Sports – Get Off My Lawn

Willie Mays Avenue

This week, we experienced another national paroxysm of “controversy”, the result of which is that a few more formerly obstinate people admitted what millions already found obvious: Donald J. Trump is a hyper-combative, utterly incompetent, ignorant narcissist who cannot do the job he finds himself in.

Also, he may or may not have proven himself to be a racist and Nazi sympathizer, though neither of those possibilities is nearly as important to the world as his utter incompetence.

On the plus side, a few monuments to the Confederacy have been torn down, thereby bringing the Civil War one baby step closer to conclusion, only 152 short years after the last shot was fired.

Also, in some circles traveled only by the 1% , it has now become de rigueur to prove your bona fides on the subject of race by making some sort of gesture or speech about it, which doesn’t help all that much but doesn’t hurt either.

More than 40 years after the death of Tom Yawkey, Red Sox ownership is making little tiny noises about finally doing the right thing concerning the “legacy” of Tom Yawkey: killing it dead.

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Yawkey bought the Red Sox for himself a few days after he turned 30 years old in 1933 for $1.25 million, thereby sentencing the team and its die-hard fan base to decades of mediocrity. Yawkey had inherited $40 million from the lumber and iron empire built by his grandfather, and could finally access the money, having reached the age specified in the will.

Today, $40 million doesn’t buy that much. Maybe the privilege of watching David Price nurse a hangnail on the bench for two years, or maybe watching Pablo Sandoval eat hamburgers in the minors before recognizing you made another small mistake. But in 1933, it was real money.

Yawkey never earned or produced anything on his own, and treated the Red Sox as a private club, often taking batting practice with “his boys”.

He died in 1976, a year after the greatest World Series ever played, in which the Red Sox lost the seventh game and came up empty for the third time on his watch. They were one player short of success yet again. The next year, Boston re-named part of Jersey St., on which Fenway Park’s main entrance sits, to Yawkey Way in honor of the great man. It’s been Yawkey Way since then.

In his day, most people in Boston thought Yawkey was a peach of a guy, and most had no problem with his views on black people. He didn’t like them. The Red Sox were the last team in baseball to put a black player on the field, waiting until 1959, and they did so half-heartedly. Pumpsie Green was the man’s name, a .246 hitter with zero power over his five year career.

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The Red Sox had the chance to sign Jackie Robinson and they passed. They did give him a tryout in 1945. A newly elected city councilman, Isadore Muchnick, campaigned to bring black players to Boston, and refused the usual formality of granting permission for the Red Sox and Braves to play on Sundays, unless they gave some guys from the Negro Leagues a tryout.

A day before the 1945 opener, Yawkey had Jackie Robinson, then of the Kansas City Monarchs, take the field for a look, along with Marvin Williams and Sam Jethroe. “We knew we were wasting our time”, Jackie said years later. No one from the press was there, and the whole charade lasted just a few minutes. It ended when someone from the stands yelled out. “Get those n—ers off the field”.

In 1945, the Red Sox weren’t alone in their antipathy. But in 1949, two years after Jackie was already in the majors and the direction of history was clear, the Red Sox passed on a 17-year-old prospect named Willie Mays, who they could have signed for $4500.

In the 1950’s, the Red Sox could have, and should have, had Ted Williams in left, Willie Mays in center, and Jackie Robinson at second. But Yawkey was too smart for that. Why try to win games with guys you don’t like when it’s so much more fun to relax with the guys you like?

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The above picture is Yawkey and Carl Yastrzemski, one of his favorites, after the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox backed into the 1967 World Series, surviving the closest pennant race in history.

Yaz had a season for the ages, playing a supernatural left field all year while winning the Triple Crown and M.V.P. Wow. He played great in the Series, too, hitting .400 with three home runs and an On Base Percentage of .500. He carried the team into the seventh game, where the Red Sox put their Cy Young winner, Gentleman Jim Lonborg, on the mound with only two days rest to face the immortal Bob Gibson. Gibson, of course, cruised to his third win of the Series, striking out ten and giving up only three hits, and ended the Red Sox season in the predictable fashion.

But a good time was had by all, right?

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The Red Sox were short just one player, as usual. Just one Bob Gibson. Or Jackie Robinson. Or Willie Mays. And it took another 37 years on top of that to finally get over the hump.

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Now John Henry, principal owner of the Red Sox, is entertaining suggestions for re-naming Yawkey Way. I think “Willie Mays Avenue” would work.

My plan would be that the next time I’m down there on game day, and I overhear some kid saying to his father, “Dad, why is this ‘Willie Mays Avenue’? Willie never played here!”, I’ll look at them both sadly and say, “Exactly.”

The death of the “dead ball”

On this day in 1920, Ray Chapman died, and so did the way baseball was played up until that point.

Chapman’s death signaled the end of the “Dead Ball” era and, in theory, the end of many of the “tricks” pitchers used to fool hitters, including the spit-ball, the scuff-ball, the grease-ball, the carved-up-on-my-belt-buckle-ball, and so on.

Chapman was a 29-year-old infielder for the Indians, their best, and was noted for hanging in tough against any pitcher and his willingness to “take one for the team”, i.e. getting hit by a pitch to get to first base. In his nine-year career, he had led the league in runs scored once, walks once, and plate appearances once. A solid guy.

On August 16, 1920, in the fifth inning of a game against the Yankees at the Polo Grounds, he stepped in to hit against Carl Mays, a submarine style pitcher who liked to throw inside. Mays hit Chapman on the left temple and the sound made by the impact reverberated through the Polo Grounds giving the fans the impression the pitch had been hit by Chapman. The ball hit him so hard that although he had been hit on the left temple, he bled from his right ear.

Chapman went down, was helped up and back to the dugout by team-mates, and died twelve hours later. The last words he uttered on a baseball field were, “I’m all right. Tell Mays not to worry”.

It was the only case of a player being killed by a pitch at the major league level, although there have been several serious and career-ending incidents since then.

Statistically, Mays had been a very good pitcher indeed, and went on to win over 200 games before he was done, including five seasons of 20 or more. He was a potential Hall-of-Famer and was last on the Veteran’s Committee ballot in 2007, when he was turned down for the final time. Most people say it was his complete lack of remorse for the Chapman incident that kept him out. “It’s not on my conscience,” Mays said 50 years later, just before his death in 1971. “It wasn’t my fault.”

At the time of the incident, umpires Billy Evans and William Dineen issued a statement that blamed Mays:

“No pitcher in the American League resorted to a trickery more than Carl Mays in attempting to rough a ball, in order to get a break on it which would make it difficult to hit.”

The next year, the rules about what kind of baseballs were allowed in play were changed. Until then, the same few balls were used throughout the game, and became very difficult for hitters to see after a few innings of abuse. After that, new, more tightly wound balls were used, and new ones were brought in whenever a ball was no longer white enough for a hitter to see clearly. The balls could be seen better and traveled farther when hit.

The “lively ball” era was born, and the home run would be king from then on. In 1919, the greatest slugger in baseball history and always a statistical outlier, Babe Ruth, led the league with 29 home runs, a total that exceeded the entire output for ten of the other MLB teams that year. In 1920, he hit 54 which exceeded the total for every other major league team except the Phillies, who had 64 in aggregate. Apart from Ruth’s 54, the 1920 Yankees had only 61 home runs hit by all other players combined.

But after the Chapman incident, the trend started changing radically, and, by 1930 the long ball was firmly established everywhere. The pitchers, or at least those that didn’t cheat, had lost their biggest advantages.

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Umpires totally get it wrong

I’m having trouble thinking about anything important lately. There’s nothing left to say about Trump and his enablers in Congress that could make any difference or even shed any new light on things.

America is poisonously split in two because of the alternate realities we are experiencing. If you watch FoxNews, you are simply unaware of what a disaster the Trump presidency has been and what a terrible course he’s put us on, and a LOT of people watch FoxNews.

It will only change when Sean Hannity decides it’s time.

If you don’t care about baseball and its anomalies, you can stop reading right here, because that’s all I have for you today.

Last night’s Yankees/Red Sox game at Fenway was a good one. Red Sox ace Chris Sale was brilliant, striking out 13 and allowing only three hits through 7 and 2/3 innings, leaving a 1-0 lead in the usually capable hands of All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel. Kimbrel, who is typically only required to get three people out in the 9th to do his job, was asked here to get the last out of the 8th as well, which he did.

Kimbrel has not blown a single save in Fenway Park since he got there last year, but last night was the night. Matt Holliday, just off the Disabled List, led off the 9th with a game-tying home-run, sending the affair into extras. It was ultimately decided in the 16th, when the Yankees took advantage of the exhausted Sox bullpen, getting a bunch of hits off Doug Fister, a recent acquisition not usually used in relief. The final score was 4-1, Yankees.

But the game is under protest because of a really weird play in the top of the 11th. Matt Holliday (again) was on first when Jacoby Ellsbury hit a sharp grounder to first baseman Mitch Moreland, a clear double-play opportunity. Moreland fielded it cleanly and threw to Bogaerts covering second for the out there, and Bogaerts threw back to first in plenty of time to double up the speedy Ellsbury. But it didn’t work that way.

When the ball was hit, Holliday started toward second, of course, as it was a force play. But when he saw the throw had already been received at second and the out recorded, he headed back to first! Apart from the silliness of the decision and the ribbing he was sure to take when he got back to the bench, there were bigger consequences. The relay from Bogaerts hit the retreating Holliday in the back and the easy double play was “broken up”

It was a senior moment for Holliday, who has been around a long time and has no excuse for this kind of mental lapse.

But it’s the umpires who are at fault here. They gave Ellsbury first base, despite Holliday’s interference which prevented Moreland from catching the relay that would have completed the double play. Ellsbury should have been called out. They said Holliday didn’t “intend” to interfere, and therefore it wasn’t interference. Huh?

Holliday is out at second. His crazy move of sliding back into first after being called out broke up the double play. Under the Official M.L.B. rule 6.01(a)(5):

(5) Any batter or runner who has just been put out, or any runner who has just scored, hinders or impedes any following play being made on a runner. Such runner shall be declared out for the interference of his teammate (see Rule 6.01(j)).

It’s petty simple.

So they review the play, causing a five minute delay, and they decide that the ruling would stand! The Red Sox played the rest of the game under protest, probably thinking the Yankees would get a run out of this situation and that would be the game. They didn’t and the game continued.

You’re probably thinking, “if that play didn’t affect the outcome, the protest is silly”. Not so fast. The game was ultimately decided by attrition – the Red Sox ran out of relievers – and, had that double-play stood, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have had to resort to Fister, at least not as soon as they did. Fewer pitches would have been thrown by the real relievers, thereby allowing them to go deeper into the game.

It’s shaping up to be a tight pennant race, and this game may be well affect the outcome, so there’s potentially something bigger at stake here. Your view of all this probably depends on which team you support, not unlike your view of politics, I suppose. The pro-Yankee media may see it one way while the pro-Red Sox media disagrees.

One thing I’m sure of, though, is that the divide between the Red Sox and Yankees world views, as great as it always has been, is nowhere near as great or as dangerous as the divide caused by the pro-Trump vs. pro-reality media divide.

The 7% Solution

Of the 16,000 or so people that have played baseball at the major league level, there have been only 26 players that have managed a career batting average of .333 or better, and four of those ended their playing days before 1900. The others are all in the Hall of Fame, with the exception of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty O’Doul (a pitcher/outfielder who really only had five full seasons).

In other words, if you get a hit once out of every three tries, you are in the elite company of the greatest to ever play the game, better than 99.85% of the rest.

The really weird thing is that to attain this level of greatness, you have to be only 7% better than average, as the aggregate batting average of all the players who ever played is .262. That’s how hard it is to be “great” hitting a baseball.

But, over the years, the statisticians here at GOML have noticed that there is a shortcut to greatness if you are above average, but not the whole 7% above. What you have to do is get traded to the New York Yankees, where good players are regarded as great, and great players are regarded as Gods, or at least Saints. Expectations are high in New York and so is the pay.

Dave Winfield is a pretty good example of this. He was a very good player in San Diego for eight years, a .284 hitter there with decent power. George Steinbrenner brought him to the Yankees in 1980 and made him the highest paid player in the game. Once in New York, the expectations for him were sky high, but paying a .284 hitter all the money in the world doesn’t make him a .333 hitter. Steinbrenner was disappointed with his new toy right away (even though Winfield actually did hit .290 over nine seasons in New York) and tried all manner of trickery to discredit him to escape the contract. It led to Steinbrenner being banned from baseball.

The New York effect can work against you as well, particularly if you’re already “great” and perform only at the “great” level but no more. Then you can go from God to goat pretty quickly. Just ask Randy Johnson. The Yankees paid him more than he’d ever made, but he managed only two close-to-great years there. The spotlight was too bright, and the privacy-loving Johnson was at war with the media for two years. Getting the extra attention didn’t really matter to someone who already was headed for the Hall of Fame.

Very good players like, say, Don Mattingly or Thurman Munson, were accorded super-star treatment in New York, though they were “just” very good.

Which brings me to the subject of Robinson Cano, a very, very good player with New York (hitting .309 over nine years there). Cano never led the league in any category whatsoever, though he made the All- Star team five times and won the Silver Slugger award (best offensive player at his position) four times. But, of course, this was enough for the “God” treatment in New York, and his market value was raised considerably.

Cano became a free agent in 2014 and signed a huge contract with the Seattle Mariners, $24 million a year for 10 years! The most he made in New York was $15 million. Of course, no one is worth this much money, no matter how they were viewed in New York, and Cano has been not quite the player for Seattle that he had been in NY (hitting .296 in his four years there). It’s good but not great, and it’s Seattle not New York, so you have not heard the name Robinson Cano in four years.

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I had forgotten completely about him and wasn’t even sure he was still in the game. Until Tuesday night, that is.

Cano was the hero of the All-Star game, hitting a home run in the 10th inning to give the Americans the win. Even though Cano has not been in New York for four years, the Yankees still own the Hyperbole Rights on him, so the headline of the story was:

Ex-Yankee Robinson Cano provides closing act at Aaron Judge’s All-Star party.

For those of you who don’t pay attention to such things, Aaron Judge is the Yankee rookie phenom who won the All-Star Home Run contest, so this was going to be about New York with or without Cano.

Cano’s been a Mariner for four years, but if he does something “great”, he is an “ex-Yankee” first, and a whatever-else second.

I ♥ NY

Baseball’s All-Star Game: a Useless Relic

It’s been a very long time since baseball’s All-Star game was worth watching and looking forward to. In those long-ago days, there was nothing at stake more than bragging rights, but both leagues were serious about winning.

Unless you lived in Chicago or New York in those days, you followed the league your favorite team was in, and never saw the players from the other league in action. You would read about them in the box scores, but that was it.

The All-Star game was your only chance to see the guys from the other league. If you lived in an American League city, the National League was never on TV and you almost never even got a guy in trade from the N.L. You just never saw them at all. Maybe their league and their players really were better than yours. The only way to find out was at the All-Star game.

Imagine a team like the one the National League fielded in 1960. A few of the guys they ran out for that one: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Stan Musial, Ernie Banks, and Eddie Mathews. All on the same team! Almost all in their prime (Musial was 39 at that point). There wasn’t even enough room on their roster that year for the likes of Frank Robinson!

It was a team of supermen. How could anyone beat them? The Americans that year were mostly Yankees: Mantle, Maris, Berra, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, and Bill Skowron, plus the 41-year old Ted Williams, then in his final year (he still managed a .316/.451/.645 season, though!). They actually played two All-Star games that year, one in Kansas City and one on New York, and the Nationals did win them both. But it was a show well worth watching.

That was a long, long time ago. These days, no one really cares about who wins the All-Star game – it’s just an exhibition and nothing more. There are a lot of reasons why, not the least of which is that baseball itself is so boring now. But there are structural and other changes that make the whole thing too silly to bother with now. Here are a bunch of reasons, but I think they’re all symptoms of the same disease, namely too much money sloshing around the sport and too much greed for even more.

Inter-league play is the main reason the game is no longer interesting. I see the guys from the other league all the time, now. I’d actually like to see them less. The whole idea that it’s a chance to see something I couldn’t otherwise see is lost.

Free Agency has a similar effect. These days, players move from league to league all the time. No one thinks of himself as a “National Leaguer” any more. The whole concept of “Us” vs. “Them” is lost.

Cable TV – I can see every game of every team all year long if I want. I don’t have to wait for the All-Star game to have a look at some new phenom in the other league. There’s no mystery about what’s happening out of your view, as everything is always in your view.

Fan voting is stupid. The way the teams are selected is meant to promote interest in the game, not produce a side with the best chance to win.

Every franchise has to be represented on the team, even if it means denying a better player a spot. Again, this is supposed to raise fan interest, as you eagerly await the turn of “Your” guy to see what he’ll do.

And this means everyone has to play, whether the situation calls for it or not. Pitchers pitch one inning at most now, and the starting position players are all on the bench by the fourth inning.

Your best squad is not out there when it matters (and even when it doesn’t) – especially if the game goes into extra innings. The 2002 All-Star game was controversially called a 7-7 draw, when both teams were out of pitchers to use. No player was awarded the game’s MVP. That should tell you all you need to know.

At that point, everyone realized how stupid the whole thing had become, and tried to revive the “meaningfulness” of it all by giving home field advantage in the World Series to the winning side. That idea was dropped this year because everyone understood that, unless you went back to a more serious team-selection and managing format, it was unacceptably random.

The players don’t care about the All Star game any more. The best players, particularly those who have already gone to an All-Star game before, would prefer just to have a three-day break with their family than participate in this charade, possibly risking injury and reducing their future earning power for no real reason. Derek Jeter famously skipped in in 2011 and Mike Trout this year just to name a couple of many examples.

They’ve tried to spice up the whole spectacle with bogus competitions like “Home-run Derby”. Yawn

If you think it hasn’t changed over the years, have a look at this play that ended the 1970 All-Star game in the 12th inning, featuring a guy who wanted to win more than anything – even an All-Star game. Could this ever happen today?

Best Sports Movies

I guess I mostly agree with a lot of the standard lists you’ll find looking around the net, but I also have major issues with some of the usual suspects. They’re generally too silly, too implausible, too worshipful, too something. But usually, it’s because the on-field stuff doesn’t cut it. Pride of the Yankees is in this category, as is A League of Their Own (I know, sorry). Also Bad News Bears, which, weirdly, makes many lists you’ll find out there.

To me a great a sports movie has to meet three criteria:

First and foremost, it must be a very good movie, irrespective of the subject matter. In other words, it has to be something that will draw in someone who thinks they hate sports or at least the particular sport the movie in question is about, and it has to keep them engaged throughout.

Second, at least one but preferably both of these things must be true: 1) the on-field stuff has to be completely authentic and believable to someone who is intimately familiar with the game and perhaps has played it at a high level, and 2) the off-field stuff has to be very accurate and make sense.

Third, the movie should be about something more than the sport itself, and being a good love story doesn’t count. It should leave you thinking about it the next day and for a long time after, and it won’t matter if the good guys don’t win the big game. Better if they come up short, actually.

There are very few movies that meet all three of these criteria, so if a flick gets two of the three, it makes my Top Ten, and if it gets one of the three, it gets an Honorable Mention.

So let me start with some Honorable Mentions, in no particular order.

1) Every single “30 for 30” ever made. I’ve seen them all and really like just about every one. Many of them could be in the all-time Top Ten, but I can’t put them there because they’re all documentaries so they really don’t have anything at risk for my Criteria #2. Also, it could be argued that they’re not really “movies” as they were made to be shown on TV, not in the theater, though this distinction is becoming more irrelevant every day.

Here’s a ranking done in 2013 that gives you a flavor, and here’s a more recent Top Ten. But you could pick any one randomly and not be disappointed. I just finished watching the 3-part four-hour long “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies” and wasn’t bored for a second. Of course, that one was about something I did care about, so YMMV.

2) The Hammer. Little seen Adam Carolla project (his politics apparently exclude him from Hollywood promotion), that is very funny, has a heart, and will teach you something about boxing. See if you can find it somewhere – you’ll thank me.

3) North Dallas Forty. Nick Nolte is pretty convincing as a pro wide-out, and Mac Davis is good, too. The locker room and off-field stuff seems about right. Bo Svenson has the best line in the movie: when asking for a raise, “When I call it a business, you call it a game, and when I call it a game, you call it a business.” Tru dat.

4) Eight Men Out. The on-field stuff is not great, but it’s a decent movie about an interesting subject, and they get the gambling culture of the time right. Irritating “dixieland” sound track diminishes it, but worth a watch over all.

5) Mr. Baseball. Tom Selleck, who went to U.S.C. on a basketball scholarship, is clearly a good athlete who looks good swinging the bat, though he did strike out in his one at-bat in a Spring Training game for the Tigers. The subject of ex-Big Leaguers trying to hang on in Japan is a good one, and the movie is as much about Japanese culture as Baseball. Haven’t seen it in a while, but I remember it as meeting at least one and maybe two of my criteria for inclusion, so it’s here. Watch it and then remind me if I’m a moron with a poor memory.

6) The Natural. I’m usually not a big fan of magical interventions in sport, but this is very watchable and Redford looks right.

7) The Longest Yard. Burt Reynolds played college football at Florida State and looks very good here, which qualifies this flick for an Honorable Mention.

8) Field of Dreams. Hmm, maybe I like magical intervention in sports more than I thought, as that’s exactly what this is about. The baseball stuff is OK. James Earl Jones is not my favorite, but Kevin Costner always looks good tossing a ball around. Mainly, it’s a very well-made movie that draws you in. Oh, and good, realistic scenes in Fenway.

9) Major League. Charlie Sheen was a star pitcher and shortstop in high school, and is completely believable in this flick as a big-league pitcher (also as an outfielder in Eight Men Out). Tom Berenger and Corbin Bernsen also look right. This one is a bit formulaic, but scores well on Rotten Tomatoes, so worth a look I think.

10) Fever Pitch. Fantastic aerial pictures of Fenway Park and Boston. Gets the crazy Red Sox fan mentality right. Shot during the 2004 run that broke the 86-year-old Curse of the Bambino, with ending re-shot after it was already in the can, because there were actual miracles and a story-book ending better than the original screenplay. At bottom, kind of a silly movie, but I like it anyway.

OK, those were the Honorable Mentions . Now here are Stewie’s Top Ten sports movies – again, NOT in order of rank. Just random.

1) Breaking away. I don’t know enough about bike racing to tell you if they have it right here, but I think they do. A very good movie about more than just the sport, in this case town/gown conflicts and family expectations. Lots of good supporting performances.

2) Raging Bull. Many people put this on their all time Best-Movie-Ever-Made list, some even putting it first all time, so it obviously must be included on any Best Sports Movie List. DeNiro-Pesci interactions are brilliant, and Scorsese’s direction of the boxing scenes is extraordinary.

3) The Hustler and The Color of Money. Both well worth the watch. Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman both shot a mean stick in real life, so no coaching or stunt doubles needed in The Hustler. George C. Scott adds a lot, but The Great One steals the flick. In the Color of Money, Tom Cruise does a nice job, and the photography is awesome. Seems to me some real pool hustlers also appear in this one, adding back in any authenticity that Cruise subtracts.

4) White Men Can’t Jump. Wesley Snipes is not really believable as a playground B-ball player, though he does get the trash-talk right. Come to think of it, he wasn’t that believable as a baseball player in Major League, either. Woody Harrelson, strangely, is far more believable and sympathetic, too. A couple of NBA stars, notably Marques Johnson, bring the playground culture to life. Good story, good performances, good movie.

5) Bull Durham. Again, Kevin Costner looks good on a baseball field. The flick evokes life in the minors pretty well, I think.

6) Moneyball. Brad Pitt does a great job as a failed major league prospect and front office success. The subject is interesting, and the real-life clips are well-integrated in the story and add authenticity.

7) Bang the Drum Slowly. Robert DeNiro probably isn’t much of an athlete, but then neither was Bruce Pearson, the back-up catcher he plays here. Michael Moriarty is excellent, evoking Tom Seaver to me for some reason, and the off-field stuff is well done. Good story, performances, good movie.

8) Hoosiers. I like Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper, so I was probably going to like this movie no matter what. Somewhat predictable story, though based on real events, so I shouldn’t complain about that. Nice portrayal of small-town basketball culture.

9) Chariots of Fire. Won “Best Picture” and is about sports, so, uh, yeah.

10) The Fighter. Christian Bale is brilliant as is Melissa Leo. Her litter of daughters is perfection. Evokes down-in-the-mouth Lowell, Mass. just right. Mark Wahlberg is excellent and more than believable as Micky Ward. And, for a change, good Boston accents all around (easy for Wahlberg, a tour-de-force for Bale).

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OK sports fans, where did I screw up and what did I leave out?

When Yankees-Red Sox meant something

It’s a little hard to remember now, but years ago it was a pretty common to see bench-clearing brawls between the Yankees and Red Sox. Catchers Carlton Fisk and Thurman Munson absolutely hated each other. Bill Lee vs. Mickey Rivers. Graig Nettles vs. Everybody. You could almost bet something unusual would go down whenever the two teams met. One brawl at Fenway Park was a little different, though.

It happened forty years ago yesterday. With Fred Lynn on first base, Jim Rice tried to check his swing off the Yankees’ Mike Torrez, but accidentally hit a blooper that dropped in front of right-fielder Reggie Jackson. Jackson came in a little casually to get it, waving off second-baseman Willie Randolph who had gone back for it. Rice took advantage of Jackson’s lack of hustle to steam into second with a double. He hadn’t meant to swing at all, but, hey, those things happen, and it should have resulted in Rice on first. But, because of Jackson, this time he was on second. Manager Billy Martin went ape-shit.

He came out to take Torrez out of the game, calling for Sparky Lyle, and, while he was at it, sent Paul Blair in for Jackson. Embarrassed in front of 35,000 Red Sox fans (who always had plenty to say to Reggie even when things weren’t crazy), the astounded and insulted Jackson went at Billy as soon as he reached the dugout.

This dramatization from “The Bronx is Burning” shows what happened next, with actual footage interspersed with re-created dialog:

Trying to explain the rivalry in those days to someone who was unaware of it wasn’t easy. They’d say, “so, you mean it’s like Harvard vs Yale”, and you’d have to say, “No, more like Israel vs. Palestine”.

When Massachusetts native Jerry Remy was traded to the Red Sox from the Angels in 1978, Carlton Fisk, a New Hampshire guy, was the first to welcome him home. A couple of Remy’s Angels team-mates had been traded to New York at the same time, and when the Yankees played the Red Sox for the first time that year, Remy went over to old friend Mickey Rivers during warm-ups to say “hi”. Fisk ran out and grabbed Remy and told him, “We don’t talk to those guys”.

It’s different now. When you’re getting paid $15 million, you can’t afford to break a fingernail, much less dis-locate your shoulder, while shoving an opposing player. And anyway you really wouldn’t want to beef with someone that, in the free agent era, might very well be your team-mate next year, or maybe even later this year.

Free agency changed everything. Before 1975, the players were the property of the team, and could expect to spend their whole career with whoever owned their contract, unless they were traded away first, often without their advance knowledge or consent.

The Reserve Clause, which codified this indentured servitude, was overturned in 1975, mainly through the efforts of the director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Marvin Miller, now enshrined in the Hall of Fame. During Miller’s time in that job the average salary of an MLB player rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982. Jim Bunning was instrumental in getting Miller the job, and Miller talks about him in this piece, which says,

And to find Jim Freaking Bunning at the center of this relatively progressive piece of history is a little like learning that Dick Cheney once ran guns to the Sierra Maestras.

Now, the pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction. Now, it’s all about the players and their money. The economics of the game has changed and so has the game itself. The players are the big winners and, in IMHO, the fans are the big losers.

Back then, it was about more than money. It’s gonna be a while before we see anything like this again:

Pete Rose is out

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is an independently operated museum of baseball history, meaning it has no direct connection to Major League Baseball. They can do what they want with their museum, irrespective of what M.L.B. says or thinks.

This week, the H.O.F. announced that Pete Rose would never be enshrined there. They affirmed a rule they’ve had which says anyone banned by M.L.B. could not be in the Hall.

As everyone knows, M.L.B. has banned Pete Rose for life for the sin of betting on baseball when employed as a manager for the Cincinnati Reds. Rose can’t work in professional baseball again. This is appropriate. Ever since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, everyone has known that the one thing you could never do was bet on the sport while you were part of it. Rose did it anyway.

The Hall of Fame is a different story. Keeping Rose out is not appropriate. It’s not the Hall of Ethics. It’s not the Hall of Good Guys.

Pete Rose would otherwise be a first ballot Hall-of-Famer, just based on the one fact that he had 4256 hits in his career, more than anyone else who ever played the game. Only the immortal (and immoral) Ty Cobb ever got to 4000 and no one else ever came close. And Rose, known appropriately as Charlie Hustle, had many many other accomplishments that also qualify him, every one of which confirms what anyone who ever saw him play already knows: Pete Rose always tried as hard as he could to do his best to win. Always.

The Hall of Fame is now committed to having a baseball museum in which, among many other omissions,

the all-time hits leader (Rose) is not enshrined,

the all-time Home Run and Walks leader and seven-time M.V.P. (Barry Bonds) is absent,

a guy who won the Cy Young award as the best pitcher in the league seven times (Roger Clemens) is out,

one of only seven people to have both 3000 hits and 500 home runs (Rafael Palmeiro) is missing,

another (Alex Rodriguez), who had an even better career than Palmeiro, will have to be kept out by the same logic when he reaches eligibility,

the left-handed hitter with the best lifetime average after Cobb (Joe Jackson) is out.

There are a million ways they could enshrine these guys and others while acknowledging their shortcomings. But they’re too high-minded for that.

It’s just stupid.

Baseball strikes out

Baseball is boring. There, I said it. I don’t think it can survive the short attention-span and demand for non-stop action that are characteristic of life in the internet age.

The games can routinely stretch into four-hour long marathons of nothingness, punctuated by the occasional instant of action or excitement. Baseball games used to take no more than two hours. The average time to complete nine innings so far this year is 3:06, while in 1978 it was 2:28, and in 1930 it was 1:09. There are lots of factors that explain this:

TV advertising dollars. As with everything else, ad revenue now rules baseball, and if they can sell more ads, they will. This translates to longer pauses between innings, so that TV viewers can be assaulted with ads.

Pitching changes. We are in an era of specialization. In the past, starting pitchers were expected to go all nine innings, and relief pitching was rarely used. Now, you hope to get five or maybe six innings from your starter, then go to your set-up man for the seventh and eighth, and finally your closer for the ninth. If any of the three have problems, you have to go back to the bullpen and change again. Before each change, the pitching coach has to come out to the mound to discuss things with the incumbent, everything from how he feels to peace in the Middle East, in order to give the next guy a chance to get loose in the pen. When the new pitcher finally does arrive, he has to adjust to the mound with a bunch of warm-up pitches. Tick tock.

Batters wandering around between pitches. This pernicious waste of time started in the 1970’s with one or two guys notorious for doing it – Mike Hargrove and Carlton Fisk come to mind – but now everyone does it. Step out of the batter’s box, look around, adjust your batting gloves, check the third base coach for signs, check the heavens for support or a weather change. It takes forever. Batters used to just stay put and wait for the next pitch.

Advanced metrics. There’s a new “science” called Sabermetrics that has come to rule baseball. It consists of analyzing everything that happens during a game and using computer models to figure out if it helps or hurts. And I mean everything. I won’t bore you with examples, but it’s become quite absurd. Many aspects of the game that made it interesting have been devalued: stolen bases, bunting, good defense, for example. It has been determined that these things don’t contribute to winning.

There are a couple of Sabermetric measurements which contribute more than others to stretching out the game and making it more one-dimensional, i.e. boring.

One is that it has been determined that the more pitches you can force the opposing pitcher to make, the better your chances are of getting him out of the game. The sooner you get him out, the sooner you can start to work on their second-line bullpen pitchers. The more of them you can tire out, the better your chances of facing one who’s having an off-day and maybe getting some hits. And even if you lose the current game, your chances of winning tomorrow or the next day, when you’ll be playing this same opponent, have improved because their pitchers will all be tired. Pitchers can only throw so many pitches without several days of rest in between to be effective.

Sabermetrics has determined that starting pitchers, in particular, must be held to a precise pitch count for each outing, usually about 100 pitches, after which it has been determined they must sit down, no matter how well they’re doing. All this calculation means more pitching changes which translates to longer games.

The disciplined teams are “taking” more pitches (not swinging) to achieve this goal, so more pitches have to be thrown in each game to get to the end. Add in all the walking around between pitches and the effect is amplified.

All this leads into a discussion of the real problem that underlies the transformation of an already less than heart-stopping two hours into a four hour slog, a problem that not only contributes to the time needed to play the game, but also makes it intrinsically less interesting to watch: it has been determined that striking out is not a bad thing.

There is no shame in striking out anymore, and, in fact, it can make you a lot of money if you do it right. Here are a couple of examples to help make this point.

Mike Napoli, currently with the Texas Rangers, has been a highly desired commodity in his 12-year major-league career, even though he is apparently a mediocre hitter with a life-time average of .249, somewhat less than the aggregate average of all players in history. He drives in a few more runners than many other players and hits a few more home-runs, but has never come close to leading the league in these categories.

Mike Napoli strikes out more per plate appearance than almost anyone who has ever played the game. He is painful to watch. But he’s better than everyone else at one thing, and that thing is highly valued by Sabermetricians: he sees more pitches per at-bat than anyone else, meaning that he “takes” more and “spoils” more (by fouling them off) before striking out. Time stands still when Napoli steps in to hit.

Napoli played on the 2013 World Series Champion Red Sox, and had three other teammates who also struck out more per plate appearance than just about anyone else: Jared Saltalamacchia, Jonny Gomes, and David Ross. That 2013 team struck out a lot, more than just about every other team in the league, and still won it all. But they were very boring to watch.

The Baltimore Orioles are paying Chis Davis $23 Million this year and for each of the next five. He hits a lot of home runs but strikes out way more than anyone else in a season. He’s leading the American League this year with 83 strikeouts as I write this, less than one third of the way through the season. By contrast, in 1941, Joe DiMaggio struck out 37 times during the entire season. Davis led the league in strikeouts each of the last two years, striking out a total of 437 times over those two years. DiMaggio struck out only 359 times over his entire 13-year career.

Davis can be expected to hit a home run once every four games or so. The rest of the time he’s striking out. Davis and Napoli are just examples. The strikeout is ruining baseball, which already has enough issues.

I wrote about Jim Bunning the other day, but I didn’t bother to mention that at the time of his retirement, he had struck out more batters, 2855 in his 17 years, than anyone in history except Walter Johnson. That was in an era when hitters would do anything to avoid striking out. Bunning mentioned how hard it was to face the likes of Yogi Berra, who struck out only 414 times over 19 years (less than Chris Davis in the last two years), and Stan Musial, who struck out 696 times in 22 years. The list goes on.

Striking out was something for a batter to try to avoid then, but not now. Bunning’s achievement is all the more impressive in this context. Today, Bunning is only 17th on the list of career strikeouts. All those who have passed him have done so in the era of the re-evaluated strikeout, even though they are indisputably great pitchers.

The game itself has changed, and not for the better. Now, it’s just boring to watch.

Jim Bunning

A very small number of people have achieved great success at the highest level of professional sports and gone on to be elected to national office. Jack Kemp comes to mind, and Steve Largent, both of whom were great pro football players and served in the House of Representatives. And, of course, NBA Hall-of-Famer and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley. Am I forgetting anyone? My sincere apologies if so.

Jim Bunning joined this small group when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1985. He served six terms in the House, representing Kentucky’s 4th district. In 1998 he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 2004. He was 85 when he died last Friday.

He led an interesting life, an impactful life, and ordinarily I’d feel happy to write a little about someone like that. But Jim Bunning did a lot of things as a congressman that make him an outlier, and not in a good way. He often found himself at odds with fellow Republicans and often caused controversy.

In the Senate, he was routinely given the highest “conservative” score by those that calculate such things. He opposed Obamacare, of course. A Catholic with nine children, he was strongly anti-abortion. He made inappropriate remarks about his opponents and Supreme Court justices.

This NPR piece says,
As a politician, he was known as “blunt and abrasive,” according to Politico. “In 1993, for instance, he referred to President Bill Clinton as ‘the most corrupt, the most amoral, the most despicable person I’ve ever seen in the presidency.’ In 2009, he made headlines by predicting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead of cancer within nine months.”

Bunning single-handedly held up unemployment payments for millions of Americans during a two-day filibuster against $10 billion in stimulus spending.

According to this CNN piece, Bunning decided to leave the Senate in 2010 after tension with his own party.

“Unfortunately, running for office is not just about the issues,” Bunning said in a 2009 statement. “Over the past year, some of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Senate have done everything in their power to dry up my fundraising. The simple fact is that I have not raised the funds necessary to run an effective campaign for the U.S. Senate.”

The remark appeared to be a thinly veiled hit at fellow Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was the Senate minority leader at the time.

Bunning butted heads with McConnell more than once and called him a “control freak”. “McConnell is leading the ship, but he is leading it in the wrong direction. If Mitch McConnell doesn’t endorse me, it could be the best thing that ever happened to me in Kentucky.”

Asked by The New York Times in March 2009 whether he felt betrayed by some Republican colleagues, Mr. Bunning replied, “When you’ve dealt with Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra and Stan Musial, the people I’m dealing with are kind of down the scale.”

Reading that made me think back to the first time the name “Jim Bunning” penetrated my consciousness.

On July 20, 1958, he took the mound for the Detroit Tigers in Boston’s Fenway Park and pitched a no-hit, no-run game against the Red Sox. That had only been done twice before in the 46-year history of Fenway, both times by Hall-of-Famers. Walter Johnson did it in 1920 and Ted Lyons in 1926.

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Fenway is noted for its “Green Monster”, the huge wall in left field that appears to be just a few feet beyond the infield, and its lack of foul ground – hitters can stay alive on fouls that would be caught for outs in other venues.

It’s a hitter’s paradise and a pitcher’s nightmare. The Red Sox always tailored their line-ups for Fenway and routinely produced batting champs. Of course their own pitchers had to pitch in Fenway as well, so it didn’t translate too well into actual wins.

The line-up Bunning faced that day included a bunch of guys who were hard to get out on any day, and who were hitting over .300 at the time: Frank Malzone, Jackie Jensen, Pete Runnels, and, of course, the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, Ted Williams, who Bunning retired for the final out of the game.

The 26-year old Bunning was coming off a great 1957 season in which he led the American League with 20 wins. He had a side-arm delivery that gave right-handed hitters the impression the ball was coming at them from somewhere around third base. He was known for his combative nature, burning desire to win, and willingness to throw a “purpose pitch” when he thought it was needed, i.e. to hit an opposing batter to make him a little less comfortable digging in against him.

Bunning led the league in hit-batsmen four years in a row, and had 160 for his career. That’s more than anyone else in the last 90 years except for Tim Wakefield and Charlie Hough, both knuckle-ball pitchers who really didn’t know what was going to happen to the ball after it left their hands. And if the knuckle-ball did hit a batter, everyone knew it was an accident and getting hit by the floater didn’t hurt a bit in any case.

Tiger team-mate Frank Bolling said, “If he had to brush back his mother, I think he’d do it to win.”

Bunning didn’t appreciate opposing players talking trash at him, either. He once threw at the always-talkative Red Sox center-fielder, Jim Piersall, for jawing at him too much. That one was a little unusual because Piersall wasn’t batting at the time, but waiting his turn in the on-deck circle.

Team-mate Larry Bowa told a story about Bunning’s approach, which is quoted in this NYT Obit, about a game that he pitched at Montreal in the early 1970s.

“The Expos had Ron Hunt, a guy who loved to get hit. Well, Bunning threw him a sidearm curveball, Hunt never moved, and it hit him. The ball rolled toward the mound, and Bunning picked it up. He looked right at Hunt and said: ‘Ron, you want to get hit? I’ll hit you next time.’ And next time up, bam. Fastball. Drilled him right in the ribs. And he said to Hunt, ‘O.K., now you can go to first base.’”

Bunning thoughtfully described pitching the no-hitter this way:

“For most pitchers like me, who aren’t overpowering supermen with extraordinary stuff like Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan, a no-hitter is a freaky thing. You can’t plan it. It’s not something you can try to do. It just happens. Everything has to come together – good control, outstanding plays from your teammates, a whole lot of good fortune on your side and a lot of bad luck for the other guys. A million things could go wrong – but on this one particular day of your life none of them do.”

He was traded to the Phillies in 1963, and was as effective in the National League as he had been in the American. He pitched a “perfect game” (retired all 27 men he faced) against the Mets in New York on June 21, 1964, the first one pitched in the National League in 84 years, thereby revealing his previous comments about pitching a no-no to be overly modest.

To get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, you need to get 75% of the votes from the Baseball Writers Association of America, and you have only 15 years of eligibility after retirement. Bunning came close, but never got the nod from the writers. But in 1996, 25 years after he retired, he was voted in by the Veteran’s Committee, which included many players who had tried unsuccessfully to hit his pitching. “The writers never faced him,” Hall of Fame shortstop Luis Aparicio said at Bunning’s induction ceremony.

As a Boston baseball fan and someone who thinks government can actually solve problems once in a while, I always dreaded it when my team had to go up against Bunning. I didn’t like to see him standing on the pitcher’s mound opposing us and I didn’t like to see him standing in Congress opposing us either.

But give the devil his due: Jim Bunning knew what he wanted to do, did things not because they were politically expedient but because he believed in them, went about achieving his objectives in his own unique way, always fought hard, and never backed down.

Marathon Monday Mashup

A few random, loosely connected thoughts occur to me about Boston and the things people say about it on Marathon Monday, always a big festive occasion here.

1. Boston is a racist, small, parochial city that is, at its heart, deeply illiberal.

Yes, OK, we’ve heard this often and I have no great desire to argue about it. I suppose the stereotype still fits in several neighborhoods that resist change and hang onto their ethnic enclaves like grim death. I won’t mention them by name because it always pisses people off, but you can tell by looking at a map who the usual suspects are – they’re all in Boston proper, but separated from “downtown” by bodies of water, train tracks and highways, or other natural and man-made boundaries that make it easier to retain their unique “character”.

ted landsmark

The Bad Old Days

2. Boston is a world-class city, internationally known for its culture, institutions, and history of progressive thought and action.

Yes, this one is also true and I like it a lot better. In fact, I would say the truths here greatly outweigh the truths of No. 1 above. No one can match our hospitals and universities. Our museums and symphony are as good as anyone else’s. We’re a technology and financial center, and an incubator of new businesses and ideas.

Great institutions anchor the Longfellow Bridge

I’ve heard it said that there are more books per capita in Boston/Cambridge than anywhere else. We can be counted on to be on the right side of history when it’s time to vote. True, we’re not New York, and we’re all in bed by 1:00 A.M., but that’s a good thing, if you ask me.

rings

And if you like sports, Boston has it all – plenty of championships in the four major professional sports, and a wealth of great college programs as well, e.g. three national powerhouses in college hockey within walking distance from one another: Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College. A fourth, Northeastern, is quickly closing in on this elite circle. And amateur sports flourish here, too, which brings me to:

3. The Boston Marathon is an international, cross-cultural magnet. It is the oldest annual marathon in the world, and arguably the most famous. Tens of thousands will run officially and unofficially, and some will be professional athletes, but the overwhelming majority are amateurs. It will draw people from all over the world who have trained and sacrificed and traveled great distances for the honor of running “Boston”.

I’m writing this before the race, but I will go out on a limb and say that both the men’s and women’s winner will have come from a far away land and have an absolutely huge grin on their face despite the exhaustion of having gone all out for a couple of hours.

winners

Yesterday was a hot day, not a great day for running. But out on the Charles, lots of runners were getting in their last tune-ups before the race. Smiles all around, people taking selfies, locals and visitors in happy concatenation. A great day to be a Bostonian.

4. Martin Richard Park. Since the 2013 bombings, the Marathon has taken on a new and important aspect, beyond that of just sporting glory. It has come to embody the “Boston Strong” spirit of overcoming adversity, and not surrendering to our worst impulses. A new park and playground has opened up honoring Martin Richard, the little kid who lost his life in the bombings, and his family wants everyone to enjoy it and have good and positive feelings about it, like Martin would.

I hope it is successful and doesn’t become another in the unfortunate string of misuses and privatization of public space that we like to rail about here at GOML.

5. Doing harm while doing good. Apart from the Marathon, just about every weekend there is some sort of outdoor event where you can try to help an important cause. Maybe it’s a “walk for hunger” (shouldn’t that be a walk against hunger?), or one to support cancer research. It’s hard to keep up with them all, but everyone seems to want to do good.

But sometimes, even the well-meaning can do harm while trying to do good. I was out walking yesterday and noticed some pink plastic/rubber ties on stakes in the ground by the riverbank, obviously there to help participants navigate some part of a charitable event. Having just written a few days ago about the proliferation of plastics everywhere around us, I couldn’t get the following progression out of my mind:

pink1

pink 2

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And, just to go out on a high note, here’s a bonus pic of a teenage goose on the ground and some teenage trash in the trees.

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Man and nature in harmony. If only.

That’s it for my Marathon Monday Mashup. Peace out, people!

G.O.A.T.

For decades, I hated the New York Yankees. Actually I still hate them, although most of the justifications for the original hatred have long since disappeared.

I hated them because every situation seemed to favor them, because they always had the best players, because they always had the most money, because they always had the most luck. And, most of all, because they always broke the hearts of lifelong Red Sox fans who repeatedly saw their heroes come so close before the Yankees invoked the inevitable luck/skill/magic/whatever required to kill their hopes and dreams for yet another year.

And the Red Sox fans weren’t the only ones who hated New York. All the fans of all the other teams felt pretty much the same way. New York was the Evil Empire. They bought wins. They stole the best players from all the other teams, turning them into Yankee farm teams. They cheated. They were cheaters.

All the while, the Yankee fans could not have cared less. The Yankees were always playing when everyone else had gone home for the winter. The championships flowed into New York and their players were seen as the Greatest Of All Time, the G.O.A.T., whether they really were or not.

It must have been great to be a Yankee fan. You spent all those hours watching the games for six months and all that money at the Stadium to see them in person, but, in the end, it was all worth it. When the team won, you won. Your prayers were always answered. God liked you best.

Last night, the Patriots, my Patriots, completed the greatest and most improbable comeback in Super Bowl history. Everything had to fall their way, our way, in the end. And, of course, everything did. Records were broken and opponents’ dreams were shattered. All the detractors who were gloating when it seemed out of reach found that the joke was on them. Again.

In my old age, I finally know how it feels to have been a Yankee fan all those years. All my time and all the attention paid over the last six months was totally worth it. Tom Brady is the G.O.A.T. I’m a good person. God likes me best. Everyone else hates us.

The Patriots won it all. Again.

Bread and Circuses

One of the big reasons Republicans hate Obamacare (or any program designed to benefit others) is that Democrats typically want to fund it with higher taxes on the richest among us. The wealthy ask, “Why should the government take our money so that someone else can avoid paying their fair share?”

The argument seems to make some sense at first, until you realize that no one benefits from government handouts and subsidies more than rich people. There are a million examples, big and small, in the tax code alone, from reduced capital gains taxes to capped Social Security deductions to generous estate tax treatments. But there are reasonable discussions to be had around these issues that don’t always center on the greediness of the upper crust.

There are plenty of other examples outside the tax code as well. Defense contractors, private prison operators, for-profit “education” operations whose customers get government loans, oil companies who lease public lands for exploration or other operations, and many many others are producing healthy balance sheets for private citizens with the taxpayers’ money providing the income. Again, the picture is somewhat clouded by arguments that these businesses provide something necessary to the taxpayer, and they do it better than the government itself could, so quit with all the whining already.

And, of course, our beloved man-baby has been one of the best of all time. Bankruptcies, bond issues that were worthless, tax breaks, and more have all taken advantage of the taxpayer to line one individual’s pockets. He’s quoted in this New York Times article about it all as saying, “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”

Of course, there were other suckers hurt by Trump’s “business” in Atlantic City beside the taxpayers: the banks who loaned him money, the morons who invested in TRMP stock, the contractors and their subs who did work for Trump and never got paid, etc. It was more than simply a direct transfer of public money to the man-baby.

If you’re looking for a truly egregious example of ultra-rich people directly lining their pockets with the taxpayers’s money, with no accountability and no real benefit returning to the people, pro sports has you covered. And the N.F.L. is the worst of the worst.

In 2005, city planner Judith Grant Long published years of research on the topic. The abstract says,

Governments pay far more to participate in the development of major league sports facilities than is commonly understood due to the routine omission of public subsidies for land and infrastructure, and the ongoing costs of operations, capital improvements, municipal services, and foregone property taxes. Adjusting for these omissions increases the average public subsidy by $50 million per facility to a total of $177 million, representing a 40% increase over the industry-reported average of $126 million, based on all 99 facilities in use for the “big four” major leagues during 2001. For all 99 facilities, these uncounted public costs total $5 billion.

But that research is now almost 20 years old, and things are a lot worse now. Richard, a good friend of the blog, alerted us to this eye-opening article in the Atlantic, How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers. It talks about stadium-building and other subsidies to a 30-member group of billionaire owners, and it’s worth your time to give it a read. Here are some pull quotes to pique your interest:

Twelve teams have turned a profit on stadium subsidies alone—receiving more money than they needed to build their facilities.

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn’t apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It’s time to stop the public giveaways to America’s richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams.

Roger Goodell has become the sort of person his father once opposed—an insider who profits from his position while average people pay.

In Virginia, Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, who styles himself as a budget-slashing conservative crusader, took $4 million from taxpayers’ pockets and handed the money to the Washington Redskins, for the team to upgrade a workout facility. Hoping to avoid scrutiny, McDonnell approved the gift while the state legislature was out of session. The Redskins’ owner, Dan Snyder, has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $1 billion. But even billionaires like to receive expensive gifts.

Taxpayers in Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes Cincinnati, were hit with a bill for $26 million in debt service for the stadiums where the NFL’s Bengals and Major League Baseball’s Reds play, plus another $7 million to cover the direct operating costs for the Bengals’ field. Pro-sports subsidies exceeded the $23.6 million that the county cut from health-and-human-services spending in the current two-year budget (and represent a sizable chunk of the $119 million cut from Hamilton County schools). Press materials distributed by the Bengals declare that the team gives back about $1 million annually to Ohio community groups. Sound generous? That’s about 4 percent of the public subsidy the Bengals receive annually from Ohio taxpayers.

It goes on and on. Hospitals close and stadiums open. School districts suffer and football prospers. Those things and lots more will make you hate the N.F.L.

Wikipedia defines “Bread and Circuses” this way:

“…a superficial means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the generation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace.”

This weekend, two circuses are on offer. Friday, the man-baby will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the U.S., and Sunday the two teams who will play in Super Bowl LI two weeks later will be decided.

I was planning on ignoring the inauguration as much as possible, and enjoying the football as much as possible. It’s getting a little harder to keep them separate in my mind.

A Hell of a summer

In the summer of 1941, Europe was at war, but America wasn’t. During that summer, two of baseball’s immortals were in their prime and putting on a show that dominated the news, sometimes putting events in Europe in the shadows for the average American.

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Ted Williams, then only 22 years old and in his third year with the Red Sox, was having a season for the ages. It would end with him hitting .406, the last man ever to reach the .400 level. In the 75 years since, only a couple of players have ever come close, though Williams himself almost did it again 16 years later, when he hit .388.

Joe DiMaggio, in his sixth year with the Yankees at age 26, put together a 56-game hitting streak, a record most think will never be broken. He won the MVP that year, for the second of the three times in his career, though, by any objective measure, Williams had the better year.

During the streak, which went from May 15 to July 17, DiMaggio batted .408 (he finished the year at .357). Over that same span, Williams hit .412. Baseball experts agree that the most important individual statistic is On-Base Percentage. Williams’ OBP for the season was an astounding .553, while DiMaggio’s was a very good .448. Williams had a slugging percentage of .735 while Joe D. slugged .643.

But DiMaggio was playing in New York where most of the MVP-voting writers worshiped him, and Williams was playing in Boston where he had already begun his lifelong war of words with the press.

On June 22nd, Joe extended the streak to 35 games, as the Yankees beat Detroit 5-4 at home. He went 2 for 5, including a hit off Hal Newhouser, a future Hall-of-Famer. On that same day, the Nazis began Operation Barbarossa. They crossed into eastern Poland, violating the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact that had partitioned Poland since August 1939, and, in doing so, opened up a second front in the war.

barbarossa

The invasion of the Soviet Union brought millions of Jews under Nazi control. Jews in what is now Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and eastern Poland all paid the ultimate price as the Germans steamrolled their way to Stalingrad.

The big killing factories like Treblinka and Auschwitz were not yet fully functional, but the Nazis couldn’t wait. Village-by-village and city-by-city, the Jews were simply rounded up, marched to a suitable field nearby, and shot, often in full view of their neighbors, who were almost always the beneficiaries of the property left behind.

Within two years or so, 1.6 million Jews had been murdered in this Holocaust by Bullets.

On September 22, with only a week left in the 1941 baseball season, fans were rapt as Williams was still hanging on to his .400 average. He had a double in three trips against the Senators in Washington, which actually dropped his average a tick.

That same day was the end of the Jews in Vinnitsia, a good-sized Ukrainian city. More than 20,000 of them went to the pits to be shot. The last Jew alive in Vinnitsia is shown in this photo, where a proud member of Einsatzgruppe D finishes the day’s work.

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The Last Jew of Vinnitsia

I am quite sure the gentleman depicted here had a name, but it is lost to history. Any friend or family member who might be able to identify him from this picture was already dead in the pit below him by the time it was taken. He may have had children as well – did he sing them a lullaby at bedtime? He may have had a profession, hobbies, interests. Maybe he played a musical instrument – the violin, perhaps? Maybe he liked chess. Maybe he was aware of DiMaggio’s streak, as Hemingway’s hero in The Old Man and the Sea was, or was hoping to find out if Teddy could finish above .400. It’s all possible.

On the last day of the baseball season, September 28, Williams’ average had dropped to .39955. The Red Sox had a meaningless doubleheader to play at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, and his manager, Joe Cronin, asked him if he wanted to sit it out so that his average could be entered into the books as .400. Williams famously declined, saying if he was going to hit .400, it would be for a full season, not a part of one. He then went out and got six hits in the two games, finishing the season at .406.

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That same day, in Kiev, the city’s Jews received this order:

“All the Yids of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday September 29, 1941 by 8 a.m. at the corner of Melnikova and Dokhterivskaya streets (next to the cemetery). Bring documents, money and valuables, and also warm clothing, bed linen etc. Any Yids who do not follow this order and are found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilians who enter the dwellings left by Yids and appropriate the things in them will be shot”.

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The Germans were ordering the Jews to show up to be shot. If they failed to do so, they would be shot. Over the next two days, 33,771 Jews were marched to a ravine at the edge of the city called Babi Yar and murdered there. It was the largest single massacre of the war.

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Marching to Babi Yar

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Later that day

The summer was over for Williams, DiMaggio and the Jews of Kiev. It was a Hell of a summer.

Flying pigs clash with locusts

Chicago’s Near North neighborhood was virtually paralyzed this morning, Nov. 3, 2016. The streets were filled with the carcasses of pigs and locusts that had exhausted themselves while competing for air space over the Chicago area shortly after midnight.

Authorities are attempting to determine how pigs could have been flying in the first place, and whether there is any indication that this may signal further unprecedented, and perhaps ominous, events.