who was smart enough and gutsy enough to understand that JPMorgan’s “egregious mistake” was another gambler’s opportunity. The Times says of Weinstein: “In the hedge fund game, a business in which ruthlessness is prized and money is the ultimate measure, Mr. Weinstein is what is known as a “monster” — an aggressive trader with a preternatural appetite for risk and a take-no-prisoners style. He is a chess master, as well as a high-roller on the velvet-topped tables of Las Vegas. He has been banned from the Bellagio for counting cards.”

If you believe modern capitalism is a zero-sum game where someone wins and someone loses, little of value is produced, few jobs are created, and vast amounts of money are at stake for a handful of gamblers, then the capitalism of Dimon-Weinstein is just what the regulator ordered. If, on the other hand, if you believe in what I’ll call old fashion capitalism where money is borrowed and invested in real enterprises that employ people and make things, then you might think that Washington, D.C., with its unwillingness to confront Wall Street gambling, is continuing to whistle past the next economic meltdown graveyard.

How else to explain that no one – not a person – has suffered even mild public rebuke, let alone jail time, for the series of decisions in housing and finance that brought much of the American middle class to its knees in 2008 and since. Not only has no one been held accountable, fundamentally – as the JPMorgan bets confirm – nothing has changed with the big banks. In fact, as David Rohde explained recently in The Atlantic, “The country’s biggest banks are getting bigger.”

“Five U.S. banks – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs – held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011,” writes Rohde, “equal to 56 percent of the country’s economy, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the biggest banks’ holdings amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. Today, they are roughly twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy.”

Using World Bank numbers, JPMorgan Chase’s market capitalization is greater than the GDP of 130 of the world’s countries, including New Zealand, Iraq and Vietnam. Given such size and scope, it’s little wonder the big banks behave like sovereign nations.

So, the biggest get bigger and ensure their position as “too big to fail” and even alleged smart guys like Jamie Dimon admit that banks too big to fail are, by definition, too big to manage. The big winners in this modern capitalism are guys like Boaz Weinstein who is a good enough gambler to get himself banned from Las Vegas, a place that really knows how to manage risk, but is, as the Times article says, “practically a featured attraction on Wall Street. [Weinstein] attends galas and charity events, and is sought out to speak at big events. Pictures of him clasping a drink at last night’s party appear with regularity on business Web sites.”

By comparison old J.P. seems like a genuine piker.

 

American Presidents, Baseball, Obama, Politics

Never Ending

Posted on by christian

What We Know That Just Ain’t So

Mark Twain is reported to have said, “It isn’t so astonishing the things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren’t so.”

This just may be the single biggest problem with civic life in the country today. We all tend to remember things that just aren’t so. Couple that with an astonishing inability to simply agree on a common set of “facts” around major issues and you have arrived at bedrock in the current unproductive state of politics in America.

An entire cottage industry in political journalism has grown up around the need to “fact check” everything candidates say. This is a welcome development in my book, but unfortunately too many of us simply will not take a fact, even one carefully checked by a pro, at face value.

Is Social Security about to go broke? Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Is the president’s birth certificate a fake? Did the stimulus save jobs or just cost money? Is Fox News fair and balanced? How about climate change, is it really happening? All questions that we have the ability to answer with what an old editor once called “the steady accumulation of facts.”

Scientists have done a lot of work on why people cling to beliefs that are clearly contradicted by evidence, by facts. I’m no behavioral scientist, but my read of the analysis is simple: we believe in things – political opinions included – that tend to reinforce our world view. Don’t like Obama: he must be a Muslim or not born in the U.S.A. Don’t like Romney: must be a heartless corporate raider or a hopelessly rich guy completely out of touch.

You can believe that Obama is a Muslim or Romney out of touch, but opinions are not facts. Facts should help shape opinions, facts should not be cherry picked to support a fully formed opinion, which explains much of our political discourse.

At the heart of this “my opinion is better than your opinion” approach to politics is the widespread inability to see the other side’s point of view and to even consider whether the guy across the aisle just might have a valid perspective. When the opposition is so easily written off as misguided and lacking in seriousness what is the motivation to listen, consider and compromise? There isn’t one. Perhaps the highest form of self awareness, a good thing in any leader, is the constant, nagging suspicion that, hey, I might be wrong.

Consider briefly the “birthers,” those folks who in the face of all evidence continue to insist that the duly elected president of the United States is unqualified for that position because he was not born in the country. Note to history buffs: Hawaii has been a state since August 21, 1959. Obama’s long-form birth certificate, affirmed by every responsible official in Hawaii and released by the White House to put a sock in Donald Trump, is dated August 4, 1961. Maintaining the fiction about the president’s birth in the face of such evidence is a little like arguing that the moon is a flat disc because, hey, it looks that way from my neighborhood!

To continue to believe the birther nonsense requires belief in a conspiracy so immense even I must be in on it. Don’t tell anyone.

Yet, as CNN political reporter Peter Hamby points out, people with seriously responsible positions – I’m not counting The Donald – continue to traffic is the “opinion” that the birth certificate is questionable. The Iowa GOP is including such opinion in its platform and the blowhard sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona is of the opinion that he needs to investigate.

Mark Twain would probably remind us – he can’t since the rumors of his death are no longer exaggerated – that people have always held fast to crazy beliefs. It is a bipartisan problem.

Some of Franklin Roosevelt’s enemies persisted in believing he was Jewish and part of a vast international Jewish conspiracy. You can find the “evidence” to support this opinion all over the Internet. And, of course, Sarah Palin didn’t give birth to her baby Trig and George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president. These “opinions” serve one really handy purpose – they delegitimize, they say you can’t take that person seriously because of some dark truth that, were it to come out, would show the world that – fill in the blank – is an imposter.

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic,” so said John F. Kennedy. Of course, JFK didn’t really die in Dallas in 1963, but is probably living in a retirement home in Florida or Lyndon Johnson killed him, even better the aliens got him.

Persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic. Kind of like our politics, all opinion and not many facts. Of course, we can chalk some of this up to simple old partisan mythmaking; the tried and true political strategy of telling an outrageous lie about your opponent and making them try to explain it away.

Little wonder we have such trouble addressing the country’s real problems, but that’s just an opinion.

Andrus Center, Baseball

The Greatest

Posted on by christian

My All-time Team

I never saw Rogers Hornsby play baseball – he quit playing in 1937 – but I’m still pretty sure he was among the best right-handed hitters of all time. On my own personal greatest team Hornsby would play second base. His lifetime average was .358 – over 23 years! Three different times he hit over .400 for a season and a half dozen other times came close to that magic mark. The Rajah could hit. I think he was the best ever at second.

Selecting all-time greats in anything is highly subjective, but still great fun and since one of the enduring things about baseball is the history of the great game. comparing and contrasting players from different eras can fodder for endless discussion and speculation. So, bring on the debate. He’s the rest of Johnson’s Dream Team.

My catcher is Mickey Cochrane. I could make an argument for Bill Dickey, Johnny Bench or Yogi Berra, but I like Cochrane. Great defense player, twice American League MVP and a .320 lifetime batting average. Black Mike could play for me in any era.

The great Mike Schmidt is my third baseman. In 18 years in the Majors, Schmidt hit 30 or more home runs 13 times. He had 548 dingers in his career. He also won 10 Gold Gloves, nine in a row. There has never been a better all-around third baseman. I love Brooks Robinson, too, but Schmidt is my guy.

Shortstop is tough and I admit to being a late adopter of the fact that the Yankees’ Derek Jeter is a superb baseball player. He is a marvelous all-around player, a leader and he can lead off for my all-time team. Jeter will end his career with a lifetime .300 average, more than 500 doubles and way more than 250 homers. I hate the Yankees, but Jeter is a player for the ages.

Who could possible be the pick at first except the great Lou Gehrig? Seventeenth all-time in batting average with .340, fifth in RBI’s, twice American League MVP and just shy of 500 homers. The sorrow of Gehrig’s personal story notwithstanding, the Iron Horse was an all-time great. Few other first basemen even come close.

Now, talk about difficult, the outfield. Was Ruth better than Aaron? How does DiMaggio compare with Cobb? Was Bonds just a steroid-era freak? How about Clemente and Splendid Teddy Ballgame? And don’t forget Mays, Mantle and The Duke? I’ve always been partial to Al Simmons and Tony Gywnn. I could go on.

In a way there are no wrong choices. So, just to balance my line-up, I’ll put Williams in left, Mays in center – maybe the best all-around player ever – and the great Clemente in right. I want all those other guys, Ruth, Aaron, etc., on the bench. Might need to give someone a day off.

As for the mound. I’ll pick two guys I’d like in my rotation every year – Walter Johnson, a right hander, and the great Sandy Koufax, a southpaw. Those two guys just might be able to shutdown the rest of my dream team. Johnson won 417 games in his career. The Left Arm of God, as Koufax was called, won the Cy Young three times and remarkably twice lead the National League with 27 complete games.

What time is the first pitch?

 

Andrus Center, Baseball

No Crying, Just Pain

Posted on by christian

The Great Rivera Is Out

I’m no Yankee fan and Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) said it for all time in A League of Their Own, “there’s no crying in baseball,” but every fan has to be moved by the awful image of the greatest closer in the history of the game grimacing in pain on the warning track in Kansas City with a torn ACL.

What a way for the season – and perhaps the career – of the great Mariano Rivera to end.

By most accounts, Mo Rivera has been the guts of the great Yankee teams of recent years; the guy who got the ball in the ninth inning and delivered time and again for the pinstripe set. For non-Yankee fans everywhere the sight of Rivera jogging in from the bullpen to save another game was about enough to prompt a switch of the dial to the Home Shopping Channel. Game over. Mr. Automatic has the ball and no one was going to lay a bat on him.

Tyler Kepner writing in the New York Times makes the case, if it need be made, for Rivera’s greatness:  “Joe Torre, the manager for most of Rivera’s career, always said that the postseason elevated Rivera over everyone else. The evidence is staggering. At a time when the stakes are highest, and the competition is strongest, the man with the best E.R.A. of the live-ball era is actually better. By a lot.

“Rivera’s postseason E.R.A. is 0.70. He has not allowed a postseason home run in 81 innings, since Jay Payton in the 2000 World Series, in a game the Yankees won,” Kepner wrote. “Rivera’s ability to pitch multiple innings in October, the way the pioneering closers did, has made him invaluable.”

Indeed. The guy is the best kind of baseball player – and teammate – he led by example, including shagging batting practice fly balls every day until yesterday.

Rivera need not come back – although I hope he can – to have his career affirmed with a lead pipe cinch first ballot selection to Cooperstown. Six times in his 18 year career he has saved 30 or more games, seven times 40 or more.

It is fitting in so many ways that Mariano Rivera is the last active player to wear Jackie Robinson’s number 42, the number that has been retired in all of baseball. Like the great Robinson Rivera, too, has been a pioneer. A quiet, gifted practioneer of excellence who has defined what it means to take the ball every time with a win on the line. If this is the end, he deserved better, but no matter since he is still the best.

 

Andrus Center, Baseball

Moyeritis

Posted on by christian

Age Wins…

Jamie Moyer, the 49 year old left-hander who is now throwing his junk for the Colorado Rockies, recently became the oldest pitcher to ever win a major league game. Moyer may be the baseball personification of the old line that “age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.”

Moyer faced 25 year old Pittsburgh Pirate standout Andrew McCutchen three times Tuesday night. Moyer was pitching in the Majors before McCutchen was born and the kid never reached base against the old man. McCutchen couldn’t believe it.

“I can’t believe he got me out,” McCutchen told the Associated Press. “You know he has nothing to throw by you, but he just nitpicks.” No, actually Andrew, he pitches – well – and has for a long, long time.

An admiring Hall of Famer and former Moyer teammate, Goose Gossage, said it well: “He throws slow, slower and slowest. How else would you describe it?”

Moyer is an inspiration to aging jocks everywhere. I’ve probably seen him pitch more games in person than any other pitcher of his – or my generation – and like most fans I’ve sat in the stands thinking “even I could hit this guy.” Nope.

Moyer’s fastball screeches in at a top speed of 79 miles an hour. Goose Gossage brought it closer to 100, but it’s really not the speed that matters with the cagey Moyer. It’s the competitiveness, the smarts and the experience that matter. Moyer has taken care of himself, been a student of his craft and, no big surprise, has learned a lot in 25 years with nine different teams.

And, aging jocks take notice, a 79 mile an hour fastball is still beyond the reach of most people. Don’t believe me? The Fort Myers Miracle, the Minnesota Twins affiliate in the Florida State League, are running a promotion where a fan can win a ticket to a future game if they can top 79 on a radar gun. More than 80 folks spent a buck a piece the other night to crank up three pitches in hopes to throwing harder than the ancient Moyer. No one did. One frustrated pitcher spent $50 on the promotion and no doubt left with a sore arm, heckling from his buddies and a hole in his wallet.

Moyer is proof that age is, in many respects, a state of mind. Winston Churchill was 65 when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain and 77 when he took over the second time. Christopher Plummer won as Oscar at 82 and the great Jack Nicklaus was 46 when he won the Masters. Experience and perspective matter in so many ways. It helps to hit the exercise bike, too.

Moyer says the key for him is how he feels the day after he pitches. Considering the typical aches and pains most of us start to feel on the long side of 40, it’s hard to imagine rolling out of the sack at age 49 the morning after throwing 100 pitches. My back hurts just thinking about it.

Think you can hit a Moyer fastball? Most of us would be lucky to foul one of his pitches off. Think you can throw a Moyer fastball? Not gonna happen for most. At the ripe old age of 49, Jamie Moyer gives all of us cause to marvel at those who play the boys game so well when the arrival of the AARP card is just around the corner. Age and treachery, indeed. But don’t count out experience and desire, important ingredients for success at any age.

 

Air Travel, Baseball, Books, Britain, Brother, Football, Johnson, Politics, Reagan, Religion

Weekend Reads

Posted on by christian

Robert Caro, Jerry Kramer and More

There is a fascinating piece planned for publication Sunday, and already online, in The New York Times on legendary Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Caro. Caro is about to release volume four of his projected five volume bio of LBJ. To date he has produced 3,388 fascinating pages.

Caro’s work is one of the greatest studies ever of the accumulation and use of political power. The piece also has great insights into the author’s methods, which could properly be described as “old school.” He dresses for work every day in jacket and tie, for example. Great piece.

Northwest Nazarene University political scientist Steve Shaw and one of his colleagues, English Department Chair Darrin Grinder, have just released an important new book that I highly recommend. The Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey wrote about the book – “The Presidents and Their Faith” – earlier this week. From Jefferson’s own version of the Gospels to Woodrow Wilson’s Presbyterian minister father to Richard Nixon’s Quaker roots, Shaw and Grinder give us wonderful mini-portraits of 43 presidents and their personal and political faith. With so much talk of politics and religion, the book couldn’t be timelier. Highly recommended.

Insightful piece in The Atlantic by staff writer Conor Friedersdorf that explains why national Republicans have spent 20 years searching for the next Ronald Reagan and haven’t found him.

“Today, would be Reagans with less charisma, less executive experience and less time spent honing their thinking and communication skills are somehow expecting to succeed even as they operate in a less advantageous political environment. Of course it isn’t happening. And it’s no wonder conservatives are divided in who they support.”

And finally, I am very aware (and happy) that baseball is back in action. My Giants open today in the city by the bay. But, the best sports book I’ve read in a while is an older book, published in 1968, Instant Replay by Green Bay Packer great and University of Idaho grad Jerry Kramer. The New York Times called Kramer’s book the “best behind the scene glimpse of pro football ever produced.”

Some think the book’s candor has contributed to Kramer being passed over for the NFL Hall of Fame. If so, that’s ridiculous. Kramer is the most deserving NFL player not in the Hall and that oversight, at long last, should be corrected. Get a copy of the book and read it. It’s great.

 

Baseball, Civility, Justice Department, Organized Labor, Political Correctness, Politics

Stupid Times Three

Posted on by christian

Ozzie, Commies and Stay at Home Moms

Bad luck like stupid comments seems to come in threes.

Ozzie Guillen, the mouth-running, currently suspended manager of the Miami Marlins baseball team is at once the most politically incorrect man in America and the luckiest. He desperately needed to get off the front pages after taking Miami’s re-branded team, cozy in its new stadium, and running his mouth straight into south Florida’s visceral hatred of Fidel Castro.

Ozzie says his comments in Spanish praising Fidel lost something in translation, but what Guillen really mangled with his ill-considered comments about the country’s least favorite commie was an old and simple rule. Loud mouth baseball managers really should never comment on anything other than what happens between the lines. Danger lurks out there beyond the friendly confines – remember Marge Schott – where men play the boys game.

But thanks to cable television, just as it looked like Ozzie might still pay for his Fidel praising with his job, two other stupid comments make Ozzie seem so last season.

Enter Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida – what is it with Florida, anyway – and Democratic political operative and CNN talking head Hilary Rosen. Consider them the duo with the crazy opinions today. Ozzie Guillen must be smiling as he sits out his suspension somewhere. Nothing spikes a stupid political comment like another stupid political comment.

In West’s case it was the astounding contention that a majority of the Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives – West said 78 to 81 members to be imprecise – are communists or socialists. And Rosen popped off on cable to the effect that Mitt Romney’s obviously smart and appealing wife had never worked a day in her life.

Two things, I think, are at play from Guillen to West to Rosen, and no that is not a double play combination. The first is the modern media age’s unrelenting pursuit of opinion as opposed to fact. Everyone is expected to have an opinion on absolutely everyone and everything and be prepared to offer it up at the drop of a question. It has become socially unacceptable to say, “Geez, I don’t know that I have anything to say about that subject.” Or even this: “You know, that’s really a silly question and I chose not to respond to silly questions.”

The other problem is a growing inability on the part of many in public life to tell one of their friends that they are just flat wrong. This has become a particular problem for politicians. Congressman West made his silly comment – opinion devoid of fact really – at some type of a friendly town hall meeting. The question that prompted his opinion came from the audience and, I’m guessing here, he wanted to play to the crowd so he answered in a way that he thought the crowd would appreciate. Maybe West believes what he said, too, but he was clearly playing to the crowd. He might have simply said in response to a silly question, “That is a silly question” and moved on. Rather he offered the alternative, an ill-considered opinion that helped move Ozzie off the front page.

Same with Rosen. She was trying to make the point that the Romney’s aren’t like most Americans who worry about mortgage payments and buying groceries, but she couldn’t stop there. Opinions being the coin of the talking head realm, she couldn’t resist offering a further opinion about Ann Romney. Not having a “real job” would, by the way, be news to any woman who has raised five sons and been a partner to a corporate CEO and a governor. The comment was, well, stupid, but Rosen was behaving the way a partisan TV talking head is expected to behave. She has to have a million of them, opinions that is.

So, as author Steve Rushin has pointed out, I am myself dangerously close to failing to practice what I preach against since – hold on – I’m having an opinion. Rushin calls such behavior a sequel to the movie Blowhard, which I confess I have never had the pleasure of seeing. The sequel, however, would be called Blowhard 2 – Blow Harder.

I long for the moment when some talking head or politician or sports figure just doesn’t go there. And it’s not about political correctness or free speech. My mother would have called it good manners. I can almost hear her, “You don’t have to comment on everything,” she would say. “Did it ever occur to you that other people may not care what you have to say.”

I’ll bet Ozzie’s mom told him something similar and he just forgot. And that’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it, while searching for that movie sequel on DVD – Blow Harder.

 

Andrus Center, Baseball

Catchers

Posted on by christian

One Tough Job

Now that the pundits have finally agreed that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican presidential nominee, we can devote attention to something really important – the start of the baseball season.

The guy in the photo is Hall of Famer Mickie Cochrane who, according to no less an authority than my baseball loving father, was the greatest catcher who ever put on shin guards. Cochrane played 13 seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers, including two years as player-manager for Detroit. His lifetime average was .320, he was twice the American League MVP and his durability behind the plate was legendary.

Black Mike, as Cochrane was nicknamed, had perhaps his best year on the legendary 1930’s A’s team that included several other future Hall of Famers. He hit .357 that year, had 85 runs batted in, 10 homers and 42 doubles. He caught 130 games and struck out only 18 times all season. His career came to an early end in 1937 when he was beaned – pre-batting helmet days – by a pitch at Yankee Stadium. His skull was fractured in three places.

Cochrane died in 1962. He was only 59. The Associated Press wrote in his obituary that “it was said of him that as a master of the mechanics of catching, he had no peer.”

I go to baseball games for lots of reasons, but I spend a lot of time watching the catchers. Once again it was my dad who pointed out to me for the first time that the catcher is the only player on the diamond who has the entire game in front of him. The catchers perspective on the field is unique. Good catchers help establish the pace of the game. A really good catcher, one respected by his pitching staff, is probably worth five or six wins a season, at least, just because he’ll know when to make a trip to the mound or insist on a particular pitch at a critical moment.

The great Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller said it well: “If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.”

Catchers also have the toughest, the physically toughest, job on the field. Just ask the Giants’ great young catcher Buster Posey who is thankfully recovering from a horrid injury last season. Yankee Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey, another candidate for greatest ever at the position, once said: “A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn’t the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn’t going to say every day, Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.”

Most catchers don’t have great speed. Would you if you were up and down, squatting and bending a couple hundred times a game? Catchers hands are often all beat up. They suffer split nails, broken fingers, bruises. It’s a tough job. The fact that a Mickie Cochrane, or a Yogi Berra, a Johnny Bench or a Dickey could play the position so well for so long is remarkable. There are only 16 catchers are in the Hall and only three of them played since the late 1960’s. It’s both a tough position and one at which it is exceeding difficult to excel.

The baseball season begins in earnest Thursday. Watch the catchers. Pitchers are a dime a dozen. Home run hitters get the ink. Catchers make great teams.