the_nub.html
“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: 7/2/09)
Team Obama and the
Mets Performing on Replay
Someone has pushed a
replay button showing two teams - one
in baseball, the other in politics – performing in a throwback mode. The 2009 Mets are playing like the 1962
Amazin’s. That team prompted manager
Casey Stengel to utter the memorable lament “Can’t anybody play this
game?” In the case of the coup that
overthrew Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, Team Obama is looking
suspiciously
like the USA
outfits of yore:
teams that played ball with military juntas in Latin
America whenever local right-wing fans wanted a populist
skipper removed
from the game.
For his part, President Obama has
talked a good game,
condemning what happened to the democratically elected Zelaya. But the stance of his dugout deputies has
been less persuasive: Hillary Clinton said the U.S.
would not call the coup by its rightful name because that would
automatically
cut off our aid to Honduras. But the leverage that aid gives us - and went
unused – supports charges Team Obama was playing on the anti-Zelaya
side. Author
Jeremy Scahill put it this way on Common Dreams:
“The
US
could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and
told the
military coup plotters to stand down. The US ties to the Honduran
military
and political establishment run far too deep for all of this to have
gone down
without at least (our) tacit support.”
Unmentioned in
the mainstream media, which has played up Zelaya’s dealings with Hugo
Chavez
(but not his corporate elite background), was a letter the Honduran
president
sent to Obama early in the year.
According to Nikolas Kozloff of Counterpunch, “(It) accused
the U.S.
of ‘interventionism’ and called on the new administration in Washington to
respect the principle of
non-interference in the political affairs of other nations.”
The
letter may be one reason Obama did not see fit to meet
with Zelaya in Washington
on the eve of the ousted president’s planned return home today. As the game unfolds, Barack will have other
chances to bat as well as pitch: to swing in strong, unconditional
terms in support
of Zelaya’s return. Such a decisive turn
at the plate will show that, despite contrary off-field signals,
Barack’s new
Team USA is no
longer
hitting reflexively to right in Latin America.
Amid the many pre-season predictions
that the Mets were
playoff-bound, a few observers thought otherwise. They
pointed to, among other things, the lack
of both a solid bench and capable minor-league back-ups That
meant the Mets were operating without fail-safe players serious teams
need to stay
in contention. To call the current Mets a
“below-average team”, as Jerry Manuel has done, hardly does justice to
the
team’s deficiencies. Who could imagine
that Damian Easley would be so badly missed?
With not a single sure return date for the missing regulars, on
thing is sure: a long, lugubrious summer lies
ahead for the Mets and their fans. And
neither a stopgap trade for someone like Nick Johnson, nor the
scattered return
of Reyes, Beltran, et al, figures to change that grim outlook.
Stat city: Tim
Linecum of the Giants and the Braves’ Javier Vazquez are the mlb’s top
two
strikeout artists (among pitchers who have thrown 100 innings or more). Linecum has recorded 132 k’s in 114 innings,
Vazquez 125 in 106.2. The pair lead in
strike-walk ratio, as well: Linecum having issued 28 passes, Vazquez
only 23. There’s a disparity in W-L
department,
however: Linecum is 8-2, Vazquez 5-7.
- 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.)
June 2009
Archive
Posted: 6/30/09)
The Disappearance of
Pitchers Pedro and Howard Dean
Howard Dean, a political newsmaker the
past couple of days,
and Pedro Martinez, a baseball item for several months, can relate to a
show-biz story about the late Sam Levene.
A dynamite character actor decades ago, Levene was the subject
late in life
of a good-natured career summary:
Who is Sam Levene?
Get me Sam Levene.
Get me a young Sam Levene.
Who is Sam Levene?
We
remember Howard Dean as the physician, former Vermont governor, and front-running
Dem presidential candidate in 2004, who fell before a John Kerry rally.
Then,
as chair of the party’s national committee, Dean ran afoul of Rahm
Emanuel in
the strategizing of the nationwide 2008 campaign. He disappeared after
the
Obama election, passed over for a spot on the Barack team, just as
Pedro’s name
eluded mlb free-agent signing lists from pre-season until now.
Pedro and friends have helped circulate
rumors that several
teams – the Cubs and Rays, among them – are close to signing him for
the rest
of ’09. On the other hand, an
unidentified scout who watched Pedro recently said the once-great
pitcher now
has mid-80’s velocity and his ball is “soft.”
The rap against Dean, who let the world know he wanted to be
Barack’s
Health and Human Services guy, is that he challenged the wisdom of
narrowing
the campaign focus. His 50-state
election strategy, the skipper’s insiders said, wasted resources that
could
have given Team Obama a more decisive victory than the scoreboard
finally
showed.
Nostalgic fans are rooting for Pedro…to
sign with a team
other than their own. Political
progressives are cheering Dean’s fighting words about health care
reform at a
rally in Washington
last week. Pitching for the team Democracy
for America,
which wants a strong government role in
the reformed system, Dean issued a warning: “We are
here; we're not going away. We voted for
change a few months ago. We
expect change. And if we
don't get it, there's going to be more change."
Not yet time to say “Who is Howard Dean?”
- -
-
Of the four weekend sweepers - the Yanks, Rays, Angels and Rockies - one, the LAAs, vaulted into first
place in its
division. The Angels and second-place
Rangers are going head-to-head in Arlington. When
the three-game AL West series ends
tomorrow night, we’ll have a sense of whether Texas can be taken seriously.
How seriously do you think owner Fred
Wilpon is taking the
plight of the Mets? If the Phillies don’t
cooperate, the Metsies could be in such a floundering state a week from
today -
when the next home stand begins – that Fred will be forced to make
reduced
ticket prices a regular thing at Citi Field.
Who wants to pay big bucks to see the New York Bisons? Blame for the “impy” (short for “improvident”)
Mets belongs in great part to the VP for Player Development. That’s Tony Bernazard. The
team is so sensitive to Tony’s failure to
produce genuine prospects as farm director that it felt a need to find
something to give him credit for: Bernazard is being mentioned with
Omar Minaya
as responsible for signing the latest pleasant garage-sale surprise,
Fernando
Nieve.
Stat City: The
NL’s leading percentage pitcher (more
than 100 innings) has flown under the radar screen.
While the AL
pct. leader, Toronto’s Roy Halladay,
10-1,(.909),
has long had a high profile, Florida’s Josh
Johnson,
7-1, (.875), is only beginning to make
his presence felt. Of the top eight
overall mlb pitching leaders, Johnson is the only one from the NL.
-
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: 6/27/09)
Smoltz Could Be
Obama’s Competitive Model
If 47-year-old Barack Obama were like
42-year-old John
Smoltz, he would say about meaningful health care reform, not “We can
do it,”
but “We will do
it.” Obama needs to get 51 Democratic
senators totally
committed to his team to insure success, and he must say less about
obstacles
while emphasizing why real reform should be inevitable.
Smoltz isn’t worried about team backup – the
Red Sox have impressive supportive weapons.
He has no doubt he will get the job done, despite a slow start
Thursday
night.
Obama: “This
is…when
we need to fight the hardest…We can see some light along the horizon,
but we’ve
got a much longer journey to travel…This is when it gets hard.”
Smoltz: “(My
comeback) will be a success. I came back
with this mind-set…The end result will be that.” (quoted by the Globe’s
Adam
Kilgore)
Bloomberg.com’s
Al Hunt calls Obama a skilled “explainer in
chief…Think (Jack) Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of
Pigs invasion , or (Ronald) Reagan after the Iran-Contra debacle.
“That’s
the league this president
plays in.”
But
Barack has yet to bring his A-game to the show. He’s
nibbling at the corners instead of
raring back and playing country hardball.
He should reach for 94 mph, as Smoltz did in his first outing. The president’s caution has potential members
of his team, and even fans, hanging back.
Smoltz,
whose old boss Stan Kasten calls “the most determined and competitive
human
being” he’s ever met, exudes confidence that eliminates defeat as an
option: “I feel I can accomplish
anything I want to accomplish…After (a few) starts, you’ll see why I
feel the
way I do.”
Obama might consider slipping down to Atlanta (where
the Sox
are playing a weekend series) for Smoltzian instruction in positive
thinking
and pitchin
-
- -
Postscript to Smoltz’s loss to Washington Thursday night: His opponent, 23-year-old Jordan Zimmermann,
struck out the Sox’s MVP second baseman Dustin Pedroia twice. It was the first time in 395 games Pedroia
fanned
more than once. Dustin paid tribute to the rookie:
“He’s got good stuff. He’s got
the
stuff of a No. 1. He’s going to be good
for a long time. He’s not afraid. He gets after it.’’
The biggest free-agent bust of
2009? SI’s Tim Marchman suggests the
prize belongs to someone to whom Mets GM Omar Minaya paid an outrageous
amount
of Fred Wilpon’s money: “The king
disaster… has been left-handed pitcher Oliver Perez,
who signed for three
years and $36 million, walked more than a man per inning in three of
his first
five starts, and then went on the disabled list with a mysterious knee
injury.
“Whether
or not he has been the worst signing in the game,
his April implosion should remind fans and executives not to expect
players to
be something other than what they demonstrably are.
Counted on and paid as a No. 2 starter, Perez
led the league in walks last year and entered the season with a career
ERA
below league average. When you sign a
lousy pitcher, you get ... a lousy pitcher.”
- 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: 6/25/09)
The Chance of Failure
in Baseball and Health Care Reform
Since even .300 hitters fail 70 percent
of the time,
baseball fans know what the late John Updike meant when he wrote:
“Baseball
was
invented in America,
where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right.”
- from Endpoint and Other
Poems
Health care
is considered a right
– accessible to everyone – in other democratic societies. Failure has marked efforts to make it that way
here for the past 60 years. The only
reason we’re not batting .000 in the health care game is because
Medicare and
Medicaid – passed in 1965 - provide government-subsidized relief for
seniors
and the poor.
The health insurance lobby has already won a key pre-game
contest: the debate over a possible public option (to compete with
private
plans) succeeded in forcing single-payer (Medicare for all) advocates
off the
field. The record book suggests that,
even with polls showing three-quarters of Americans support a public
option, it
would be unrealistic to bet against the lobby team in the big game
itself.
How consistent the lobby’s clout has
been was described on
“Democracy Now” the other day. Biographer
D.D. Guttenplan told Amy Goodman what happened to radical journalist
I.F. Stone
when he went to bat for a national health program in December 1949. Stone was a regular in the “Meet the Press”
lineup
at the time:
“On
this particular morning…(Stone) was battling…Dr. Morris
Fishbein…(then)…the
most famous doctor in America…and editor of The Journal
of the American Medical Association…He was the
person that the medical and pharmaceutical industries put up to
oppose…national
health insurance. He…coined the phrase
‘socialized medicine’…(and) described the proposals for national health
insurance as a step on the road to communism.
And so, Stone said to him, ‘Dr. Fishbein, given that President
Truman
has already spoken out in favor of national health insurance, do you
think that
that makes him a dangerous communist or just a deluded fellow
traveler?’
“That
was the last time I.F. Stone was
ever on Meet the Press, and…he
wasn’t again allowed to be on national television for eighteen years. He became a kind of disappeared person…”
The
public option may not disappear but it could be barely
discernible when the final out is recorded in Congress.
- -
-
On the New England Sports Network (NESN) the other night,
Josh Beckett was asked whether he could tell before a game he was not
going to
be sharp as usual. His answer was
strikingly candid: “You can’t tell. But if you go out there and, say, batters
aren’t swinging at your first two pitches – well, it can make a
difference.”
Comparisons Can Be
Mets-odious Dept: Sox reliever Takashi Saito said this, when asked
by the
Globe’s Nick Cafardo if he was surprised at how well his old team the
Dodgers
were doing: “I’m
not surprised at all. The guys
contributing to that team were guys in the minors last year and younger
guys
who were just coming into their own. You’ve got (Jonathan)
Broxton
and (Cory)
Wade
and
a lot of good young talent. I think the
Dodgers planned really well. We may very
well face them in the World
Series, so I don’t want to say too much, but I wish them the best.”
Amid
myriad signs of Mets’ farm-system impoverishment there is this: the
recall of
Nick Evans, who batted .093 at Triple-A Buffalo, then a lusty .276 at
Double-A
Binghamton.
Joe
Girardi’s enviable, Joba-like dilemma: Do I keep Phil
Hughes pitching lights-out in relief, or return him to the rotation,
where he
could be an even bigger asset (than Chien- Ming Wang)?
- 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: 6/18/09)
Corzine Playing
Catch-up Game, Like the Mets
If Jon Corzine is a baseball fan,
chances are he roots for
the Yanks or the Phils. That’s the way
the ball bounces in the state he manages, New Jersey.
But Corzine these days has a lot in common with the Mets. That is, he’s struggling in his contest with
Republican challenger Chris Christie, just as the Mets are scrambling
to keep pace
with their division-leading main rival, the world champion Phillies.
The scoreboard shows Corzine trailing
Christie, a prosecutorial
slugger, by 10 polling points in a state that is 80 percent Democratic
and
Independent. The Mets trail the
Phillies by three games, despite a $36 million
payroll edge
and the fact that it is the most valuable franchise in the NL, nearly
twice as
profitable as the Phils.
Corzine’s huge personal fortune helped
him win election to
the senate in 2000, and then to the governorship in 2005..
But his reliance on money as the big bat in
his campaigns made him less reliant on players in the Dem party. His diffidence toward the team led to
defections and a deficient political farm system, something that has
burdened
the Mets throughout Omar Minaya’s four-plus years as GM.
Corzine will be getting reinforcements
from Team Obama,
which has a big stake in keeping NJ in the Dem win column.
The Mets have no such help on the
horizon. Discomforting days lie ahead
for Minaya, Player Development VP Tony Bernazard, as well as the team’s
fans,
and, of course, owner Fred Wilpon and son Jeff.
- -
-
The Yanks are drawing better than some of us hoped they
would at their new, publicly subsidized (with dollars and parkland)
stadium. But how much better could it
have been if, instead of reduced to an unsightly husk across the way,
the old
stadium, spruced to the max, had been saved, as was Fenway Park?
In yesterday’s Boston Globe, former Mass. governor
and presidential candidate Mike Dukakis paid tribute to the people who
made the
decision to hold on to Fenway:
“The
new ownership group understood what many
native Bostonians did not - that we had a jewel of a ballpark that,
with some
tender loving care, could both expand the number of seats and preserve
its
special history and atmosphere in a way that almost no other major
ballpark has
been able to do. The results have been
spectacular. The cost is a fraction of what the new ballpark would have
entailed, and the experience of watching a ballgame at Fenway is (more
enjoyable
than ever).”
It
looks as though Manny Acta, a Mets front-office favorite,
will soon be the ex-manager in Washington. Or
does it?
Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell isn’t so sure:
“Whom
will the Washington
Nationals name as interim
manager? Bench coach Jim Riggleman or Class AAA manager Tim Foli? Or
will it be
Bobby Valentine, now in Japan…More
important, after the whole offseason search process is complete, who's
the
manager in '10? The baseball grapevine has good reasons why it won't be
any of
th(em).
"’It's
going to be me,’ said Acta…He was
poking his finger into his chest, his face animated with the kind of
pride you
know must be in him…. ‘It's going to be me,’ he repeated, not hostile
but
defiant. ‘Watch.’ With
that, he walked toward the field at
Yankee Stadium where his Nats lost (again).”
Stat
city (mlb leaders): Innings - “the most
important pitching statistic”(David Cone) - Roy Halladay, Toronto, 103 (14
starts). W-L record -
Halladay, 10-1. Strikeouts – Justin
Verlander, Detroit,
110 (90 innings). Gopher balls – Kevin
Millwood, Texas,
13 (99.2 innings).
- 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.)
The Nub, on a long-weekend road trip, will
be up next a week from today.
(Posted: 6/16/09)
There are Ballpark
Possibilities in Politics, Too
“At the ballpark, anything is possible”
-
thank you, NYT’s Ben Shpigel - and in politics, the same is true: in NY
state
alone, we’ve had such recent examples as the sudden departure of
Governor Eliot
Spitzer, the unexpected promotion of Kirsten Gillibrand, the abrupt
overthrow
of the Senate Dem majority and its leader Malcolm Smith.
And, on a grander scale, how about the
long-shot election of Barack Obama? Anything
seems to be possible when it
involves political players. Issues are
another ballgame. Health care
reform has taken the field before with broad fan support, but been
beaten badly
nevertheless. In the pressbox they’re
touting this contest as crucial. Robert
Reich, writing for The American Prospect, sees two defining outcomes in
the
game: whether Obama has the strength and
savvy to take on one of the most formidable lobbying teams around; and,
if so,
whether he can eke out a public-option score as part of the victory.
Reich says Skipper
Obama can’t play small ball with its
public-option offense: the option has to
be “national in scale and combines
its bargaining power with Medicare, and is allowed to negotiate lower
drug
prices and lower doctor and hospital fees. And
that's precisely what Pharma and Insurance
(and the doctors) detest, for exactly the same reason.”
The UK Guardian’s Michael Tomasky brings
a
realistic perspective to the ballgame: “The
powerful lobbies…(seem) resigned
to the idea that some kind of healthcare bill will pass, so they might
as well
play ball and make it something they could live with. But will they
stay
resigned or decide they have a little fight in them after all? I'd put money on the latter…
“It's one thing (for Team Obama) to
be adroit in the first inning, which is where we are. When it counts is
in the
ninth inning. (This week) marks the start of an important process
because Obama
will clearly hope that by the time the late innings come around, he'll
have
toured the country and solidified public opinion behind reform.”
Based on
Obama’s tentative pitch
for the idea yesterday, the chances of the reform including a
meaningful
public-option plan are about the same as those of the Mets making it to
the
World Series. Anything else apparently
is possible.
- -
-
Six of the 14 weekend
inter-league match-ups ended in three-game sweeps.
The Colorado Rockies deserve star billing:
they won their ninth, 10th and 11th straight
against Seattle. That ties their team record set in 2007, when
they surged to a pennant and then the World Series.
Other sweepers: the Marlins over the Blue
Jays, the Angels over the Padres, KC over Cincinnati, the Giants over
Oakland,
and Tampa Bay over the Nats.
The second-place Angels moved to
within two-and-a-half games of first in the AL West, the second-place
Giants to
within seven and the Rockies to
within
10-and-a-half in the NL West, the third-place Rays to within five in
the AL
East, and the third-place Marlins to within six in the NL East. (Update: Angels beat the Giants last night to move
two games behind the
Rangers, the Giants slipping to seven-and-a-half behind the Dodgers.)
What more could go wrong for the Mets?
Plenty:
On SNY Sunday afternoon, Mets announcers Gary
Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez noted early that Johan Santana’s
velocity was topping out only at 91 mph. “He’s hittable,” they agreed. And he has been, they might have added, over
his past six starts (ERA 6.50). Johan
should bounce back, but if he doesn’t, this season for Mets fans will
turn from
a singular bad dream into a grand slam of a nightmare.
In that
context, there is this cheery Metsian note
from NY Post-man Kevin Kernan: “The
Mets keep saying they are a
championship-quality club, so (failing to score with bases loaded and
none out)
can't happen. But everything happens to
the Mets. They are playing without
their injured shortstop and first baseman and are hindered in left
field. The
situation at first is getting more dreadful by the day with young
Daniel
Murphy. He's hitting .238 with a .354 slugging average from a position
that is
all about slugging. Consider that Mark
Teixeira's slugging percentage is .620. Rookie
outfielder Fernando Martinez is not
ready for the majors.”
- 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: 6/13/09)
The Bouncing of Black
Leaders in Baseball and Politics
The other day, while interviewed by
WNYC’s Leonard Lopate,
Keith Hernandez confirmed the story behind the firing of Mets manager
Willie
Randolph a year ago this month: the team’s Latino players didn’t relate
to him
and wanted him gone.
On NY’s political field, we know that
two Latino members of
the Dem Senate majority – Pedro Espada
of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens
–
had similar feelings about their African-American leader Malcolm Smith. They toppled him from power, insiders say,
because he made promises to them he couldn’t keep…and billionaire Tom
Golisano
made it worth their while.
Little sympathy was expressed for the
victims in either coup
– Randolph
didn’t deserve the way he was fired, said the media, but he did have it
coming.
Smith paid the price, according to the press, for not staying on top of
things. An argument could be made that,
with Moises
Alou lost for the season and closer Billy Wagner hurting and on the
brink of
the DL, Willie should’ve been given a fairer shake.
Or that Smith, having managed the thankless
task of keeping his precarious majority together, merited a better fate
than to
be blindsided by big money.
NY Times columnist Gail Collins may
have been the only media
voice to give the saga an against-the-grain perspective:
“The coup was
engineered, at least
in part, by…Golisano…(He) spent several million dollars helping the
Democrats
get their precious two-vote majority. In
triumph, he traveled down from Buffalo
to share his insights on how to resolve the state fiscal crisis with
the new
majority leader…Smith. To Golisano’s
outrage, Smith kept checking his Blackberry while his patron was
talking. This is a truly shocking
story…Anybody who
has been in politics for more than six minutes knows that the cardinal
rule is to
look interested when a rich guy is telling you his thoughts.”
Less
shocking is the issue Golisano wanted to discuss: the
proposal to impose a tax on the
super-wealthy like himself. That tax
has the important, if reluctant, backing of David Paterson. The governor has merited boos for the bungled
Carolyn Kennedy/Kirsten Gillibrand Senate-appointment play. But his record on taxes, pension reform, etc.
in this tough economic year would seem to be good enough to warrant a
fair accounting
by the media; the press could at least offer occasional positive
mention. It
may turn out that, like Randolph, Paterson will
deserve to
be fired, but he shouldn’t be subject - it says here (again) - to the
piling-on
way it is happening.
- -
-
Errors, injuries – all kinds of misfortune – are piling on
the Mets, last night’s
heartbreaking loss to the Yanks the latest example.
The Yanks are the least of
the Mets’ worries, however…
Tim Redding’s tribute to the Phillies Thursday
night - “You
can’t keep that team down for long” - was a not-so-subtle
acknowledgment that
the Mets can’t expect to catch the defending champions this year. The wild card is a (remote) possibility if
Jerry Manuel’s hope that his decimated team can stay above .500 until
his
injured regulars return (dates unknown) is realized.
Snap
quiz – who said: "They
deserved to (beat) us. We didn't
play too well. Of course, we're
disappointed, but we can't feel sorry for ourselves. Their guys have
played
better than us." Answer:
Derek Jeter, although it
could have been a collective Yanks/Mets statement after losing five of
six to
their chief rivals, the Red Sox and Phillies.
Let’s focus, before the inevitable
happens, on the
rejuvenated Colorado Rockies. The Rox
named former Dodgers and Pirates manager Jim Tracy to replace Clint
Hurdle as
skipper late last month. As of last
night’s ninth-straight win, 6-4 over the Mariners, the team, under Tracy, was 11-4,
having completed an
eight-game streak…on the road!
And that’s not all: seven of the games were against the
Cardinals and
Brewers. “Not easy to do,” said Tracy in an
understated salute
to his team.
-
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: 6/11/09)
Dysfunctional
Describes Teams as Well as Pols
The “in” word in New York these days is
“dysfunctional” – defined
generally as “failure to serve an assigned purpose.”
The term seems to be hurled daily at the
state government, with particular reference now to the Senate and its
failure
to get things done, thanks in great part to a tumultuous game of
musical chairs. But dysfunctional is
finding its way into the
baseball lexicon, too. Fans of the
Washington Nationals feel their team is not meeting its assigned
purpose of
being minimally competitive. Then, in a
separate category, there are the Mets, whose manager a year ago Willie
Randolph, would soon be deposed just as abruptly as was Senate Majority
Leader Malcolm
Smith on Monday.
Much has been made of the legislative
balls now in the air –
same-sex marriage, mayoral oversight of NYC schools, reinforced
tenants’
rights, etc. But in the overriding
won-lost
columns, Dem errors give Team GOP an unexpected advantage as the battle
for majority
status plays out between now and the 2010 election.
That in turn could lead to a crucial
reapportionment victory - control of how the state’s legislative
districts are
redrawn, insuring through creative demarcations that Repub vote
potential is
maximized. On a managerial level, the
miscues will certainly set back skipper David Paterson’s effort to dig
in as a
late-appearing in-charge governor.
The hits the Mets are taking in the
media haven’t matched
those endured by Paterson. But the harshness is growing, despite the
patchwork team’s occasional signs of life. SI’s
unforgiving Jeff Pearlman provides a
tough example:
“These
Mets lay down -- for everyone. They play with
little gusto, and less aggressiveness. They rarely hit in the clutch,
and make
lackluster opposing pitchers appear to be the second coming of Steve
Carlton. When the Yankees suffer
through a conga line of injuries, the organization never offers up the
maladies
as an excuse. The Mets, on the other
hand, all but seek out injuries to cite to the media. If
only we had Delgado. If only we had Reyes.
If only ...
“The future has been
written for
the 2009 New York
Mets, and it is not good. They are
modern day Jobs, all of them. Only in
this run, there is no reprieve. A team
with baseball's second-highest payroll will win, oh, 85 games and
finish 10
games behind Philadelphia.
They will add someone -- Aubrey
Huff? Nick Johnson? -- to the mix, sing
his praises, find a groove, then
sink back to reality. They will fire
their manager, trade off their prospects, talk about the new Mets, the
fresh
Mets, the exciting Mets. But they're
still the haunted Mets.”
Lob from Left Field: “The
(compromising posture) of the Democratic Party may have sufficed when
the GOP was ascendant and the goal was restoring a Democratic majority.
But now the majority party resembles a
dysfunctional family, badly in need of outside intervention.” - William Greider in The Nation (touting citizen
activism)
Although the Red Sox have dominated the Yankees so far, attentive
residents
of Sox Nation have no illusions about their team leaving the
pinstripers
behind. The Boston Herald’s Gerry
Callahan cites a key reason the Yanks will be around at the end: “We don’t know
yet if the Yankees finally bought themselves a World Series,
but we know this: the Yankees bought themselves first place… primarily
with one
move. After years of foolish free agent
signings from Kevin Brown to Carl Pavano to Jason Giambi to Kei Igawa,
(Brian)
Cashman and the Yankees got one very right this year.
“Hey, they
were due. In (Mark)Teixeira, they got a
29-year-old player who hits like A-Rod but acts like Jeter, a buttoned-down professional... unfazed by the
bright lights and big expectations of New York.”
Baseball
simplified, courtesy of Josh Beckett (quoted by the Globe’s Nick
Cafardo):
"The whole
game of baseball is predicated on the fastball, keeping it located.”
- 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: 6/9/09)
The Dissing of
Paterson And the Mets
If Mets fan David Paterson watched the
Phillies-Dodgers game
on Fox Saturday afternoon, he surely noticed that his team received no
respect
from Dick Stockton and Eric Karros.
Indeed, the announcers treated the Mets in the dismissive way
the NY
political media treat the governor of their state.
“The Phillies have made the playoffs
the last two years,”
said Stockton,
“and they’re on the way to making them this year.”
“All their star players have intensity,”
added Karros. “That’s rarer than you
would think. It rubs off on the team
as
a whole.” No mention of the Mets. The NY press mentions Paterson all right, almost always
with
disparagement.
When the media people look ahead to the
gubernatorial
playoffs, they see Andrew Cuomo, like the Phillies, to be a virtual
sure thing.
The similarities between the two
alleged also-rans were
underlined last week when the Mets lost four of five games to the
struggling
Pirates and Nats. “Jerry Manuel doesn’t
have the players.” was the consensus verdict on the injury-riddled team. It was much like the media’s relentless
sniping at the people Paterson
depends on: “The governor doesn’t have a capable staff,” has been the
mantra.
What Team Paterson has that the Mets
don’t is time. It will be mid-August
before Jerry Manuel can
hope to have all his stud invalids – Delgado, Reyes, Putz and maybe
even Billy
Wagner - back en masse. In the Mets’
current vulnerable state, keeping the Phils from muscling them out of
the
picture by then will take some doing. Paterson can
fend off the
muscling from his party until early next year.
In the meantime, though, he’s got to win the kind of generally
positive
press he attracted by vetoing the bill that would have sweetened the
pension of
newly hired cops and firefighters. What else? He
needs to project an image of command,
something that doesn’t come easily to him.
And he could use more of the kind of pressure Charlie Rangel put
on
Cuomo last week. Charlie warned Andrew,
in so many words, that taking on a black Dem candidate for governor (an
incumbent, yet) for a second time in eight years could compromise his
political
future. So far, Cuomo’s stance says he
believes time is on his side as the gubernatorial game plays out.
The Mets will still have seven
head-to-head games with the
Phillies as of the second half of August (and nine with the Braves). But for them to mean anything, the Mets
probably need Omar Minaya to produce a Santana-like miracle deal…and do
it
soon. If it happens, it won’t be soon
enough to shore up the undermanned team for its six games beginning
tonight
against the Phils and Yankees. To
paraphrase a classic “Peanuts” strip, “You know what they say, Jerry
Manuel,
‘Win some, lose some.’ To which
Manuel
replies: “That would be great.”
The Yankees have been confirming the
baseball truism that
“good teams get the breaks” since Alex Rodriguez returned to the lineup
a month
ago. Trailing the Rays, 3-2, in the
eighth inning Sunday, the Yanks were able to tie the score when third
baseman Willy
Aybar made an error on a double-play ball tailored to set up a force at
the
plate. The decisive run in their 4-3
victory was grounded home by Hideki Matsui, whom an umpire signaled
safe at
first, a call cameras showed to be wrong.
In attracting the breaks, the Yanks are taking their cue from
captain
Derek Jeter. He has been the master at
finding a way to get on base through errors, walks – even fluke plays
that
sabotage conventional outs. On YES last
week in Cleveland,
Paul O’Neill noted Derek’s gift:
“Jeter’s hitting the ball well,” he said, “but he can’t make an
out if
he tries.”
The Red Sox have a nice problem facing
them as a backdrop to
the six games they’ll play with the Yankees (starting tonight) and then
the
Phillies: John Smoltz is scheduled to
join the rotation next Monday, the 15th.
That means someone has to go – and it won’t
be Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield or Dice-K Matsuzaka. That apparently leaves Brad Penny, who may
have a new address – the Phillies? – when Smoltz takes the mound
against the
Marlins.
- 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: 6/6/09)
A Year To Run Out Ground Balls Hard
“This
is not a year to not run out ground balls. We
get a check every two weeks, and there are
people who just found out they ain't getting a check. We've
got to pinch ourselves and realize how
lucky we are."
-
Detroit
manager Jim Leyland to his team
during a series at home this week against the Red Sox (quoted by the
Globe’s
Dan Shaughnessy)
Leyland
could have added a key reason the
ball players are lucky: they have a union to represent them in dealings
- on
such things as free agency and salary arbitration - with team owners. (As most of us know by now it was
then-Federal District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor who stopped the
owners from seeking
to emasculate the union by eliminating the decades-old collective
bargaining
agreement in 1995.)
Leyland was referring, mainly, to the plight of auto
workers in and around
the Motor
City.
The bankruptcy filing, first by Chrysler, then by General
Motors,
brought uncertainty into the lives of thousands of employees and their
families. What will happen to holdover
Chrysler
workers remains murky as the legal game unfolds in the judicial
ballpark. GM employees have a clearer
picture of the
field in front of them; the union workers among them have no need to
pinch
themselves to see how comparatively lucky they are.
Here is how the NY Times laid out the situation earlier
this week:
“GM employees who are
not union members do not have any
job security. The company can ask a
judge for an immediate pay cut (for them) and can announce job
cuts…Contracts
covering members of the UAW union and other unions will remain in force
unless
the company asks a judge to void them…UAW members approved (contract)
changes
last week, and the new GM is expected to honor that contract…
“A
company can also eliminate retiree health care benefits
for non-union employees…”
While
in Detroit,
Dan Shaughnessy reminded readers of a way of life that has disappeared
with
union jobs: “In Michigan, GM
was the embodiment of the American
dream. You could get a job at the plant, work there your whole life,
raise a
raft of kids who could go to college to East Lansing and Ann Arbor, and
you
probably had enough left over for a summer cabin up north.”
“I
hate unions,”
we overheard a young working woman say not long ago, while watching
coverage of
a labor dispute on TV. “I wish I had a
union.”
Lob from Left Field (on Team Obama’s ties
with Israel):
“This
is a basic lesson which most people learn in adolescence or young
adulthood. Teenagers who tell their parents that they are not
compelled
to comply with parental dictates are typically met with the response
that this
is so only if they want nothing from their parents, but as long as they
seek
financial support, then the parents have the right to demand certain
actions in
return…
“Identically,
if Israel
wants to be free of what it and some of its U.S. supporters call
‘interference’
from the Obama administration, that’s very easy to achieve:
Israel
can stop asking for tens of
billions of dollars of American taxpayer money, huge amounts
of military
and weapons supplies for its various wars, and unyielding
American diplomatic protection
at the U.N. But as long as Israel remains dependent
on the U.S…, then Obama… has the obligation to demand that Israel cease
activities which harm U.S. interests.” - Glenn
Greenwald in Salon
-
-
-
You’re Fred Wilpon. Your Mets are
reeling again from injuries. Last year,
it was Moises Alou and Billy Wagner, this year Carlos Delgado, Jose
Reyes, J.J.
Putz, etc.
You know that injuries are part of the game, that good teams find
players on
the bench or in their system to help them stay competitive. You could see this past week the Mets were
not up to the challenge. Your team has
always been short on good back-ups, hoping instead for quick get-backs. You have to wonder about your GM’s strategy;
about his emphasis on pricey free-agent signings and deals for older
players; and
ask yourself, too, why Omar’s and Tony Bernazard’s farm system is so
unhelpful? You
must have seen in the Houston Chronicle what a fellow owner in your
situation
has decided:
The Rays may be defending AL champions and only five games out of
first in
the East (as of early last night), but in NY and Boston they’re chopped
liver. The media in both cities see the
Sox and Yanks finishing in the top two spots this time.
Here’s a sample from the Boston Herald’s Michael
Silverman: “The AL
West-leading Rangers ar(e) at
Fenway… and they will be followed by the Yankees, who figure to be
neck-and-neck with the Red Sox in the AL East for quite some time.”
The almost-audible rejoinder of
NYY fans: “That’s if the Sox are lucky.”
-
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 6/4/09)
Baseball-Like Wish
List Follows Barack to Egypt
The baseball wish list probably begins
in Chicago,
where Cubs manager Lou Piniella
yearns for an early return of injured Aramis Ramirez, his so-far
irreplaceable
third baseman. But, just as every
team
has a wish list – the Phils would like a starter to replace Brett
Myers, the
Mets a reliable eighth-inning reliever, the Red Sox a rejuvenated David
Ortiz,
etc. – so were political teams wishful in advance of Skipper Obama’s
speech in
Cairo today. Substance was on their
minds.
Although the president said his pitch
would be down the
middle with no surprising change-ups, that didn’t stop different
political team
members from digging in. They hit from
every stance on both sides of the plate this week, suggesting that
Barack say
what they wanted to hear about U.S.
foreign policy. The Neocons hoped Obama
would play hardball and reaffirm what they see as America’s mission to swing
forcefully for freedom in the world. The
Realists wanted a presidential pledge to pull the string on our use of
force, limiting
it only to places where vital U.S.
interests are at play. The Progressive
Policy Wonks would have liked the skipper to say Team USA will be more
cooperative
than competitive with other teams in the global league, and will send
interventionism to the showers.
Isolationists, who hit to right, and Anti-Imperialists, who pull
to the
left, would have both been happy for a sign that Barack was prepared to
leave
the field; the A-I team would like all bases pulled up, the I-team just
some.
A ballbag full of left-leaning wishes,
the ultimate in
wishfulness, was tossed the president’s way by the International Herald
Tribune’s William Pfaff:
“(Although
only
remotely possible,) Obama might declare in Cairo that he wished to
withdraw all
American forces from Muslim countries, and seeks the support of all
Muslim
governments to make this possible. That while he will honor guarantees
given to
governments in the region, (and) will pursue the authors of any attack
on the
United States… the objective of his government is a creative
disengagement,
leaving the people and political forces of the Islamic regions to
settle their
own affairs, with – should they wish – generous financial help from the
U.S….”
The
UK Independent’s Robert Fisk saw the game from a similar
perspective: “ I
suspect that what the Arab world wants to
hear - not their leaders, of course, all of whom would like to have a
spanking
new US air base on their property - is that Obama will take all his
soldiers
out of Muslim lands and leave them alone…But for obvious reasons, Obama
can’t
say that.”
-
- -
Stat city oddity: Two Zacs – Zack Greinke
of KC and Zach Duke of Pittsburgh
– are rated two and three on the mlb pitching effectiveness list. Roy Halladay (9-1) is number one.
Greinke (8-1) leads the majors with a 1.10
ERA and hasn’t given up a home run in 82 innings. CC
Sabathia is sixth on the list; Johan
Santana has dropped to 15th. SF’s Tim Lincecum leads in strikeouts with 91
in 71.2 innings.
Joe Torre said something we already knew about Jorge
Posada to Yahoo Sports’
Gordon Edes the other day: “He gets lost in the
shuffle, but he’s a really good pressure player.”
Edes reminds us that “Posada played just 50
games last
season because of a shoulder injury, and the Yankees missed the
postseason for
the first time in 13 years.” Another
reminder from Joe about a member of his old team: “You lose Alex
[Rodriguez] like the Yankees did this year, you get so accustomed to
the
numbers he puts up that you don’t realize until he’s gone how much you
miss him.” What’s
obvious now: When A-Rod, then Jorge
returned to the
lineup, the Yankee offense became just plain scary.
More
from Edes, on two of the NL Central’s competitors:
“Cubs GM Jim Hendry (talking about) the
Cardinals: ‘Give Tony La Russa
credit, but if people don’t think the (Cards) have good
players, they’re
nuts. They’re way better than just Albert (Pujols). Yadier Molina is a
good
catcher, [Ryan] Ludwick is a good player, Rick Ankiel is a good player,
Chris
Duncan can hit, and they got some gamers like they always do. And their pitching is good.’ Hendry
on the Central race: ’It wasn’t going to be
easy even
if we were healthy. We haven’t played very well. It’ll
be a dogfight. There’s no (one saying)
Cubs are going to win
for sure’. ” Surprising
omissions: Brewers and Reds, both very much in the division race.
Michael Kay’s know-all banter during
Yankee games on YES
sometimes wears us down. But his
occasional
flashes of wit help make him tolerable, as was the case the other night
in Cleveland. Seagulls had swarmed in from the lake and
settled on the outfield grass. “The
gulls are shading Matsui to right,” said Kay.
-
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
6/2/09)
Yankee Lineup Is T
for Tough, Nothing More
A Nub posted on May 21 included this
phrase “With a lineup
that has turned into Torturers Row, the Yankees…” You
won’t see such blithe reference to
torture again here; not after the graphic reminder of what the practice
entails
as seen on Bill Moyers Journal last weekend.
The program, featuring excerpts from the documentary “Torturing
Democracy,” showed in painfully vivid terms the price we as well as the
victims
pay for our government’s descent into barbarism.
Most of us have experienced brief
periods of excruciating
pain in our lives. We can imagine – if
we try – how that pain inflicted in a sustained way must feel. What we can’t imagine unless we see images of
it is the inhumanity of people doing unspeakable things in our name. We flinch from the subject of torture lest it
prompt us to dwell on the betrayal of our values – we thought we were
better
than the “animals” of Nazi Germany, say - and the way the practice has
corrupted so many of our fellow citizens.
Early in “Torturing Democracy” (before
the temptation to
flinch begins), there is this segment,
dating
from late 2001/early 2002, filled with dire implications for many who
were
about to become victims:
“As Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda disappeared
into the rugged mountains on the Afghan/Pakistan border, the Pentagon
increasingly relied on bounty hunters.
“Tens of
thousands of leaflets promising ’enough money to
take care of your family and your village for the rest of your life’
were
dropped by psychological ops teams.
(A Witness):
‘Where is
Arab? Where
is Arab? Where is Arab? Thousand dollar
for one Arab. Thirty thousand, forty thousand, sixty
thousand.’
“Any Arab
in the region was at risk of being turned in as
a terrorist (by local warlords).”
Colin
Powell’s chief of staff, seen in the documentary,
suggests roundups like that one were part of a Team Bush effort to find
somebody
who, in the run-up to the Iraq
war, could be broken into saying there was a link between Al Quaida and
Saddam
Hussein.
Team Obama has a tough
sell trying to put this dark chapter
in our history behind us. Its effect on
the American psyche clearly will not soon go away.
- -
-
"We're getting to the point where we're
50 games into the season. I think the
numbers start meaning something.” - Red Sox manager Terry
Francona
The numbers today
say the Red Sox will fight it out with the Yanks for first in the AL
East, and,
barring a Rangers-Angels-or-Rays surprise, should feel confident of
winning the
wild card as a consolation. The numbers
say David Ortiz is still only batting .185.
But Mark Kotsay, who can play the outfield and first base, is
due off
the DL today, while John Smoltz should join the team around the 15th,
a potentially big boost.
"We've
talked all along that we believe Chien-Ming Wang is a
starter, and at some point we believe he's going to be in this rotation. I'm not ready to say that right now. I love
the way he is throwing the ball .
. . “ -
Joe
Girardi, on the possibility Phil Hughes would be replaced in the
Yankees
rotation.
May Whine: Minnesota
fans hate to complain about their annually overachieving team. But, while Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau were
baseball’s two best hitters on May – with a combined BA of .386, 20
homers and
61 RBIs – the Twins only went 19-21 for the month.
The fans would rather see the team performing
best, with Mauer and Morneau the secondary story.
ESPN’s Peter Gammons saluted
Tigers owner Mike Ilitch last week for ignoring
Bud Selig’s attempt to limit the amount paid in bonuses to highly
regarded
drafted amateur players. Ilitch signed
pitcher Rick Porcello out of the University of North
Carolina in
2007. Porcello, only 20, won his fifth straight start last Wednesday. He has a 1.50 ERA in those games.
Ilitch declined to be a “good citizen” (like
the Mets, who went along with Selig’s approach and regretted it). As Gammons points out, he did more than just
sign Porcello: “Ilitch had to OK more
than $8 million to get
(Rick) to forget about a dorm room in Chapel Hill, N.C. Ilitch…(also went) above Selig's price-fixing
’slot’ and sign(ed) Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller, who in turn gave
(GM
Dave) Dombrowski the chips to trade for Miguel Cabrera, one of the best
hitters
in the game.” The
Red Sox face Porcello tonight in Detroit.
-
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.)
May 2009 Archive
(Posted 5/30/09)
Political Stats Can
Never Inform Like the Baseball Kind
“Statistics make baseball,” said a fan
the other day. “Why can’t the same kind of
numbers make
politics more popular?”
We know why: key
political stats are money-raised, poll results and, only marginally,
elections
won and lost. Money and the recognition
it brings plays too big a role in the election process.
When we see that Kansas
City’s Zack Greinke has an 0.64 ERA to
go with an 8-1 W-L record, we know he has earned his reputation for
excellence. In politics, fund-raising
ability often counts more in the
won-lost column than on-the-job performance.
In baseball, talking a good game gets
you nowhere; doing –
that is, playing well – is how you succeed.
And the stats will confirm the level of that success. Unlike ballplayers, politicians can score by
speaking out on issues, and going to bat to reinforce words with their
presence
and (if feasible) votes. Since most
candidates
are careful to offend as few people as possible, the ones willing to
tell
unpleasant truths, cast unpopular votes, and risk boos for so doing,
deserve to
get a favorable stat next to their name.
One such truth-teller, a Democratic
candidate for mayor,
said this to Times columnist Jim Dwyer
not long ago: “The real estate
industry donates the most money to elected officials in New York and
they control the agenda.” The
candidate, Queens Councilmember Tony
Avella, is a long-shot because, among other things, he will not be
getting real
estate money after a remark like that.
But it says here he may be the better of the two choices –
Comptroller
Billy Thompson is the other – to play David to Mike Bloomberg’s Goliath
this
fall.
Why? Because
– unlike
Thompson - Avella has received next to no money from any kind
of corporate
interest for his campaign. He’s set up, therefore, to throw chin music
at the
mayor about his pro-business, anti-public stance favoring the ballparks
and oversized
real estate projects in general. Furthermore,
as one of the handful of Council members who voted against Bloomberg’s
third-term caper AND renounced taking advantage of its passage, Avella
can hit at
least as hard as Thompson (who also declined to go for an easy third
term) at
the mayor’s anti-democratic hubris.
Thompson, with roughly 3.5 million campaign dollars
already
on hand, compared to Avella’s $132,000, will be tough to beat in the
two-man
Democratic primary. If Avella somehow
does it – and Bloomberg keeps displaying his “You’re a disgrace” type
of arrogance (what he hissed at a NY
Observer
reporter who asked him a prickly question) – there may be a semblance
of a
mayoral contest ahead of us, after all.
- -
-
ESPN’s Peter Gammons saluted Tigers owner Mike Ilitch this week for
ignoring
Bud Selig’s attempt to limit the amount paid in bonuses to highly
regarded
drafted players. Ilitch signed pitcher
Rick
Porcello out of the University
of North Carolina,
Porcello, only 20, won his fifth straight start on Wednesday. He has a 1.50 ERA in those games.
Ilitch declined to be a “good citizen” (like
the Mets, who went along with Selig and regretted it).
As Gammons points out, he did more than just
sign Porcello: “Ilitch had to OK more
than $8 million to get
(Rick) to forget about a dorm room in Chapel Hill, N.C. Ilitch…(also went) above Selig's price-fixing
’slot’ and sign(ed) Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller, who in turn gave
(GM
Dave) Dombrowski the chips to trade for Miguel Cabrera, one of the best
hitters
in the game.”
The
Mets station SNY shows itself to be a no-class operation each time it
schedules a game involving the Buffalo Bisons, the team’s Triple-A farm. Although not identified as such, the games
are on tape, having been played the previous day. A
big saving from live coverage to be sure,
but what a disservice to SNY viewers.
The Toronto Star’s Richard Griffin has this take on a
different dubious televised-baseball
practice: “’Breaking
ball’ seems to be the play-by-play announcer’s
way of escaping the fact that he really has no clue and can’t identify
the
pitch as it happens. He may know it was
slower than a fastball and from where he sits in the pressbox it looked
like it
changed direction. Thus the generic description ’breaking ball’ covers
a host
of broadcasting sins. On TV, when they
finally replay the pitch from the centre field camera, it will be the
analyst
seated alongside the pitch-challenged play-by-play guy that will tell
you
slider, curveball, slurve, splitter, change, knuckleball, cutter, or
whatever
else the dude may be throwing up there.”
-
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 5/28/09)
Familiar Change at
Play in Capital Politics, Queens
Baseball
“If
we want things to stay as they are, things will
have to change.”
That statement, from an Italian
historical novel, was linked
by The Nation this week to the early-season record of Team Obama. Some Mets observers see the words also
connecting
to the strategy of team GM Omar Minaya.
Omar committed himself over the winter to keeping the “core” of
his team
- Reyes, Beltran, Wright, Delgado, etc. - intact while upgrading the
bullpen. With the Memorial Day milestone
behind them,
the media’s pre-season favorite Mets (their handling of the Nats
notwithstanding) have shown themselves to be little changed from what
they were
last year at this time - at best, a wobbly .500-plus club.
For fans in the left field stands, Team
Obama, meanwhile,
has been playing no better than .500 ball, scoring rhetorical runs
touting a
fresh start, but giving away much on matters of substance. The skipper’s inside-out swing is reminiscent
of Bill Clinton’s. Indeed, guided by
batting coach Tim Geithner, who came up through the Clinton farm system, Barack’s hits to
the
opposite field in the financial game have been especially galling. Economist Jeffrey Faux, who wrote The Nation
essay, says the “pervasive influence of Wall Street” has stalled
Obama’s rally
for “change.” Faux says the skipper’s
bailout stance during an early at bat was locked in at the G-20
economic summit
in London:
“The first priority for
the US
economy…was
to get the other nations to expand their economies (so they could buy
from
us). Unless they do, much of the
undersize US
spending stimulus will be lost to an increased trade deficit. The Europeans were disinclined.
Instead, they argued for the international
regulation of finance…But Wall Street (did) not want…to be subject to
international regulators who might be beyond the reach of their money
and
influence…If that weakened the US
recovery, so be it. The administration
concurred…
“The public
feathering of the
corporate nest will certainly continue…The smart money understands that
the
revolving door of cash and people between Wall Street and Washington
will
protect the plutocracy.”
The confidence the Bush 2-to-Obama play
has generated on
Wall Street mirrors that felt on the street 15 years ago, when Clinton
succeeded the first George Bush. Then
and now, the new people put in place, representing cosmetic change,
insured
that the status would remain quo.
The Mets have a familiar (core-related)
excuse in place – Delgado’s
hip, Beltran’s knee, Reyes’ calf, etc:
injuries have blindsided the best-laid-lineup plan.
It happens to most teams. It’s just
that the Mets seem to be singularly
strung out as each year’s manager scrambles to find replacements. The option of breaking up the core and
broadening the number of solid position players is a non-starter on
what for
the past two years have been non-playoff teams. The never-changing
problem amid
each fresh approach was summed up in four words yesterday by Newsday’s
Ken
Davidoff: “Lack of organizational
depth.”
Time will tell whether 20-year-old
Fernando Martinez is
ready to play regularly for Jerry Manuel’s team. The
stats tell us he can’t do much worse than
the injured Ryan Church, however. Church
has hit a single home run in 125 ABs and struck out almost twice as
many times
as he’s walked. Then there was that
decisive missed touch of third base last week against the Dodgers. Manuel has been on Church’s case since spring
training and would clearly welcome an upgrade - even a raw one - in
right
field.
In the aftermath of the Memorial Day
milestone, here are what
look like the playoff-competitive teams in each division:
AL East – Yankees, Red Sox and Rays; AL
Central – Tigers and the rest; AL West - Angels and Rangers; NL East –
Phils,
Mets, Braves; NL Central – Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds; NL West –
Dodgers. That adds up to 18 of the 30
teams still in contention. Make it 19,
if you think the Blue Jays will bounce back.
Gonna be an interesting summer.
We’ll compare this outlook with the one that emerges after July
4th.
- 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 5/21/09)
Jays, Team Canada
Singular
in Hitting and Health Care
How appropriate that the team with the
most singles (and
hits) in the majors comes from the country that leads the continent in
single-payer health care. A tight-knit
offense stitched together with 300 singles in 44 (pre-inter-league)
games has put
the Toronto Blue Jays in position to lead the AL East after this, the
first of
three holiday-weekend milestones.
Canadian medical help has played a part in the Jays’ success;
it’s been
needed to assist the team in dealing with a decimated starting rotation.
President Obama has often tossed praise
at the single-payer
system in Canada. But he has turned his back on the
intensifying campaign for a similar program in the U.S. The other day at a town hall meeting in New Mexico he
explained
to a questioner why he wouldn’t scrap the existing system and push for
single-payer:
“The…
problem is that
we (can’t) start…from scratch. We have historically a tradition of
employer-based health care. And although
there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care,
the
truth is that the vast majority of people currently get health care
from their
employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't
want a
huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we're
trying to
completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.
“So what
I've said is, let's set up a system where if you
already have health care through your employer and you're happy with
it, you
don't have to change doctors, you don't have to change plans -- nothing
changes. If you don't have health care
or you're highly unsatisfied with your health care, then let's give you
choices, let's give you options, including a public plan that you could
enroll
in and sign up for. That's been my
proposal.”
The key question: How soon will that pitch,
however slow in
delivery, reach the Congress and be put into play?
- -
-
Injuries have put the Mets in deep trouble; ask Jerry
Manual. The manager doesn’t like to be
associated with a “challenging” situation for which he is not to blame. The media-savvy Manual is politic enough to
avoid pointing fingers at his superiors.
But once in awhile his annoyance with them surfaces. “It would be nice,” he said the other day if
there was some young talent in the farm system that could help him
compensate
for the loss of Carlos Delgado. But
there’s not. “And whose fault is
that?”Manual
did not say. But the implication was
clear. And don’t think Omar Minaya and
Tony Bernazard didn’t wince when they heard what the manager said.
Good news for the Yanks and Red Sox
(and maybe for
still-pouting Mets fans): As reported by SI’s Jon Heyman - “Scott
Kazmir ‘doesn't
look healthy,’ one exec says. Instead of throwing 95 with a power
slider, he's
throwing 90 with a limp slider.”
Stat city: Entering last night’s games, the
runaway Dodgers
in the NL West led both leagues in team pitching. The
LAD’s were tops in ERA (3.64) and fewest
runs yielded (158 in 42 games). Kansas City led the AL
and was second overall in pitching; the Royals showed a team ERA of
3.79 and only
24 home runs yielded in 42 games, the fewest in the majors.
- 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: 5/21/09)
Socialism a
Bugaboo for GOP and Baseball
“I think
that baseball, at its
core, is the purest form of capitalism… There is no favoritism… and
that's the
way it should be.” - Detroit Tigers coach Andy Van Slyke
Andy Van Slyke was a player’s player in the 80’s
and 90’s –
a gold glove center fielder for the Cardinals and then the Pirates who earned respect for the way he carried
himself. His conservative views – probably
representative of how most major leaguers feel – are quotable because
this week
members of the Republican National Committee are taking a similar line
in
attacking the Democrats. A resolution
passed
at an RNC meeting near Washington
condemned what Team GOP calls the “Democrats’ march to socialism.” .
Van Slyke made clear how he feels about our
Democratic
president and socialism when he said if Obama were baseball
commissioner, “he might
be trying to spread 25 points of batting average to
somebody else so that they can have a better arbitration case.” Most Republicans see “spreading the wealth” as
socialistic;
it’s what happens in their view when the government invests tax dollars
in “entitlements”
- safety-net programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Polls show that most Americans like the
safety-net
approach, whatever it’s called. They may
grumble about paying taxes but more and more of them sense that
progressive
taxation leads to greater fairness in society.
What they may not understand yet is the connection between
taxation and
happiness. A global study has found that
the people in three northern European countries - Denmark,
Finland and Holland - are
most content with their lives. What they
have in common says Marketwatch’s
Thomas Kostigen is “some of
the highest
taxes in the world.
”Danes pay
about two-thirds of their
income in taxes. Why be so happy about that? It
all comes down to what you get in return…”
Danes are protected, Kostigen says, from
every wild pitch life can throw – affecting health, job loss, family
support,
old age, etc. He adds what’s obvious: Danes have no doubt they’re
getting – or
will get – what they’ve paid for. The
contrast in the U.S.
is striking, he says:
“ Taxes
in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association
because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return
for
paying them, other than the world's biggest military.
Healthcare and other such social services
aren't built into our system. That means we have to worry more about
paying for
things ourselves. Worrying doesn't
equate to happiness.”
- -
-
A year ago, the reeling Mets were unhappy about the loss of
Moises Alou – if injury to his brittle body hadn’t ended his season,
‘twas
said, their lineup wouldn’t have such a
gaping hole in it. Now it’s another
heavily
counted-upon veteran – Carlos Delgado – down for what may be the season. Again, there’s a hole with no one to fill
it. Fred Wilpon must be getting tired of
the Omar Minaya/Tony Bernazard act. Omar
invests big bucks in injury-prone vets; when they break down, there’s
no
remotely ready replacement in Bernazard’s farm system.
So the Mets will limp along offensively and
hope that their shaky front-line pitching will somehow keep them
competitive.
With a lineup that has turned into
Torturers Row, the
Yankees are the reverse-image of the Mets.
The pinstripers may not be leading the AL East on Memorial Day,
but it
will be a surprise here if they’re not on top (perhaps of the entire
league)
July 4th. The NYY organization
does have a concern, however: the new stadium is playing like a bandbox. ESPN’s Buster Olney suggested calling it
“Coors Field East” after the Yanks’ first HR-filled home games. Now, he notes, 65 home runs – 34 by the Yanks
– have been hit in 18 games. By
comparison, he says: “Last
year, the Yankees' pitchers allowed 68 for the entire
season, and the Yankees' hitters mashed 92, for a total of 160. So at
(roughly)
the current rate, there will be more homers hit in new Yankee Stadium
by July
17 -- the first home game after the All-Star break -- than there were
during
the entire 2008 season in old Yankee Stadium.”
Worst
part of the Mets’ collapse in LA – unless you’re a
Dodger fan – is the aid they’ve given Joe Torre’s team as it runs away
from the
rest of the weak NL West. Giants fans
were hopeful the Mets, so hot in SF, would have the needed fire-power
to cool
down the Dodgers. Early though the
season is, it will be a stunner if anyone in the division catches the
LAD’s now.
-
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: 5/19/09)
Yanks May Be as Sure
of Winning as Mike
The Yanks have taken six straight
games, giving them a
winning surge almost as strong as that of another team with a financial
edge –
the one belonging to Mike Bloomberg. The
most recent Quinnipiac poll showed the NYC mayor with a double-digit
lead over
announced Dem opponent Billy Thompson and quasi-candidate Anthony
Weiner.
The Yankees are clicking with key
cylinders missing…but not
for long. Brian Bruney, their solid
eighth-inning man, is due back from the DL tomorrow; starter Chien-Ming
Wang
and their backbone catcher Jorge Posada will rejoin the team in a few
days. Posada’s strong-armed fill-in Jose
Molina is
on deck to return by the end of the month.
If the Yanks can stay healthy - always a big if – they’re a
serious
threat to go all the way.
Bloomberg is more than a threat. As of now, he’s a lock. Although
he probably didn’t need it, he got a
significant boost last week when a prominent Upper West Side Democratic
club
declined to endorse Thompson. The club -
Three Parks - was one of few in the city
that refused to support Hillary Clinton last year.
Its choice of long, long-shot Tony Avella for
the Dem mayoral nomination flashes a sign that says:
“We don’t think the party’s conventional candidates
have a chance, so we might as well cheer on a principled maverick
against our
unprincipled anti-democratic mayor.”
At a meeting yesterday
sponsored by Manhattan Media, Weiner
was asked whether Thompson’s non-traction so far was building pressure
on the reticent
congressman to provide voters with another - perhaps more viable -
alternative
to the mayor? He said he was sensitive to the situation, but that his
higher priority was to concentrate on issues coming before the House at
this ”critical
time for the country.” He indicated that
he would circulate petitions next month to qualify as a candidate but
would probably
not decide whether to run in earnest until later in the summer. The consensus of the political observers on
hand: Bloomberg himself is the only one
who,
through a major error, can beat the incumbent mayor in his third-term
bid – an increasingly
unlikely scenario.
- -
-
Every team in both leagues has problems, but the Red Sox
seem to have more than their share.
They’ve been playing without clean-up man Kevin Youklis, a
hitting and
fielding loss, and Dice-K Matsuzaka, their number 2 starter; both are
injured,
Youk with muscle strain, Dice K with arm fatigue. Healthy
players are also causing problems for
the Sox. A power slump has benched David
Ortiz; then there’s the headache at shortstop, described by the Globe’s
Amalie
Benjamin:
“The
Sox now have 11 miscues from the
shortstop position, the most in the (AL
and tied with the Nationals in the NL). Shaky
defense has been all too common, whether it has been (Nick) Green or
Julio Lugo
stationed there. With Jed Lowrie's
return from wrist surgery still probably a month away, the Sox have had
to play
through a black hole at that spot. The
defense at short has been questionable enough that manager Terry
Francona
inserted minor league journeyman Gil Velazquez for defensive purposes
Saturday
night, rather than put in Green with the Sox in the lead.”
Stat city: Toronto’s Marco
Scutaro
(an ex-Met, by the way) leads all shortstops in fielding with a perfect
1.000
percentage – on 186 chances. Going into last night’s games, Derek Jeter and Minnesota’s Nick Punto were
tied for second in the AL with a .986 pct. – 141/143.
Colorado’s
Troy Tulewitzki led in the NL with .987 – 148/150.
Philadelphia’s
Jimmy Rollins was second - .985, 129/131.
San Diego’s
Heath Bell and
the Rangers’ Frank Francisco own perfect ERAs, Bell having given up no runs in 15
innings,
Francisco none in 14.2. KC’s Zack
Greinke leads starters in ERA with an 0.60 – four runs in 60 innings.
- 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: 5/16/09)
Opposition Surprising
Tribe and Team Obama
These days Team Obama finds itself like
the highly regarded
Cleveland Indians, who lead the AL Central in runs but are struggling
because
of surprising opposition. The Obama-ites
are 30 points ahead on the approval scoreboard but their momentum has
been
slowed also by a couple of stunning setbacks.
Cleveland’s opponents have made
the Indians
the worst AL
team in earned runs yielded and worst in their division in giving up
bases on
balls. Back-to-back brush-backs may stop
Team Obama from digging in on two issues. Fans
surveyed are showing they don’t like
skipper Barack’s stance on gun control and global warming.
The president could have seen it coming
had he checked the
trends in polls on those subjects taken in recent years.
A typical Gallup
survey, for example, found that less
than 30 percent of those polled backed a ban on handgun possession. And a Rasmussen sampling found that only a
third of respondents believed human activity was responsible for global
warming.
Washington Examiner columnist Michael
Barone sees the trends
as a lesson to liberals, one that clearly gives him satisfaction:
“These
shifts in opinion may be responses to events that liberal elites have
not
deigned to notice. Forty of the 50 states now have concealed weapons
laws that
allow law-abiding citizens to get permits to carry guns.
Gun controllers predicted these would result
in traffic shootouts and general mayhem. They
haven't. It turns out that criminals are
deterred from
attacks less by gun-control laws than by the possibility that their
intended
victims may be armed. As for global
warming, many Americans may have noticed that temperatures actually
haven't
been rising over the past decade, as global warming alarmists
predicted…
“Democratic
officeholders, who must live by the discipline of the ballot, have
noticed.
Party leaders did not press to re-enact the assault weapons ban when it
expired
and currently are flummoxed by (resistance to a) bill that would impose
huge
costs on those who use electricity.”
Electeds in cities certainly know
how their constituents stand on guns.
One reason NYC’s moneyed Mayor Mike Bloomberg can expect to win
liberal
votes despite his anti-democratic third-term stance is his strong
gun-control
leadership.
- -
-
NY’s two celebrity shortstops have
endured a week of sniping. First, SI’s
Tim Marchman suggested that Derek Jeter was fading as his 35th
birthday
approaches. Then the Daily News’ John
Harper said, in so many words, that the Mets should recognize Jose
Reyes is a “bonehead”
and wasn’t going to change: Therefore
they “may have
to seriously consider…whether Reyes’
penchant for costly mistakes outweighs his game-changing ability. (In
the end,)
trading Reyes may be the best way to remake a ballclub that leads the
world in
exasperating its fan base.” Harper quotes a rival GM as saying the Mets
could get an “impact
hitter” or even a “front-end starter” for Reyes and then easily get a
“heady”
shortstop like Orlando Cabrera to give the team “what you want” in that
position.
Boston has its own drama, which until last night could
have been
called the “Ortiz Watch.” David Ortiz was
batting .208, and had zero home runs for the season – 34 games and 130
at-bats.
Tito Francona moved the plot along
when
he benched Ortiz against Seattle
so he could “take a deep breath.” Next
questions: How long will Papi remain out of the lineup, and, when he
returns,
will he still be the team’s number three hitter?
A Jeter
homer, meanwhile, helped
the Yanks overcome the Twins last night.
The team has been energized by the emergence of rookie Bret
Gardner, who
played a key defile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlfensive role Thursday night in Toronto,
and had an in-the-park HR plus a triple among his three hits against Minnesota.
With the
Memorial Day milestone
approaching, roughly four-fifths of 30 mlb teams are statistically
still in
contention for division leads. Broad
competitiveness is missing in only one of the six divisions: the NL West has devolved into a two-team race
between the Dodgers and Giants. Colorado, Arizona
and San Diego
are falling
back into double-digit outlier-ness. One
or all of those teams could embrace the salary-dump scenario sooner
than
usual. The most probable early tradee:
Jake Peavy of the Padres.
- 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: 5/14/09)
How Field Was Cleared
for Drug Use and Water Torture
Steroid use and waterboarding - two
frowned-upon practices in
separate fields - surfaced together in similar fashion this week. Published reports say both the
baseball-related booster agent and the anti-terrorism technique had the
field
cleared for them years ago. Both
practices received the blessing of shadowy influential sources, making
it all
but impossible to stamp them out.
In the case of steroids, former Red Sox
player Lou Merloni
said that about a decade ago a doctor advised team members on how to
use the
muscle-enhancers properly: "It
was like teaching your teenage daughter about sex education," Merloni told the Globe’s Nick Cafardo. "The
organization acknowledged that there were likely players using
steroids and basically ‘if you're gonna use them, this is how you use
them so
you don't abuse them’.”
Merloni elaborated in a separate broadcast interview: "I'm
in spring training…(at a)
meeting. There's a doctor up there and he's talking about
steroids…He…says,
'You know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter
long, you
can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean. If you're going to take steroids, one cycle
won't hurt you; abusing it will’.”
Merloni emphasized
that the doctor was “in no way…encouraging us” to use steroids. Nevertheless, it would be hard to blame
players who took what the doctor said as encouragement.
The American
Spectator renewed this week a defense-of-waterboarding tradition that
has been
prevalent in the right-wing media since the public learned several
years ago
that the practice was sanctioned by Team Bush.
The Spectator described waterboarding in the benign detail long
used by
apologists: “The New York Times… labeled
it ‘gruesome,’ ‘shocking,’ and
‘near-drowning.’ In fact, it is none of
the three… In
waterboarding, the ‘individual is bound securely to an inclined
bench.… A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water
is then applied to the cloth in a
controlled manner… (as) the cloth is lowered until it covers both the
nose and
mouth.’ While performing this technique
‘air
flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds. . . (creating) the
perception
of drowning’."
National Review amplified a typical, unattributed
official
view in a 2007 article: “Though clearly
uncomfortable,
waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries…
There
is nothing ‘repugnant’ about waterboarding…It is something of which
every
American should be proud.”
If such propaganda did not make us proud, it did
prompt many
of us to take a purposeful pass on the matter.
Columnist Richard Cohen referred to what he called the “hard,
hard
question” in the Washington Post this week: “Is it more immoral to
torture
than it is to fail to prevent the deaths of thousands?”
-
- -
A sore quad is just the
latest sign of Derek Jeter showing
his age; he’ll be 35 next month. Sports
Illustrated’s Tim Marchman includes Jeter in his list of aging stars
who seem
to be fading: “New York's
shortstop is… starting to look crisp on the edges. Consider
this: Jeter (going into last night’s
game was) hitting .273/.347/.409 on the year -- down from his career
rates of
.315/.386/.458. Therefore, the difference between his passable but
uninspiring
offense and what he usually does is 42 points of batting average.
Granting that
he has lots of time to raise his average, is it more likely that a
34-year-old
shortstop with 14 years worth of tread on his tires is a .273 hitter or
a .315
hitter?”
Among
others on Marchman’s list of suspiciously slow veteran
starters: David Ortiz, Jason Giambi and Brian Giles.
The first part of the headline of Tom
Verducci’s latest SI
column is MANNY’S SUSPENSION PROVIDES A GIANT OPPORTUNITY FOR…Verducci
believes
San Francisco
now has a shot in the NL West. We
believe more than ever that, with the Dodgers scuffling, Manny himself
will be
the big winner. When he returns in July
he’ll likely be set up to replay his ’08 role as savior.
The Dodgers could probably scrape by in the
weak division without him. With him,
assuming that he’ll hit close to the old-Manny level, LA could (as
we’ve said
before) make it to the WS. Manny could
even be in a position to opt out of his second year with the Dodgers
and go
elsewhere for more money. There’s no
chance - it says here - of his being treated as a pariah anymore than
are Andy
Pettitte or Miguel Tejada. The only
penalty ahead of Manny is one all the identified star drug-users face:
no
admittance to Cooperstown. A punishment that will detract neither from
glory days still to come, nor from his bank account.
- 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.)
(5/12.09)
Banks, Baseball
Dealing Differently With Rules Changes
“Fifty days? Why
not
500?” If you’re a non-Manny or non-LA
Dodger fan, that question may have popped out of the Ramirez pickoff. In the same way, many of us – baseball fans
or not – may be puzzling over the latest series of plays in the bank
bailout
game.
Why did Manny get what many consider a
slap on the wrist
when mlb is desperate to see the players clean up their act? Then again, how come A-Rod, Andy
Pettitte,
Jason Giambi and others got off without even a slap?
And in the banking field, how is it that bailout
funds, once passed around unmonitored and based it seemed on personal
relationships, now are parceled out differently?
In both cases the answer is this: rules
keep changing and
leave many of us behind. A year ago,
when new, stricter drug rules were announced, baseball granted amnesty
to
people like Pettitte and, yes, Roger Clemens, who were implicated as
users in
the Mitchell Report. Manny, obviously,
didn’t make that cut under the new deal.
Last February, under tougher Team Obama rules, bailed-out banks
had to
agree, among other things, to take part in more foreclosure prevention
efforts. At least, that was the sign
flashed by Tim
Geithner. A week or so ago, the Senate
had a chance to lock the banks into that strategy.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin sponsored a bill
that would let desperate homeowners renegotiate their mortage payment. The final score on that bill: 45 for the
homeowners, 51 for the banks. That is,
defeat for Durbin’s initiative.
The scoreboard message: New rules or
not, the banking
interests will keep fouling off changes in their field.
The Manny punishment suggests that, slap or
not, baseball had the spine to brush back interested insiders who
surely wanted
Manny to get away with being Manny.
Durbin described the
bankers-being-bankers problem on Bill
Moyers Journal last weekend:
“When you
sit down and talk about some
fundamental reform of these financial institutions… so that folks
facing
mortgage foreclosure have a final chance to maybe save their homes…
basically
the banks are going to have the last word. It's
counterintuitive. The people who brought
this crisis to us are the ones that are dictating policy….The banking
industry…
fought me all the way…Even though the mortgage foreclosure crisis is
getting
progressively worse in this country, and is at the heart, I think, of
our
economic weakness…the banks were unwilling to step up and really
participate in
finding a solution…There are some leaders in this industry who really
don't
accept a corporate responsibility for the good of this nation.”
Durbin didn’t name names, but executives
of JP
Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have been mentioned as
playing
both sides of the field – expressing a willingness to compromise while
letting their
lobbying team rally votes in opposition to the bill.
The apparent switch-hitters: Jamie Diman,
chairman and CEO of Morgan Chase; Kenny Lewis, Bank of America’s
president and
CEO; and John Stumpf, CEO of Wells
Fargo.
- -
-
Should Mets fans be excited by the overdue sign of
life in their team? Newsday’s Wallace
Matthews offers caveats, but gives a main reason why the answer is yes:
“They still have some holes - there is still an infielder
playing leftfield, and a guy who can't hit lefties playing right, and
some
problems in the bullpen, notably Sean Green, who has great potential to
be the
new (Aaron)Heilman - but the one hole the Mets seem to have filled is
the one
where their killer instinct was supposed to be.”
Stat city:
Guess who has most pitchers among the AL’s 20 strikeout/walk ratio
leaders?
Seattle – Eric Bedard (6), Felix Hernandez (8) and Jarrod Washburn (11). The Red Sox and Yanks have one apiece on the
list – Jon Lester (7), A.J. Burnett (18). Minnesota’s
Kevin Slowey is at the top, with 25 Ks and only two BBs.
The Cubs have three in that NL category: Ted
Lilly (7), Rich Harden (16), Carlos Zambrano (17).
Florida’s
Josh Johnson, with 43 Ks and six walks, is number one.
The Mets and Phillies each have one on the
list – Johan Santana (4), Joe Blanton (13).
Strange skedding:
The Red Sox will come home from Seattle
next Sunday, having already completed their visits to the West Coast
for the regular
season. Prior to a home game Thursday
night, Tampa
Bay will have
played 22 of its first 33
games on the road.
Detroit fans are hoping 5/11 will be the day the Tigers
took the
lead in the AL Central (overtaking Kansas City) for good.
-
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: 5/9/09)
‘Evil Empire’ Expanding
into Politics as well as Baseball
Ask baseball fans – especially those
from Red Sox Nation –
to identify the Evil Empire, and we know what they’ll say.
Nearly everybody outside the pinstripe
precincts of NYC hates the Yankees because of the way they spend to
attract the
best available players. Turns out
the
Yankees have a counterpart on Wall Street; only instead of using money
to
attract top talent, this team - Goldman Sachs - uses its talent to
attract
money.
“Evil Empire” became part of the Red
Sox Nation lexicon when
the Yankees waited until a Sox-Rangers deal involving Alex Rodriguez
was all
but completed before swooping in and picking off A-Rod.
The NYYs signed Mark Teixeira the same way,
bettering a Boston
bid for the coveted first baseman at the 11th hour. The luring of Johnny Damon to New York was a
lesser surprise
hit, but a hit, nevertheless.
Goldman Sachs already had the players
on its long-term
roster with the clout to enrich the franchise:
Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Henry Paulson, etc.
And the team had an informal working
agreement with the NY Fed Reserve and its Skipper Tim Geithner, who
played
under Rubin as a minor leaguer. TruthDig’s Robert Scheer reminds us of
something that won’t go away: Geithner
while at the Fed qualified the firm to receive $18.1 billion in bailout
money. And that under Team Bush’s
Treasury Secretary
Paulson, “the bailout of Wall Street was dominated by Goldman Sachs
alums.”
Now that the Yankee lineup looks (with
variations) like this
- Jeter, Damon, Teixeira, Rodriguez, Matsui, Cano, Swisher, Cabrera,
with
Posada due back before the end of the month – there may well be “Evil
Empire”
grumbling among overmatched opponents.
The Yanks can shrug off the resentment as they focus on making
the
playoffs. Team Obama does not have that
luxury. If public outrage persists about
what Wall
Street wags are calling “Government Sachs,” the president may at last
acknowledge a need to rid the White House of its own little evil empire
in
Treasury.
- - -
The newest member of baseball’s community of banned-drug
users has shaken the sport in ways that even revelations about Barry
Bonds,
Roger Clemens and A-Rod failed to do.
Why? Because Manny was lovable in
his eccentric way…and man, could he hit!
ESPN’s Buster Olney has an insightful take on the game’s latest
stain:
“The sad part is
that… crime within baseball pays in a big way, as Ramirez has
demonstrated, and
A-Rod and others demonstrated before him. Manny is a certified user of
a banned
substance, but he's going to giggle his way all the way to the bank,
and he and
others can continue to do so unless Major League Baseball takes what
should be
viewed as the last necessary step in its battle against PEDs and
institute a
zero-tolerance policy.
“After
forcing his way out of the eight-year, $160 million
deal he signed with the Red Sox -- and now, of course, all that he has
accomplished will be cast into question, in the same way that the feats
of Barry
Bonds and Roger Clemens are in question -- Ramirez agreed to a
two-year, $45
million deal with the Dodgers this past offseason.
“It's
up to Manny whether he wants to walk away from the
contract after this season, but let's just hazard an early guess on
this point:
There is no way he will walk away, because starting today he is an
outfielder
who will turn 37 later this month and now is connected with the use of
performance-enhancing drugs, and no team with any sanity is going to
match the
money that Ramirez stands to make in the second year of his deal. If
you
thought Ramirez was a pariah after the way he dogged his way out of Boston, well, you
ain't
seen nothing yet.”
We disagree in part on the last point: Manny will
be
welcomed back in LA, possibly as the potential savior he was seen as
last
summer. And if he hits at close to his
drugged-up level, someone will propose naming a candy bar after him.
- 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: 5/7/09)
Ollie Perez and Obama
– the Good and the Bad
Just as Mets fans are familiar with the
two sides of Oliver
Perez - the “Good” Ollie and the “Bad” Ollie - so political
progressives now
see a “Good” and “Bad” Obama. The
different sides of the president came into sharp focus as his first 100
days as
skipper were evaluated.
Here is the lineup critics see
resulting from decisions by
the “Bad” Obama: 1 - Wall Street/Banks Bailout
($12.8
trillion); 2 - Uncurbed defense-related spending ($1 trillion);
3 - Open-ended military commitment in Iraq
(indefinite
long-term timetable); 4 - Expanded war in Afghanistan; 5 - Drone
attacks taking
innocent lives in Pakistan; 6 - Refusal to act to ease limits on labor
organizing; 6 - Dismissal of single-payer
health care consideration; 7 - Against
prosecution of Team Bush war crimes (including torture); 8 - No to
dismantling
Bush secrecy laws or restoring habeas corpus.
The “Good” Obama lineup: 1 - Pledge to
close Guantanamo and
CIA “black sites;” 2 - Ban on use of torture; 3 - Lifting of ban on
stem cell
research funding; 4 - Emphasis on dealing with climate change and
developing a
green economy; 5 - Submitting a strong economic stimulus bill; 6 -
Restored
re-engagement with the world and won back respect for the U.S; 7 -
Expressed
willingness to engage with countries shunned by Team Bush;
8 - Declared commitment to abolishing nuclear
weapons.
The Mets finessed their “Bad” Ollie
problem by consigning
Perez to the bullpen as a possible prelude to sending him back to the
minors. The Nation magazine, from which
the “Good” Obama lineup was compiled, suggests a similar, if partial
resolution
of what it agrees was a very“Bad” Obama error - the bailout: “Selecting
the (Larry)
Summers/(Tim) Geithner team was a huge lost opportunity and a major
misstep…(It) may (lead to) more anger in the form of right-wing
populism. But…Obama’s pragmatism and
experimentation
suggests that if the bank bailout doesn’t work and he’s confronted by
(growing)
citizen (dissatisfaction with) the Summers/Geithner approach, he may
move to
Plan B – or a Team B – to maintain his credibility and keep his agenda
alive.”
TruthDig.org’s
Chris Hedges, source of the “Bad” Ombama
lineup, may offer the
simplest and most clear-cut reasons why the president, flaws and all,
is
generally so popular: “(Obama) make(s) us
feel good about our government…We feel
hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us.”
- -
-
How badly will the Yankees miss Jorge Posada, hamstrunged
out for two to three weeks? Said Michael Kay on YES:
“When A-Rod returns, he won’t be adding to
the team. He’ll just be replacing
Posada…” Jorge had been on a tear: 20
rbi’s in 23 games. Six doubles and five
HRs among his 24 hits, and a .312 BA.
Quick pitches:
“It
seems like every game is the same with
them. All of those games could have gone
the other way. And we know they're
playing without A-Rod now."
- Dustin Pedroia
(to the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy Tuesday night)
"They
won’t
always pitch, but…the Dodgers are a daunting team (that)…looks like
they are
going to hit all summer long.” – Tim
Brown, Yahoo Sports
Stat
city: Going into last night’s games,
former Met
Heath Bell, now with the Padres, and the Cardinals’ Ryan Franklin were
the two
NL closers with ERA-perfect records – Bell
in
10.2, Franklin
11.1 innings. Cincinnati’s Arthur Rhodes and the
Mets’
Brian Stokes are two other relievers with 0.00 ERAs – Rhodes in 10
innings,
Stokes in 11. In the AL,
save leader (8) Frank Francisco of Texas,
had a perfect ERA over 13.2 innings.
Non-closer Octavio Dotel of the White Sox was also perfect over
9.1
innings.
- 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: 5/5/09)
Empty Stadium Seats
Attract Rare Protest Coverage
The empty seats in Yankee Stadium - bad
news for the
Steinbrenners - are a good sign for those of us who worry about the
disappearance of mass protests from American life.
Why?
Not because of the numbers. “Mass” is a misnomer when referring
to maybe
the hundreds of people missing from a ballpark that holds 50,000. Nor is it because the absentees were
organized. The ticket-holders who didn’t
show were individuals, acting on their own.
Protests that count - most of them political - are orchestrated
by
issues-oriented groups that bring like-motivated people together to
make a
collective statement.
The hopeful aspect of the empty-seats
story is the coverage
it has received from the mainstream print media. The
press tends to dismiss demonstrations as
“photo-ops” – picture stories that have little or no news-worthiness. The visual non-demo at the Stadium is
attracting sustained coverage because it’s an economic as well as a
sports
story. Political protests during the Bush
era didn’t have that dual appeal; yet the single issue was a compelling
one:
preemptive war. The dismissive media
attitude abetted Team Bush in its effort to win widespread acceptance
of Iraq.
The stadium-empty-seats syndrome
threatens to become a running
story at Citi Field.
A month into the season it is clear the Mets have
neither
the pitching nor enough timely-hitting talent to remain in contention
as they
are. That NL East competitors will have
problems of their own seems the team’s only hope. The
reality of the Mets’ plight could become
evident as early as the next few weeks.
They come home from Atlanta
to play two against the Phillies, and three with Pirates and the
Braves. Then
it’s off to the West Coast for seven games with the Giants and Dodgers,
followed
by three on Memorial Day weekend with the Red Sox at Fenway. Burial time?
If so, stories about “Citi Cemetery”
will seem
doubly appropriate..
The print media buried hopes of peace
activists by
discouraging protests aimed at preventing the Iraq war from starting. One example:
On October 26, 2002, five months before “shock and awe”, 200,000
marchers
converged on Washington
to rally against Team Bush’s pre-war buildup.
The NY Times gave the story a few perfunctory paragraphs,
written in
advance of the actual event. Four days
later, it acknowledged – in response to complaints - that the event was
bigger
and more meaningful than its coverage indicated.
When post-invasion marches received
similar minimizing
treatment, it gradually became clear to even the most ardent activists
that
their efforts were making no impact. (Another factor: the remarkable
lack of
prominent political and religious participants.) Historians say that
for
centuries wars have won broad support because people perceive them to
be
necessary evils. In the U.S.,
from late 2002 to, roughly, 2006, the media fed that perception, in
part, by
trivializing the substantial visible movement for peace.
In 2009, this spring,,
a different kind of sustained protest
movement may be getting under way: against the banks for predatory
treatment of
struggling homeowners. Labor unions
organized demonstrations outside Bank of America offices in 75 cities
last
week. And Bill Moyers Journal last week
covered
an ongoing anti-bank community action in Boston. That
protest is being supported by the
Presbyterian Church, a possible model for other faith-based communities
in the
country.
-
- -
Baseball America
provided a further clue to the depth of the Mets’ problems: the
magazine’s
survey of performances for the month of April uncovered 20 “hot” minor
league
prospects. Three each belong to the
Orioles and Indians, two each to the Marlins and Braves.
Not a single member of the Mets system
appeared on the list. Then there’s the NYM
affiliate from which help normally could be expected - Triple-A Buffalo. It had won four of 22 games as of early last
night. Could
that be why Director of Player
Development Tony Bernazard has been keeping a low profile?
"People
are always trying to get me to
say something bad about the guy, but there's nothing bad to say.” That’s
Red Sox shortstop Nick Green, talking
(to the Globe’s Nick Cafardo) about Alex Rodriguez.
Green was a teammate of A-Rod’s with the
Yankees and worked out with him off-season.
He has a perspective different from most seen in print these
days about
Alex, soon to return as Yankee third baseman: “He
was a great teammate as far as I could
see. I know that he really helped younger guys all the time, especially
Robinson Cano and
Melky Cabrera. He spent a lot of time with
those guys,
teaching them the game and showing them the right way to do things,
just as he
did with me. I think we all appreciated what he did for us…
(Off-season in Miami)
"We'd
work out and we'd go hitting. I'd be there in the batting cage
taking my swings and I thought I was swinging the bat so well, and then
he gets
in there and you see him do his thing and it's just at a level you
can't
possibly imagine. Hitting a baseball sounds a lot different when he
does it
than when anybody else does it. It's
amazing to watch him. It's not something
you can really describe to people, but as a professional baseball
player, I'm
in awe of what he does.”
- 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: 5/2/09)
The Insider Game in
Baseball and Political Moneyball
Baseball became an insider-run game in
1951, when mlb owners
forced hyperactive A.B. “Happy” Chandler
to resign as commissioner, in favor of the more compliant Ford Frick. More
than a half-century later, the nation’s fans saw U.S. Moneyball become
a Wall
Street-insider game when Team Obama chose Tim Geithner to be Treasury
Secretary.
Chandler
riled owners by trying to be as independent as predecessor Kenesaw
Mountain Landis,
who was given unlimited clout after the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Among other decisions, Happy made 15 owners
unhappy when he overruled their attempt to stop the Dodgers from
signing Jackie
Robinson in 1945.
Geithner, we know, has enraged
taxpayers by using their
money to bail out the very banks who hit
into the current financial collapse.
The mlb owners would argue that, under
Frick and his
successors who played ball with them - Bill Eckert, Bowie Kuhn, Peter
Ueberroth, Bart Giamatti, Francis (Fay) Vincent and Allan (Bud) Selig -
the
national pastime has expanded at home, caught on abroad - and
flourished. Geithner
believes - hopes – that his giveaway-game-plan will be similarly
successful
down the line.
Meanwhile, public outrage
notwithstanding, Geithner and
teammate Larry Summers have received minimal razzing in the mainstream
media. Earlier this week, the NY Times
did lay out Geithner’s personal ties with the people who benefited from
the
government handouts. And Nobel Prize
economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have second-guessed the
bailout
strategy. But at Wednesday night’s
presidential news conference, for example, the man who signed the
Geithner/Summers duo didn’t hear their names mentioned.
This was the only exchange that came within a
mile of hitting the ball as it should have:
Jonathan
Weisman, Wall Street Journal: You
are currently the chief shareholder of a
couple of very large mortgage giants...And I'm wondering, what kind of
shareholder are you going to be? What is the government's role as the
keeper of
public trust ?
Obama: Well,
I think our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get
out. You know, I don't want to…run banks. I've got two wars I've got to
run
already. I've got more than enough to do.
So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off
we're
going to be. We are in unique
circumstances. You had the potential collapse of the financial system,
which
would have decimated our economy, and so we had to step in.
As
I've said before, I don't agree with every
decision that was made by the previous administration when it came to
(the
first bailout), but the need for significant intervention was there,
and it was
appropriate that we moved in.
What Obama
did was to finesse the bailout subject, engaging in the
equivalent of fouling off pitches he didn’t want to handle. It was an implicit defense of Geithner’s
insider-influenced strategy, containing not a word of sympathy for the
taxpayers burdened by that strategy. The
question the response raises: how long will the president be able to
duck away
from that keenly felt concern? A separate
question: Why has Congress been so complicit in the giveaways? An answer given by Illinois Senator Dick
Durbin on a Chicago
radio station this week: “The banks…are still the most
powerful lobby on Capitol Hill…And they frankly own the place.”
- -
-
A source of concern to the Red Sox is the travail of their
ace Josh Beckett. He is exhibiting the
Chien-Ming Wang-type symptom – loss of location. The
Globe’s Adam Kilgore filed a face-to-face
report on what Beckett is going through:
“In
four starts since his Opening Day
masterpiece, Beckett is 1-2 with a 9.14 ERA. His last two starts have
yielded
15 runs, 20 hits, and 7 walks in 9 2/3 innings.
Beckett says he feels ’real good’ physically, and ‘that's part
of the
frustration… It's a lot of things. I just got to make adjustments’.” When asked precisely what he had in mind, Beckett
answered in three words: “I don’t know.”
The Red Sox have plenty of offense to
compensate for any
pitching letdown, including (pre-last night’s games) the AL’s number
one clutch
hitter in late innings: Jason Bay (seven for 11, .636, when batting in
tight
games from the seventh inning on). As of early last night, the Yankees
had four
of the league’s top 20 close and late clutch hitters – Robinson Cano
(.467),
and Derek Jeter, Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada (all .429).
In the NL, prior to the Mets game, the
Phillies had four of
the top 25 late clutchers – Chase Utley (.714), Raul Ibanez (.583),
Matt Stairs
(.500) and Pedro Feliz (.429). The
Dodgers had three, including Manny Ramirez and Orlando Hudson (both at
.467). The Mets had none.
The Phillies’ Shane Victorio told NY
Timesman Jack Curry
that his resilient team – nine of 11 come-from-behind victories – has
the
“chemistry” that produces the sense “you’re never out of it.” Jerry Manuel intends to “address” the Mets’
lack of come-from-behind confidence. But
“addressing” the need for winning chemistry is unlikely to get him
anywhere.. Change is needed, and that is
out of Manuel’s
hands.
- 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.)
April 2009
Archive
(Posted: 4/30/09)
What Baseball and the
Bailout Have in Common
Any baseball fan meeting friends from
the other side of the political
field knows how to avoid a verbal brawl: “How about those Mets (Yanks,
Red Sox,
etc.)?” Baseball can bring opponents
together, at least for the moment, providing a common base of interest.
MIT Prof. Simon Johnson says the bank
bailout is playing
like baseball; it has created common ground on which the left and right
can
stand.. Appearing on Bill Moyers Journal
last weekend, Johnson, a former International Monetary Fund executive,
said all
of us bailout-bashers on the third-base side of the diamond have
company:
“Everyone's
worried
about…the disproportion of power in the hands of a relatively few
financial big
players…You can worry about it from a left point of view. You say,
‘Well, this
is just unfair and it obviously affects distribution of power and
income.’ You can worry about it from a
right point of
view because it leads to corporate welfare. Actually,
I think everyone's opposed to
corporate welfare (for) these big players.”
Johnson says the banking big guys
think they’ve won, and they’re right: “They
got the bailout. They got the money they needed to stay in business.
They got a
vast line of credit from the taxpayer…The banks have (even succeeded in
getting)
control of the state… Not the state control of the banks. If the state had control of the banks, the
banks wouldn't be able to turn around and say, no on your Chrysler deal
and no
way on modifying the rules about mortgages…”
The chances of a public outcry
leading to fairer government measures are not good, says Johnson. Why? “We're
having a moment of relative clarity right now where a lot of people are
agreeing. But these things pass.
“The
baseball season
is upon us.”
Historical note: “(In) the
Depression of 1929-31…Britain’s was the first
major economy to turn the corner…(It) spen(t) on new housing, which
reanimated
the construction industry…In France, by contrast, governments…lent
large sums
to banks…and lost it.”
- From The
Penguin History of the Second World War (reissue 1999)
- -
-
From the e-mailbag, re baseball’s racist history (previous
Nub): “The
disgrace to MLB is the failure to honor Commisioner Albert
("Happy") Chandler's role in causing the color line to be
broken. The vote to dishonor the
Dodgers' contract with Jackie Robinson was 15-to-1 with all owners --
apart
from the Dodgers -- voting against.
Chandler, former Kentucky
senator, overrode the
racists, He was rewarded by having his contract not renewed. (Commisioner
Kenesaw Mountain)
Landis, a devout racist, denied Bill Veeck's effort purchase the
Phillies in
1944 upon learning that Veeck planned to engergize the ‘Phutile’
Phillies by
hiring Negro players.”
David
Schechter, Wilmette,
IL
“Unwatchable,” a word easily associated
with the ’08 Mets,
is fast becoming applicable to the doleful ’09 edition.
Worse, the NY Post’s Kevin Kernan is already saying
the unsayable about Omar Minaya’s Mets:
Kernan suggested the other day that the NY team with the second
highest
mlb payroll could finish the season under-.500.
Tuesday night’s TV lineup offered a
perfect illustration of
the fan-appeal challenge facing the Mets in their competition with the
Yanks. What attentive fan would choose
to watch Livan Hernandez pitch against the Marlins rather than see
young Phil
Hughes take on the Tigers? Another Omar
salvage project on SNY, a prospect on YES.
Multiply that disadvantage four (non-Santana) games out of five
and one
could almost sympathize with the over-hyped, under-clutched Metsies.
- 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: 4/28/09)
When Racism, Fascism Went
to Bat
Observance this month of Jackie
Robinson’s breakthrough 52
years ago points to a gap in baseball’s voluminous history: the racist
period. Details of the behind-the-scenes
maneuvering
by the mlb commissioner and owners to keep the pro sport segregated
during its
first half-century have remained unreported.
(Commish
Kenesaw Mountain
Landis was sometimes called the “Great White Father.”) That nothing
useful
could come of compiling such a report - baseball’s implicit stance –
is, we
know, also at the center of a political debate these days:
whether to disclose more detailed information
about torture and those involved.
International Herald Tribune columnist
William Pfaff has
gone to bat forcefully for disclosure. He recalls the 1935 Sinclair
Lewis novel
“It Can't Happen Here” which foresaw “install(ation
of)
an American counterpart to the fascist
dictatorships already in power in Italy
and Germany.” That turned out to be a false alarm, says
Pfaff. But:
“When
‘It’ did happen
was in 2001-2008, in the Bush administration.
There was a takeover of the government by a self-willed
executive power,
unprecedented in American history. The president and vice president
acted on a
novel and legally unsupported claim to unlimited ‘wartime’ presidential
and
executive-branch power. The justification was an illegal, undeclared
war.
”International law and American treaty obligations were defied, as were
established American law on the conduct of war and the treatment of
prisoners, constitutional
protections, and the surveillance of citizens.
All of this occurred without meeting serious, or at least
successful,
Congressional or judicial challenge, with little or no objection from
the
national…media….
“President
Obama’s
unwillingness to see his first term dominated by the crimes of the Bush
administration is comprehensible. Yet
there is a limit. The…moral vacuum created and encouraged during the Bush years
is so outrageous, perverse, sadistic and nihilistic that it demands
attention…”
It’s a demand that has particular
resonance today, the fifth anniversary of our first seeing photos of
the
horrors fellow Americans perpetrated at Abu Ghraib.
Out
of the lost weekend at Fenway
came a sense that the Yankees will find themselves and be all right. One reason: Hideki Matsui is healthy enough
to have reclaimed his stroke. Another:
the oft-mentioned possibility that Alex Rodriguez will be back in the
lineup
sometime next week. A-Rod-added punch or
not, the Yanks may well have to settle for the wild card.
The Red Sox confirmed that they are extremely
deep, thanks to an impressive farm system that keeps producing young
arms like
Hunter Jones and Michael Bowden (not to mention Jon Lester, Justin
Masterson,
etc.) When Globe reporter Adam Kilgore
suggested to Tito Francona that the farm system might give him the
equivalent
of a 14-man pitching staff, the manager said, “Or 18 or 20.”
Anyone
watching the Phillies sweep
the Marlins over the weekend (on MLB and TBS), coming from behind in
the ninth
twice, could not help but notice the contrast between the defending
champions
and the Mets: the Phils exude energy,
bounce and clutch hitting. The Mets
convey the opposite of resiliency - tightness under pressure. Re: Oliver Perez – one can almost hear Fred
Wilpon saying to Omar Minaya: “$36 million!
What could you have been thinking?”
Mets have
lots of pitching-woes
company, the LA Angels the most striking example. Three LAA starters
are on the
injury shelf: None of the three - John
Lackey, Ervin Santana and Kelvim Escobar – is expected back before the
end of
next month. Meanwhile, the Angels are
looking to sign someone from the independent Atlantic League.
- 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:
4/25/09)
Political All-Stars
Event – a Scorer’s Notes
On a political playing field the other
night - a Manhattan
Democratic club
- baseball was served up during appearances by four pol all stars. The occasion: an NYC public advocate
candidates forum involving the four – Eric Gioia, Norman Siegel, Mark
Green and
Bill de Blasio. All lefties, they
comprised a formidable pitching rotation.
The night’s starter Gioia, up from the
Council team out of Queens, kept
everybody on his toes with a rapid-fire
delivery. The newest face among the
four, he established himself as a pesky comer by defying those who run
the outfit
in Queens and competing successfully
to make
the Council roster. That was eight years
ago. Since then Gioia has been firing
away on behalf of, among others, people on food stamps and residents of
the
huge Queensbridge Houses project in his Woodside district.
He actually tried playing for a week while
living on food stamps. And he went to
bat successfully to bring services to the project. Gioia’s
energetic style has paid off
dollar-wise: he’s the most well-heeled member of the rotation.
Seconds into his pitching turn, civil
liberties league
veteran Siegel threw a high, hard one at the city and the Yankees. His target: their failure to keep a pledge to
local residents of the area around the new Stadium. “The people in the South Bronx want their parkland back,” he said. Twenty-two acres of public green space was
traded
away as part of the stadium deal. The
community has yet to get the promised compensatory recreational
parcels. Siegel delivered the locals’ case
at a
demonstration protesting against the delay on the new Stadium’s opening
day. He’s also bearing down on Team
Bloomberg’s
plan to turn over 40 percent of playing fields on Randalls Island
to 20 private schools. “This,” the
combative Siegel called out, “is who I am.”
Green, looking to win the
comeback-player-of-the-year award,
pitched with an easy, effortless motion.
He acknowledged the high velocity of the others in the rotation. But, he said, where they are still prospects,
“I’ve shown what I can do.” Back in the
dugout, he reviewed the record book of his stint as top man on the
public
advocate team from 1993 to 2001. The
info accompanying his stats detailed his forcing the tobacco industry
to stop
appealing to young would-be smokers. It
also noted his work in disclosing that the NYPD only penalized one in
20
officers found to have committed “substantive” offenses. Green
indicated Mayor Bloomberg could expect
brush-backs from him. He said he has
many new ideas to let loose if returned to the PA team.
Closer for the night Bill de Blasio,
from the Council team
out of Brooklyn, impressed spectators
with his
confident delivery. Less familiar to Manhattan
spectators than
the others, he pitched the fight he led in the Council against the
extension of
term-limits by legislation instead of referendum. He
said affordable housing would be his
focus, as it has been. He told of getting
buzzed on a plan he had formulated for affordable housing in his Park
Slope
neighborhood. “When I called (deputy
mayor) Dan Doctoroff about it, he said ‘Bill, we’ll fight you to the
death on
this one’.” As the game was wrapping up,
de Blasio was asked if he would support the Democrat in the mayoral
race. He tossed out a spirited “Yes!”
before the
question was even completed.
Scorers’s note: We’ve
worked in the past with Siegel and Green and have a high regard for
both. But Gioia and de Blasio are superior
candidates as well. This is surely the
season’s
most interesting citywide primary race
- -
-
It seemed to us early on that, from a pitching standpoint,
Omar Minaya was like the man who jumped out the window, hoping he - and
the
Mets -were on the first floor. He took
the chance that his starters after Johan Santana would come around; he
took it
even though Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez and John Maine were clearly an
iffy
trio. Now the Mets are plunging toward
the basement, and, although Jerry Manuel says he’s prepared to
“address” his
pitching problem, his implicit message to Minaya (through the media) is:
“Get me help!” Mark
Mulder would surely be worth a shot from Manuel’s standpoint. No Pedro Martinez, thank you.
And, please, no more Nelson Figueroa-types.
The Washington Post’s Tom
Boswell offers some D.C.
perspective on Boston’s
concern about David Ortiz: “The Red Sox better
hope Kevin Youklis can keep tearing it up at No. 4
because Ortiz looks like he may have gotten old fast. Pitchers
are challenging him up and in with
mediocre fastballs… and dominating him”
And
here is Boswell on Lastings Millidge, newly
dropped to triple-A by the Nationals: “Looks
like he's a corner OF with CF power (ie., not quite enough). I
think he still has trade value. That New York Hype machine takes a long
time to wear off…. The
main problem perhaps: Lastings loves being a big leaguer more than he
enjoys
the game itself. If that ever changes, he could be a fine player.”
- 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: 4/23/09)
Baseball and Politics
Differ on Looking Back
We know one reason for baseball’s
popularity is its
preoccupation with the past. Fans take
pride in total recall of the sport’s memorable stats and moments. The common themes are clutch performances,
excellence, even greatness. Politics, by
contrast, avoids dwelling on the - often dubious - past. Policies
and events that are error-filled,
like the yanqui record in Latin
America, is a pertinent example.
Skipper Obama’s polite encounter with
Hugo Chavez in the Trinidad clubhouse
set off a commotion in right field, in
part, because the democratically-elected Venezuelan president is, for
some in
that field, a “dictator”, a “tyrant.” In
a typical accusation, CNN’s senior political analyst Gloria Barger
complained “(Chavez) say(s)
outrageous things about us.”
But
what really caused a rhubarb at the Summit was the sudden presence of
another
player: Eduardo Galeano. A Uruguayan who
appeared in name only as the author of a book Chavez gave Obama,
Galeano
treaded where many Americans would prefer not to go: into the
hemispheric
record book. He called his history “The
Open Veins of Latin America.”
Galeano’s accounts of the U.S.
“pillaging” its neighbors to
the south distresses many of our political and media people. Better to pass over purposely - they believe
- names like Arbenz (of Guatemala),
Allende, and even Chavez, whom Team Bush
helped depose briefly in 2002. In a
review of “Open Veins,” Salvador Allende’s cousin Isabel reminded
readers of
the U.S. Latin American record in the late 1900’s alone:
“It
was the
time of the Cold war, and the United States would not allow a leftist
experiment to succeed in what Henry Kissinger called ‘its backyard.’ The Cuban revolution was enough; no other
socialist project would be tolerated, even if it was the result of a
democratic
election. On September 11, 1973, a
Military Coup ended a century of democratic tradition in Chile
and
started the long reign of General Augusto Pinochet. Similar coups
followed in
other countries, and soon half the continent's population was living in
terror.
This was a strategy designed in Washington and
imposed
upon the Latin American people by the economic and political forces of
the
right. In every instance the military
acted as mercenaries to the privileged groups in power. Repression
was organized on a large scale;
torture, concentration camps, censorship, imprisonment without trial,
and
summary executions became common practices. Thousands
of people ‘disappeared,’ masses of exiles
and refugees left their
countries running for their lives…” (Monthly Review, April 1997)
Now
wonder the right attacked Obama: he accepted a record
book few Americans knew existed, and fewer still want publicized.
- -
-
If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, he could entitle a
story about the 2009 Mets “The Tell-Tale Lack of Heart.”
Going into last night’s game in St.Louis, six
of seven Mets defeats occurred in contests in which opponents had
overtaken
them. When a lead evaporates, Jerry
Manuel’s team seems to lose the spunk needed to persevere to victory. It’s a failing the Metsies displayed a year
ago as well, under Willie Randolph.
With two-plus weeks of the season
completed, we have
unlikely first-place teams in three of the six divisions: Florida
in the NL East, and Toronto and Seattle in the
AL East and West. But the Yanks and Red
Sox are already
ruffling the Jays’ feathers, so they may not remain on top much longer. Lots of fun in store this weekend at Fenway Park,
with both teams, the Sox and NYYs, getting their acts together.
The Pirates’ three-game spearing of the
Marlins qualifies as
the biggest early-week surprise. Bucs
starter Paul Maholm is 3-0; closer Matt Capps has five saves and hasn’t
given
up a run.
- 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: 4/21/09)
Fans Lament Distancing
of Obama and Baseball
Q - What do many B. Obama and NY
baseball fans have in
common?
A - A sense that all is not as
good as it should be in their
world.
Both feel distanced; the Yankees and
Mets have relegated the
average fan to the far reaches of their new parks, each as much a mall
as a
place to play ball. Early on, skipper
Obama let coaches Tim Geithner and Larry Summers run the team; neither
distinguished himself for fair play.
Barack’s Middle Eastern game plan has been as fuzzy as it is
unpopular. No one sees how competing
both in Afghanistan
and Iraq
can
end in wins.
And, despite the skipper’s smiles and words, two
change-averse Team Bush holdover advisors (Jeffrey Davidow, Thomas
Shannon) are
obstructing the sight of where Obama’s going in Latin
America.
The Nation columnist Naomi Klein sees
the need for a wider,
more realistic perspective:
“A
growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the
possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if
we all
just hope really hard.
“This
is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power
is going to transform itself into an independent political movement,
one fierce
enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we
are all
going to have to stop hoping and start demanding…
“Hope was a fine slogan when rooting
for a long-shot presidential candidate. But
as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth,
it is
dangerously deferential. The task as we
move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find
more
appropriate homes for it…”
Klein urges
small-ball
activism rather than waiting for the skipper, remote in the stately
white dugout,
to push the buttons that make good things happen.
- -
-
Sunday at the new Stadium, 9,000 no-shows. YES
camera coverage showing, mainly, on-field
action and wide shots of the 43,000 in attendance.
Then, in the bottom of the seventh, during
the replay interruption of the Yanks-Indians game, viewers were shown a
friendly front-of-dugout chat between Joe Girardi and Derek Jeter. In the background: rows and rows of empty
premium seats. True
fans could see plainly on this perfect
weekend afternoon how little the big spenders cared and how the game
had moved
away from what they remembered it to be.
Over at Citi Field, “Figgy” (Nelson
Figueroa) - the aptly
nicknamed stopgap starter for the Mets - pitched just badly enough to
give Milwaukee
a win. On Sunday, filling in for Mike
Pelfrey, the
34-year-old journeyman was a familiar sight - a fig leaf covering the
paucity
of promising talent in the Mets’ system. Casey
Fossum, Figgy’s replacement, is the
latest wilted exhibit.
Newsday’s Wallace Matthews noticed
swatches of empty seats
at Citi as well as at the Stadium. Here
was his take in yesterday’s Newsday: “ Both
ballparks were built on many of the same principles
that are destroying our economy. Both
teams grotesquely, and artificially, inflated the value of their
product, and
did their best to create a false sense of demand by reducing capacity
and
trying to bully longtime fans into paying absurd new prices or risk
being shut
out.”
It’s
early, but two-plus weeks into the season it looks as though
Joe Torre’s Dodgers, with a payroll half the size of the Yankees
($100,000 to
$201,000), have as good a chance as the pinstripers (if not better) to
win
their division. Prematurely speaking, the
Dodgers may be the only division-winning sure thing in the MLB
- 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.)
Will Obama Change Stance Toward
Team Chavez?
Late last year, a reporter asked White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen who
was the
toughest man he knew. “Fidel Castro,” he
said. “Everybody’s against him, and he
still survives, has power. Still has a country behind him.
Everywhere he goes they roll out the red
carpet. I don’t admire his philosophy. I
admire him.”
Guillen, a proud Venezuelan, has never claimed to be a supporter of
his
country’s president Hugo Chavez. But
Chavez could easily be his choice as second toughest. After all,
Guillen
watched as Chavez led a failed left-wing coup against a rightist Caracas government in 1992. Six
years later, soon after release from jail,
Chavez won the presidency with a campaign based on advocacy for the
poor and
greater public control of the country’s oil resources.
He survived a U.S.-supported right-wing coup
attempt in 2002 and was re-elected to a third term in 2006, much to the
distress of Team Bush.
The big question at the Latin American Summit in Trinidad/Tobago is
how America’s new
president will get along with
Chavez, who like Castro (far from unpopular with “everybody”), has most
of Latin America behind him.
Skipper Obama has called Chavez an “obstacle to progress” in the
hemisphere. NYU’s Greg Grandin, author of
“Empire’s
Workshop: Latin America, the U.S.
and the Rise of the New Imperialism,” calls that stance a mistake:
“(The) left turn that started with
Chávez's 1998 election as Venezuela's
president…still continues apace. Last year, after all, Paraguay elected a liberation
theologian as
president; and last month… the guerrilla group turned political party
Ronald
Reagan spent six billion dollars and 70,000 Salvadorean lives trying to
defeat
in the 1980s finally came to power in El Salvador…
“Love Chávez or hate him, he is
recognized as a legitimate leader by all Latin American countries
and is a close ally to
many. For eight years, a Bush administration policy of driving a wedge
between
the rest of the region and the Venezuelan proved a dismal failure,
except when
it came to increasing the outflow of Washington's
hemorrhaging power in the hemisphere.” (The Nation)
The wfile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlelcome
Team Obama gave the conciliatory words of Raul
Castro yesterday might be a sign the president is in a
let-bygones-be-bygones
mood at the Latin American Summit. But
everyone recognizes that a teaming up of the U.S.
and Chavez is far from a sure
thing.
E-mailbag exchange: “ I agree
with much of what you wrote about Castro in your
latest blog. However, I think your praise
of Castro needs a little tempering.
After all, he did imprison a lot of people who disagreed with
him. The
ACLU probably will not give him any medals for his toleration of dissent.” - D.Bruner, Budapest, Hungary
To:
D.Bruner: “Can't
defend Castro for his imprisonments, especially of gays,
jailed only because of their sexual persuasion.
But, there have been no
documented reports of torture. And many,
if not most, dissidents were found to have been on the CIA payroll. Overriding post-cold-war question: Why should
we be judging - even seeking to subvert - the policies of other
sovereign
states?”
- -
-
With nearly two weeks in the
books, it’s time to take one team seriously: the Florida Marlins. Yes, the Marlins, the team with the lowest
payroll in the majors - $37 million (just $4 million more than Alex
Rodriguez) -
have the best record in either league. Florida’s
rotation, featuring Ricky Nolasco, Josh Johnson, Chris Volstad and
Anibal
Sanchez, strengthens the sense the Marlins will make the NL East a
four-team
race.
John
Smoltz, Mark Kotsay and
Julio Lugo: that threesome working out
this weekend in Fort Myers
will be reinforcing the hurting Red Sox, one by one, as spring
progresses. Infielder Lugo is expected to be the first, in
a week
or so, outfielder/first baseman Kotsay, shortly thereafter, and pitcher
Smoltz
sometime in June.
The puffery
for eateries at both
new ballparks has been egregious. Yesterday,
it was Michael Kay and Paul O’Neil on YES, ooohing over the Mohegan Sun
Bar in
the new Stadium. “How about if we go out
there tomorrow?” one asked the other. The
other night, SNY’s Kevin Burkhardt stood on the terrace outside the
Acela, a
high-end place at Citi Field. He
explained the series of seatings, the limitations on who qualified for
admission, etc. All this while the
Mets-Padres game was in progress. On
Wednesday night, when there were patches of empty grandstand seats at
Citi, the
cameras were directed instead at the long lines waiting for service at
Shake
Shack. Looked like a good crowd was on
hand.
Keith
Hernandez is often fun to
listen to on SNY, as well as insightful.
But occasionally he slips into questionable taste, as he did
this week: Fumbling for a name or stat, he
said “I’m
getting Alzheimer’s.”
- 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: 4/16/09)
Fidel Is Still Faithful
to Baseball
Fifty years ago last January, a former
college baseball
player led the overthrow of a Cuban dictator.
The ex-pitcher took control of the island nation, and soon
turned it
into a feisty Communist and Moscow-protected opponent of Team USA. Since then, while playing David to America’s Goliath, Fidel Castro has
maintained
his love for America’s
national pastime; he’s persisted in that affection despite US-linked
terrorist
acts, a military invasion and an economic embargo that has deprived his
people
of all but basic sustenance. American
hostility persisted for no rational foreign-policy reason after the
cold war
ended in 1989.
Not long ago, even the most tenacious
anti-Castro exile
outfit in Florida conceded what had
long since
been acknowledged outside of Miami:
that Fidel
had won the standoff with the U.S.;
or, at least, the effort to bat him away had not worked.
And earlier this week, Team Obama took a
first, tentative step toward normalizing relations with Cuba.
The embargo remains in place and newly permitted
travel on
the island will be restricted to Cuban-Americans. But
it is a start that should be welcomed by
the majority of Americans who feel no animosity toward Cuba.
Fidel himself considers the step
“positive” but insufficient.
His only truly negative remark about the U.S. lately had to do with
baseball. The MLB-organized World Baseball
Classic
bracketed the Cuban team early with Japan
and South Korea,
the two best teams in the tournament. He
saw it as a deliberate effort to try to get rid of the Cubans before
the
semi-final round.
It’s doubtful that Skipper Obama will
say anything about
Fidel at the Latin American Summit beginning tomorrow in
Trinidad/Tobago,
although he could acknowledge El Jefe’s
retirement a
little over a year ago. Before he sent
himself to the showers, Castro had successfully played and lasted
against an
impressive 10-man U.S.
lineup: Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard
Nixon, Gerald
Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W.B. Bush, Bill Clinton and
George W.
Bush. It’s unlikely the retired Fidel,
soon to be 83, will outlast Obama.
-
- -
After winning their opening home game, 15-5, the Rays
brought out the best in the Yankees. Both
A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte pitched into the eight inning in 7-2 and
5-4
victories. The Yanks saw Xavier Nady go
down with an injury that may keep him out for a long while. But hot-hitting Nick Swisher is on hand to
take
his place.
Misery-has-company dept:
Red Sox and Yanks are watching to see how serious is the setback
of each
of their Asian starters, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Chien-Ming Wang. Dice-K was put on the DL following Tuesday
night’s game in Oakland,
when he left after one inning complaining of shoulder fatigue. Chien-Ming could follow him on to the DL,
although his struggle seems more mental than physical.
He has let lack of execution - he can’t get
his sinker to sink - shatter his confidence.
Chien-Ming is scheduled to pitch again this weekend as Joe
Girardi keeps
his fingers crossed.
An E-mailbag message from NYC statman Scott
Swanay, the Fantasy Baseball
Sherpa, that may cheer up Mets fans. He
says when it comes to lack of solid starters, the NYMs have company: “As down
as Mets' fans might be on their team's rotation, I
think they match up well with the Phillies' rotation. Hamels is
more of
an injury risk than Santana, Myers is at
least as inconsistent as Ollie, I'll take Maine or Pelfrey over Moyer or
Blanton…Phillies had the superior bullpen last year, but with their
additions
of Green, Putz, and Francisco (as well as subtractions of Heilman &
Schoeneweis), the Mets have closed the gap significantly.
Phillies
obviously had a big edge on offense last season, and I believe it's
even
greater this season… Both teams are flawed, but that's what will make
for an
entertaining race this summer!”
- 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: 4/14/09)
Cubs Fans Converting
to Obama?
The polling scoreboard that posts
day-to-day tallies
attracts most attention in the political field.
But more important is the scoreboard that tracks partisan trends
over
the years. Super statman Charlie Cook,
who follows those trends, has issued a report on Congressional scoring
with
baseball-related implications. It
suggests that, although Barack Obama is an avowed White Sox fan, he has
reason
to consider saying nice things about the Cubs.
Cook says a Democratic trend has
developed in the Chicago
suburbs,
traditionally Cubs - and GOP - country.
Suburbanites in six Chi-area districts have moved toward the
Dems in
recent years, and Cook notes that the change corresponds to the
emergence of
Obama as a heavy hitter. The GOP has made
gains in a different ballpark, notably inTennessee, where the Cubs have
their
double-A farm team. Cook says the Dems
lost ground in Tennessee
when native son Al Gore left the presidential field. The
report, based on House results collected
over the past five presidential election cycles, includes, obviously,
the
Bush-Gore race in 2000. It shows where
the Dem-GOP game stands now, in the aftermath of the nationwide 2008
vote.
The scoreboard tracking partisan
rallies gives the Dems a
whopping 34-16 lead in the 50 most competitive House districts. That
reflects a
hint of a trend in 163 minimally competitive races.
As for the rest, Cook notes that Dems and the
GOP usually split 222 “sure” seats of the lower chamber’s 435. In a top-of-the-grandstand view, Cook’s stats
give the Dems a 51.3 - 48.7 edge over the Repubs nationwide. (That
happens to approximate
bookmaking odds the Cubs will make it to the NL championship series.)
Consensus day-to-day polling, by the
way, gives Obama a 60
percent approval, Congress a 58 percent disapproval rating. Still, as we’ve seen, most House incumbents
are safe.
-
- -
Daniel Murphy seems safely ensconced as the Mets’ number two
hitter, despite his Agita-causing on-the-job learning as a leftfielder. His welcome presence in the lineup points up
a glaring Mets absence in recent years – that of other home-grown
position-player prospects. Jose Reyes
broke in six years ago this June, David Wright five years ago this July. The dry spell since then attests to the
oft-noted deficiency in the team’s player-development operation.
On Saturday, fans tuning in the Red
Sox-Angels network TV
game had to make do with the reporting of Fox second-stringers Kenny
(Flat) Albert
and Eric Karros. They transformed a
fairly exciting matchup into a snoozer.
The only enthusiasm exhibited by Albert came when he extolled
the
wonders of the new Yankee Stadium, whence next Saturday’s
Cleveland-Yanks game
will be carried on Fox. He was
especially dynamic in his description of the stadium’s “five-star
restaurant” and
other amenities. A couple of times
Karros had to remind Kenny that his touting of Toronto’s
lead in the AL East and Pittsburgh’s
moving over .500 meant nothing. “It’s April,” Karros said, with an edge
of
exasperation many viewers shared
- 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: 4/11/09)
Bats Out for the Boys of Summers
How about that good news for the
economy’s bleacher-seat
people? In advance of today’s anti-bailout rallies in 50 cities, Tim
Geithner
said ordinary fans may get a chance to profit from the government
handouts,
just like Wall Street’s heavy hitters.
The game plan calls for creation of bailout funds - much like
mutual
funds – that would let punch-and-judy swingers invest in the toxic
assets Team
Obama is trying to rescue with taxpayer money.
If the plan works, the Obama-ites are
clearly hopeful that
the resulting positive vibes will take some of the heat off Geithner
and his
bailout double-play partner Larry Summers.
Both are linked in the public’s mind to a program that seems to
be
benefiting only those teams and players who caused the debacle in the
first
place. Geithner, we know, was the
ultimate Wall Street insider as skipper of the Fed Reserve team in New York. He oversaw the trick plays that led to the
subprime
crisis. Summers made those plays
possible, then profited from them, as TruthDig.com’s Robert Scheer
reminds us:
“Summers…(was)
cut in on the loot from the
loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when
he was
Bill Clinton's treasury secretary… No one has been more persistently
effective
in paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans
of
finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is
now the
top economic adviser to President Obama.”
Obama
reportedly told a group of Wall Street CEOs last week
that “the public isn’t buying” attempts to rationalize their privileged
status
in the bailout ballpark. He added -
according to The Politico - “My administration is the only thing
between you
and the pitchforks.” Barack should know
that he, personally, is the only thing between Larry and Tim - his
team’s “Boys
of Summers” - and a grand slam of public bashings.
- -
-
Amid predictable signs that the non-Santana part of the
Mets’ rotation is shaky comes a first-hand report from SI’s Jon Heyman
on
starters for the Braves and Marlins: “Beyond (Derek) Lowe
the Braves
aren't bad… Javier Vazquez wasn’t great for the White Sox, but he's
generally
been better in the National League, and maybe the switch will do him
good. Throw in Jair Jurrjens and the
Braves have the
makings of a very nice rotation…
“The Marlins
are going to be tough
whenever they're throwing their top three pitchers, because Ricky
Nolasco, Josh
Johnson and Chris Volstad give them a great trio.”
Heyman,
like many Yankee fans, suspects that the team will
have to upgrade the middle of its bullpen - Jonathan Albaladejo, Phil
Coke,
Brian Bruney and Damaso Marte - if it is to compete successfully with
the Rays
and Red Sox to make the playoffs.
No sooner did Baseball Prospectus’s Joe
Sheehan predict on
the eve of the season that the Texas Rangers would “lead the AL
in runs scored by a good margin,” than the Rangers tallied 29 runs in a
three-game sweep of Cleveland. Texas
tacked on just two more in the blowout yesterday against the Tigers. But that’s still a total of just under eight
runs a game.
- 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:
4/9/09)
The Obama-Jeter Connection
“The
iconic images many of us have of (Derek) Jeter on the field
are diving head first into the stands to catch a foul ball, running way
out of
position to make a crucial flip home, as well as the calm, graceful, unselfish style he shows on and off
the field. Obama clearly has the calm and
grace (he'd be a great two-strike hitter, too) but I think Obama still
has to
show some of that willingness to get dirty, get a few stitches.”
– J. Mindich, Manhattan
(E-Mailbag, re 4/04 Nub)
The “few stitches” image paints
the black because of Obama’s bruise-free involvement
in policies linked to
torture. In one of his first acts in
January, the new president elected not to outlaw the practice of
rendition –
picking up suspected terrorists and sending them to a third country for
questioning. Although he stipulated that
“harsh interrogation techniques” were not to be used, there have been
numerous
reports of torture in rendition sites in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. To
believe such methods are being
discontinued there because of an executive order in Washington
requires a long leap of
faith.
Why was the
president willing to
“get dirty” on the side of aggressiveness rather than restraint? An unidentified Obama teammate explained the
skipper’s stance this way: "Obviously you need to preserve some
tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys."
Barack has
further disappointed
his fans in left field by refusing to let the law go after Team Bush’s
bad guys
– the ones the International Red Cross says engaged in the brutal
treatment of
suspects. Team Obama’s position on that
– the same as Team Bush’s: Release of
such “information…could
jeopardize national security.”
The
American Civil Liberties Union accuses Obama of reneging - through the
Justice Department - on a stance he took as
a candidate: pledging to reform abuse of the state secrets game. This is far from “change”, says the
ACLU. It’s the same Bush-league style of
play; the skipper keeps his his distance from the field and his uniform
clean.
- -
-
Jeter
may have looked his vintage self, batting leadoff in Baltimore, but
his Yankees seem a little
tentative…at least, compared to the cocky Red Sox.
Kevin Youklis is already bemoaning a lack of
consensus on where the Sox will wind up:
“Man,
how can anybody,” he
says,
“ pick us to lose to the Cubs in the World
Series?"
Baseball Prospectus’s Joe Sheehan is
prematurely bullish on the relief-bolstered
NYMs: “If the
Mets just play as well
as they did through six innings a year ago, they'll win the NL East,
because
they will be much better after that…”
Says
here that’s a big “if” because of the team’s soft starter-rotation
underbelly:
Mike Pelfrey, and Oliver Perez and John Maine, in particular. We know what bookends Johan Santana and Livan
Hernandez can and will do: Santana will win at least as many – 16 – as
he did last
year, and Hernandez will manage at least 12 (and lose almost as many). But games Perez and Maine start will be up for grabs,
and Pelfrey’s
outings only a little less so. Bottom
line: Mets will need a hard, productive-hitting year to compensate for
the
softness elsewhere.
- 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: 4/7/09)
Flafile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlk-file:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.htmlCatching in
Finance and Baseball
Q - What do the new Met, Gary
Sheffield, and Team Obama’s
still-new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, have in common?
A – They’re both taking flak for
performances – past (in Sheffield’s
case) and past and present (in Geithner’s).
Geithner took a pounding on
Bill
Moyers Journal the other night from William Black, author of “The Best
Way to
Rob a Bank is to Own One.” An economics
and law professor at the University
of Missouri,
Black
supported Barack Obama, but he said Geithner’s – and therefore Obama’s
–
bank-bailout policies are “substantively bad” and “completely lack
integrity.” Why? Because
the Treasury Secretary is letting the
banks play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money:
“Geithner
is…covering up. Just like (former Treasury
Secretary Henry) Paulson
did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take…$2
trillion
taxpayer dollars to deal with this (financial collapse) problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report
that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both
statements can't be true. It can't be that
they need $2 trillion,
because they have massive losses, and that they're fine.
“These
are all people who have failed. Paulson
failed, Geithner failed.
(He)… was one of our nation's top regulators,
during the entire subprime scandal,..He took absolutely no effective
action. He may be right (to claim)that he
never
regulated, but his job was to regulate. That
was his mission statement…as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York…”
Black says the bank bailouts have
involved
outright lawbreaking; he calls inaction on the part of government a
“scandal.” There’s a reason for the
inaction, says
Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker:
nationalizing instead of bailing out the banks “would drive the
stock
market down and increase the agita of people with 401(k) plans” plus
“soften
(Congressional Dem) support for (Obama) legislation.”
Therein lies a clue as to why the mainstream
media can’t seem to make a coherent case for outrage over the scandal.
Newsday’s Wallace Matthews sums up the
record book
on Sheffield this way: “In
his 21 major-league seasons, Sheffield,
40, has called seven clubhouses his
home, and not one did he leave on friendly terms. At
every stop, he has clashed with managers,
general managers and owners. He has insulted teammates, reneged on
contracts
and, by his own admission, deliberately made errors to force his first
team, Milwaukee
to trade him.
”He has ripped Latin players and players who didn't conform to his
image of
racial purity, such as Derek Jeter He
couldn't get along with Joe Torre, a man
who could find common ground with Mahmoud Ahmadineiad. And
just about every place Sheff has landed,
he has found occasion to level a charge of racism at somebody.”
Can Sheff make himself over
for the Mets? The team’s fans - it says
here - should pray
for a miracle, which is what it will take.
Still, the deal so far goes down as a good one.
Reliable NYC
statman Scott Swanay, the Fantasy Baseball
Sherpa, has passed along his annual regular-season predictions as games
are
starting to count
“AL:
Yankees, Indians (barely), and Angels win their respective
divisions. Red
Sox easily secure Wild Card. NL:
Phillies & Mets in dead heat (outcome will depend on the teams'
relative
health - I like the Mets' chances of staying healthier and winning the
division). Cubs and Diamondbacks win their respective
divisions.
Phillies-Mets runner up will get the Wild Card as a consolation prize,
edging
out the Cardinals.”
The Sherpa
knows we all have our own gut-estimates as to
how the season-long games will end.
There will surely be comments from the Nubby cheap seats in due
course.
E-Mailbag re
new ball parks: “Has there
been any talk of an
active organized boycott of games at the new stadiums? I
tried to push my son into leading the charge
but he doesn't sense the injustice yet (he may get a better
appreciation as the
months go by). I can't wait to see pictures of a half filled
stadium or
for the opportunity to buy tickets at below face value on stubhub.” – Jeremy.M., Manhattan
“Your
article, which accurately
focused on all the excesses, left out the most important fact for
Yankee
lovers, the big palace is still in the down home Bronx
neighborhood it has always been. Our team was saved from the West Side! See you
on the #4
train. Play Ball!!!!” – Jim M, Nyack
-
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 4/4/09)
New Ball Parks Rate as Many Boos as
Cheers
It may be wet-blanket-y to suggest -
even to hope - that the dank and drizzly “opening night” at NYC’s new
stadiums
was an omen of financially dismal days ahead for the Yankees and Mets. Yet, weeks of puffery notwithstanding, the
ballparks have earned at least as many boos as cheers…on merit. The record book, we know, shows hundreds of
millions in public subsidies granted both private ventures, 22 acres of
parkland sacrificed to make room for the stadium in the Bronx,
and the deal whereby bailed-out Citigroup got its disgraced name
emblazoned
over the Mets’ ball yard.
Then there’s the seldom noted
cultural change the new arenas represent.
NY Times columnist George Vecsey addressed it briefly in
yesterday’s
paper when he said the teams’ “main goal became
turning
ballparks into resorts, land cruises, designed for A.I.G.
bonus-recipient
wallets…” Nevertheless, he
added, “real
fans will find a way to the ball parks, pulled by
the life-affirming force of baseball coming around again in the spring.”
The latter point may prove
true
while the new playing fields remain an early-season novelty. But just as forced-out residents soon stop
revisiting their gentrified old neighborhoods, so regular fans are
likely to
resist returning to the upscale replacement of their old cheering
grounds.
The days of the spontaneous
“Let’s
go out to the ballgame” are over. The
decision now entails substantial investment and planning, more like
attending
an opera than an athletic event.
Instead, fans will retreat to their TV sets and hope that, as
baseball
tries to mimic pro football’s season-long sellout success, the cost of
watching
games at home doesn’t soar.
Caught up in this
comparatively
benign version of “class warfare”, the best regular-fan strategy – it
says here
– is to put off visits to either ball park until someone offersfile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.html
a free ticket.
-
- -
This weekend marks The Nub’s second
anniversary. Following a hoary tradition
started a whole year ago, we herewith re-run our first item from 4/5/07:
“If Barack Obama
regains his early campaign momentum, one reason is
likely to be the Derek Jeter factor.
That Barack and Jeter share similar multi-cultural backgrounds
will
surely seep into the broader voter consciousness as the baseball season
unfolds. The racial comparison will
likely lead many even casual observers of the sport to connect Jeter’s
attributes with those of Obama. Jeter has
earned the admiration of fans throughout the country and world for his
skills
and conduct. Obama can benefit from a
transfer of that admiration if he handles himself in the political
field with
the same unruffled assurance that Jeter exhibits when he steps to the
plate or
corrals a difficult ground ball.”
Two years later, Obama has reached the pinnacle of political
power
while Jeter, now nearing 35, is no longer the premier player he was at
33. He remains - it says here - the
athlete with
whom most New Yorkers would like the city to be identified. Why?
Newsday’s Wallace Matthews provided this answer not long ago:
“For
13 years now, Jeter has navigated th(e) (celebrity) minefield
and come through it largely unscathed. No former girlfriend has dished
on him
or sued him, or so far as we know, is writing a book about him. No one, publicly, has had a bad word to say
about him. He never has embarrassed
himself or his team. That's not by luck
or accident.”
Nub’s-eye
view of the MLB’s
top three rotations: 1) Yankees – CC
Sabathia, Chien-Ming Wang, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, Joba
Chamberlain. 2) Red Sox – Josh Beckett,
Jon Lester,
Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield, Brad Penny.
3) Reds – Aaron Harang, Edinson
Volquez, Bronson Arroyo, Johnny Cueto, Micah Owings.
What that
listing suggests to us: Cincinnati
could surprise and be a factor in
the NL Central race.
- 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 4/2/09)
Piling On Popular in
Politics as Well as Baseball
“Dog-piling”, they call it in baseball. It’s when teammates rush to engulf a
game-winning hero after the decisive run has scored.
Political dog-piling – better known as
piling on – has been
under way throughout much of NY state.
The target: the media’s favorite anti-hero, Governor David
Paterson. When what Jimmy Breslin calls
“the Pekinese
of the press” smell blood they can’t resist pouncing over and over on
the
wounded.
Paterson
opened his own wound by mishandling the appointment of someone to fill
the U.S.
Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.
The reaction to that bumble sent him sprawling; state
Republicans,
abetted by right-wing elements of the media, have not let him up. “GOV
CLINCHES
DEAL ON HUGE TAX HIKES” is the way the NY Post headlined the budget
agreement
announced earlier this week. Rush
Limbaugh declared the new taxes and, by implication, Paterson “stupid.” “THE STENCH OF TERRIBLE LEADERSHIP” was the
Daily
News’ headline contribution to the coverage.
Had the dog-piling mindset not taken
hold, the media might
have found cause to congratulate Paterson for a crisis budget that did
not (a)
trim education and health care (as did his Republican predecessor
George Pataki
earlier in the decade, nor did it (b) follow the Republican reflex of
cutting taxes
and spending at a time when people need adequately funded government
services
more than ever.
On NPR Tuesday night, MIT prof and
former IMF economist
Simon Johnson said the US
led the world in entrepreneurial initiative but lacked the “strong
safety net”
that could make it as desirable a place to live for the masses, as are
most
European countries. Paterson, in his budget, recognized
that, now
especially, many New Yorkers relate to the axiom “Government is your
enemy
until you need a friend.”
Paterson
has to play hard, but he could get out from under the dog-pile before
next
year’s gubernatorial campaign and position himself as a feisty
incumbent. Andrew Cuomo would be well
advised not to
challenge him in a primary, given the AG’s record of having taken on
another
African-American, Carl McCall, in 2002.
If Cuomo does run, it will almost certainly be the result of Paterson
stepping aside,
having been buried too long to regain his stride.
-
-
-
Many Mets fans are in their high-flying, pre-season
mode. For them in particular, Newsday’s
Wallace Matthews has these come-back-to-earth questions:
“After
Johan Santana and, hopefully, Mike Pelfrey, which
starting pitcher can you truly rely on every five days for a full
season? John
Maine? Oliver Perez? Livan Hernandez? Pedro Martinez?
“Or,
do you really expect that Daniel Murphy, with all of 131
major-league at-bats to his credit , can handle the responsibilities of
an
everyday leftfielder?
”Same goes for rightfielder Ryan Church, who suffered two serious
concussions
last year and was never the same. Are we
to trust that he is fully recovered now?
”What about Luis Castillo, the subject of this year's spate of
disingenuous ‘rededicated
and in the best shape of his life’' training-camp space-fillers?
”And then there's Brian Schneider, who didn't hit a lick last year but
will
this year, we are assured, because he now is ‘more comfortable’' in New
York. Never having heard this before this
spring, I
wonder: When exactly did his comfort level become a problem?
- 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.)
March 2009
Archive
(Posted 3/31/09)
Too Big to Survive Can
Happen in Baseball
Taking their sign from AIG and Bank of
America, the Yankees
elected last fall to enter the new season “too big to fail.” The Steinbrenner boys invested in the
blue-chip market, insuring that their team would be the MLB’s biggest,
star-studded
spender by far in 2009. Where Yankee
fans are comfortable with that approach - failure won’t cost them a
cent - many
of President Obama’s supporters fear that, under his team’s new
financial plan,
the government will wind up bailing out the big boppers again, and cost
them a
bundle.
When
skipper Barack arrives in London for
the Group
of 20 meeting today, he will find Team USA’s credibility
undermined by the
way it catered to the big guys during the economic collapse. MIT prof and former chief IMF economist Simon
Johnson scans the error-dotted scorecard
in the current Atlantic:
“Elite business
interests — financiers, in the case of the U.S. —
played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger
gambles, with
the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their
influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed,
and fast,
to pull the economy out of its nosedive.” (quoted by Paul Krugman in NY Times)
The
Nation columnist William Greider dug deeper into the Johnson analysis
on Bill
Moyers Journal last weekend:
“Handing out of government guarantees and
capital to hedge funds and private equity funds…institutions founded on
secrecy…(will end)…somewhere down the road (with) people…learn(ing)
that the
investors, so called, are reaping…double-digit returns on this money
with
almost no risk at all to themselves…What the administration's approach
may be
doing is consecrating ‘too big to fail’.”
Greider is hopeful
Congress will
fight for reform rather than rubber-stamping the Tim Geithner-proposed
system. Where that system offers virtually
a
win-win deal to selected securities teams, Yankees manager Joe Girardi
is in an
almost no-win position: he’s expected to reach the World Series so will
get no
credit for anything less. And if the Yankees don’t win the
championship, he
could well be out of a job.
While Team USA’s
financial cred has eroded in the world economic field, there’s been an
erosion
in baseball of established players who can hit for power and average,
and
field, run and throw at a superior level.
LA Daily News columnist Jon Gold names names:
“The
days of true five-tool talents…seem to have
disappeared. The only five-for-five studs last season were (Hanley)
Ramirez, Matt Holliday, Alex
Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran. But Holliday
has left Coors Field, A-Rod has a bum hip
and Beltran is turning 32
and his power numbers are declining. That
leaves Ramirez as the only likely (up-to-standard performer). “
Another list illustrating the shortage of first-line MLB talent,
compiled by
the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo, focuses on gaps in the backs of
pitching
rotations. Cafardo names only eight of
30 teams that don’t have end-of-rotation problems.
Three of the eight – the Yanks, Red Sox and
Rays – are in the AL East. The Braves
and Marlins are rotation-deep in the NL East (sorry about that,
Phillies and
Mets); the Cardinals and Reds in the NL Central (that’s right, no
Cubs), and
the Giants in the NL West. Shut out
entirely: teams in the AL Central and West.
-
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: 3/28/09)
Double-Plays Tainting
Politics and NYC Baseball
Until Hillary Clinton identified the
double-play combination
causing havoc on both sides of our southern border, NYC baseball fans
had only a
local twin killing to brood about: two
heavily taxpayer-subsidized stadiums with seat- pricing structures that
put
premium games out of average-taxpayer reach.
Where the stadium play revolves solely
around money and has
little impact beyond the NYC area, the game-disrupter lamented by
Hillary - the
combo of guns and money - has broad implications. Beyond
fuelling the drug trade between Mexico
and the U.S.,
the traffic in dollars and weapons has all
but
destroyed any hope of establishing a humane and peaceful society in
this
country.
Clinton
spoke of our “inability” to control the spread of guns.
She could also have acknowledged the lack of
political will to take on the National Rifle Association and strengthen
gun
control laws. Firearms have been
involved in mass killings this month alone in Florida,
Illinois, Alabama
and California. More than 50 have died just in those
incidents. The NRA’s response to elected
officials: don’t legislate “on the fresh graves of tragedy.”
The gun lobby’s clout stems from its
double-play
partner. The NRA contributed a
million-and-a-half dollars to Congressional candidates in key races
last
year. The lobby’s huge war chest links
to the campaign finance system, where dollars have been playing an
especially
pernicious role since 1976; it was then the Supreme Court equated
unlimited
campaign spending with free speech. William
Greider (who is guest on Bill Moyers’ PBS
program this weekend) detailed how the
public was betrayed through regressive tax policy directly related to
that
decision. Here is how he lays it out in
his book “Who Will Tell the People?”
“For those who blame
Republicans
for what has happened and believe that equitable taxation will be
restored…(when) the Democrats…win back the White House, there is this
disquieting fact: the turning point on tax politics, when the moneyed
elite
first began to win big, occurred in 1978 with the Democratic party
fully in
power and well before Ronald Reagan came to Washington.
Democratic majorities have supported this
great shift in the tax burden every step of the way.”
The
same can be said for Dem support through the years of
minimal gun regulation. The people don’t have to be told. But, says historian Howard Zinn, “If both
parties ignore public opinion, there is no place for voters to turn.”
- -
-
Let’s check in for the first time this spring on the world
champion Phillies. The Philadelphia
Bulletin’s Drew Silverman filed an overview of the team 10 days before
its
opening-season game a week from tomorrow night.
Here is an excerpt:
“Kyle
Kendrick was
expected to be the Phillies’ fifth starter, but that didn’t exactly
work
out. Ronny Paulino was the favorite to be the backup catcher, but
things
have changed. Even players like Miguel Cairo and Marcus Giles,
who
initially thought they had a good shot at making the team, are starting
to
think otherwise.
”These are the Phillies’ major storylines of spring training. And
honestly, none are particularly earth-shattering in the grand scheme of
roster
moves.
”The Phils already have their starting position players set.
Their
rotation is 80 percent complete and their bullpen is pretty much carved
in
stone. All the Phillies need to do from this point on is a little
spring
cleaning when it comes to their bench, bullpen and the back end of
their
rotation…
“Ryan
Howard, Chase
Utley and Jimmy Rollins are probably going to make the roster.
Calm down,
it’s a joke. Utley, like third baseman Pedro Feliz, underwent
surgery in
the offseason that initially was expected to sideline him for part of
the regular
season. However, it now looks like both Utley (hip) and Feliz
(back) will
be ready to go by April 5. This is bad news for all of the other
infield
candidates”…and for NL East
teams,
especially the Mets and Braves.
- 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: 3/26/09)
WBC Signals
Change in World Standings
“Decline
of the West,”
said the dilettante baseball fan (supporter of whichever NY team is
doing
well).
Time:
morning of the WBC title game in which Japan
and Korea
had shown Americans how their
national pastime should be played. The
fan in question hadn’t yet learned about the political hardball being
played in
Shanghai – China going to bat for a
new
international currency to replace the dollar.
Nor had he remembered the word out of Europe two months ago – as
reported by the International Herald Tribune’s William Pfaff: “The
(bailout) crisis has devastated
America’s…reputation for competence, and with it, justification
for (a) six-decade role as world
leader…(That)…reputation…has crashed and burned.”
The overconfidence in the
U.S. financial
clubhouse
that risk could be avoided and success achieved seemed to infect Team USA’s
approach
to the WBC tournament. The team had no
shortage of well-paid stars – Derek Jeter, David Wright, Jimmy Rollins,
Kevin
Youklis, Dustin Pedroia, etc. And it had
the type of power – Ryan Braun, Adam Dunn - that gives our military
apparent
world dominance. But, where Japan and Korea,
using “small ball,” played as disciplined units, the U.S.
would-be longballers performed
as comparatively casual individuals. MLB
Commissioner Bud Selig (on ESPN) regretted what he called the team’s
“lack of
intensity.” “We could have easily won th(e) game (against Japan),”
said
manager Davey Johnson. He had a list of
excuses that included the opposition putting in more training time and
effort. MLB VP Bob Watson had a simpler
explanation – one that could apply in international affairs as well as
in
baseball: “The
world,” he said, “has
caught up with us.”
Mailbag: Re “opaque”
financial language (mentioned
in previous Nub) – “Quoting
Warren Buffett: He
said years ago that if you cannot understand a corporate report, you
can be
sure that they wrote it that way with great care.”
- Brit Wyckoff, Washington, D.C.
- -
-
The Yankees (and Mets) have obviously set up their
new-stadium ticket-pricing structure with care:
they’ve made it hard to get a handle on the high cost of seats
at a
given location and game. Newsday’s Neil
Best accepted the challenge; here’s a sample of the pricey NYY numbers
he came
up with, the economy notwithstanding:
“Say
you can sneak away from the office Wednesday afternoon, April
22, and would like to check out the stadium for the game against the
Athletics
with nine of your closest friends.
”You're in luck! As of noon (Tuesday),
you could buy 10 together in Section 24B, Row 5, for $2,625. Per seat. Plus $59.70 a ticket ’convenience
charge.’ Plus $3.25 for ’order processing.’
”Grand total: $26,850.25.” No
kidding.
- 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: 3/24/09)
Why Can’t Finance Be
More Like Baseball?
Statistical static like GIDP* and
WHIP** notwithstanding, simplicity
is the soul of baseball. The game
unfolds in a leisurely, easily comprehended way, unlike football and
basketball,
which feature complexities like “nickel” defenses and three-second
violations. The financial game is complex,
too, seemingly
deliberately so. But the politics
surrounding
the Wall Street collapse has become clearer with each new costly
complication.
“Massive, “opaque” and “quasi-private”
are three terms
descriptive of government deals throughout the current losing streak: Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi sees a
linguistic, as well as political, basis, for such a strategy:
“By
creating an urgent crisis that can only
be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people
to
understand, the Wall Street
crowd has turned the vast majority
of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in
the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power… By
making
an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used
the
crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political
system — transforming a
democracy
into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats
above and
clueless customers below.”
The
consequence, thus, is a new double standard in which ambitious,
willing-to-work Americans no longer enjoy the fair shot they once had
in the
competitive game; an unfair edge now belongs exclusively to the
invulnerable
financial players chosen by Team Obama.
The Nation’s William Greider
(writing in the Washington
Post) says the choice has left the president in a clearly precarious
position: “trapped between
the…elites who decide things and the people who are
governed. Which side is he on? If he does not choose wisely, the anger could
devour his presidency.”
- -
-
Trying to win the Yankees’ center field slot is not exactly
devouring Brett Gardner. But Red Sox
Nation (and Globe) reporter Nick Cafardo says Gardner has had his problems proving
he’s the
man for the job:
“(Gardner’s)
teammates are rooting for him to get the starting job, but there's a
growing
feeling that the Yankees may rekindle talks with Milwaukee on Mike Cameron.
Why? As one scout put it, ‘He's a very
streaky kid. He'll have a couple of
weeks where he'll get big hits and really be an effective leadoff
hitter and
another two weeks where you need to hide him as the No. 9 hitter’."
Anyone who watched the World Baseball
Classic final four
over the past few days had to be impressed by the superior intensity of
the
Asian teams, and the unfocused manager and perhaps understandably
haphazard
quality of Team USA’s play. The Denver
Post’s Troy Rendt provides a clear-eyed epitaph on the team’s ultimate
failure:
“Forget
for a second that too many of the best American players
declined invites to the World Baseball Classic. Forget
that Adam Dunn was in right field, Mark
DeRosa was at first base and that…the
roster was not perfect and the timing of this event is not a fit for
the U.S…
“A bigger issue is (this:)…
Japan and Korea...both
provide reminders of how the game used to be played, selfless and
team-driven. If there’s a lesson for the U.S.,
(that’s
it).”
P.S. If Bud
Selig is serious about
building the WSB’s popularity among U.S. fans, he would not let
ESPN
schedule coverage of the championship matchup at 9:30p, EDT. That precluded most fans in the East staying
with the game to the tournament’s conclusion early this morning.
- -
-
*Grounded into double play
** Walks plus hits per innings pitched
- 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: 3/21/09)
A.I.G.’s ‘Bonus Babies.’ No Boon for
Team
Obama
For
longtime baseball fans, “bonus,” now a fighting word in
the American lexicon, is linked to names like Sandy Koufax and Al
Kaline. Unlike the hundreds of A.I.G.
workers who are
divvying $165 million in bonuses as rewards for their year-end presence
in the crippled
company, Koufax, Kaline and other “bonus babies” from 1947 to 1965
earned their
money (a few thousand dollars each) - Koufax from the Brooklyn Dodgers,
Kaline
from the Tigers –for signing after performing outstandingly as amateur
players.
A.I.G., recipient of $183 billion in
bailout taxpayer
dollars, obviously cannot claim a performance basis for the bonuses. How the company was able to gain government
approval
for the largesse being awarded is a source of embarrassment;
fingerpointing at
Team Bush, the Fed, Congress and, most of all, Treasury Secretary Tim
Geithner is
the grandstanding game of the week.
The rap against Geithner, part of what
worried Obama fans
when the skipper-elect picked him for Treasury, was that he was a Wall
Street
insider. Thus, as described in the NY
Times the other day: “Mr. Geithner’s instincts are that government
should not
dictate compensation issues to businesses.” Dean Baker, co-director of
the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, puts the bonus matter this
way: As Fed
chairman (last fall) “Geithner
had every reason to believe that AIG would
continue to pay out bonuses even after it was bailed out by the
government,
because he did not tell it to stop paying bonuses. He
may not have considered this issue
important until the last week.”
Paul
Krugman balks at lettung Geithner’s boss take a pass: “This
administration, elected on
the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short
time, to
create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers.”
Krugman’s
Times colleague Gail Collins has a
bonus-related blacklist, surely similar to that of many Americans:
“I hate everybody in
the world of
finance…And I’m totally angry at everybody in Congress for trying to
pretend
that they’re angrier than I am…(And) let’s complain about Barack Obama. Why doesn’t he sound angrier?”
Chances
are Obama will cry foul when he sees his approval
ratings in the polls any moment; they are likely to plummet over what
could be
remembered as his financial Bay of Pigs.
- - -
It’s possible the second World Baseball Classic will end in
virtual obscurity, as far as U.S.
baseball fans are concerned. Team USA has been decimated by injuries -
excuses in
place - and will be overmatched in the final-four semis against Japan (tomorrow night) South Korea,
and Venezuela.
But the come-from-behind 6-5 victory
over Puerto Rico that put the team
into the semis will be long remembered by
the players involved. Here are two
testimonials as reported by SI’s Tom Verducci:
Brian
Roberts (Orioles):
"I've never played in a game like this. Ever.
(Who) say(s) this doesn't matter? All you had to do is see the
faces as
everyone ran out of the dugout. I wish I could find the words to
describe the
feeling."
Brian McCann (Braves):
"I
would go through (anything) for this one moment. This
is a moment I will cherish for the rest
of my life, for sure. It's the greatest
game I've ever been a part of. “
McCann
also spoke with wonder about the enthusiasm that
night of teammate Derek Jeter: “To see Derek Jeter out
there, a guy who has won everything in this
game, and he's out there dog-piling in March ... wow."
- 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 : 3/17/09)
Tiger Ordonez Takes
on Political Risk
“You can’t
mix politics and
sports,” says Detroit Tigers third
baseman Miguel Cabrera. His
teammate Magglio Ordonez
disagrees. Both are playing with Venezuela
in the World Baseball Classic. The
tournament’s second round site is Miami…and
Ordonez heard it Saturday from his
expatriate countrymen who moved to south Florida.
Why? Ordonez
went to
bat on TV for a referendum extending term limits for President Hugo
Chavez. The ex-pats consider the
multi-millionaire Ordonez a traitor to his class for supporting a
socialist
like Chavez. Who can blame them? Chavez is spreading Venezuela’s
wealth, which means the upper classes are taking a hit.
That’s why many of them left.
“I don’t have any grudge against them,”
says Ordonez (who
received less of as hard time last night).
“I just don’t think they’re well-informed.”
The info Team Bush spread about Venezuela,
dutifully amplified by our media,
identified it as part of a Latin American “axis of evil” with Cuba, Bolivia
and Ecuador. Here is a rare, almost-balanced example of
how the NY Times has treated Hugo in its pre-Obama news stories: “Chávez
has tightened his grip on the country’s political
institutions, imposing his socialist vision and threatening to assert
greater
state control over many parts of the economy.”
Seldom noted in the Times (or any of
the major media) is
that Chavez has been imposing his vision democratically, through
popular
vote. Seldom, too, are the occasions
when our media describe socialism in anything but negative terms. Truthdig’s Robert Scheer, an exception,
sees
a socialistic goal in these terms: “If (it) means
a system of governance in which a robust middle class is rewarded for
work with a strong social safety net supported by higher taxes on the
most
affluent, well, let's get it on. “
Whether
Team Obama will change the official Yanqui
stance toward socialist outfits to the south is still not clear. But many believe the president’s willingness
to let Brazilian skipper Lula da Silva make
the
case for better U.S.
relations with Chavez and the other erstwhile “axis” leaders is a
hopeful
sign. In connection with da Silva’s
weekend visit to the White House, Team Obama dropped a subtle but
promising
clue: it refrained from criticizing Bolivia’s president Evo
Morales for
expelling Bush’s ambassador during that country’s secessionist crisis
late last
year.
- -
-
For what it’s worth as pre-season banter, the Mets and Yanks
dominated a list of the top 10 “game-changers” compiled by the Boston
Globe’s
Nick Cafardo. He asked 20 scouts,
managers, team execs, players, etc. for names of men who can change a
game
singlehandedly and/or carry a team on their backs.
The near-unanimous number one: Albert Pujols,
with Manny Ramirez runner-up. But the
list also includes three Mets: Johan Santana (3), David Wright (5), and
Jose
Reyes (8). The Yanks placed two: A-Rod
(9) and C.C. Sabathia (10). The other
three: Cleveland’s Grady Sizemore (4), Toronto’s Roy Halladay and Boston’s own Dustin Pedroia (7).
- 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 3/14/09)
Team Obama Has Gap in Its Lineup
“Obama
fans ‘getting
restless’ 40 days in. You can't be serious! You
must be a Met fan.”
Peace, Mr.
Yankee fan who replied
that way to a previous suggestion; we’re feeling early empathy for the
springtime absence of A-Rod. Team Obama
obviously has a missing link, too; a guy as yet unsigned who hits from
the left
side and makes sure he gets the skipper’s ear.
Where is he
(or she)? We need someone to swing
hard for a
single-payer health system and a more even playing field in the Middle East. The
O-team bogs down when those issues are on base and need driving in.
Democracy
Now’s Amy Goodman
describes how hard it is to get the president to let single payer into
the
ballpark:
“Congress
is considering H.R. 676, "Expanded and Improved Medicare for
All," sponsored by John Conyers, D-Mich., with 64 co-sponsors. Yet even when Rep. Conyers directly asked
Obama …if he could attend the White House health-care summit, he was
not
immediately invited. Nor was any other
advocate for single-payer health care…
“After
much outcry, Conyers was invited. Activist
groups like Physicians for a National
Health Program (pnhp.org) expressed outrage that no other single-payer
advocate
was to be among the 120 people at the summit.
Finally, the White House relented and invited Dr. Oliver Fein,
president
of PNHP. Two people out of 120.”
Goodman cited a media
watchdog survey in the days leading up to last week’s summit. Of the
hundreds
of stories that appeared in major outlets, said the surveyers,
"only
five included the views of advocates of single-payer - none of
which appeared on television." Any wonder single-payer couldn’t be found when the summit
game was over.
And, of course, there’s
no sign of veteran diplomat Charles Freeman, nominated to be Team
Obama’s chief
intelligence analyst. He made the
mistake in the past of criticizing Israel while advocating
equal consideration
of Palestinian and Israeli grievances. In
so doing, he unleashed an uproar that forced him off the field before
he picked
up a bat. Charlie Schumer took credit
for persuading the White House that Freeman was no friend of Israel
and
therefore should be sent back to the scholarly bushes.
Here is part of Freeman’s valedictory: “ I
am saddened by what the controversy and the
manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to
sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any
longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent
judgment
about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our
allies and
friends.
“The
libels on me and their easily traceable
email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby
determined to
prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to
factor in
American understanding of trends and events in the Middle
East.”
The lobby deserves
credit, not
blame, for playing hardball, its role. But
Team Obama must be prepared to deal with
such intensity, it needs somebody who can stand at the plate and not
back down
when principle is at stake and the action gets hot.
- -
-
Baseball fans who are enduring
what one Boston Glober calls a “Sominex” spring training season, have a
treat
in store tonight: Team USA
plays Puerto Rico in the second round
of the
World Baseball Classic (8p, ESPN). Two
familiar Carlos - Beltran and Delgado – are PR mainstays, as are former
Yankees
Bernie Williams and Pudge Rodriguez. Barring
a continuation of the Netherlands team miracle, Derek Jeter, David
Wright and
company will be jousting with the Puerto Ricans and Venezuela to see
which one
of the three gets eliminated before moving into the final-four round. How great is it to be able to follow games
that count while the juiceless Grapefruit and Cactus League schedules
stretch
ahead for three more weeks!
Speaking of
the Venezuela
team,
an important new Met was key to its last victory. Sports
Illustrated’s Tom Verducci was on hand
for the performance:
“The
New York Mets would
like to see what they saw from closer Francisco Rodriguiez in Venezuela's 5-3 victory over Team USA on
Wednesday night. Okay, it was a typical
K-Rod save: he walked the leadoff batter and wound up bringing the
winning run
to the plate, all before fanning Kevin Youklis to close the deal. But for a guy whose velocity dipped last
season, Rodriguez hit 95 mph on the radar gun and sat consistently at
92-93
mph. Not bad at all for the ides of
March.
“Rodriguez
did speak about the adrenaline rush of pitching
with ‘Venezuela’
across his jersey . ’I feel that right now,’ he said, ‘I'm at another
level, to
wear the Venezuela
jersey. It's totally different’."
- 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: 3/10/09)
Baseball GMs and
Obama: ‘Cheer-Up Everybody’!
“We are where we want to be,” said Mets
GM Omar Minaya, his
spring training satisfaction replicated by two dozen or more of his MLB
counterparts. “I am absolutely
confident” said President Obama that our potent economic offense will
start
scoring after a few more innings.
Lots of optimism on the baseball front
and the political
field, with results promised but a long way from realized.
And, despite dramatic evidence to the
contrary, financial advisors remain bullish about investments in the
market. Should it all be taken
seriously? Let’s look at the record
book:
With a few changes, the Mets have put
together essentially
the same team that didn’t get it done last season.
Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz are an
upgrade over Aaron Heilman and Billy Wagner in the bullpen. But the familiar starting rotation after
Johan Santana is shaky. And just as they
ran out of money after signing Santana last year and therefore couldn’t
upgrade
their bench, so they have had to patch things together this time after
obtaining Rodriguez and Putz. Hope is
the order of ‘09 in Mets-land, but it says here there’s no cause for
optimism.
Team Obama is unwilling to upset Wall
Street,
checked-swinging on nationalizing “zombie” banks and leaving
transparency out
of sight in the clubhouse. We - all of
us - don’t know where our money to keep that privileged league in
operation is
going. Meanwhile, many top observers
predict that Obama’s would-be stimulus rally will fall short of getting
the
game back on track. And through it all,
the Dems squad in Congress seems incapable of brushing aside the
outnumbered GOP
and taking control of the action. “Yes, We Can…Hope for Change” might be Team
Obama’s revised slogan. There are few
signs
of confidence in the way it’s playing now.
The financial coaches, meanwhile, would
have us believe all’s
well. Joe Queenan tells - in the LA
Times - of the signals those coaches are flashing:
“Over and
over, investors have been told not to panic because no
one has really lost any money until they've sold their stocks. Meanwhile, the market has surrendered more
than half its value and seems perfectly prepared to continue its merry
toboggan
ride south. So even if you haven't
actually lost any money yet, it may seem as if you've lost money. It may seem, in fact, as if you've lost half
your life's savings.”
Skipper Obama reminds us that he’s
inherited this mess, and that’s perfectly true.
It’s also true that the fans are getting restless.
And the only one they’re poised to boo is the
man in charge on the field now.
- -
-
Skeptics watching the climactic ninth inning of the
Canada-USA game on ESPN Saturday had to become World Baseball Classic
believers. New Mets setup man J.J. Putz
had to pitch his way out of a 6-5 pressure cooker – tying run on second
with
one out and Justin Morneau and Jason Bay
coming up. Putz got both of them. In the process, his commitment to the WBC was
reinforced, as SI’s Tom Verducci reported:
“Th(e WBC) is about baseball and it is about country, not
the institution of Major League Baseball. And
if you didn't get the significance of
that, you weren't standing next to Putz,
an ice pack dripping water from his right shoulder, a smile plastered
to his
face, when somebody asked him where this moment ranked in his career.
"This,"
he said, "is at the top."
“Cody Ransom.” It
could be a perfect
made-up name for diceball or imaginary lineups in other card-table
versions of
the game. For some of us it will be more
fun watching the likeable, likely stand-in play third for the Yanks
early on than
it would be seeing the damaged star himself.
- 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
3/7/09)
Team Obama and
Baseball’s Tight-Money Model
“The Mets should have signed Manny,”
said a fan who could’ve
been speaking for countless brethren.
“They need him, and he would have been great in New York.”
The Mets, of course, have a stopper:
“We can’t afford it.”
That mantra was heard throughout the
majors as well-regarded
free agents like Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, and Orlando Hudson had to
settle for
bargain-rate contracts. The trend was
not too surprising. Most Americans understand the unyielding reality of
a
shortage of money. Especially now. The national losing streak should give the
White Sox fan in the White House the rationale (like it or not) to step
to the
plate and take some cuts…hitting to left.
A few suggestions:
*Leave Iraq
sooner not
later, and completely: We can’t afford
to stay.
*Reverse the buildup in Afghanistan: We can’t afford to see that war drag on.
*Reduce our outlays on weaponry:
We can’t afford to keep flexing our might.
*Cancel the Missile Defense system in Europe:
We can’t afford the hostility.
*Close Guantanamo
and return
it to Cuba. We can’t afford the moral cost.
Those hacks, spurred by the slump
rather than politics,
might elicit a positive response - even from right fielders on the
Congressional
team. We’re obviously playing clubhouse
kibitzer here, but such stepping back by the skipper could begin to
make sense
if the current tailspin continues.
- -
-
With finances depleted everywhere (it seems) except in the
Yankees’ treasury, the New Yorker’s Roger Angell sees a test ahead for
the team
and its owners: “On trial…will be
the new Stadium’s attendance figures in this era of economic anxiety,
and
(whether there will be) renewals on those new corporate luxury boxes.” The
pre-crisis-level price tag on those boxes
(as Angell points out): upwards of a half-million dollars per season.
Manny will be making $25
million this year and $20 million
next unless he opts out of his contract next fall, a right the Dodgers
agreed
to apparently to help him save negotiating face. The
Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo thinks Manny
is fortunate to have extracted $45 million from LAD owner Frank
McCourt:
“The
sport will be hit even harder next
offseason,” says Cafardo. “The feeling is Ramírez would be wise
to accept the $20 million in 2010 because that kind of money won't be
available
elsewhere…In another time and in another market, Ramírez would
likely have
received his four-year, $100 million deal.
But again, he's lucky, very lucky, he got what he got.”
- 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 3/3/09)
The Matt Holliday
Factor in NYC Politics
It’s March…baseball’s spring and the
start of the political
season. So why is the buzz in both
fields so future-oriented? Why so much
anticipation of change? Here are two
clues: Matt Holliday and available third terms.
Baseball fans know that Holliday, a
Colorado Rockies star,
went to Oakland
in an unlikely inter-season deal. A’s GM
Billy Beane is famous for swapping stars for prospects, often in
mid-season. Holliday can thus be
expected to move on, if Oakland
drops out of playoff contention this summer.
Political watchers know that six tireless NYC Council players -
all Dems
- are taking their hacks in the public advocate and comptroller
contests. Despite pledging to stay in the
Primary game
until next September, some, if not all six, could drop out in May,
leaving time
to change signals and circulate petitions (as of June 9) putting them
back in
the Council race.
For example, if either Mark Green or
Norman Siegel, two PA
competitors with no elective home, is far ahead on the
finances-or-poll-numbers
scoreboard, Bill de Blasio, Eric Gioia and John Liu could elect to
switch-hit
and try to take advantage of their Council incumbency.
In the comptroller race, Melinda Katz, David
Weprin and David Yassky could feel the same temptation if Billy
Thompson
decides to leave the mayoral field in favor of trying to keep the
position he’s
fielded for the past eight years.
How the Council candidates swung on the
mayor’s anti-democratic
pitch to bypass a third-term referendum could become an election issue. If so, here is what the box score shows: all three in the public advocate race said
“no” to dissing the people; in the comptroller contest, only one,
Weprin, voted
“no” to leaving the electorate out.
Comptroller Thompson didn’t get to vote, but he made his
opposition
clear.
If fund-raising success turns out to be
crucial, Katz has a
slight edge over Weprin, as of the mid-January filing.
She reported bringing in $2,135, 040 to
Weprin’s $2,062, 248. Yassky’s total was
$1,429, 594. (We’ll do the PA numbers
another time.)
- -
-
Mets GM Omar Minaya has already started talking about the
possibility the team will compete later to add Holliday via trade.
That’s
tantamount to confirmation the Mets don’t have enough offense going
into the
season. At the same time, Minaya
repeated the tired defense of the team’s
farm system. “Our…system is stronger
than people seem to give it credit for,” said the protest-prone GM. As has been noted here, the “people” at
Baseball America
rate the Mets system 17th out of 30.
Another repeat offender is Keith
Hernandez on the subject of
the World Baseball Classic (WBC). He
complained - not for the first time - on SNY Sunday about the
international
tournament interfering with spring training.
Big deal. For true baseball fans
- it says here - the WBC is a quadrennial bonus: many of MLB’s best
playing as
volunteers, not for money but as good citizens of their respective
homelands. And playing in GAMES THAT COUNT
throughout
most of March. Team USA took the Classic lightly last time
and
suffered elimination long before Japan
and Cuba
met in a memorable final. There’s no
guarantee it won’t happen again, but it will be fun to see Derek Jeter,
David
Wright, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youklis, Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy, et al,
try to
avoid embarrassment this time.
- 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.)
February 2009
Archive
(Posted 2/28/09)
Team Paterson Needs a Mega-Rally to Survive
There are a lot of innings left to
play, but the scoreboard
in the NY gubernatorial game does not show encouraging numbers for
skipper
David Paterson. He’s down 57-19 on the
question of whether fans want him back when his contract runs out. Those stats, picked up in a recent poll
sampling, can only get better. But the
rally
may not be sustained enough to save David from being pushed aside by
team management.
Just as Jerry Manuel was available and
ready when the Mets
faltered late last spring, so the Dems have Andrew Cuomo on deck and
willing to bat for
David, if the AG gets the call. That
call will almost certainly come if Team Paterson continues to struggle,
making a
cliffhanger of what a year ago looked to be a likely Dem statewide
sweep. Cuomo, who in 2002 made an
unpopular run at
another black candidate, Carl McCall, will need broad African-American
support
this time. But with elective jobs,
including
U.S. Senate, statewide government offices and legislative seats on the
line -
and the latest poll showing Paterson in disfavor even with many blacks
- such
support may be eager to express itself.
Paterson
said some time ago that Cuomo assured him he had no intention of
seeking the
governorship next year. But that’s
hearsay. Albany Times-Union’s Fred
Lebrun has this take on Andrew’s laid-back stance during David’s bad
stretch: “It would be a grave mistake for Andrew to
appear to want the job at all, particularly because a fellow Democrat,
the first
black governor in New York,
is laboring to keep it. While it is widely accepted that Andrew Cuomo
has
successfully reconstructed his image the old-fashioned way, by working
the room
statewide, and through the legendary Cuomo work ethic at his state job,
the
last thing he wants to do is remind the voters of how baldly ambitious
and
opportunistic he once was.”
- -
-
Non-lawyers may not know how to evaluate the strength of
perjury charges against Barry Bonds, given that other implicated former
players
- Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire either denied use of steroids or
were
unwilling to respond to questions on the subject put to them by
Congressional
investigators. But prominent NYC
litigator Victor Kovner says Bonds is getting a bad deal. “Going ahead with
the prosecution case, he told us, “would be clearly
inappropriate at this time, or worse.” Why? Because, according to Kovner, “It is
fair to infer that the
government resents Bonds’ refusal to provide the expected apology or
public
contrition. They may
not like that, but it
provides no basis for prosecution where so many admitted superstars
have gone
unprosecuted.”
On
YES the other day, Michael Kay noted that Phil Hughes,
who was penciled in as number 3 in 2008, would be sixth in the Yankees’
rotation this year. “He’ll be protection
should one of the top starters get injured,” Kay said.
The team’s pitching riches and superstar
first baseman Mark Teixeira are its
showcase items as spring training starts.
The Mets have a more complicated promotional task.
Offering less talent than the Yanks, their
emphasis in Florida
is on manager Jerry Manuel, and the impact he is supposedly making. “You can feel the difference,” said SNY’s
Gary Cohen. “Last year, it was all about
the collapse in 2007. Although there was
another collapse in 2008, Jerry has them focusing on what’s ahead.” When Kevin Burkhardt interviewed John Maine,
he practically forced the pitcher to follow that script:
“What about the new spirit this year, compared
to last?” Maine
reluctantly went along. Implicit in his
tone, however, was that the hype had already gotten old.
- 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:
2/24/09)
Green’s Signal: Team
Bloomberg Will be Tough to Beat
The additives flap may
be reducing the Yanks’ chances of
making the playoffs, but the odds favoring Team Bloomberg widened the
other day
when the mayor’s original opponent opted to compete citywide again…but
not
against him.
Mark Green’s decision to seek his old
number 2 spot in the
municipal lineup - public advocate - flashes this signal about the
mayoral
contest: He learned in 2001 how hard it is
to overcome Bloomberg’s well-financed team; and that was even before
Mike had
stats as a political player.
Had he chosen to swing against the
mayor again, Mark would
have been - it says here (home of former teammates) - the strongest
hitter in
the opposition lineup. Anthony Weiner
and Billy Thompson will conduct scrappy campaigns, but their teams lack
the
articulate clout that Green can bring to the plate.
Still, as we’ve noted, there’s a resentful
buzz growing among NYC fans – more over Bloomberg’s arrogant,
public-be-damned
game than against him personally.
A savvy player in the city’s academic
circuit put it this
way in response to a previous Nub: “Speaking
of the Yanks and Bloomberg. Around the nation,
Yankee approval ratings are always on the low side because the fans
hate the
idea of buying the championship. Are we at that point with
Bloomberg? Is his wealth (and cockiness) blowing it with the
fans?
How long can he keep being loved if he says he is smarter than all of
us, and
proves it by being so rich? Unlike baseball, where approval
ratings are
less significant than winning. in politics -- at election time-- it is
everything.”
If the still-squibby trend
continues, the final election scoreboard could show Team Bloomberg
defeated,
not by Weiner or Thompson as such, but by the concept of the
anti-democratic
mayor.
The guess here: Green is aiming
for another mayoral run in 2013. He must
win first, of course; he already has the citywide recognition that
three of his
four major Dem opponents - Bill de Blasio, Eric Gioia and John Liu -
are
seeking. The fourth, Norman Siegel, has
well-earned
recognition but not the big bucks that may be required to pull out this
all-star contest (about more later).
- -
-
How great is the spring training
season? Here are the reveries of Dan
Shaughnessy and Bruce Jenkins, columnists for the Boston Globe and San
Francisco Chronicle:
“All
the clichés are true. Pitchers and
catchers. The crack of the bat. The smell of the grass and suntan oil.
“Spring
training is where…a majestic blast
off the bat of Dave Kingman in 1975…sailed over a light tower and
bounded onto
a practice field beyond the left-field wall. Yankees
manager Bill Virdon decided it was a
six-bagger - a home run at Fort
Lauderdale Stadium and a double on the adjacent
diamond.
“Spring
training is where I saw a Montreal left
fielder crash into a fence in Winter
Haven chasing a
fly ball. Back in 1976. The kid was out
cold for a spell. Fans applauded when he
finally got to his feet. He wound up
spending most of his career behind the plate. Gary
Carter.
Hall of Famer.
(Shaughnessy)
“Jose
Reyes dances
off first base, and it's a bit of Rickey
Henderson, that sweet sense that anything can happen
... A
pitch sails head-high and inside to Vladimir Guerrero,
who doesn't flinch….he somehow drills it down the right-field line ... John Smoltz takes it ever so
slowly, a
world-class athlete in repose. The Red
Sox are saving him until mid-summer, and the payoff could be huge ...
Everyone
in the Dodgers' camp has an eye on the front gate. Surely,
this is the day Manny
Ramirez checks
in.” (Jenkins)
- 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:
2/21/09)
Money Propelling Mike
and the Yanks
Economic batting practice - money as a
predictor of
success: two NY examples, Mike Bloomberg
and the Yankees. Who would bet against
baseball’s richest franchise, the bulked-up Yanks, making the AL playoffs (at
least)? And all stats point to the
mega-rich mayor
romping to a third term this season. So
what else is new?
Well, a teacher-friend the other day
reported anti-Bloomberg
rumblings among her public school teammates, which suggests the UFT is
getting
the mayor-as-undemocratic message out to its members.
And perhaps because he detects mounting
opposition, Mike is not playing his
usual unflappable game. As the NY Times
reported this week, the mayor is nervously looking for organized
support; he hopes
to be picked up by a formal political team, perhaps the GOP outfit from
which
he recently demanded a release.
Another sign that all’s not well with
Team Bloomberg’s game
plan: Mike’s testiness. When a Daily
News reporter asked if the mayor now wished he followed the lead of Venezuela’s
Hugo
Chavez and let the people decide on extending term limits through a
referendum
instead of by Council vote, he blew up:
A: "I don’t understand your question. What on Earth do we
have to do with Hugo Chavez?"
Q: "Well, like you, he wanted to extend his term."
A: "If you wanted to ask Hugo Chávez, call him up! Maybe he’ll take your call. My
suspicion is he doesn’t have press
conferences… Who knows? I still fail to see a connection.
"
Chavez tried to end the limits to his presidential term through a
referendum in 2007;
the voters rejected the idea then, but supported Hugo earlier this week.
The referendum on the Yankees will come via the
turnstiles
at the new Stadium. The revelations about A-Rod’s steroid use may have
some
effect on those numbers as well as the new elevated ticket prices. Meanwhile, Baseball Prospectus projects the
Red Sox as winners of the AL East, with the Yanks only a likely wild
card. A Boston Globe roster rundown
concludes that
the Sox will rise or fall on the performance of David Ortiz. The Yanks’ hopes don’t rest on any one
player, which should give them an edge in that competition. But they do have an important hole to fill in
center field.
Progressives see at least three big
holes in Team Obama’s
early game plan: the troop buildup in Afghanistan, continuance of the
Bush
rendition policy - sending suspected terrorists to be interrogated
abroad - and
continued Bush-like hostility to Chavez (there he is again); his
democratically
elected team is winning fans in much of Latin America while the Yanquis are losing them.
More baseball:
The Curt Schilling Theory - the team that gets the most starts out of
its
rotation has the best chance of winning - is gaining stat-checker
support. Sports
Illustrated’s Tom Verducci notes that the Phillies (158 rotation
starts) and
Rays (153) made the Theory look good last year.
But, since World Series teams seldom repeat - from 2001 on
there’s not
been a single returnee - it’s unlikely, he says, that either of them
will be
back in 2009. Here is his take on the
subject:
“Want to see The
Schilling Theory at work? Here are the
only teams in 2008 to get 30 starts from four starters:
1.
Phillies (Won World Series)
2. Rays (Won AL
pennant)
3. Angels (Won AL West)
4. White Sox (Won AL Central)
“Since
2000, 28 teams, or about three per year, were
fortunate enough to have four starters make 30 starts…Good luck to the
Phils
and Rays seeing those kinds of numbers again, especially after three
rounds of
playoff baseball added to the load. Most
alarmingly, (Cole) Hamels threw 79 innings more in 2008 than he did in
any
other professional season, putting him at great risk of a fallback
season. Winning can be costly, and not
just as
measured by payroll.”
- 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: 2/10/09)
Obama Keeping to His Game
Plan Despite Hits
Pete Rose bowled over catchers, Roger
Clemens tossed a bat
at Mike Piazza. Why has Barack Obama taken
so long to show the same aggressive spirit?
Obama as a baseball manager who lets
his team play the game
its laid-back, undisciplined way: that’s the image suggested up to now
by the scene
on the stimulus field. The team - with
“CONGRESS” across its collective chest - has not played as smoothly
together as
its leader would like. Fans were waiting
for his news conference last night to see if he would do anything about
it. What they heard was a strong argument
for quick
passage of the stimulus bill. But on the
matter of divided loyalties on his team, Barack
said he intended to continue behaving
with “respect and civility” toward the dissidents and hoped that his
“overtures
will be reciprocated.”
That politeness is not what the left
was looking for. NY Times scorer Paul
Krugman has led the call
for Obama to get tough. Krugman wants
the manager to stop coddling the foot-dragging players from the other
party. Obama’s big mistake, says
Krugman, was to
think he could win the obstructionists over to his game plan. The
effort wasted
time and, by the scorer’s lights, has been a damaging failure. “The
real
question now,” Krugman said in advance of Barack’s prime-time
appearance, “is
whether Obama will be able to (take control of the game)…My guess is
no.”
Where
Krugman blames Barack for playing ball with “centrists” on the
Congressional
team, statman Charlie Cook, viewing matters from the exact middle of
the
political field, likes the two-sided approach.
He says it’s Obama’s true game plan, and a sensible one, based
on the
record book numbers: “What
was so impressive about Obama's victory last November was that in
winning 53
percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes, he showed a
breadth of
support that suggested a transcendent appeal. He was able to attract
votes far
beyond the traditional reach of liberals. He
was the first Democrat since 1964 to carry
Indiana and Virginia. He prevailed in Florida, Nevada,
and Ohio.
He captured
college graduates by 8 points, those with some college by 4 points,
suburban
voters by 2 points, and men by 1 point…”
The custodian of the Cook Political Report says the
figures
suggest why Barack’s centrist game plan makes sense: it opens the
possibility
to major long-term accomplishments. Because they are thinking
short-term, says
Cook, the Dem members of Team Obama are his real problem: “Congressional
Democrats are understandably anxious to put into place
those programs and priorities that got nowhere while Democrats chafed
under
Republican rule. Expecting them to take
naturally to this very different approach by Obama is unrealistic. For that very reason, the Obama White House
must begin (calling) the plays, or it risks having Hill (Dems)…run
counter to
the president's game plan and have much less likelihood of success.”
-
- -
Success could elude several ballteams grappling to fill
gaping holes in their rosters. Rocky
Mountain News columnist Tracy Ringolsby assembled this partial
team-by-team
list of hitting and pitching gaps:
Giants: Middle
of the lineup. They’re still counting on
Bengie Molina to hit cleanup.
Brewers: No
replacements for C.C. Sabathia and Ben Sheets in the rotation.
Cardinals:
Closer. No sign of a successor to
Jason Isringhausen.
Tigers:
Closer. Brandon Lyon, who
couldn’t cut it in Arizona,
is their best hope.
Blue Jays:
Front-line starter. No #2 behind
Roy Halladay, with A.J. Burnett gone.
Ringolsby did not mention the Mets, who
are weak at the
outfield corners, and have only a single reliable starter in Johan
Santana. Still-learning Mike Pelfrey may
(or may not)
match his ’08 performance. Oliver Perez
may well remain his bi-polar self. John
Maine, recovering from an injury, has inconsistency issues, as well,
etc.
Along with the Obama comment
last night about A-Rod’s “tarnishing”
himself and baseball, Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci had this
comment about the
Rodriguez steroids controversy: “The Yankees are stuck
with him
for nine years, a guy who is untradeable and unloved. They have to be
reserved
with how much they promote him because a guy who used steroids and lied
about
it is not exactly what the image-conscious Yankees want as a face of
the
franchise. They're stuck paying him and they're stuck paying those
garish
bonuses based on home run milestones, a bad idea that looks
embarrassing now
that those milestones are meaningless.”
- 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.)
The Nub, heading south
in search of pitchers and catchers, will return
at the end of next
week.
(Posted: 2/7/09)
It’s the Nervous
Season in Baseball and Politics
On the brink of baseball’s pre-season
and the end of the
political post-Inauguration inning, fans of both pastimes are nervous
about
what they see. Teams like the Red Sox
and Mets have not strengthened themselves enough to compete with
confidence
against their main adversaries, the beefed-up Yankees and still-solid
Phillies. And Team USA,
despite its new globally
popular manager, has lost ground in defense of its “most influential”
world
title.
The savvy International Herald Tribune
scout William Pfaff
notes that, not only has the U.S.
economic model lost its clean-up spot on the world financial team, the
nation’s
military prowess has taken a hard hit, as well.
Pfaff says Europeans consider the idea America
“won” the cold war as spin;
the consensus there is that it was “lost” owing to the Red team’s
internal
problems. He produces a lineup of what
Europe
sees (U.S. claims notwithstanding) as American defeats in Asia and
Africa – the
conflicts comprising open warfare, police actions and covert activity: “Communist China, Korea,
Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq (an
estimated 95 thousand civilians
killed in Iraq, 15 thousand coalition soldiers and police, including
4,229
Americans; and the outcome still in doubt).
The war against terror has been a bloodbath with mainly civilian
victims,
two free-standing Asian states wrecked, and probably more to come.”
Among the depressingly familiar features
of Pfaff’s U.S.
economic-model box score: “swindles…personal enrichment…criminal real
estate
practices…Ponzi schemes.”
Red Sox GM Theo Epstein shrugs off the Yankees’
spend-whatever-it-takes practice in the competition for free agents. “I always assume if the Yankees want a player, they're going
to get him,” he
said in an interview. Speaking for much
of Red Sox Nation, the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy asks:
Is th(e team’s) prudent spending
supposed to make fans feel better when the Yankees whip out almost a
half-billion for Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett?...The
Sox seem
to have a lot of easy outs in their lineup.”
“Easy
outs” are clearly what threaten to make the Mets
also-rans again this year. Back in the early 90’s, then-GM Joe
McIlvaine was
fixated on using products of the Mets’ farm system to make the team
competitive. (Tightfisted co-owners
Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon didn’t give him much choice.) Owing to injuries, poor performances, etc.,
the practice didn’t work. More than a decade later, Omar Minaya seems
to
believe in making a couple of splashy
deals each year – Johan Santana and Francisco Rodriguez are two recent
examples
– and then making do with extra players salvaged from the MLB scrap
heap. Mets’ fans know he doesn’t have much
choice,
either. But they also know Omar’s system
is another that doesn’t work.
With their new stadium due to open come
spring, the Mets
received this catchy signage advice the other day from Newsday’s
Wallace
Matthews: “Give
back the dough, drop a TARP over those Citi Field signs and
come up with a new name for your ballpark."
- 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:
2/3/09)
Citi Field Hit From
the Left and Right
“Extremely troublesome.”
Those are the words of Congressmen
Dennis Kucinich and Ted
Poe - one from Cleveland, and the far
left of
the political playing field, the other from southeastern Texas, and the
far right. They teamed up last week to
slam the $400
million deal under which Citigroup bought naming rights to the Mets’
new
stadium for 20 years.
In a letter to the new Treasury
Secretary, the pair noted
that Citigroup received a $45 bllion government bailout and that, under
the
circumstances, the naming investment - which, in effect, is being
undertaken
with taxpayers money - was “unacceptable.”
Citigroup and the Mets insist that the deal, made in 2006, will
stand. A number of people, political and
press among
them, say it should be sent to the showers.
Here is how Newsday’s Anthony Rieber puts it:
“(Although)
it's in the country's best interests for our giant
financial institutions not to fail…it is not in the country's best
interests
for a Citi Field sign atop the new ballpark - not considering who is
paying for
it. Order it taken down, Mr. Treasury
Secretary. Cancel the contract….
”Or how about the Mets doing the right thing and getting out of the
contract
themselves? The Citigroup money is not quite blood money, but it's very
close.”
Troublesome,
too, is the silence of NY’s Dem elected
officials about the naming deal. Surely,
Anthony Weiner, whose Congressional district includes parts of Queens, could be expected to take his swings. Joining Kucinich and Poe would generate
sure-fire positive publicity for his run for mayor.
Same goes for fellow Dem mayoral candidate
Billy Thompson. He, too, seems reluctant
to take on Citygroup. Except for two
Staten Island Republicans, Councilmembers - those running for
reelection and/or
citywide offices - have kept a low profile on the issue.
As for our senior Senator Chuck (Where’s
Charlie?) Schumer, fuhgedaboudit. The
suspicion here, as yet undocumented, is that Citygroup is as active a
political
contributor as it is a corporate dealmaker.
More than troublesome:
The mantra of many Republicans during the law-defying eight Bush
years
was “as long as there’s no indictment.”
Already, thanks to the arrogance of privilege of Tom Daschle and
Tim Geithner, Obama Democrats are moaning
“I thought we
were better than this.” The pair has
tarnished the pre-game gleam that suffused Team Obama.
And it’s only the top of the first, with a
tough season ahead.
WNYC’s Jonathan Schwartz recalled over
the weekend that, in
response to a fan letter, John Updike, along with a “thank you”,
sketched a
ballfield at the bottom of his reply.
“How to Beat the Yankees” was the caption. The field had a husky, pinstriped batter at
the plate and 15 defenders facing him.
Schwartz had commended Updike, who died last week, for his New
Yorker
essay “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” which described Ted Williams’ last
at-bat in
September 1960. Baltimore’s Jack Fisher was the
pitcher. Here is an excerpt:
“Understand
that we were a crowd of rational people. We
knew that a home run cannot be produced at
will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the
ball. Three innings before, we had seen a
brave
effort fail. The air was soggy; the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around a
corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope,
and this
was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a
density of
expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
“Fisher,
after (an) unsettling wait,
was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams
swung
mightily and missed. The crowd grunted,
seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked
in its
failure. Fisher threw the third time,
Williams swung again, and there it was. The
ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center
field. From my angle, behind third base,
the ball
seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless
construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge.
It was in the books while it was still
in the sky. (Jackie) Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the
outfield
grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch
where the
bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see,
vanished.
“Like a
feather caught in a vortex,
Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching
screaming. He ran as he always ran out
home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a
storm of
rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his
cap. Though we thumped, wept, and
chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did
not come
back. Our noise for some seconds passed
beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry
to be
saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the
other
players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and
acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”
-
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.)
January 2009 Archive
(Posted 1/31/08)
Two Respected Pros Hurt
Themselves
Two good guys - one in NY politics, the
other in baseball -
have suffered self-inflicted wounds that could prove professionally
fatal to
the politician. He is Governor David
Paterson, who allowed his selection of a senator to bat for Hillary
Clinton to
degenerate into a media melee. Joe Torre
hurt himself less, but drew blood, by agreeing to play ball with SI’s
Tom
Verducci, author of the book “The Yankee Years”
We worked briefly with Paterson
some years ago when he was mulling a run for city office.
His intelligence, wit and candor about
vision-related insecurities were impressive, less so his ultra-cautious
decision-making. Torre, of course,
earned the respect of fans everywhere because he carried himself with
dignity
through the many highs and few lows of his 12 years with the Yankees,
indeed, through
his entire career.
Unlike Torre, who never sought
attention, Paterson
apparently succumbed to
spotlight-itis. The privilege of
choosing Hillary’s successor gave him enormous transitory power, to
which he
couldn’t resist clinging. The longer he
put off announcing his choice - would it be Caroline Kennedy? - the
more
attention he received. The extra innings
showed Kennedy to be error-prone, and allowed the inevitable tension
between
hired PR consultants and staff people to tear the gov’s team apart. The resulting contradictions pitched to the
media about Carolyn’s status hurtled out of Paterson’s control.
Tom Robbins provides a devastating game
summary in this week’s Village Voice:
“Nothing
that the
governor or his people say about the entire affair is to be believed. They lied all Wednesday night (1/21) when the
rumors about Kennedy's exit from the race first surfaced. Then they
lied some
more on Thursday. It was a nanny problem, they said. Taxes.
A
bad marriage. Thisfile:///C:/Users/dickstar/Downloads/Documents/PerfectPitch%20blog/the_nub.html
from a politician who
confessed to affairs with women on the state payroll. Kennedy's
people fired back and, at day's end,
Paterson sued for peace, admitting there had been no such last-minute
surprises
about her.”
The box score shows Paterson
has made enemies of: Caroline (and the Kennedys), and Mike Bloomberg,
who
supported Caroline. He’s made friends
of: Chuck Schumer (the appoiutee’s alleged sponsor), and Kirsten
Gillibrand and
her mentor Al D’Amato, neither of whom are popular in vote-heavy NYC. No way does the governor come out on top in
that rundown.
More significantly, Paterson’s
miscues have strengthened AG Andrew Cuomo’s poll numbers to the point
where he
will be tempted - his reported disclaimer notwithstanding - to take on Paterson in the
Dem gov
primary next year. Cuomo’s rationale: the
accidental governor, like Caroline, just wasn’t clutch under pressure. Paterson
has time to regroup. But he can’t allow
any replays between now and election time next year.
Although negligible by comparison,
Torre’s wound is a cut in
stature. Much has been written
questioning Torre’s decision to tell tales about Carl (“Everybody hated
him”)
Pavano, Alex (“A-Fraud”) Rodriguez, etc.
More damaging, however, is the book’s suggestion of a streak of
self-pity that leaves both Joe and Yankees GM Brian Cashman diminished. Here is an excerpt, describing Torre’s
feelings after Cashman failed to pitch hard to get the Steinbrenners to
give
him a two-year contract following the ’07 season:
“I
thought Cash was an ally, I really did,"
Torre says. "You know, we had some
differences on coaches, and
the usefulness of the coaches. I know he didn't think much of
(Ron) Guidry.
And [former bench coach Don] Zimmer.
You know, Zimmer didn't trust Cash,
and I
disagreed with Zimmer vehemently for the longest time. Then,
you know, you start thinking about
things ... I have a, I don't want to say it's a weakness, but I want to
trust
people. And I do trust people until I'm
proved wrong. And it's not going to keep
me from trusting somebody else tomorrow, because it's the only way I
can do my
job."
It’s hard to believe Torre agreed to do the book
to gain a
measure of vindication. He didn’t need
it. Nor did he need the money the book
will make. Whatever the reason - and the
latter is the more likely - many of Joe’s fans can only wish he had
taken a
walk rather than playing along with the book offer.
- 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:
1/27/09)
Team Obama Taking
Sides in Mideast
Team Obama’s first-inning at-bat as
part of the deadly game
in the Middle East has ended, with the score Israel
3, Palestinians 1.
The scoring, based on the verbal swings
of the Team’s top
man, is offered as a service to George Mitchell, the former lead
investigator
into baseball drug use. As we know, he
is now assigned to the chewed-up field in the Middle
East. Mitchell must persuade
both Israel
and the
Palestinians that the Obama team will be an unbiased umpire in the
effort to
bring the sides together. How tough a
sell that will be was confirmed when Obama stepped to the plate last
Thursday.
Fans were waiting to see if he would
hit straight away or
toward one side or the other. Would he
call attention to such things as Hamas rocket attacks, arms-smuggling
into Gaza,
suicide bombings,
the vow to destroy the Jewish state? Or,
on the other hand, would he deplore Israel’s
recent three-week attack on Gaza, the
expansion
of illegal settlements on the West Bank,
the
blockade of humanitarian aid to the Gazans, the unilateral breaking of
the
previous cease-fire, etc.
What Obama did was produce runs for Israel by hitting out at Hamas for (1)
rocket
attacks and (2) the smuggling and then, rather than deplore the attack
on Gaza,
he (3) defended the
Israelis’ right to defend themselves. The president did make a pitch
for
humanitarian aid for Gazans, enabling Team Palestine to scratch out the
theoretical
run that kept it from being blanked.
The game has a long way to go, and it
might end in a
tie. But we’re obviously far from that
now; indeed, since Barack’s first-inning statement, Team Obama has
thrown its
gloves behind a last-minute Bush/U.S. commitment to help Israel prevent arms from entering Gaza. As the scoreboard-watching continues it’s
clear Mitchell will need a change in stance by the skipper if he is to
succeed
as peacemaker.
President Obama’s bipartisan
approach, so dismaying to
progressives, received an indirect defense from Princeton
prof. Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Bill Moyers Journal over the weekend. Harris-Lacewell suggested that Obama has to
do whatever it takes to prevent the Republicans from badly eroding the
Dem
majority in the 2010 Congressional elections.
She recalled what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994, two years
after his
election: the GOP regained control of the Senate and House, setting the
stage
for the Newt Gingrich-led conservative comeback. It
could well be a persuasive rationale for
what historian Thomas Frank (another guest on the Moyers show) insists
is the
“chump’s game” of centrism.
- -
-
We have Mets VP Jeff Wilpon to thank for providing us with
the laugh of the month. He said the team
hadn’t expressed interest in signing Manny Ramirez “because (GM) Omar
(Minaya)
hasn’t brought it to me as an option.”
The Mets have one of the weakest batch of corner outfielders in
the
majors – two (Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis) are converted
infielders, another
(Ryan Church) can field but fans too often for a 270s hitter with only
middling
power. Why would Omar not want to try
for Manny? There mu$t be a reason.
Given the alternatives, Newsday’s
Wallace Matthews suggests
that Mets fans brace for disappointments:
“Think
about that the next time the Mets need a big hit late in a
game, you’re looking for Manny Ramirez to bound out of the dugout to
save the
day, and out comes . . . Marlon Anderson.”
Fashion
alert: Black
baseball caps with White Sox lettering are fast becoming popular
headgear in
NYC. A safe guess: Most of the wearers are
fans of the Chisox fan in the White House.
- 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: 1/24/09)
Barack, Sox, Bombers
Lead Popularity League
President Obama may be a White Sox fan,
but he ranks with
the Red Sox and Yanks in the popularity league.
Just as polls show Barack gained the highest approval rating
ever
recorded as president-elect, so, based on surveys as well as
home-and-away
attendance figures, the Bosox and Bombers are the teams baseball fans
most want
to see. The difference, of course, is
that popularity in politics means people are rooting for you, in
baseball, it
can mean being the team or teams fans love to hate.
Obama, so new on the field, is not in
the same league with
our three presidential icons – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and
Franklin
Roosevelt. Each of the three earned his
legendary status by guiding the country through crisis – the fight for
and
challenge of independence, the Civil War and the Great Depression. If Obama deals successfully with our present
economic crisis, he might rank just behind the big three, along with
the likes
of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt.
Obama received an 82 percent approval
rating in a
CNN/Opinion Research poll before taking office.
That compared to 67 percent transition score for Bill Clinton
and 65
percent for George W. Bush. Obama also
had a margin in double-digit range over the senior George Bush and
Ronald
Reagan.
Fans knew Obama was serious about his
baseball when he agreed
to state his preference for the White Sox over the Cubs and to knock
the scene
at Wrigley Field in the process:
"You go to Wrigley… you have a beer,
beautiful people up there. People aren't
watching the game. It's not
serious. White Sox, that's
baseball."
Although
Reagan and two Bushes were real baseball fans, the
prize for true spectator fanaticism belongs to Richard Nixon, who said
this
about his affection for the game:
"I never
leave a game before the last pitch, because in
baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will
happen."
Between 1923 and 2000, it was safe
to predict Yankees’ success: the Bombers won more than a third of the
World Series
held in that period – 26 or 76. The
Yanks also hold the record for most appearances in Series history
(dating back
to 1903) by far – 39 (of 104).
The newly nationally popular Red Sox are
Papi-come-latelys
by comparison: seven WS titles in 11 appearances. Their
last WS loss: the memorable battle with
the Mets in ’86.
- -
-
For many, the highlight reel of Inauguration day showed
a departure, rather than an arrival. Garrison Keillor, who saw the
happening live,
described it on Salon:
“The
great moment
came… as the mob flowed slowly across the grounds.
I heard loud cheers behind me and there on
the giant screen was the Former Occupant and Mrs. Bush saying goodbye
to the
Obamas in the parking lot behind the Capitol, the Marine helicopter
behind
them. The crowd stopped and stared, a
little stunned at the reality of it.
“They saw
it on a
screen in front of the Capitol and it was actually happening on the
other side.
The Bushes went up the stairs, turned,
waved and disappeared into the cabin, and people started to cheer in
earnest. When the blades started turning,
the cheering
got louder, and when the chopper lifted up above the Capitol and we saw
it in
the sky heading for the airport, a million jubilant people waved and
hollered
for all they were worth. It was the most
genuine, spontaneous, universal moment of the day. It was like watching
the ice
go out on the river.”
- 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:
1/20/09)
The Dirt on
Caroline’s Political Uniform
“DOUBLE STEAL” said a tabloid headline
about the $1.2
billion and $6.3 million the city handed out in tax-free-bond dollars
to the
Yankees and Mets last week. The term
implicates
NYC skipper Mike Bloomberg who has the clout – financial and political
– to
make things happen. We know that
Bloomberg has used his clout to do more than allow the ball teams to
“steal”
public dollars for what is largely private benefit.
He and 29 members of the City Council also stole
the right of NYC residents to vote on the term-limits extension.
So much for the record book.
The word now is that Mike has another theft in mind. Wayne Barrett reports in the latest Village
Voice that the mayor may have co-opted Governor David Paterson in the
Bloomberg-backed campaign to get Caroline Kennedy named to the senate
seat
being vacated by Hillary Clinton. If the
campaign is successful, Caroline could be expected to become a
Bloomberg-friendly senator who, as a key early Barack supporter, might
just -
in Barrett’s words - “get Obama to sit on his hands in the 2009
(mayoral)
election.”
For playing ball with Mike, if he
follows through in that
game, Paterson
would
have a key (non-Democratic) friend of his own when he runs as the
incumbent in
the 2010 gubernatorial election, possibly against Rudy Giuliani. Paterson’s
problem - as detailed by Barrett - is Caroline and the taint her stint
in the
political field has brought to her reputation.
Not only has she been swinging like an amateur in response to
media
lobs, she permitted her record as a player of note to be puffed way out
of
proportion (abetted hugely by the NY
Times), a record with some embarrassing negatives, like a failure to
vote in
half the elections since 1988.
Some day later this week, Paterson will
likely announce his senatorial
choice. It may have been a coincidence
that, after Barrett’s article appeared, the governor said he was doing
some
“new thinking” about whom he should appoint.
Whatever triggered that do-over decision, it suggests Paterson knows
his performance at this at-bat
is a test of leadership mettle – one
that could profoundly affect his future..
-
-
-
Interesting stats involving, among others, C.C. Sabathia,
Johan Santana, Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett and Mike Pelfrey emerged from
a
recent interview former Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson gave to
fullcountpitch.com. Illustrating the
importance of pitch counts, Peterson noted that batters only hit .200
against
Santana during the 25-to-50-pitch period of his performances. But that BA goes up to .284 when Johan
reaches 100 pitches. For AJ Burnett and
Josh Beckett, who seldom are asked to go over 100, the differences
between
25/50 and 76/100 are .232/.298 (AJ) and .224/,292 (Josh)
Sabathia is the dramatic exception to the
losing-gas rule. His BA yield between 25
and 50 pitches is .214. When he goes
over 100, he holds batters to .179. Now
we know yet another reason besides W-L and durability stats why the
Yankees
were willing to give up as much as they did to get CC.
Peterson identified the main reason
Pelfrey isn’t as
effective as the Mets would like: batters seldom miss making contact
with the
strikes he throws. That adds up, not
only to few strikeouts, but the obvious alternative - more balls in
play that
can become hits. Batters swung and
missed at less than 8 percent of Pelfrey’s strike-zone pitches. Mike’s saving grace, according to Peterson,
is his ability to induce ground balls.
In that category, he’s 15th best
in the majors.
- 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: 1/17/09)
Make Way for Prez Barack
and…Baseball
Three days to President Obama and
three-plus weeks to
pitchers and catchers: life can’t get much better than this. For many of us, anticipation is the best part
of imminent change, the new departure seldom matching our hoped-for
delight. Barack’s democratic coronation
Tuesday will mark
the end of his triumphal pre-season; too soon he’ll be tested in games
that
count and will start hearing boos.
The Mets’ Omar Minaya could have been
speaking for most baseball
GMs when he looked ahead the other day and said that, barring
unforeseen
setbacks, “We feel very good going into the year.”
Why not feel good? No one’s lost a
game yet. In a like upbeat
mode, Hillary Clinton spoke of Obama’s arrival on the global field as
“the
dawning of this new American moment.”
For Team Obama, the new moment will
surely seem much like
the old: tricky questions requiring careful answers, like how best to
deal with
the threat posed by Iran?. As a candidate, Obama said that, even with
nuclear arms potential, Iran
did not represent a threat to the U.S. He
thought it might be possible to reach out
and get the Iranians to play ball with America.
As incoming president, he has changed his
stance, He now says, as Hillary Clinton did this week, that “all
options are on
the table” with regard to Iran. The
emphasis in the response suggests that,
at least at the start, the new White House team will be field a foreign
policy
as combative as its predecessor.
NY Times’ David Sanger says new
presidential teams need time
to get a handle on the spook games they’ve inherited and the info
coming out of
those games. “There are covert actions,”
Sanger says Obama will be presiding over “before he fully understands
them.” When John F. Kennedy was in a
similar situation, he found himself the fall guy for the Bay of Pigs debacle. Until
Leon
Panetta gets into position at the CIA - an approval process that could
take time
– the kind of mischief-making traceable to the U.S.
occurring in places like Bolivia,
Venezuela and Georgia, as well as Iran,
may well continue. If that happens, the
boos aimed at Obama will
drown out the memory of these highly hopeful days of anticipation.
- -
-
The Red Sox are the reclamation champs of the hot stove
season. The signings of 41-year-old John
Smoltz and 38-year-old Takashi Saito give them two potential
comeback-of-the-year pitchers as well as the
taking-a-risk-on-damaged-old-guys
title. The Sox also took advantage of
the bargain deal accepted by 33-year-old Mark Kotsay.
We suggested not long ago that Kotsay – who
made $7.3 million last season – could be had for a “few million” this
time
around. He signed for $1.5 million (plus
incentives), a chump-change figure for the Yanks and one even the
straitened Mets
could have afforded. Always on the
lookout for bargains, Omar Minaya missed one in the versatile Kotsay. Omar probably had to pass on Smoltz and
Saito. After wasting millions on Moises
Alou and Orlando Hernandez, among others, he has likely been barred
from
further old-timer signings by Fred Wilpon.
Free-agent-signing predictions is a
fool’s game. Yet, that Atlanta HAD to sign Derek Lowe was
clear, a
prophetic no-brainer. The same can be
said about the Dodgers and Manny. A
three-year, $75 million contract should get it done.
But don’t hold us to those numbers.
- 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 1/13/09)
Ball Fans, Taxpayers
Can't Follow Their Money
Baseball fans would like to know how
their teams are doing
financially, and where the money is going – into the farm system, free
agent
signings, stadium improvements, or the corporate pocket.
Taxpayers have a similar wish - to know where
the various federal bailout dollars – their money – is going and has
gone.
Everyone in those two groups is out of
luck. Forbes magazine publishes annual
team
valuations, but those are profit-and-loss estimates, not authenticated
figures,
which are kept private. “They make the(ir) numbers up,” scoffs Rob
Manfred, an
MLB exec v.p. “It’s important to realize
that the(y) are not real in any sense of the word.”
At least Forbes provides baseball’s
fans with estimated
figures. Taxpayers, who should have
access to how their money was distributed, are left in the dark by the
people
responsible. A Government Accountability
(GAO) report released last month said, in effect, there was no way to
monitor
where the bailout money went: It blamed
the program’s “rapid (startup) pace” which “hampered” watchdog efforts,
meaning
“government and taxpayers may not be adequately protected.” The Treasury Department’s inspector general
echoes the GAO’s distress call: We don’t
know “right now how we’re going to do proper oversight of this thing,”
he says.
The closest thing to oversight
available to the public has
been provided by Bloomberg,net An
analysis, by reporter Mark Pittman, suggests that members of Congress
are
almost as ignorant as the rest of us because they were snookered by
Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson. Pittman reminds
us that the secretary sold the program to Congress “as a way to buy
securities that had fallen in market value. (But then) Paulson
shifted his emphasis to direct capital injections to banks to prevent
the
financial sector from foundering.”
The Bloomberg scorecard lists
Paulson’s “injections” as purchases of
174 shares in a range of banks from hugely profitable Goldman Sachs to
comparatively tiny Saigon National Bank, of Westminster, CA. Pittman says those buys will yield a fraction
of a return to the taxpayers than one that could have been negotiated
by
private investors like Warren Buffett (who exacted a 21 percent
stake in
Goldman Sachs compared to a 2.7 percent now held by Paulson and the
government).
Paulson defended his deal in a
Bloomberg TV interview: “We did
successfully…design a program that would…get (us back to)
normal market conditions.” Supporters
of Paulson like the NY Times’ David Brooks agree: Most critics
acknowledge, he
says, that “the financial system is not in the extremely fragile state
it was
in a few months ago.” While conceding on
the Lehrer NewsHour that there hasn’t been enough oversight, Brooks
offered a
rationale for the disappearance of hundreds of millions of bailout dollars:
“Let's
remember: You spend $350 billion quickly, that's
really hard to do well. I mean, in wartime, when you have to do a lot
quickly,
you get a lot of waste.”
Why is Congressional oversight so hard
to do? That’s a question the media should
require
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to answer.
Baseball owners argue that fans
shouldn’t care how teams
spend their money, as long as they are receiving an attractive product. That may not be a persuasive argument in Pittsburgh or Kansas City, where teams are on tight
budgets and fans on
short rations. In cities like New York and Boston,
owners are willing to spend extravagantly because the operational
bottom line
does not matter. It’s maximizing the
long-term
value of the franchise that counts. Hence,
there’s apparently little point - for fans and, especially, for
investors – to
second-guess the Yanks’ superstar deals.
Those deals do serve to drive more
frugal owners crazy,
however. The Mets’ Fred Wilpon looks
tight-fisted compared to his cross-town counterparts, the Steinbrenners. There’s a sense - right or wrong - that
Wilpon cares only about fielding a competitive team, not a dominant
one, which
is a consistent Yankees goal. Relatedly,
the Forbes valuations indicate that MLB teams make enough operating
money most
years to obviate any of their being out of pennant contention before
the season
starts. Because they seem to be slipping
into the non-contending category, the Braves must know they can’t let
prime
free agent Derek Lowe get aw
- 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: 1/10/09)
Bias at Bat in Coverage
of Deadly Game in Gaza
Attentive fans know that beat
reporters, whether watching
the White House or the White Sox, become semi-embedded with the players
they’re
covering. Familiarity often breeds…team
spirit. When was the last time you read
anything negative about the Chisox’s African-American GM Ken Williams? Or the newly elected national leader who wore
the White Sox cap while he was vacationing in Hawaii?
The old reporting standard of calling
political games the
way Tony Kubek called Yankees games (for which he took a lot of
corporate hits)
- straight down the middle - has given way to a more grooved approach. The reporters swing in support of the home
team over the opposition, something that used to be rationalized under
the label
“analysis.” That’s less the case now,
particularly noticeable during the conflict in Gaza.
The other day,
the NY
Times ran a seemingly standard front-page piece by Jerusalem correspondent Steven
Erlanger. It told what Israel
was trying to accomplish militarily in Gaza
– how it hoped to avoid civilian casualties, resolved to rely less on
air
strikes, etc. Any questioning of the
major offensive strategy went unaddressed.
Similarly, a story via the UN from Gaza
in the Muslim News spoke only of the violence, the casualties, the
hardships. The Hamas rocket-fire that
helped trigger the devastation - and which continues - went unreported.
In the midst of the one-sided
reporting, this down-the-middle
comment provided needed perspective on the deadly game in Gaza.
The author: UN’ Middle East
envoy Robert
Serry:
"The
protection of civilians, the fabric
of life, the future of the peace talks and of the regional peace
process has
been trapped between the irresponsibility of the Hamas attacks and the
excessiveness of the Israeli response."
- (Quoted by Chris
Hedges, TruthDig.com)
Among Team Obama’s many challenges:
extricating the peace
process - and the bloodshed - from the trap.
- - -
The consensus in hot stove chatter is that the deal market
has turned cold as we move to barely a month before pitchers and
catchers. Two former Red Sox heroes may
feel the chill
in different ways. ESPN’s Peter Gammons
told a Boston radio audience that Jason Varitek won’t come near
matching what
he could have made by accepting the Sox’s arbitration offer: “How
Scott Boras looked him in the eye and
said, 'By the way, I turned down $10 million [in arbitration],' is
beyond me. He turned down arbitration --
he would have
made a minimum of $10 million, maybe $11 million. And
there are a bunch of guys like that -- Jon
Garland, Orlando
Cabrera. There are a bunch of guys who
are not even going to come close to what they made in arbitration
“
Boros
and Manny Ramirez rejected a two-year, $45 million offer from the
Dodgers. That was before Raul Ibanez
(Phillies) and
Milton Bradley (Cubs) agreed to three-year, $30 million deals, and Pat
Burrell signed
with the Rays for $16 million for two years. Joe Sheehan, of Baseball
Prospectus,
believes Manny will regret hanging tough: “Right now, the best
contract for
Ramirez is the one that he no longer has available to him: his
one-year, $20
million option that was voided when he accepted a trade to the Dodgers.
At the time it seemed silly to suggest that
Ramirez wouldn't do better than that. Now,
looking at the deals signed by his peers,
it seems silly to suggest that he will.” (Note: Sports
Illustrated’s
Jon Heyman hardly fits the description of “silly.” Yet he says Manny
will do
much better than $20 million per in a three-year deal with the Dodgers
or
Giants.)
Another prominent player on the wintry outside
looking in:
Andy Pettitte, who seems to have made a costly mistake in declining the
Yanks’
$10 million offer The
Mets, meanwhile, must hope the cooling
market affects their dealing with Derek Lowe and his agent Boros. Gammons says the Yankees wanted Lowe more
than they did A.J. Burnett, but that Burnett;s agents beat Boros to the
negotiating
table. Because of the loss of face
involved,
it’s unlikely Boros will let Derek sign the three-year $36 million deal
the
Mets are offering. Unlikely, that is,
unless the recession has become a starker baseball reality than
pinstripe
spending made it appear.
- 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 1/6/08)
Patience Asked of
Bosox and Barack Fans
Bosox partisans, like supporters of
Barack Obama, are
pitching the same virtue to fellow fans.
Be patient, they say, things will work out, decisions made to
your liking.
Members of the Sox Nation are restive over the team’s minimal
off-season
activity (compared to the Yankees) – adding Brad Penny but losing Mark
Teixiera. People like Boston Globe
columnist Bob Ryan advise them to cool it, reminding them that GM Theo
Epstein
has earned their confidence: “Theo…has been right more often than he’s
been
wrong.”
A recent Gallup Poll found that 93
percent of liberal
Democrats surveyed were confident Barack
Obama would be a good president. On specific issues, however, there is
progressive dismay: Obama’s stance for
expanding the war in Afghanistan
is a source of particular concern. Many
liberals opposed the consensus view that the war in Afghanistan
was “right”, unlike the one in Iraq.
A small, police-action force could have
been used, they said, to try to ferret Osama bin Laden out of his
dugout. That would have been preferable to
the
carnage Team Bush unleashed in vain.
Historian Howard Zinn recently
amplified the argument in a
speech at (NY) State University, Binghamton
(recorded by Pacifica’s
“Democracy Now.”) At the time, he said,
some progressives asked “Why are we
bombing Afghanistan?”
“Because, oh, Osama bin Laden is there.” “Uh, where?” Well, (we) don’t
really
know, so we’ll bomb the country. You know, if we bomb the country,
maybe we’ll
get him. Sure, in the process, thousands
of Afghans will die…”
We know now that Osama has, indeed, become “Osama
bin Forgotten.” Failing to find him, Team Bush has made the Taliban as
well as Al
Quaida a major target, killing more and more innocent civilians in its
endless
military campaign. Zinn said he
“likes”
Obama and understands the need for patience:
“But I’m a
citizen. I have to speak my mind. At one
point in the campaign, (Obama) said, ‘It’s not just a matter of getting
out of Iraq.
It’s a matter of changing the mindset that
got
us into Iraq.’
That was a very important statement. Unfortunately, he has not followed through by
changing his mindset.”
-
- -
There’s an occasional faint sign that the Mets
are
following through on an effort to upgrade their farm system. One such has emerged from the Puerto Rican
Winter League in the form of 22-year-old righthander Dillon Gee. Latest stats show Gee with a 4-0 record in 10
games and a 43-13 strikeout/walk ratio in 48 innings.
He divided the ’08 season between Single-A
Saint Lucie and Double-A Binghamton, going 10-6. Meanwhile,
the Mets’ 20-year-old
super-prospect Fernando Martinez has been showing power in the
Venezuelan
League. In 41 games, he was batting
.314, with seven doubles, five triples and six home runs.
The Yankees may have a budding slugger in first
baseman Jorge Vazquez, who was batting .348, with 12 doubles and 15 HRs
in 54
Mexican Pacific League games. The
26-year-old hit .339, with 18 homers in 56 games in regular Mexican
League
season. The Red Sox would seem to have
future third-base help in 24-year-old Jorge Jiminez, who has hit .346
in 27
Puerto Rican League games after batting .352 for the Single-A Lowell
Spinners
before a late-season promotion to Double-A Portland
Since Omar Minaya and Brian Cashman know at least
as much as attentive fans about needed team improvements, they must be
aware
that:
- The Mets will be left with only a wild card hope
in ’09 if the Phillies sign Derek Lowe.
- Joe Girardi likes Oliver Perez - “He has a chance
to good” - and would likely welcome the challenge of to harnessing the
free agent’s unstable
pitching talent.
-
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
1/3/09)
U.S. Made Similar Errors on Two Fields
The
other day, former Mets manager Davy Johnson deplored the
way the U.S.botched its role as would-be world leader: “We assumed that if
we threw our gloves out there and took our hacks, we were going to win,”
he said. “The rest of the
world…was a lot better.”
Johnson was talking about Team USA’s
cavalier approach to the
first World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2006.
But his words certainly applied to Team Bush’s leadership in the
foreign
policy field. The presumed cheering that
our military would receive in Iraq
was the perfect symbolic error, but the record book is replete with
others, most
familiar, some not. A recent, largely
unnoticed federal scorecard, for example, confirmed a devastating truth
about a
$100 billion effort that was supposed to keep the Iraqis cheering after
the
“shock and awe” innings. “Five years after
embarking
on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan
in
Europe,” it said, “the U.S. government has in place neither the
policies and
technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be
needed to
undertake such a program.”
The
dimensions of other misplays -
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Latin
America,
etc. – are becoming more and more evident. In
the Middle East,
domestic politics has so skewed our outlook that a pitch for an
“even-handed” stance
toward the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is construed as anti-Israeli. In going to bat for the relentless offensive
against Hamas, Barack Obama has all but dashed hopes for an end to our
one-sidedness. Author/actor Wallace
Shawn expressed the dismay of many Americans in an article in The
Nation:
“It
is…unbearable to think that among the
first words we would hear from our new, clearly rational president
would be
preposterous sentences trying to persuade us that Israeli policies
which seem
to be appalling are actually quite normal and acceptable. Certainly
nothing our
new president could do would be of greater value to the world--and
greater
value to the Jews--than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing
habit of
supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in
more
tragedy.”
Diehard
Obama fans cling to the notion that he will
straighten out his political swing by the time he steps to the plate on
the 20th. Davy Johnson assured
Yahoo’s Gordon Edes that
Team USA would be focused and ready for the second WBC in early March. With a roster that includes pitchers Roy
Oswalt, John Lackey and Joe Nathan, and
position players Derek Jeter, David Wright, Chipper Jones, Jimmy
Rollins, Ryan
Braun, Grady Sizemore, etc., Johnson would seem to have a better basis
than the
Obama fans for optimism.
-
- -
The Mets and Red Sox have something in common: both teams
say they will not “break the bank” to sign free agents this winter. The Mets, we know, need to add a solid
starter to their rotation, the Sox are looking for position-player
reinforcements. Boston made a generous bid for Mark
Teixiera,
only to be outbid by the Yankees. “So be
it,” they said. The Mets said they would
not spend beyond their means after Derek Lowe declined an offer of more
than
$36 million for three years. Although
the teams are taking a similar spending approach, they’re in different
talent-flow
ballparks. The Sox had twice as many
minor league all stars (among those selected by Baseball America)
as the
NYMs in ‘08, and finished ninth of 30 in aggregate W-L minor league
standings, while
the Mets came in 25th. The
obvious moral: teams cannot maintain economic discipline and hope to
win without
a productive farm system.
- 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.)
DECEMBER 2008
ARCHIVE
(Posted: 12/30/08)
Money Talking for
Mike and the Yanks
Two of New York’s
most prominent competitors - the Yankees in baseball, and Mike
Bloomberg in
politics - seem to have the same strategic stance.
Spelled out, their approach can be described thusly: “NEW YORK DESERVES THE BEST.
MONEY IS NO OBJECT.”
The Yanks, we know, activated their
strategy by anteing $423
million for C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira.
Bloomberg is ready to spend close to $100
million in his pitch for a controversial third mayoral term. Both the team and the mayor are in position
to see their outlays pay off: for the Yanks, a shot at the World
Series; for
Bloomberg, a front-running chance at winning four more years as the
city’s skipper.
But fans know nothing is sure in either
competitive field: the
Yankees have antagonized their less well-heeled opponents.
Their extravagant spending insures that each
team on the schedule will be lying in wait with an unparalleled
incentive to
cut them down to size. Team Bloomberg must deal with widespread
resentment of
the mayor’s unwillingness to let voters decide via referendum whether
term
limits should be extended. In our
current economic environment, a leader who is both super-wealthy and
undemocratic can generate strong opposition.
One can imagine a variation on an old
theme - “He’s the Best
Mayor Money Can Buy -and Keep Around” - striking a public nerve. A similar resentment of the Yankees’
extravagance after begging taxpayer dollars could badly hurt demand for
overpriced seats in the new, heavily subsidized Stadium.
If nothing else, the mayor may find himself
in a tough, brush-back battle for re-election.
As for the Yanks, they’ve roused the combative ire of at least
one
adversary: a Boston
columnist says Red Sox fans should be happy the Steinbrenners have
spent so
much to improve, thereby sharpening a rivalry that had become too
one-sided.
- -
-
Although we deplore the practice of sports writers presuming
to spend other people’s money, recommending free-agent deals - “Pay
whatever
Manny or Derek Lowe ask” - we feel constrained
to make this modest recommendation to
the Yanks, Mets, and even the Red Sox:
Sign Mark Kotsay. The veteran
outfielder, who played with Atlanta and
Boston
last season, can
probably be had for a bargain rate (say, a few million).
He would certainly fill the Yankees’ big
center field hole, or meet the Mets’ need for a solid defensive corner
outfielder who is no slouch at the plate (a career .281 hitter). Back problems sidelined Kotsay for five weeks
in ’08, but he finished the season strong, playing in 110 games. The Red Sox could use him again as a
part-time first baseman, now that Teixeira is going elsewhere. Some team’s going to grab him, and - it says
here -be happy it did.
Just as the first round of baseball
playoffs clearly
includes teams that don’t belong - we said that in October about the
Brewers
and White Sox - so it is in the NFL Wild Card round this Sunday: San Diego (8-8) and Arizona
(9-7) are the playoff imposters. For us,
there’s a bigger source of dismay than the presence of undeserving
first-round teams:
it’s the schedule that puts all four games in sunbelt (Arizona,
San Diego, Miami)
or indoor (Minnesota)
sites. Frostbelt
football, outdoors and, preferably, on natural turf, is what we believe
is
worth watching. For that we’ll have to
wait until a week from Sunday, when the Giants and Steelers play at
home, in
the open January air.
- 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 12/23/08)
NY’s
Likely Political Rookie of the Year in ‘09
“The envelope, please, Governor
Paterson.”
“The next
U.S. Senator from New York
is…Joe Torre!”
That’s a
fanciful choice to replace Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton –
one of
13 “interesting people” – suggested by the New Yorker’s Hendrik
Hertzberg. He calls the names on Paterson’s
political list of potential
choices as “strikingly unimaginative.”
It’s doubtful that Torre has maintained a New York residence
that he may
have once had, just as it is unlikely that another from the Hertzberg
list,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has maintained his long-ago NY residential status. But Hertzberg’s game seems to be to justify Paterson’s probable selection of
Caroline
Kennedy: she is the only one on the governor’s list, Hertzberg says,
“that
qualifies as even marginally adventurous.”
It says here
that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo or Nassau County Executive Tom
Suozzi (for
whom we’ve worked in the past) would, based on their experience and
records, be
excellent choices. But both have a
gender-disadvantage - many believe the seat Clinton holds should be handed on to
a
woman. There’s a further sense that
Cuomo (like his predecessor Eliot Spitzer) has made himself almost
irreplaceable as AG. Most agreed in 2006
that gubernatorial candidate Suozzi had everything going for him except
timing:
he had chosen to go to bat against Spitzer, the widely acclaimed
“Sheriff of
Wall Street.”
As for the
three most frequently mentioned Congresswomen in the mix - upstater
Kirsten
Gillibrand, Manhattan and Queens Rep.
Carolyn
Maloney, and Brooklyn’s Nydia Velazquez - they would, under ordinary
circumstances, have much to recommend them: Gillenbrandt is a bright
new face;
Maloney has 16 years of experience in the lower chamber, and Velazquez
is the
rare Latina in federal elective office.
But none of them can match the illustrious name – the obvious
star power
– and access to money that Caroline offers.
There’s all that, and the fact that, until she came out for
Obama last January,
the 51-year-old daughter of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy had avoided
making enemies with political clout. She could be the “rookie of the year” in 2009
that Sarah Palin might have been in 2008 had she sparked Team McCain to
victory
in the presidential contest.
Had
the timing and other contingencies
worked out, Joe Torre going to the U.S. Senate would not have been
far-fetched. After winning four World
Series in five years in 2000, Torre was popular enough - downstate
anyway - to
succeed in joining another major leaguer, Kentucky’s Jim (No-Hit) Bunning, in
the
upper chamber.
- -
-
Anyone paying
attention to the affiliations of the 84 minor league all stars listed
last year
by Baseball America
could
not have been surprised by the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays as an AL power in ’08. The Rays owned seven of the stars chosen from
the six minor-league levels (nine position players and five pitchers at
each
level). That was more than other team
could claim. This year, three teams -
the Cardinals, Indians and Padres - placed six players each on the
all-star
rosters to share the distinction of having the most apparent blue-chip
farmhands
in baseball. They will bear the kind of
watching next season the Rays should have received this year.
Watching
39-year-old
Brett Favre run out of steam as the Jets’ season winds down should be a
cautionary lesson for baseball GMs.
Pitchers like Andy Pettitte, who will be 37 this June, are
especially susceptible
to late-season fatigue. Look what
happened to Andy last season, when, after a terrific start, he had to
settle
for a .500 W-L record (14-14). It’s a
lesson Brian Cashman may not yet have learned; Mets fans can hope Omar
Minaya
has, at last.
- 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: 12/20/08)
Iraq’s Billy Wagner
of Political Counter-Spin
Mets fans remember the
pre-Santana-signing period a year ago
when Billy Wagner low-bridged the team’s “things-are-looking-fine” spin. “We’ve lost the 13 games that Tom Glavine
won,” he said, “and let go a catcher (Paul LoDuca) who wanted to win
more than
most guys. I think there’s reason to be worried.”
Shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi is the Billy
Wagner of political counter-spin. His
brush-back interruption of the Bush news
conference in Baghdad sent a clear
message to
the world: “Don’t believe the hype about things being fine in Iraq
as George
W. heads for the showers.”
A feature of Team Bush’s last season has been
a run of stories about how
the game in Iraq
is being won. Typical was this account
last winter in USA Today about progress a year ago this month: “U.S. deaths
were at their lowest levels since
the 2003 invasion, civilian casualties were down, and street life was
resuming
in Baghdad.”
Then, in April, Bush’s field manager General
David Petraeus reinforced a
series of “Surge-is-working”media reports: “Levels of violence and
civilian
deaths have been reduced substantially,” he told a panel of
senators.
“Al-Qaeda
Iraq
and a number of other extremist elements have been dealt serious blows."
And just the other day, the Washington Post
ran a story by its syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, which
suggested
our “hav(ing)
turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at
the epicenter of the Arab Middle East
into an
ally.”
It was not only the toss of the shoe that
exposed the new-friends-in-Iraq
myth; al-Zaidi’s words as he threw - “This is from the widows, the
orphans and
those who were killed in Iraq” - brought home the horror of what Bush’s
unprovoked pre-emptive war has produced.
And why our efforts to make Iraq a trusted democratic
ally will
never succeed.
More than a million Iraqi civilians are dead
as a result of the war –
that’s the stat reported by British sources - and another million felt
they had
to flee the country. The symbolic empty
shoe will be part of Bush’s legacy. It’s
a disembodied image expressive of what could be his epitaph -
pronounced in
2003 by historian Howard Zinn: “He has no respect for
human life."
The Mets wisely did no more than ask Wagner to
cool it in the future
(which he never did). The Iraqi
government would be equally wise to give al-Zaidi no more than a slap
on his
pitching wrist. All Iraq - indeed, the Arab,
and the
entire world - is watching.
- -
-
Baseball America’s
annual review of the minor leagues contains a possible clue as to why
the
Yankees have deemphasized their dependence on farm system call-ups and
reemphasized paying big bucks for big-time free agents.
The Yanks had only two players - Brett
Gardner, at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, and catcher Jesus Montero
at low
Class A Charleston, SC - among the 84 all stars chosen from the six
minor-league levels this past season (14, nine position players and
five
pitchers at each level). Last year, they
had five, led by Edwar Ramirez and Ian Kennedy.
The Red Sox, who placed three players among the 84 all-stars in
2007,
had four this past season, headed by outfielder Chris Carter, at
Triple-A
Pawtucket, and pitcher Michael Bowden, at Double-A Portland, ME..
The Mets, who
have continually insisted that their farm system is better
than it looks, gave a speck of credence to that claim this year. The team went zero for 84 in 2007; not a
single all-star belonged to the Mets. This
year, they placed pitcher Brad Holt of Brooklyn on the Short-Season
A-league
all stars, and shortstop Wilmer Flores of Kingsport, TN,
on the Rookie League
stars. The NYMs, who finished 27th
of 30 in organizational standings (overall W-L at the six levels) last
year,
edged up to 25th in 2008. The
Yankees finished at the top of that category both seasons.
The Red Sox went from 12th in ’07
to 9th in '08.
- 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: 12/16/08)
Errors Many of Us Miss
Errors of omission, the kind that don’t
show up in the box
score: an infielder’s failure to cover a base to force a runner, an
outfielder
letting a catchable foul fly fall because he thought it was curving
into the
stands.
In politics, such errors only show up
if we’re paying
attention. Team Bush launched a blistering
offense against the legal way the game was played in the U.S. There was a great outcry from spectators,
media people and officials close to the field.
But the players who could have turned things around and made a
key error
of omission instead were hardly noted.
Similarly, the Bush-ites arranged a
$700 billion bailout for
certain Wall Street teams, using public dollars. Again
came the protests of observers, followed
by yet another crucial error of omission by players who should have
been alert.
The reckoning is coming too late to
stop some of the
excesses, but in time to emphasize the identity of those ultimately at
fault,
those who failed to make the possibly game-saving plays.
In a double-header on Bill Moyers’
Journal the other night, leadoff
man Glenn Greenwald of Salon reviewed in striking words what we already
knew in
an unfocused way: Team Bush’s offense,
he said, was “a declaration of war on the
whole idea of law itself, on the idea that our political leaders are
constrained in any way by the limitations of the American people
imposed
through our Congress.”
We
expected those limitations to be imposed, he
said. Instead “Congress
(became)
virtually invisible, impotent, powerless, by its own accord, almost
voluntarily…We
need Congress to reassert itself in terms of how the government
functions.”
In the second
spot, Moyers had Georgetown
U. economics professor Emma
Coleman Jordan
address the error connected with Team Bush’s early bailout. She said when Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson went to bat, he hit what should have been an easy force-out: “(Paulson)
believed that by fixing the problem at the top,
by giving the money with trust to his peer institutions on Wall Street,
the
money would trickle down in the form of lending to consumers and
businesses.
And the economy would be restored. And so that way of thinking
dominated his
decision making…
