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“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.

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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.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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
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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.”

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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)? 

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(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.
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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).                       

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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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.

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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.”
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.  

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(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 -
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(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.
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(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
                        
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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 Astros’ Drayton McLane) spoke of the importance of scouting and player development, of getting younger and of being patient.  He seemed to understand th(e)…  need to…rebuil(d), and this time he wants to do it the right way.  Yes, he sees the same things you see.”  - Richard Justice

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.”
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(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.”

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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.                   

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(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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.”

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(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.

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(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?
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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.

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(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.   

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(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.

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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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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 -
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(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 -
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(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 -
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(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.       
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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)

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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 -
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(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 -

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(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 -
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(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 -
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(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 -
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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?”

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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.”
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.
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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!”
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(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.
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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

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(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.
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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.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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 “informationcould 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.
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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.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.            
                                
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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? 

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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.
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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.
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(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 ShanghaiChina 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.

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(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.

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*Grounded into double play
** Walks plus hits per innings pitched                 

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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."   

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(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).  

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(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’."                                                                                                                    
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(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. 
                                  
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(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.”          
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(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.)
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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.    

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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.”
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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.                                   

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(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).
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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)       
                             
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(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.”

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(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.” 

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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.”
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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."

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(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.”
                                
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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.
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(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.  
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(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.       
                                    
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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.”
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(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.         
 
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(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.
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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.  

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(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

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(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.
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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.   
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(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.”
                          
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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.

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(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. 
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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.
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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.
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.
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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.

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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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.
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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.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
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(The  Nub is a team effort skippered by Dick Starkey.  Comments
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(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…