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The Nub

“Politics and baseball.  Interesting blog…called ‘The Nub’ on perfectpitcher.org.”
                                                                                                 - Boston Globe
   “If you don't think life imitates sports, you're not reading The Nub.”
                                                                                                 - Bill Moyers

(Posted: 2/2/10)

Laid-Back Mets and Team Obama Looking for Leadership

After a season of Mets’ misreadings – the amount needed for a number 2 starter, first-string catcher, etc. – the team (but not the rest of us) could find solace in a remarkable strategic bobble by the people’s skipper.

President Obama confessed to Time magazine that he had “overestimated” his ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to play ball together.  The admission suggests lack of focus on a crucial game.  It preceded the part of the skipper’s State of the Union pep talk in which he distinguished between “good short-term politics” and “leadership.”

The Mets likely blew their chances for minimal competitiveness when, with nobody taking charge, they let Randy Wolf, Joel Piniero and Bengie Molina get away.  We know they did complete a good (for the moment), multi-year corporate play when they signed Jason Bay.  If someone in the front office – Omar Minaya, Jeff Wilpon, someone – had focused on the farm system, the Mets might not be so poorly positioned for the 2010 season.

When the skipper contrasted Team GOP’s short-term political game to leadership, he left the ball over the plate.  On the foreign affairs field, he not only failed to be leaderly when Team Netanyahu took liberties in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, he allowed a right-wing outfit to overthrow a democratically elected president in Honduras.  Barack was nowhere in sight as those plays unfolded.  Back on his home turf, the skipper’s unwillingness to replace oft-booed economic coaches Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke suggests that, Mets-like, Team Obama has no bench.

“We Believe in Comebacks,” the poignant new Mets slogan, thus applies to Team Obama.  We suggest this hopeful variation: “A Comeback You Can Believe In”.
                      -     -     -
How about misreadings between the Yankees and Johnny Damon?  The Globe’s Bob Ryan almost wishes they had gotten together on a contract. Almost: “The…divorce is a tremendously welcome development in the rivalry.  (It) is, without question, the most foolish split in recent baseball history.  The farther Johnny Damon is from the Yankees, the better things will be for the Red Sox and their fans.  The Yankees need Johnny Damon and Johnny Damon needs the Yankees.  They may think they'll be just fine with Nick (Ming Vase) Johnson replacing Damon in the No. 2 spot in the batting order, but that's a laughable delusion. Yes, Johnson is an OBP guy.  But he ain't Johnny Damon, who had developed a swing for the new Yankee Stadium that guaranteed him 20-25 homers as long as he remained a Yankee or turned 45, whichever came first.

“But what exactly is the matter with Damon? Does he think he will ever again be able to bat in a comparable batting order in which he hits behind Derek Jeter and in front of Mark Teixeira and A-Rod?... Hey, that's New York's problem. The Yankees cannot be as good a team with Nick Johnson and Brett Gardner as they would have been with Johnny Damon and Johnny Damon.”

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

The Nub will be away on a road trip, returning for pitchers and catchers. 

    

January 2010 Archive

(Posted: 1/30/10)

High Court Backs a Hit at Hillary as it Did a Swing Against Flood

The names of Hillary Clinton and baseball hero Curt Flood will be linked forever, thanks to seismic Supreme Court decisions – one last week, the other 38 years ago.  The court’s 5-4 decision in the “Hillary: The Movie” case liberated corporations from the need to curb money spent on political candidates.  By a 5-3 count, the court refused, in the 1972 “Flood v. Kuhn” case, to free players from baseball’s reserve clause.  That clause, an anti-trust law exception, made the players team property, denying them the right to sell their services on the open market.

Flood would have turned 72 last week, reason enough to remember him and his historic case.  But first, a between-innings…
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Lob from Left Field on a subject the Skipper avoided Wednesday night:

“When (Obama) became president, there can hardly have been any American holder of public office who did not understand that the United States had either to tell the Palestinians to give up the two-states solution (and prepare for emigration or apartheid), or to inform Benjamin Netanyahu that it was all over for the settlements, and that if he wished to continue to be Washington’s best friend he must sign, on the spot, that long-negotiated two-states draft agreement…  President Obama’s failure has astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted.”  –William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune
                          -     -     -
Repercussions of the Flood decision led within a few years to free agency for players.  Whether there will be unintended consequences of the Hillary ruling remains to be seen. The skipper made clear Wednesday night that he hopes so.  Chairman Barney Frank of the House Finance Committee suggested on MSNBC a few days earlier that Congress might well require corporations to seek shareholders’ permission before spending what is their - the investors’ - money on candidates.

The corporations can thank the conservative corporate team that made the Hillary movie for insisting it was a documentary and not a partisan political vehicle subject to campaign finance laws.  The team believed in its case, as Flood did in his.  Although Flood lost, his willingness to fight to end what he called “well-paid slavery” made millionaires out of a great many major league ballplayers who came after him.  As for Flood himself…

To press his case, with union help, he had to give up his livelihood.  A black man from a modest Oakland, CA background, he could have earned almost $100,000 with the Phillies in 1970 had he agreed to a trade from the Cardinals.  His decision to sit out that season and the next left him nearly destitute before the case reached the High Court in ‘72.  When the justices upheld baseball’s monopoly,  Flood was reduced to a life on, sometimes over, the edge.  For sacrificing to secure economic justice for ballplayers, something he himself could never hope to benefit from, Flood wound up scrimping, drinking, suffering a series of marital breakups and experiencing always the sense of ostracism from the game he loved.  He couldn’t get a steady job with a team or even with the players union. 

When we asked the great former players union chief Marvin Miller about the poor treatment Flood received in his last years - he died in 1997 at the age of 59 – Miller disputed that the union didn’t do enough.  The evidence – as set forth in lawyer/author Brad Snyder’s meticulously researched “A Well-Paid Slave” (Plume Books) – indicates otherwise.  The union helped Flood wage his legal fight, but it failed to get its members still active in the game to publicly support him.  The players he had fought for seemed afraid to be associated with the man their bosses deplored as a troublemaker.  Not a single one agreed to testify in the reserve-clause case.

Those same owners have been generous in celebrating the professional lives of the likes of Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams, players who had been their property.  The players union has yet to insist that mlb do right by Flood, the man who completed the baseball revolution that started when Robinson put on a uniform.  Flood finished it – in the words of Brad Snyder – “by taking his off.”

Not the Mets Again!  Last week it was Joel Piniero and Bengie Molina, this week the Mets lost Ben Sheets and Jon Garland.  Well, there’s still Eric Bedard, John Smoltz and Jarrod Washburn among free-agent pitchers Jeff Wilpon could settle for.  The boss’s son is being blamed for not dealing promptly for the best available players.  We can hear him saying “You’d be slow to move, too, if your GM had committed a total of $18 million this season alone for Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo.”  The obvious reason GM Omar Minaya hasn’t been moved…out…is that his three-year contract worth about $6 million has just kicked in.  A further sign money is short: Fernando Tatis is back

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

 

(Posted: 10/26/10)

Team GOP Now Like the Yankees, Only More So

By midsummer last season, 40 percent of major league teams had no realistic chance to make the playoffs.  By midsummer this electoral season, the Democrats will be lucky if only 40 percent of their Congressional candidates are clearly on their way to defeat.

Money is making the difference in both fields, now more than ever.  The Yankees have three of the seven best-paid players in baseball – Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Derek Jeter – and four other “have” teams, the Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cardinals, employ the others (Jason Bay, John Lackey, Manny Rodriguez and Matt Holliday).  It will be no surprise if, owing to top-heaviness, baseball attendance drops this season for a second year in a row. 

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the top-heavy corporate hitters like Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric (Fortune 500’s first five) to spend the candidates they support to victory.  The nine-judge team, by a 5-4 margin, said corporate lineups have a free-speech right to hit with as many dollars as they want behind selected players.  The danger of the decision resulting in a damaging political double play - a rise in one-sided contests and a decline in voter participation - is real.

The newly allowed money will give Team GOP a Yanks-like edge in adding to its Congressional roster.  Fans in the left field see decisive support for players with an anti-government agenda skewing the electoral field.  Fans in right field, like the NY Times’ David Brooks, don’t like the ruling for a different reason.   Here is the pitch Brooks delivered on the PBS Newshour:

“I think it is a bad decision. I do -- I think it will have a poisonous effect on political atmosphere…What do corporations want when they go to Washington?...  They want to crush small businesses who are hoping to compete with them by erecting regulatory hurdles.  So, I think they will use that money to try to essentially hurt small business, who don't have lobbyists, don't have money to spend.”   

So the news may be particularly good for the Wal-Marts in the influence game, and bad for Mom-and-Pop teams.

In baseball, the outlook remains bleak for the Mom-and-Pop equivalents in small markets, and the hopes for broader competition.  Peter Gammons laid out aspects of the problem on the MLB Network: “The economy in Cleveland is stagnating the Indians' energetic organization.  Major League Baseball is gravely concerned about the future of the Rays, who last year realized little bump from their 2008 run.  A respected organization industry-wide, the Rays are stuck in a (bad) ballpark and location....  Pittsburgh is trying to be aggressive in the domestic and foreign talent pools, spending the money to get top scouts and development people, but has yet to show progress. MLB still isn't certain that the Marlins' new facility will make Miami a viable baseball market.”

Doubts about the long-term viability of Jason Bay continue to emanate from Red Sox Nation.  After Bay told a Boston broadcaster last week that the Sox wanted to include too many medical provisions in the four-year contract he rejected, questions resurfaced about his suspect shoulder and knees.  Team doctor Thomas Gill didn’t like what he saw during tests of the outfielder.  The Globe’s Nick Cafardo notes the doctor’s track record: “Gill is the same doctor who after looking over Pedro Martinez’s medical history advised the Sox that, based on what he saw, Martinez would likely break down and have a major shoulder issue.  Well, about 1 1/2 years into his contract with the Mets - the same Mets who have signed off on Bay’s issues - guess what happened?”

Other ballgames:  The run-up to the Jets-Colts game reminded us of the run-up to Iraq: pro-Jets media hype - like the pro-war hysteria - out of control. This enemy had a WMD – Peyton Manning.  The result of the Vikes-Saints game seemed foreordained when it went to overtime.  Joe Buck and Troy Aikman noted often that Brett Favre had taken many hard hits.  What they didn’t say was the obvious: By overtime, the 40-year-old Favre had to be exhausted.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 1/23/10)

Baseball and Politics Need ‘Fannies in the Seats’

Had Barack Obama heeded George Steinbrenner, his first year as skipper might have been different.  “You measure the value of a ballplayer,” Steinbrenner said years ago, “by how many fannies he puts in the seats.”

In his pre-skipper days, Obama flashed his spikes on the political basepaths and swung for the fences.  The excitement he brought to the field energized fans, attracting them – and their fannies - in huge numbers. Then, as of a year ago, the skipper decided a new strategy was needed: he elected to play small ball with his team, an offense featuring sacrifices, safety squeezes – cautious ways to gain a scoring edge.  The result: game at a near-standstill, owing both to Team Obama’s caution and the hardball defense of the other side.  Meanwhile, the once-cheering fans in left field slipped away; it was not the type of game the pre-skipper led them to believe he’d play. 

From a political standpoint, the game is only in the bottom of the third inning.  The skipper’s task now, observers on the left agree, is to return to what brought him early success – winning the fannies back with a tough, hard-hitting game that takes out GOP opponents who get in the way.  The first order of business: a pep talk.  Lefty tactician William Greider, of the Nation, suggests what the skipper should say:

“Obama's turn-around speech would declare--honestly--that he misjudged the situation.  The damage is far worse than he originally realized. Some deeper structural changes are required.  The political opposition is more than ever blindly resistant… But now Obama can promise to govern nose-to-nose against the political forces blocking everything he attempts. He may not prevail, he concedes. But he is going to throw himself at them and he asks the people to join him in the fight.”

That Obama had hard-nosed Paul Volcker and not Tim Geithner with him Thursday when he took on the big banks reinforced the sense that the skipper has already adopted a tougher political stance.  If he carries through, he could recapture the magnetic you-can-believe aura that surrounded him in spring training a short while ago.  His fans did believe and were sure he would bring dramatic change when the season started.   His challenge now is to prove, however belatedly, that they weren’t wrong.  The fannies wait in the wings and fingers are crossed.
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The Mets front office must have thought its mishandling of the Carlos Beltran-surgery story was as bad as week could get.  That was last week; Omar Minaya and Jeff Wilpon learned this week that they waited too long to sign two of the last free agents with more than marginal value – catcher  Bengie Molina and pitcher Joel Piniero.  The pair were snapped up by the Giants and Angels, respectively.  That leaves the Mets without a credible catcher or capable number two starter.  They are adding a decent backup to Beltran in Gary Matthews, Jr., obtained from the Angels.  But pitching and catching is the pressing need.  We’re betting the team’s crack PR man Jay Horwitz will contrive to generate interest despite the roster shortcomings.  Whether his work will lure a sufficient number of fans to the Citi Field seats is another story. 
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 1/19/10)

The Missing Player on NY’s Progressive Political Team

Branch Rickey, the man who desegregated baseball, called them “anesthetic” players.  They were name players who had stopped producing but still made teams feel good having them in the lineup.  Rickey would get rid of those players just before or soon after they fell into the feel-good-but stage of their careers.  New York state has had an anesthetic political player on the U.S. Senate team since 1999.  Chuck Schumer will run for a third term this year on a record of having talked a good game, but…

Chuck, a supposed lefty, has disappeared in the game to make Wall Street more accountable to taxpayers.  Some see a connection between that absence and his fund-raising scorecard: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Schumer’s been on the receiving end of more than $2 million in contributions from financial, insurance and real estate industries during his current term.  Chuck did go to bat for private equity and hedge-fund firms before the housing bubble burst, however.  He came out swinging against the proposed closing of a multi-billion-dollar tax loophole those firms enjoyed.  Thanks, in great part to Schumer, it’s a perk they are still benefiting from. 

It was Chuck, we remember, who saw in the Team Bush appointment of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general a positive step, and sponsored the candidacy of another torture-supporter, Michael Mukasey, as Homeland Security chief.  And how can anyone forget Schumer’s support of war-powers for Bush and his silence on the decision to invade Iraq and its disastrous aftermath?

In fairness, NY’s senior senator has been an effective party insider, an astute national campaign organizer.  And he has said the right things on health care reform and the need for a public option.  But you’ll be hard put in checking his website to find any stances on tough issues: announcements of grants, programs, proposed legislation and calls for improved security, yes.  His ability to take safe stands, say the right things and attract media coverage have all but assured his re-election.  But New York progressives expect better.  To them, despite his flair, Schumer remains an overrated, anesthetic player whose performance deserves to be constantly scrutinized and challenged.
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The hot stove baseball season has been dotted with deals involving post-anesthetic players – those who have demonstrated that they’ve declined from even their feel-good,  unproductive days.  Two former Mets are in that category – lefty Bruce Chen, now with Kansas City, has been with 10 teams since 1998.  He’s 36-43 since he broke in, and was 1-6 last season with KC.  Chen will be 33 in June.  Righty reliever Luis Ayala will only be 29 this season, but he’s bounced among six teams since 2003, including the Dodgers, who just signed him.  He was 1-5 with Minnesota and Florida last year, 29-39 overall.  His career ERA: 3.67, high for a reliever.   

Sports Illustrated’s Tim Marchman believes the Reds made a risky six-year, $30-million investment in untried Cuban-exile fireballer Arnoldis Chapman.  But that doesn’t mean he thinks Cincinnati fans are being shortchanged: “For all (my reservations), I love this deal.  I love that the Reds are laying marks on real talent rather than squandering $5 million on Kyle Farnsworth or someone like him.  I love that Reds fans are (rightly) so excited about this.  I love that Chapman can finally start thinking about the best players in the world rather than worrying about money.  Mostly I love that it was the Reds, rather than the Yankees or Angels, who signed him.”

Farnsworth, another post-anesthetic type, will be returning to Kansas City after an injury-marred ’09 season.  He pitched in only 41 games (compared to his usual 60’s or 70’s) and had a 1-5 record with an ERA of 4.58.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 1/16/10)

A Guilt-Tinged Cheer for ‘Game Change’

We were among the (apparently) few fans turned off by the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa race for the mlb home run record late in 1998. And the steroid suspicions were only part of the story.  It was infuriating at the time that no one seemed to care about the pennant races; you couldn’t get game-day team scores, only whether Mark or Sammy hit one.

We wish we felt the same dismay over another tainted distraction, this in the political field.  The book “Game Change”, another example of the media’s failure to keep its eye on the ball, sucked us in; its mix of cheap head-hunting and dirty take-outs too tasty to ignore. There’s nothing like petty sideline action to take a fan’s mind off what’s really going on in the political game. 

The media made it easy for fans and non-fans alike to become mesmerized by the mano-a-mano heroics of McGwire and Sosa. But the account of a pre-game warmup to a key political one-on-one contest in “Game Change” received surprisingly minimum play.    Co-author John Heileman talked of the incident the other night while defending the book to Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.  He said the disclosure that, in 2006, Majority Leader Harry Reid urged then-freshman Senator Barack Obama to challenge Hillary Clinton for the presidency was an important historical footnote.  In retrospect, it does suggest the depth and strength of the party’s desire to find an alternative to Hillary in 2008. 

Still, most of the book is bush-league stuff, says Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.  He says those of us seduced by “Game Change” fail to see its demeaning significance:

“The real value of a book like this lies in the opportunity it presents for Washington's elite class to distract themselves and everyone else from the oozing corruption, destruction, decaying and pillaging going on -- that these same Washington denizens have long enabled.  With some important exceptions, that is the primary purpose of establishment journalism generally.  Even better, the book lets our media and political elite -- and then the public generally -- feel good about themselves by morally condemning the trashy exploits of Rielle Hunter and the egoistic hypocrisies of the (now) irrelevant John and Elizabeth Edwards.”

Point driven home.  Also true: the book offers political fans a ballpark-full of guilty pleasures.
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We know that the Mets, as constituted, were going nowhere with or without Carlos Beltran early in the season.  His absence while recovering from knee surgery may affect  attendance and make it a bit harder for the team to achieve third place in the NL East.

The injury could also jeopardize Beltran’s earning potential when his Mets contract runs out after next season.  At 34 then, with brittleness in his history, he’ll be unlikely to get the $17 million-per deal he received from the Mets five years ago.  What else did we see confirmed in the Beltran rhubarb?  That the Mets front-office is in much worse disarray than the team.

Post-season deals may have left baseball with potential adjustments in divisional balance, but there’s been little in the way of true “game change.”  As we’ve noted, the Yankees and Red Sox figure to repeat in the AL East, the Phillies and Cardinals ditto in the NL East, Central.  The Mariners, with recruits Cliff Lee and Chone Figgins, come as close as any team to possessing a roster of potential game-changers.  The NL West mix, as we saw last time, can be expected to include the Giants, the AL Central the usual three (or more) - team donnybrook.   The outlook, all and all, is for a 2010 season devoid of  upstart-caused drama.  Old money will play a major role, as usual. That won’t stop us from poring over the daily box scores.

Extra-Inning Lob from Left Field:  “If you care about fiscal responsibility, you have to favor raising taxes.  But whose taxes? The truth is that we've had a large income and wealth shift in the United  States, in favor of not just the rich in general but the financial sector in particular.  We are overtaxing wage and salary income relative to investment income, and overtaxing the manufacturing and service sectors relative to the financial industry.  It's why Warren Buffett has said he's taxed at a lower rate than his receptionist.

“Moving the tax burden toward the financial sector is thus a matter of both justice and political necessity.  The best thing that could happen to Obama would be for him to have a fight or two with Wall Street and the big banks on behalf of balancing the budget.  It is precisely the way to shake off both ends of the (charge he is a) Wall Street Liberal.” – E.J. Dionne, New Republic
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 1/12/10)

Who Will Be NY State’s Designated Political Hitter?

Get ready for baseball metaphors as NY state politics approaches a meaningful moment this May.  That’s when the Democratic team will decide whether to let David Paterson  stay on as its designated hitter in the contest for governor or send its player with better stats, Andrew Cuomo, to the plate instead. 

If Cuomo goes to bat, it apparently will only be after Steve Levy, up from Suffolk County, takes his swings in the on-deck circle opposite Paterson.  Levy is seen as less a threat to David than a buffer for Andrew: Cuomo needs cover if he is to go against a black teammate for the second time in eight years. Dems know their strategic game plan could change between now and May: Paterson, who had been struggling, is starting to make contact.  If he can get a crowd- (and media-) pleasing streak going - and put up some numbers - he could still take his place at the top of his team’s electoral lineup.

That’s a big “if.”  But Paterson has finally benefited from a few lucky plays.  First, Rudy Giuliani let a chance go by and left the GOP field to less formidable Rick Lazio.  Then the legislative players below David in the order persisted in dismaying fans with their error-prone behavior.  The result: David’s swing has smoothed out and he’s pitching better than he has in a long time.  He knows he’ll have to keep it up to turn back Andrew, the state’s all-star.                 
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All-stars switching teams have provided hot stove highlights so far. With pitchers and catchers just a month away, it’s time to assess the possible changes in divisional balance as a result of star-sprinkled post-season transactions.   In two of six divisions – both in the West - there could be new big guys on the block.  The Mariners, by adding Cliff Lee to a rotation headed by Felix Hernandez, plus Chone Figgins and (to a lesser extent) Casey Kotchman, are likely to be competitive with the Angels. The LAAs lost Figgins and John Lackey while adding only Hideki Matsui. The Rangers, meanwhile reinforced by Rich Harden and Vladimir Guerrero, can’t be counted out. The Giants, with reserve strength already on hand(see below), picked up the versatile Mark DeRosa, just one more complement to a strong rotation headed by Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Barry Zito.  The Dodgers and Rockies, who have stood virtually still, could be overtaken this time around.

Boston’s key acquisitions – John Lackey, Marco Scutaro, Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron – almost assure that the Sox will be battling the Yankees and new pinstripers   Curtis Granderson, Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson, again in 2010.  Tampa Bay has the best young depth in baseball (see below again), so the Rays are long shots to make the AL East a three-team roundelay.  The Phils, with Roy Halladay, are sure-shots in the NL East.  In signing Matt Holliday, the Cardinals solidified their status as favorites in the NL Central.  The AL Central, minimally affected by deals, should be up for Tigers/Twins/White Sox grabs.

From the E-mailbag:  “You write (in the previous Nub) that Wilpon Jr. has screwed up. But can you or anyone tell us what, exactly, he does?” M. Polner, Great Neck, NY

Jeff Wilpon is the Mets’ chief operating officer.  He is in charge of how his owner-father’s money is spent.  As such, he is the team’s day-to-day decision-maker.  A measure of how short-sighted his (and Omar Minaya’s) investment in the Mets’ scouting and player-development operations has been can be found on the list of players and affiliates in minor league all star teams of the past three seasons.  Those teams are composed of 18 position players and 10 pitchers, primarily from the triple- and double-A levels, listed by Baseball America.  Of the total of 84 players selected in ’07, ’08, and ’09, the Mets had one – Ike Davis, named backup first baseman on the most recent team.  The Tampa Bay Rays had eight, the Giants six, the Yankees and Dodgers five each.  The Mets finished 28^th of 30 in cumulative minor league standings, just ahead of the Reds and Astros.  Yet, as we know, Wilpon and his people invested less than any of the other 29 teams in amateur-draft prospects. 
                            - o -
(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

(Posted: 1/9/10)

Fantasy League 2010 - Politics as Well as Baseball

Most of us are not good at keeping New Year’s resolutions, but we make them anyway.  What we’re good at is suggesting what others should resolve to do.  There’s no shortage of such nudging in baseball and politics this year, most of them pitches to front-office decision-makers that key people be cut.  Frank Coonelly and Fred Wilpon, presidents of the Pirates and Mets, have been ducking away from a barrage of fan frustration about the way their teams are being run.  And the man who runs Team USA has taken a lot of chin music for holding on to two unpopular players.

 Lefty economics ace Bob Kuttner let fly at Barack Obama in the Huffington Post.  His pitch about the skipper’s need to rectify his bad roster choices is as much a warning as a nudge:

“The path that Obama is on, unless he alters it fast, will lead to prolonged economic stagnation and Republican champagne next November.  If you think a lunatic-fringe Republican party is any protection, look at the blowout victory of Pat Robertson protégé Bob McConnell in the Virginia governor's race two months ago.  And this in a blue-trending state….What will it take for Obama to recover his footing?  Some key personnel changes might be a start.  As investigative reporters did deeper into the mess that Larry Summers made of Harvard's finances, you have to be thankful that the man isn't running the nation's economy (oh, whoops, he is.)  Summers reinforces all of Obama's conservative instincts and none of his progressive ones.

“Tim Geithner, who was in charge of relations with Congress for Obama as the House deliberated the financial reform bill, weighed in mostly on the wrong side.  If Obama is truly to signal a change of course and mean it, one constructive sign would be replacements for Summers and Geithner.”

Geithner and Summers are, of course, familiar players on progressives’ wish-they-were-released lineup.  We could add the names of the skipper’s center-right fielder, his Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, and his extreme-right-fielder, the State Department’s Assistant for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon, a Bush holdover.

Yesterday in the Times, Paul Krugman launched this follow-up laser to colleague Kuttner’s warning blast:  “There’s a populist rage building…and President Obama’s kid-gloves treatment of the bankers has put Democrats on the wrong side of this rage.  If Congressional Democrats don’t (get) tough…with the banks in the months ahead, they will pay a big price in November.”

Pirates fans have given Coonelly’s choice for GM Neal Huntington almost two-and-a-half years to, if not turn the small-market franchise around, at least offer them reason for hope.  That hasn’t happened.  Over the last two seasons, he has traded away, among others, Xavier Nady, Damaso Marte, Jason Bay, Nate McLouth, Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson.  And, not long ago, he failed to re-sign closer Matt Capps, who was snapped up by the Nationals.  The prospects (mainly) that Huntington received in return have so far failed to jell.  Pittsburgh, which has had a record 17 straight losing seasons, figures to add an 18^th this year.  No wonder there’s a clamor among Bucs fans for Coonelly to hunt for a replacement for Huntington.

Mets fans know it is unrealistic to think Fred Wilpon will acknowledge son Jeff has screwed up the franchise and deserves to be fired.  But many of them know, too, that if they stay away from Citi Field in numbers this unpromising season, Fred might relent.  It is clear that only with on-the-job trainee Jeff Wilpon sent away can the Mets develop an efficient operation and return as serious playoff contenders.

Jason Bay said “This is where I want to be”; he never said he was “happy” to be joining the Mets and leaving the Red Sox.  Who can blame him for ambivalence?  The Sox-Mets comparison is odious.  Boston, by adding John Lackey, Adrian Beltre, Mike Cameron and Marco Scutaro have assured 2010 competitiveness with the Yankees.  That’s good news for everyone, including Yankee fans, who revel in the exciting rivalry.  The Mets?  They’ll spend more than the Sox and be…respectable.
                                - o -
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 (Posted: 1/5/10)

Can Baseball Ease Our Tense Political Game With Venezuela?

Two years ago, the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington pointed out that Americans and his countrymen had much in common – including a love of baseball.  Relations between the two nations, he said – at least as far as people were concerned – should be friendly, not adversarial.   

A front-page story about baseball and Venezuela in the NY Times the other day shows why it is so hard to end the negativity felt on this side of the field: political bias intervenes.  The story tells of Buddy Bailey, a 52-year-old Virginia mountain boy who is one of the winningest managers in the history of the Venezuelan professional baseball league.  Bailey’s Aragua Tigers won five championships in the last eight years.  

The story notes that Bailey is lionized by many fans and has won the admiration of Venezuela’s skipper Hugo Chavez.  Skipper Bailey has nothing bad to say about the host country.  But the Timesman refers disapprovingly to Chavez “nationalizing foreign-owned companies and expelling some Americans.”  And at a time when spreading sexual violence - little mentioned in our media -  is shaming our ally Colombia, the NYT story alludes to “soaring levels of violent crime” in Venezuela.

Crime in Caracas, says the story, has “eclipsed” the prominence of “gas guzzlers and shopping malls”, pre-nationalization features of “the largest postwar American expatriate community in the world.”  Now, it adds, “so many values have been turned on their head” in Venezuela.  It is true that “Chavez’s socialist-inspired revolution” has spawned many problems while it focuses on improving the lives of the poor.  The middle class is feeling pinched and the wealthy resent the economic hit they’re taking. There is unrest, yes, and crime. But the Times, the Washington Post and our other major papers have yet to examine Venezuela’s new values in a balanced way.  Nor have they weighed the rights and wrongs of the obvious reason for our skittishness: Venezuela’s control over its own coveted natural resource, oil. 

The sense here is that little positive will happen until Team Obama signals a change in the game plan it inherited: a plan that included in 2002 abetting an anti-Chavez coup. Team Bush at that moment made a second mistake: it approvingly acknowledged Hugo’s ouster, then watched his supporters return him to power.      

Baseball fans shrug at the off-field maneuvering.  They care about the Venezuelans they know: Johan Santana, Felix Hernandez, Carlos Zambrano, Victor Martinez, Bobby Abreu, Marco Scutaro, Francisco Rodriguez, Ozzie Guillen, etc.  Baseball, nevertheless, may have a political role to play: it is the link that, at the very least, can keep the countries from moving farther apart.
                              -     -     -
The Daily News’ Mark Feinsand reports that Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez, who last played in the majors in 2007 for the Mets, is also pitching in Venezuela now. His team: the Margarita Bravos.  He’s doing all right, if not lights-out; Feinsand has El Duque’s stats: “In seven games (six starts) in Venezuela, Duque was 1-2 with a 3.27 ERA. He allowed 29 hits and 13 runs (12 earned) in 33 innings while striking out 27 and walking 15.  He gave up two homers.  Last year, he was 2-0 in eight games for Oklahoma of the Pacific Coast League. Don’t know if he wants to get back to the majors, but he sure does like pitching, eh?”   Hernandez is believed to be 43, but that may be off by a few years.

While our focus has been on the roster-filling of teams in the east, like the Red Sox and Mets, there’s been a big personnel story in LA, involving the Dodgers.  Orange County Register columnist Mark Whicker ticks off the team’s many contractual challenges: “All the (Dodgers) have to do is deal with (arbitration-eligibles) Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Jonathan Broxton, Russell Martin, George Sherrill, Hong-Chih Kuo and Chad Billingsley. Whatever happens, the Dodgers will have to make this lineup play better than last year's did in the second half, because San Francisco and Colorado are coming – and, maybe, Arizona, with Edwin Jackson backing up Dan Haren and Brandon Webb in the rotation. These are the problems you face when your franchise winds up on the DL (Divorce List).”

A Bank-Shrinking Game Plan (first espoused on CNN by Arianna Huffington): “When I recently told a few friends that my wife, Joy, and I had decided to close our little account at Bank of America and move our money to a local bank that has behaved more responsibly, I was amazed at the response. Religious leaders… around the country called to say that they, too, were ready to take their money out of the big banks that have shown such shameful morality and instead invest according to their values, by putting money into more local and community-based institutions.

“So we've decided not just to remove our own money, but to invite other Christians, Jews and Muslims to do the same. Already we are hearing reports of whole congregations… from California to New York City, deciding to transfer their funds to local banks and credit unions. The banks say they are ’too big to fail.’  So let's make them smaller.  We might finally get Wall Street's attention.” – Jim Wallis, Sojourners Magazine (in the Washington Post)
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(Posted: 1/2/10)

Enough of Seventh-Inning-Stretch Patriotism

Just over 60 years ago, Jackie Robinson had a dilemma many of us face today: Do we embrace or reject the patriotism forced upon us by both national policies and the national pastime?  Because he was a baseball star who broke the game’s color barrier, Robinson was asked to refute before Congress what had been said by Paul Robeson, the great actor, singer, All American football player and anti-war activist.  Robeson, an African-American like Robinson, had questioned black loyalty to a racist society.  To many that was a fiercely unpatriotic sentiment.

Robinson agreed to go to bat, but he did so from both sides of the plate:  he said blacks would fight for America in a war because of their investment in the country’s welfare.  But that stance, he said, did not “change the truth of (Robeson’s) charges” of racial injustice.

It is hard for many baseball fans to feel benignly about the seventh-inning-stretch patriotism imposed since early in the decade at Yankee Stadium and other ballparks – “God Bless America” and God help our fighting men and women abroad.  Major League Baseball has thrown in with Team USA’s foreign policies for well over a century – for the complete war-related record book, see “The Empire Strikes Out”, by Robert Elias (The New Press).

If we disregard its militaristic aspect (or try to), there is another take on the flag-waving game that connects to what Robinson said about our investment in our nation and the sport.  It was expressed back in the ‘70’s in an essay by author Philip Roth entitled “My Baseball Years.”  Roth recalled being the last man cut from tryouts for his high school baseball team in New Jersey:

“Playing baseball was not what the Jewish boys of our lower-middle-class neighborhood were expected to do in later life to make a living.  Had I been cut from the high school itself…there would have been hell to pay in my house, and much confusion…As it was, my family took my chagrin in stride.  They probably would have been shocked if I made the team.

“Maybe I would have been too.  Surely it would have put me on a somewhat different footing with this game that I loved with all my heart, not simply for the fun of playing it, but for the mythic…dimension that it gave to an American boy’s life – particularly to one whose grandparents hardly spoke English.  For someone whose roots in America were…, only inches deep and had no experience, such as a Catholic child might, of an awesome hierarchy…baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and region of the nation and bound millions upon millions of us together in common concerns…Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best.”

Whether the baseball brand is patriotism at its best or worst, it is surely time to say of the intrusive stars-and-stripes stretch: “Enough.”
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On MLB-TV the other night, Dan Plesac, who pitched for 18 years in the major with six different clubs, rated five of the most interesting free-agent hurlers still on the market: Joel Piniero, Ben Sheets, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Jon Garland.  He said if he were a GM, he would sign only one of the five without reservation: Piniero.  “He learned a lot in St.Louis,” Plesac said.  “He’s strong and a good bet to give you innings.” Plesac said Martinez might be worth signing for half a season and Smoltz for bullpen duty.  He said there were too many questions concerning Sheets’ health and about how much Garland has left.

We hate it when working-stiff sports writers presume to tell teams how to spend millions of their dollars.  But we can’t resist suggesting to the Mets a solution to their first-base problem: Xavier Nady, who played first as well as the outfield when he joined the Mets before 2006 (in a deal with SD for Mike Cameron). We’d guess that Nady, who has been overlooked so far, could be snapped up for a reasonable $5 million or so per season.

On cue, the Mets have signed the big-ticket player selected to lure their understandably glum fans to Citi Field next season.  Jason Bay might help do that; he doesn’t add enough to the team, however, to lift it above third place in the NL East.  Meaningful games in mid-August may make for respectable total attendance figures.                   

January is here with what we know is its major attribute - the last between-seasons month without baseball.            
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December 2009 Archive

(Posted: 12/22/09)

A Healthy Triple Play in the Offing

A former key player on the NY State Democratic team reminded a group of fans the other night that the Dems could be about to complete a political triple play.  He was talking about the health care game and cautioning that extra innings lie ahead before the final out signaling (modest) success is made.  The triple play: from FDR (social security) to LBJ (medicare) to BHO (health care reform).

If the Mets lineup experiences health reform, we know modest success is all the team – and their fans – can hope for in 2010.  The Mets so far have been “monitoring”, “looking at”, “interested in” free agents and players potentially available through trade.  But the lack of significant Mets deal-making has been a source of bafflement here and beyond NY.

The compromising done by the Dem team in the Senate in an effort to get the health reform bill baffled observers and dismayed progressives.  Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson takes a Nubbian approach in his comment, quoting Casey Stengel’s 1962 lament about the Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” He says Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu know how to play on the political field.  “The Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate can play, too.  At this point, 11 months since Obama took office, it's striking how successful Republicans have been in presenting a united front against virtually everything the president and the Democratic congressional majorities are trying to do…”

Team GOP, abetted by many Dem progressives, has thrown rhetorical bean balls at the compromise reform lineup that includes:

1.  Ending denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
2. Ending denial of coverage because of catastrophic illness.
3. Ending insurers' dumping of some beneficiaries for technical reasons
4. Preventing insurers from varying rates regionally and demographically
5. Ending lifetime caps that limit what insurers must pay
6. Ending annual caps on what insurers must pay
7. Requiring insurers to pay more for preventive care and immunizations
8. Keeping young adults on parents' insurance plans into their mid-20s.
9. Banning coverage discrimination against employers based on salary 

It is hard to see how an argument that says such a lineup, which at the very least gets the ball into play, deserves to be sent back to the bushes.  In any event, here is Paul Krugman’s take on his NY Times blog: “The health care bill…represents a rejection of the view that the solution for all problems is to cut some taxes and remove some regulations.  In that sense, what’s happening now,  for all the disappointment it represents for progressives, is a historic moment.”

Everybody’s beating up on the Mets this hot stove season – it is not only happening here.  We’ve said that if the Mets stayed in tip-top health last year they could not have beaten the Phillies.  That applies more than ever this coming season.  MLB.com’s Marty Noble, a Mets beat veteran, minces no words about the 2010 outlook:

“The Mets need to upgrade, no question. But if they do upgrade, and Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana and the other patients aren't healthy, the Mets aren't going to contend anyway.  So, the idea is to enter the season, thinking -- hoping -- health no longer is an issue.  And if it's not, I'd expect the team that won 70 games last season to win at least 81 games in 2010.

“That won't put them on the Phillies' level.   I'm not sure (Jason) Bay would, either.  The Phillies are an exceptional team.”

One of the few brighteners on a dreary hot-stove baseball week: Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rogers’ take on the Cubs’ Milton Bradley for Mariners’ Carlos Silva deal:   ”It's a trade of one of the worst Cubs ever for the best batting practice pitcher in the game.”
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The Nub  is off on a holiday road trip.  Back next week.  Merry Christmas everybody. 

 

(Posted: 12/19/09)

The ‘Truth’ in Afghanistan and at Citi Field    

Artie (Dutch) Schopenhauer died in Germany as baseball was gaining popularity in the mid-19^th century.  But before he went, Artie developed a pitch that caught on with thinking political fans as well as those in sports arenas.  Truth, he said, is often ridiculed at first, then denied, finally accepted as obvious.

Fans who booed opening day of a “good war” against Afghanistan in 2002 were ridiculed for saying a small-ball strategy aimed at tagging out Osama bin-Laden would have sufficed.  The pro-war majority went into denial when Osama slipped away from our heavy-hitting pursuit.  Now, it can be argued that the truth about that war, despite hopeful words by generals and the commander-in-chief, is obvious.  Ask the British and the Russians, from whose experience we might have learned, and check the record book on how Alexander the Great’s team made out on the Afghan diamond.

For the relevance of Schopenhauer’s sizzler on the comparatively banal field of baseball, we don’t have to look further than Mets-land.  Pessimism about the future of the Mets, shrugged off when voiced several years ago, should have been taken seriously.  That’s clearer today than it has been in a long time.

Thomas Johnson, professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA and Chris Mason, a former foreign service officer in Afghanistan, wrote a sharp, quasi-insiders rejoinder to Skipper Obama’s troop buildup plan.  Here is the way they put it in Foreign Policy magazine:

“Obama is one of the most intelligent men ever to hold the U.S. presidency.  But no intelligent person could really believe that adding 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a country four times larger than Vietnam, for a year or two, following the same game plan that has resulted in dismal failure there for the past eight years, could possibly have any impact on the outcome of the conflict.  The only conclusion one can reach from the president's speech…is that the administration has made a difficult but pragmatic decision: The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the president's second term and progressive domestic agenda cannot be sacrificed to a lost cause the way that President Lyndon B. Johnson's was for Vietnam. The result of that calculation was what we heard on Dec. 1: platitudes about commitment and a just cause; historical amnesia; and a continuation of the exact  same failed policies that got the United States into this mess back in 2001.”

Former Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday warned, while memories of the 2000 World Series appearance lingered, that major trouble lay ahead with the boss’s son Jeff Wilpon  taking over the team in 2003.  After firing GM Steve Phillips in June of ‘03 and naming Jim Duquette interim GM, the young Wilpon signed off on the trade of star pitching prospect Scott Kazmir to Tampa Bay for Victor Zambrano, a more experienced pitcher who flopped.  The move presaged a pattern of placing known quantities on the big team’s roster while losing focus on the farm system.  As we know, the pattern insured that the Mets would field name regulars – who even got them into the NLCS in ’06; but, overall, the lack of investment in player development (the Johan Santana deal in ’07, notwithstanding) has left the team hurting for competent replacements when multiple injuries intervene, as they did at Citi Field last season.  The Phillies, for one, don’t have that problem.

Can any fans be happier than those in Philadelphia these days?  Roy Halladay locked up until the middle of the next decade…and all that offense.  Nobody figures to come close to the Phils in the NL East.  But Mariners fans have more to be happy about: With Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee at the top of the rotation, and Chone Figgins reinforcing Ichiro at the top of the order, Seattle has a real shot at winning the AL West.  And, if everything goes right, the M’s could get into the World Series for the first time in the team’s history.  That possibility, however remote, is a cause for mega-rejoicing.  Too bad former Met Endy Chavez won’t be part of the fun.  The Mariners have let him go.  Mets fans - remembering the effort he gave the team in ’06 -’08 - surely hope Endy stays healthy and continues to be an asset wherever he plays.   

Nobody asked us, but…If the elite free-agent choice for the Mets comes down to either Jason Bay, $75 million for five years, or Johnny Damon, $39 million for three, we’d take Damon.  The Mets need a sustaining spark, not a Reyes-like hot and cold one.  Damon could be that.  In a normal free-agent year, Bay would be an upper-middle-level selection, not in the elite class.  And certainly not a spark.
                               - o -
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(`12/15/09)

The Celebrity Game in Our National Pastimes

Liberals like to think Barack Obama became an international icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner because he wasn’t George Bush.  That may be part of the story, but we know he gained automatic celebrity status as the new skipper of Team USA.  And we know how important that status is in baseball and all fields here at home: A-Rod and Derek Jeter are household names far outside Yankee-land; Tiger Woods gets regular front-page play in the NY Times for his off-course activities.

The president (and his first lady) gladly cooperated in the non-political puffery.  He knew his personal popularity could come in handy if poll numbers began plummeting.  Apolitical fans tend to stay loyal to people they put on a pedestal.  The Mets hope they can benefit from the same behavior on the part of their fans.  What both skipper Obama and Jeff Wilpon need now is something to distract supporters from the rough economic and strategic patches their teams are going through.  Celebrity could fill the bill in each case.  Here’s what Stuart Rosenberg, columnist for the Capital Hill newspaper Roll Call, said some time ago about Barack’s status:

“(Since he has attracted a) deeper emotional commitment than many politicians receive…he could retain his popularity - and, with it, political clout on Capitol Hill - because of his (and his family's) celebrity coverage and appeal.”

Or the emotional commitment may be explained in a related way, as columnist Glenn Greenwald did on Salon over the weekend: “(Much) reaction to Obama is dominated by (a) view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual.  These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies.”

The Mets know they must attract a name player - one with celebrity potential - if they are to stem the erosion of fan support caused by last year’s revealing collapse.  The Phillies’ in-process deal for Roy Halladay only underlines what the Mets are up against. How critical is their situation (if anyone has missed its reality) can be gleaned from comments made on WEEI, Boston by the MLB Network’s new analyst Peter Gammons.  He used the Mets to reassure Red Sox fans that things could be worse:

“You could be in some markets where people just go, huh, who cares?  The New York Mets have made themselves that way.  The Mets are running around announcing that they have made offers to Jason Bay and now (NY Post’s) Joel Sherman is saying that it is to make sure that people believe that they are actually trying.  That is not what people want to hear.”

Bay, offered $60 million for four years by the Sox, is now unlikely to wind up in Boston because of the expense of the pending John Lackey deal.  So the Mets seem to have a genuine shot at signing him.  The one caveat: if another team offers Bay close to what the Mets agree to pay, he might take the lower number to avoid involvement with a dysfunctional franchise.  The suspicion here - before the Lackey-to-Fenway development - was that the closest thing to a celebrity playing for the Citi Field home team would be old friend Carlos Delgado.  That still may be a good guess.    
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(Posted: 12/12/09)

What to Do About Dominance of Yankees and Democrats?

Whaddaya know?  The Yankees have added a still-young, stud centerfielder who can hit with power, run like a rabbit, etc.  And, get this: the rap against Curtis Granderson in Detroit was that he wore himself down with his community involvement.  He tried to get everybody interested in the city and in the Tigers.

Getting more of the NYC public involved in the political game was coincidentally the aim of a confab held at St.Francis College in Brooklyn this week.  A group of unofficial players in the pol-field discussed the pros and cons of a distant equivalent to baseball’s trade and free-agent transactions.  The hot potato, chosen by veteran exec Frank Macchiarolla and pitched by rookie author Frank Barry (“The Scandal of Reform”):  nonpartisan elections.

We know it wasn’t money alone that permitted the Yanks to add Granderson to their world-champion lineup; they had to develop tradable young players like Ian Kennedy and Austin Jackson.  Nor is money the only issue that should dominate the political debate.  Fans of nonpartisan balloting see it as an all-fields drive for reform, for bringing more balance to the electoral system, much as many fans want baseball’s wealth imbalance reformed.

Nonpartisan balloting would surely make elections more competitive, just as something like financial parity would do the same for pennant races.  Those are both hard sells in NYC, where the Democrats and Yankees have long been dominant in their respective fields.  Fans of the nonpartisan approach say it deserves consideration because the Dems have been able to take their vote-gathering power for granted.  And that has led to shoddy performances - incumbent apathy, irregularities, misconduct, corruption.  Under the nonpartisan game rules, candidates would run without party labels; there would be no primaries – the two top vote-getters would compete in a decisive runoff.  Much unfamiliar excitement could result, and maybe even a boost in voter interest. 

That the present systems hold back talented young players in both fields is well known; the rule in both party politics and baseball is that, no matter how ready you are for the show, you “wait your turn.”  The frequent result in politics is that young talent leaves the game.  If the competition were nonpartisan, they could stay and run - turn or no turn.

Just as money - teams with lots don’t want to give up their advantage - is the stumbling block to baseball parity, so in an inverse way does it contribute to clogging acceptance of the nonparty game: the liberal Dem left worries that the conservative Repub right will recruit wealthy candidates; that Bloomberg-like, they will use their personal fortunes to gain a winning edge in the newly competitive races.  And if that happens, the left fears issues like living wage and affordable housing will be replaced by calls for tax cuts and spending curbs.  The confab group’s conclusion: Only when common ground is reached on such issues does non-partisan reform have a prayer of getting to bat. 
                            -     -     -
The groans over the Granderson deal are being heard throughout the AL East, especially in New England.  The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy worries that the deal, coupled with a lack of Sox upgrade fervor, signals a grim season ahead for The Nation:  “The Yankees blew past the Red Sox in 2009 and New York just got better. Granderson is an All-Star leadoff hitter, a defensive artist in center field, and a 30-home run guy in his prime.  Meanwhile, the Sox are standing still and holding the line on their four-year offer for Bay.  If Bay winds up in New York, Anaheim, or Seattle, the Sox are going to have to deal with Scott Boras for Holliday.  Or do nothing and remind us that the kids will be available to help in 2012…”

The Mets are near the top of teams that can ill afford to do nothing.  Desperation to bring fans back to Citi Field figures to drive them to sign at least one of the three elite free agents – Jason Bay, Matt Holliday and John Lackey.  It says here they would need all three to compete with the Phillies, who have premium prospects as well as Cliff Lee, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, etc.  Two of the three would assure Metsian “meaningful games” late in the season.  If they blow the budget on a single name player – the most likely scenario - fuhgedaboudit.

Our Less-Than-Nobel Laureate: “Obama puts a pretty, intellectual, liberal face on some ugly and decidedly illiberal polices.  Just as George Bush's Christian-based moralizing let conservatives feel good about America regardless of what it does, Obama's complex and elegiac rhetoric lets many liberals do the same…(The neocon consensus:) ”If even this Democratic President, beloved by liberals, announces to the world that we have the unilateral right to wage war and that doing so creates Peace and crushes Evil, and does so at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony of all places, doesn't that end the argument for good?”  - Glenn Greenwald, Salon
                                 - o -
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(Posted: 12/8/09)

A Jason Bay/David Paterson Snap Quiz

What do NY Governor David Paterson and Red Sox left fielder Jason Bay have in common?   If you follow our two national pastimes, the answer is easy:  Both are looking for the best possible deals as they take their next professional step.  For Bay it’s about money; he declined a four-year, $60 million offer from the Sox to see if he could do better as a free agent.  For Paterson it’s about pride; he refuses to remove himself from the 2010 gubernatorial contest absent an offer that provides prestige and minimal loss of face.

We’ve long been fans of Paterson (with whom we worked briefly) so we regret   foreseeing his withdrawal from the gubernatorial field.  But, with poll numbers persistently down and Andrew Cuomo on deck, even diehards must face that inevitability.  Let’s look at David’s options: Team Obama owes him for, among other things, the obvious slights inflicted by the skipper during visits to NY.  And the state Democratic team let Paterson down by allowing loud party whispers to ease him toward the showers.  Those brush-backs should earn David a purposeful pass to another status-filled position.

The Red Sox owe Bay nothing after the four-year offer, but they need him - or a reasonable facsimile - to keep pace with what their Nation considers the Evil Empire.  The Yankees could snap him up the way they did Johnny Damon four years ago. But the guess here is that Bay will not attract a more generous non-Sox offer; the new defense metrics showing him to be sub-par as an outfielder undermine his bargaining position.  Team Obama could dangle a deputy AG job in DC for David’s consideration; he has DA office experience.  And local Dems could hope a state judgeship would satisfy him.  But if the stubborn Paterson waits them out, fouling off pitches long enough, he should get a fat one in the zone. Neither Cuomo nor the party would want Andrew competing in a primary against another African-American for governor, as he did Carl McCall in 2002. The obvious play is to make room on the federal bench for NY’s underappreciated skipper.

The Mets could certainly use Bay but the team’s many as-yet-unfilled holes make him unaffordable.  Their hot-stove dealings got off to an inauspicious start.  While the Sox, Phils, Braves and Mariners signed top-tier players Marco Scutaro, Placido Polanco, Billy Wagner and Chone Figgins, the Mets went the cull route, lining up catchers Henry Blanco and Chris Coste.  For their fans, the trend so far is disturbingly familiar.

Joe Girardi stayed with Brian Bruney after his stuff as a reliever became suspect. Joe Torre did the same with Scott Proctor two years ago.  When they finally felt enough was enough, the Yanks shipped Proctor in-season to the LA Dodgers.  Bruney they kept until yesterday, when he became a National.

Pearl Harbor day lob from left field on America’s wartime morality: “The intensity of (the 12/7/41) shock was rooted less in Japanese chicanery than in America’s race-based assumption of technical and martial superiority.  As for morality, the Japanese attack was aimed against genuine military targets. The US revenge attack, a bombing raid led by Jimmy Doolittle on Tokyo some months later, was aimed purely at civilians.”  - James Carroll, Boston Globe
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(Posted: 12/5/09)

Did Obama Do a Jeter and Come Through on Afghanistan?

Barack and Derek: linked by many baseball fans for their similar bi-racial backgrounds and the classy way they carry themselves.  Tuesday night at West Point, Skipper Obama came to rhetorical bat in the clutch.  Would he come through on Afghanistan the way Jeter so often does when the game is on the line?

Our scorecard shows the president connected in some ways, looked clumsy in others.  He turned on the pitches of skeptics early, driving off their arguments against the troop buildup.  “We must keep the pressure on al-Quaeda,” he said; “and to do that we must increase the stability…of our partners in the region.”  Doubts as to whether he was locked in disappeared when the skipper launched another key hit: “We know that al-Quaida… seek(s) nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe they want to use them.”

Barack was vintage Derek when he inside-out-ed a hit to right announcing the build-up, then pulled the ball to left, decreeing the 18-month deadline.  His performance lost its edge, however, when it took on a cloying Yankee Stadium-like “Honor America” tone.  He invoked “freedom” and “liberty” four times, the equivalent of hitting cheap-buzz laser fouls on inside pitches.   And, although he spoke of our “values” as the “moral source of America’s authority” and referred to the influence of our “moral suasion,” he never acknowledged the deaths of countless innocent people for which we are morally responsible.  Indeed, when Katie Couric asked CBS correspondent Mandy Clark in Afghanistan the reaction there to the speech, her first words were: “The people here worry about civilian casualties.  More troops mean more casualties.”

Not bad, skipper, but not quite up to the Jeter standard.
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It will be a surprise if there isn’t just a two-team contest to add the Jays’ Roy Halladay this winter:  the Yankees and Red Sox will likely go mano-a-mano to deal for the Toronto ace.  A Yankee front four in 2010 consisting of  Halladay, C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte would reinforce the Bombers’ already existing dominance in their division, league and all of mlb.  The Sox must make a desperate effort to stop that from happening.  But principal owner John Henry seems to be bracing for the worst.  He’s calling for a heavier tax than already exists on teams like the Yankees that are willing to spend more than $200 million a year on player payroll.  Halladay is due $16 million this coming year.  He is expected to command a five-year-deal paying him close to $120 million after 2010.  Sure sounds like he’ll be working for those Yankee dollars.

The Mets’ maligned farm system produced two of the Arizona Fall League’s top 10 prospects as selected by Baseball America: pitcher Jenrry Mejia and first baseman Ike Davis.  Mejia, a 20-year-old righthander,  finished sixth on the list despite an indifferent 1-3 W-L record and an ERA of 12.56.  He struck out 16 in 14.1 innings during which he walked 13.  Davis, who batted .341, finished 10^th.  Nationals prospect Stephen Strasburg led the list, which included no other team with more than one player.

Baseball America was less complimentary to the Mets in it farm-system overview, calling the system thin and putting it in the lower half of its 30-team rankings.  The five top-ranked systems: Rangers, Rays, Giants, Phillies, Indians.  The Yankees and Red Sox were in the second – “best of the rest” – level in the top half of the rankings. 
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(Posted: 12/1/09)

To Rebuild or Rejigger: Choice Facing Political and Ball Teams

Political teams, like those in baseball, face a tough choice after a losing season: should they stay the course (intent on making changes for the better) or recognize the need to rebuild.  Staying the course is the more tempting of the two; it entails tweaking rather than turnover.  Team Obama, which inherited the White House franchise, seems inclined to play the Mets’ game:  to upgrade rather than discard components of the previous disaster.

Just as the Mets believe that Johan Santana, Jose Reyes, David Wright and Carlos Beltran plus well-chosen additions will insure competitiveness and fan-support, so Team Obama clearly thinks following Team Bush’s approach to war-making and civil liberties will keep voters rooting for the players now in charge.

As the skipper prepares to announce both the latest troop buildup in and ultimate exit from Afghanistan, he knows he’s following a familiar play-book: For more than a half-century, Team USA leaders have bowed to pressure from the militants in the national grandstand.  We must fight, those fans said, to “save” China, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc., and, now, Afghanistan.  Most men in the dugout doubted the validity of the war-making argument, but they knew going along could achieve at least one important save – keeping their team on the field. 

Power-hitting historian Gary Wills, writing in the NY Review of Books, reminds us of the successive team record on foreign playing fields.  It leads to a tough choice of his own concerning Skipper Obama:

“I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.

“These are the arguments that have kept us in losing efforts before. They are the ones that made presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon pass on to their successors in the presidency the draining and self-lacerating Vietnam War. They are the arguments that made President George W. Bush pass on two wars to his successor.

“I have great hopes for the Obama presidency, even in his first term, and especially if he could have two terms to realize the exciting new things he aspires to do in the White House. But I would rather see him a one-term president than have him pass on another unwinnable war to the person who will follow him in office.”

If Skipper Obama’s double clutch on Afghanistan tonight is dismaying to fans in left field, imagine how they feel about his reversed stance on Honduras.  After swinging out early against the coup that overthrew lefty leader Manuel Zelaya, he switched to the other side:  While most of Latin America has refused to recognize the weekend election of a rightist Honduran businessman, Team Obama says it will accept the result and lock in its swing accordingly.  One happy observer: GOP player Jim DeMint, who took credit for the change in a press statement that said - "Senator secures commitment for U.S. to back Nov. 29 elections even if Zelaya is not reinstated."  The White House has let the statement stand.
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The just-completed Arizona Fall League, which in ’08 helped catapult Tommy Hanson to Atlanta’s starting rotation, was a good showcase this year for two Yankee prospects: outfielder Colin Curtis and third baseman Brandon Laird.  Curtis hit .397, second best in the league; he showed some power, too, swatting five home runs in 20 games.  Laird batted .333 and was in the running for MVP, won by Oakland’s outfield prospect Grant Desme, the HR leader with 11.  The Mets’ first-base hopeful Ike Davis hit .341 with four HRs.  The Nationals’ mega-bonus-baby Stephen Strasburg led the league in wins, going 4-1.  He struck out 26 in 19 innings; his ERA, however, was an underwhelming 4.26.  Another positive note: Baseball America says Strasburg and White Sox reliever prospect Sergio Santos had the best fastballs in the league.  

Baseball fans who, like the Nub, enjoy meaningful frostbelt NFL games in the late-season open air, have little to look forward to this year.  Three and probably all four of the NFC division winners will be sunbelt or dome teams – Dallas remains on the bubble in the east.  In the AFC, two of the four leading teams are sunbelt/domers.  Indianapolis is earning home-dome advantage throughout the playoffs, as is New Orleans in the NFC.  It looks as though games in Foxborough, MA and Cincinnati, hosted by the Patriots and Bengals, will be the only “football-as-it-should-be-played” post-season contests that appeal to us marginal, cozy living-room spectators.  Of course, the game between the Cowboys and the still-alive Giants at the Meadowlands this Sunday is one of a few pre-playoff matchups that could make for worthwhile viewing.
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November 2009 Archive

(Posted: 11/21/09)

Will Dems and Mets be Caught in 2010 Twin-Killing?

At a non-political gathering the other night, a prominent player on the NY Congressional team talked about the outlook for the Democrats in 2010.  “It’s going to be tough,” he said, to maintain control of the House.  The event was held not far from Citi Field.  The thought occurred that ’10 could be a twin-killing year for Dems who happen to be Mets fans.

Early hot-stove stats compiled by Congressional (Pew Research) scorekeepers say 67 of 435 districts will be truly competitive next Election Day.  If the Republicans win 41 of them (minus upsets elsewhere), they will retrieve control of the House.  On the Senate side, the game-time outlook is murky; much will depend on Skipper Obama’s approval rating, which is hovering now around 50 percent.  Should O-rating remain close to that level, the Senate Dems will almost certainly see their 58-40-2 margin reduced by a few seats, but not enough to lose their majority.

The Mets, we know, are a consensus pick to finish fourth in the five-team NL East.  The addition of a Joel Piniero-type starter will not change that estimate.  Nor will adding another bat.  Jeff Wilpon is clearly in charge, and remembering his pre-Obama track record – among other things, the hiring of Art Howe, whom he called the ideal choice for manager – there is scant reason for optimism.

The donut weighing down all Democrats, of course, is the economy.  Chances of a reversal of the jobs losing streak changing the election dynamics are dim. In GOP/swing districts like NY’s Nassau County, where Dem Tom Suozzi (a former client) had won two terms as county exec, the swing back to the red team could be wide and strong. Compounding the malaise among voters is the disparity between the masses and those who appear to be entitled.  Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes in Salon why the stats of the disparity are so frustrating: “How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs.  And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.”
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For Congressional Dems the issue is whether they’ll retain an edge, however reduced, or lose their majority.  For the Mets, it is whether they can maintain enough marginal competitiveness to keep fans coming to Citi Field.  There is no question now of the team winning its division.  One familiar reason: lack of the type of farm system that (pre-Jeff Wilpon) produced Jose Reyes and David Wright.  Fernando Martinez, until recently the system’s lone standout prospect, has lost his luster:  Marty Noble, of mlb.com, reminds us of why: “(Martinez) is merely 21, but the injuries that have interrupted his development and his unremarkable performance in his first big league tour have raised questions... Right now, Martinez is closer to becoming another Alex Escobar than an Alex Rodriguez.”

How badly do the Red Sox want Jason Bay to re-sign with them?  Badly enough to badmouth him as soon as he opted for free agency.  The team’s message amplified through the media:  No NL team should want Bay; he lacks range as a left fielder and can be most effective used alternately as a DH.  Furthermore, he is “not someone you can build a team around.”  Who knew?

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The Nub will be on a road trip for the next week, returning a week from Tuesday.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

 

(Posted: 11/17/09)

Skipper Obama’s Problem With Tough Pitches

“I almost wish Bush were still president,” said a front-office team member. “Then I could still be hopeful.   Now the political problems seem as immutable as the Yankees’ advantages in baseball.”

 The sentiment is a familiar one to people watching along the left-field line.  Skipper Obama can make great statements, but he ducks away from tough pitches instead of taking his cuts.  Those pitches, thrown by right-handers, are promoted by the corporate media and therefore popular with the public.  Let’s run down the consistently baffling assortment:

The high, hard one: Wars are something Team USA must wage.  It’s a dirty job - in Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe Iran – but if we don’t fight, we’ll be perceived as giving in to terrorism and undercut our stance as the world’s clean-up hitter.

The keep-away pitch: Defense - that is, war- spending must never be questioned.  Deficit ballhawks can warn about the perils of aggressive social investment, but complaints about huge arms deals should be confined to the clubhouse.

Bread and butter delivery: Big-bank privileges and Wall Street prosperity are what market democracy is all about.  Going to bat for a less-tilted way to keep the economy in play risks ejection from the game. 

Brush-back:  Progressive taxation as a possible remedy for much of our financial losing streak is a non-starter.  Mere mention of the t-word can get a major player sent to the political minors.

Rules-breaking spitball:  In the name of “safety and security,” some right-handers say that, unlike several countries around the world, we dare not allow terrorist trials in the U.S.  Salon slugger Glenn Greenwald exposes the “cowardice” of pitchers who take that approach: “(They)insist,,,that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive:  the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded…It is...as pure a surrender to the terrorists as it gets.” 

We know the Yankees will never have to surrender their financial edge; the players union  won’t accept any management proposal that would cut into members’ earnings.  And would it be fair to blame them for that?

It would not be a radical change, but Brewers GM Bob Melvin thinks the way to mitigate the disparity between the “have” and “have-not” teams could be through the player draft:  “The draft has to be fixed,” he says, so that teams willing to spend the most money don’t  wind up with the best players.  Which is what happens because small-market teams seldom bother drafting the best, who are in a position to demand - and receive - top dollar.  Melvin and his management colleagues believe - hope - some kind of curbs on signing payments can be established in the next labor agreement in 2012.      
                            -     -     -
Desert stars:  The Nationals, Marlins and Oakland A’s are three teams surely watching the Arizona Fall League with satisfaction.  As of yesterday’s stats, the Nats’ high-priced first draft pick Stephen Strasburg led the league in wins (4-1) and had struck out 23 in 19 innings.  Marlins’ outfielder prospect Bryan Petersen leads the league in hitting (.422) and Oakland’s slugging outfield farmhand Grant Desme has hit 11 home runs in 24 games; no one else in the league is close to double-digit HRs. 

The Yanks have a promising hitter in outfielder Colin Curtis, batting .388 after 17 games.  Mets first-baseman prospect Ike Davis had a .319 BA with four home runs after 17 games.  The Red Sox must be pleased with the progress of shortstop Jose Iglesias, the Cuban defector to whom they gave a $6 million signing bonus not long ago.  Defense is Iglesias’ forte, but he was batting .295 after 16 games.
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(Posted: 11/14/09)

The Unpredictable Pastimes – Politics and Baseball

Non-Yankee baseball fans can find solace in the nine-year gap between Bronx-Bomber championships.  Big money doesn’t always buy World Series titles; unpredictability is an important part of baseball’s appeal.

Politics, we know, is even more volatile than our national pastime - look at what happened in the recent election: despite a popular president, Team GOP, playing in a bad economy, won two major contests and a passel of minor ones.  At the same time, little-noticed scoreboards in two states showed how unpredictable the political game can be.  In Maine and Washington, amid household-budget losing streaks, voters defeated efforts to limit the amount of tax money their states could ask of them.  The margin was 60-40 in Maine, 57-43 in Washington.  Talk about “you never know”, many anti-tax-limit voters in Maine showed they could pull to right by also defeating a gay-marriage proposal.

Washington Post-man E.J. Dionne noted that the anti-tax attempt was “part of a laboratory experiment pushed by the Beltway Right.”  The outcome therefore was something progressives could point to and possibly build on.  He adds, though, that leadership is needed, which raises a familiar question: “Will President Obama and his party take the lesson and go on offense against the simple-minded anti-government screeds now getting so much play?”

Experienced official scorers are calling Team Obama’s swinging bunt concerning its Afghan ambassador a hit; that is, the handout (disguised as a leak) describing the envoy’s doubts about a troop buildup advances the running story cleanly and provides protection for the skipper.  Fans will not now be shocked when Barack pulls back from giving General Stanley McChrystal the large number of additional armed players he requested.  Or if the “leak” does produce an outcry, Team Obama can change its strategy accordingly.    

The cheer expressed here for ratings-beleaguered CNN had scarcely subsided when the cable network’s Wolf Blitzer made the support a source of embarrassment.  Here is how Blitzer asked Nidal Hasan’s military lawyer – Ret.Col John Galligan – about his taking the case involving the Fort Hood massacre:

BLITZER: “A lot of folks, when they heard I was interviewing you, they asked me how could a retired U.S. military officer, a full colonel, go ahead and represent someone accused of mass murder? And I want you to explain to our viewers why you're doing this.”

GALLIGAN: “Wolf, I will tell you what I have told consistently anyone who asks that same question, and that is…I fully appreciate the importance of ensuring that everybody has a fair trial.” 

He might have added “And you should, too, Wolf.” 

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Although nothing happened at mlb’s post-season meeting in Chicago, Mets fans rest assured their team will make at least one big-ticket signing before too long.  Jeff Wilpon and Omar Minaya must do something to distract from the suddenly non-competitive state of the franchise.  Marty Noble, who covered the Mets for years with Newsday and now does it for MLB.com, tells it like it is:

“My sense of the situation it is that the final standings in the National League East accurately represent the relative strengths of the 2009 teams and are likely to serve the purpose for the 2010 season -- even if the Mets acquire a quality starting pitcher. Adding a power hitter who plays the outfield well… and a quality starter would close the gap.

“But the catching situation is an enormous issue that seemingly has been camouflaged by the need for pitching and power.”

Time to talk about the marginal-interest sports of baseball fans, specifically today, pro football.  Our recommended focus each year is on frost-belt football played outdoors in December and particularly in the January playoffs. (So much fun to watch from a warm living room.) We therefore hope the Eagles or Giants overtake Dallas in the NFC East, and will root for either in upcoming games.  And we want the Patriots and the (barely contending) Jets to maintain their respective leads over Miami in the AFC East.  We’d like to see the Broncos fend off the charging San Diegoans.  And in the AFC North, where the Bengals, Steelers and Ravens are fighting it out, may the best team win.   
                       - o -
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(Posted: 11/10/09)

Is It Good to Have the Yanks and Team Obama Playing Their Game?

Last swings (for now) on a thoroughly scuffed subject:

What does it mean that the Yankees can outbid any other team for ballplayers they want?  There’s a politically correct answer, we believe, that connects to the way Team Obama plays its game.

“You can't root for the Yankees regretting their spending of money,” says JM, of Nyack, in the e-mailbag. “There is a long arc from Babe Ruth to Johnny Mize to Catfish Hunter down to the present day.  It's never the spending, but only the spending for trash that burdens our souls.”

Then there is this from GM, of Princeton, NJ:  “What folks forget is that most owners are rich.  It's the fan base that allows the Yankees to spend and know that they are going to recoup their money.”

To sum up the above: The Yankees are fortunate to have a huge fan base – it’s the good hand they were dealt.  That they spend freely the massive amounts of money they take in is something they’ve always done, which we should learn to live with. 

Implied is “Life is unfair”, a fact wealthy teams like the Yanks can take in stride.  But not everyone.  Most fans would like to see something approaching an even playing field.  Much of the third world resents Team Obama because, like the Yanks, it can afford to do whatever it wants.  What nearly everybody abroad and at home seeks is fairness.  Americans resent the O-team’s “soft-touch approach to Wall Street” (Paul Krugman’s phrase) which has enriched a few players while most others struggle.  People in the Middle East deplore the skipper’s check-swing toward the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestine; in Latin America, they’re booing Obama’s inaction over the  rhubarb in Honduras.    

The reluctance of Obama to push for change, to seek a righting of imbalances, has (again in Krugman’s phrase) “seemed to many like a betrayal of their ideals.”  The ideal of greater fairness in baseball is more elusive than in politics because the head man Bud Selig is in even a bigger slump than Obama.  No change is imminent.  Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski, frustrated as anyone, explains why:

“A. Everyone knows the Yankees spend much more money than any other team to win games.
B.  Because everyone knows it, people have been complaining about it for many years.
C.  Because people have complained about it for many years, everybody is sick of hearing about it.
D.  Because everyone is sick of hearing about it, nobody really listens.
E.  Because nobody really listens, people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games….

“The Yankees have a pat hand…(Nevertheless) many of us keep (watching) because we love baseball and there’s enough randomness in the game itself and enough volatility in the playoffs to distract us from the lunacy of having the game so ridiculously tilted toward one team.”

A modest proposal for ending the lunacy - split the Yankees into two teams, the way you split an overvalued stock: creation of, let’s say, the NY Clippers would help the AL establish 16-team balance with the NL and again make NYC the three-team town it was before the Dodgers and Giants abandoned it. (No charge for the consultation.)
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted: 11/7/09)

Did Loser to Team Mike Care as Much as the Phillies?

In an election-week verbal pepper game, a friend hit out at the Bloomberg/Yankees connection made in the previous Nub.  He said he hoped, that in relating wealthy Team Bloomberg to the Yanks, we weren’t implying Billy Thompson was like the Phillies: “Unlike the Phillies,” he said, “Thompson didn’t want it badly enough.”

Thompson, a zero on the personal scoreboard of most New Yorkers, surely wanted to win badly, but he didn’t have the financial clout to do so; he couldn’t transform himself through TV and other paid media into someone for whom the public could cheer.  Bloomberg was a zero when he first ran in 2001.  His money made him a visible player, and a winning one.

The danger now, we know, is that another moneyed candidate could come along in 2013 and replicate Mayor Mike’s success.  Then, once in office, he might demonstrate to the public what son-of-money Jeff Wilpon has shown Mets fans: he doesn’t have what it takes to run the franchise.  The fans can stay away from baseball games; the public must stick it out for four years with a bad mayor. 

Bloomberg will be a good mayor, as Thompson might well have been had Team Obama saw fit to go to bat for him.  Obama has been letting his fans down on a number of plays – as he and we have been hearing for some time.  Washington Postman E.J. Dionne takes a warning post-election hack at the skipper and his coaches.  He sees “a spirit far different than the buoyant confidence Barack Obama inspired a year ago.  And the Obama change-agents, particularly the young, were notably absent from the voting booths this week.  In Virginia, a state Obama carried comfortably last year, a majority of those who showed up to vote on Tuesday said they had backed John McCain. This much more Republican electorate produced a GOP landslide all the way down the Virginia ballot.

“That is the fact from this week that Democrats would be fools to ignore. It's not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama's party.  Indeed, the stronger the right's role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use the Republicans to express their discontent.  But for the moment, the thrill is gone from politics, and that is very dangerous for the mainstream progressive movement that Obama promised to build.”
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The on-the-job training of Jeff Wilpon as in-loco-parentis boss of the Mets began six years ago. Shortly before then, former co-owner Nelson Doubleday told the Newark Star-Ledger he saw trouble brewing for the team: “Mr. Jeff Wilpon has decided that he’s going to learn how to run a baseball team and take over at the end of the year… Run for the hills, boys.  I think…baseball people will bail… Jeff sits there by himself like he’s King Tut waiting for his camel.”

In fact, Jeff brought in baseball people – Bill Singer and Al Goldis – to serve as special assistants to new GM Jim Duquette.  That too-many-cooks experiment ended badly – all three were gone in short order, with Omar Minaya taking over as GM at the end of 2004.  Now Jeff is talking about a repeat of the debacle, assistants for Omar, who has lost the player-moves autonomy promised when he took the job. 

How do fans outside Yankee-land feel about the Bombers’ WS victory?  Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty gives us an idea:

“The Yankees have missed the postseason exactly once since 1993.  Apparently, their front office has been nothing but wise since then.  I'm sure Carl Pavano thinks they're brilliant.

“Care about the Cincinnati Reds or don't.  Fact is, if you follow the sport -- and are somewhere in the vast part of America that doesn't care about the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets -- you need to be concerned about a competitive imbalance that allows one team to spend $200 million on players and another in the same business to spend $40 million.”

More, pro and con, about the political correctness of “imbalance” in the next Nub.
                   - o -
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(11/5/09)

Did Wealth Make Yanks and Team Mike Failure-Proof?

Is it fair to say the Yankees, like Mike Bloomberg, were “too big to fail”?  The answer has to be “yes,” but with a safety-squeeze qualification: Had either the Yanks or Team Mike tripped over their moneyed advantage; had internal rivalries or jealousies developed among well-paid teammates, or had outside events - serious accidents, injuries illnesses or political corruption - intervened, then bigness could not have spared them failure.

Both succeeded - the Yanks to a world championship, Bloomberg to a third mayoral term  - because they put their money to effective use: the Yankees spent multi-millions extra to outbid opponents for C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira.  Team Mike used the $100 million-plus self-financed campaign to shift the public’s focus from the mayor’s devious term-limits play to his two-term record of on-field performance.  Few, if any bumps slowed either franchise. 

Polls and media consensus suggest that for both outfits fan support was ambivalent: voters resented Bloomberg’s “Who’s-your-daddy?” rule while approving the way he ran the city. The many dispassionate Yankee rooters regretted the team’s willingness to spend to make the competitive field as uneven in its favor as it felt was necessary to win. 

The election results only underscore the price Mayor Mike will pay for his win: an erosion of the good will New Yorkers felt for him because of what they considered his trustworthiness.  He now deserves little more trust than most politicians.  And the skepticism is likely to show in the way the once-supportive media treat him. (“No Longer Invincible,” was the 11/4 Times’ quick-pitch headline about the mayor ) Yankee-hating, which had subsided throughout much of baseball since the team’s last World Series appearance in 2003, will now surely regain widespread fervor. 

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg sums up what the public and “daddy” Bloomberg have let themselves in for over the next four years:  We gave him a third term “sullenly,” he says, “knowing that while it probably won’t measure up to his first two…it’ll probably be good enough…But then what?  Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?” file:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.html     

The UK Guardian’s Michael Tomasky picks up on Hertzberg’s idea, seeing Bloomberg’s  victory more as a grudging coronation than re-election: “New York City, once the greatest city of the 20th century, will carry on for the foreseeable future being the greatest city of the 15th.”

                  -     -     -                    
Auld Lang Syne:  One hates to see the season end.  But the finale had a lot going for it, especially if you were Yankee fan.  SI’s Tom Verducci put it this way:
“In Game 6 we (got) the next best thing to a Game 7, in every way. Pedro pitching against the Yankees for the 40th time. Pettitte pitching in a postseason game for the 40th time. The World Series decided…at Yankee Stadium (old and new) for the 17th time.  It's like a great bedtime story to a child.  Tell me again, because it never gets old.”

It was a heartbreaking bedtime story for Phillies fans, who got a taste of what Mets fans went through when Pedro pitched for their team.  Tim McCarver said at the start that Pedro had no fast ball.  And just before Hideki Matsui knocked in his third and fourth runs, Joe Buck said “Pedro’s not fooling Matsui.”

Shortly before game 6 started, Fox promoted two sitcoms, promising they would be on tonight.  Not a word about the possibility of a seventh game.

Now the hot-stove guessing game can begin:  Will or won’t the Yanks re-sign Matsui?  After Hideki’s clutch WS performance, there’s no question how most Yankee fans feel.               

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(Posted: 11/3/09)

Ballparks as Bloomberg-Aided Business Centers

Stadium designers know that new ballparks must be bigger than the old to accommodate neither a larger playing field nor greater seating capacity.  What teams want in their new digs is a swath of additional commercial space.  That the restaurants, clothing stores, souvenir shops, etc. are built-in threats to local businesses is too bad: baseball has an anti-communitarian streak evident in many new-ballpark cities, but especially in New York.

We know that the Yankees, abetted by Team Bloomberg, have received $360 million in tax relief and subsidies as well as chunks of precious parkland for their new stadium.  The Mets completed a lesser deal with city but have also made out quite well on the taxpayers’ cuff.   All this should be taken into account as NYC voters go to the polls today.

The Voice’s Tom Robbins and Wayne Barrett, the Times’s Jim Dwyer and the Daily News’ Juan Gonzales and Errol Louis are among the few journalists who have kept the mayor’s record in perspective.  Time constraints have made TV news people less conscientious.  Lingering in the TV ballpark, our pitching for CNN last time prompted a couple of differing e-mailbag at-bats:

“You are certainly right about the need for an old fashioned, which is to say, relatively objective news source, but CNN has not been that for years.” - Carol Ann Rinzler, Manhattan

“That was a good piece about CNN neutrality.” - Richard Bruner, Budapest

In truth, we based much of our CNN assessment on its foreign coverage, which may explain the disparity of opinion.

Down-the-middle hitting machine Ronald Brownstein (National Journal) summarizes in two crisp swings the major-party strategies as the political game heads into 2010:

“Democrats are wagering that they can sell Americans on a sweeping and in some ways unprecedented expansion of government's reach to confront both…immediate …and… long-term challenges.”

“The fundamental bet that Republicans are placing this year (is) that they can regain power by riding a public backlash against government overreach.”

Two early tests today of how the strategy is working: In gov elections in New Jersey and Virginia, polls indicate a tie - Dem Jon Corzine winning in NJ, Repub Bob McDonnell in Virginia.  Both franchises are sure to declare overall victory.  Margins may be the key to which spin makes more sense. 
                                 -     -    -
It’s Not Over Yet, But…In retrospect, Charlie Manuel tipped us off to his starting-pitcher problems and the disadvantage under which the Phils were playing.  His choice of Pedro Martinez to pitch the second WS game said clearly he had lost confidence in Cole Hamels.  Having no starter with “lights-out” potential after Cliff Lee meant the Phils were overmatched against C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte.  The team could hit a ton, but so could the Yanks.  Victory for the NYYs was - is - therefore predictable.  But we’re not saying it here; at least, not this time. 

Mariano Rivera was generous in imparting his cut-fastball “one pitch” secret the other day.  The Boston Herald’s Sean McAdam took down what he said:  “I started throwing the cutter in 1997 and since then, it has been one pitch, yes.  But it does a lot of things.  It doesn’t go in the same direction always, and it’s not always in the same spot.

“Before, I used to just try to go inside, inside, inside and occasionally I went outside.  Now I use the whole plate. I use the outside corner, the inside corner and up and down. When you make those adjustments, the hitters will tell you if you have to make any (further) adjustments… But that’s what I’ve done, I’m using the whole plate.”

Not exactly news, perhaps.  But when a great one talks about his craft, he or she is worth quoting.

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October 2009 Archive

(Posted 10/31/09)

Why We Should Care More About CNN Than the Mets

The Mets and CNN both finished fourth in their respective divisions. As ominous for NYM fans as the team’s decline may seem, it’s not in the same league as the last-place finish of centrist CNN in the cable news standings.

Why should we care about CNN’s fall behind Fox, NBC and HLN, when the Metsies ended 25^th out of 30 in W-L percentage this season?  That’s a real downer!  The cable news game is easy to shrug off: Teams Fox and MSNBC at the top, one hitting consistently to right, the other to left; HLN settling for squibby headlines.  So what?  Here’s the nub of the matter: CNN is the only team in the league that hits up the middle.  If fans have lost interest in that kind of un-slanted swing, it confirms the broader, off-field reality: most spectators cheer the approach to hitting they agree with – resulting in drives that hug either foul line – and not the reliable straightaway stroke that CNN still offers (however imperfectly).

In the journalistic game it’s called objectivity.  A hint as to why that all-sides tradition is important can be found in hundreds of record books.  One at hand, “The Penguin History of the Second World War” recalls how Swiss radio, “with its built-in reputation for neutral impartiality,” kept Europeans from being cut off, providing information that helped them survive the hardships of German occupation.  While unconcerned about a similar threat in our ballpark, we should worry about being cut off ourselves from the instructive benefits of the news game as it should be played.

The trend away from down-the-middle reportage coincides with the relentless cutback in newsgathering teams and players.  Village Voice slugger Tom Robbins says diminishing rosters and less competition generally have left many significant stories uncovered.  The failure is especially unfortunate, he says, in the run-up to NYC’s mayoral election:

“The big story late lafile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlst week was the stunning court ruling on the illegal Stuyvesant Town rent hikes.  But you'd never know from the coverage that Bloomberg had praised the original deal cut by landlord Tishman-Speyer (headed by one of his strongest allies).  Or that his top aides had scotched a plan to keep Stuy Town affordable.”

Off-field performances that should be considered as part of Election Day decision-making.
                                 -     -     -
In the sixth inning Thursday night, Joe Buck was guilty of a surprising oversight.  He said Pedro Martinez would be facing the heart of the Yankee batting order, emphasizing only the challenges posed by Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez.  “Don’t forget Hideki,” one viewer (at least) said to the TV screen.  Matsui has been as timely a hitter as anyone in the NYY lineup.  Hideki’s home run may have caught Buck by surprise, but not fans who follow the team daily. 

Insiders are saying Matsui will play next season only if the Yankees offer to re-sign him, or, failing that, Seattle gives him a chance to play with his idol Ichiro Suzuki.  It’s not our money, so we say the Yanks should re-snap him up. 

Has anyone else noticed how the Yankees’ omnipresent HR potential means a game can be drained of sustained excitement at any moment?  The tension builds with men on base and reaches a peak when a clutch pitcher-batter faceoff unfolds.  Home runs - especially solo shots - are often anti-climactic.   Heresy? Maybe, but it was certainly true in game 2.
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(Posted: 10/29/09)

Baseball and Politics Both Distancing Young People

“Descent into mediocrity” is how the Boston Globe describes the plight of the Mets and the team’s outlook for 2010.  It’s what happens to any organization that doesn’t give  priority to planning.  The political system is like the Mets – and, from a broader perspective, like all of baseball: it invests little in attracting the young. 

The signs of anything but a youthquake in the 2010 midterm elections should come as no surprise.  The reality of entrenched incumbency – and little responsiveness in Washington - has replaced the anything-can-happen excitement of the presidential campaign. That’s part of the turnoff.  Then there is the deadening role of money.  Most campaign money, we know, goes for political TV spots.  And we certainly know that TV and the money baseball gets for broadcast rights is key to the sport’s less-than-fan-friendly image. 

What’s to be done?  Nothing will change politically, says Times lefty Bob Herbert, “without a big effort from an active citizenry, and that means a citizenry fired with a sense of mission and the belief that their actions…can make a profound difference.”

Herbert is asking for the equivalent of a walkoff home run against Mariano Rivera in a seventh World Series game.  The down economy and what one NY political scientist has called the “crisis of democracy” have left people, old as well as young, too discouraged to activate themselves.

If there’s a squib of hope for a return to popular political action, it clings to health reform, and the potential fallout from its many innings in Congress.  An eventual law that includes an opt-out public option could prompt electeds in some states to say “no thanks.”  If a stance that pits a state against health care affordability doesn’t reawaken activism in those affected, nothing will.

The e-mailbag contains this pertinent message re baseball’s poor health: “The final game with the Angels ended about midnight on a school night.  So kids should not have stayed up to watch.  Then I thought, what if the game was on earlier?  Do I really want my 10-year-old watching Cialis and Viagra commercials during a baseball game, along with the beer commercials which aren't much better?” – Frank S, Manhattan

Does anyone think anything will budge Bud Selig and team owners from permitting post-season schedules that yield the most TV money possible?  Does anyone think an appeal based on the need to cultivate future generations of fans would work?  For that to happen, we know, would be the equivalent of a seventh-game walkoff against Mariano, this one ending in a grand slam.
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On a night when Cliff Lee and Chase Utley would be the dominating forces, the Yankees earlier got the World Series off to an inauspicious start.  Their usual super-patriotic excess marred the pre-game activities (and, later, the seventh inning “God Bless America” break).  Then leadoff man Derek Jeter set the tone against Lee, striking out and looking bad doing it.  A rare lapse by the captain, who singled doubled and singled again later in the losing cause. 

Many Mets fans thought Omar Minaya did one thing right early last season: he resisted re-signing Pedro Martinez, who was clearly over the hill.  Well, make that one thing minus one: Pedro, we know, bounced back in unbelievable fashion for the Phillies.  Those who doubted that his successful comeback was real were surely persuaded otherwise when he blanked the Dodgers for seven innings in game two of the NLDS.  Pedro will give the doubters another chance tonight.  Meanwhile, Yankee fans have reason to be unsure about Pedro’s mound opponent:  A,J. Burnett brings the threat of unsteadiness with him every time he toes the rubber.  It will be an entertainingly unpredictable match-up. 

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(Posted 10/27/09)

Cracks Causing Problems for Mayor Mike and the New Stadium

Cracks in the concrete at Yankee Stadium and in the façade of Mike Bloomberg:  coincidental setbacks on the eve of the World Series and the cusp of the mayoral end-game.   Mike’s team was responsible for the poor job done on the Stadium’s pedestrian ramps, not the skipper himself.  He suffered self-inflicted damage when he hit into a political twin-killing: letting Rudy Giuliani play dirty on the campaign basepaths and setting up Detroit for a verbal spiking of his own.

The Yankees say the ramp cracks may be an embarrassment, but only a “cosmetic” problem; big-show balladeer Leonard Cohen says it better: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”  Bloomberg can’t dismiss the race-related mischief that darkened his campaign when Giuliani pitched to a Jewish group in Brooklyn the idea that only Mike - and not his black opponent - can insure community peace.  The mayor could have retrieved the situation by calling Rudy off-base; instead, he kept the fear-centered rally going at the expense of Detroit.  Mike warned that the Yankees’ home city could become another Tigers-town, historically hit by racial as well as economic woes.

Even Bloomberg backers are wondering why?  Why the race game on top of negative TV shots?.  He is outspending Billy Thompson 10-1; his record campaign payroll is the political equivalent of what the Yankees spend to outdo all other major league teams.   But unlike the Yankees, who must pay a luxury tax to provide financial aid to low-payroll competitors, Mike faces no such penalty.  (See “The Big Kids Play With Corked Bats” at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/rosenthal in this week’s Nation).   If the Yanks had dealt for Cliff Lee or Matt Holliday while still well ahead last season, it would have been seen as either overkill or desperation.  So it is with Team Bloomberg.  Whatever the reason, the mayor’s latest plays hardly do him or his team credit.
                                   -     -     -
A dream World Series for some, a nightmare match-up for others.  Imagine how anti-Yankee Mets fans feel: the big guy on the NY block is nearly back on top.  A horrendous thought.  On the other hand, the Phillies are so smug in their anti-Mets superiority.  A pox on them, too.  One thing we suspect: If Bud Selig could choose, he’d want the Yafile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlnkees to win to defend against talk of a Phillies dynasty.  Better to be able to boast of (even a dubious) parity and a different champion each year.

Did anybody else notice the trace of tension in the usually relaxed face of Derek Jeter Sunday night?  It was most noticeable at the plate, but Derek seemed up-tight in the field as well.  If the playoff pressure is getting to Jeter, then none of us is safe from everyday stress.  Derek, we know, is the model for cool.

The around-midnight finish of Sunday night’s game and the prospect of more of the same during the Series inevitably prompts recriminations in the media.  Bill Dwyre wrote this lament in the LA Times:

“A telling conversation last year during the World Series with Fox President Ed Goren.  The conversation was about the good old days when they played the World Series during the day, when kids could watch, when there was a sense of connection to baseball's vintage time.

”Goren told the reporter that he was amenable, that he could see the attraction to that.  He also said that it was his understanding that Commissioner Bud Selig kind of liked that thought.  Of course, Goren told the reporter, day games get much lower ratings than night games, so Fox would certainly have to reduce the rights fees it pays to MLB.

”We all know how that day-game-for-the-kids turned out.”
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(Posted: 10/24/09)

No Fault to Find with Fox Baseball Coverage and Joe Buck

After the series of stunning missed calls by umpires in Anaheim this week, Fox’s Joe Buck asked Joe Girardi what he thought about them:  They were “odd,” Girardi said. “A politic answer,” said Buck.

Fox is fortunate to have Buck, who pitches down the middle, on its team.  That’s especially true at a time when its prime affiliate Fox Cable News has been accused by Team Obama of excessive hitting to right.  Fans like Fox’s bias so it has every reason to stay with its swing, just as MSNBC can justify its pulling to left.  What’s useful - it says here - about the Obama-ignited rhubarb is its instructional value.  Most, but not all, cable-TV watchers, know they’re getting propaganda curves mixed in with straight informational fast balls.   For a small percentage of those fans, however, the built-in bias will be news.  They will have learned that to get straight-down-the-middle reporting they must look elsewhere. 

We’ve mentioned before how difficult it is to find truly objective reportage - that is, coverage of all sides of an issue - in our corporate media.  The McClatchy chain is a previously cited straight-hitting source.  The National Journal is another.  The broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC pass muster while being far from perfect.  The same goes for National Public Radio. 

Entertainment value, we know, long ago replaced newsworthiness on TV.  That applies to ESPN, whose mission is to sell sports and not examine its underside.  We’re talking about stories like the charging of unconscionable ticket prices or the exploitation of young Latin American ballplayers, cast aside if they don’t qualify as genuine prospects.

Since we can’t pretend to pitch down the middle every game, we have a first-hand report on Fox Cable News to toss out this time, dating from its early days more than a decade ago.  A lefty non-roster member of the team - and hopeful then of guiding it to straightaway coverage - we noticed that the bias consisted, mainly, of the choice of stories rather than their content: a small anti-government protest would be covered, for example, rather than delivery of aid to drought-distressed areas. There were minor instances of wording bias, as well: a reporter doing an anniversary piece on Senator Joe McCarthy would be instructed to list the “good things” the senator had done to balance out the bad.   

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has a more up-to-date description of what Fox is doing that distinguishes it from conventional news teams: “Fox has taken on a political role that is very rare… for a large American news organization.  Its news coverage is not merely biased or opinionated; there'd be nothing unusual about that.  Instead, it is a major participant -- the leading participant -- in organizing, promoting and fueling protests, including street protests, against the government… Fox has every right to do that, but the pretense that it is a news organization is ludicrous.”                                                                                                                                                                               

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In retrospect, “ludicrous” is an apt word to describe the once-widely held opinion that the Mets could have competed successfully against the Phillies had they not lost their “core” to injuries.  Not only did the Phils have a tough core of their own, they had a more solid bench plus three attractive prospects to deal for Cliff Lee, the clinching piece to their World Series-bound team.

Back to Joe Buck, who may one day have a candy bar named after him - (remember the “Reggie”(Jackson) bar?  When his Fox sidekick Tim McCarver said he didn’t want expanded replay coverage slowing down baseball as we’ve known it, Buck said “What did it take to see the bad call on Swisher leaving third base (in game 4), six seconds?”

The replay procedure in pro football is too cumbersome and time-consuming, he said. But with a supervisory umpire watching “from upstairs”, the controversial calls could be reversed or confirmed without disrupting the flow of the game.  From his lips to Bud Selig’s ears.

Had he been listening to McCarver in the seventh inning Thursday, Mike Scioscia would have known better than to replace starter John Lackey with two out and two men on base. “Lackey’s the best he’s got,” said McCarver when Buck wondered if the change was about to take place.  “I think he’ll be around for awhile.”  After inserting Darren Oliver, Scioscia watched a 4-0 lead turn into a 6-4 deficit.  Second-guessers would have given Scioscia a Girardi-like searing (see game 4) had his team not fought back.

Although they might have preferred a victory, Yankees fans couldn’t have minded the defeat Thursday too much.  It set up tonight’s sixth game at the Stadium, a bonus.  And there’s always C.C Sabathia waiting to pitch the seventh, if necessary.
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(Posted 10/22/09)

Betrayals Bedeviling Baseball and Barack Fans

Pittsburgh fans must enjoy the Pirates-like bind Team Obama is experiencing.  Both outfits – the Bucs and the Barack-ites - have betrayed their supporters in separate financial plays, and failed to rectify the way the game has gone. 

The political betrayal, played out appropriately in Pittsburgh last month (at the Group of 20 Summit), concerns Goldman Sachs and other money-making teams responsible for the trilliona lost in the worldwide economic collapse.  The question addressed: what to do about them?  The baseball betrayal concerns the Pirates’ reluctance to invest in top prospects the comparatively paltry $110 million in luxury tax money it has collected as a small-market team.  And what to do about that?

The Summit agreements call for tighter regulation over the financial teams, their deal- making, and the pay and bonuses they give their top players.  Pirates fans are urging Commissioner Bud Selig to force the team’s owners to use luxury-tax money to be more competitive.

The Summit promises sounded good until last Sunday, when Team Obama’s PR man David Axelrod appeared on ABC-TV with host George Stephanopoulos.  He was asked about the tighter regulations being imposed on Goldman Sachs:

“Well… first of all, we have… limited sway other than moral suasion with some of these -- a lot of these institutions.”

STEPHANOPOULOS:  “They are getting an awful lot of money from the Fed.”

AXELROD:  “They ought to think through what they're doing, and they ought to understand that, a year ago, a lot of these institutions were teetering on the brink.  The United States government and taxpayers came to their defense. They have responsibilities. They ought to meet those responsibilities.”

The scorebook shows three “oughts” in four sentences.  It indicates this final outcome: “moral suasion” making noise but producing “ought.”

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, sees one thing that Skipper Obama can do – a move that would dispel some of the disillusionment with him and his team: get rid of Treasury Department albatrosses Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.  Here is how she put it in response to a direct question from Bill Moyers on his “Journal”: 

BILL MOYERS: “Should Geithner be fired? And Summers be fired?”

MARCY KAPTUR: “I don't think that any individuals who had their hands on creating this mess should be in charge of cleaning it up.  I honestly don't think they're capable of it.”

The special inspector general of the bank bailouts program yesterday reinforced criticism of how it was handled.  The IG said the favored treatment to Goldman Sachs and eight others and the failure to make banks accountable for how they used bailout money has fed anti-government sentiment in the U.S.   Is it any wonder the latest Washington Post/Pew poll shows the national percentage of self-described conservatives at 38 percent compared to 23 percent for liberals?

Since the record book indicates Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig doesn’t even try to exert moral suasion on team owners, Pirates owner Robert Nutting must act on his own, undertaking a spending initiative if the Bucs are to respond to the fans’ clamor.  He has the added incentive, presumably, of wishing to end his team’s record-long series of 17 straight losing seasons.
                                 -     -     -
After Jayson Werth hit a three-run homer off Vincente Padilla in the first inning last night, the Phillies - in Ron Darling’s phrase - “never looked back” on their way to the NL pennant-clinching victory.  The Phillies had too much offense for the Dodgers, no surprise.  The surprise was the effectiveness of their much-maligned bullpen.  The expected Phils-Yankees World Series matchup should feature offensive fireworks  of a highly explosive order.

More on betrayals:  If ever an umpire’s call betrayed the need for replay overrule, we know it was Tim McClelland’s on Nick Swisher’s tag-up at third base in the fifth inning of Yanks-LA game 4.  McClelland ruled that Swisher had left third before Torii Hunter made a catch in center.  But Tim McCarver pointed out during a replay what viewers could see clearly: McClelland was watching Hunter, not Swisher, when the play occurred.  Obvious lesson: umpires can’t be expected to see two things at once.      

And another on betrayals - this of us ticket-buyers - from the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy:  “I’ll never understand why it’s OK for (teams) to go into business with companies that sell tickets at elevated prices.  I realize this is tapping into the ‘secondary market,’ but didn’t we used to call that ‘scalping’?”

How optimistic are Angels fans that they can bounce back to win the ALCS?  LA Timesman Bill Dwyre gives us a good (already partially outdated) idea:  “The World Series will open in the American League city (next Tuesday).  If it matches the Dodgers and the Angels, Tom Lasorda will be changing water into wine at home plate at the Big A.”

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(Posted: 10/20/09)

Team USA Is Slipping but Still Resented Like the Yanks

Too late in the season to even fantasize about “Breaking up the Yankees”.  But pinstripe fever in NY notwithstanding, most baseball fans want to see the Yanks stopped in their title-seeking tracks.  That’s just the numerical reality.  It’s not only partisans of Angels, Phillies and Dodgers who have championship hopes; we’ve noted how followers of the 26 other teams with lower payrolls resent the Yankees for the wealth and power they possess.

So it is on the international field.  Polls show that, while people around the world feel a sense of hope associated with Team Obama’s leadership, they don’t like what they see as America’s superiority complex.  The Yankees certified their leadership by winning more regular-season games, hitting more home runs, getting more RBIs, scoring more runs than any other team.  Our non-baseball stats hardly qualify us as a world league leader.

Once we led the league in making things; we’re now down in eighth place.  Team USA is lower than that when it comes to the measurement of economic playing fields.  Only Mexico and Turkey have wider holes separating the struggling and the well-off.  We’re in 13^th place in the affordability-of-education standings.  How about the comfort level – the quality of life – of people in our coast-to-coast ballpark?  We’re 15^th, far behind such “socialistic” teams as Canada, France and Norway.  As to our slot in the quality-of- health-care stats, don’t ask:  we’re 37^th, according to the World Health Organization.     

You get the picture:  the days of “We’re number one” - except in war-related competition - are long gone.  That has been true for the Yankees since 2000.  The Angels, Phils and Dodgers – and non-NYY fans – want it still to be case early next month.    
                                    -     -     -
When Alex Rodriguez ignored a stop sign at third base in ALCS game one and barreled home into Angels catcher Jeff Mathis, Fox’s Tim McCarver made this interesting observation: “In a play like that the runner tags himself out.  The umpire can’t tell if the catcher actually touches him with the ball.  But if the catcher still has the ball after impact, the umpire will call the runner out.”  In game two, McCarver remained puzzlingly silent when Derek Jeter was called out at the end of a key Angels double-play.  Joe Buck said Jeter looked safe, and re-plays showed that clearly to be the case. McCarver said, in effect, “no comment.”  Mathis, incidentally, made three crucial blocks of wild pitches after he entered yesterday’s game three, then later hit a leadoff double in the 11^th before scoring the winning run.  “He’s quite a player,” said McCarver.

They admire Jeter on the West Coast as much as we do on the East.  His home run and late rally-killing cutoff play yesterday reinforced that admiration.  LA Times-man Bill Shaikin elicited these comments about Jeter from baseball people who’ve watched him closely:

“He’s clutch.  He likes this time of year.” – Larry Bowa
“The game doesn’t speed up for him.” – Joe Torre
“(He has an) extraordinary ability to take a deep breath and deliver rather than yield to a rapid heartbeat in October.”  - gist of baseball execs’ comments summarized by Shaikin
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(Posted: 10/17/09)

Is There Politics-Like Dishonesty in Baseball?

From the e-mailbag: re prevalence of bad calls in baseball and politics -

“I think there’s a problem with your analogy of bad calls by the umpires and Team Bush (“What to Do About Bad Calls on Both Fields” at perfectpitcher.org).  I assume that the umpires are making honest mistakes.  By contrast, Cheney/Bush were not interested in ‘making the right call.’  They wanted to go to war, so the game was rigged, and the wrong call was not an accident.”  - Frank S, Manhattan.

We can only hope reports that complaining players risk being penalized for “showing up” umpires are exaggerated…as, we hope, is the implication that some bad calls on the ballfield are not totally honest.

The situation is different on the political field.  It can be argued that then-Skipper Bush made an “honest mistake” in justifying the intervention in Iraq.  He believed Team USA could run things better in Iraq and the region than those who live there.  He saw his lie about WMDs as a necessary step to achieving a worthwhile goal and therefore (in his eyes) morally acceptable.  Lyndon Johnson did the same in 1964 when he used two fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incidents to put us on a war footing in Southeast Asia.

Team Obama, like its predecessor, clearly believes in its right - if not to intervene militarily, then to tell other teams to shape up to our satisfaction (“Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System”- NY Times headline Thursday).  We’re telling the military outfit in Guinea that we want a stop to the post-coup violence there.  And the coup government in Honduras is hearing - however sporadically - about our discomfort with the situation there.

Author Neal Gabler, writing in the Boston Globe, sees a “greatest-country-in-the-world” and “last-best-hope-of-mankind” syndrome at work.  It’s a worrisome self-delusion, he says, particularly at play in our away-from-home record:

 “A country that believes it is the greatest in the world is also less likely to be constrained by that world. One could argue that the Iraq war was a direct result of a sense of national infallibility.  So was our willingness to torture, our reluctance to admit our mistakes in Afghanistan, our culpability in the global recession, and our foot-dragging on global warming. Such a nation is also less likely to introspect or to strive for true greatness because it believes its greatness has already arrived.

“There is something bizarre about (such) a country…but that describes America today.”
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“Bizarre” is an apt description of post-season baseball, being played in 40-degree temperatures at night and important games starting at times that insure the finish will come long after many fans have gone to bed.  Our first Phillies-LA game-watcher gave up in the bottom of the eighth, minutes before midnight Thursday.  It was an exciting game, flattened out by the TBS broadcast team. Ron Darling and Buck Martinez are two solid color men, but each makes the other redundant.  Given the media flak he has taken, the choice of Chip Caray to do play-by-play is odd, if not bizarre,       

Darling uttered the best line in the second Phillies-LA game.  He said Pedro Martinez (seven shutout innings) made Dodger hitters appear to be were “teetering on a boat in stormy weather.” That’s how Pedro’s teammate Chase Utley looked trying to complete double plays in both games.  He threw balls away twice with runners bearing down on him.  Yesterday, the error set up the Dodgers’ come-from-behind 2-1 victory.

When the first inning of the Angels-Yankees series produced a Derek Jeter leadoff single, an A-Rod RBI, and shockingly sloppy play by LA, the tone was set for game one.  C.C. Sabathia made sure there was no Angelic dissonance.  “The Yankees are acting like they expect to win,” said Fox play-by-play man Joe Buck.  “Yes, they are,” said Tim McCarver, “like the Yankees of the late ‘90s.”

A mystery connected to the Mets’ descent into moribund-ity is the case of hitting coach Howard Johnson.  Remembered as one of the team’s most undisciplined batsman in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Howard is now hailed for his effective hitting instruction.  The 2009 team BA was .270, sixth in the majors, but the Mets finished a distant last in HRs, and 24^th in RBIs and runs.  The Johnson case is relevant because of the availability of the widely respected Rudy Jaramillo, who declined a contract renewal as hitting coach of the Rangers.

Jaramillo’s name, brought up by Michael Kay on ESPN radio, led to a discussion of the Mets’ front-office situation.  Kay said to guest/colleague Peter Gammons that Mets GM Omar Minaya likes Jaramillo.  Gammons’ response: “Omar isn’t the general manager, Jeff Wilpon is…Omar’s the one out there to take the heat.”  When Jeff signed Minaya in 2004, he agreed – or so he said – to give Omar total control over baseball decisions; no meddling.  Amid the dismal Mets’ outlook, the most discouraging development is the return of “decider” Jeff Wilpon.  

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(Posted: 10/15/09)

‘Socialism’s’ Non-Threat to Baseball and the Political System

Why are we surprised when someone like Twins manager Ron Gardenhire makes no mention of the uneven playing field his team has to compete on with the mega-payroll Yankees?  Or why little is said in the political arena about the abyss between the privileged and the plain people in our society? 

Gardenhire is a players’ manager in more ways than one.  He knows the big-spending Yankees inflate player salaries beyond New York.  So he would never complain about the inequality baseball allows.  On the political diamond, the hint by an elected player that the economic groundskeepers have given one team an edge over another - would earn him the label “socialist.”

Yet, as a franchise that seeks to broaden the economic baselines, socialism should be attractive to the tens of millions of struggling Americans.  That it still has a bad name in this down economy attests to the clout of the corporate media, which believes as much in capitalism as Gardenhire does in ultra-free-market baseball.

In fairness, there’s another reason why our rampant - and selectively risk-free - enterprise system goes largely unchallenged.  “The Other America” author and home-grown socialist Michael Harrington explained the paradox a half-century ago: “Tell a typical poor person that the deck is stacked in favor of the rich, he won’t say we’ve got to change  the system.  He’ll say ‘How do I get to be rich?’” 

Coincidentally, there’s a connection that can be made between the soft education system this lack of awareness suggests and the 2009 Mets: “A stunning lack of fundamentals” says MLB.com’s Marty Noble about the team.  He adds: “flawed performance and lack of concentration (is) seemingly…tolerated.”
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Nubby oddsmakers make the Yankees an even bet to emerge from the final four with the World Series championship.  We wouldn’t take the numerically attractive bet against the Yanks for five major reasons:  (in alphabetical order) Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia, Mark Teixeira.  In the NLCS, the edge goes to the Dodgers because of Philadelphia’s shaky relief corps.  But we wouldn’t bet against the Phillies, either.

Although much is being made of Chone Figgins’ potential to cause the Yankees serious problems in ALCS, LA Times-man Mike DiGiovanna notes a consistent Figgins slump in the playoffs: “As productive and disruptive as he has been in seven big league seasons, including a superb 2009 in which he hit .298 with a .395 on-base percentage, 114 runs, 101 walks and 42 stolen bases, Figgins hasn't been much of a factor in the postseason.

”In 29 games in nine playoff series since 2002, Figgins is batting .182 (18 for 99) with a .214 on-base percentage, 11 runs, four stolen bases, five runs batted in, 32 strikeouts and only three walks….For the Angels to beat the powerful Yankees in the best-of-seven ALCS and advance to the World Series, they're going to need Figgins to provide more of a spark.

’"I know I need to get on base,’ Figgins said after Tuesday's workout in Angel Stadium. ‘I will get on base’.”   Obviously, a lot will rest on whether he makes good on the promise.

At a political meeting he hosted last night at St.Francis College, Nubbite Frank Macchiarola was asked by us to add something about baseball to the agenda.  He said Italian-Americans had something special to celebrate going into the Columbus Day weekend: “Five of the eight playoff teams had Italian-American managers – Terry Francona (Red Sox), Joe Girardi (Yankees), Tony La Russa (Cardinals), Mike Scioscia (Angels) and Joe Torre (Dodgers).  That’s never happened before.”  

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(Posted: 10/13/09)

What To Do About Bad Calls on Both Fields

Bad calls are the curse of baseball.  They’ve tarnished the playoffs as they often do Team USA’s political standoffs.  Detroit lost a chance to win its division-deciding one-game matchup with Minnesota when an umpire failed, in a bases-loaded situation, to see that a pitch brushed Brandon Inge’s uniform.  The other night, the Twins could have evened the ALDS series with the Yankees if an umpire hadn’t incorrectly called a fair Joe Mauer line drive foul.  Then Sunday night in Denver, a missed call by the home plate umpire in the ninth inning set the stage for a Phillies victory.

Bad calls after 9/11 – the decisions to wage an anti-Osama conventional war in Afghanistan, and to justify invading Iraq because of non-existent nuclear weapons – have, we know, skewed our national priorities and caused tens of thousands of deaths.      

Baseball, thanks to technology, has a sure-fire remedy at hand.  A supervising umpire could monitor the game with the help of TV re-plays.  When the televised picture shows a bad call, he or she can overrule it.  As it is, umpires on the field don’t see the re-plays until after the game.  In all the above-cited cases, after seeing the brushed uniform and fair ball replays, the umpires conceded too late the errors made.  “We all make mistakes,” was - is - the genetic rationale, an unacceptable one considering that crucial mistakes can be avoided.  If the playoff umpiring lapses don’t prompt Bud Selig to budge on the tech second-opinion issue, nothing will.

In the political field, where the stakes have a life-and-death seriousness, there is no technology that can rectify a mistaken - or misleading - call.  The only weapon the public has is responsible challenge.  The only entities that can mount such a challenge are news organizations.  Internet outfits offer minimal help because they deliver mainly opinion.  It’s on-the-spot news-gathering that is needed.  That leaves us dependent upon fast-disappearing newspapers.  We know that nearly all of them abdicated the challenging role in 2002 and 2003, cheering every war-run-up pitch tossed by Team Bush.   A tenuous hope now is that at least some outfits learned from their mistakes.  We must support the few good ones, like the McClatchy media chain - an admirable exception to the cheerleading outlets. And we must hope that McClatchy and a possibly reformed NY Times will still be around when the next major bad call occurs.     
                                 -     -     -
Pennant race finales:  Depending on LCS results, we know we could have a Turnpike Series on the northeast corridor, or a Freeway Series in the LA area.  Or a mix and match.  Jorge Posada may be the key - one way or the other - as the Yanks try to beat down the energizer Angels.   

Ron Gardenhire summarized the Twins’ sweep by the Yankees with “We had our chances.”  Then he paid this tribute to the Yanks:  “That’s a great baseball team over there.  You have to tip your hat to them…They’ve got the whole deal, and some of the classiest players in the league out on the field.  A lot of things are  said about their payroll and all that stuff.  But the bottom line is they’re great baseball players and they deserve the money they make.”

Boston Herald columnist Steve Buckley referenced the Mets (of ’86) indirectly when he wrote this epitaph to the Sox’s playoff elimination:

“The Red Sox are going home because they couldn’t touch Angels starters John Lackey and Jered Weaver in Games 1 and 2, respectively. They are going home because Jon Lester didn’t have great stuff in Game 1 and Josh Beckett petered out in Game 2. They are going home because, with Halloween approaching, Jonathan Papelbon has already decided he’s going to the party as Calvin Schiraldi.”

sbuckley@bostonherald.com

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Can’t spell ‘outplayed’ without ‘D’

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(Posted: 10/10/09)

Tales of Baseball and Political Slippage

Two men who have slipped off pedestals built with public acclaim in baseball and politics:  Manny Ramirez, once a feared slugger, now a serviceable hitter with LA Dodgers, and Mike Bloomberg, once widely, now grudgingly respected as NYC mayor. 

The thread linking their decline in stature: loss of trust.  Manny overstayed his stormy eight-year sojourn in Boston last July when he benched himself with the Red Sox in an obvious protest against a plan to renew his contract at less than what he thought he was worth. Then, after a brilliant end-of-2008 season with the LA Dodgers (.396 BA, 17 HR over two months), he failed a drug test early this year and was suspended for 50 games.  He finished this season with only a .290 BA and 19 HR over four months.   In retrospect, that same 2008 was anything but a brilliant year for Mayor Mike.  Although previously renouncing any thought of seeking a third term, Bloomberg quietly changed his mind.  And when a poll showed the public would vote against an extension in a referendum, he conspired to get approval through 29 compliant members of the City Council.

In 2004, Manny was the Sox’s World Series MVP and could have been elected mayor of Boston.  Mayor Mike had not yet become involved in his one major political mistake, the West Side Stadium/Olympics bid debacle.  Polls showed the public liked him mainly for his trustworthiness; financially independent, he could be - and was - a straight shooter who did what he thought was right.  There is no such illusion now: Joyce Purnick’s “Mike Bloomberg – Money, Power, Politics” reviews the secret machinations cited above, putting the devious Mike into perspective.

Manny could break out any moment, but so far he has been a shell of himself in the Cardinals-Dodgers NLDS: a .125 BA - one hit in eight at-bats - and no rbi’s.

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Joe Torre’s Dodgers and his former team are on track to meet in the series – and won’t that be something?   But the anticipated curtain-raiser between the Yanks and Red Sox is not on schedule.  The Sox have some serious sustained winning to do if we are to have a climactic drama before the season’s championship culmination.

While the Yankees are stealing most sports page space, we shouldn’t neglect the Mets.  Newsday’s Wallace Matthews has these thoughts on where blame should be placed for the disaster of 2009:

“The Mets' problems begin and end with accountability, and that begins and ends with ownership.  The Wilpons have yet to take real responsibility for anything, from building the wrong ballpark to overvaluing their tickets to overrating their team's vaunted ‘core.’  Really, the Mets are rotten to their core, which extends deeper than the clubhouse. Still, the men responsible for it all speak no truth and pay no consequences. No one of any importance pays for Jeff Wilpon's mistakes.

“No one but the…fans.”

TBS playoff broadcasting teams have provided a nice change from their ESPN counterparts.  It may be the effect of season-long over-familiarity, but most ESPNers have an annoying self-assurance about their baseball savvy.  They’d be better off more sensitive to their viewers, who know almost as much as they.  The star of the TBS galaxy is Bob Brenly, doing color in the Cardinals-Dodgers series.  Brenly, currently a Cubs broadcaster who managed the World Series champion Diamondbacks in 2001, and was a Giants catcher for most of the 80’s, gives you the goods: “Furcal wants a fast ball; he doesn’t like breaking stuff.”  “Catchers have a rule: with a three-and-two count, never signal for a high breaking ball.”

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(Posted: 10/8/09)

Why It Is Easy to Root Against the Yanks and Bloomberg

Unless you’re a bred-in-file:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlfile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlthe-bone backer of the Bronx Bombers, it’s easy to be Yankees-averse.  No one likes to see big spenders winning because they have more money than the next guy.  That applies not only to the NYYs, but to NY’s mayor as well.  The Yanks have a $201 million payroll, three-quarters of a million more than the Red Sox and better than three times as much as the Twins, whom they’re playing in the ALDS.  Mayor Bloomberg, we know, has spent $65 million on his re-election campaign compared to $3.8 million doled out by opponent Billy Thompson’s campaign.

Bloomberg has been a good skipper; among other things, he has gone to bat for bicycle lanes and pedestrian malls and against the plagues of guns and smoking.  Had he not used his financial clout to override the will of the people on term limits, he would – it says here – deserve fan support. 

The Yankees fielded a dream team; their dream season left them so dominant it reminded everyone of the uneven playing field Steinbrenner money had made.  But, unlike Mayor Mike, the Yankees merit the backing of all New Yorkers – at least, that’s how we feel.  Red Sox Nation will line up solidly behind Boston, Minnesota fans behind the Twins, LA fans behind the Angels and Dodgers, etc.  The unwritten baseball code permits – even requires – regional chauvinism in the post-season.  And NY pro-tem boosters will be in a no-lose situation: if the Yanks fall by the wayside, they can revert to their true state of fandom and not feel too bad.

Whether or not you feel bad for David Letterman, this from the e-mailbag is a reminder that his plight is comparatively small-ball stuff:   “The Mets are the John Edwards of baseball: lose, lose, lose.  Can’t think of a politician who embodies the Yankees.  Can you?” – Keith W, Manhattan  

John Edwards got caught off base and made the further mistake of challenging the call.  Andrew Cuomo, like the Yankees, has kept his eye on the ball and won’t let well-meaning distractions - like “What’s next?” - lead him to lose focus. 

The events that caused high-flying Edwards to tumble and Andrew to rise from the post-2002 cellar point up the obvious:  politics, like baseball, is a topsy-turvy game over the long run.  John Edwards’ first mistake may have been – like the Mets – losing sight of the value of a solid underpinning.  Leaving the Senate team after one term to seek the top job in Washington left Edwards unhampered by official restraints.  Unconstrained, he strayed from the game’s baselines, and eventually was sent down.  Andrew ground out a comeback through a series of barnstorming appearances wherever political fans gathered.  His discipline has brought him to the clean-up position, where he now goes to bat - like the Bronx Bombers - at the top of his game.
                            -     -     -             
Win or (probably) lose, the Minnesota Twins have done a remarkable job making the playoffs with a team largely composed of no-names.  On TBS Tuesday night, Ron Darling said he asked Ron Gardenhire about the particular skills of the likes of Nick Punto and Matt Tolbert.  Gardenhire wouldn’t get specific, but his answer captured the character of the team:  “They’re ballplayers,” he said.  Of the Yankees, the Twins manager said: “Say what you like about their money, they do things the right way.”

In a best-of-five series, it’s quality starting pitching that counts:  Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia confirmed that conventional wisdom in the playoff openers against the Rockies and Twins.  In LA, pitching depth was the key; the Dodgers had it.

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(Posted: 10/6/09)

Investments  Paying Off in Baseball and Politics

Pre-playoffs consensus: The Yankees are the dominant team among the final eight, and, barring a stumble against the Red Sox, should go all the way.  The Steinbrenners insured the Bombers’ dominance, it turns out, when they invested mega-millions in Mark Teixeira, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.  In the political field, the insurance industry seems to have assured a favorable – i.e., non-threatening – health care reform bill by investing heavily in, among others, the 23 members of the Senate Finance Committee.  We gave you the standings in the health-related – largely pharmaceutical – league last time.  Here is how contributions line up in the insurance league both in 2008 and from a player-career standpoint, the Dems team first:

Senator			2008 Insurance Sector	Career Insurance Sector
MAX BAUCUS (D-MT)			$285,850.00	$1,170,313.00
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV (D-WV)			$107,874.00	$394,074.00
KENT CONRAD (D-ND)			$56,650.00	$821,187.00
JEFF BINGAMAN (D-NM)			$1,500.00	$160,875.00
JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA)			$90,250.00	$1,397,367.00
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN (D-AR)			$49,500.00	$440,033.00
RON WYDEN (D-OR)			$45,999.00	$229,173.00
CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY)			$3,000.00	$946,400.00
DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI)			$40,800.00	$246,750.00
MARIA CANTWELL (D-WA)			$12,300.00	$80,850.00
BILL NELSON (D-FL)			$22,500.00	$520,016.00
ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ)			$67,450.00	$458,679.00
THOMAS CARPER (D-DE)			$28,700.00	$447,984.00

 

Senator			2008 Insurance Sector	Career Insurance Sector
CHUCK GRASSLEY (IA)			$72,200.00	$858,224.00
ORRIN G. HATCH (UT)			$24,880.00	$659,307.00
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE (ME)			$5,000.00	$408,490.00
JON KYL (AZ)			$2,000.00	$533,044.00
JIM BUNNING (KY)			$45,100.00	$769,016.00
MIKE CRAPO (ID)			$63,750.00	$360,932.00
PAT ROBERTS (KS)			$157,900.00	$296,342.00
JOHN ENSIGN (NV)			$19,150.00	$580,690.00
MIKE ENZI (WY)			$84,250.00	$240,953.00
JOHN CORNYN (TX)			$289,069.00	$568,253.00

As can be seen, Chairman Max Baucus, who led health-league hitters with receipts of just under $1.5 million in 2008, is an insurance league leader, as well.  Only Texas Republican John Cornyn outdid him in last year’s contributions.  John Kerry exceeded Baucus’ dollar intake in the career listing, thanks to his presidential candidacy in 2004.  (The above figures - largely ignored by the mainstream media - became accessible thanks to the work of public interest groups like the Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org and the Sunlight Foundation.)

The one cloud on the Yankees’ horizon: the near-unanimous sense that only with a World Series victory will their season be a success.  The team handled both potential first-round rivals easily, taking five of six games from the Tigers and seven of seven from the Twins.

If you’re an underdog-loving fan and are normally neutral as between Detroit and Minnesota, you should be leaning toward the Twins in today’s one-game playoff.  Why?  Minnesota has the seventh lowest payroll in the majors: $65 million.  The Tigers have the fifth highest: $115 million.

Two surprising votes on ESPN for 2009’s most disappointing team:  Steve Phillips picked the Cubs, Peter Gammons the Diamondbacks.  The Mets got dishonorable mention, but the network pundits cut them (undeserved) slack because of their many injuries.  

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(Posted: 10/3/09)

Yankees and Health Care Reform Taking Hits

Despite the team’s success on the field, the Yankees took a 13-percent hit in attendance this year.  Whether the Bombers finished financially in the black or red, we won’t know for sure:  The Yanks and all teams say their books are private.  How elected officials do financially thanks to identified contributors should be closely monitored public information.  But, like the baseball profit-and-loss records, the political fund-raising numbers seldom, if ever, appear in the corporate mainstream media.

Forbes magazine provides an annual estimate of how the value of baseball teams fluctuates each season; Detroit and Atlanta were among 10 teams the magazine said declined in value in 2008 while the Yankees and Mets finished one, two in estimated value gained.  Public interest groups like the Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org and the Sunlight Foundation help citizens keep tabs on lawmakers who may or may not be beholden to their contributors.  The focus on members of the Senate Finance Committee who have voted down variations of a public health reform option is particularly revealing.

Committee Chair Max Baucus, who voted against two the two public option proposals pitched by fellow Dems John Rockefeller and Charlie Schumer, took in more than twice as much private health-related money – just under $1,150,000 – than any of the 12 other Dem members in 2008.  He also led the Dems in money from the insurance industry, $1.4 million over his career, $285,800 in ’08.  It was Baucus who said he saw “a lot to like” in the public option but voted “no” because it wouldn’t attract enough votes to pass.  The logic of a fighting leader.  Republican Orrin Hatch, who called the public option “a Trojan horse for a single-payer system”, topped his nine party teammates in career-long, health-related contributions - $2.3 million.

 Here are the seldom cited health-related contribution stats for the Senate Finance Committee, Dem members first, then Repubs:

 

Senator	2008 Health Sector	Career Health Sector
MAX BAUCUS (D-MT)	$1,148,775.00	$2,797,381.00
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV (D-WV)	$515,150.00	$1,674,229.00
KENT CONRAD (D-ND)	$117,350.00	$1,331,363.00
JEFF BINGAMAN (D-NM)	$14,151.00	$861,841.00
JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA)	$289,430.00	$8,145,141.00
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN (D-AR)	$226,753.00	$1,281,608.00
RON WYDEN (D-OR)	$96,925.00	$1,161,488.00
CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY)	$10,000.00	$1,402,358.00
DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI)	$239,018.00	$1,188,186.00
MARIA CANTWELL (D-WA)	$48,951.00	$573,076.00
BILL NELSON (D-FL)	$60,015.00	$1,163,210.00
ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ)	$81,650.00	$1,216,476.00
THOMAS CARPER (D-DE)	$15,450.00	$452,000.00
Senator	2008 Health Sector	Career Health Sector
CHUCK GRASSLEY (IA)	$334,237.00	$1,876,479.00
ORRIN G. HATCH (UT)	$122,300.00	$2,311,744.00
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE (ME)	$6,000.00	$744,640.00
JON KYL (AZ)	$68,550.00	$1,971,968.00
JIM BUNNING (KY)	$40,450.00	$1,045,687.00
MIKE CRAPO (ID)	$92,000.00	$549,192.00
PAT ROBERTS (KS)	$657,749.00	$903,337.00
JOHN ENSIGN (NV)	$16,550.00	$1,795,899.00
MIKE ENZI (WY)	$287,549.00	$612,715.00
JOHN CORNYN (TX)	$950,669.00	$1,994,353.00

 Progressive columnist Murray Kempton said it all, shortly before he died a dozen years ago:  “When I was a young reporter elected officials responded to their constituents.  Now I am an old reporter and elected officials respond to their contributors.”

Why is the way the Senate Finance team swings so important to the future of health care reform game?  Because Skipper Obama made cost the key to what he would consider an acceptable bill.  The Nation’s Alexander Coburn recalled the scene last month when Barack went to bat before a Congressional audience on behalf of fiscal austerity: “The president reached the apex of lunatic effrontery when he caused the assembled legislators to leap to their feet in stormy applause by pledging that ‘I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.’   This is the same president, these are the same legislators, who are committing billions in red ink for the war in Afghanistan and the continued U.S. presence in Iraq,”

                                -     -     -
The Mets haven’t disclosed the depth of the hole in their ’09 attendance numbers.  But those figures – whatever they turn out to be – have them bracing for a lean 2010: witness announcement of reduced seat prices of as much as 20 percent in some categories.  

Newsday’s Ken Davidoff is among the first to say the inevitable – that Jerry Manuel should have managed his  miserable team better and wouldn’t be missed were the Mets to fire him before next season: “Although no one would be so foolish as to blame Manuel for the team's stunning rash of injuries and appalling lack of roster depth, that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either…The Mets…lost 41 of their last 59 games, a woeful .305 percentage. That can't be attributed solely to a talent disadvantage.  That screams, ‘White flag’…

“This is a tough business. The Mets owe Manuel nothing.  On the other hand, they owe their fans everything.  Is Manuel everything you've always wanted?  If he is, then, to be blunt, your standards are too low.
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(Posted: 10/1/09)

How Much Is Matt Holliday and Health Care Worth?

The man who owns the St.Louis Cardinals says he’s ready to spend whatever it takes to keep Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday together on the team.  “We need them both so we’ll find the money,” was the gist of his message to the fans.  On the other hand, Barack Obama, the man who runs Team USA, says this about an indispensable cog in his operation, “I will not accept a health care bill that costs more than $900 billion over 10 years.”

Boss Bill DeWitt will have to fork over a total of more than $50 million a year to satisfy St.Louis’s two offensive stars.  “No way he can afford it,” say rival owners.  DeWitt apparently calculates value differently.  If Skipper Obama checks the record book, he’ll find how a predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, handled the signing of another expensive indispensable, Medicare, a half-century ago.  When told by a key House chairman that the program was costing too much, he replied “I’ll take care of (the money)…400 million’s not going (to stop us) when it’s for health.”  Obama’s $900 billion 10-year- ceiling figure for health care reform is only a little more than Team USA spends on defense in a single year.  That type of disparity existed in Johnson’s day; he kept it in mind when pondering his budget in the mid-60’s.  LBJ told his Vice President Hubert Humphrey “I’ll spend (whatever) goddam money (is needed).  I may cut back some tanks.  But not on health.”   

(Quotations from “The Heart of Power: Health and Power in the Oval Office.” – David Blumenthal and James Morrone)

Pujols is signed through the 2011 season so DeWitt can concentrate on locking up Holliday.  Obama can’t wait if he wants to assure passage of a meaningful health care reform bill.  He has to rally his would-be Congressional allies, as LBJ famously did – “Lyndon told me to,” explained a senator who switched from opposing to voting for Medicare.”
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How potent is the Pujols/Holliday punch in the Cardinals’ lineup? After last night, they’d combined for 60 home runs (Pujols 47 in 156 games, Holliday 13 in 56 games) and 167 RBI’s (a remarkable 51 for Holliday).  Pujols’ BA was .330, Holliday’s .350.

Wednesday was close to playoff-clarifying night.  The Tigers are now gearing up to meet the Yankees in the best-of-five next week.   The Rockies ditto, probably against the Phillies, while the Cardinals and Dodgers play in the other bracket.  We’ve known for a couple of days that the Red Sox and Angels will square off in the other AL first-round series.

Tiger tales (told chronologically):  Minnesota’s rookie righthander Brian Duensing tamed Detroit a week and a half ago, yielding no runs, four hits in 6.1 innings.  Yet on Tuesday night Jim Leyland sent the same lineup that had done little against Duensing back against him again.  Bert Blyleven who covers the Twins for Fox in Minnesota explained why (on MLB-TV): “Leyland’s  a smart manager: he  knows that lineup has seen Duensing and will be ready for him this time.”  The Tigers reached Duensing for five runs on seven hits in four-and-two-thirds innings as they scored a crucial first win in the second of two games.   ESPN’s Rick Sutcliffe foresaw the hit that would break open last night’s near-decisive game.  With the score 4-2 Tigers in the bottom of the sixth, he said before Magglio Ordonez hit his base-clearing double: “This game will be all but over if (Carl) Pavano keeps pitching up in the zone.”

Leyland, on how he wanted the team to prepare for that important game: “I tell them to go to Wendy’s, do whatever they want.  Say a prayer? (maybe).  Have a meeting? (no)”
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September 2009 Archive

(Posted 9/29/09)

Unwelcome Changes Affecting Team Obama and Mets

Just as a season of stinging reversals has dismayed future-oriented Mets fans, so worrisome off-field changes are affecting the play of Team Obama.

Cracks in the Mets' big-ticket-player facade exposed widespread organizational rot. Hopes of a new positive start were dashed when oft-disengaged owner Fred Wilpon said he intends to keep control of the club and leave son Jeff in charge.  Jeff Wilpon is overseeing removal but not (so far) replacement of people connected with the team's farm-system failure.  Un-replaced is the departed staffers’ boss, GM Omar Minaya.  The Mets will enter the off-season with holes everywhere.

 Skipper Obama has most of his squad in place, but the rules of the managerial game have changed owing to power plays that occurred before and post-9/11.  Historian Gary Wills traces in the NY Review of Books the changes and their effect on the skipper and his team:

“Some were dismayed to see how quickly the Obama people grabbed at the powers, the secrecy, the unaccountability that had led Bush into such opprobrium…(But) it should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard,  perhaps impossible, task.  After most of the wars in US history there was a return to the constitutional condition of the pre-war world.  But after those wars there was no lasting institutional security apparatus of the sort that was laboriously assembled in the 1940s and 1950s…

“On January 25, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales signed a memo written by David Addington that called the Geneva Conventions ‘quaint’ and ‘obsolete.’ Perhaps, in the nuclear era, the Constitution has become quaint and obsolete….(Today),  we are all, as citizens, asked to salute our commander in chief.   Any president, wanting leverage to accomplish his goals, must find it hard to give up the aura of war chief, the mystery and majesty that have accrued to him with control of the Bomb.”

Amid the burgeoning shambles last month, the Mets could have been expected to act aggressively in the 2009 draft.  Instead, they spent less money than any other club in the effort to sign players in the first 10 rounds.  And they failed to sign two highly rated, early-selection pitchers.  Nevertheless, fans can be confident the bright façade will be back next spring and maybe it will remain in place a few months longer than it did this year.

Gary Wills is somewhat less confident in change for the better transforming the National Security State.  “It may be too late to return to (the) ideals (of the Constitution),” he says, “but the effort should be made.”
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Looking at the schedule, it’s hard not to foresee the Braves (now only two games behind) overtaking the Rockies in the next six games and perhaps setting up a one-game NL wild card playoff.  While  Colorado must play three with Milwaukee at home and three with the Dodgers away.  Atlanta finishes playing two more with the Marlins and four with division doormat Washington, all at home.

Minnesota needs a sweep to win at least three of its current four games against the Tigers to set up a possible one-game playoff with Detroit.  The Twins will almost certainly face Zack Greinke at the start of a final weekend series at home against KC.  The Tigers, meanwhile, will close at home against the White Sox, who have Jake Peavy but no one of Greinke’s caliber.

Stat city: Although considered a good bet for the Cy Young Award, Greinke only places  sixth on the mlb’s list of effective starting pitchers.  The top five (in order): Roy Halladay, C.C. Sabathia, Adam Wainwright, Felix Hernandez and Justin Verlander.
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(Posted 9/26/09)

Nitpicking Look at the Baseball and Political Playoffs

Playoff time: in baseball, at the end of next week; in two NY citywide runoffs, this Tuesday.  How do we handicap the competitions? 

In baseball, it’s little unrecorded things – errors of omission like failures to cover a base, back up a play or hit a cutoff man – that separate good players from the rest. The same can be true in politics.  That’s how we’re judging the public advocate and comptroller races.

PA:  Former Public Advocate Mark Green, running for NYC’s political comeback-of-the-year award, failed to cover his own base in 2001.  That’s when he supported a proposal to have Mayor Rudy Giuliani stay on the job for three additional months in the aftermath of 9/11.  We believe the other night Green should have backed up on calling the new ballparks positive additions to the city; he might at least have questioned the handing over of parkland to make room for the new Stadium.  Bill de Blasio neglected to run a positive campaign, hammering Green for, among other things, supporting the more-of-Giuliani plan and for accepting campaign money from his real estate-rich brother.  We like that de Blasio led a fight (with John Liu) against Mike Bloomberg’s third-term power grab, but it’s hard to forgive him for a bit of outlandishness: saying that Betsy Gotbaum was a better public advocate than Green.

Either will be a good PA. We give the edge to Green (a former client), owing to overzealous play on the part of de Blasio. 

Comptroller: David Yassky left his own base in 2006 to run in a neighboring minority district for the Congressional seat being vacated by Major Owens.  Before that he failed to follow through in a tentative at-bat for the Brooklyn DA’s office.  Yassky was all over the field; he then allowed himself to get out of position on the mayor’s extended term-limits maneuver, moving from an early opposition stance to a vote of support.  His opponent John Liu matches him in do-whatever-it-takes ambition.  Liu really wanted to run for public advocate but switched to the comptroller race when Green entered the PA contest.  Thus (unlike Yassky) Liu signaled a lack of fire about the prospect of playing the game of audits.  But, in general, both have been effective Council members and match up well. 

Liu gets our vote because of the elevated political status his victory would give to the Asian community, but, mainly, because Yassky neglected to stand his ground on Mayor Mike’s term-limits play.
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Despite the late-August addition of Scott Kazmir, the Angels have erred in not doing more to solidify their pitching.  The LAA staff ranks 22d out of 30 in pitching stats; through Thursday the team had given up as many ERs and more hits than the miserable Mets.  The Dodgers, Cardinals and Phillies, in that order, have the best pitching records going into the NL playoffs; the Red Sox, Tigers and Yankees are lined up, stat-wise, in the AL. 

Switching from errors of omission to the other kind, the team leading the majors in the fewest-errors category is the still-in-contention Minnesota Twins.  Going into last night’s action the Twins had committed only 68 miscues in 152 games.  The Washington Nats, at the other end of the category, had just under twice as many.  Right behind the Twins was a surprise team: the Pirates with 68 errors in 151 games.

The deal that brought Adam LaRoche from Boston to Atlanta for Casey Kotchman is one reason the Braves are still in the NL wild-card game.  Amalie Benjamin had comparative details in yesterday’s Globe: “ In 47 games with the Braves (46 starts), LaRoche has a .355 batting average, 12 home runs, 36 RBIs, and a 1.048 OPS.  Kotchman, meanwhile, has played in 29 games for the Sox, starting for the 13th time last night. With a 2-for-4 night in the Red Sox’ 10-3 win, he raised his batting average to .239, 1 home run, 7 RBIs…(And) Kotchman has gone 0 for 9 this season off the bench.”
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(Posted: 9/24/09)

Bad News Developing for Barack’s Team and War

The White Sox and Afghanistan: Skipper Barack clings to the hope that both the team and the military campaign he supports will pull out victories.  In one case - the Chisox – the hope has all but been blown away.  That his war game in Afghanistan will end well is doubtful.  But whether the game should be played at all is a question that rallies fans on both sides.

The early post-mortems in Chicago say a “passive” offense doomed the White Sox season.  Manager Ozzie Guillen said his hitters showed “no fire.”  A tell-tale sign of passivity is the inability of teams to sweep their opponents.  The Chisox were plagued by letdowns after taking the first two (or three) games of a series.

Polls say the American public is passive at best about pursuing the war in Afghanistan.  How skeptics feel was well expressed the other day by the International Herald Tribune’s William Pfaff:  “On Afghanistan, there seems to be no coherent reason or vision as to why we are there.  To ’catch’ Osama bin Laden, ten years after his crime?  But you don’t have to take control of a country of 250 thousand square miles and 3l million people in order to catch a terrorist leader. (Especially when it is taken for granted that he actually is in Pakistan.) You don’t have to take it upon yourself to solve Afghanistan’s internal social problems or to ‘defeat’ (how, no one knows) the Taliban military, political and religious uprising in the country.  What has that really to do with Americans?”

The equally lefty Michael Tomasky, of the UK Guardian, stresses fundamentals in what amounts to an answer from the other side of the field: “In the United States’ history as a world power, it has been attacked on its mainland soil exactly once.  Neither mighty Russia nor powerful China nor Nazi Germany nor Imperial Japan managed to hit the American continent. Only one foreign entity…did: al-Quaida, clearly and directly aided and abetted by the then-government of Afghanistan.

“How do you justify running the risk of letting the only people who have ever successfully attacked the American mainland regain power? That they could attack again is not merely theoretical.  It happened.  So it could happen again.” 

The president clearly agrees with the Tomasky view.  He has termed Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but has begun hedging on a response to his military commander’s call for more combat troops.  The New Yorker’s George Packer, who hits down the middle, suspects skipper Barack would regret making too big a commitment.  Packer visited Afghanistan with Our Man in the region Richard Holbrooke (about whom he did a long, puff piece).  This laser of his could be the walkoff comment on the situation:  “Now there is a strong possibility that (last month’s) stolen election will leave (shifty, unpopular President Hamid) Karzai in power for five more years, at the very moment that Obama (would have to commit) to send thousands…perhaps(to) die, on behalf of the Afghan government.”   Unthinkable?  We’ll see soon enough.
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KC’s Zack Greinke, on the difficulty of maintaining a low - 2.08 - ERA: “It’s kind of like watching Joe Mauer hit, where he’ll get a hit [in a game] and his batting average will go down.  You’re like, ‘That’s unbelievable’.” (quoted by the Globe’s Adam Kilgore)

The suddenly inarticulate Terry Francona on Greinke’s 5-1, two-hitter against the Red Sox Tuesday night: “Man. that’s . . . he had everything.  That’s, that’s, that’s . . . that’s impressive.’’

Who said: “Overall, we lacked depth. When we had to reach down ... (it wasn't there)." 
Although it sounds Metsian, the speaker (quoted by SI's Jon Heyman) was not Omar Minaya, but Brewers GM Doug Melvin.
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(Posted: 9/22/09)

Remembering Irving Kristol’s Gift to Baseball Fans

A parting game of pepper in honor of Irving Kristol, who died the other day at 89.  It was Kristol, the neoconservative ace, who struck out oracular baseball writers, sparing many of us the sense of being sporting simpletons.

At a long-ago televised panel discussion on the media and literature, Kristol said newspaper readers had to accept the reliability of reports from abroad, places and situations they knew nothing about.  But, he said, “when a baseball fan turns to the sports page, he usually knows as much as the writer.”

That reality took awhile to sink in, but the tone in sports reportage and opinion gradually changed as writers like Jim Murray, Peter Gammons,  Robert Lipsyte and Tom Boswell did in their own way what Red Smith had started – treating the fans as equals, and with a sense of humor, to boot.

Kristol, who began his career in left field, then moved to right, eventually became a rare breed of political pitcher. a lighthearted neocon.  He described his right-of-center delivery this way: “It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic."   Few, if any, of his teammates have followed that lead, nor is there much cheer to be found on the left.  Where are you when we need you, William F. Buckley?  Thanks for trying, Michael Moore.
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With the Red Sox surging and the Yankees sputtering - and a three-game series between the two on tap in a few days - the wild-card Sox are thinking the unthinkable: overtaking the Yanks.   Jason Bay put it this way to the Globe’s Adam Kilgore: “’You want to be that team that’s hot at the right time.  It’s not always the best team that wins.  It’s the best team at the time.  Right now, we’re on a pretty good roll.’’

If regular-season road records are useful playoff indicators, Phillies fans have reason to be confident, Tigers fans much less so.  The Phils, at 45-29, have the best road record in either league.  Detroit has registered an abysmal 31-44.   Although the AL will have home-team advantage in the World Series, the stats suggest that the Phils, if they make it, will not be at a disadvantage.

Lob from the green grass of center field: "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."  - H.G. Wells
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(Posted: 9/17/09)

Cuban Ballplayers ‘Si,’ Cuba ‘No’

 How striking: the same week the NY Times celebrated Cuban slugger Kendry Morales, Team Obama announced it was extending the anti-Castro embargo to prevent people like the Angels first baseman from coming here legally.

Morales had to risk his life, sailing to Florida from his home island in 2004.  That was 15 years after the end of the Cold War, the end of the alliance between Fidel Castro’s regime and the former Soviet Union.  Although Cuba no longer represented a threat to U.S. security, it could only hope to play ball with Team USA if it introduced democracy to the island.  That is, the first Bush Administration arrogated to itself the right to tell a sovereign state how it wanted things done.  Among those things: “free” elections.

Cuba sees our elections as giving the candidate with most money the “freedom” to win.

Some things have changed 19 years later: Team Obama has eased travel and financial restrictions between the two countries.  But Skipper Barack has parroted Bush I and II in demanding “democratic reforms” in Cuba before the decades-old “trading-with-the-enemy” embargo would be lifted and diplomatic relations could be normalized.

Morales has come close to achieving normal production as a replacement to Mark Teixeira.  Mega-star Mark hit 13 home runs in 54 games with the Angels last year (after being traded from Atlanta); Morales has hit 30 HRs in 137 games and has 98 RBIs, not far off Teixeira’s ’08 pace.

In relations with other Latin American states, Obama has followed the spike marks of George Bush II: adversarial – if not hostile – to leftist Venezuela and Bolivia.  We’ve made clear we don’t like the way Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales are running their countries.  At the same time, like Bush, we are friendly to right-wing Colombia and, meanwhile, patient with the rightists after their June 28 coup in Honduras. “Change we can believe in?”  More like “Barely perceptible change that tests our willingness to believe.”

Lots of Congressional impatience with ACORN, the community organizing group caught in a compromising position by conservative sting teams.  The House has voted to end federal funding - $3.1 million a year – to the group.  Salon’s Glenn Greenwald puts the events into perspective: “Nobody is apologizing for (ACORN) or suggesting that they've done nothing wrong.  Any group that large will have individuals in it who do bad things.  The issue is one of  proportion.  If someone ostensibly opposes government waste and unfairness in tax policy yet spends most of their time focusing on a tiny group that helps the poor and receives a miniscule amount of government money -- all while ignoring or even revering the enormous, omnipotent industries which eat up trillions in taxpayer waste and dwarf the impact of ACORN by many, many magnitudes -- then any rational person would question what the real motives are. “
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The Phillies have inched past the Cardinals, setting up for the moment a St.Louis-LA Dodgers playoff first round while the Phils get the wild-card opponent, probably the Rockies.   Philadelphia plays seven of its last 10 on the road – two more at Atlanta, then two at Florida and three at Milwaukee before finishing with three at home against Houston.  The Cards play eight of their last 10 away; after completing two more at home against the Cubs, St.Louis goes to Houston and Colorado for three each and Cincinnati for two.  If the Phillies have the edge, it’s because of their one extra home game and the fact that the Cardinals will be playing the team with the strongest incentive, the wild card-leading Rockies.

Stat city:  Detroit’s Justin Verlander not only leads the AL in strikeouts with 239 in 210 innings, he’s also caught 13 runners trying to steal, tops in both leagues.  SF’s Tim Lincecum remains the majors’ strikeout king, with 244 in 207 innings.  Incidentally, Tigers catcher Gerald Laird has far and away the best backstop caught-stealing pct: 42.4.

The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan on a subject close to our hearts: “September means expanded rosters, a form of peculiar madness unique to baseball. Major League Baseball is the only one of our primary team sports in which there is one set of parameters for the first five-plus months and a different set of parameters in the final month, when, presumably, the most important games of the season are played.”

Ryan solicited the support of Sox manager Tito Francona who said this about the expanded-September-roster rule: “I’m against it I think we’ve gotten to the point where we need an amendment to the rule.  We play all year under one set of rules, and when we get to Sept. 1, it’s vastly different.’’
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(Posted 9/17/09)

Losing Teams in Baseball and Politics Urged to ‘Get Serious’

Bobby Ojeda had an 18-5 record with the world champion 1986 Mets; James Carroll won a National (non-fiction) Book Award in 1996 for the war-related “American Requiem”.  Both offered similar advice this week, in Ojeda’s case, to his former team, in Carroll’s, to our non-fiction-writer president.  What they said in short was “get serious.”

Ojeda, an SNY analyst, said the Mets looked unfocused to him as far back as spring training, and he doubted their ability to make the playoffs even when they were at full strength.  Carroll, writing in the Boston Globe, said the president allowed himself to become distracted by foreign war-making when his focus should have been at home:

“The scale of President Obama’s military mistake is becoming clear exactly as the moment of his greatest opportunity to improve American life has arrived. The tragedy, as with Lyndon Johnson, will be the destruction of his proposed social transformation by his simultaneous opting for war, as his core supporters among liberals and Democrats feel bound to oppose him. The day after Obama’s unifying speech on health reform, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent a foreboding warning on Afghanistan, ahead of an all but certain request from the Pentagon for a major escalation there.  The storm cloud (of a standoff) approaches.”

The storm cloud already shadowing the 2010 Mets - a fragile front line and no real prospects - can be tracked at length between seasons.  Ojeda’s recollection of the Mets “having fun” instead of working hard at Port St.Lucie last spring is a reminder of the hype Gary Cohen and the SNY crew imposed upon fans then: the team’s “new spirit”, “fresh start”, “no-nonsense attitude”, etc. 

As if Team Obama doesn’t have with health care and Afghanistan enough challenges, the aftermath of last year’s bank bailouts has refused to leave the field.  NY Times slugger Gretchen Morgenson reminds us of an ongoing regulation scandal:  “Senior regulators who stood idly by for years as financial firms built their houses of cards have been rewarded with even bigger jobs…Those in the public sector ask us to believe that regulators who snoozed during the credit bubble will be alert…when the next mania begins.”

Morgenson quotes Edward Kane, finance prof at Boston College on how the regulators and those supposedly being scrutinized are playing ball:  “We’ve got a very comfortable equilibrium here where Wall Street praises the authorities and the authorities give Wall Street…what it wants and they hope that the public…doesn’t understand.

“…You keep reading about how wonderful it is that we didn’t have a Great Depression.  Well, if they can sell that point of view, then nothing will change.”
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What’s left of regular-season baseball fun is in the West, where the Rockies and Giants are dealing for the NL wild card.  But the re-emergence of Daisuke Matsuzaka – six shutout innings against the Angels Tuesday night – gives AL East fans something to look forward to.  The Red Sox now have the pitching to give them a definite edge over the Angels in the first playoff round.  The Tigers don’t match up with the Yankees.  Ergo, while acknowledging how unpredictable baseball can be, it’s fair to say a Sox-Yanks ALC series appears likely.  And won’t that be fun!

Comparisons, we know, can hurt.  While the Mets wonder where they are going to find their future stars – certainly not in the system – the Braves have produced a young ace in Tommy Hanson (10-3) and are bringing along an outfielder, Jason Heyward, whom Baseball America has just been named Minor League Player of the Year. 
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(Posted 9/15/09)

Batting Practice for Today’s NYC Balloting

Nobody asked, but here is how we see the field in today’s NYC-wide Dem Primary:

Of the 10 players - Tony Avella (running for mayor), Billy Thompson (mayor), Melinda Katz,  John Liu,  David Weprin, and David Yassky (comptroller),  Bill de Blasio, Eric Gioia, Mark Green and Norman Siegel (public advocate) – only one has a sustained positive connection to baseball: Stormin’ Norman.

Siegel twice filed legal challenges to Team Bloomberg’s plan to hand public baseball fields on Randalls Island over to private schools. And he has supported local opposition to terms under which the new Yankee Stadium was built.  We’re voting for Siegel, a former client, for more than baseball-related activism: he has been the unelected people’s advocate for well over a decade and can be counted on to keep the mayor honest during the next four years.  Norman, a rabid Mets fan, is up against it in his race just as his favorite team is in its.  But his supporters can cling to the mantra of the NY Lottery: “You never know.”  Polls suggest that Green (another former client) and de Blasio are pre-game leaders into today’s crucial PA contest.  We give Green the edge over de Blasio, owing to the latter’s hilarious contention (along with Gioia) that Betsy Gotbaum was a better public advocate than Mark had been from 1994 through 2001.

Speaker Christine Quinn told us last fall that she was “proud” of the Council vote in support of the Yankee Stadium deal that carved away 22 acres of ballfield-dotted public parkland.  None of the seven Council members running for the various offices today spoke out against that deal.  Nevertheless, we favor feisty underdog Avella over current Comptroller Thompson for the mayoral nomination.  We prefer Liu over Weprin among the comptroller candidates because he is a leader of the under-represented Asian community.  As we’ve said before, there isn’t bad candidate among the 10.   But Katz and Yassky lost any chance for our support by going to bat for Bloomberg’s push for term-limits extension without a referendum.
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Regular-season newsworthiness?  Yes, even though eight mlb teams - Yanks, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, Rockies - are virtual playoff locks, there are a couple of marginally interesting cliffhangers to watch over the final two weeks.  By taking three of four from the Mets over the weekend while the Cardinals were losing three to the Braves, the Phillies moved to within a game of St.Louis (as of early last night).  Should the Phils pass the Cards in W-L pct., they will get to play the (likely) wild-card Rockies while Tony LaRussa’s squad will draw the Dodgers in the first round.   The Rocks, of course, still have an outside chance of catching LA for the division title.  That about sums up the quasi-interesting developments.

Stat city:  If it is true that starting pitchers consider number of innings their most important statistic (a David Cone contention), then baseball’s three leading starters, as of now, are: C.C. Sabathia, 213.1, Roy Halladay, 208.0 and Adam Wainwright, 205.0.  Halladay leads the AL in another important stat – fewest walks allowed.  He’s given up only 1.25 passes per nine innings.  The Cards’ Joel Piniero leads both leagues in the fewest walks category – 1.04 per nine over a total of 190 innings.  Arizona’s Dan Haren is third overall – 1.39 per nine over 201.1 innings.  The presence of Wainwright and Piniero on these below-the-radar lists of leaders points up the strength of St.Louis pitching, headed by ace Chris Carpenter.     
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(Posted: 9/12/09)

The Concession Game in Baseball and Politics

For some of us, the usual baseball homestretch excitement began to dissipate on August 29.  That day the wild-card-contending Tampa Bay Rays traded their erstwhile ace Scott Kazmir to the LA Angels.  A month-and-a-half earlier, Team Obama’s dugout coach  Rahm Emanuel took the suspense out of the health-care-reform contest by signalling that his skipper would pitch around the public option threat.

Then, Wednesday night, Obama waved away the threat, saying the public option was something that could, not must, be part of the reform package and, anyway, it would only be available to the uninsured, less than five percent of the new program’s potential enrollees.  Thus did the skipper dash the early high hopes of fans in left field.  Last spring they thought creation of a public program “to keep insurance companies honest” was a realistic goal.

When the Rays let Kazmir go they had a valid shot at the playoffs, positioned only four-and-a-half games behind the AL card-leading Red Sox.  Since then Tampa Bay had lost 10 of 12 games (before last night) and reduced the number of “meaningful” AL races to a single one – that  between the Sox and Texas for the fourth playoff spot.  The betrayal of the Rays’ fan base that the deal – for two prospects – represents is an additional argument for mlb to institute a rules change to stop rich teams from getting richer at the expense of poorer ones during the season.  In the interest of greater fairness to fans, there should be - it says here (yet again) - a freeze on team rosters at season’s start or shortly thereafter.

In fairness to Obama, his overall pitch for the need for health reform was effective.  Washington Post super-sub Tom Shales described the president’s late-in-speech persuasiveness in terms of baseball offense: “Quoting from a letter that (Ted) Kennedy had written and that he had asked to be read after his death, Obama hit one out of the park…

“The letter was in part an…assault on partisanship in a time of deep crisis, and Obama's point was that Kennedy, no matter how political an animal he was, knew when it was time to put differences aside and stop bickering.  If we don't, Obama said, then ‘we lose something essential about ourselves’ and about ’the character of our country’."

Shales said that at-bat “most likely touched a chord with millions watching.” Indeed, polls showed that a substantial number of previously skeptical fans swung their support behind Team Obama’s initiative.
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Although the Dodgers’ at-the-wire deals for Jon Garland and Jim Thome will give them a stronger playoff roster, the new pitcher and pinch-hitter may not provide enough of a boost to stop destiny’s team the Rockies from winning the division.  The reward to either NL West winner will be a first-round rendezvous with the defending world champion Phillies.  The Dodgers have taken four of six from the Phils this season, the Rocks have lost four of six to the champs but that was before they went on their latest high.

If you’re a fan of one of the 20-odd teams out of the playoff race, the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell offers this tepid consolation - his listing of potentially available free agent pitchers this winter:  “It's a huge class. People like (Braden) Looper would be at the bottom of it.  Somebody like Randy Wolf in the middle. They were available last winter, signed for one year and are available again. Some of the 'names' have club options for (20)10, so it's hard to say exactly which ones end up on the market. But it will be a ton of them. (My rough) list  includes: Jason Marquis, Looper, Garland (club option), Rich Harden, Livan (Hernandez), Tim Hudson (club option), John Lackey, Cliff Lee, Kevin Milwood, Brett Myers, Vicente Padilla, Brad Penny, Joel Piniero, John Smoltz, Carl Pavano, Jarrod Washburn, Brandon Webb (team option), Todd Wellemeyer, Wolf."

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

August 2009 Archive

(Posted: 8/29/09)

NY’s Paterson and Cubs’ Bradley Must Get Off Political DL List

A few days after NY state skipper David Paterson complained about racial attitudes in the media (a charge he later sought to withdraw), Cubs right fielder Milton Bradley talked about the racism he confronts daily on and off the field.   That the media in NY and Chicago played the stories big suggests there was at least a squib of truth in what Paterson and Bradley were saying.

But what each could not acknowledge was another influential factor in their respective mistreatment stories: time on the disabled list.  Paterson’s physical disability - his near-blindness - has been a life-long burden; Bradley’s major league career, dating from 2000, has been marred by various injuries and long DL stints.  More significantly, the governor and the ballplayer have been hurt by word and deed that placed them on what could be called a political DL list.  Paterson went on the list, where he remains, because of his mishandling of his appointment of Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the Senate.  He dragged out the process by which Carolyn Kennedy was bypassed in favor of Kirsten Gillibrand.  A series of temper tantrums along with incendiary remarks earned Bradley his place on the political DL and a bad-guy reputation. 

Although sidelined with an early-season groin pull, Bradley has played in more 80 percent of Cubs games.  He’s hitting .262 with only 11 home runs, but his uncharacteristic durability almost vindicates the three-year, $30 million contract the Cubs gave him over the winter.  If Paterson is to get a new contract as NY governor, he’ll have to keep his frustrations in check, as must Bradley, and produce at a much higher level in his field than the Cubs right fielder is in his.

If we had Bradley’s ear, we would recommend his saying to the media how pleased he is with the way Lou Piniella has used him: “I’ve been able to stay healthy and I’m grateful."  More than just a positive pitch, Paterson has to switch from whiny-ness to expressing confidence. As a Mets fan, David might want to paraphrase manager Davey Johnson’s prescient statement before the 1986 pennant race:  “I intend not only to win next year, but to dominate.”                         
                        -     -     -
A week ago, all Mets fans had left was Billy Wagner.  To know the electric, irrepressible, outspoken reliever was still on the team gave them reason to keep following the NY Bisons.  The departure of Wagner to the Red Sox reinforces the growing sense of the Mets’ financial desperation.  The Globe’s Tony Massarotti uses the Wagner deal to note indirectly the difference in spending attitudes between the Sox and the Mets: “So why did the Sox make this move? Because even with 5 miles per hour shaved from his fastball, Wagner still throws harder than the majority of lefthanded relievers in the major leagues.  Because he gives the Red Sox another potential weapon.  Because the Red Sox are a big-market team that can spend $3.5 million on a player for six weeks of service and be none the worse for wear.”                                

Fearless end-of-August playoff projections:  AL - Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels.   (Caveats: the AL Central is always unpredictable.)  NL - Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, Rockies.  (Caveats:  Braves and Marlins have outside chance should either surge while Rocks and Giants stumble.)
                                      - o -
(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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The Nub is off on a road trip, returning late Labor Day week.

 

(Posted: 8/27/09)

Reason to be Glad Ben and Omar Are Staying On?

Proposition: We should be grateful for the week’s two big re-appointments, one by the president, the other by the boss of the Mets.  Grateful?  Many progressives deplore Barack Obama’s decision to keep Ben Bernanke on as chair of the Fed.  And most Mets fans believe Omar Minaya has earned a pink slip as the bedraggled team’s GM.  So, it won’t be easy, but let’s see if we can find a rationale for the prop:

The record book does not make a positive case for Bernanke: it shows him going from Princeton to the Fed’s Board of Governors in ’02, then moving in ’05 to George Bush’s   Council of Economic Advisors, before finally taking over as Fed skipper a year later.  If anyone was positioned to puncture the housing bubble early, it was he.  Similarly, Minaya must have seen the lack of a safety net for the Mets, if his high-priced “core” players went down.  If he did, he clearly didn’t do anything about it.

But there are strong cases to be made for both re-appointees: Economist and policy research executive Dean Baker concedes that, “serious issues of unnecessary secrecy and failed regulation” notwithstanding,” Bernanke “moved very effectively in the last year to prevent the collapse of the financial system.”   Paul Krugman is even stronger in his endorsement: “Bernanke has done a good job in the crisis — he’s been far more aggressive and creative than almost anyone else would have been in his place.”

For many of us, however, the most compelling argument for each of the decisions was the probable alternative.  Instead of Bernanke, the new Fed chair could have been Larry Summers – he, who with Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson, was a key behind-the-scenes player in the bank bailout.  The way that game ended has reinforced popular mistrust of government evident in the health care reform rhubarb. 

If Minaya didn’t return to the Mets, the team’s fans would probably have gotten assistant GM John Ricco in his place.  Ricco, mentioned here earlier this month, is an administrator.  The real player-signing power would belong to Jeff Wilpon, whom the fans have seen in action long enough to say: “No thanks.  We’ll stay with Omar.”

Joe Girardi stayed with the bunt to his regret Tuesday night.  The Yanks had rallied from 10-5 to score four runs against the Rangers in the ninth.  With men on first and second and none out, Joe asked Nick Swisher to lay one down, advancing the runners to second and third.  Swisher fouled one off, then popped out to third.  Channel 9’s camera showed Joe’s reaction: he stormed up and down the dugout as if Swisher’s failure - only the first out - had cost the game.  Could Girardi be carrying a crystal ball?  Melky Cabrera hit a liner to shortstop Elvis Andrus, who caught both the fly and pinch-runner Jerry Hariston before he could get back to second.  Game over: Texas 10, NY 9.  Melky allowed himself a tight grin.  Girardi wasn’t smiling.   

If misery loves company, Mets fans can find kindred spirits in Chicago.  Cubs fans never dreamed their defending Central Division champions (with a $135.1 million payroll just under that of the Mets) would be fading from the playoff race as they have been this month.  Carol Slezak of the Sun-Times voices a familiar frustration in this critique of Lou Piniella’s Teddy Bears:

“For the umpteenth time in recent history, the Cubs have lost their way. They've spent most of this season making excuses for their poor play.  Yes, they've been hit hard by injuries. But it's always something…. The Cubs have spent a lot of money…but they've often spent it unwisely, throwing it at the wrong guys and hoping for a miracle…If the Cubs have had a plan, it has been indecipherable to most of us. But then, it's tough to build a championship team through free agency, and the Cubs' minor-league system has long been…threadbare.  How does this happen, when teams restock their system every year? Are the Cubs drafting the wrong guys, or are they failing to develop players properly, or both? If (new owner Tom)Ricketts hopes to build a team that can contend on an annual basis, he'll have to overhaul the entire scouting and minor-league operations. That's no easy task.  But it would be money well spent.”
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(Posted: 8/25/09)

The Obama-Jeter Connection Redux

Nub-worthy news items:

“_______TEAM LACKING MOST OF TOP PLAYERS”

The front-page headline in yesterday’s NY Times could have been about the Mets.  But the team in question was Obama’s.   Both roster-light outfits are losing ground, the Mets in the standings, Team Obama in the polls.

"OBAMA HOSTS JETER AT HIS VACATION RETREAT"

In the first Nub nearly two-and-a-half years ago, we suggested that candidate Obama could benefit from the similar multi-cultural background he shares with much admired Derek Jeter.   Now it’s an association with Jeter’s dazzling comeback that could help the struggling president.  Remember how Derek was considered to be over the hill by many after a slow early-season start?  Today he embodies, as Barack would like to, the knack of champions to bounce back when things are going badly.  Team Obama surely wants a photo of the two together at Martha’s Vineyard to hint at the possibility of a game-changing turn-around.

Paul Krugman on the possibly decisive moment of Obama’s performance:  “It’s hard to avoid the sense that a crucial opportunity is being missed, that we’re at what  should be a turning point but are failing to make the turn.”    

The Mets missed their turn long ago.  More sobering than their present plight is the outlook for 2010.  In the words of the Daily News’ Adam Rubin:  “The (team) will have several holes to fill with limited dollars…The Mets have no (ready) minor leaguers…leaving them entirely dependent on free agents and trades to fill any voids.”

How far has the Mets’ returning GM Omar Minaya’s stock fallen?  Allegedly given full autonomy over baseball decisions when hired in ’04, he now says he’d have manager Jerry Manuel return, too, “if given the choice.”
                                 -     -     -
Why such a Colorado Rockies high?  Because the NL wild card-leading Rocks believe a legitimate ace has emerged in their pitching staff.  Twenty-five-year-old Ubaldo Jiminez outdueled SF’s super-ace Tim Linceum Sunday to win his fifth straight this month   He has a1.63 ERA over those starts, and an arsenal that includes a 99 mph fastball. 

A performance that pleased Red Sox Nation and almost everybody in baseball Sunday:   The one turned in by John Smoltz who blanked the Padres for five innings.  A fine, fresh start for the Cardinals’ 42-year-old future Hall-of-Famer. 

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(Post: 8/22/09)

Harvard Prof: Stop Bean-Balling in Baseball and at Israel

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz is known neither as a baseball fan nor for his progressive politics.  True, he’s a resident of Red Sox Nation.  But he’s more easily identified as a hard-liner on Israel-Palestine, a harsh critic of Jimmy Carter, and an accessory to the firing of a Jewish prof at DePaul U., who, like Carter, differed with Dershowitz on that deadly Middle-Eastern game.

Dershowitz believes the rash of bean-balling that has marred ballgames this season is potentially deadly in its own right.  He – like many of us – think the commissioner, owners and players are ignoring the danger of serious injury (as they did to the plague of drugs).  If the practice is allowed to continue, Dershowitz wrote in the Boston Globe this week…“Someone will be maimed or killed, despite the presence of helmets. The time has come for Major League Baseball to ban the bean ball. The only way to do this is for baseball to adopt a zero tolerance policy and to impose draconian sanctions not only on pitchers who throw at the heads of batters but, more importantly, on the managers who instruct them to do so.”     

Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci reinforced the message soon after the Mets’ David Wright was beaned: “A vigilante culture has taken root in which teams are retaliating even when it was obvious that a pitcher wasn't trying to hit a batter…It's time to knock off the punkish stuff in which every hit by pitch becomes a challenge to your manhood. One of the most dangerous eras in baseball history could become even more dangerous.”

Resistance to change that characterizes baseball exists, we know, in every field.  Many, if not most, Americans cling to the idea that the private sector must play its long-assumed major role in our health care system.  Brooklyn/Queens Congressman Anthony Weiner challenged that belief in a much-discussed appearance on MSNBC earlier this week.  He noted that insurance companies serve no direct delivery-of-services purpose.  Host Joe Scarborough was taken aback:

JS:  It sounds like you’re saying you think there is no need for us to have private insurance in health care.
AW: I’ve asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?
JS: Again… I’m astounded by your question. It sounds like you’re suggesting that there’s no need to have a country that’s run on free market principles.
AW: Time out.  Let’s focus on one thing at a time. This isn’t a commodity, Joe.  Health care isn’t a commodity.
JS: You’re saying that health care is different than everything else.

Scarborough’s observation is the nub of the matter: Americans do not understand, as do people of most advanced nations, that health care is a right rather than a profit center.  And upholding – supporting – the rights of its citizens is a basic role of government. Until people comprehend that distinction, true reform will clearly not happen.
                            -     -     -
Thoughts re the Mets spending several million less than the 29 other teams on first 10-rounders in the draft:  1) It suggests the rumors of Fred Wilpon having lost $700 million in the Madoff scam were right on; 2) That Rudy Terrasas (Rudy who?), not Omar Minaya had to take the fall before the media, suggests that Omar either asked to be spared any more Agita, or he is indeed on the way out.

An article by the Globe’s Tony Massarotti that compares young talent on the Yankees and Red Sox can be read as an unexpressed indictment of the Mets:

“Take a good look at the first-place Yankees this weekend. From Robinson Cano to Phil Hughes to Joba Chamberlain to Melky Cabrera, they have the kind of home-grown talent that makes them far more competitive with the Red Sox in that area than most anyone ever acknowledges…

“‘I just can’t get…concerned with that, because if something special is going to happen, you have to have a little bit of everything,’’ general manager Brian Cashman said when asked if the Yankees get enough credit for their player development.  ‘I just don’t pay attention to it.  I do know that we have a lot of good young talent.  I don’t think we have the best farm system in baseball, but I do think we have one of the better ones’.’’
                                - o -
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(Posted: 8/20/09)

Can Lefty Health Reformers Stage a Ninth-Inning Rally?

The Yankees and opponents of real health care reform are winning (something we discussed last time).  But neither the baseball nor the political game is over: If the Yanks don’t make it to the Series, they’ll be losers, and a ninth-inning rally could give true health reformers a walk-off win.

Yankees history supports the long-shot thesis that dissident underdogs can pull out a come-from-behind victory.   In 1976, the Yanks had arranged to take over 32 acres of Macombs Dam Park as part of a remodeling of the Stadium.  But local protesters on opening day that year caught the eye of Walter Cronkite.  CBS ran the story of the would-be land grab, which stopped it…until the Yankees got their way 30 years later.

How is that history relevant to the health reform contest playing out today?  Coverage by the media can add decisive clout to whichever side makes the stronger showing.  If the the team pitching for the public option could mobilize some of its millions of players to march in support of that reform, it would be difficult for the mainstream press to ignore.    

“In the end,” wrote Skipper Obama in the mainstream-est of papers, The Times, “this isn’t about politics.  This is about people’s lives and livelihoods.”  He didn’t say what we all know – that it is mostly about money: the billions at stake for scores of HMOs, insurance and drug companies.  The slugging radical Saul Alinsky said the way organized money can be outscored is through organized people. 

Mobilizing the kind of massive rally whose numbers would send a compelling message to Congress requires a clutch hitter to come to the plate.  The Web is awash with urgings for someone, some group, to get busy.  Robert Reich, for example, called Tuesday for a march on behalf of the public option, adding, according to The Politico, that “While he said organizing was not his strength, he would be prepared to assist.”  

Ralph Nader would surely take part in a rally along with Reich, but he doubts it will happen, in part, because young people are no longer interested:  “This is the third television generation,” he told Truthdig’s Chris Hedges. “They have grown up watching screens. They have not gone to rallies. Those are history now. They hear their parents and grandparents talk about marches and rallies. They have little toys and gizmos that they hold in their hands. They have no idea of any public protest or activity.  It is a tapestry of passivity.”       

Nader could well have meant those words as a challenge…to the old as well as the young:  All of us on the public-option team must be willing to line up together in DC, where the nation is sure to see.

Back to the Bronx and Yankee Stadium’s checkered history:  The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins connects the beginning and end of three decades this way: “(Among those) leading the (1976) protest were Gil Gerena-Valentin, who was soon elected city councilman, and a community and labor activist named José Rivera, also destined to become a Bronx political force.

“It took another 30 years, but in 2006, Macombs Dam was finally plowed under after Rivera, then the leader of the Bronx Democratic party, reached an agreement with Bloomberg and the Yankees on the new stadium.  In exchange, the team generously agreed to pay $800,000 annually to Bronx civic causes.”
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Baseball’s most glamorous name this week belongs to someone who has never played in the majors.  He’s San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg, signed for $15.1 million plus incentives by the Washington Nationals.  The signing has excited the nation’s capital and Washington Post’s Tom Boswell:

“Strasburg has put the Nats squarely on baseball's map, on the list of can't-miss attractions in the game that must be seen.  Does he really throw 100 to 102 mph with command? Or is that partly scouts' mythology?  Is his 93-mph slider really his best pitch, so sharp it actually seems to hit something in midair and deflect? And is Mike Rizzo, the Nats acting general manager, correct when he says what sets Strasburg apart is not just his stuff but ‘a fierceness’?”

Baseball America calls the Mets one of the amateur-player draft’s biggest “losers” along  with Tampa Bay, Toronto and Texas.  The magazine identifies  the five top “winners” as Washington, KC, Colorado, Baltimore, Detroit.   Here is BA’s take on the Mets’ latest “nothing-close-to-aggressive” misplay: “While the cross-town Yankees spend money like nobody's business in the draft, the Mets toe the line. Sure, they paid top pick Steve Matz (a second-rounder) an above-slot bonus, as he got $895,000, almost $400,000 more than the recommended slot.  That's a Mets rarity…The(y)…failed to sign their fifth- and sixth-rounders, and only had two players—Matz and 13th-round pick Zach Dotson, a Georgia prep lefty signed for $500,000—who signed for as much as the Yankees gave their 44th-round pick.  No large-revenue team uses its money less in the draft than the Mets.”
                                    - o -
(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted: 8/18/09)

The Difference Winning Makes?  Ask the Yankees and Obama

Winning changes everything: baseball fans know that better than anybody.  The opposite is true, too – in politics as well as baseball.  Ask the fans of Team Obama, worried about a losing streak.

At the season’s start, we remember, the Yankees were tarnished by negative stories about the financing of their new ballpark, how the land-grab penalized the community, and the park’s inflated ticket prices. .  Then there were the A-Rod drug-taking revelations, the frequent early losses and unseemly rash of stadium home runs.

What thrilled many Obama supporters at his season’s start was how he and his team were restoring America’s winning image in the world.  That perception has taken hits…in Latin America, Asia and, owing to the faltering health care reform effort, in parts of Europe.      

Today, the Yanks are leading the majors in winning percentage, attendance, and a tangible aura, that of overall dominance.  The Stadium is the place to be, or, remotely, watching Joe Girardi’s juggernaut on YES.  The young Steinbrenners, so patronized by the media last winter, look for the moment like (older) boy geniuses.  

Meanwhile, news that an anti-government offensive has apparently balked a key component of Obama’s health care reform pitch - the public option - means the president will get watered-down reform, at best.  The likelihood of such a compromise when the U.S. clearly needs drastic system overhaul astonishes the British. The UK Independent’s Guy Adams described how urgent the need is through his report on the one-week offer of free medical and dental care in a Los Angeles suburb last week:

"They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury.  Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram,  others had brought their children for immunizations that could end up saving their life.  In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an 'evil and Orwellian' example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California… provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system."

That the program was run by a humane outfit called Remote Area Medical, which often offers services in underdeveloped countries, is not lost on the Brits.  It only underlines how bad things are health-wise for many Americans and how badly hurt Team Obama will be if real health reform is not achieved.       
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We mentioned last week Orel Hersheiser’s suggestion that some players might see their numbers go into free-fall concurrent with baseball’s latest crackdown on drug use.  The Globe’s Nick Cafardo spotted two-plus examples almost immediately without speculating whether having to play drug-free was responsible for the declines in performance:

“Chris Young, CF, Diamondbacks - There are a lot of guys in Young’s boat this year - guys who were once good (J.J. Hardy) but are having inexplicably bad seasons. The first rookie in major league history with 32 homers and 27 steals in 2007, Young was optioned to Triple A Reno after hitting .194 with 7 homers and 28 RBIs in 103 games this year. Arizona has him signed through 2013, with an $11 million option in 2014. Yikes.”

“Bill Hall, INF, Brewers - Designated for assignment, the versatile Hall has had a terrible season after hitting 35 homers in 2006, but might be a nice piece for a contending team. He can play multiple positions, steal a base, and add some pop. Hall, owed $10.5 million by the Brewers, is still only 29 years old. While Milwaukee GM Doug Melvin was talking trade, teams may wait until Hall clears waivers rather than absorb the money.”

Among notable playoff-related weekend results: the Rays ending a five-game losing streak by taking two of three from the Blue Jays.  That bounce-back kept Tampa Bay in the wild card hunt, three games behind Boston and (going into of last night’s Minnesota-Texas game) three-and-a-half behind the Rangers.  The Cardinals sweeping San Diego while the Cubs took two of three from the Pirates.  St.Louis thus stretched its lead in the NL Central to five games over Chicago…pending the Cards’ game with the Dodgers in LA last night.

The Red Sox will know if they are slipping into critical condition after their next six games: they face Ricky Romero and Roy Halladay in the first two of three games at Toronto beginning tonight, then three against the Yankees at Fenway.
                          - o -
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(Posted: 8/15/09)

Hope for Team Paterson as We Forget the Mets

Earlier this month, a regular reader suggested a connection between David Paterson and the Mets:  both needed to “go on a tear”, he said, to avoid falling out of their respective races.  Since then Paterson has been running in place while the Mets have plummeted out of wild-card sight.  The governor may not have surged but he’s held his own; the Mets, on the other field, have looked so bad there’s now talk of GM Omar Minaya losing his job before a three-year-contract extension kicks in.

We can’t resist re-offering free advice to the team still in the game:  Paterson can surge by playing “small ball.”  He’s an engaging and effective conversational partner going one-on-one with people.  He’s got to do that with members of the media.  We believe getting up close and personal will stop, or, at least, slow down the print and on-air head-hunting.  That plus competent handling of the state’s challenges should have a positive effect on the polling scorecard.  A note on road trips: Governors go nowhere without an entourage.  Paterson would do well to cut the size of his travel team to a minimum; too many dugout coaches distract the public’s focus from where it belongs.

If the governor were operating on a Yankees instead of a Marlins budget, he could commission a national TV spot depicting him as someone who has attained political leadership despite disability.  On that score, New Yorkers have much to admire in their chief executive and should be so reminded through paid media. Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have to be reminded that, as AG, he is in the catbird seat.  He can decline to participate in pushing out Paterson in 2010, buoyed by the prospect of four more years of adding to his public approval:  His “I’ll look into it” works magic in calming popular fury over the latest hustle or outrage.  The gov has no such power.   

While Paterson is comparatively new as NY’s skipper, Minaya has overstayed his time with the NYMs.  His excuse for placing minimal emphasis on the Mets’ minor leaguers has been “New Yorkers want big names.”  He should have realized, as Brian Cashman does, that New Yorkers want it both ways – big ticket players AND promising prospects.

Omar’s strategy - fielding a star-studded first string with waiver-wire, bargain-basement backups - provided no insurance against key injuries.  He should be let go.  Our guess is that, because of budgetary considerations, Minaya will be granted a year to reverse the team’s fortunes.  And, given the alternative suggested by the News’ Adam Rubin - Assistant GM John Ricco, an administrative type, taking over for Omar and depending on the player-evaluations of “deputies” - Minaya remaining would be preferable.

For Mets fans, the most preferable scenario would be a sale of the club by Fred Wilpon.  His judgment-challenged son Jeff has been complicit in - indeed the instigator of - many of the team’s bad moves since 2000: the hirings of Art Howe as manager, of Jim Duquette as (short-leashed) GM, of Tony Bernazard as vp for player development, yes, and of Minaya.  In each case, Jeff Wilpon allowed personal relationships to influence personnel decisions.  Given such an error-prone history, it’s clear that for the Mets to turn things around, a clean house - starting with the sweeping out of the Wilpons - is in order.   Fans should hope it happens in their lifetimes.

Updating a stat noted by NY Postman Kevin Kernan (and tinkering with his text): “(Going into last night’s games) the difference between the Yankees and Mets (was)…this, the Yankees ha(d) hit 109 more home runs than the Mets this season. That's insane.”

It may be equally insane to say the Yanks, Angels, Phils and Dodgers are sure division winners.  But since that’s the consensus of attentive observers, we can, by hard-nosed count, identify 10 teams in the wild-card race, including respective Central Division leaders Detroit and St.Louis.  The AL has four – Red Sox, Rangers and Rays, as well as the Tigers.  The NL: Rockies, Cardinals, Giants, Marlins, Braves and Cubs.

Do the words of Mike Lowell (quoted by the Globe’s Nick Cafardo) constitute a Red Sox white flag vis-à-vis the Yankees?  “We have to be realistic about things, given where we are right now. We’d love to be in first place and watch the Yankees battling for the wild card, but that’s not what’s happening…”   Answer: yes…but the concession is only good until the teams tangle again, beginning next Friday at Fenway.

                            - o -
(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 8/13/09)

How Team Goldman and the Red Sox Got their Edge

In an ideal world there would be an even playing field - perfect fairness in baseball, politics, finance…life.   In the real world, we know, everybody’s looking for an edge.  Disclosures over the past week suggest that, in separate games, the Red Sox and Goldman Sachs benefited from unfairness in a way their corporate competitors did not.

We remember in George Mitchell’s ’07 report listing 104 players alleged to have taken performance-enhancement drugs, that he did not mention the since-identified Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz.  The Red Sox, for whom Mitchell had worked, got a pass, while Yankees Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte were named.  Mitchell has denied giving the Sox favorable treatment, just as former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - through his bench coach – denies arranging a financial edge for Team Goldman during frequent pre-bailout confabs with its skipper.

What’s clear at a minimum from the published work of NY Timespeople Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta is that Paulson cut ethical corners in his generous dealings with Goldman (whose survival depended on the rescue of mega-client AIG).  Furthermore, that an air of desperation surrounded the phone calls between the two former teammates.   

Paulson’s deals cost us taxpayers well over a hundred billion dollars, much of which we’re not expected to get back.  Yet, even lefty slugger Paul Krugman has joined a lineup minimizing what Paulson and successor Tim Geithner have wrought. “Without (the badly handled) bailouts, Krugman says, “things would have been much worse.” 

Baseball has gone the bailout minimalists one better.  A united front of the players union, the commissioner’s office and the Red Sox supports Ortiz’s claim of ignorance of buying what were allegedly banned substances over the counter.  “Allegedly” was an operative word at the Saturday news conference:  The validity of the charges against players on the Mitchell and a separate government list, as well as against Ortiz, was questioned.  Amid the “sludge” - Gordon Edes’ word (on Yahoo Sports) - baseball’s goal seemed to be to trivialize the game’s recent doping history.

Detroit’s Jim Leyland says “nobody cares” among the fans.  ESPN’s Orel Hersheiser suggests that fans will care about some players – those whose performances deteriorate drastically from what they were during the steroids era.  

Then there are the few players whose careers take a sudden upward turn.  Toronto’s Marco Scutaro is a prime current example.  His last four seasons – three with Oakland, one with the Blue Jays, his BA’s were .247, .266, .260, and 267.  This year, playing regularly at shortstop for Cito Gaston, Scutaro is batting .296 and, going into yesterday’s game, led the AL in hitting on an 0-and-2 count - .423, 11 for 26.      

Lob from Left Field…unloaded by former NY Timesman Chris Hedges, who refuses to avert his gaze from the game Team Obama is playing:  

“The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama.  It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush.  It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously.  It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or ‘extraordinary rendition,’ restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems…If we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state…we are in serious trouble.”  (Truthdig.org)

The NL’s wild card-contending Giants have serious scheduling trouble – 16 games in September against the Phillies, Dodgers, Rockies and Cubs.  Talk about an edge: the Rockies, vying with SF for the WC lead, open September with 13 games against the Mets, Diamondbacks, Reds and Padres.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted 8/11/09)

NYC Vote This Fall Could Produce a Political Ichiro

Just as Ichiro Suzuki quickly became the first Asian position player to achieve stardom in the majors, so John Liu is seeking to gain political stardom.  He's pitching to become the first Asian to win city-wide office in New York. 

Ichiro, we know, is Japanese and has been playing for nearly a decade with theSeattle Mariners.  Liu is Chinese and has represented Flushing in the Council for eight years  When Ichiro led the league in batting and won both MVP and Rookie-of-the-Year awards in 2001, he triggered an influx of Asian players who would supplement pitchers like Hideki Nomo and Hideki Irabu, already established U.S. performers.  Liu could be making a similar impact in NYC politics.

Liu is one of a strong four-player Democratic field in the contest for comptroller.  His opponents are three fellow Council members - Melinda Katz, David Weprin and David Yassky.  Liu and Weprin rejected legislation backed by heavy hitters Mike Bloomberg and Christine Quinn to extend term limits…and do it in defiance of the voters’ twice-expressed preference.  Katz and Yassky played ball.

For those of us who believe one's position on anti-democratic power plays to be decisive, the choice between the two nay-ers and yea-ers is clear.  Liu has an edge over Weprin, it says here, because he, more than his fellow Queens competitor, is pounding away on the baseline issue.   “It’s about upholding the fundamental basis of our law and democracy,” he said when the legislation came to a vote.  And that has been his out pitch throughout the campaign.  .

Liu is not a perfect candidate.  He has an opportunistic streak displayed when he switched his candidacy to comptroller from the race for public advocate.  He made that side-step move right after Mark Green entered the PA field.  His supporters called it pragmatism.  Despite that hitch in his delivery, Liu serves as an important model for the Asian community, a Chinese Ichiro, potentially - in a political major league.
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Going into last night’s games, Ichiro was hitting .363, two points behind Minnesota’s Joe Mauer in the mlb batting race.  Ichiro led both leagues in hits with 165, Mauer had 120.  The NL batting leader was Florida’s Hanley Ramirez, at .348.

“How do you deal with this bad stretch of injuries?” Sox manager Terry Francona was asked by Fox’s Joe Buck during the game with the Yankees Saturday.  By “not feeling sorry for ourselves,” Tito answered.  A far cry from the “Oh, woe is us,” heard on at least one team with injury problems.

Nineteen of 30 teams are still within single digits of division leads, meaning they remain in playoff consideration.  Fans of the two NY teams are excitement-deprived: the Yanks appear a lock, the Mets locked out, as far as post-season play is concerned.  The NL West boasts three (of five ) teams in the hunt – the league-leading Dodgers and the two top wild card competitors, the Giants and Rockies.  Four of six teams in the NL Central are still in the scramble for the league’s final four.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted: 8/8/09)

Bad Calls in Baseball and Off-Field Contests

The other night, a bad umpiring call at the Trop almost cost Tampa Bay a victory over the Red Sox.  Everybody - on MLB.com, anyway - agreed that a runner who reached home safely had passed third base before a ball went out of play.  The umpires said the tie-breaking run did not count, the player had to return to third.  (The Rays eventually won, 4-2, on an Evan Longoria HR in the 13^th)

“It’s baseball’s dirty little secret,” said a neighbor who is also a fan.  “How many really bad calls there are.”  The Henry Gates-James Crowley confrontation in Cambridge was clearly a bad call, a simultaneous one: both players overreacting in a stressful situation.  The good that will come from that bad episode – a heightened awareness on the part of police of reflexive racial profiling, and a new public appreciation of the  pressures police feel when facing challenged citizens who turn hostile – will make things better for everybody.  But the tech revolution is reason to believe police-public interaction will be even better - more restrained - in the future.

In baseball, a zone evaluation system has improved judgment-accuracy around home plate.  Under the system, umpires’ balls-and-strikes calls are camera-monitored in the 30 major-league parks.  The monitoring is on the way to eliminating the wide variations in umpiring calls that once existed.  And the video-replay policy of double-checking controversial home run “boundary” calls has been successful enough to remain in place.   The crew chief, not a team manager, decides whether replays are needed.  Growing tech use will make for fewer and fewer bad calls and, perhaps eventually, fewer and fewer umpires.

Police work will surely remain a growth employment field.  But the widening use of miniature cameras, like those on cell-phones, will help protect the public against overzealous police behavior.  That salutary trend began when a witness with a video camera recorded the beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers in 1991.  Such equipment has obviously come a long way since then.

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The pennant races still have a long way to go.  But, as of the start of the second week of the next-to-last month of the season, there look to be three sure-things in the eight-team playoff picture: the Yankees, Angels and Dodgers.  The temporary absence of Jason Bay has probably made the Red Sox seem shakier than they are.  But the playoff-qualifying challenge they face - fending off the surging Rays while hoping the Rangers fade – is a big one.   That’s especially true since the Sox have eight more games with the Yanks, while the Rays have only three.  

When the Braves vetoed in mid-spring letting Tom Glavine try a comeback with them, he said he would consider making another attempt - perhaps somewhere else - next year.  John Smoltz’s comeback experience with the Sox should prompt Glavine, who will be 44 next March, to hang it up for good.  Here is how a scout summed up Smoltz’s plight to the Boston Herald’s Sean McAdam: “He has to keep that fastball off the middle of the plate, because it’s straight with no movement, and he can’t do it.  The slider actually is pretty good, but they’re feasting on that fastball.”  Smoltz’s future, if he has any with the Sox, would seem to be spotting that slider often while pitching out of the bullpen.

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(Posted 8/6/09)

NY’s Governor Can Learn from the God of Batting

 “I’m seeing the ball good,” is how hot hitters like to explain why they’re going so well. 

 That phrase came to mind at a recent gathering of NY political friends who were talking about the governor.  “Part of David Paterson’s problem,” someone said, “is that he can’t make eye-contact.”

The remark – more proposition than statement - prompted a quick response. “That’s exactly right,” said a nationally prominent former office-holder.  “And I don’t know if he can do anything about it.” 

Slumping hitters talk to coaches, look at tapes, take extra BP.  Paterson is legally blind.  Yet he does have partial sight in his right eye.  He has many political problems beside the physical one.  But he has to do what he can – consult with experts, check the tapes - to communicate in something approaching a personal, eye-to-eye way.  Why?  It’s almost impossible to establish rapport with members of the media, or with voters, if you can’t seem to be focusing, at least briefly, on each of them.  “I couldn’t tell if I had his ear,” a staffer was quoted as saying about the governor.  Such a sense of elusiveness is inevitably reflected in the polls

Paterson could learn from the man who was Japan’s first baseball superstar. Tetsuharu Kawakami, a contemporary of Ted Williams, was renowned for his constant practice and intense focus.  Called the God of Batting, he said he paid such close attention at the plate   he could “see the pitch stop.”  His disability notwithstanding, Team NY’s manager must work to pay Kawakami-like attention to everyone on the field.  Along with an in-charge message, he must attain what performers describe as “just the other side of intimacy.”

When we worked briefly with Paterson in the mid-90’s, he was concerned about the need for practice, for getting more comfortable at what was his plate – the speechmaking podium.  He worried that his visual disability was making him too reticent to speak publicly.  He planned to do something about that communications problem then.  It would be surprising if, during Andrew Cuomo’s much publicized “waiting game”, Paterson isn’t taking his practice hacks now, with eye-contact on a comeback rally.    
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Baseball America’s Jim Callis identifies what he considers the “most puzzling” of the July 31 deadline deals: “The Reds' decision to trade two quality arms (Zack Stewart, Josh Roenicke) to the Blue Jays for Scott Rolen.  Cincinnati isn't in the playoff hunt and Rolen is in the midst of just his second healthy and productive season in the last five.  He's an upgrade over Edwin Encarnacion, who also went to Toronto, but Rolen makes $11 million next year and the Reds will miss Stewart and Roenicke.” 

Callis cites two other puzzlers - he says the Indians should have resisted dealing Cliff Lee to the Phillies and Victor Martinez to the Red Sox:  “Lee ($9 million) and Martinez ($7 million) both had very reasonable club options for 2010, and saving $16 million isn't going to make the Indians major players for off-season free agents and trades. The American League Central lacks anything close to a powerhouse, so Cleveland could have contended for a division title next year with Lee and Martinez.

And while it was a buyer's market, the Indians sent Lee to the Phillies and Martinez to the Red Sox without getting any of either club's premium young players…Justin Masterson (however) could be a No. 3 starter after he transitions back from relieving for the Red Sox.”

Stat city: the majors’ top three pitchers, according to mlb.com, have a surprise in the number 1 spot.  Toronto’s Roy Halladay is second on the list, the Giants’ Tim Linecum third – no surprises there.  Ahead of those two super aces is Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals.  Wainwright is 12-7, with a 2.79 ERA.  That he’s rated as tops is a statistical anomaly as well as a surprise: Halladay is 11-5, 2.75; Linecum has the gaudiest stats – 12-3, 2.18, with a majors-leading 191 strikeouts in 22 games.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted: 8/4/09)

Yanquis and Baseball Are Creating Pariahs

In the aftermath of baseball’s mad deadline-trade melee, one thing is clear: the game’s powers-that-be have made pariahs out of small-market teams that collect luxury-tax subsidies, then exploit the chance to unload big-ticket players.  Meanwhile, in the international political league, the world power is making pariahs out of many states that accept its military aid, then play an anti-populist game in their bailiwick.

The people who run the Pittsburgh Pirates were already being booed for trading away most of their high-salaried players when the team’s subsidy figures emerged over the weekend.  A former Bucs’ PR director told the Globe’s Nick Cafardo that, in addition to receiving a reported $27 million in subsidies from big-spending teams, the Pirates took in another $36 million in shared-TV money.  All that before the season started.

The USA is pouring thousands of troops and hundreds of millions of dollars into Latin America, an under-reported region, to stop the rally toward what the Pentagon has called “radical populism.”  The two main home bases for this offensive are Honduras and Colombia, where military training and anti-drug-trafficking are official reasons for our armed presence.  In Honduras, Team Obama’s acquiescence in the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya is becoming clearer every day.  The State Department has declined to follow up Barack’s strong words of support for Zelaya with action.  A Democracy Now report from the Honduran capital said Zelaya’s approval of a hike in the minimum wage helped trigger the coup.  The report suggested that the United Fruit Company, now called Chiquita, played a major role in the upheaval.  In Colombia, Team Obama’s decision to send U.S. military personnel to three airfields and two naval bases has heightened tensions along the Venezuelan border.  A veteran Latin American observer sees the move as more than what it’s supposed to be - a warning to drug dealers:

“It’s a signal to the rest of the region that the United States is going to be using military means in order to address not just drug trafficking…(but) to support…counterinsurgency and to carry out (unspecified) operations in the region.”   (John Lindsay-Poland on Democracy Now)

We can’t expect that anti-populist signal to be noted by our mainstream media, which have chosen their side: Yanqui and business interests wherever in Latin American they can still be encouraged.
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The Pirates may be on their way to a 17^th straight losing season, but, depleted roster and all, they are still trying.  The same cannot be said of the Baltimore Orioles.  The O’s have lost 12 of 16 since the All-Star break, managing only a single win in nine games against the division-rival Red Sox and Yanks.  Baltimore did do something constructive before the trade deadline…for the Dodgers.  Sending George Sherrill to LA shores up Joe Torre’s bullpen at a time when relievers tend to get worn down.

Couldn’t say it better:  “If I were Czar of Baseball you’d come out of spring training with your team, and that would be your team, other than what you’d produce from your farm system. That would stop this nonsense in which the rich get richer, which is generally what happens in these matters.” – Bob Ryan, Boston Globe

“It was the sickening desperation of it all, the feeders feasting on the helpless.  Baseball totally has lost its vision.”  - Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune

A measure of the aridity of the Mets farm system can be found in the identity of stopgap pitchers called up from triple-A.  Remember Jose Lima (0-4) in 2006?  Jason Vargas (0-1, ERA 12.19 in two games) in 2007?  Nelson Figueroa, thrown into the breach last night, is the latest bad penny.  He has filled the emergency role – in mediocre fashion (3-4) – throughout 2008 and now.
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(Posted: 8/1/09)

The Differing Small-Market Blues in Baseball and Politics

You’re a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.  Your small-market team has been up against it – a record-tying number of 16 straight losing seasons.  But this year was going to be different: the Bucs finished April above .500, and it looked as though ownership’s promise that better days were at hand would be realized.

Another small-market team of six U.S. senators - from Iowa, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Iowa - are involved in a game of health care reform.  They’ve promised fans to put together a bipartisan bill that will insure healthier days ahead for all Americans.

Until June, Pirates GM Neal Huntington rejected the term “rebuilding” in connection with the team.  But early that month, he traded returning All-Star centerfielder Nate McLouth to the Braves and Eric Hinske to the Yankees, then earlier this week dealt current All-Star second baseman Freddy Sanchez to the Giants and former All-Star Jack Wilson (plus pitcher Ian Snell) to Seattle. And Thursday, he sent prize lefty reliever John Grabow and former lefty starter Tom Gorzelanny to the Cubs.  All those established players (plus Nyjer Morgan and Sean Burnett, dealt to the Nats) went in exchange for prospects or suspects like Lastings Millidge and Joel Hanrahan.  The Pirates are now all but certain to set a new consecutive- losing-season record.

If Pirates fans feel betrayed, imagine how Americans hopeful of meaningful health care reform feel: the small-market sextet of three so-called “centrist” Dems and Repubs have tossed away two key progressive proposals: the public option that would provide government-run competition to private health insurance programs, and the income surtax on high earners to help pay for the reforms.

 So we have two disparate small-market effects: In baseball, the big-market teams dominate low-budget clubs like the Pirates, picking off their high-priced stars and leaving small-market fans frustrated. In Congressional politics, it’s the small-market veteran players from mostly rural states who are in a position to snuff out progressive rallies; they apparently will get to decide what kind of health care reform Americans – most from larger states with sizeable urban populations – are to receive.

The center-right has seized on the costs of proposed substantive changes in our health care system to signal stop.  Meanwhile, defense spending rises with little complaint from both sides of the Congressional playing field.  Chalmers Johnson, author of  “Sorrows of Empire,” has some eye-opening stats on our world-wide military investments:

“According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.

“These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive.  According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible

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The Nub has never liked the non-waiver deadline deals that occur each season and, in general, benefit the wealthier teams while consigning the less wealthy to wait another year.  Nevertheless, key trades that have been completed require acknowledgment.  We rate them this way:

Super-clinchers – Cliff Lee (Indians) to the Phillies, George Sherrill (Orioles) to the Dodgers  (both teams seemed to be division winners anyway).

Possible clinchers – Jarrod Washburn (Mariners) to Tigers, Freddy Sanchez (Pirates) to the Giants,Victor Martinez to Red Sox (SF is now a valid wild card threat, Sox have solidified their wild card status, at least). 

Anything can happen – Mark DeRosa (Indians and Julio Lugo (Red Sox) to Cardinals; John Grabow (Pirates) to Cubs  (Both teams now look to have an edge on Brewers in NL Central).               

Staying alive – Orlando Cabrera (A’s) to Twins.  (Minnesota not conceding AL Central)            

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July 2009 Archive

(Posted: 7/30/09)

The More-of-the-Same Mets and Team USA

The story of two skippers: Last February, Jerry Manuel began his first full season leading the Mets; a month earlier, Barack Obama began his first season directing Team USA.  Both talked of change in the way their teams would be run.  Yet both have operated  much as their predecessors did.

Manuel sent his stars out day after day - true, he had no bench – but he clearly wore down Carlos Beltran, who made warning noises about his aches throughout the spring.  Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes were a different matter, but in retrospect they certainly could have used rest, something Willie Randolph didn’t give them, either.  Obama used Bush-like bank bailouts to deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis and has kept most anti-terrorism tactics in place (including the possibility of torture at rendition sites); more pressingly, his games in Afghanistan and vis-à-vis Russia and Latin America look to be taken from George W’s foreign-policy playbook. 

Manuel can blame boss of personnel Omar Minaya for his predicament.  Who can skipper Obama blame when dugout coach Joe Biden makes a provocative pledge to support the adversarial states on Russia’s borders?  Or when Hillary Clinton calls ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya “reckless” for trying to return to his country and now is unwilling to refer to what happened to him as a coup?

Is it owing to Bill Gates that Team Obama is sending 21,000 more troops into a contest that looks as dubious as the one in Iraq?  That would be Afghanistan, at the top of the A-list of Barack’s bobbles.  How misguided is the situation there?  International Herald Tribune’s William Pfaff offers this perspective:

“The growing opinion in Europe is that Afghanistan is the United
States’s ‘new Vietnam.’  The truth is that it is worse than Vietnam.
In Vietnam the United States had a clearly identified enemy,
supported by a responsible Communist state in North Vietnam with its
government in Hanoi…

“Unlike the Viet Cong, the Taliban are not a disciplined force
acting under some government’s orders, and have neither the intention
nor means to attack anybody outside Central Asia. They are motivated
by nationalism, today focused against the United States, and by a
desire to propagate their form of Islam.

”In that respect it’s a war of ideas, which the United States has no
theory about how to ’win.’ There is no way to make the Taliban
surrender. At most they will temporarily fade away when U.S. and
NATO forces begin to fade away, and fight again another day. There
is no Taliban government to bomb. And there is no way to ‘make’
Afghanistan a democratic ally of the United States. The ‘no’s’ have it.”

Early in his first season it was fair to attribute Obama’s errors to inexperience or to having too many balls in the air.  It is fair now to hold him accountable on foreign policy/anti-terrorism, as the mainstream media seems reluctant to do.

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Nobody asked us, but…Amid their complaints about Dice-K and his criticisms of their training regimen, the Red Sox can’t resist latching on to many teams’ preferred (but insubstantial) explanation for certain disappointing performances this year: participation in the World Baseball Classic (WBC).   We  repeat  our fervent hope that the quadrennial classis is here to stay.

The Phils’ deal for Cleveland’s Cliff Lee should put to rest any delirious thoughts that the Mets might have been competitive with the defending champs, even if their core regulars had remained healthy.  

Of all the crackling media responses to the Mets’ Bernazard-firing circus, Newsday’s Wallace Matthews generated the most sparks.  Here is part of what he wrote:

“(The Mets) are the only group currently known to harbor not one but two people who actually claim to have liked and respected Tony Bernazard.  Unfortunately for those who care about the club those two would be Jeff Wilpon and Omar Minaya.  And they appear to be the only individuals in major league baseball who (didn’t know) that Bernazard is a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered little cuss with a Napoleon complex and two last-place minor league clubs on his resume.

“Mets fans your future is secure.  Jeff Wilpon and Omar Minaya are a matched set, equal in ignorance, arrogance, incompetence and vindictiveness.  And as long as they remain together – the idiot son of the rich owner and clueless general manager content to serve as his dummy – the Mets will continue to stink out their shiny new ballpark.

And they will remain together, because what other respected baseball man would work for a cipher like the Son of Wilponstein?”
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(Posted 7/28/09)

The High Price of One Pitcher and Many Medications

The names Stephen Strasburg and Jim DeMint made the mainstream media lineup last week.  Most of us know Strasburg is the pitching phenom from San Diego Statewho has been drafted by the Washington Nationals.  DeMint is the Republican Senatorfrom South Carolina who has drafted himself to pitch against health care reform.

Strasburg could command a $15 million bonus - a record for a college player - to sign with the Nats.  The reward DeMint seeks is credit for leading a Conservative effort in a game seen as crucial to Team Obama's hopes for season-long success. Money, much more than $15 million, has a position to play in the health care contest, as well.

 The implications of money in both encounters are staggering. Observers like Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal suggest that, if Strasburg gets close to his asking price, ticket and food prices will inevitably rise at the Nationals' ballpark. Here's the way Barra puts it:

 "Sportswriters and radio guys delight in reminding fans that every time a team acquires an expensive player the cost of everything goes up. But that's just not the way economics works.  It certainly seems as if ... prices...go up after they sign that new guy or build that new ballpark (always with a large chunk of taxpayer money).  But that isn't because the owners of sports team are greedy. They are greedy, but that's not the point.

"The point is that prices go up because the owners think that's what you're willing to pay.  If you are willing to pay, the price stays high. If you aren't -- or at least if enough of you aren't -- then the price will come back down.  It's that simple."

We know that what's simple in the current health care field is the lack of clout we consumers possess over prices; drug companies know that we'll be willing to pay whatever they charge for a simple reason: the prescribed medication is likely to be essential to our well-being, even our life.  Only in the rare cases when a generic alternative is available do we have a choice.  Congress has decreed that not even the government can buy cheap drugs from Canada for domestic distribution.

DeMint has gone to bat for the idea that scoring political runs against Obama is more important than, in effect, whether we can more easily keep from feeling sick.  He believes that by stretching out the game, his side, helped by insurance and drug-industry positioning, will make a twin killing – keeping excellent health care as it is, for the Stephen Strasburgs, and denying the president even a modest policy win.  Fans have between now and the end of the season to get into the game, or sit back and see how it turns out.   
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Nobody seemed to like Mets player-development VP Tony Bernazard except Jeff Wilpon.  GM Omar Minaya can’t like his departure, however.  Now Omar alone is on the spot for the team’s moribund farm system.  Bernazard joins a rogues gallery of ex-Met execs that includes Al Goldis and Bill Singer, whom Wilpon hired as special assistants after the Mets lost 95 games in 2003.  The pair were supposed to evaluate young talent, but left in short order, however, with little recruited talent to show.  Bernazard stuck around, but had the same result.

How should Sox fans feel about their team’s domination of the Yankees, who are beating everybody else in sight?  Newsday’s Wallace Matthews says Red Sox Nation has a special reason to be grateful:  “Of all the improbable things that have happened in this baseball season…nothing seems quite so unlikely as the Yankees going 0-for-8 against the Red Sox, by a combined score of 55-31…(It turns out that) by losing those games, the Yankees are keeping the Red Sox in the race.  Measured against the rest of baseball, there is no question which is the better team.”

A numbers squeeze after dealing for Adam LaRoche forced the Red Sox to release reserve outfielder/first baseman Mark Kotsay.  The Mets could have signed him cheaply over the winter as protection against injuries.  As it is, there’s little chance Kotsay would  accept an offer from the Mets now…not with contenders in both leagues surely on his trail.

The Yankees may not regret letting Bobby Abreu get away last winter, but the LA Angels are happy they signed him (and at a bargain rate, at that).  The Globe’s Nick Cafardo and Bill Chuck explain why with these stats:  “Abreu has stolen at least 20 bases for 11 straight years, the longest streak of any active player. Rickey Henderson holds the record with 23. When Abreu hits his 250th home run (he has 248) he will join Bonds, Craig Biggio, Joe Morgan, Henderson, and Willie Mays as the only players in major league history with 250 homers, 2,000 hits, 1,000 runs, 1,000 RBIs, 1,000 walks, and 300 stolen bases.”
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(Posted: 7/25/09)

Who Turned Off the Political and Pennant-Race Heat?

New Yorkers should be glued to deep-summer dogfights in politics and baseball; it’s a local-election year, after all, and a fever-hot time for pennant races.

Not this year.  The incredible shrinking Mets have sunk out of the sight while the Yankees and Mayor Bloomberg appear to be sure bets in their respective contests
Money – the mayor’s willingness to spend tens of millions to make his case, and the Yanks’ big-ticket purchases of key players who are performing as hoped – have taken the suspense out of the summer for many of us.  Oh, the Red Sox are still a factor, but there’s little doubt the Yanks will make the playoffs, at least.

The doldrums extend to the field in Washington, where the health care reform game is being played badly from a spectator’s standpoint.  Fans down the left-field line saw single-payer absent from the starting lineup.  They thought public option - a competitive government-run entrant - would get into the game, but there was a sign at Skipper Obama’s news conference Wednesday night that wasn’t happening, either.

Public option disappeared from the field of discussion early this month when Obama’s bench coach Rahm Emanuel reportedly said importing cheap drugs from Canada would NOT be part of the final health care package.  Not one of the 10 mainstream media people scheduled to be in the skipper’s starting news conference lineup slapped out a public-option question.  The issue would have gone unaddressed had McClatchy’s Steve Thomma not raised it without being called on. 

While paying lip-service to the public option’s potential, the president sent a signal that improved “insurance regulation” would be a compromise substitute for what he earlier hoped would be a government plan “to help keep the insurance companies honest.”  In hinting at the compromise, Obama was, in effect, acknowledging the resistance of Congressional centrists like House Democrat Charlie Melancon of Louisiana, who fears that public option would become a “big government entitlement program.”  Then there is Republican Senator Olympia Snow of Maine who says she would only vote for the public option “as a last resort.”  The option looks as dead as the Mets and passage of a watered-down reform bill as slow to happen as infield grass to grow.

The health care presser scorecard showed a significant stat: the president threw out the word “deficit” 16 times.  He mentioned inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from the Bush Administration and said he “understands why the American people are queasy about the huge deficits.”  Deficits linked to defense spending maybe.  But polls say deficits that help pay for quality health care would be more than acceptable to most Americans.
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Two months ago, when the Houston Astros were 18-25, owner Drayton McLane had to fend off queries about the possible firing of manager Cecil Cooper.  Since then the Astros have gone 31-19 (as of the start of last night’s game) and are contending both for the NL Central and Wild Card leads.  The Astros and Wild-Card-leading Colorado Rockies are the team comeback stories of the year so far.

 At the other end of the field…the talk around the Mets is that volatile player-development VP Tony Bernazard will survive his series of embarrassing incidents because of his close ties to Jeff Wilpon, boss Fred’s son.  It was Jeff who thought Art Howe was the perfect choice to succeed Bobby Valentine as manager early in the decade, and that he and newly named GM Jim Duquette could run the team despite minimal experience.  It all led to a disastrous few years.  If Fred Wilpon leaves decision-making power to Jeff, there may be a lot more disaster in store.

How badly have the streaking Yankees spooked Red Sox Nation?  The Globe’s Nick Cafardo gives us a clue on the subject of the Yanks” apparent disinterest in dealing for Roy Halladay:  “The louder the Yankees scream they won’t give up the franchise for Halladay, the more you think they’re in it.”

Health again: The story the other day about the high incidence of cellphone-related highway deaths surely influenced this riff by Salon’s Garrison Keillor:

“I call up my mother while driving, which is exciting for her since she is 94 and remembers when phones were attached to the wall and you talked on them while standing still. ‘Is that safe?’ she says.

“No, it's not, but neither is life itself. Animal fats, ultraviolet rays, unknown persons trying to get you to carry things aboard an aircraft, Argentine women trying to lure you down to Buenos Aires -- it's a minefield out there. “
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
to dickstar@aol.com are welcome, as are subscription requests. 
Previous Nubs can be found by scrolling below.)

 

(Posted: 7/23/09)