This is a blog about Federalism*

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T01:30:00.000-05:00

I am excited for the new year -- it gives me a chance to start over with a new set of arbitrary goals that don't present a meaningful challenge. Last year, I mustered 1335 miles (only a marginal increase from the year before, even though I missed nearly three months of 2010 with a stress fracture), read 63 books (thanks to three Adventures of Tintin books in the last few days, I think I set a new high in that total, read 100 short stories (due entirely to the work of Ryan and Ashley), attended 32 baseball games in 7 cities (in 2 countries), and made it to 7 concerts (in three states/districts). And I started a new job and bought a house.

That makes for a busy year.

2012 will bring more of all of those things (I'm getting the short stories over with early this year), a trip to California for a West Coast opening day swing that will help carve stadiums off my list, and I'm excited to get started on them.

My hopes for the year (we won't call them goals, because it's not like I will regard myself as a failure for not achieving them).

-Notch a 2010 Boston Qualifying time -- the standards for Boston keep dropping, and this drop is just cruel, since a 3:05 time is really a stretch of any imagination -- 3:10:59 was already straining credulity.
-Crack the 5 minute mile (current best is 5:27)-- this is actually something that makes the first goal look modest, but I have more faith in the possibility of this hope. For whatever reason, I can always find speed in reserve, so long as I know that the end is a minute or two away. This provides no solace over a distance of 26.2 miles, but plenty over a distance of one. I don't know why I can notch times as quick as 5:27 on the treadmill, so I may well be capable of even more.
-Make it to at least 4 new MLB stadiums -- I've dwindled the list down a fair bit in the last year, but the western divisions are still virtually untouched. I'm aiming to go out at Opening Day for a trip that would take me to ARI-LAA-SDP-LAD, but I have to actually make it happen, and since my wife isn't likely to make it, I have to remain motivated on my own.
-Broker a peace treaty between the cats -- the newest torments and attacks the oldest on a nearly-relentless basis. It's disconcerting, and I'm losing hope that age will resolve the problem. But it continuing can't be an option, and I don't want to lose another cat.

Overheard in ATL

2011-11-22T13:24:00.001-05:00

Hello?

Oh, I'm at the airport.

Oh, you didn't know? Whenever I'm at the airport, I have an incessant
need to call everyone I know. If I'm not calling people at the airport
-- oh, I can't hear you, I'm in the airport -- if I'm not calling
someone, then I would have proof that I have no friends. It's just
inconceivable that I wouldn't have someone to call.

NOW BOARDING FLIGHT 757...

Oh, gosh, I'm about to get on the plane. But rather than get off the
phone and end this call that was made solely because I am in the
airport, I will just make everything take longer. Oh, I'm in the
airport.

Oh, you're at work? Really? Oh, well it won't be much longer. I'm at
the airport. I can't believe you're at work. I mean, it is 2 pm on a
Tuesday and there's a 99 percent chance that if you have a job, you
would be at work, I just think it's SO WEIRD that you're at work. Oh,
I'm not at work. I'm at the airport.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FORWARD DOOR IS CLOSED, PLEASE SHUT OFF ...

Hello? Hi Doodie, I just wanted to let you know I was here and was all
checked in. My flight's on time, so thanks for bringing me.*

*this is an exact quotation. This leads me to believe 1) she was
calling anthropomorphic feces, 2) that can drive, 3) and that in the
event that her flight had not been on time, she would be angry at the
anthropomorphic feces for driving her to the airport.

This person also was telling person #3 (the person before
Anthropomorphic feces) that she has a mortgage for 40,000 and a second
mortgage for 15,000. She should have skipped flying to Atlanta, she
could have paid off her f---ing mortgages.

--
Sent from my mobile device

The continuing story of Justin Verlander, magical pitcher

2011-10-04T12:31:00.005-04:00

Justin Verlander and narratives -- in that link, Joe Posnanski discusses how sportswriters and commentators are clinging to the story that Justin Verlander was the reason the Tigers won last night, despite all evidence being markedly to the contrary. It's a great read, it's spot on, and it has one problem and one problem alone. Alas, that problem is that Posnanski himself is guilty of perpetuating a narrative that numbers didn't necessarily back up with Verlander this season. See, for instance, two ways to look at MVP voting and the obvious MVP choice (he rightly concludes there isn't one).

While Posnanski is willing to acknowledge that Verlander is not a guarantee for MVP, he does seem to buy into the gospel that Verlander is a uniquely dominant pitching force in the American League. In fact, numbers indicate that he's a superb pitcher whose difference from other great pitchers has been exceptional fortune. To the extent Verlander has a defining feature that makes him the true unrivaled leader in AL pitching, it's been his ability to pitch deeper into games than his rivals (which may be a function of how atrocious the Tigers' other starters were for most of the season, forcing Leyland to leave Verlander in to give his bullpen a rest).

Verlander has been a very good pitcher, but for nearly the entire season, he was only marginally separated from any others in Fielding Independent Pitching. Jered Weaver and Justin Masterson were both his equal at the start of September. Masterson then got rocked, courtesy of a grand slam from the Tigers that destroyed his numbers (FIP doesn't take kindly to grand slams); Weaver is still his equal. Verlander benefited from a lot of defensive help (not merely from good defensive range, but through things like OF assists and Alex Avila throwing out baserunners -- both of which he got huge benefits from in the game I saw him pitch (where he was about as unhittable as Mike Pelfrey)). Verlander should win the Cy Young, but he owes his magnificent season to defensive freak plays and a significant aberration in strand rate. While you can't write off strand rate entirely (obviously, Verlander's ability to strike batters out makes a huge contribution here), it's a significant aberration from the past performances of one Justin Verlander (who, unlike Cliff Lee, did not generate a sudden ability to strike batters out in the 2010-2011 offseason).

A good comparison would be Verlander's 2008 season. It is, by any account, his worst season in the major leagues. But it's the one that most mimics batters' performance against him this year. The line drive/ground ball/fly ball percentage is virtually identical.

But his numbers were dreadful. Three factors killed him -- 1) a high walk rate -- his walk rate was nearly double what it was in 2011; 2) a BABIP difference (unaffected by Verlander's superior strikeout ability, heavily affected by defense and luck) -- .296 in 2008 (the completely unsustainable .236 in 2011) and 3) a strand rate that was a career low of 65%.

Of these three factors, I think everyone can acknowledge that the first is heavily influenced by narrative. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Jamie Moyer...there are plenty of pitchers who were known to live outside the strike zone but get the calls that would turn their games up a notch -- in Maddux and Glavine's case, to legendary status, in Moyer's, to a very impressive career. Because Verlander is hyped, he will get calls he shouldn't. It's either a fact or a piece of widely-accepted apocrypha that accomplished pitchers will have a more expansive strike zone. Verlander is in that range now. In 2008, probably not so much. Given that Verlander posted a career-low walk rate (by a significant margin)

The second is one that's easily to write off entirely as luck, but that's worse than never looking at BABIP in the first place. BABIP can tell you, at a glance, whether things are likely to be sustainable. But it's risky to read too much into it out of context. Here, however, the context shows plenty to tell you that there is no reason to believe that his numbers are earned. His 17.7% line drive rate is only 1% better than 2010, his ground ball rate is down 0.8% from 2010, and his fly ball rate absorbs both reductions -- with infield fly rate increasing by 1% as well. Thankfully, he's in a stadium where fly balls are things of beauty (though he still got stung by an abnormally high HR/FB%, which is the only reason you can feel any pity for Justin Verlander -- that said, an abnormally high rate for Verlander would still be a phenomenally fortunate James Shields -- who has never dropped below 9.8%). But there's simply no explanation for a decrease of .060 in BABIP when the line drive rate drops by 1%.

The strand rate is mostly Verlander's doing. There's only 5 starts (of his league-leading 34) where he left a game after retiring one or two batters in an inning. (There's likely a game or two in that mix where he put a runner on and then was yanked, but too lazy to check 34 different games). The other factors likely contribute, but it's hard to exclude them. It's unlikely he's going to combined with his relievers to strand 80% again next season, since I can find nearly no one that fortunate (with the awesome exception of Bob Wickman's 2005 season where he managed a 92.5% strand rate -- god bless small sample sizes and pitch-to-contact closers). Roy Halladay, a pitcher who you still have to rank higher than Verlander career-wise, has managed a 73% strand rate. A pitcher who compares to Verlander in terms of strikeouts -- Tim Lincecum -- even with the benefit of facing pitchers in about 8-9% of at bats against, has never hit 80% and has a career percentage of 76% (markedly better than Verlander's). Kerry Wood (again, mostly in the NL) only once hit the 80% plateau and has an average of about 76%.

I agree that Verlander is unrivaled for the Cy Young award this year. But when the narrative is one of a pitcher truly unparalleled in his dominance by any measure -- the numbers don't bear it out. There are a handful of pitchers in the AL who, given his combination of defensive support, a Cy Young caliber reputation (sorry, Justin Masterson, James Shields), run support (sorry again, all other Cy Young contenders other than CC Sabathia*), could have achieved what Verlander did.

*ESPN seems to be about the only data source that will allow you to search by run support, but it only allows for a run support average. Let's just say on one level that I don't get it -- and on another level that it is nonsense of the highest degree. Justin Masterson is a great example of someone who is emphatically not going to win the Cy Young and someone who got screwed by a team that didn't score runs -- his record in games where he allowed 2 earned runs or fewer is 7-5. Read that again. In the 22 starts where Justin Masterson allowed 2 earned runs or fewer, he won 7 games.

Fangraphs lists Verlander with 144 runs scored in support of him, Justin Masterson with 98, yet ESPN has Masterson with a greater run support average. So I took a broader view, maybe ESPN is just looking at the number of runs scored by a team in the entire game that those pitchers started??? Nope. That would skew the numbers even more. The Indians scored a total of 113 runs in ALL of Masterson's starts. (In comparison, the Tigers scored 155 in Verlander's starts). Thus, even setting aside Verlander's 35 more innings pitched, ESPN's run support percentage is just inexplicable.

The average run support with the fangraphs numbers (RSx9 divided by innings pitched):
Verlander: 5.16
Masterson: 4.08

Fire Rob Parker?

2011-09-22T11:10:00.006-04:00

Joe Girardi deserves a lot of credit

I don't want to have to do this, Rob Parker. Don't make me do it. Oh lord. Fine.

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi likely won't win American League Manager of the Year.

Rick Perry likely won't be elected president in 2012. But there's a disturbing probability that each of these could happen despite mountains of evidence that neither man has offered a shred of value added to his representative organization. I like the direction that this article is going, Mr. Parker, please continue.

In fact, he'll be lucky to finish in the top three in the voting.

I don't know. If I had a ballot, it would probably say Joe Maddon, Manny Acta, and Ron Washington, but a lot of people just look at who went to the playoffs, so Girardi's name will be on there. But I also think that Manager of the Year is preposterous since managers are essentially irrelevant -- what you need is a GM affiliated with the Army of the 12 Monkeys and some dork that was in Get Him to the Greek. Haven't you seen that Moneyball movie?

Sadly, most baseball writers/voters just can't look past the Yankees' $200-million payroll to actually see what he's done.

Earned an attendance certificate? Filled out the lineup card? This is why Manager of the Year is as stupid an award as an ESPY. Winning games is its own reward for a team or a manager. Winning individual awards is something only non-true Yankees like A-Fraud cares about.

Plus, there's an anti-New York vote that swirls around Baseball America whether folks want to admit it or not.

You do know that Baseball America is a publication, right? One that's infinitely more esteemed in its coverage of baseball than the Red Sox crap factory that employs you?

But if there was ever a manager who deserves some credit for getting his team into the postseason this year -- the Yankees clinched the AL East title with a doubleheader sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday -- it's Girardi.

If there was ever a manager who deserves some credit for getting his team into the postseason this year. You tricked me, Rob Parker. I was going to suggest that EVER was a very high threshold -- that you would have to be saying that Joe Girardi outmanaged Gil Hodges in 1969 or Sparky Anderson in the 1970s, Bobby Cox in any of the years between 1991 and 2005, every year John McGraw managed... No, instead you are saying he is the most credit-worthy of all time* *if you measure all time by considering only this year. You're still demonstrably, ludicrously, and insanely wrong by any rational measure (Kirk Gibson, anyone?), but you're clever. (Oh, wait, you mean credit like credit ratings, credit limits, right? Because obviously since he has a $200+ million payroll...oh Jesus. You're serious.)

No one wants to remember spring training when all the talk was about the Boston Red Sox. Some, or so it seemed, wanted to call off the season and hand the Sox the division title, without ever playing a game.

The Yankees, who seemingly did nothing in the offseason to improve themselves, were flying under the radar.

There were some baseball experts, shockingly, who predicted the Yankees wouldn't make the playoffs.

That's right. It was the Red Sox winning the division and the Rays grabbing the wild-card spot out of the AL East.

Hold on. I know you're not done. But your article has, as I see it, one premise.

1. Joe Girardi had to do an exceptional job to get the Yankees into the playoffs.

You are now describing the very idea that someone would SUGGEST that the Yankees might not make the playoffs as "shocking."

Joe Girardi has to do an exceptional job to avoid something that, even in the abstract, is so unlikely to Rob Parker as to be shocking.

Accordingly, there can be no doubt that Ned Yost is the manager of the year. He managed the Royals to a season where they did not make the playoffs.

But with a week to go in the regular season, not only are the Yankees going to the postseason for the third straight year under Girardi, they are on the verge of securing the best record in the league.

A fact so significant that, if every series went its maximum length, they will play a maximum of two more games at home than any team in the playoffs.

And by no means was it a walk in the park. Girardi had to work at it, solve problems and work through dilemmas. He had to guide this team through a slew of injuries as well.

Girardi lost Phil Hughes, Rafael Soriano, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to the disabled list at different points in the season. And lost Joba Chamberlain for the year with an elbow injury.

The loss of Hughes along the way would have derailed most clubs' postseason dreams. Not Girardi's Yankees.

Ok, I am an Indians fan. So please...on August 18, the Indians were 1.5 games back in their division. At that time, players who had spent time on the disabled list?

Hm. 3 of the pitchers in the starting rotation and the top 2 pitchers in wins for the club last year (1 - Fausto Carmona, 2 - Carlos Carrasco, and 5 - Mitch Talbot) for 15 days, 15 days, and 66 days, respectively. The pitcher called up to replace the number 2 starter -- Alex White -- for 70 days before he was traded to Colorado for a plate of Rocky Mountain Oysters and some magic beans.

Plus, A-Rod . . .

Parker, shut the f*** up. I'm not finished.

Every player on the team who had ever attended an All-Star Game in a non-fan capacity. Grady Sizemore -- 3 different times -- for a combined 64 days. Travis Hafner for 30 days. Shin Soo Choo for 49 days. Carmona (as mentioned above). Alas, in July, Asdrubal Cabrera got sent, likely because the rest of his team was currently on the DL, so the Indians could no longer claim to have an exclusive club in their infirmary.

Then their best right-handed reliever (Joe Smith - 15 days), the man who was supposed to play third base and left the Indians starting Jack Hannahan for two months because of his slow recovery from a broken finger (30 days), their woeful first baseman (Matt LaPorta - 18 days), and the guy who was the center fielder for all of last year (168 days as of August 18, alas, he came back in September).

Plus, A-Rod (.281 with 16 HRs and 60 RBI) has struggled through his worst season as a pro.

He is making $30 million a year -- which is pretty much the payroll of all of the Indians other than Travis Hafner. His worst season in history (119 OPS+) would be damn near be the best season of anyone on the Indians (Asdrubal Cabrera is at 120, Carlos Santana is at 124, Hafner's at 127 in his half season). The Indians were within 1.5 games of achieving the same thing that you're celebrating right now despite the fact that nearly every player on their team would have had to get markedly better to have his season.

Girardi's ability to hold the team together didn't go unnoticed by Yankees general manager Brian Cashman.

"Joe and his staff have done a great job," Cashman said before Game 2 at Yankee Stadium. "Obviously, we have a lot of talent, we have a lot of depth and it showed this year because it was needed.

"And we've had a lot of guys also step up. Some guys we knew had that in them, other guys came in and surprised us."

I'm pretty sure that the New York Post headline for this statement would have read: CASHMAN: GIRARDI IS WORTHLESS. "Obviously, we have a lot of talent, we have a lot of depth and it showed this year because it was needed."

Girardi also was impressive with the way he handled delicate situations with his stars, namely Jeter and Jorge Posada.

Many wanted Girardi to give up on Jeter when he was struggling during the first two months of the season. Sports-talk radio was screaming for Girardi to drop Jeter from leadoff to ninth in the batting order.

And it would have made perfect sense for him to do so. His decision not to do so does not have any correlation with Jeter's resurgence after coming off the disabled list. Only an idiot would...

Girardi, to his credit, never wavered on his future Hall of Fame shortstop. And Jeter delivered for his skipper. Since coming back from the disabled list July 4, he's hitting .336 (90-for-268).

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Girardi also handled the Posada situation properly. He benched the former All-Star catcher when it was necessary. And it took guts to do it to a player who has meant so much to this franchise. But Girardi had to do what was best for the team, not play favorites.

What was best for the team, apparently, was playing a person who is not hitting in a position that is designated solely for hitting on an everyday basis until the end of August. What was best for the team was playing that lousy hitter as a DH with an 88 OPS+ in a mere 109 games (for the record, 20 more than Hafner's played in all year).

Give Ozzie Guillen the Manager of the Year. His DH is even worse and he's played him even more.

He also had to work a lot of different players into the lineup in order to fill in for the players that went down, and keep his older team fresh in the process. For sure, Girardi earned his pay this season.

You know, I actually thought this had to be true. It's not. Not even close. The Yankees have a total of 13 players with more than 50 plate appearances. In other words, they have never gone deeper than the Opening Day roster.

for comparison:

Boston - 16; Chicago - 16; Cleveland - 21; Detroit - 18; Someplace where they aren't Angels of someplace that isn't the first place - 15; Texas - 15

I admit my 50 PA cutoff is relatively arbitrary. But for the Yankees, there's only one player close to breaking it -- Jesus Montero -- and he made his debut in September. The Yankees have 16 players with more than 30 plate appearances and 4 other guys who have 11 or fewer. I would safely wager that Joe Girardi has worked his primary hitters for more games than any team in baseball. And the only reason it might not be a lock is the ineptitude of a DH that he platooned with a much better DH in Andruw Jones.

"Joe has done an incredible job and doesn't get enough credit," said Rodriguez amid the Yankees' celebrations. "To me, he is the manager of the year. He's been terrific."

Best of all, Girardi doesn't believe his job is over by just making the playoffs.

"It's the first step of three that you want, to me, to accomplish in the regular season," Girardi said. "First one is to get in.

"The second one is to win your division. And the third one is to have home-field advantage throughout. It's the first step, and you've got a shot now."

Thanks to Girardi, whether others want to acknowledge it or not.

Well done, Mr. Parker. That second paragraph should just say "Best of all -- obvious cliche proving that Joe Girardi does not accidentally say 'yep, we made the playoffs. Now it's time to snort some coke and bang some hookers. F*** the World Series." That's true. By having what is likely the healthiest starting lineup in baseball, the highest payroll in baseball, by winning a division where his team was basically given a 10 game head start because the Red Sox and Rays both started the season 4-16, and overcoming the burden of having to pencil 5 of his starters (4 of whom are all stars) into the lineup for more than 145 games, and overcoming a 15-day DL stint to a player who was atrocious, an injury to a starting pitcher with a 6.00 ERA, and two relievers -- a setup man his GM didn't want (and who had pitched his way out of the eighth inning role anyway) and a headcase who had been demoted out of the 8th inning role and was replaced by an exponentially more effective LUIS AYALA.

Put me down for voting Larry Rothschild the pitching coach of the year. Joe Girardi should be fired and replaced by a creaky old mimeograph that can make blurry copies of the same lineup every game.

Lists: Books

2011-09-13T22:51:00.000-04:00

January (3)
Black and Blue: How Racism, Drugs and Cancer Almost Destroyed Me by Paul Canoville
Home Buying For Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
Tips and Traps When Buying a Home by Robert Irwin

February (6)
Mortgages for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
The Damned United by David Peace
The Quitter by Harvey Pekar
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
The Good Stuff by Joe Posnanski
How to Beat Up Anybody by Judah Friedlander

March (3)
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt
Hell in a Handbasket by Tom Tomorrow
2011 Baseball America Prospect Handbook by Jim Callis et al.

April (4)
The War for Late Night by Bill Carter
I Was Right On Time by Buck O'Neil
Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore
For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre

May (5)
The Internet Is a Playground by David Thorne
Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
Living on the Black by John Feinstein
The Late Shift by Bill Carter
Cancer on $5 a Day *Chemo Not Included by Robert Schimmel and Alan Eisenstock

June (4)
The Game From Where I Stand by Doug Glanville
The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
Permanent Midnight by Jerry Stahl
Mountain Man Dance Moves: the McSweeney's Book of Lists by the Editors of McSweeney's

July (6)
Chasing the Game by Filip Bondy
Shut Out: a Story of Race and Baseball in Boston by Howard Bryant
The Rocket That Fell To Earth by Jeff Pearlman
The Final Season by Tom Stanton
The New Frugality by Chris Farrell
Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg

August (5)
Project Nim by Elizabeth Hess
A False Spring by Pat Jordan
Zoo Story by Thomas French
High Heat by Tim Wendel
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

September (2)
My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin
Last Call by Daniel Okrent

Since I've uploaded this, I've read nothing but nonfiction, but it's also included some real dense works -- Last Call took me the better part of two months. It's a good history of prohibition, but the word I'd use to describe it a bit too appropriate for such a topic, so I won't even use it.

...

I hit a run of science/ecology/biology books with Where the Wild Things Were, Project Nim, and Zoo Story. Now I'm starting a couple of novels, which is odd since I haven't read anything but nonfiction since apparently An Object of Beauty in February, which, while certainly not good, didn't warrant a half a year away from fiction entirely.

...

Fine, fine, Last Call is dry. Okay? Happy now? Can we move on?

The 50 book threshold seems a lot tougher this year. Admittedly, I've had a lot of lengthier books and I've really run out of go-to fiction authors (I've read everything from Chabon and Vonnegut now, and the Ian Fleming Bond novels are waaaay back in the rear-view mirror now), but it still seems like I've read a lot more than 38 books. I suppose moving near the subway has largely limited my ability to read when going to and from work -- my commute's no longer worth filling and this week I've taken to walking home while I'm trying to overcome an inexplicable injury/health issue that I'm not willing to run through. Either way, 50 is doable, and I suspect it could be done by November considering I have a couple more flights in my near future and no baseball games to fill my spare time.

I hate our coffee machine

2011-08-11T11:38:00.001-04:00

The coffee machine in my office is annoying for two reasons. 1) It fills even paper cups about half full, so you have about half of a cup of coffee. 2) The coffee machine has apparently become human. It has developed self-awareness and the ability to lie.

The machine ALWAYS lies. With coffee, it says "preparing your fresh ground coffee"...and my response is "f*** you, machine. I know it's not fresh ground, because I was the one who put in the little plastic packet into which the "coffee" was ground probably eons ago. So the only way to interpret its statement is that the coffee has been freshly brewed from ground coffee, which is...how coffee works. Barring someone just pouring water over a bunch of beans into a mug, it's going to be made "freshly" with ground up beans. So basically the machine is telling me that my eyes are working and the machine is performing its task, but it has to be a fancy man about it.

From this machine, I drink coffee solely because I'm trying to avoid drinking soda, because I don't like coffee much. So I usually get a mocha -- which, as I learned from said coffee machine, is just coffee with hot chocolate in it. (I do not know these things and I don't enjoy the differences between wine. I am not welcome in the white guy club.) And the mocha...it's even worse. This time the machine's not lying, it's just an asshole. With the mocha, it says "preparing your indulgent mocha". Indulgent? Come on. 1) machine, check dictionary.com -- in·dul·gent /ɪnˈdʌldʒənt/ Show Spelled[in-duhl-juhnt] adjective -- characterized by or showing indulgence; benignly lenient or permissive: an indulgent parent. 2) Are you kidding me? There is nothing indulgent. It's powdered coffee, powdered hot chocolate. It's about as indulgent as doing your taxes. The only, only, only way that you can call it indulgent is to use it in the more colloquial sense that basically means gluttonous. The machine is telling me "hey fatass, you'll get your fucking sugar caffeine shit."

So I hate our coffee machine and am going to have to see the movie Tron so I can figure out how to kill it from the inside.

Live from Oriole Park at Camden Yards

2011-08-06T17:41:00.001-04:00

They're playing Ini Kamoze's "here comes the hotstepper" in the Bud
Light Warehouse Bar right now. I had forgotten the song entirely,
which is embarrassing, since I'm now convinced it's the best song I
don't have on ITunes (Us3 - Cantaloop and Onyx - Slam might be its
only rivals, and I now intend to buy all three when I get home).

Coming here is always an ambivalent experience. I've never liked the
Orioles, I hate Cal Ripken (and if I were to say so here, I would
likely be burned at the stake), I was very down on the stadium until I
discovered the bleacher seats -- the "good seats" here (about 20 rows
behind the plate) are among the worst "good seats" I've ever had. But
it's a good day today, I can pretend I want the Orioles to win
(admittedly, on balance, I prefer the Jays, but I really just want the
AL East to reach parity and Andy McPhail is criminally
underappreciated as a GM).

Orioles fans are probably the most past-oriented fans on earth. I
don't think you'd find any other stadium where the most omnipresent
jersey is a player who doesn't play anymore. Admittedly, they've been
bad for a long stretch, but their fans don't have the excuse that
they've not spent money (that's definitely not the Orioles' problem --
they signed Tejada, after all) or that they traded everyone (I don't
even remember the Orioles trading a homegrown talent other than Bedard
-- they deal guys like Derrek Lee that they sign on one year deals
because they'll pay for such players or short-term guys like George
Sherrill).

Now they've moved from Ini Kamoze to "Party in the USA". Maybe the
Orioles just acquired Tulo.

--
Sent from my mobile device

How to Live Forever

2011-07-30T01:13:00.000-04:00

Because it was still 100 degrees at 5 p.m., I decided there was no way I'd subject myself to the Nationals game tonight, even though I missed it Wednesday for work. So I had to find something new to do and knew my laptop was dead (my 5 year old laptop...still works fine -- hence you can read this and it's not all blackberry-formatted). Because I'd been constantly in the E Street Cinema the last few weeks, I was acutely aware of a documentary coming out called "How to Live Forever" that examined aging, death, and whether these were truly inevitable things. Not from a super-scientific point of view, much more of a populist sort of mid-life crisis assessment. And today, it opened at the E Street Cinema and the director was there for a Q&A. Having missed the Q&A with the people associated with Project Nim last week when it sold out before I got tickets, I had to go.

And I'm glad I did. It's a light documentary considering that really so much of it is about death. It's somewhere in between the Errol Morris school and Michael Moore. But one of the questions that he asked a number of people on the street really struck a chord with me because it was bizarrely appropriate to a conversation I had earlier this week while exemplifying why I am a bad role model and should not be let near summer associates.

The question was: "if you could take a pill that would let you live 500 years, would you take it?" The people on the street that he asked were basically split -- half seemed to think that life's brevity was a value of some sort (these were either truly decrepit people or people who were far from having to contemplate death), half said yes (with a special poignance from one person, who pointed out he was recovering from his second cancer surgery).

My conversation came about in a different way but sort of touched on similar ground. In order to talk about anything but work, I asked the summer associates what they were doing with their time in between working and going back to school. One of them had a great many travels planned, the other was going to a wedding and was planning to go skydiving.

Because my brain doesn't involve itself before I speak, I just say "I could never do that." The reason? It's not because I'm afraid of heights or even that I'm afraid my parachute wouldn't open (though that probably plays an insignificant role). Rather, it's the fear that I would get in the air and decide that maybe it's not worth it to pull the rip cord. It's not that I'm suicidal, I couldn't even contemplate that seriously. It's that I lack 100% certainty that, given the actual obligation to do something or vanish, I'd do something. It's much easier and much less troubling to simply continue to exist and not have to confront those decisions. There are plenty of days where I think I don't know how people have kids, because I have it easy and this still sucks. I'm healthy, I have a job, I'm financially secure (until August 2, thanks a lot, tea party). And there are a lot of days where I am ready to chuck it all.

It's certainly possible other people feel this way, but I suspected it's not a terribly common belief. Well, I thought that for a day. The next day, I learned that the summer associate who is not going skydiving apparently told one of my co-workers that my theory was "brilliant". Either I'm apparently onto something and there's a whole community of us who practice fundamentalist ambivalence or he may be more troubled than we know.

Bixler's dream is over -- Riggleman resigns

2011-06-24T13:51:00.000-04:00

Well, perhaps Jim Riggleman's just been overcome with guilt for continuing as a manager after I excoriated him <A HREF=http://blogaboutfederalism.blogspot.com/2011/04/worst-managed-game-ive-ever-seen.html>here</A>, or maybe Jim Riggleman's resignation is just another sign of the Nationals trying desperately to get their plot to move the team to Las Vegas back on track. In any event, it's one of the most fascinating train wrecks I've experienced, definitely one of the weirdest managerial situations. Edwin Rodriguez resigned earlier this week, to be sure, but he resigned on a day when I looked at the standings, saw the Marlins had fallen to last and wondered how he hadn't been fired already. Mike Hargrove suddenly quitting on the Mariners was odd, but the team's only real player didn't like Hargrove and was vowing to leave if Hargrove remained as manager (leading to articles like <A HREF=http://www.thebrushback.com/hargrove_full.htm>this</A>.

But the Riggleman situation is a real black eye for everyone associated with it. Mike Rizzo looks like a jerk for not offering to have a conversation (at which point he'd have refused to exercise the option, triggering Riggleman's resignation then) and the franchise looks cheap because they could have bought peace for the remainder of the season by coughing up $600,000. For a team that signed Jayson Werth to an average annual value contract of $18 million, that's really stingy.

Then there's Jim Riggleman. The Nationals job has already lasted longer than two of his three managerial stints even though his winning percentage hasn't shown much reason to keep him around. The 2011 Nationals are a team that's managed to win a lot of games without ever looking particularly good. They've got some solid pieces and have recovered well from losing two players who were supposed to serve as the heart of the lineup with Zimmerman out for nearly two months and Adam LaRoche out for the season. Despite his truly mind-boggling moves and the complete lack of depth on the team, the Nationals were respectable and seemed to be actually drawing some interest from fans (the attendance numbers don't reflect this, though the Nationals have been hampered because they haven't had any of their big draw promotional games yet, any weekend series against the Phillies, and haven't had the sellouts that came from Stephen Strasburg showing up to pitch.) In any event, the team was at least looking likely to survive and still have a few fans in the seats in September. So, despite the fact that he's been a questionable manager, he deserved to get the lame duck option picked up, because he hadn't done anything fire-able in the standings (again, tactically, I don't see how he could possibly have held his job in the first instance and a manager who didn't make such moves might well have had this team three or four games over .500 -- the Giants game would have been firmly in the win column). But insisting that the conversations had to happen in June is, as Mike Rizzo said, not what baseball is about. He had a contract. He wasn't getting fired. If he was going to get fired at the end of the season, he'd have lost nothing -- he's not going to generate any interest as a Major League manager ever again now, and that would make him an unlikely bench coach as well. If things really work out for Riggleman, he'll be managing the Camden Riversharks next year.

I don't think the Nationals will finish at .500. They wouldn't have with Riggleman, they won't under McLaren. I don't know what effect it will have on the team or their performance. I don't know how McLaren's performance will compare to Riggleman's. But I do know this much -- everyone in the scenario looks like they weren't suited for the jobs they held, and that doesn't bode well for the future of baseball in D.C.

Welcome to run-down San Salvador!

2011-06-19T14:46:00.001-04:00

Combining the presence of half of El Salvador's population with the
fact that RFK looks a lot like it's a stadium in a third-world
country, I think I've really got the real feel today (hopefully minus
the people throwing bags of urine).

When they said the game was sold out, I just figured they'd not sold
all the seats and were treating this like a DC United match. Nope.
This place is going to be full by 6 pm, when the El Salvador-Panama
match starts.

What's stunning is the complete absence of Panama fans here. When I
was at the Gold Cup semifinals in 2009, Panama had at least 2/3 of the
fans in Lincoln Financial Field. Today, I saw three on the Metro, no
one in the stadium. Even Jamaica's six fans outnumber Panama thus far.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Top 5 Interrogative Songs

2011-06-15T21:14:00.000-04:00

posted from The Top 5 - the longest-lasting of any of the blogs after the livejournal venture had disappeared for a couple years, but I am so swamped with things to do that I am unmotivated to do any of them before midnight, since I'll be doing them after midnight anyway. So it led me to resurrect the top five blog, so long as I can convince Ryan, who's not teaching in the summer, and Dan, who should have limitless time, as I understand that is what happens in grad school -- to follow suit.

Tim's Top 5:
I blame Dan. He posted a reference to this blog today. So I'm posting, because I came up with something that I think would make for a good sporcle quiz -- providing answers to songs ending in question marks. So that's what this is for me -- you could choose to pick songs that are phrased in the form of a question if you prefer, but I'm sticking to something easy to search for in Itunes -- and the only other songs I can think of are "Are you gonna go my way", "Are you gonna be my girl," and "Do you want to know a secret" none of which would make my list anyway. The fascinating thing is that this is a list where the Jimi Hendrix Experience, CCR, Elliott Smith, John Lennon, R.E.M. and The Clash would have qualifiers, and I didn't pick any of those.

1. Life on Mars? - David Bowie - This is far and away the winner here, although if I'd gone with songs phrased in the form of a question, I wouldn't be able to count it. It's one of my favorite Bowie songs, which means it's one of my favorite songs period. The vocal jumps are matched perfectly by the mostly nonsensical lyrics and the music is just soaring. I can't think of a whole lot of songs that do so much with vocal dynamics, but it's fantastic here.

Answer: possibly, frozen under the water.

2. What Do You Want Me To Say? - Dismemberment Plan - I had actually stumbled onto listening to this album (Emergency and I) today and never once thought to connect this song to the list until I ran the ITunes search. It has a similar sort of emphasis on explosions of sound, but ties in some occasional spoken-word sort of lyrics. I've never listened to anything but this album, but this album is fantastic enough to deserve the hype it gets.

Answer: that you're coming back to DC and will be playing the Black Cat on a Saturday or Sunday night.

3. Isn't it a Pity? - George Harrison - This is a very simple song that goes on for a very very long time, but it doesn't feel that way at all. Another masterpiece from what is far and away the best solo album any Beatle ever released. Yes, I said that. Suck it, Imagine (which had a song that narrow missed this list). This song is also noteworthy because IT includes a question mark in the title, even though the next track (What Is Life) does not. Get with the program, Harrison!

Answer: Yes. 'Tis. You're missed, George.

4. What Difference Does It Make? - Sensefield (cover of The Smiths) - I'm sorry, but I just really don't think that highly of the Smiths song (like most Smiths songs, I can see how someone who is not me would like it, but that person is not me). Jon Bunch's vocaqls are meant for this sort of thing, and Morrissey's spoken-word vocal here doesn't carry the same force. This is a pretty good straight rocker, and I am a sucker for Sensefield.

5. What do you do with a B.A. in English? - Cast of Avenue Q - this is the perfect start to a fantastic show that was even better than I had ever figured possible when I saw it live in London. RIP, Sir Gary Coleman.

Answer: Good luck figuring that out. That's why the song is so perfect.

Honorable mention - there'd be plenty, including the only Alice in Chains song that I like (Would?), but how about: CCR - Have You Ever Seen the Rain?; Elliott Smith - Wouldn't Mama Be Proud?; R.E.M. - What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

Just a thought...

2011-06-09T21:20:00.002-04:00

I find it amusing that there are 19 copies of Final Exit available used on Amazon.com. Either Amazon's running estate sales now or that book's not all it's cracked up to be.

Lists: Books (2011)

2011-05-29T23:07:00.002-04:00

I'm at 20 books for the year and expect that I'll be at 21 by the end of the month. I've noticed that I'm accumulating a number of authors for whom I've read multiple books over the last few years -- likely because I read on very few topics and I don't have a lot of readers in my social circle who would really turn me on to someone. The latest to join this group is Bill Carter, who is a television writer, which is surprising, given that I don't really watch much in the way of television. But I read his book about the debacle at NBC with Conan O'Brien in April, which then led me to go back and read his book about the Letterman/Leno debacle at NBC -- of which I made short work. They're both fascinating to me and strike me as pretty ludicrously balanced. They don't make me despise Jay Leno any less, but they make a case for him as a sympathetic figure in both scenarios. But that was right on the heels of finishing John Feinstein's error-laden book about Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine, which was my second of his books.

I'm in the middle of three books: Where the Wild Things Were, Shut Out by Howard Bryant (see FJM post if you want a good reason why I've not felt motivated to pick this up again), and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (which I anticipate I may finish in the next two days).

So, since I started this quest in 2007, I've read 24 authors multiple times. Here's the list:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (13)
Ian Fleming (12)
Michael Chabon (9)
Jon Krakauer (5)
Raymond Chandler (3)
Steve Martin (3)
Joe Posnanski (3)
JD Salinger (3)
Sherman Alexie (2)
Jim Callis et al. (Baseball America prospect handbook authors) (2)
Bill Carter (2)
Don DeLillo (2)
Dave Eggers (2)
John Feinstein (2)
Mark Haddon (2)
Dashiell Hammett (2)
Nick Hornby (2)
AJ Jacobs (2)
Chuck Klosterman (2)
Michael Lewis (2)
David Maraniss (2)
Jeff Pearlman (2)
Art Spiegelman (2)
Eric Tyson/Ray Brown (2) - no more from these two, it's safe to say.

I'm surprised that Fleming got beat out, I didn't realize I'd read that many Vonnegut books. I will definitely read more Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler when the opportunity presents itself, I just don't engage with fiction that often (the list of authors kind of shows that my forays into fiction are very concentrated in a given author).

I'd expect to add a few authors to that list since I already own the books to do it: Christopher Buckley, James M. Cain, Raymond Carver, Norman Mailer and Harvey Pekar.

January (3)
Black and Blue: How Racism, Drugs and Cancer Almost Destroyed Me by Paul Canoville
Home Buying For Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
Tips and Traps When Buying a Home by Robert Irwin

February (6)
Mortgages for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
The Damned United by David Peace
The Quitter by Harvey Pekar
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
The Good Stuff by Joe Posnanski
How to Beat Up Anybody by Judah Friedlander

March (3)
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt
Hell in a Handbasket by Tom Tomorrow
2011 Baseball America Prospect Handbook by Jim Callis et al.

April (4)
The War for Late Night by Bill Carter
I Was Right On Time by Buck O'Neil
Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore
For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre

May (4)
The Internet Is a Playground by David Thorne
Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
Living on the Black by John Feinstein
The Late Shift by Bill Carter

Well, it fits one of the themes...

2011-05-19T18:38:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" is the song most likely to be permanently lodged in my brain. It's not my favorite song of his by a longshot, but it just gets in there and it stays for weeks.

Well, I'm working...

2011-05-15T00:03:00.001-04:00

so that explains why I'm really spending my effort trying to write about a stream-of-consciousness playlist that really captures what I'm feeling or what I'm looking for. It was inadvertent, I found I couldn't really focus on reading comment letters to the CFTC when I was listening to Patton Oswalt (although I like Todd Barry considerably more as a comedian, I end up listening to Oswalt's albums more than any other comedian -- probably since I already burned through all of Barry's so much the first few years where they were the only comedy albums I owned).

It started because I sorted by genre, which brought up alt-country, a genre I created since I figured it made more sense than trying to find Old 97's albums that were spread among live, pop, rock, and country. But the first album it brought up was Bare Jr.'s boo-tay, a poorly named but genuinely interesting album that's completely off the radar at this point. It also has a song that will forever rank as one of my favorites, though it was passed up for a genuinely bad single and probably helped to sink the band's launch despite some pretty strong reviews by Spin (I think) and an up-and-coming music journalist (me -- and god, for all the things I did write when I was chasing journalistic pursuits, music reviews were not among them -- I am not gifted at writing about music even now, and 2 of the 3 albums I managed to review positively led to the rapid destruction of the bands I reviewed -- Bare, Jr. lasted one more album before Bobby Bare Jr. went out solo, U.N.K.L.E. never released another album after Psyence Fiction. I'm likely forgetting something, the only other album I remember reviewing was the first volume of U2's greatest hits).

Anyway, Bare Jr. - Nothin' Better to Do is the song. It's not even available on youtube -- that's how forgotten this album is. The closest thing is this: -- but it's not even close to the same -- the drums and mandolin are what really power the album version, which, after a considerable effort, I managed to find in clip form.

Anyway, the Bare Jr. youtube clip of the house party led to me adding a song that I want to hate, want to despise, want to abhor, because the same house party performance included Bobby covering America's "Sister Golden Hair". Yes, I want to loathe it, but I love for some reason I can't even begin to understand. Whenever I hear it, I then have to listen to it at least a dozen times in a day. And, I suspect if I ever formed a band, I would feel obligated to cover that cursed song. Which led me to -- Neil Diamond - Forever in Blue Jeans (let's just say my band wouldn't be particularly hard-a-rockin'), which led me to Bob Dylan - Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You - a song that I discovered in the last cassette I ever bought -- I was 17 and experiencing the freedom that comes with driving a minivan, because for some reason I had to take it to practice for Once on This Island across town that afternoon, ended up at blockbuster music, and they had a cutout bin of cassettes that included a 99 cent copy of Nashville Skyline. I liked the album, didn't know what that said about me, and would eventually buy it in CD form about 10 years later.

That, somehow led to the Avett Brothers' "I and Love and You" -- which I really loved the first time I heard it on XPN, bought the album (and its predecessor) the same day, and only remembered it enough to recommend it to others. It remained unforgotten until my nephew (who was, at the time, not even 4) overheard some reference to Brooklyn and referenced the song. And anytime I bring that up, then I have to add The Weight of Lies to the playlist as well.

I went back to my own genre category, which got me to add three songs to the list from the Jayhawks I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - which I got from the KURE giveaway at the end of Kaleidoquiz my junior year on a 5-track EP that also included the Jayhawks song I already knew that was probably my favorite at the time Blue, and a song I adore but forget constantly (though I've now listened to it 4 times tonight) Save It for a Rainy Day.

That sent me to look for Matthew Sweet - Winona (which is astonishingly not on youtube in non-cover form), which brought up the Matthew Sweet cover of what may actually be my favorite song -- so I added the original (Big Star - Ballad of El Goodo).

Then, about the third time I was listening to Save It for a Rainy Day the harmonica sounded familiar...and so I added Neil Young - Long May You Run (unplugged).

Then I remembered the second song I felt would have to go on my tombstone as a song I loved for reasons that I never understood -- and went ahead and added both it (Pure Prairie League - Amie) and its Wesley Willis cover version (no youtube, sorry -- Amie - rock over London, rock on Chicago). And, because it fit the genre bill -- Old 97's - Buick City Complex, which led me to my other favorite rust belt despondency anthem Bruce Springsteen - Youngstown

So there's the playlist I felt it necessary to post about. It did the job, too, because I'm still not done working.

The Worst Managed Game I've Ever Seen

2011-04-30T20:10:00.001-04:00

Jim Riggleman should feel honored. Despite having literally no clue
about what happens during a game of baseball, he's managed to get what
should be an awful team to a semi-respectable record. And he will keep
his job despite offering unquestionable proof he doesn't have any
business possessing it. Two moves he made both constituted the dumbest
things I'd ever seen, both of which were dictated "by the book" only
if one read the title of said book and disregarded every shred of
common sense.

As a thought experiment, consider the circumstances in which you would
walk Eli Whiteside to pitch to Aubrey Huff.

If you said "if there's a left-handed pitcher pitching," you are Jim Riggleman.

If you said "only if there are being runners on first and second in
the bottom of the ninth and either no outs or one out and Aubrey Huff
suffering from late-stage Lou Gehrig's disease," you aren't even a
baseball genius or an intelligent baseball observer, you have merely
reached the status of "sentient being."

Were this the only example of being governed by abstract percentages
that don't make sense in reality, it'd be one thing. But the next
inning, with the game on the line because the move that couldn't
possibly work out didn't work out, he did the same thing. Mike Morse
is coming to the plate. While Mike Morse playing left field would lead
you to excuse most managers for having a losing record, that's not the
point here. So Morse is on deck, Sergio Romo, a right-handed pitcher,
is on the mound. But there's a left hander ready in the bullpen.

The move -- by the book and by the numbers -- is to pinch hit Laynce
Nix. Riggleman's good so far. The Giants, predictably, counter by
bringing in a left-handed pitcher.

Jim Riggleman goes back to the book of baseball in the abstract (not
Bill James' historical abstract, obviously) and sends a right-handed
batter to the plate in the form of ... Brian Bixler.

Let's just stop and say "wow" for a minute. There are precisely zero
circumstances where replacing Laynce Nix with Brian Bixler make sense.
(That includes late-stage Lou Gehrig's disease for Nix.) You're down
one. You pinch hit Nix (a mediocre hitter prone to occasional spurts
of prodigious power) for a mediocre hitter prone to occasional spurts
of prodigious power. Morse and Nix are basically the same, Nix just
has demonstrated his power this year and hits right-handed pitching
better. So. By the book, obvious, bush league stuff. And you know what
happens -- they'll substitute their LOOGY because they've seen the
book too.

Nope. Not if you're Riggleman. If you're Riggleman, you twirl your
fiendish handlebar moutache and say "aha! But I have a secret weapon!"
and pinch hit someone who's only in the major leagues because he can
field and the Nationals suffered an injury to the one player they
didn't anticipate getting hurt, rendering their utility man an
everyday player. But some weapons are a secret because they pose no
threat to anyone, and one of those is a light-hitting slap-hitter who
could only maximize his potential by getting hit with a pitch (an
outcome rarely governed by platoon splits).

Just comparing Nix and Bixler by itself makes the move stupid, but it
also eliminates (1) versatility -- presumably, when one of your bench
players is Matt Stairs, you will be needing someone who can pinch run
and play the position of the player for whomever Stairs (with
apologies to Jonny Gomes, the only DH in the NL) pinch hits. Now, the
bench is Alex Cora and Matt Stairs. (2) the possibility of the only
useful outcome, given that the team has mustered two hits, one of
which should have been scored an error, and you're at the WORST part
of the astonishingly bad lineup. Even if Bixler gets a hold of one
(and gets hit with a pitch), you have a runner on first for guys who
are all woeful hitters (Desmond has, despite a 3-for-3 day on Friday,
an OBP under .300, Hairston was recently spotted batting under . 100,
and then it's the pitcher's spot for whom your options, if you let Nix
bat, are Stairs, Cora, and Bixler. In other words, if the guy batting
in Morse's spot with one out doesn't hit a home run, it won't make a
damn bit of difference. A single just means another man left on base.

So Bixler bats, manages to use the candy cane that he uses for a bat
to hit it to shallow center, and ends the belief that the Nationals
could possibly win the game for themselves.

Brian Wilson nearly remedied this, but instead, the Nationals leave
the bases loaded for the third time in a game in which they had TWO
hits (again, one of which was a hit in the same sense that miniature
golf is golf).

And that's why Jim Riggleman should be replaced by the computer that
wrote Moneyball, Grady Little, or whatever actor played the
kid-manager in Little Big League. Or his hitting coach (Rick Eckstein,
brother of 5-time MLB grit leader/top Grit salesman David Eckstein)
should, despite the fact that by all accounts he is an incredibly nice
and decent human being who donated a kidney to save a family member's
life) have one kidney more than he has jobs.

--
Sent from my mobile device

This week's stupidest thing I've ever read

2011-04-27T12:53:00.001-04:00

This week, it comes from Roger Goodell. This should come as no surprise. I have despised his tenure with the NFL, and, unlike Bud Selig, whom I disagree with vehemently and dislike immensely, I don't see that Goodell has done anything positive for his sport. Selig's all-star game chicanery, wild cards and interleague play all offend me, but most people like them. Most people will probably like his attempt to further dilute the playoffs, but I'll probably discuss that later. Goodell has issued an inexplicable series of suspensions for off field conduct that brought MORE attention to the conduct under the pretense that the conduct was hurting the league, when the NFL is, in my experience, completely immune from righteous indignation.

To wit, how many people are buzzing about these off-field incidents:
-Leonard Little killed a person in a traffic accident when he was driving drunk. Then, six years later, he got another DUI.
-Rae Carruth attempted to murder someone while in the NFL -- he was a first round pick, not some practice squad scrub.
-Ray Lewis was arrested for murder, but ultimately acquitted.
-Lawrence Taylor was arrested for pretty much everything involving drugs and sex at some point.

These are all serious issues. But they weren't major stories that rivaled the games themselves. Goodell put the spotlight on guys like Pacman Jones and Chris Henry.

Anyway, as to the actual retardery, Here's Goodell's parade of horribles:
No draft. "Why should there even be a draft?" said player agent Brian Ayrault. -- That's great. You are quoting an agent. You're not quoting a player or anyone tied to the NFLPA, but you're identifying an agent. You can quote me on this "Why should there even be an NFL commissioner?" I think that if you consulted the NFLPA, there'd be nearly unanimous support for the draft, because the draft 1) means money (just broadcast revenue for the draft is substantial), 2) hasn't prevented teams from going nuts in paying players even with a salary cap, but 3) does ensure that the money doesn't all go to players upon entry into the league, so there is money spread around to the guys getting drafts in the third and fourth rounds. VERDICT: Not the players.

No minimum team payroll. This, Roger, is an OWNERSHIP problem. Some teams will have lousy owners. But you know how fans can solve that? Not go to Bengals games. They did it even during the salary cap era. The players may be doing a lot of things, but they aren't crusading to eliminate the minimum team payroll. And your point that there will be substantial salary disparity between teams? You know, baseball's gotten worse over the last decade with this disparity, but their revenues are better than ever. You know why? Because they're more years removed from a stupid work stoppage that killed interest in the sport and fans don't really care that much about parity, because most sports fans are fair-weather fans. VERDICT: Not the players and complete red herring.

No minimum player salary. Again, Roger, this isn't what the players are going for. This is what they're willing to accept given that you won't even continue the ludicrously unfair CBA that your owners opted out of to try and add a second deck to the sedan chairs in which they commute to and from games. VERDICT: Not the players.

No standard guarantee to compensate players who suffer season- or career-ending injuries. Who exactly are you trying to convince? The players? This is, again, something that 1) could be negotiated, and 2) is a concern primarily because you subject players to unsafe working conditions and you're trying to make them even more unsafe. Given that contracts aren't guaranteed, players have virtually no protection on this to begin with. If you're going to suffer a career ending injury, you'd be much happier in MLB. VERDICT: Not the players and not of concern to fans.

No league-wide agreements on benefits. Yes, I'm familiar with what it means to not operate under a CBA. Your benefits are pretty lousy to begin with. Just ask Dave Duerson or Mike Webster. VERDICT: Not the players and not of concern to fans. it only took six of these and you finally got to one.

No limits on free agency. It only took six of these and you finally got to one that was both relevant and of some interest to fans. Alas, it's not even sort of realistic. The players' association isn't likely to seek free agency after one year in the league. They have to recognize that it would create even more instability in the league. And your expressed concern that non-elite teams would serve as farm teams for superior teams...well, that's hilarious, because 1) that already happens, it's just that every team is a "farm team" for the Redskins, who will overpay broken down players that have big names and 2) it's the goddamned NFL, there's no farm teams because there's a ludicrously small percentage of players in the league who play long enough to reach free agency. Even those who do are usually priced well beyond their actual ability to contribute -- Albert Haynesworth is really the poster child of the Goodell-era NFL. I honestly can't think of a game-changing free agent that's changed teams since Deion Sanders in about 1995. Teams find contributors in free agency, they don't build teams that way. VERDICT: not a realistic interpretation of the players' demands or likely outcomes.

No league-wide rule limiting the length of training camp or required off-season workout obligations. Yep, that's what not having a CBA means. This doesn't mean anything to fans. And, under your jeremiad scenario, all the players are free to sign wherever they want, and I doubt that Tom Brady, Adrian Peterson, Steve Smith, DeMarcus Ware and Jared Allen are all going to sign with the New York Giants when they find out that they have an 8 month offseason training camp with 2-a-days all year. So owners would have to be reasonable or else they'd be shooting themselves in the foot anyway. That tends to lead to equilibrium and agreement. VERDICT: not of relevance to fans, not realistic.

No league-wide testing program for drugs of abuse or performance enhancing substances. This matters to baseball fans. This means absolutely nothing to NFL fans. Your league is roided to high heaven to begin with, your testing program has caught about two players in history (I can recall two that actually stayed suspended-- Todd Sauerbrun's steroid-laden punting foot and Shawne Merriman), both of whom have suffered the backlash of...fans not giving a damn. Pat and Kevin Williams got suspended, I don't think they've served their suspensions and it's been years.) VERDICT: not of relevance to fans.

So, do I want the NFL you predict? You know what? I'd be just fine with it. If your owners had any sense, they wouldn't pay what they do for free agents, so having a free-for-all whereby everyone bids $200 million for Albert Haynesworth and actually guarantees $2 million of it would be awesome. Operating outside a CBA (which is not going to happen) will potentially hurt marginal players, but they're basically unprotected under the current ludicrously owner-fellating regime, so it wouldn't make much difference. And, at the end of the day, all of the predictions you summon are entirely of your own creation. The players have never taken a hard bargain with you on anything except the 18 game schedule and occasionally the franchise tag. You could have easily gotten a salary cap that increased incrementally and not had to cough up more revenue. You chose to blow up the contract. I hope to heaven that it destroys your league's stranglehold on the United States, but at the very minimum, it ought to result in the players in your league ending its at-will employment policy. Employers who hire and fire at will don't usually add the insult of putting it in a contract that makes it look like you have a job.

Moneyball

2011-04-26T11:40:00.000-04:00

So I'm listening to Joe Posnanski's Poscast (with Michael Schur -- Cousin Mose/creator of the ludicrously overrated Parks and Recreation), this week they're doing a Baseball Book Fantasy Draft. I'd been holding off on listening to it, because it seemed like a really fun idea. I'm pretty disappointed thus far, but the thing that was most annoying is familiar to people who know me.

With the first pick, unsurprisingly, Michael Schur picks Moneyball -- the single most overrated book in the history of hyperbolous statements. While I understand the many reasons why Moneyball is wrongly criticized by baseball purists, it's a ludicrously overrated book that has become more overrated as Billy Beane's career arc has continued. People still read it as genius and laud praise on Billy Beane.

Posnanski is now guilty as an accomplice of dismissing the best criticism -- which is that the A's success was really about Hudson, Mulder, and Zito more than it ever was about on-base percentage or Billy Beane's "genius". But the numbers don't lie. The A's on-base percentage was never near the top of the league when they were good, and stripping it to "seeking undervalued commodities in a market" is effectively stripping the book to an idea that is absurd. Every GM is seeking undervalued commodities, some of them are just really dumb.

Anyway, I'd put together a much longer screed on this subject in response to Schur's paean to Jeremy Brown "retiring for personal reasons" on fire joe morgan.

It even elicited a response from him, which was "Well, I dish it out, so I can take it. I would add that (1) surprise-bunting for a GW single is a lot different from the kind of 1st-inning sac bunting that Beane eschews, and (2) DePo was run out of L.A. by idiot beat writers who didn't like his personality. Dodger fans sure like Brad Penny, though, and they sure don't miss Adrian Beltre, and they like Derek Lowe, and they sure don't miss Paul Lo Duca or Juan Encarnacion...and they sure as hell hate Ned Colletti and Grady Little. DePo was a douchey guy, apparently, but he made some great moves for that team.

KT"

So I stand by my criticisms. Moneyball is an interesting book, but if you really tried to run a team by the principles it presents, you would have a team that bears literally no resemblance to any of Billy Beane's teams, which were driven by steroids (Giambi, Tejada) consensus high-value pitching (Zito (9th overall pick) and Mulder (2nd overall pick), and players drafted by (surprise) someone else -- Giambi (drafted by Alderson in 1992), Tim Hudson (6th round pick drafted by Alderson in 1997), and Eric Chavez (1st round pick drafted by Alderson in 1996 - 10th overall). Other than the consensus high picks, Beane's drafts resulted in...five players with greater than 10 WAR: Joe Blanton, Eric Byrnes, Rich Harden, Nick Swisher, and Andre Ethier (who he gave away for Milton Bradley). Lest that still sound adequate (it sure beats Mark Shapiro's drafting in that span), keep in mind that at the time Moneyball was published in 2003, only Harden and Byrnes had made the majors, let alone achieved "greatness".

Thought from Nationals Park #2

2011-04-15T22:18:00.001-04:00

Rick Ankiel is one of the most underappreciated stories in baseball.
He was a phenom, a dynamite pitcher who looked like he'd win 20 for
years, but then became worthless and couldn't hit the broad side of a
barn.

And then, relying on a skill he'd barely had to use and had no reason
to rely on, he still was good enough to make it as a hitter.

He's not great, far from it, he's a player whose reputation outstrips
his actual talent, but in the absence of a complete meltdown, the
guy's a pitcher. HGH or not, that's pretty remarkable.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Thought from Nationals Park

2011-04-15T21:54:00.001-04:00

If there's a sadder phrase than "pinch hitter Alex Cora", I've
certainly never heard it.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Welcome back, FJM!

2011-04-14T14:36:00.007-04:00

Rather than start a blog called Fire Howard Bryant, I'm going to point out some of the myriad problems with this article. It is only that I feel comfortable that my blog will not generate more than three or four hits on this piece of garbage that I can do so in good conscience. (In true FJM style, his words are in italics, mine are not.)

Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader and from 2000 to 2004 easily the most dominant player since Babe Ruth, will wake up Thursday as a convicted felon.

Or a cockroach, if Kafka was onto something. Maybe even a porpoise. That'd be totally cool.

A San Franciso [sic] jury convicted him of obstruction of justice.

If only they'd been given rice-a-roni. It was not a San Francisco jury. He was tried in the Northern District of California, so that means there were people in the jury panel from Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Salinas, Oakland, Eureka, San Jose. But, obviously, the jury's potential residence in a large city makes it very different. If this were one of those god-forsaken Petaluma juries, they'd just be off their rocker and Bonds would be an untainted legend of the game.

Roger Clemens, arguably the game's greatest pitcher, faces the possibility of a similar fate.

I think if you argue that Clemens is the game's greatest pitcher, you are arguably an idiot, but fine, he was a great pitcher.

Seven times a Cy Young Award winner, Clemens will go on trial this summer for lying to Congress.

Once, twice, three times a Cy Young winner...uh...this sentence has been brought to you by the Commodores.

And Manny Ramirez, one of the featured faces of the crowning moment of this millennium -- the Boston Red Sox finally winning the World Series in 2004 for the first time since 1918 -- retired from baseball last week rather than accept a 100-game suspension for being caught using performance-enhancing drugs again.

As you know, Manny Ramirez played a large role in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, cleaned up the BP oil spill, completed the human genome project or produced those Progressive commercials with Flo in them. One of those has to be the crowning achievement of the millennium, right? Oh. No. I forgot, a team with the second highest payroll in baseball beat the completely surmountable odds (and the team with the 11th highest payroll in baseball) and won the World Series. It's possible that someone's discovered a cure for all cancer in the last 10 years, but compared to the Sawx, it'd hardly be worth mentioning.

Despite fierce but unsuccessful attempts by fans, writers, players and management to soften the devastating and embarrassing effects of the steroid era, baseball's greatest fears are coming true.

Man, were those attempts fierce. These attempts were so vicious, they need not be recounted or described. But they couldn't ward off baseball's greatest fear: clowns. As you may know, baseball, a game, an outline of rules for playing a sport, is terrified of clowns. And by devastating and embarrassing effects of the steroid era, I can only assume he means shrunken testicles.

Wednesday's verdict . . . reinforces baseball's terrible truth: the steroid era is the most discredited period in the history of American professional sports.

Keep in mind, he said "American professional sports", because otherwise the most discredited period in sports would be Caster Menenya's. (rim shot). But, alas, it's very discredited. That's why we don't consider records of that era when we compile lists of records, like, say, all of professional baseball before 1901.

The apologists will continue to try to laugh the era off as hyperbole, suggesting that players have been looking for an edge since there were eight balls in an at-bat and pitchers threw underhand . . . or . . . try to use the nonsensical argument that players who used uppers in the 1960s were no different than the players injecting themselves with female fertility drugs.

The best way to make an argument sound nonsensical is to make a nonsensical argument and accuse other people of making it. Well done. There isn't anything in common with Willie Mays reportedly using amphetamines and Manny Ramirez using female fertility drugs in a supposed attempt to mask his use of performance-enhancing drugs. There is, however, a one-to-one correspondence with Willie Mays reportedly using amphetamines to enhance his ability to recover from exhaustion and boost his performance level (at a time when amphetamines had not been banned in baseball) and Manny Ramirez using performance-enhancing drugs to enhance his performance (at a time when steroids had not been banned in baseball). While Manny managed to test positive after drug testing was implemented and it's more like cheating, you may have forgotten, you're writing about BARRY BONDS, who never tested positive for anything except being a cuddle bear.

Of course, there is a difference. The difference is in the collateral damage, the real collateral damage.

This is a very violent article -- collateral damage? Did Barry Bonds declare war on America? So what's the collateral damage?

Bonds and Miguel Tejada, the two MVPs in 2002, have now both been convicted in PED-related cases.

Oh. That's it? I'd forgotten about Tejada entirely, and Bonds' conviction has had the legacy of about 8 hours, during which you wrote this garbage. So obviously, Bonds has harmed mankind, but only as an accessory before the fact.

Rafael Palmeiro, despite 569 home runs and 3,000 hits, received only 11 percent of the available votes for the Hall of Fame this winter. Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 and finished his career with 583, but received less than 20 percent of the votes.

So, collateral damage...bodies. Corpses. Serious harm. We gonna get there? Because I've got work to do. All you've shown me is that hall of fame voters are, depending on your point of view, defending the honor of steroid-free players like Barry Larkin (ok, well, that argument fell apart in a hurry) or they are snotty holier-than-thou pricks who sit in judgment based on facts they don't know (like how much work Jeff Bagwell put in at the weight room). Given that Rickey Henderson only got 94.8% of the vote for the Hall of Fame, that didn't exactly warrant an article.

Jason Giambi, the fun-loving 2000 American League MVP, was never the same player or the same celebrity after he admitted to PED use.

Fun-loving (WTF?) Jason Giambi admitted PED use at the age of 32. You know who else wasn't the same player after they turned 32? Every player. By my quick analysis, three players got better: Jamie Moyer, Raul Ibanez, and Barry Bonds (who, again, was supposed to be the subject of this article). Pretty much everyone else got worse. Ken Griffey Jr. was never the same player after he was traded from the Mariners. Clearly, the collateral damage of being traded from the Mariners destroyed the game. Better retire now, Cliff Lee.

There is not another American sport where so many of the elite have been disgraced.

Unless we're counting superbike racing, there are not very many American sports. And even at that, I don't know. LeBron is a pariah, Kobe's a gay-bashing accused rapist, and that's all the players half the adult population in the US can name in the NBA. The NFL is a sport without a meaningful history, no real pride in the game, and because most of the population that consumes the NFL like ravenous animals still don't know players for long, since the shelf life of even non-Favre/Manning/Brady stars in the NFL is a matter of a few years, Shawne Merriman using steroids meant nothing to anyone. They also have a drug testing program that's about as rigorous as a character and fitness exam for admission to the bar.

Perhaps only the segregation era shamed the game as much as performance-enhancing drugs have. But segregation was a societal issue, and few individual players (even highly publicized racists such as Ty Cobb or Cap Anson) suffered the disintegration of their professional reputations that has come with being associated with steroids.

Andy Pettitte can hardly show his face without ... receiving adulation. Alex Rodriguez gets booed...exactly as much as he did before. You know, maybe people just don't like Barry Bonds. People didn't like Albert Belle.

But the Bonds case, and the Clemens case to follow, are only partly about performance-enhancing drugs. They're also about the belief among players that they could lie to a federal grand jury or to Congress.

Actually, the latter? That's entirely what they're supposed to be about. So the real shame is that the government is complicit in these charades.

Or to you. And the game's general managers, owners and commissioner believed they could do the same, and did until the entire card house came crashing down starting with the famous Congressional hearings on March 17, 2005.

Aside from Manny Ramirez, players already lie to us. Derek Jeter would have you believe he wants to win as much as every fan in the stands. But he doesn't, because Derek Jeter has some sense. Every fan in the stands would say they'd crash into the wall to win the game for their team every day. Bobby Abreu didn't, because he recognized that crashing into a wall might mean he's out of work at the age of 30. In a lot of ways, Manny's the only honest player, because he made it look like he didn't give a shit.

Wednesday's guilty verdict is further evidence that the collapse is ongoing.

No doubt. After that verdict, which probably changed the public opinion about whether Barry Bonds used steroids less than 1%, Barry Bonds will never play Major League Baseball again. TIMBER!

Bud Selig, who became the richest commissioner in baseball history during the steroid era, issued a statement that did not mention Bonds by name, as if he had never played the game, had never impacted its record books, its history, culture or that the game would endure beyond scandal.

I hate Bud Selig. I think he is a genuinely bad person who has done serious harm to the game with some of his ridiculous decisions. But there have been ... what, eight commissioners of baseball? He became the richest of 8 people? Is this inflation-adjusted? I'm pretty sure he was already the richest from day one, but maybe Peter Ueberroth was a member of the Barbary Pirates or something. Anyway, screw you, William Eckert. You're dead AND poorer than Selig.

He then gets paid by the column inch by reproducing a lengthy quote from Selig that lauds baseball's drug testing program.

Contrast Selig's words to those spoken by another commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, on Aug. 24, 1989, about his banishment of Pete Rose for gambling. Giamatti understood that the players also make the game, by their talent, their names and the wonder of their skills. Giamatti mentioned Rose by name, for responsible effect, to show that the game had been wounded by one of its greatest sons, an admission Selig could not make.

"The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed," Giamatti said that day. "It will be debated and discussed. Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball. That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward. Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game."

That's great. Giamatti was talking about things HE did, he wasn't commenting on something that was completely unrelated to himself. In order to explain his decision to ban Rose, he had to say it was harmful to the game -- it's in the Major League Agreement that the Commission could "investigate, either upon complaint or upon his own initiative, an act, transaction or practice, charged, alleged or suspected to be detrimental to the best interest of the national game of baseball, (and to determine and take) any remedial, preventive or punitive action (he deemed appropriate)."

And, for that matter, what else would Giamatti say? It wasn't about a larger issue, it was about one guy gambling. You know how you were saying there was no comparison between the two? Well, you're getting a lot closer to it here, Howard.

When a trial ends, it is supposed to provide closure.

It says so right in Article III of the Constitution. And in the Bill of Rights! As I recall, the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury concludes by saying "so you can get some sleep at night, for Christ's sake".

The Bonds trial did not, but it did shift the steroid era into its second phase, its deadliest phase for baseball.

"The Deadliest Phase" is currently slated to debut with a 13-week run on the Discovery Channel in summer of 2011. I will anxiously await what Howard Bryant has likened to the horrors of the Japanese earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina...and it's...Manny Ramirez not getting into the Hall of Fame.

It's where the greatest of a generation, the men at the top of the record books, are erased by a game that is just as guilty as its players.

Cursed Jenga -- you're as guilty as those poor souls that you lure into building and destroying the tower. And curse Bud Selig's oily hide. He's the one keeping Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame. He let down baseball, he singlehandedly kept Bonds injecting himself, he injected Palmeiro, he singlehandedly cast less than 30% of the votes for the Hall of Fame for Mark McGwire.

It's just a shame there isn't some sort of organization of sportswriters who could vote for the Hall of Fame. Sure, they wrote a ton of stories glorifying McGwire and Sosa in their home run chase (let's be honest, the Bonds thing was pretty underwhelming after that -- the record was already a joke), but they know who really belongs in the Hall of Fame and they didn't let steroids happen on their watch.

Oh. Really? The BBWAA, of which you, Howard Bryant, are apparently a member determines who gets in the hall of fame. Not the god of baseball. Or the fans. Hm. All right, well, then Howard Bryant is an idiot.

I've missed this season.

2011-04-04T10:41:00.001-04:00

It's kind of remarkable how out of the loop actually going to games
has left me. I've managed to see two total, when if I'd gone to no
games (and had been at home), I'd probably be up to at least six.

In the meantime, the Orioles are 3-0, the Rays (who the O's swept) are
0-3, the Red Sox are 0-3. I'm now waiting for the light rail at BWI,
so I'll surely be witnessing the end of this streak against the
Tigers.

The Reds managed to sweep the team that was supposed to surpass them,
even though the Reds started someone with mono in game 3 and trailed
by 3 in the ninth in Game 1.

Chicago was interesting enough, we covered a lot of ground, saw some
friends, and managed to not blow through much money -- which is of
some significance at the moment. I got back this morning and began
this circuitous journey. Since the game is during the day and during
the week in Baltimore, parking would be a nightmare (my standby garage
that's normally $10 is $26, I think?). Plus, I've already had my car
parked at BWI for over 72 hours, so I'm paying for four days anyway.
So I had to take a 4:40 am train to Midway, fly to Baltimore, take the
shuttle bus to the daily parking garage to drop off my luggage, take
the next shuttle bus back to the terminal, then walk the length of the
terminal to the light rail (since I've never taken it before and had
no idea where it was -- and was about take the other regional rail).
After the game ends (at rush hour, conveniently enough), I'll have to
take the train back and then drive to DC.

Let's just say I'm really committed to seeing a game I'm marginally
interested in seeing.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Live from the Friendly Confines...

2011-04-01T13:37:00.001-04:00

Wrigley Field is no Fenway Park. It's a wonderful place, mind you, but
it doesn't generate the sheer stadium envy that Fenway did.

Admittedly, the 50-55 degree temperature difference between when I was
at Fenway (last July 3-4, both days checked in north of 90, but were
comfortable at Fenway) may have made part of the difference, but
there's a lot that's lost by having the bleachers separate from the
stadium.

It's somehow even colder than yesterday's foray to Nationals Park and
the rain seems to pose more of a threat to the game (though for a
second day in a row, I'm inadvertently under cover).

We'll see how the game goes. It's about as dull an affair as you can
muster with Dempster going against Kevin Correia. It's the kind of
game that makes you grateful to have the legendary Fausto Carmona on
your club.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Marathon curse

2011-03-25T13:17:00.001-04:00

Well, last year, I had several issues --

1) what to eat? (Didn't matter, definitely had digestive issues even
before the race)

2) Which shoes? I went with the older new balances, they were probably
a good choice.

3) Knee brace or not? I'd started having knee pain a week before the
marathon. I used it, it was a good choice, so much so that I was
half-tempted to keep using it even after my knee was fine.

This year, they've added logistical stress (the metro opens an hour
before the race starts -- not nearly enough time to get there and even
think of stretching or using a nasty ass runners' portapotty. And
then...

1) What to wear? It's going to be cold, but every time I decide I'm
going with something, the forecast changes. I was planning on pants
and long sleeves since it was supposed to be 34, wind chill of 29. Now
it's supposed to be 39. Ugh. Shorts, I guess? I've done that before
(at least for a drizzly awful half)

2) Shoes? The stress fracture has me concerned, though even that
doesn't actually give me an answer, since it's split whether it's worn
out shoes that are worse or newer shoes (in this case, shoes that
haven't ever been worn off the treadmill). I'm going newer, there's
some rough terrain on this course.

3) What kind of pace can I handle? This I'll never know. Most
legitimate runners can tell their speed, they know their pace, what it
feels like. I run on treadmills all the time, I have no clue. I don't
know how fast I'm going, I don't know whether that corresponds to how
winded/tired I get (it usually doesn't, unless I'm trying for real
speed -- 5ks under about 19:40, 6 minute miles, etc.)

4) Can I go from crippled to marathon in three months? I damn well
better. Otherwise, tomorrow's going to be a long stroll in Anacostia,
because I know I can go 18 miles.

These things aren't rational, I know that. But it's a rare opportunity
to learn things about yourself. And it's a rare chance to really
prove things to myself. Let's just hope I prove myself right.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Well, let's just say it's not a bestseller.

2011-03-19T18:06:00.001-04:00

So I bought The Baseball Project's new album, vol. 2: High and Inside today on amazon mp3. I'd gotten their first album from the Bear Public Library and found it was pretty much ideally suited for me, with a couple songs that were among my favorites because they mixed good melodies with lyrics that were both witty and informed like, for instance, Harvey Haddix, which includes the name of every pitcher who's ever thrown a perfect game and included more than a dose of baseball trivia (like, for instance, mentioning the origins of Yo La Tengo, Denny McLain, and Minnie Minoso in a song.

So it's clearly aimed at me.

Perhaps with more laser-guided precision than I anticipated, though. I bought it on amazon mp3, and amazon was so helpful as to tell me "Customers who bought this music also bought:" and three of the seven things identified were things that I owned. Now, given that Peter Buck is in The Baseball Project, it would only make sense that it'd be R.E.M. albums, etc. Hell, Ben Gibbard and Craig Finn guest on the album, so obviously Death Cab for Cutie and The Hold Steady will be on the short list.

Nope.

1) Old 97's: The Grand Theater, volume 1

Ok -- well, clearly the person who bought both these just bought everything that had a volume number on it. I expect that World Book Encyclopedia, volume "L" will be next.

2) Mumford and Sons - Dharohar Project

Ok, given that Mumford and Sons would be playing in my own personal Abu Ghraib prison, I think this "same word appears in both things" might be the key here. The word project appears in both. Alan Parsons, you're next.

3) The King is Dead - The Decemberists

Well, that is actually the last thing I bought from amazon mp3. Odd. The two will not be appearing on the same pandora radio station ever, but fair enough, they're both hyper-literate dork music.

4) The Old 97's - Mimeograph (EP)

Uh, really? So, of the 7 things listed, I own 3 and bought all of them from amazon mp3, and I doubt that two of them sold more than say, 500 copies.

5) Blessed - Lucinda Williams

Yeah, so in other words, no one has ever bought this before.

6) Going Out in Style - Dropkick Murphys

This one makes a modicum of sense, they're uber-Boston-y, I've read that this album is very Red Sox heavy.

7) Bella - Teddy Thompson

I don't know who this is.

How Terry Cashman didn't appear on this list is beyond me. But I suppose I bought "One Stop Along the Way (the Ballad of Johnny Bench)" from ITunes. So that must be why.

Stamford

2011-03-17T22:28:00.000-04:00

Stamford died this morning. I know it's for the best, but I miss my friend, even in his worst state. I just wish I had his ability to take an awful situation and find positives in it. He lived more than 15% of his life shut in our bathroom because he couldn't control his back half and use the litter box, but up until Sunday, if I went in, he would 1) make a spirited effort to escape and then 2) start purring as if there wasn't a happier cat in the world.

There was so much wrong with the whole process. I'm furious with the veterinarian's office, who failed to give us test results last week when they were supposed to, failed to respond to six phone calls and two emails trying to get them this week, and then when I just drove in person to confront them (and took Stamford with, knowing that at this point, it made no difference what the results were), they assured me someone had called Sarah's phone on Tuesday and left a message. That message? That there was a problem with the blood work and they needed to draw blood again. So despite the purpose of this test being to ensure there wasn't a non-FIP cause, something that could be eliminated (if not reversed), they allowed his condition to get exponentially worse so that even if they found he was just absolutely laden with parasites, I'd have had a hard time not going forward.

Not only did they not call with the "we screwed up" news, but then today, they took him away to sedate him and put in the catheter and it took so long that by the time he got back to us, we think he had already died from the sedative alone. We don't know for certain, but either way, it's just frustrating. They sent in a vet tech to tell us he was very riled up and that's why it was taking so long -- but he hasn't been riled up in days -- and if he were, I'm not sure how you'd tell, given that he had no use at all of the back half of his body and wasn't particularly strong with the front end anymore. Each night this week, I felt like there was at least a 50-50 chance he wouldn't live through the night -- and had reached the point that I sincerely hoped he wouldn't, so he could end his suffering without me having to be the one responsible for his death.

The other cats weren't upset with me when I got home -- I expected them to find the return of the empty carrier concerning, but they seemed more concerned for me. Now, I wonder if Stubbs expects to see his brother, as he's spent all day and night in the window looking out, but it may just be that the weather is nice.

I know this is going to be hard for me, I'm not particularly gifted at dealing with anything sad, but I think the saddest thing for me is that I don't know of anything that shows that we had Stamford. Now that I've cleaned the bathroom, it's like he never existed. There's nothing left of Stamford's short life but a Christmas stocking, a white towel that got put in his carrier after one of his vet visits (because he'd peed in the carrier on the way over there), and precious few pictures (the result of me being lazy and never having reason to know it'd be over so quick). I don't know why it matters, I certainly am not going to forget him, but it upsets me.

I now promise to move on to posting vapid shit in the near future to satisfy the whims of all 10 people who ever stumble across this.

It's ending soon.

2011-03-15T11:49:00.001-04:00

Stamford is going to die by no later than Friday. Just typing that kills me, but it's true -- my most fervent wish is that he'll die sometime in the next day or two so I won't have to play a part in it, but I know it will come to that. When we got back from New York (by way of Delaware, where we moved the last of my possessions from my apartment of five years into storage), he'd lost all remaining use of his back legs and couldn't even balance to stand up. This morning he was having trouble even propping his front end up. He's fought for a long time, far longer than anyone thought he could, but it would require a miraculous and lengthy history of wanton malpractice to save him now (meaning that the vet would have to notice that they'd just missed something in test after test after test and he'd been completely curable with a shot or a pill all along). Having called around to pet cemeteries, it doesn't seem I can bury him for under $3,000. (This only adds to the frustration we've experienced on the house search -- we put an offer in a week ago that was over asking price and didn't even get a call back to tell us it was rejected for another offer.)

So I'm not sure what to do. I don't believe in cremation. I think the idea is absolutely awful and I recoil at the thought, but I also have no place to bury him and even I can't justify spending $3,000 for such a place just because of my irrational fear of cremation (this should be noted by anyone ever making funeral arrangements for me -- although I respect that my first choice -- being placed in a glass tube like Lenin -- is probably out of the question for me, cremation ought not appear in your playbook). Part of me wonders if I could just go deep into Rock Creek Park and find someplace, but I have no doubt I'd manage to compound my current miseries by getting arrested for doing so. So I'm out of ideas and can barely hold it together to get through the week anyway.

Lists: Sporting Venues

2011-03-10T15:34:00.003-05:00

The end of March can't come soon enough. March has been a month of missed opportunities and general frustrations. Plus, the end of March means baseball, which is a major plus. I have tickets to the Opening Day game in Washington on March 31, then the next morning I'm flying to Chicago to go to Wrigley Field on Opening Day, and then Monday I'm flying back into BWI, which puts me in Baltimore in time for the Orioles' home opener on April 4. So, in all, three games in five days in three cities. Admittedly, I've done this before -- in 2008, I was at the first ever game at Nationals Park, then saw the Nationals playing in Philadelphia the next day and then went to the Orioles' second game the next day, but this crosses another stadium off the list in Wrigley Field.

I don't know whether I'll get to all 30, but it's definitely something I keep in mind when I make travel plans. I'm actually more alarmed at the number of non-MLB venues that I've made it to, considering that my level of interest is so emphatically lower. Hell, I've been to two MLS stadiums. So here's the list, with the disclaimer that I only count a venue at which I've seen the home team playing a game (for instance, although I've attended concerts and Wizards games at the Verizon Center, I've not seen the Caps, so for NHL purposes, I've never been there). I'm organizing them in order of frequency of attendance.

Thus far:
MLB:
Philadelphia - Citizens Bank Park (more than 40)
Washington - Nationals Ballpark (about 10?)
Cleveland - Progressive Field (5)
Kansas City - Kauffman Stadium (probably about 5)
Boston - Fenway Park (2)
Cincinnati - Great American Ballpark (2)
Colorado - Coors Field (1)*
New York Mets - Citi Field (1)
New York Yankees - Yankee Stadium (new) (1)
Pittsburgh - PNC Park (1)
Detroit - Comerica Park (1) (added 6/30)
Chicago - Wrigley Field (1) (added 4/1)
Toronto - Rogers Centre (1) (added 7/1)

Former MLB:
Cincinnati - Riverfront (12?)
Washington - RFK (1)

MLS:
Philadelphia - PPL Park (2)
New York - Red Bull Stadium (1)
Washington - RFK Stadium (1) (added 6/11)

NBA
Philadelphia - Wells Fargo Center (probably about 10)
Washington - Verizon Center (2)
Denver - Pepsi Center (1)

NFL
Baltimore - M&T Bank Stadium (1)
Cincinnati - Paul Brown Stadium (1)

NHL
Philadelphia - Wells Fargo Center (at least 5, probably more)
Buffalo - HSBC Arena (1)
Colorado - Pepsi Center (1)
Columbus - Nationwide Arena (1)
Los Angeles - Staples Center (1)
Washington - Verizon Center (1) (added in April)

EPL
Chelsea - Stamford Bridge (1)
Fulham - Craven Cottage (1)

Coors Field gets asterisked because it was pouring rain and we only stayed for a couple of innings (the game was ultimately rained out after 6, it ought never have started, if I'm willing to leave a game because of weather, it's safe to say you are not experiencing conditions in which a sporting event should not be played).

Favorite sporting venue (venue itself): Fenway Park. It's the kind of stadium in which baseball should be played. Yes, there are obstructed views left and right, but it's intimate, it's ramshackle, and it's charming. It's the antithesis of Yankee Stadium, which is my least favorite sporting venue (and not by a small margin).
Favorite sporting venue (culinary): Progressive Field wins. The food is actually nothing special, Cleveland doesn't exactly have a local cuisine that begs for a prominent role at the ballpark. But they have two things no ballpark should be without -- brown mustard and quality local beers. And it just happens that Cleveland has Great Lakes Brewing Company beer in the center field batter's eye pavilion, which is my favorite. So long as you're there at midseason, everything is at its best (my experiences with the opening day cooking were underwhelming). (Rogers Centre wins some major points for their BBQ Chicken nachos and Alexander Keith's, though the absence of any other Canadian beers is disappointing).
Favorite sporting venue (gameday experience): I love PPL park. You can tailgate right outside the stadium, the food and the beer selections inside are astonishing, the only bad seats are those that are reserved for the Sons of Ben anyway, so you're safe with anything else.

I'm not sure what my next stop is as far as stadiums that I really want to see. I should make it to Madison Square Garden for a Knicks or Rangers game someday, but after Wrigley, Dodger Stadium is really the only other stadium I think of as a must-see. If I were an NFL fan, obviously Lambeau Field would top the list, but football stadiums lack any sort of significance, they're just functional.

Jimmer Fredette insists he has been suspended from BYU basketball team

2011-03-03T10:40:00.003-05:00

PROVO - As reports circulated that Brandon Davies had been suspended from Brigham Young's basketball program for having premarital sex with his girlfriend, NCAA scoring leader and BYU guard Jimmer Fredette insisted that he, too, was facing any number of potential suspensions and would likely be kicked off BYU's team and stricken from its record books.

"I'm not proud of what I've done, but with my brother Brandon suspended for his disregard for the moral code, I would be a hypocrite if I continued to play for BYU," Fredette said, adding "I can't go into detail, but I have indulged in a great many suspendable offenses."

BYU's honor code requires that students must remain "chaste and virtuous." When pressed for details on how he failed to live up to this honor code, Fredette hesitated.

"Obviously, I'm extremely embarrassed to let my teammates down and we all make mistakes, so I don't know if I should say anything. It was, I mean...they...they were all pretty hot. You know how, uh, when you grab a woman's breast... it feels like... a bag of sand?" Fredette added.

Fredette was quick to add that he was embarrassed about his numerous offenses, but could hardly be blamed, because he'd fallen under the influence of a hard lifestyle.

"All the women, they were really hot. But I can barely remember it, because I had drank so much. I was drinking a case of O'Doul's like every night. And I was, uh, mixing vodka in with my Caprisun. Sometimes it's hard though, it's hard to get the straw in the pouch when you're so hammered," Fredette insisted.

Despite Fredette's insistence that he faces myriad disciplinary actions, BYU has not announced any suspensions for Fredette. Indeed, BYU basketball coach Dave Rose denied that Fredette faced any suspension.

"Everybody who comes to BYU, every student if they're an athlete or not an athlete, they make a commitment when they come. A lot of people try to judge if this is right or wrong, but it's a commitment they make. It's not about right or wrong. It's about commitment. Jimmer's shown that commitment. He's a model player and a role model, I haven't even seen him look at a can of Coke in his four years here. And girls? Whee golly. Let's just say it's a good thing he's scoring a lot on the court," Rose said.

Rose expected no disciplinary action would be needed toward Fredette.

"And he calls himself Jimmer. He's got a real name, a name that's at least pubescent, and he calls himself Jimmer. Yeah, I think if the NCAA would allow it, he'd be able to play for BYU for another decade or more," Rose said.

KU forward reinstated after triple murder

In other college basketball news, University of Kansas forward Blake Cole was reinstated to the team after Coach Bill Self concluded that the triple murder to which Cole confessed Thursday did not violate KU's honor code for athletes.

MLB allows Red Sox a 41-man roster

2011-02-22T11:19:00.000-05:00

Well, try as I might, I just cannot see how this is an acceptable contract under Major League Baseball league rules. Andrew Miller, the once-promising Tigers prospect who flamed out in Florida, has signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox. He could have gotten major league contracts from the Pirates and Indians of the world, but he's with the Red Sox.

That's something baseball can't fix. People will take less to win, just the same as the Heat loaded up on decent veteran players who decided to take 50% or greater pay cuts to play with Wade/James/Bosh.

Miller's contract, on the other hand, is not the same thing. But the contract he has with the Red Sox is egregious and unfair to the game. If the Red Sox put him on the major league roster, he gets $1.3 million. Fair enough. If he then gets sent to the minors, because he can no longer be optioned, he would have to be designated for assignment and, therefore, made available to all teams. But in this case, it's different. If he gets DFA'd and someone claims him, he has an option for $3 million that vests for 2012. In other words, the Red Sox have a ready-made 41-man roster, because they can take him off the 40-man at will, so long as no one feels interested in paying $3 million for a player the Red Sox deemed unworthy of playing in the majors.

That MLB allows this kind of provision defeats the entire purpose of being designated for assignment. The 40-man roster is supposed to make it so that teams like the Red Sox will occasionally have to lose off 26th men that might prove to be solid roster pieces -- or even starters -- for lesser clubs. Instead, it will just make the rich richer -- players will sign these poison pill contracts with the teams they don't want to leave -- the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies -- but the Indians? No way. Bud Selig needs to exercise his authority to act in the best interests of baseball and void the contract.

Life in DC

2011-02-19T21:02:00.001-05:00

Today is actually a weird day for me. I'm not used to having spare time, I've had none of it since I moved here, really. I'm in my office for at least 12 hours every day (admittedly, since it has a gym, I'm not always working 12 hours -- or, more typically, I am working 12 hours, but some of those are at home), commuting takes at least another hour, cooking and buying groceries have taken a lot of time. I've had to trek to and from my old apartment with considerable regularity, my first weekend here was spent at the DMV, etc.

But now my wife is gone to Iowa, I don't have much work to do (and am not motivated enough to do it now), and I lack the motivation to hike down to Georgetown to see Cedar Rapids, since 1) it's not worth driving because it's only a mile or so, 2) I don't want to deal with the ludicrous winds by walking, and 3) I just have a hard time going to movies or any non-sporting events that actually have a set time. I have a very DVR attitude toward things, if they can't be done on my schedule, then it's not worth me going, even when my schedule could have accommodated going to the movies at any of the five times it was playing today. I would still have had to make that decision, and I make decisions for a living. I don't do that in my spare time. And, of course, since I now had a weekend to spend at the Verizon Center without feeling guilty at all, it's Disney Princesses on Ice all weekend. Every weekend this month, the Wizards are home. The one weekend I know I can go? Disney Princesses on Ice. Two shows today. Given that my life's goal list starts and ends with "don't appear on a sex offender registry", I figured I'd sit that one out.

Basically, the benefits of living here:
1) I like walking around places and feeling like I actually live here. It still just kind of hits me occasionally, since it doesn't seem real. (In fact, it's not, I suppose, most of my stuff is elsewhere, but I've learned that doesn't much matter. I have books, my APBA set for 1997, and my laptop, and I don't get to use them.)
2) The bus system is annoying, but a godsend at the same time. Not driving is the best thing in my life, because I hated doing it so much, and now it's something I can just not do. Being on the bus is an opportunity to do the things I would do if I had free time -- responding to emails, writing things, reading books or mlbtraderumors).
3) I have lived my entire life believing that at some point I would be found out and revealed as a fraud. it hasn't happened yet. I'm actually getting a good grasp on what I'm doing rapidly. I haven't developed that all-encompassing knowledge that certain others have, but frankly, that's not what I was concerned about. I was just worried I'd be completely lost. That hasn't happened yet.

The costs of living here:
1) we're not finding much that we like as far as living options, now that it's an option to actually move forward. We had a good run, then everything we were interested in got snapped up and the house we really loved raised the bar. So now everything's disappointing or located in a place where I'd have to give up not driving, which isn't negotiable.
2) my job is a lot more all-encompassing than before. I was always watching my blackberry in Delaware, but it was a rare instance where it was a necessity (that said, everything there was more urgent if I was getting those random emails). Here, there's just a lot more days that go to 10 or 11 just because things need to get done.
3) I really don't see my wife much after all. I'll be glad after she gets back from Turkey, because I think this will improve substantially. My life will become less nuts after the Dodd-Frank regulation deadline passes in July, she should be down at least one job and be teaching her class instead, which I think will help.

I ran this morning and based on the map I had to assemble on dailymile, it looks like I ran a bit under 17 miles, journeying into Maryland (I clearly like the idea of crossing state lines when I run since it makes it seem like an achievement), running through the National Zoo (I saw a fishing cat, none of the other animals were out for my entertainment), Rock Creek Park, by the White House, Washington Monument, a few blocks down Constitution Avenue (where I'll be again in 35 days). Considering I 1) didn't take my IPod, figuring (quite correctly, I'm guessing) that the wind would make it impossible to hear anyway, 2) that the wind was atrocious, gusting up to 50 mph, and 3) DC is a terrible place to run since there's an overabundance of surfaces that are even worse to run than sidewalks (cobblestones, bricks, and such), I'll take it. I'm not even particularly sore, which is pretty remarkable. I feel like the National Marathon should actually be an improvement from my time last year, which considering that I'd have been listed as Out on the injury report for it if it were up to my orthopedist, I'll take as a remarkable testament to my ability to bounce back/engage in wanton reckless behavior. Other than making the one jump in my second week back on the treadmill, I've actually done everything pretty much in accordance with how I should be doing things (no huge jumps in mileage, etc.)

Not much new

2011-02-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

My wife tried to get Stamford into the Iowa State vet clinic, since she got invited to be a guest lecturer in Iowa and was flying out anyway. He might have been able to go so they could see what they could find out, but his vet's office never called Iowa State. I'm not terribly optimistic there is anything that can be done, but I am frustrated that an entire office of 10+ veterinarians couldn't pick up the phone on an urgent matter that may be life and death.

He's pretty much stopped eating, though, admittedly, it's hard to tell. He was never a big eater and it's hard to track the dining habits of three cats -- the other two were easy to tell, since they are both fat. That makes it easier. But we're now giving him the cat supplemental milk for kittens who were weaned too early. He clearly likes the taste of it, but he still has to be force-fed. It makes me feel bad to have to do it, to impose my will on a creature who's giving up on survival and actually has the mental focus to just not eat, but part of me still has a shred of hope. He's seen so many veterinarians (these aren't as second opinions, I'm not vet shopping, he's just had to go to vets in two locales and to two different 7-day 24-hour veterinary ERs, but once he tested positive for the feline coronavirus, every veterinarian just determines that anything that's wrong with him is FIP. Every symptom in the world except good health is a symptom of FIP, and in fact, good health is a symptom of it too.

He can still get around, but he has a lot of moments where he clearly loses control of a back leg or has no confidence -- he's done with jumping, which gives him virtually no opportunity to do anything in the bathroom. Now I've let him out because at his slow rate of movement, he's not hard to monitor, I just try to keep him off the rug. Now, his brother left the carrier that's still sitting out (he had a pre-existing veterinary appointment about the leg issue for Tuesday morning, the ER vet told me to keep it, and given the paucity of space in our apartment, to put it away takes 15 minutes of effort pulling things out of the closet and then putting them back).

I'm not a cat person, though I now have three of them. I have always wanted a dog and will continue to want one, because my job is not exactly amenable to caring for an animal that can't use its own bathroom (which, sadly, now includes Stamford). But I am definitely an animal person, and I can't imagine not having animals in the house. It's just not an acceptable outcome.

This is a hard time.

2011-02-18T11:51:00.005-05:00

So Stamford (the kitten with a vast array of health problems) has been defecating and urinating outside his box for a couple of weeks now. His vet just said it was probably a stress reaction to having a new cat in a very confined area (when I moved, I brought my cat to join the two kittens, who'd already had to live with him for considerable periods of time, but with more rooms and opportunities to separate themselves in my apartment). So, after he continued to get worse and worse about it, we got him cat prozac -- which is, apparently, human prozac, but it's mixed to supposedly taste like salmon.

Well, last night, I found out it was likely all in vain. I took him to the ER at an all-night veterinary hospital because he's having issues with his back legs. He doesn't look balanced, he has had increasing difficulty jumping, and the one time I saw him go to the bathroom in the living room (not in his box), he was just walking along, and all of a sudden, it was like his back end just twisted. I didn't even realize he'd pooped, but my wife could smell it immediately. It was like he didn't even know what he was doing.

The bad news is that it seems that he doesn't. He has no idea. Given his feline coronavirus and the wildly varying symptoms of FIP, the veterinarian thinks that he's experiencing primary FIP infection and it's causing neurological symptoms, which have explained the progression in his loss of ability to use his back legs. In short, she thinks he's going to die in the very near future.

I've spent thousands trying to keep him alive. It has really been more than $2,000 at this point with all the vet bills. Most people would be glad to have it end, no more wiping up urine every time I need to use the bathroom, no more trying to squeeze in trips to the vet in between 14 hour work days. Not me. I just want my friend. And that, apparently, is what I can't have.

50 book challenge

2011-02-14T11:01:00.001-05:00

Back when I was on livejournal, in those distant distant past days, my friend Ryan got me intrigued at the so-called 50 book challenge, wherein people read (unsurprisingly) 50 books in the span of a year. At the time, I'm sure I'd read somewhere between one and five books the prior year, since I was prone to just starting tons of books and never finishing any of them. Since it became a quasi-competitive thing, I've had no such problem. This year, even though I no longer regard it as a particular challenge, it's going to be much more of an uphill climb. Moving, starting a new job that involves far more work, certain other complications (the subject of which will be clearly revealed when you see the books I've finished) and the time that it takes just because I actually see my wife have all limited my reading. So I'm at a mere 5 books for the year, though I feel as if I'm simply forgotten something that I read.

January (3)
Black and Blue: How Racism, Drugs and Cancer Almost Destroyed Me by Paul Canoville
Home Buying For Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
Tips and Traps When Buying a Home by Robert Irwin

February (3)
Mortgages for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
The Damned United by David Peace
The Quitter by Harvey Pekar

Chief Wahoo's Trail of Tears has updated!

2011-02-11T17:20:00.000-05:00

Yes, this was the blog I was actually intent on keeping current, so much so that I sponsored some baseball-reference.com pages. Then I got busy and the Indians did not. Whoops. Anyway, here's the link.

With malice toward []one, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

2011-02-10T13:45:00.002-05:00

It's not often that malice toward others will increase someone's esteem in my book. (depending on whom you ask, it might be extremely often, but it's certainly not just often). But in this case, Mark Buehrle's got a hall of fame vote from me.

Accurate Perception Syndrome

2011-02-03T16:31:00.002-05:00

So I'm trying to get a psychological disorder that I've discovered (and named after myself, of course) into DSM-V when it comes out. DSM-IV launched Asperger's, autism, and ADHD into the realm of super popular diseases. I think I should do the same for cynicism.

TK's Disease or Accurate Perception Syndrome is a crippling psychological disorder that is associated with a bleak worldview and the belief that whatever foods will help keep you from becoming obese will ultimately give you cancer, and those things that don't give you cancer will give you heart disease or an increased likelihood of being hit by a bus or shot by a tea party activist. It, like life, is invariably fatal.

Bill Belichick Summoned to Roger Goodell's Office to Explain Academy Award Nominations

2011-02-03T11:30:00.005-05:00

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has reportedly requested a face-to-face meeting with Bill Belichick after his film NYJ Walkthrough 12/3/10 received 3 nominations for Academy Awards last week.

NYJ Walkthrough 12/3/10, a 98 minute film of a final walkthrough of a game plan by New York Jets players and staff, which received nominations for Best Picture, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor, has garnered near-universal acclaim in the cinematic community as a visceral portrayal of futility and despair. The film, which was shot from the stands at the Jets' practice facility, was rumored to be intended for Belichick's personal game preparation, but has instead become a dark horse to triumph in the Best Picture category over films like The Black Swan and The King's Speech.

Belichick has denied comment on the film, stating only "I have not seen the film, i had no role in its making, and I was operating under the belief that the NFL permitted the conduct that the Academy suggest I played some role in. I would decline any Academy Awards that were given to me."

Heralded cinematographer and fellow nominee Roger Deakins (True Grit) rejected Belichick's response as false modesty.

"I've seen few videos that so captured the grace of Right Red 42 and the weaknesses in D'Brickashaw Ferguson's ability to pick up a right end stunt. It was moving. The gravitas of it all was so much that it looked like the Jets could barely even get the ball moving. It was as if Belichick's film just had a paralyzing effect on them, like the Patriots saw everything coming and the Jets saw the futility of the game," Deakins said.

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper was among the critics who lauded Walkthrough's single-hidden-camera framing.

"The single-camera shot is relentless. It takes the intensity of Hitchcock's Rope and says 'listen, if you're going to have nothing but 8 minute shots, we're going to have a single shot that bears down on the same spot on the field for 98 minutes.' And the eerily silent soundtrack really harkens back to Von Stroheim," Roeper said.

LaDainian Tomlinson was alarmed to hear of his nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of an aging, broken-down running back refusing to concede the inevitable.

"I'd like to thank the Academy, but that's a bunch of shit," Tomlinson said. "I'm as fast as I ever was."

Uncredited executive producer Rex Ryan claimed full credit for releasing the films to theaters in New York and LA against Belichick's wishes.

Ryan said, "I knew this could really appeal to the [expletive deleted] public. I mean, millions of [expletive deleted] people watched the [expletive deleted] Pro [expletive deleted] Bowl. Football sells."

Former Browns and Jets Coach Eric Mangini agreed that the film was worthy of Roger Goodell's attention, but believed the meeting would do nothing to allay Belichick's cinematic career.

"Of course [Goodell]'s calling Belichick in, he probably wants to congratulate him. I mean, this is Roger Goodell, and it's not like Belichick celebrated a touchdown. He'll be fine," Mangini said.

Fun with homonyms

2011-02-02T12:39:00.003-05:00

Listen, the hair is bad. I will grant you that. But this is a mockery. In competition with Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady is named NFL Offensive Player of the Year. Not even close. He's nowhere near as offensive as they are.

There may be posts in the pipeline, but the move has sapped me of my strength and the solitude that led me to post things in the first place. We'll see. Things that might be discussed: my response to the Academy Award nominations (which I started a week ago), why fantasy sports no longer hold any appeal to me (I certainly haven't grown up), my top Onion Articles, and my top songs and albums for years from 1960-2009 (it takes me a while to catch up, sorry).

Thomas Wolfe was right.

2011-01-21T22:36:00.001-05:00

Well, the point was that you can't go home again. But he also wrote "Look Homeward, Angel", so he's just a contradictory asshole, isn't he?

Anyway, for those who aren't attuned to the current course of events, I'm starting a new job next week and am going to have to move. On the plus side, I'm moving out of Delaware. On the down side, I HATE moving. Plus, I have a lot of things in this place that I don't know why I still have. Among the things I found was a box full of papers and things I wrote in high school. Rather than belabor the truly astonishingly level of pathetic that was unearthed among the dozen partly-written screenplays and notes from people I don't even remember, I will share something that, judging by my handwriting, was written in high school. That said, I don't ever remember writing it and still find it amusing. Actually, to clarify, I'm not sure whether I find it funny or whether I find the fact that at some point I felt it necessary to pen it funny.

So I present to you:
God's Hood - The Ten Commandments
1. Thou shalt not be frontin' wit me, cause I am yo God! Thou shalt not be givin' the coin to nobody but me.
2. Thou shalt honor yo mama and yo daddy, as if you even knew him, cuz you a bastard.
3. Thou shalt check thyself before thy wreck thyself.
4. Thou shalt be sharin' hits from da bong with yo tokin' brothas.
5. Thou shalt be lovin' thy day off from bustin' caps.
6. Don't be wastin' thy brothas, bitch.
7. Thou shalt not be jackin' things from yo brotha's crib.
8. Thou shalt not be ballin' some other man's wife bitch; ice the brotha first.
9. Thou shalt not be covetin' no goods, even if yo neighbor's an ol' dirty bastard.
10. Thou shalt not even be wantin' yo brotha's bitch, even though she be all over you, dude.

Stream of consciousness

2011-01-19T11:12:00.001-05:00

I've decided I'm going to try something new, which is to set my IPod on random and then let whatever song it picks cause me to write something in response for the period that the song is going on (if it goes longer, so be it).

The Ipod has decided this is going to be a challenge, because it picked Portishead - Silence. I don't know the song well, I believe I got it from a CD a friend of mine sent me along with The Go! Team and something else (possibly Camera Obscura). Portishead strikes me as a band I'd really like to like, but like the Chemical Brothers before it, it's not something I can generally get into, although I should make considerably greater use of techno-ish music on runs. The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" and Propellerheads' "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" were both on my marathon playlist if I recall correctly (I'm certain about the latter, which is the perfect marathon song since it's 9 minutes long). Portishead isn't prefect for such things, the harrowing sort of vocal line on this song isn't the kind of adrenaline and endorphin dump that I'm looking for, but the drum loops could carry the day by themselves.

Of course, IPod. Now you play "The Book I Write" by Spoon. Well, I managed to time the last one so I wrote for the exact duration of the song previous. For this song, it's a much easier task. Stranger Than Fiction (the soundtrack from which the song is taken) is one of my favorite movies, easily in the top 10 of the last decade for me and probably higher if I were to concoct such a list. Considering the paucity of movies I've seen since I went to law school, this is hardly putting it in a pantheon, though I think it belongs there. I suspect Stranger Than Fiction might have been the first movie I saw by myself in Delaware after moving here. Immediately after seeing it, I went out and bought the soundtrack and have since bought a half dozen Spoon albums. Good choice, Ipod.

Report: McNabb at fault for another Eagles playoff defeat

2011-01-10T12:06:00.001-05:00

As the seconds ticked away and put an end to the Green Bay Packers' upset victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in the wild card round of the NFL playoffs Sunday, Philadelphia sports fans blamed a familiar figure for the Eagles' failure: quarterback Donovan McNabb. Although fans disagreed in how directly McNabb was responsible for the defeat the directness of McNabb's responsibility for the defeat,they were uniformly in agreement that he was to blame.

Some fans, apparently confused by the on-field presence of a quarterback other than Kevin Kolb, accused McNabb of quarterbacking the Eagles to the defeat. "McNabb played horribly yesterday," said Frank Lawton, 39, a pipe-fitter from Bala Cynwyd, PA. "That interception at the end was classic McNabb. I think we all knew what was coming. He may have changed his number on the field, but he hasn't changed his losing attitude."

Some fans, while acknowledging that McNabb was nominally not a member of the Eagles, still found a way to blame McNabb for the defeat.

"Listen, when they traded McNabb, they got back a 2nd round pick. If McNabb had been any good, we could have gotten a real player in return, not just Nate Allen. Just imagine -- if McNabb had been any good, we could have drafted Eric Berry or even Tim Tebow," said Gary Logan, an HVAC salesman from West Chester, PA. "With a guy like that, we'd be in the Super Bowl."

Still others blamed McNabb's effect on the locker room as the reason for another disappointing season.

"McNabb's attitude was brought down the team. They got used to his attitude of losing and that's what keeps them failing in the playoffs year after year. No matter who's actually playing quarterback, every time they lose, you can see that McNabb look in their eyes," said Richard Graham, a talk show host on local sports radio station WPH.

Not even Michael Vick, the Eagles' quarterback who actually threw the game-sealing interception with 33 seconds left in the game, was immune to the contempt for the six-time Pro Bowler.

"Listen, I've always loved Donovan, he's a great guy and has been a good friend. But, man, I hate Donovan McNabb. That guy has let this team down so many times. And worst of all, I can't believe he killed all those dogs," Vick added.

While many Eagles fans blame McNabb, he is not without his supporters.

"McNabb? Who's that?" said Joseph Harris, a retiree from Pennsauken, New Jersey. "All I have to say is that Randall Cunningham was awful yesterday. They should get rid of that no-good bum."

Report: Rex Ryan's Wife May Have Rex Ryan Fetish

2010-12-22T14:57:00.000-05:00

Rex Ryan has been no stranger to controversy during his tenure with the New York Jets. After his team's appearance on the HBO series Hard Knocks, Ryan faced criticism by no less an upstanding citizen than Michael Vick lackey Tony Dungy for his foul, sexist, homophobic and obscene language. That controversy reached new heights Wednesday after deadspin.com released a story suggesting that Rex Ryan's wife, Michelle Ryan, who may have been posted a number of foot fetish videos posted to the Internet, may have a strange and disturbing fetish for hulking tub and New York Jets coach Rex Ryan.

In a conference call with Chicago reporters and at his press conference later Wednesday leading up to Sunday's big game with the Bears, Ryan didn't deny the Deadspin.com report showing videos of a woman who looks very much like his wife showing off her feet while a cameraman -- who sounds like Ryan -- talks to the woman in a fashion that could be construed as sexual.

"To be honest, and I get it, I know you need to ask and all that stuff," Ryan told reporters when asked if the idea of a woman engaging in carnal acts with him could render his players incapable of focusing during Sunday's game against the Chicago Bears. "But it's a personal matter and I'm really not going to discuss it, OK?"

Ryan said the matter was between him and his wife and would not elaborate.

"I'll be coaching, and I am ready," he said. "It's my job and I'm focused on the hand job -- I mean, job at hand."

When asked point blank if he and his wife had made sweet love, Ryan would not say one way or another.

"I understand I'm going to get asked this question from up front, behind, on top, underneath, and all this, but it is a personal matter," he repeated.
The New York Jets denied comment on the subject, saying ""This is a personal matter and Rex will have no comment."

I'm not touching this with a 52,800 foot pole.

2010-12-22T14:37:00.001-05:00

Rex Ryan: my *!@@#! wife's *@#@!&*# participation in #@&*(!@ foot fetish videos is way less @#!&* disgusting than her Rex ^&*!#@ Ryan fetish.

Now I'm not a connoisseur of the lascivious arts, by any means. But the foot fetish is one that will perpetually elude me. They are feet. Anyone who's ever seen Vibram FiveFingers knows damn well that the human foot is not a thing of beauty. It should be as enclosed as humanly possible.

That said, given that all other pornography finds niches to make itself even raunchier and even dirtier, I have to wonder how foot fetishes fit into this. Is there a sect of depraved foot fetishists who won't watch a video that involves fewer than two plantar warts? Bunions? Corns? Is there Athlete's foot fetish porn?

If you can answer these questions, please never reveal yourself.

54 books and counting

2010-12-15T18:51:00.000-05:00

I'm back to posting reading lists. Here's 2010, which has been a whole lot of mediocrity. Looking at this list, I remember very few books that were exceptionally good. The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Soul of Baseball, Cardboard Gods, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, and The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven are probably the top five for me. Not coincidentally, four of the five (not The Art of Racing in the Rain), I think I finished in no more than three or four days (or, in the case of The Soul of Baseball, about 14 hours). Born to Run is also an exceptional book, but since it also contributed to my returning to the Vibram FiveFingers (which immediately preceded my stress fracture -- though I'm reluctant to declare a causal link), I'm definitely docking it some points).

January (10)
9 Stories by J.D. Salinger
Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid: the Year that Changed Baseball Forever by John Rosengren
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Raise the Roofbeam High, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction by J.D. Salinger
You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
American Lightning by Howard Blum

February (2)
The Book of Vice: Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) by Peter Sagal
From Here to Eternity by James Jones

March (2)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

April (7)
Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot by Mike Greenberg
2010 Baseball America Prospect Handbook edited by Jim Callis et al.
The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series by Ryan McGee
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski
The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs
Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Pop Apocalypse! by Lee Konstantinou

May (8)
The Punch by John Feinstein
You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice edited by Eric Spitznagel
Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman
Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards by Josh Wilker
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Big Hair and Plastic Grass by Dan Epstein
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

June (3)
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
For Love of the Game by Michael Shaara

July (2)
You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting
Wrigleyworld by Kevin Kaduk

August (4)
U2 by U2 by U2
Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker
Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

September (5)
This Land Is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
The View from the Upper Deck by D.J. Gallo
Long-Range Goals: the Success Story of Major League Soccer by Beau Dure
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

October (5)
Earth: a Visitor's Guide by Jon Stewart et al.
Odd Man Out by Matt McCarthy
The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven by Aaron Skirboll
Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
Kiss It Good-Bye by John Moody

November (4)
Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant
Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Jim Neufeld and Jim Dwyer

December (2)
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
How to Lose Friends and Influence People by Toby Young

From the Worldwide Leader in Brett Favre/TO coverage...

2010-12-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

Quelle surprise! Terrell Owens blames the Bengals' coaching staff for the 2-11 season.

You know, I hate to agree with Terrell Owens, but it's really hard to reach a different conclusion. The Bengals have gone 2-11, but they've lost 7 games by 8 points or fewer and they've blown second half leads in 4 games. Two of those defeats were absolutely incomprehensible (the collapse I witnessed against Tampa Bay and the disaster with Buffalo). Marvin Lewis doesn't want to keep his job, I'm sure, but I couldn't see how you'd justify keeping him on after this debacle.

Bits and pieces

2010-12-14T23:05:00.001-05:00

So I've learned the kitten's health problem may be related to feline corona virus, for which he tested positive. He tested positive with a level of antibodies that he might have the strain that is known to cause FIP, which is fatal to cats. And, since he has it, his litter mate brother is all but certain to have it, and the other cat has likely been exposed to it. But I haven't managed to get a straight answer as to what percentage probability there is that if a cat is testing positive in the range of antibodies that means it could be the FIP virus -- what's the probability that it actually is? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? 1 in 2? That makes a big difference when we're talking about a lifetime of medicating not one, but three cats.

After months of effort (whereby I started by acquiring the Master Edition add-on)I've just acquired APBA Baseball and finally gotten an opportunity to play it. (I'm a sucker for it because my brother and I had 1984 Championship Baseball Board Game by Milton Bradley.

It was a ludicrously simplistic, but wonderful board game that involved a very similar, though much simpler game play.

APBA is definitely the kind of thing that could be all-consuming for me if I could just find myself with free time. Now that I'm out of the walking boot and I can get back to exercising in earnest (and will have a renewed need to do so, given that I've basically just been at work for the last two months), it's unlikely it'll ever get that chance. But, still, it's a charming enough pasttime that just needs a few tweaks to really become fascinating to me. I haven't really looked over the Master Edition yet, so I'm hoping it has answers as to how you can introduce issues with pitcher fatigue in the absence of the pitcher being crushed by random chance or lefty-righty matchups, but even in its simplest form, it's entertaining. That said, I was a little concerned after 8 innings of the first game where the 1997 Reds had notched a total of one hit against Greg Maddux. Then they mustered a pair of runs in the ninth and I Brad Clontz had to come in to end the game. That made me feel a little better. The second game was much more offensive, ending 7-5, with the '97 Indians blowing 2 different 2 run leads.

Pros: simple enough to figure out in short time, mostly realistic -- the 1997 Reds were atrocious, Greg Maddux could have one-hit them, Jose Mesa damn near blew the save in the Indians game.

Cons: it's not THAT realistic -- I had Scott Spiezio steal back-to-back bases, including home, against me; pitching skill seems to be of relatively minimal importance, lack of any sort of fatigue issue. It's really expensive if you consider the expense of the cards (all sets are $30 or higher) and even at that, the card sets are very thin -- 20 players to a team means the Indians don't have Jaret Wright, Julio Franco, Eric Plunk, or Paul Shuey. To get the expanded set...you guessed it, more money (and then it's 30 players to a team, so if you're being realistic, you'd need to have five inactive).

...and Crawford makes 142 million.

2010-12-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

That Jayson Werth signing looks great now. Werth may be older and be less "proven", in that he's been better than Carl Crawford in each of the last four years (but only four, which is the main criticism), but he's a much better bet to be a useful player in 7 years. For one, his game isn't based solely on speed. Second, he's not limited to one position (Crawford is solely a left fielder -- a great one, maybe, but he's going to a place where covering a lot of ground is worthless -- Manny Ramirez had adequate range at Fenway). Third, he's not receiving $20 million a year.

Crawford is a great player. There's little doubt about that -- though 2008 gives you some cause for concern, with the 89 OPS+ -- Werth's most recent season of that sort was 2005 (though he missed about half of 2005 and all of 2006 with injury). But he's a player whose gifts are so heavily skewed around one tool -- speed. That's a rare tool these days, fair enough, but it's also, as noted above, a tool that's not terribly useful defensively at Fenway Park and a tool that the Red Sox are certainly not lacking. Yes, Crawford may leg out infield singles, but when there are runners on, that just means there's a force at second instead of a double play.

Crawford doesn't draw a ton of walks, his defense is largely meaningless, and his power is good, but certainly not in the realm of $20 million a year kind of power. He's not Rickey Henderson. But the Red Sox are paying him as if he were. That this deal hasn't astonished everyone speaks volumes as to my prior theory. The Werth contract was crazy to people because it was the Nationals. Carl Crawford, who is one hamstring pull away from irrelevance and is coming off nine seasons of playing indoors (worked out great for Griffey) got the utterly insane contract. It may work in the short term -- to me, the Red Sox have to be World Series favorites in 2011 -- but I don't think the Crawford deal makes a substantive difference in that. After adding Gonzalez, they already had the best lineup and the best rotation (assuming Beckett does anything right this year. They even have depth in the rotation and at all the positions except catcher (which, of course, they may yet solve with Russell Martin). Their bullpen has some large question marks, but I have little doubt they'll cobble something together. I think they're going to end up bringing back Okajima or maybe even adding Arthur Rhodes, whose return to Cincinnati gets less likely by the day (in my mind, anyway). They are already giving away their first round pick to add Crawford, so there's not much disincentive to adding a Type A right-handed reliever like Grant Balfour.

Keith Law is coming out and saying that this deal will hold up, while saying Werth's couldn't possibly. I'd like to understand that logic, but I really can't. Since 1901, there are 201 seasons by a player in history between 30-35* stealing 35 or more bases; only 132 such seasons since World War II. Carl Crawford will be 30-35 for 5 of the 7 years of this deal.

*I originally forgot that I'd restricted it to 30-35 and thought that might have meant there were plenty of seasons where a player accomplished this feat after 35. nope. 22 since 1901.

There are 144 seasons by a player 31-35 doing the same feat; 98 since World War II. Carl Crawford will be 31-35 for 4 of the 7 years of this deal.

There are 94 seasons by a player 32-35 stealing 35 or more; 64 since World War II. Carl Crawford will be 32-35 for 3 of the 7 years of this deal.

I don't see much more of a need to belabor this. If Carl Crawford isn't stealing 35 bases a year, his game is what, exactly? He doesn't hit for prodigious power. His range in left field is a non-factor (and will obviously decay if he slows up at all). He doesn't have a great knack for getting on base through walks -- he's a lot like a player the Red Sox already have on their bench (Mike Cameron -- who's at least an exceptional center fielder). He's a great athlete, sure, but he doesn't have Darryl Strawberry/Eric Davis power in his wrists to just whip balls over the wall. So if and when he slows down, you're paying a load of money for a whole lot of adequate.

*Note: I thought the number of steals might be a bit arbitrary -- I picked 35 since it seemed like a number likely to land you into the AL's top 10 every year. It may be arbitrary -- but here's the ultimate reason to not be so intrigued at paying Crawford $20+ million a year -- his most comparable players are really not very good. Roberto Kelly and Ralph Garr are the good comps. The most similar by age is much more favorable -- Roberto Clemente for most -- but (1) I'm not seeing it, and (2) the next comparables are guys like Claudell Washington and Cesar Cedeno -- good players who have some combination of speed and power, but hardly superstars.

Whither Jayson Werth?

2010-12-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

So Jayson Werth signing with Les Expos has brought all sorts of chuckles and condescension because the deal is really long and it's for more money than was expected.

But the uniformity of the response is puzzling. Do they really think this deal is so preposterous? One friend described it as "almost as bad as the Ryan Howard deal."

That, of course, would be more accurately characterized as "not even in the same stratosphere as the Ryan Howard contract, which paid a player who is not as good as Jayson Werth far more money than Werth will earn, two years before any extension was necessary. There is simply no precedent for the stupidity of the Ryan Howard signing. I'm not even sure there is a contract that rivals its sheer stupidity looking without hindsight (maybe Vernon Wells, Mike Hampton and Darren Dreifort, but all of those were contracts that conceivably could have worked out. With Howard's contract, that's not even a plausible scenario.) In retrospect, Mike Hampton, Darren Dreifort and Chan Ho Park might get to that level. Everything about Howard is already fading -- his eye (he's hemorrhaged nearly 50 walks over the last three seasons), his power (his slugging's down .154 points since its peak, and his home runs were down 14 just from '09-10), his durability (he hit the DL for, I believe, the first time ever in 2010). Werth is still in his ascendancy, even if he is old. Now 2010 may well be his peak year, but at least it gives Nationals fans a rational reason to believe he could still have years equivalent to it going forward.

As for Werth, I'm not inclined to agree that the deal is atrocious. It's not great, to be sure, but major free agent signings never look to be great deals. Any time there's a 9-digit offer, it's got a high probability of blowing up. Both the amount of money and the number of years make it a very high probability of being a disappointment.

But if we look at this contract through the lens of what it is -- a team trying to buy its way toward success, it's a reasonable investment. The Nationals had to offer more money and more years. That has to be a given. They had two alternatives -- overpay in years and dollars, or not sign any free agents that would represent a marked upgrade from Mike Morse. The Nationals have to overpay for non-marquee free agents like (ahem) Jason Marquis, so of course they have to overpay for a five-tool player. They theoretically had their chance to make a market-price deal and they said "no thanks, we've seen enough of Adam Dunn."

However, the Nationals are taking a serious risk of making this deal insane by deciding to trade Josh Willingham. Willingham is a genuine offensive producer. Letting him go would completely negate whatever gains the team had made by adding Werth to replace Adam Dunn.

Most of the backlash really strikes me as condescension. I managed to listen to about five seconds of WIP listener feedback before I reviled everyone who had ever been to a Phillies game (keep in mind I have partial season tickets). It was person after person saying "have fun winning 69 games for the next seven years, Jayson." In fact, I think that's why this deal is getting the response it is. If the Angels or Red Sox had signed Werth to the same contract, it'd just be an accepted overpayment to get a player that's basically in a sample size of three in this market -- Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth, and Adrian Beltre were the only available free agents who really seemed like guarantees to make their teams better. They didn't have gaping holes in their games (Dunn), weren't on the verge of retirement/death (Konerko), and they hit over .200 (Pena). But the response to Werth's signing seems likely to be driven more by the team that signed the contract than the terms of the contract itself.

Werth isn't Ryan Howard. He's got a game that seems likely to age gracefully. Even as his legs go and he loses the speed and defense part of his game, he's still going to leave you with a solid power-hitting left fielder. He's got a lot of decay in his game to get down to the kind of player that the Phillies are still signing to 3-year deals (I think a 38 year old Werth is going to look a lot like a 38-year-old Ibanez, actually - better than average, but not the answer to any of your questions). So he'll decay to average, not decay to disaster the way that Boog Howard will.

Lastly, I think it's worth it to overpay because right now, there's a big credibility gap in Washington. They lost their opportunity to fill the seats when Strasburg's elbow blew out. Right now, their biggest dates for attendance are dates when popular visitors come to the stadium -- the Phillies fans outnumber the Nats fans for Phillies/Nationals games. And I think they recognize the shelf life of their team. If they don't get the fans in the next two or three years, it's likely that this franchise is never going to cut it in Washington. So it makes sense to go all in while they still have Strasburg and they still have Bryce Harper. The short-term fixes are the ones that don't make sense -- plugging in Pudge Rodriguez remains as irrational as the day they signed him. Signing Jayson Werth -- that makes sense.

I believe the Nationals have some really useful pieces. Their rotation isn't great, it's certainly patchwork. But Jordan Zimmermann looked electric at times before he needed Tommy John surgery. Collin Balester should bounce back and Strasburg will be back by 2012. But the pitchers aren't there on the market this year, so they can either push off even the slimmest hopes of .500 or try to shore up the difference elsewhere. And, in reality, I think this signing helps on the pitching front as well.

Before this signing, Cliff Lee signing in Washington was a 0% probability. Now, maybe it's a 1%. Maybe this is a tipping point for Brandon Webb to say Washington's a better reclamation alternative. Zimmerman and Werth is a good core to a lineup, both offensively and defensively. Nyjer Morgan will bounce back to 2009 level performance/non-insanity, Desmond showed promise in his first year, Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen are a solid beginning to a bullpen.

I don't think Werth is a franchise player, so this is a lot of money. In the end, Nationals fans may live to regret the contract that's been signed in 2016 and 2017. But first, the Nationals need to ensure they have fans. This is a step toward that.

For all the condescension the bitter WIP callers had to offer, it's hardly a safe bet that the Phillies will finish ahead of the Nationals beyond 2011. They're an old team getting older with a lot of years on contracts that they are already regretting or will in the very near future. Jimmy Rollins may be the oldest 31 year old on the planet, Ryan Howard has regressed rapidly from the once-astonishing hitter he was, and Chase Utley began to appear human. They have pitching, yes, but Halladay and Oswalt are on the wrong side of 30 and have endured a lot of abuse and I'm skeptical there's anyone in the Phillies farm system that could come up and be as successful as Luis Atilano or Craig Stammen if Halladay or Oswalt go down. If Werth cared only about winning, he'd have gone to New York or Boston. While his Octobers will probably be free for at least four of the seven years of his contract, I'd speculate that the same would be true even if he'd stayed.

Thoughts from the veterinarian's office

2010-12-05T18:41:00.000-05:00

Odd things about me.

I've never been called for jury duty. I want to be, though I believe it should rightly be regarded as unconstitutional. (To summarize my legendary seminar paper into a sentence, jury duty arose from a time predating the 13th amendment. Saying you are compelled to serve is contrary to the text of the 13th amendment, and de minimis compensation does not make it any less a case of involuntary servitude.) I don't know that I would be a particularly good juror; I make decisions about things very quickly and then have to be beaten nto submission to change my mind. This would obviously give the prosecution an edge, though my general disgust for how law enforcement is operated and suspicion of the effectiveness of the courts may negate it in the end. I don't know, and frankly, I likely will never know, since in an actual trial I would probably not be able to accurately perceive what results from my biases and what results from actual facts.

Odd thing #2: despite regarding myself as a very smart person, I let myself get fleeced constantly, while knowing I'm getting fleeced. Any time I deal with a person of expertise, I instantly yield to them. This trip is costing 600 dollars for that reason, because they want to do blood work and tests that, if they came back negative, would probably not matter to me anyway, since I don't think I really believe in euthanasia for animals. If Stamford can't communicate that he's sick to me for a couple days (possibly longer, but I hope not), how do I know he would really not want to be alive?

The whole ordeal just makes me very concerned that I'm not paying enough attention to any of the cats. That's a hard thing to consider -- I obsess over pets -- but I work long hours, I've been going to the gym, I don't know whose poop is whose, I don't know whether he'd been eating during the work week, since I have to segregate the cats to keep Charlie from feasting on kitten food. The one thing that is nice about kids is that they'll always be able to communicate with you. They may lie, but you can at least ask them things.

I hear Stamford yowling in the other room. It's an awful sound to endure. It's just a great thing he's so good at the vet. If this were charlie, they'd have had to sedate him just to get his weight.

Skepticism, Fear, and Belief - Part 2 - Belief and Fear

2010-12-04T12:11:00.000-05:00

So the last post was actually an aside that came up in discussing this question. I would recommend reading part 1 first. Last week, in London, my wife and I saw Ghost Stories in the theater. It'd received some very enthusiastic reviews, there was little available for Sunday matinees that didn't conflict with our plans for the day (we did a London walk oriented about James Bond and Ian Fleming, I suspect as a favor to me).

The production was well-acted, but had no present-tense effect on me. I saw its frightening moments for what they were – they weren't deep-rooted psychological horror or terror, they were cheap showman's tricks. (As someone who always aspired to be a cheap showman, I'm familiar with the ouevre.) Lights go out, noises are summoned from places in the theatre where there are no actors, and wee golly, there were lots of insufferably loud noises. In other words, it wasn't contemplative horror, it was disorienting horror. And frankly, it didn't work on me. The rest of the audience would gasp or scream and I would sit there wondering how this was effective when they simply had to know what was coming. He's driving in a car, of course someone's going to pop on stage suddenly and get hit.

Rather than reveal the “secret” of Ghost Stories here – a secret that, unlike The Mousetrap, which we'd seen on a prior trip – seems to be more irrelevant dyed-in-the-wool formula than “secret,” I write about it because of its opening. It has a professor of parapsychology questioning the audience as to who believed in ghosts (about 2/3 of the people raised their hands for that) and who'd experienced something they felt could only be explained through the paranormal (maybe 1/10 of people for that one). My hand went up nary a time. But, as I had decried, I knew that although my wife's hand was raised and mine was not, she would be sleeping peacefully that night, and I would likely be terrified out of my wits.

Why? And how? How is it that I can be afraid of something that I genuinely do not believe exists? Is that even possible?

As to the why, that's simple. I live a life that's got a lot of fear. It's probably one of the driving forces in my life. I could divulge a litany of reasons for this, but no need to lay blame right now. It's not of ghouls, goblins and boogeymen, but of making decisions that are perfectly rational now only to discover that in ten years, I'd be a walking piece of slapstick comedy to science:

Scene: 2020 – no flying cars, temperature appears to be about 3 or 4 degrees warmer, about 10 degrees warmer in the US. Thanks, President-for-Life Palin.

Doctor: He's only 40. What happened?
Doctor 2: It's simple really. He drank Pepsi One for two years and ran marathons.
Doctor: Didn't he know that Splenda caused instant spleen cancer and a certain death? I mean, the words “spleen die” are practically in the name.
Doctor 2: They didn't know back then. They thought it was healthier than high fructose corn syrup, which we know now to decrease the likelihood of cancer, diabetes, and increase penis size and girth by up to 40%.
Doctor: Poor dead fool, he probably used half of the life he had trying to “stay in shape”. I bet he regretted those abs when the Great Corn Famine came.

But that fear is rational. I believe that what I'm eating is generally non-lethal, but recognize that there is no certainty in that arena. But how can I be afraid of something in which I genuinely affirmatively and emphatically do not believe? And why don't I believe?

Ok, the last question is explained by the prior entry. I am a skeptic and I think I do far better at it than the so-called skeptics who have adopted full-on atheism, which is adopting a form of skepticism without doubt, which is...nothing. I also am fully convinced (take that, skepticism) that the human brain has a nearly limitless capacity.

And, I think that this offers some explanation. I am afraid of ghosts, even though I don't think ghosts are real, because 1) one of my greatest and most omnipresent fears in life is being wrong, 2) I have lingering doubts about even the non-belief in ghosts (which cannot be categorically disproven, even if wholly illogical), and 3) even many of the quasi-rational (within the realm of possibility, if beyond the realm of plausibility) explanations for things that go bump in the night. When I hear something bump in my closet or rustle under the bed, it may not be the ghost of Blackbeard under there, but it may well be Earl Carter, the Dixie Disemboweler who escaped from prison. It's sure not likely he's been under my bed undetected since I got home, but it's not as if I regularly check under the bed either. (Actually, I would note that given that Wilmington (population 72,664) has had 28 murders in the calendar year of 2010, which is still about 1/13th from over, gunmen trying to kill me ought to be a substantially greater fear than it is.)

So I guess that raises a new question, which is really the old question. Does the fact that I am afraid prove that I actually believe in ghosts even if I don't think I do? Can you be afraid of something that you do not believe in? Or does it just prove that I'm a coward? (That, of course, is a fact about which my belief had reached a semi-religious fervor ages ago.)

Skepticism, Fear and Belief: Part 1 - skepticism

2010-12-04T08:21:00.000-05:00

“I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.”
The Cowardly Lion, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Yes, I haven't written anything in a blog in ages that didn't deal solely with sports or music. Rather than try and conjure an explanation, accept it as a given – anyway, this is a multi-part tome right here. We're underway.

I am a skeptic. I am skeptical of most things, I wrap myself in a blanket of cynicism. In fact, nay, it's a snuggie of cynicism; that's right, my cynicism has sleeves. Suck on it, Richard Dawkins. I'm so skeptical that I am skeptical of what has come to be regarded as skepticism. Case in point: a friend of mine expressed envy of her friends who met some famed “skeptic” at Skepticon.

Yes. There is a Skepticism convention.

This incenses me. I am ready to take arms against these people. As I commented, the idea of gathering together to share a common non-belief is something that I thought had been limited to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field or any sports arena in Cleveland – any alternative is just a profoundly self-congratulatory thing to do. Skepticon is a convention of true believers, their only belief, however, is a non-belief. To me, anyone with that much certainty that they are right is a grave threat to rationality. Given that any argument about the supernatural is necessarily removed from logic, you can never prove or disprove the supernatural and your beliefs are, for that reason, beliefs and nothing more. Rebutting the acccoutrements of belief (like religious zealots trying to cram theological beliefs into schools) may be a valid exercise of your time, but meeting to debate and disprove the unprovable strikes me as, for lack of a kinder phrase, the most pretentious and retarded idea of our times. And, of course, given that it's naked advocacy for a belief, it is the antithesis of skepticism.

Now, a defender could say that the point is not to celebrate non-belief, but that the point is to have debates with religious believers to point out that those beliefs are not rooted in logic. Fair enough, if there was someone who actually believed their religious beliefs were rooted in any logic other than Pascal's Wager, which, of course, would still skew heavily in favor of belief, given that one of its premises is that there is literally nothing worse than hell. If there's a person out there, they might decide to replace their false-logic-based religious beliefs with...religious beliefs?

Skepticism without doubt is faith, even if it doesn't involve a bearded guy in the sky, the evil lord Xenu, or the flying spaghetti monster.

Moreover, celebrating your non-belief in something because you regard the belief as illogical doesn't finish the answer. Why do you not believe? Not merely because you do not think it logical, that's not an answer. Why do you not believe it to be logical? Was it some heroic choice of free will? Isn't free will itself a silly idea, since it can't be explained scientifically? If all my belief and thought is comes from a different level of dopamine that's pushed out by my brain thanks to DNA I had nothing to do with assembling, aren't we back at a level of predestination that only a Calvinist could have concocted? Here, I don't have any answer. My best guess is...yes. And that's so depressing that the Catholic Church seems like a joyful celebration.

And so that explains why it's been so long since I posted. It's fatalism. Now the real explanation for how this came about will follow.

2008-10-04T16:38:00.000-04:00

Fannie Mae forgives the loan of the 90-year-old woman who shot herself while being evicted.

Well done, Fannie Mae.

1) You just got bailed out by the government, so those are now publicly-owned mortages that you're giving up because this lady shot herself.
2) You're teaching all sorts of negative life lessons by forgiving someone who takes irrational action in response to foreclosure. Now, we can expect a lot more people to at least contemplate this kind of stupid act in the hopes that it will protect them somehow.

Who in their right mind would make this loan in the first place? It's a mortgage for $45,000 that they actually gave to an 86-year-old woman. It might be one of the best examples of predatory lending. But that doesn't give us any reason to forgive a loan to a woman just because she doesn't have the sense not to kill herself.

Hot off the presses...

2008-03-16T17:01:00.001-04:00

Roger Clemens discovered to have used performance-enhancing soap in late 1980s.

A letter from representatives of former Clemens personal trainer Brian McNamee implicated three-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens of involvement in a number of efforts to secure performance-enhancing substance.

The letter stated "Roger Clemens has used steroids and human growth hormone for a number of years. However, perhaps of even greater concern to baseball is the revelation that Clemens has been using performance-enhancing consumer products since his meteoric rise into the big leagues in the second half of the 1980s." McNamee offered as proof this recently-revealed video of Roger Clemens using performance-enhancing soap.

"While other major league players have played with various levels of soap film limiting their movement and performance, Mr. Clemens has effectively washed his body clean of residue and film, giving him an unfair advantage over the 99% of major leaguers who are left to cope with Lifebuoy, Irish Spring, and whatever soaps they scavenge from road hotels."

"Perhaps more alarming is the fact that Mr. Clemens was aware of the implications of using performance-enhancing soap and took care to dub another person's singing voice in over his own into the inexplicable video," the letter continued.

Congress has not announced whether they will pursue charges against Clemens or P&G Labs, the purported creator of the performance-enhancing soap known as "Zest" (believed to be short for Zinc Ethyl Steroidal Tetrazone). Upon advice from ousted New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, the IRS is attempting to contact the nude women appearing in the video to confirm whether Clemens is, in fact, the man known as "Client 9".

Clemens declined the opportunity to respond to reports that he was "Zestfully clean".

14 going on 50

2008-03-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

So I've now read 14 books this year, after a serious diversion last month for work-related reasons.

January (7):
Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz
Nothing's Sacred by Lewis Black
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Liars' Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage On Wall Street by Michael Lewis

February (2)
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm by Jon Katz
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

March (5)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Supreme Conflict by Jan Crawford-Greenburg
A Practical Guide to Racism by C.H. Dalton
Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Fiction: 4
Non-fiction: 10

I'll be brief with my discussions of the new books to the list, since a lot of time has passed.

In summary,
February
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm - Average, but underwhelming, Katz is pretty judgmental and pretentious, he loves dogs, but he criticizes others for loving them too much and treating them like children, because whatever love they show that exceeds what he shows his dogs is wrong. All while he abandoned his family and moved to a farm to herd sheep because of his dogs. Yeah, that's not contradictory. It's occasionally endearing, but he's too distant to be writing about emotional bonds with animals. Not recommended, particularly if you love dogs.

The Body Artist - Well, one of these years I had to finish a DeLillo book, given that I have almost all of them. I chose the wrong one, because this is self-consciously abstract and obscure, albeit mercifully brief -- which is why I chose to read it when the deployment to NYC was impending, I thought I could actually finish it, and I did, just barely. Not recommended.

March
A Confederacy of Dunces - This won a Pulitzer? It's a farcical collection of off-the-wall characters that is relatively innocuous and doesn't add up to something until its conclusion, which goes on for sixty pages, but still seems brisk. I'm still puzzled by the critical acclaim, but it's a generally innocuous book, albeit one that's relatively dense (my work schedule may have had something to do with the month it took to read this, but it wasn't the sole factor). Recommended

Supreme Conflict - Did you know that Clarence Thomas was confirmed and is currently on the Supreme Court? That's about all you'll learn from Jan Crawford-Greenburg, who puts a lot more focus on the other justices who have been nominated in recent years. It'd be puzzling if it didn't fit in so closely with her moderate right-wing approach to the Supreme Court appointment process. She's fairly even-handed, but it's not hard to tell where her sympathies lie, which can get tiresome. You will learn more about Bush's approach to appointing Supreme Court appointments here than you would from The Nine, and there's less fawning over Justice O'Connor, who ranks among my top 10 worst justices in the history of the Court (let's be honest, this blog got its title from her mastery of callousness), but she also dodges issues of interest, like the Thomas confirmation hearings, which are basically skipped so that she can deride the appointment of David Souter as executive ineptitude first because it didn't accomplish the goal H.W. Bush had, later because it's clear she has affirmative contempt for Souter. Recommended, but not if you have access to other Supreme Court writings, because frankly, aside from Rehnquist's history of the Supreme Court, I've yet to find anything that's not worth reading on a largely under-covered topic.

A Practical Guide to Racism - It's funny. Mission accomplished. It has plenty of highlights, I knew I had to buy the book after reading the discussion of Mormons. It's a premise that's executed very well for 160 pages, but the glossary at the end is tiresome. That said, if you're not on some ill-advised quest to read 50 books cover-to-cover...you wouldn't sit and read every relentless word of it. So, because you're not psychotic, this is highly recommended.

Mere Anarchy - Well, most of these were published in the New Yorker, so it's no surprise that the only link the stories have is that they are all pretentious. The verbiage is annoying at times and his character names are an exercise in reader's tolerance for complete absurdity, but most of the stories are whimsical or amusing enough to justify the twenty minutes it will take to read the entire book. Harmless fluff, recommended if you think you could possibly like it, definitely not recommended to anyone who has any doubts.

Into Thin Air - It's certainly not the page turned that Into the Wild is, because that book was gripping from start to finish and took no effort at all to get into. Into Thin Air is a far more gradual book, which teaches you about the tedium that is involved in preparing for a mountain climb, but once they start to ascend the mountain, it is hard to put down. It's certainly hard to gauge how objective the account is, but it's a readable one in any event, and almost certainly the best book I've read this year. Highly recommended.

Nobody puts Swayze in a corner...

2008-03-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

Whoopi Goldberg says she would not have won her Oscar for Ghost without Patrick Swayze

You know, Whoopi, the guy already has cancer. Now is not the time to blame him for your Oscar win too.

Dusty Trails

2008-03-04T19:47:00.000-05:00

I'm hoping that Dusty Baker realizes that his name would be apt for an entertainer in what must be an ever-growing industry -- videographed adult entertainment. Because his true calling is apparently far from his current occupation of baseball soothsayer.

Today, in no small part because of Dusty's fetish for elder players (again, he's got himself a niche -- mature porn it is), the franchise for which he now festers acquired two of the least efficient and least impressive specimens in the game of baseball today. One who can't walk (hm...figuratively, there has to be some sort of paralysis fetish/handicapped porn -- but at the very least, Corey Patterson's inability means he certainly should have glasses, which probably puts him into his own niche) and who is utterly lacking of talent (hm...amateur?).

If only he had a thing for barely legal center fielders, the Reds would have a shot. Instead, like many participants in the adult entertainment industry, they're just f***ed.

(The editor offers his thanks to the Adult Entertainment Association of America for their gracious assistance in this blog post).

Oh yeah, well, you're a beet farmer...

2008-03-02T10:12:00.002-05:00

So a co-worker of mine alerted me to the existence of firejoemorgan.com six months ago, and I suspect 2 of the six months since have been spent reading it and re-reading it. It merges my interest in baseball and scorn for David Eckstein into one concise package.

For that matter, the next few months will continue to be spent reading it, which obligates me to vent to no one about how it has wronged me with its calm reminder that there are people in the world who love Moneyball, namely my fiancee, who does not like baseball, everyone else who does not like baseball, and people who read the book the way you're supposed to read LSAT reading comprehension sections -- delightfully ignoring each and every word while attempting to impose your own meaning on it. Some of us it shuttles to lowly Cornell Law School where we wonder how anyone who is regarded as brilliant signs Lou Merloni to anything but a suicide pact, others it allows to enjoy reading Michael Lewis' work and mistaking it for an accurate and true syllogism of of baseball genius.

Ken Tremendous is also a television writer who has written episodes of The Office and plays Cousin Mose. So I'm going to refer to him as Cousin Mose out of respect.

1) You'll note that cousin Mose decays into using wins and losses to defend Esteban Loaiza, which is a fair indicator that there wasn't much that could be said to defend the Loaiza signing, because wins and losses are hardly the ultimate measure -- as Cousin Mose, among others on the site, point out on a near-daily basis while attempting to refute baseball's biggest cretins.

2) The injuries in 2007 nearly all happened to Mr. Glass. It's one thing to decry an onslaught of injuries when it happens to players who don't have a history. But when your injured list starts out with Milton Bradley, Rich Harden, Bobby Crosby, and Eric Chavez, it's about 3% more surprising than Kerry Wood and Mark Prior being injured at the same time. Chavez had suffered significant injuries in two of the last three seasons. Harden has had just one season where he made it through an entire season on the mound, and his closest after that, he made 22 appearances and 17 starts. Bobby Crosby has been injured three of his four major league seasons, and has been limited to an average of about 90 games in those three seasons. And is not good. Not even close to good. A .255 EqA, a 7.1 VORP, which pales in comparison to BP's projections for Alex Gonzalez's mighty 11.3, Asdrubal Cabrera's 11.5, and even Marco Scutaro's 6.5. So, thus far, we have three players from whom you automatically discount at least 1/5 of a 162 game schedule and that fantasy players won't even touch because of their fragility. Then add Milton Bradley, who's never finished a season without injury. So, thus far, you have four players who all had to be figured for a 66-100% of missing significant time with injuries. They are all injured. It doesn't take me Paul DePodesta to regard this as statistically insignificant. In fact, it was more probable than not. (Forgive me for the crude calculations, it's relatively silly to say that if you've been injured in three of the past four years, you have a 75% likelihood of injury -- but it's considerably less silly than ignoring the player's injury history entirely.

3) I'm being generous to exclude Mark Kotsay and his bad back that showed up after he arrived in Oakland. Then you add Kotsay, who was coming into the season as Mike Sweeney and lo and behold, did not experience a miraculous recovery from back problems. Maybe go to Lourdes? Then add Dan Johnson. Wait. Well, if you want to be specious, you can say that the injuries to Dan Johnson held back the A's his 108 OPS+ must have been truly coveted, since it'd have taken a herculean performance from a slightly better than average, but still worse than Aaron Boone (113 OPS+) player to replace him. You know, like Daric Barton, an actually promising player (186 OPS+ in extremely limited time -- limited primarily by Beane's refusal to call him up, so that he could keep Todd "OPS Deadweight" Walker on the roster filling in at 1B along with moving Nick Swisher into the infield to make room for Kielty, who would be released in June.

4) How about mentioning that for some reason Billy Beane saw it fit to acquire Jason Kendall, a man whose immense talent for things other than baseball are rivaled only for by his immense lack of talent for baseball after his gruesome ankle injury (read: Jason Kendall's going to get hall of fame votes, his ankle may come to rival Andre Dawson's ravaged knees if he can fall ass-backwards into a World Series). And after seasons of 79 and 88 OPS+ (well below average), he still did nothing to bring in a rival catcher or ... huh ... he didn't want Jeremy Brown playing instead. In fact, Jeremy Brown, who retired for "personal-non-talent-related" reasons couldn't even carry Kendall's jockstrap, because Adam Melhuse got that job. Billy Beane, when given a big sack of money, can't even help himself from throwing it at players who make 3 years of Derek Bell for $9 million look like a clearance sale at Dollar General. He signs and re-signs only dead weight, so while he may draft well and he still makes some impressive swindles on the trade market, he also makes his share of awful trades, like giving away future All-Star Mark Redman and a fine pair of earrings in Arthur Rhodes for Jason Kendall. The sad thing is that those are the best things I can say about those players, and yet I would still much rather have them than Jason Kendall.

5) When you sign players like Mike Sweeney, you expect Mike Sweeney-like production, which means "Ow, I hurt my back. See you in September." They have gotten that from the players that fall into the Mike Sweeney category. The few aberrant injuries came to Huston Street (who will be leaving as an overpaid closer very shortly), Justin Duchscherer, and Kiki Calero. These are significant injuries to three very solid pitchers. Injuries that, if they had never happened, could theoretically have led to the A's winning...how many more games? And if we resurrect the broken-down bat of Eric Chavez, whose last season of .800+ OPS was 2004, so he could contribute at his 2006 levels...you're right. The A's still miss the playoffs, and not by a particularly close margin, even in the worst division in the AL.

6) The chapter on the major league draft is really quite significant. You really need to go read it again before you tell me how amazing Moneyball is. What you really learn is that Billy Beane thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and in doing so, he mocks picks that have turned out considerably better than his own. Beane had a great first round that year, three of his four picks hit (Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, Mark Teahen), one of them missed (Jeremy Brown). Swisher and Blanton were coveted by other teams, and Beane was surprised either of them fell to the slots they were in. Jeremy Brown was not regarded highly by anyone, for the most part it sounds like no one knew of him. And for their ignorance, those teams had less talented AA players those three years Jeremy Brown spent in Midland. But time has also taught us that Billy Beane was wrong. Prince Fielder, mocked as much as he was in that chapter by Beane himself, is a significantly better player than Nick Swisher. Fielder last season had a 156 OPS+, VORP of 69.1. Swisher? OPS+ of 127, VORP of 31.5. Not a bad player, by any means, and better defensively than Fielder. But eat your words, Beane. Basically, aside from 4 of the top 5 picks, who have been largely sidelined by injury (thanks a lot, Chris Gruler) or were picked way above their talent level (Bryan Bullington), there were a lot of hits in that first round. Zack Greinke, Jeremy Hermida, Jeff Francis, Scott Kazmir (who Beane derides), Cole Hamels, James Loney, Jeremy Guthrie, Jeff Francouer (if you ignore the fact that he can't draw walks and that he's not a good player -- most do), Mark Teahen.

7) Jeremy Brown's career OPS is barely above .800. It's like saying you go to one of the top 7 rated schools...when you say top 7, you mean that you go to #7, and next year, you may be going to #8 or 9. His OPS is .809 in the minor leagues. Thus, he's a supremely talented player who is more than capable of beating up on minor league pitching Crash Davis style and someday will meet a philosophical woman named Annie and a fireballer named Nuke who looks vastly inappropriate while attempting to throw pitches, clearly proving that Ron Shelton can't write scripts that teach Tim Robbins to pitch or Kevin Costner to act. Breathe. Fact: Jeremy Brown had two really good seasons in the minors, three that were less impressive. He had gotten leaped over by another college catcher who was more highly regarded coming out of college who put together a pedestrian .799 career OPS in the minors (for shame, Kurt Suzuki), but was apparently seen as more likely to contribute in the major leagues, since Jeremy Brown's been spending the last two years really familiar with the RiverCats after three years at Midland. He had spent six years in the minors after being drafted as a college senior. You can call it what you want, but he was too old to be a prospect (and was not regarded as one by Baseball America for the last four years, failing to crack the top 30 prospects in any of those seasons, unlike players as unknown as the A's Minor league player of the year Andre Ethier). Russ Morman had an OPS exceeding 800 in a much lengthier career in the minors, you can ask him why he retired (answer: hanging around AAA for ten years gets tiresome). So it was for personal reasons, but one can easily suspect that the personal reasons involved being unable to live up to the unwanted expectations that came with being in Moneyball and his inability to crack the major league roster and see any playing time. And Landon Powell had just passed him up on the likelihood of being in the majors list, the A's had traded to get Rob Bowen and kept him on the 40-man roster, so he was a 28-year-old 4A catcher who wasn't on the 40-man roster (and had been dumped from the 40-man roster without getting any interest on the waiver wire), hadn't gotten picked in the Rule 5 draft, and wasn't probably going to catch a lot of interest from anyone else on the market. Those are very personal reasons, but there's a lot of baseball involved in them too. If he has a dying relative or something of that sort, then that might have been the biggest catalyst for him to make a decision rather than postpone the inevitable, but there's not too many people lining up to say it wasn't inevitable.

Once again, Baseball Prospectus is telling. "When it comes to Jeremy Brown, the A's might not be selling jeans, but nobody's buying the idea that he's much of a ballplayer anymore, either."

Lastly, that begins to refute this defense of Moneyball, which is emphatically harder than refuting Moneyball itself, which can be summed up in about three words, but I will, with my lawyer-like sensibility, take considerably more.

8) Moneyball glorifies two players above all others on the roster -- Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford. They typify the underlying Beane theory -- don't overpay for players because you can find production in castaways. This is fine and good. The teams that the A's were taking to the playoffs when Moneyball came out involved a couple of other players that you may have heard of if you were a Cy Young voter. Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. They are barely mentioned in Moneyball. Nearly all the time is devoted to discussions of how important on-base percentage is, Zito, Mulder and Hudson warrant about a paragraph of mention, while Chad Bradford gets a chapter. As much as OBP and OPS are important statistics that are overlooked even now in an era where Juan Pierre finds work in a baseball-related job, they don't have much to do with the A's success. Even in their halcyon days of reaching the playoffs, the team OBP is not at the pinnacle of the AL (3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th, I'm told in a correction to my earlier hyperbole). Their ERA, on the other hand, is near the top of the AL every year they made the playoffs. So if you want to prove the importance of OBP, find a team that found success because they could hit and reach base safely through walks. Don't find a team that had a couple flashes from young players who went on to bleed money from other GMs and then have their steroid-backed bodies break down into nothingness. Beane's supplemental parts might have had value, but they weren't the driving force behind success.

9) Listen, I hate bunting too, but in the most thrilling (read: I'm being as specious as Michael Lewis, it's the only A's playoff game I remember) game in which the A's found playoff success, how did they do it? They bunted. Didn't Billy Beane read Moneyball? What a moron. (I'm referring to game 1 of the 2003 ALDS against the Red Sox, where the A's won on a bunt single from Ramon Hernandez). While I hate people who think Asdrubal Cabrera is the Indians' savior because he knows how to generate bunt outs, it's clear that abandoning the bunt entirely isn't really a part of Beane's plan either.

10) The glorified assistants -- Moneyball also details how crafty Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi were using computers to make great teams. Paul DePodesta then went on to suck with the Dodgers, J.P. Ricciardi took everything he learned from Beane, then spent all his money on a closer anyway and now has a dynamite closer named Jeremy Accardo that he discovered only through Tommy John surgery for B.J. Ryan. And while Moneyball lauded Ricciardi for turning around the Blue Jays with a modest payroll, when the book was published, it was a lie because they had one of the ten highest payrolls in the major leagues (Carlos Delgado was a factor) and they had not, and still have not, turned anything around. DePodesta was present for the destruction of the Cleveland Indians (the wacky John Hart years where the Indians landed such dynamite talents as John Smiley, Ricardo Rincon and Kevin Seitzer in exchange for actual major league players, although the healing has begun, I can no longer say the Indians miss Jeromy Burnitz or Danny Graves) and lasted about the length of a Will Ferrell film in Los Angeles.

11) OBP is not Beane's revelation, not even for the A's. Sandy Alderson started this process. If you don't believe me, read The Numbers Game. Beane is a genius because he drafted Tim Hudson in the 6th round in 1997 (editor's note: whoops, no he didn't. That was Sandy Alderson -- Beane's efforts were far more middling.), Mark Mulder in the 1998 draft (2nd overall pick), and Barry Zito in the first round in 1999 (ninth overall pick). Two of those three were in the top 10 picks in the draft, where it's at least harder to miss. Still, they were off the charts successes and Beane deserves credit for them and for at least starting to shy away from high school players (though he's abandoned this in recent years) in favor of quicker turnaround players from college.

You can hate Moneyball and still like numbers that are relevant. It's not even difficult, you just have to be willing to accept that about 90% (or even all) of the premises can be true without the conclusion (performing sexual favors for Billy Beane is a necessary and Opus Deian act of self-abasement) following from them.

12) Bobby Crosby is not a good baseball player. He had one good season. Period. I cannot mention this enough.

The Mitchell Report

2007-12-13T19:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, that's right, I read it. The whole damn thing until he got to the recommendations, which are obviously not my concern, because I am neither a member of the MLBPA nor a person of any authority. But I did read the entire scandal sheet, including the history (which was particularly enjoyable to resurrect memories of Pascual Perez).

My conclusions:
1) If you're a light-hitting catcher, you've been identified as purchasing steroids. It's a shame Tim Spehr didn't hang on longer, he could certainly have joined Tim Laker, Todd Pratt, Gary Bennett, Greg Zaun, Cody McKay, Ryan Jorgensen, Bobby Estelella...and so on.
2) There's very few surprises, the Clemens thing is considerably more explicit than the others, but generally the people aren't huge surprises, collections of players who weren't there long enough to make an impact or people who were repeatedly broken down (Kevin Brown, Rondell White).
3) No Red Sox. At all. Brendan Donnelly is mentioned (although they non-tendered him), so is Eric Gagne (who they cast away a few weeks ago) but aside from Clemens and Mark Carreon, nearly no one who's ever been associated with the Red Sox seems to show up on the list.
4) Selig ignoring the recommendation not to punish players is hubris to the nth degree. Yes, players have broken the rules, but to punish only those people who were dumb enough to pay with checks or buy from one of two designated sources is ridiculous and arbitrary. As much as I'd love to see Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, and Paul Lo Duca get exiled for a while, it's ridiculous to do it unless you're going to launch a full-scale investigation that would implicate people on the Red Sox too.
5) Man, white people love steroids. This is one really white list of players, considering the ethnic background of the Major Leagues.
6) The Dodgers' organization sure knew what was up. While there's no other documentation of teams indicating that their players were on the juice, the Dodgers' discussion of Kevin Brown and Paul Lo Duca show absolute complicity. Theo Epstein is the only other person who inquired about it, but then he ignored the advice he received and picked up Eric Gagne anyway.

The following people are all named in the Mitchell Report, although several are only mentioned as people who had been identified in the media as receiving HGH or steroids:

Manny Alexander
Chad Allen
Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Mike Bell
Marvin Benard
Gary Bennett
Larry Bigbie
Barry Bonds
Ricky Bones
Kevin Brown
Paul Byrd
Alex Cabrera
Ken Caminiti
Mark Carreon
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Len Dykstra
Bobby Estelella
Matt Franco
Ryan Franklin
Eric Gagne
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Juan Gonzalez
Jason Grimsley
Jose Guillen
Jerry Hairston Jr.
Matt Herges
Phil Hiatt
Glenallen Hill
Darren Holmes
Todd Hundley
Ryan Jorgensen
Wally Joyner
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul LoDuca
Nook Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Gary Matthews Jr.
Mark McGwire
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Dan Naulty
Denny Neagle
Rafael Palmeiro
Jim Parque
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Adam Riggs
Armando Rios
Brian Roberts
John Rocker
F.P. Santangelo
Benito Santiago
Scott Schoeneweis
Gary Sheffield
Mike Spinelli
Mike Stanton
Miguel Tejada
Derrick Turnbow
Ismael Valdez
Mo Vaughn
Randy Velarde
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Matt Williams
Todd Williams
Steve Woodard
Kevin Young
Gregg Zaun

2007-01-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

10 reasons there should not be a college football playoff...

1) How many teams? If it's four, why is it four and not eight? If it's eight, why not four? If it's eight, why not 16? Hell, why not just have 65 teams and make the regular season as utterly meaningless as college basketball's unwatchable first four months of meaninglessness?

2) Where the hell are these games being played? I'm sorry, but having neutral site playoffs is utterly lame, having better seeded teams play at home is way too advantageous to be fair in any meaningful sense, given that the differences are theoretically negligible, hence the need for the playoff.

3) How often are there 3 teams equally worthy to be in the title game? Oh sure, it's happened, Auburn got screwed a few years back, but let's face it, there's usually 2 or fewer teams who warrant being in the title game. The solution to that is certainly not playing more games. Ohio State went undefeated, no one else aside from Boise State did. Ohio State should not have to win two games to win the title, because they shouldn't have to play any of these teams.

4) How flexible will it be? Absolutely inflexible, it is the NCAA. So it doesn't work more often than not. If there's three teams, it's not a round robin, it's still going to be a final four, so a fourth team who is less worthy than the other three now gets to crash a party they weren't entitled to it. Moreover, you can't change things, because people have to be able to plan their vacations at some point, tickets have to be sold, ad time has to be sold, and even a 40 day layoff won't be enough to placate the NCAA's money-generating machine.

5) How much does this game really matter? College football teaches lots of harsh life lessons. If you lose a game, more often than not, you're screwed. That ends it for you, you're just playing to ruin everyone else's season. If there's a playoff and you lose, you just have to go out and run up the score in all subsequent games to look like a dominating team.

6) How much bias could this remove? Lose early, win late, you're going to be blessed with an inflated ranking. Win early and lose your final game...and you're done. This isn't going to change with a playoff, because a playoff is still fundamentally flawed, because voters and computers are going to elect the teams to those games, whether they warrant it or not. You're just making it be a screw up as to who the fourth or eighth team to get in is, instead of the second team.

7) Whither Boise State? The Playoff, unless it expands to eight or sixteen teams, would virtually never address the biggest weakness with the current system, which is that an undefeated team like Boise State won't ever get to test themselves against a real top team. They didn't play a 1-loss team, they didn't even play the top 2-loss team. They got relegated to playing a team who was no better than the 6th best team in the BCS (behind Ohio State, Florida, USC, Michigan, and LSU).

8) What strength of schedule? Notre Dame made the BCS. Notre Dame had one of the weakest schedules of any team on God's green earth. So how'd they get in the BCS? They have fans, they have a lucrative TV deal, and they had a preseason #1 ranking. None of these things changes with a playoff. None of them is going to have less impact on a playoff system that will be even more driven by TV ratings, since it would dispense with conference champions altogether.

9) What conference champion? Fact is, conference championships should usually mean something. It's only true mockeries like last year's FSU/Pittsburgh team that crash the BCS and make it a joke. This year, all the teams at least had some business being there, with the possible exception of Wake Forest, who at least made their game fairly even. So if we dispense with all significance to winning a conference, conferences like the SEC are harmed even more for having a hair more quality than others (not as much as the media would tell you, though, its teams still lost some bad games).

10) What about everybody else? Name one dark horse team that would have made an appearance in this college football playoff. Not Northwestern with Darnell Autry, not Boise State with Jared Zabransky/Ivan Johnson, not Utah with Alex Smith, none of these teams would have made it into a top 4 playoff. Not one of them. We lose some of college football's best sheer amusements and finest triumphs. So how are we making things less arbitrary? Sure, it has a modest gain, because teams like USC don't waltz through a soft conference to a single-game season, but if they were really all that soft...how were they going to win that title game? You can see from the last few years that USC sure lived on the lucky side by playing a weak conference and a soft non-conference prior to 2006, but the seasons they won the title games, they weren't particularly disputed. Truly dominant teams like Miami in 2002 (they played a pathetic Nebraska team with Eric Crouch and little else) shouldn't have to do it twice, because there's no one who has a right to play them to begin with. Moreover, seasons like 2001 where there are two deserving undefeated teams (Ohio State and Miami), there's no reason to add a pair of unworthy teams.

Why not just insist that firms abuse their attorneys more?

2006-12-13T23:29:00.000-05:00

Scalia: pity the poor $165,000 a year jurist...

Is there anything less sympathetic than invoking the poor SDNY judge who suffers through a salary of $165,000?

Yes, me. I am considerably less sympathetic and slightly less well-compensated. However, while it's an injustice, it's not one that the federal government should be taking any action to correct.

But even if I were not nearly outearning Judge Scheindlin, and that's not much of an injustice given her body of work in recent years, she has something that lawyers do not have -- security.
Lawyers do not have lifetime appointments. Lawyers do not have pension plans, unless they make partner, in which case they don't need any sort of retirement plan except "Find a woman half my age. Marry. Rinse, lather, repeat."

Federal judges have the ability to be imprisoned without losing their job. Let us all recall the heroic Walter Nixon, who not only drew a paycheck while serving time in prison, but also managed to take his impeachment to the Supreme Court and evoke Rehnquist's fine "epistemological fog" argument in response to defining the word "try." That all happened before this guy lost his job for being a felon.

Federal judges have clerks. Oh, lord, what I would not give to have clerks as a junior associate. It's not enough to have junior associates beneath you, because let's face it, you didn't hire them, you will still have to do some of your work, and if you do an incompetent job, you'll start to receive suggestions that you open that restaurant you always have been talking about or become a professional riverboat gambler, anything to get you to quit your current job.

Federal judges work at the ultimate lifestyle firm -- the United States government. There are a lot of federal holidays, the hours are as reasonable as you want them to be so long as you can keep up with a speedy trial calendar

Federal judges have prestige. Any judge has some prestige, but federal judges carry a lot of weight. They get opportunities to witness things that your ordinary lawyer never will.

Federal judges could honestly do nothing and face little criticism for it. Let's face it, if a judge wanted to, they could just decide things from the bench, never research an issue or bother to ask their clerks to do it, they could just work on their putting game in chambers, meet with a few attorneys, and develop a dreadful reputation for arbitrariness and caprice. What happens? They serve as a judge until they die or retire. While a judge may care about his reputation, he or she certainly doesn't need to, they just need to stay one step away from being impeached. Let me assure you that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind to get yourself impeached (see also Nixon, Walter).

You can make more in the private sector, it's true. But that's not the end of the story. If you're saying a SDNY judge doesn't earn enough to raise a family, you may be right (though there are a whole lot of people raising families in the Southern District of New York while making 10% of that, so you are, in fact, wrong). But now place that SDNY judge back in his job at Cravath or Jones Day...now he's making more as a seventh year associate or even junior partner. But he still can't raise a damn family, because his firm owns him 18 hours a day with an option for 6 more. When there's no telling whether you'll be home at all, let alone in time for a 9 p.m. dinner, you're going to have a hard time raising a family anywhere.

Will the judiciary have a hard time grabbing the top lawyers? Yes, sometimes. But it's not firms they're going to lose them to, it's sophistry in America's finest law schools. If you offer the opportunity to become a federal judge to any 1st-8th year litigator, my guess is that your answer is going to be yes 9 out of 10 times. And that other prick is wearing monogrammed shirt sleeves and has had the goal of making partner since he got kicked off the tee-ball team for wearing metal cleats.

Now as to those I <3 Boobs T-shirts...

2006-12-12T22:17:00.000-05:00

At long last, the Supreme Court has answered the vital question of what people in attendance at a murder trial can wear.

Carey v. Musladin

It lacks that certain Justice Thomas-I'm-overruling-stuff-that's-not-even-law-yet panache, but don't worry, Court fans, it's early season, where only the most unanimous of opinions are being thrown out at the women who insist on standing outside the Court throwing brassieres onto its front steps. And that's just Cindy Sheehan, who has to hang out somewhere. Oh, and although it doesn't sound like it, and although I don't think even Justice Thomas intended to, he made it happen in fine form today.

For those of you too intimidated by headnotes to penetrate the curt and breezy opinion's 6 pages, the Supreme Court determined that members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them at trial.

Wait, no, that's too sweeping. Step back.

They decided that members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them while the family members sit in the front row of the audience at a murder trial.

Hm. No, still too sweeping. That looks like a precedent.

They decided that when members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them while the family members sit in the front row of the audience at a murder trial, it is not inherently prejudicial.

That's where it stops, right? Wrong.

This is the quiet beauty of AEDPA, the court systems are spent dealing with minutiae that can't possibly add up to a precedent, which is why the only thing that the Supreme Court can point to as inherently prejudicial is...damn, can't think of anything but shackling him. The best case the Court can point to as an analog here is Estelle v. Williams which is, under the O'Connor dicta the Court is adopting as a holding -- utterly meaningless in a habeas context. I will note that the trend of glorifying the street commodity of a bean balance that is the former Madame Justice is growing in popularity in habeas and Establishment Clause jurisprudence, proving once and for all that both fields of law are irreparably broken and the courts may fare better with a dart board or a party of five year olds pinning the case law on the majority opinion.

But now I must digress back into my point. Justice Thomas notes the O'Connor offering in a concurrence where she was only joined by Justice Stevens (hardly a font of beloved precedents these days -- just read Kyllo) that "clearly established Federal law" refers to the "holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court." Then Thomas points out that this isn't clearly established law, there's no holding saying anything about people in the audience, there's no holding saying anything, in Estelle v. Williams, it was a question about dressing the defendant in prison clothing and so on.

But here's the lingering question. Why cite to these cases? What precedential authority does any discussion of Estelle v. Williams have? None. As Thomas states, it's a case where a defendant failed to object. It's like an exhaustion question. It has nothing to do with habeas in a non-exhaustion context. Any discussion of inherent prejudice from Estelle is, by his prior definition, pointless. Thomas then lists the panoply of disagreements from every court in the country as to whether the issue of whether Williams and Flynn have any application to people in attendance at trials or only state-sanctioned conduct and so on. Which all creates the illusion of an actually drafted legal opinion. That, my friends, it ain't. Ask yourself...what is the holding in this case? The holding in this case is not that the family's actions were not inherently prejudicial. In fact, the holding in this case is that there is no established federal law saying that they were not inherently prejudicial and there never has been. What's more, there never can be established federal law saying that it is not inherently prejudicial, because whatever Court offers that holding is exceeding its role under AEDPA.

So what is Carey v. Masludin? It's officially the end of history. Six justices take no issue with O'Connor's two cents on AEDPA and from this day forward, established federal law with regard to trial practice in a criminal context cannot change until AEDPA is replaced with something more draconian.

Don't get me wrong, the result in Carey v. Masludin is rightly decided, nine justices knew there wasn't much reason to fight this conclusion. That said, the next victim's family better not stop with the "my kid's in the band" plain photo buttons that these people did. I expect production values. I expect T-Shirts that read in 45 point Comic Sans MS (to keep things light) -- Defendant Brutally Murdered My Child and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. Find me clearly established federal law that prohibits it. And if you do, change the word "And" to "--" and I've got you a habeas-proof trial.

AEDPA has proven once and for all that the Republican party has been idiotic with its approach to all controversies. Every time someone burned a flag, aborted a fetus, or stopped a school prayer, they threatened to yank the Court's jurisdiction. That got people who understood jurisdiction angry, it got the Court indignant, and it ended up vanishing into a puff of smoke. But thanks to O'Connor's desperate attempt to join a majority intent on rendering AEDPA meaningless in Terry Williams, now AEDPA has left the Supreme Court as the kid with the Playskool steering wheel in the backseat of Congress' Hummer.

2006-11-09T23:28:00.000-05:00

Things the Democratic Congress* Should Do, But Probably Won't (for the *, see #6):

1) Open things up. This is the biggest sin that the platformless Republican party committed against America, but it's a grave one. More stuff got pushed behind closed doors into committee meetings that only took place when Republicans and only Republicans were in the room. Thousands of pages of things were silently put into a record that the Democrats who opposed the legislation never saw (not that it would matter, it was destined for victory).

2) Create open hearings on the secret prisons and rendition practices of the Bush administration. Listen, I know it relates somewhat to national security, but it's also KGBish. We don't do this stuff in this country, or at the very least we don't get caught.

3) Two words - trade deficit. We used to be a financial partner. We are now a financial purchaser. This is inevitably going to doom our nation unless we do something to correct it. We need to manufacture something other than weapons, we need to export something other than our troops, and we need to spark some sort of industry more meaningful than pets.com. It's not going to be easy, we're on a downward spiral and the "solutions" that are used to lessen the trade deficit don't help anyone but scions of industry (restrict all 50 non-municipal employees who are in unions, decrease wages, protective tariffs). But something needs to be done, and we could start by being more choosy about our trading partners. There's no reason our country should be funneling billions of dollars in profits to China, when China is the greatest threat to the United States' future survival.

4) The Estate Tax - Wah wah wah, cry me a gooddamn river. If you die leaving $7,000,000 and can't figure out how to avoid the estate tax, you should lose a lot more than they're charging you. For one, being born to rich parents has already entitled you to too much. Secondly, it's not an estate tax, it's a sloth tax. Any idiot can hide money from the estate tax through completely legal means. If you don't prepare for such events, too bad. I don't like the estate tax, but given the deficit 6 years of Bushonomics have caused, we need some money back, and a tax that only punishes the ridiculously wealthy who are also ridiculously stupid is a step in the right direction. Think of it as eugenomics. (both because it's my theory and because it's a mix of eugenics and economics)

5) Rethink our deployment strategies. We can't bring everyone back, the administration has dug its heels into a mass grave in Iraq that will only get worse if we pull everyone out and let the country fall into immediate civil war exceeding what will inevitably result. But we can at least prioritize our deployments and send those who are most reasonably expected to go. No more of the National Guard/Reserve deployment first strategy. Fact is, if you've gotten paid full-time military pay for years, you're the person who should go, not the guy who was willing to join the reserves in case his country needed him. It's not the job of the National Guard to guard other nations or serve in other nations. It's ours. They need to be here for when this nation needs them.

6) Do something to try and keep Joe Lieberman. Blame the blogs for bringing out the Lamont crowd, because lord knows why I'd stay a Democrat if I was Joe Lieberman. The Republicans should be offering him a position of major authority, because it'd give them the unholy power they've wielded unfairly in secret for years. But if Lieberman feels a loyalty to the party which he rarely supports, they will need to do the same. Biden's already cornered the Foreign Relations Committee, but there's plenty of plum deals for Connecticut's favorite incumbent. Make sure he gets one, or you're going to see yourself as a minority in the senate with a mere 50.

7) Listen to Jon Tester. He might be the wisest 7-fingered man in Congress, even if there are others. The Democrats need to consider a more libertarian strategy, or else they'll be back to being the only party without a platform.

8) Insist that every American receive a tax cut in 2007 in the form of a copy of Snakes on a Plane on DVD. It looks good (note the words "tax cut"), but has the same salutory effect that the illusory tax cuts the Republicans put into place had. And it would spark a serious cultural rise in this country.

2006-11-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

I missed out on so much...

Item #1: from the IMDB...When Madonna arrived in Malawi last month she was amazed to discover her name took on a whole different meaning for all the people she met. The "Hung Up" singer has sparked furious debate after adopting David Banda towards the end of her stay in the African country - and began to wonder why locals knew her name when they had no idea of her superstar status. She says, "People started to say my name and they had never heard of Madonna. And, in Chichewa, the word 'madonna' means 'distinguished white lady', so I think they got very confused."
In a nutshell: "distinguished white lady"? Yeah, I can definitely see how that would confuse them.

Item #2: Neil Patrick Harris revealed that he is indeed a homosexual.In a nutshell: Unlike Mark Foley, he did not need to guise it under molestation or alcoholism. That said, Doogie Howser's computer journal might have given Mark Foley a few too many ideas about sharing emotions with a computer.

Item #3: Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hangingIn a nutshell: This is commendable on one count, hanging, if done properly, is probably far more humane than any method of execution used in the United States. As for it being a product of the invasion force...you're damn right it is, and the trial was such a mockery as to be pointless. A fair trial might well have come out to the same conclusions and would have secured no more of Saddam Hussein's cooperation, in fact, it would have been impossible. But what they think they're going to accomplish by martyring him, I don't know. Enjoy your civil war, I hope our people aren't forced to fight it.

Item #4: Man, isn't it interesting that all the people who spread their message that homosexuality is sick and perverse are in fact, sick perverts who are homosexuals?In a nutshell: This is the Roy Cohn generation. Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, who's next, Fred Phelps? Bob Dornan? Jim McGreevey ranked high on the creepy scale when there were conversations about his affair, but he at least wasn't campaigning to stamp out his own existence.

Item #5: The Army Times says it's time for Rumsfeld to goIn a nutshell: Let me assure you that the "independent" publication is nonetheless not that independent. These are papers that are published for people in the military, and it really shows. Whether it's the Air Force Times or the local military newspaper (in Bellevue, it was the Air Pulse), these are not papers that are going to go out on liberal limbs that are going to make news very often.

Item #6: Comcast needs to learn how to write headlinesComcast's Headline: Renowned Screenwriter Schrader DiesIn a nutshell: Paul Schrader ( writer of, among other films, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and writer/director of Hardcore and Affliction) is, in fact, still alive. His brother, Leonard Schrader, has died. Paul Schrader is one of the most renowned screenwriters (though, in my opinion, he's living on borrowed time and has done nothing since 1980) and writers on the subject of film in the world. His brother, on the other hand, may be renowned to some, but I can count the people I know who have seen Kiss of the Spider Woman on one hand, probably a hand with no more than two fingers. It's not that Leonard Schrader isn't renowned, it's that I don't think there's a person in the country who would think of him first when reading that headline that wasn't personally aware of his death.

2006-11-01T20:41:00.000-05:00

"We believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman and it needs to be defended."
-George W. Bush in Georgia yesterday

That's right southerners...the Republican party supports unions. Good luck...you're voting libertarian this year. Where's Michael Badnarik when you need him? Oh...that's right, he's been lurking outside your house talking about how he has the right to drive drunk unless he hits someone. And stalking your wife with a concealed weapon -- just because he has the right. And interrupting your adult education class ranting about the war on drugs and how it is the motivation behind your son's inadequate education that came from the failure of the education system because it left the market system.

You're right. It'd just be easier to support unions. Fine, Southerner, be a pinko.

Rainy Day Post #s 12 and 35

2006-09-16T16:32:00.001-04:00

This was passed on to me. http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7448&context=expresso

It's pretty derogatory, considering it's coming from Oklahoma City University of Law, but he has a point, because I think everyone has at least one professor that writes articles solely to attach inappropriate titles to them. In fact, I can testify on my classmates' behalf that we had a professor who is responsible for anywhere between 5-15 of the Bob Dylan attributions. The abstract, however, tips that this is perhaps the ultimate law review article, because its conclusion is something like "it's all cool...it could be used successfully" while also being written by a student who is in no position to determine what successful use is.

All in all, it's an awful article for failing to mention my own work, which went through about fifteen titles, all less successful then my Neil Young rip-off. And I can't fathom that it's true that R.E.M. gets cited more than Neil Young.

As a side note, if he's going to use Guided by Voices to open the article, I would have suggested "A Salty Salute", "Watch Me Jumpstart", "I Am Produced" or at least "Little Lines". (In fact, maybe the article should be titled "Your Name Is Wild". But that's just me -- and Bob Pollard.

2006-09-04T21:22:00.000-04:00

The Blog About Federalism is on indefinite hiatus to recover from a stingray wound and mourn the loss of Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin.

Rest in peace, sweet prince.

Tell it to Air America before your career goes Apocalypto

2006-07-30T11:52:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/28/gibson.dui/index.html

I'm going to christen your statement FairyTale: a True Story. Lies are a lethal weapon, Mel. And your pile of bullshit is just a chicken run.
Ok, no, it's a load of bullshit, if you were actually a lifelong alcoholic, you wouldn't turn into a rageaholic when you're at 0.12%, because that's barely even over the real limit (not the illusory South Dakota v. Dole .08 limit that was railroaded through by MADD that accomplishes nothing) You, with your newfound lifelong drinking problem, should have a tolerance greater than that of an infant, you should at least be able to handle a tequila sunrise now and then. You were acting about as stable as a bird on a wire at 0.12%. I'd expect something a little better from anyone, because at 0.12%, you're barely intoxicated, you're not exactly taking on the role of the Road warrior or turning barrel roles like Maverick in top gun. You're barely even doing battle with remaining conscious. At 0.12, you should still be able to observe basic road signs.

You're clearly an anti-semite, which is comforting to know that the council of Elders actually had a point with the whole Passion of the Christ thing. This is good payback, frankly. And intoxication is no excuse, you don't become a different person when you're drunk, you become you in a more revealed fashion. Moreover, let's tear away the facade, how dumb are you? Do you really figure in the town of Los Angeles that there's that many Jewish police officers? Even your concocted theory of the Jews being out to get you doesn't even make sense for a concocted theory of ethnic inferiority. The KKK would be like "hey, Mel, back off, there's not a whole lot of Goldbergs on the highway patrol". There's no Julius Epstein, the singing detective. At least their theories involve banking, law, or Hollywood...and let me assure you, each is an infinitely more plausible ethnic Conspiracy theory than your own, sir. I only hope that the substance of your statements makes it to the mainstream media, so it can be reported about Mel's statements making this the year of living dangerously.

Lastly, I am officially issuing a decree that in the Court of my opinion, a confession to being an alcoholic is admissible as proof that you are not an alcoholic, but are trying to excuse yourself from obedience to societal mores and laws. (See also Eustachy, Larry) Actual alcoholics don't have the time nor the desire to call press conferences to announce their drinking problem, because they're concerned with other things. Or they're in denial. So...if we're playing Who's the Alcoholic?...David Hasselhoff might be, Mel Gibson decidedly is not. But I guess you're a braveheart who can reveal your problems to the world...that's what your average drunk is apparently missing?

So why the lies? Is it what women want? Is it to keep the paparazzi at bay?

Signed,
Tim
PS: If you want anything from Dublin or London...when you get to Canada, turn right and then keep going. :) If you get to Gallipoli, you've gone too far.

PSS: By the way, yes, I do deserve a Pulitzer, and half of the award money will be donated to the IMDb.

Overheard in my sarcasm...

2006-07-28T01:08:00.000-04:00

Quotation #1: Floyd Landis is an American hero, just like Barry Bonds, except in a sport we only care about when we win through cheating. He's just like the guy who rode faster because he only had one testicle weighing him down...and was pedaling to avoid hearing his girlfriend play "Soak Up the Sun".

Quotation #2:
You could compare Gary Majewski to pouring gasoline on a fire, but that's a specious analogy. Say what you will against Exxon, BP, and OPEC, but gasoline doesn't start a fire where there was none before.

Quelle merde!

2006-07-09T17:15:00.000-04:00

I'm an American. I ought not care about soccer, and for the most part I don't. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

What do I say?

That the end of the World Cup was the steamingest pile of stinky diarrhea shit I've ever seen, and every time I attempt to watch the World Cup, it ends the same feces-encrusted way -- with the aberrant termination of a game through the penalty kick. It is the worst abomination that could possibly befall any sport, especially in its finest hour.

How can I illustrate this? Well, put it in American terms. It's the Super Bowl. The goddamn Patriots are playing any NFC team (unfortunately, we know how it ends). It's 21-21 with three seconds left. Vinatieri comes on...and misses a field goal (he'll do it now that he plays with the non-loathed Colts, but Martin Gramatica will be doing great this year). So the time's out, there's no time left. We're going to...the punt, pass, and kick contest!

Or...it's the bottom of the ninth in the 1997 World Series. Jose Mesa blew the save. Instead of extra innings, where we would continue to play baseball and allow the Indians to lose in a soul-crushing fashion...it's home run derby time. Hope you're up to it, Matt Williams!

Or...it's the NBA playoffs. Ah, I can't watch this crap, the playoffs began last January and aren't ending until May 2009, change it to Major League Soccer.

They've played soccer for an ungodly period of time. They're dead tired, they've got nothing left, the game will grind to a near halt. In other words, this is where it finally gets interesting. The game could end at any moment. But instead, after two overtimes, soccer substitutes the shootout. This doesn't work. Hockey has used the shootout after overtime fails, and generally, it's pretty exciting. Good stuff. But they have the good sense to drop it when it counts. If it's November and the Penguins and Blue Jackets have skated (I use the term loosely) to a 1-1 tie and overtime didn't settle it, fine, use the shootout, because those fans haven't been able to get a beer since 10 minutes into the third period, and they know that even though more than half the teams will make the playoffs, these aren't among them. But in the playoffs, it's overtime, overtime, overtime, and then when that doesn't work, more overtime. They know that the reason the teams are there is because they're good at hockey, not just a particular facet of the game. No matter how passable the shootout is to casual fans, it's just not a real game. It's not as if a goalie is playing by himself against five guys shooting the puck. There's a team component that's totally neglected by the shootout. Sure, you have five guys shooting, but a good team isn't one that is made up entirely of scorers (see the aforementioned Pittsburgh Penguins).

With soccer, it's even more egregious, because it's not a test of skill on skill, it's a test of skill on total and utter luck. There were nine penalty kicks taken in the penalty kick phase that settled the game. 8 of them were goals. This tells you how preposterous it is for resolving a game. For one, nine shots is an astonishingly high percentage of the shots you'll see in a game. Secondly, that's a conversion rate of 89%. How many saves were there by these goaltenders, among the best in the world? None. Not one single save. The only shot that missed was because a French guy was not content to fire into the Red Rocks ampitheater that is a FIFA soccer goal and hit the crossbar.

What's worse, what the penalty kick phase rewards isn't even a major component of the game. The goal is huge because it's rare to get a shot, and because if you do get a chance at a shot, you'll just about never get it off with an opportunity to just focus on putting it in. There's not a whole lot of soccer breakaways. If a scorer gets a shot at a net with no defenders but the scrawny antsy looking guy with the different jersey, he will score way too often.

Maybe that's fine if you're settling some regular season match, but it's not fine when you're settling bragging rights for the World for four years. That's utterly preposterous. And what reason do you have?

1) TV coverage - cry me a damn river. Maybe Americans shut it off when it wasn't 5-2 after 90 minutes, but this is the biggest sporting event in the world. People would watch this if it went on for three weeks. And I'm not an advertising seller, I don't know how it works, but sell contingency ads. You say to GM/Nissan/Renault, "All right, you've got the ads for the transition between the third and fourth OT if it happens. It'll cost you forty billion dollars, if the game gets to that point." They'll buy it. I don't know how the Super Bowl operates with respect to overtime ads, since no Super Bowl has ever gone to overtime, but I'm pretty sure the ad revenue is still better than when the European station switches over to reruns of Webster after the game.
2) Excitement - Oooh, look, it all comes down to this, there's 2 out in the bottom of the ninth! No. Bullshit. It's only exciting if the excitement arises in the organic and natural course of the game. If you tack on generated "excitement", you're just obliterating the nature of the sport. And if you really want to make it more exciting by changing the game...you've got better options. First, shrink the number of players on the field. 11? Screw that. Time for 7. That's still more guys than you need and more names than just about any American will know. Second, make it sudden death. In soccer, overtime doesn't end upon the first goal, the periods are actually played out in their entirety. The paucity of goals scored in your average match renders it essentially sudden death except the losing team has to run around embarrassed until the game's over, but that's besides the point.
3) It's FIFA's bedtime. - You got it. That's all I've got.

These aren't excuses, I don't like soccer as a general rule, it's just not a game I can really get into, because I've been raised in a generation of video games. There has to be something more instant about gratification. If you can be the greatest player of your generation and I won't know by watching four or five games, then I'm not going to give a damn. If your goalie is amazing because he saved actual bona fide shots...I'm not impressed. Even Victor Martinez stops a wild pitch now and then. But that said, if I was a fan of soccer, I'd be utterly irate right now. The World Championship of a sport needs to be decided by playing that sport, not its XBox equivalent.

And you think your state is a mess...

2006-07-05T10:39:00.000-04:00

Government shutdown will cost New Jersey millions a day in pure filthy lucre.

The regulation of gambling is a huge cash cow for states, and New Jersey is going to give up pure revenue because the state bureaucracy is all-encompassing for the casino industry. As a result, during the peak of the year for the industry, casinos shut down, New Jersey loses millions of dollars of mostly out-of-state tourism revenue, and New Jersey continues to add to its reputation as the greasy, overweight, mesh-shirt-wearing armpit of America.

Do you like golf? Or do you just hate people who aren't boring?

2006-06-29T17:49:00.000-04:00

Women's U.S. Open postponed by fog. In related news, golf loses its last chance of credibility in claiming that it is a sport.

Seriously. Fog. FOG.
Not a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG), the U.S.S. Fogg, John Carpenter's The Fog, not the fog of war (nor the shadow of the future), not Phileas Fogg, nor Josh Fogg, just plain ordinary fog. FOG???

The Indy 500 delayed by fog, I'll buy that, there's genuine peril in driving in fog (that said, it's auto racing, not going to rank #1 on my list of things I consider sports, it's right above curling). This ends the list of sports delayed by fog. Baseball has a credible claim (just ask Ray Chapman), but I've never seen a game undergo a fog delay. Football, they play through anything except lightning, there's no such thing as a weather delay. Baseball, if it's pouring rain, they delay it.

In golf? It really doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference if it's foggy. Maybe they're doing it because they're worried the fans won't see enough, but how much are they going to see anyway? If you're at the tee, you see Annika Sorenstam swing the club and the ball go off somewhere where you couldn't see it anyway. Even if it's pea soup fog, you know what, you've got a caddy, his job will be to find the ball if the Golf Channel doesn't first. And maybe it's the TV networks that are delaying it, but again, NFL games get played through fog, so I don't see why broadcasting golf in fog would be so impossible, except that it might add an element of something interesting, which would infuriate the PGA/LPGA, who limit their areas of potentially interesting occurrences to Phil Mickelson sucking and Annika Sorenstam playing with men, proving once and for all that women and men are both equal at boring the shit out of me.

2006-06-27T18:28:00.000-04:00

Oh, by the way, after reviewing the book of Exodus, I noticed that God didn't promise not to cause more floods. He just said he wouldn't kill everyone with a flood.

So, for instance, wiping out Delaware with a flood...not a breach of his oral agreement with Noah. For that matter, given that God's promise was not fully performable within one year, it needed to be placed in writing, and rainbows do not fulfill the statute of frauds. Hence, unenforceable. Now as to whether mankind was an intended third-party beneficiary, that's a different question...

The Cruel and Unusual Execution of the Presumption Against Death

2006-06-26T11:12:00.000-04:00

It's long been stated that there is a presumption against a death sentence. Although the death penalty has been eroded in a number of ways in recent years, the tide appears to be turning yet again with today's decision in the case of Kansas v. Marsh.

The Court decided today that Kansas' "tie goes to the gurney"* statute requiring a jury to sentence a defendant to death if the aggravating factors and mitigation were in equipoise was perfectly constitutional. Relying in part upon Walton v. Arizona, the Court determined that a defendant can be obligated to prove that mitigation outweighs aggravating circumstances in order to avoid a death sentence. Walton, of course, is not a direct decision on that point, instead determining that a jury does not have to determine a death sentence (since overruled on that point, of course). While Apprendi would not do anything to change the result in Walton, given that the statute's maximum penalty was death, it was just practically taken off the table, the Apprendi revolution seems to be getting surprisingly short shrift in today's decision.

In Walton, the Court noted that under Arizona's statutory scheme:

The burden of establishing the existence of any of the aggravating
circumstances is on the prosecution, while the burden of establishing mitigating
circumstances is on the defendant.

It becomes difficult, if one accepts the Court's determination in Marsh, to uphold the conclusion in Woodson v. North Carolina, since the presumption against death only means that a state must rationally narrow those who are eligible to the death penalty to those who have some peppercorn of aggravation above the statutory violation itself. Moreover, it is unclear why a mere outweighing of aggravation would be sufficient. Under Marsh and Walton's resurrected non-holding, the court permits placing a burden on a defendant to present mitigation "sufficiently substantial to call for leniency." As a result, there doesn't appear to be any reason that a state could not rquire mitigation to substantially outweigh any aggravating factors. The jury merely has to be permitted to consider all the mitigating evidence that a convict wants to present.

If a tie can go to the gurney, effectively the aggravating factors have been written out of the statute entirely, because aggravation and mitigation are in equipoise if neither is offered. While it is perhaps a contrivance to argue that the evidence was perfectly equal, and that an Allen charge was more likely the appropriate result, Marsh will likely be a springboard to states who want to tweak their death penalty statutes to ensure a larger number of people end up on death row, finally being given a way to combat Ring and Woodson.

We can see Kansas v. Marsh a number of ways, none of them positive. Maybe it's a pointlessly narrow case that just explains why the Michigan v. Long presumption is purely a silly O'Connor equity contrivance that should be eliminated instantly, especially in the context of the death penalty, where there is a presumption against AISG for Marsh now, but in habeas, the presumption switches immediately to the rule of Coleman v. Thompson, where the trap of AISG will once again swing to open the door to the death house. Even Stevens' rights-narrowing approach would make more sense than the mess of Long here.

Most likely, it is a statement that John Roberts really is a big fan of the death penalty, no matter what the habeas work and his Catholicism might have indicated. Kennedy thinks he's being innocuous after standing out as a hippie in Roper and Atkins, so he's joining a devastating death penalty opinion.

Fundamentally, the case is the death knell for the presumption against death. Perhaps it's finally clear that the Supreme Court needs more sports fans. Think of the aggravating circumstances and mitigation evidence as a scoreboard. While quantifying evidence is ludicrous, this demonstrates a dire flaw with the practicality of the system we have, and I won't attempt to correct it in this post. The jury found three aggravating circumstances

Only in law could the result in a 2-2 or 1-1 game be different than a 0-0. If it's zero-zero, Marsh wins a lovely parting gift to life in prison with no possibility of parole. If it's zero-one, Marsh wins life in prison with no possibility of parole. If it's 1-1...Marsh is executed. No wonder they say defense wins championships.

A professor of mine had offered three theories as to how the Supreme Court resolved cases...and it fits here. Marsh got cute -- or at least might have. The Supreme Court's decision is, typical of Justice Thomas, utterly uninstructive, saying only that Marsh did not outweigh the aggravating factors. It's unclear whether the mitigation was actually regarded as "equal" to the aggravation.

If not, then the don't get cute principle definitely applies here. Marsh would have lost on the scoreboard 3-0, and convinced the Kansas Supreme Court that the statutory provision was unconstitutional, because the tie went to the gurney.

Never mind if there wasn't a tie, the statute was unconstitutional. Kansas' Supreme Court got it right, the statute ought to be considered unconstitutional. It's just that there's no as applied challenge here, so Marsh got lucky, his sentence was struck down because of a statute that might have ended up having no impact on him whatsoever.

And, now, as a result, more people will die. Marsh's reign of terror continues, but now he has five accomplices wearing black robes, luring states to execute or execute with red tape more and more offenders and inspiring legislatures to bring back the presumption in favor of the death penalty.

It's a deadly game, and the Court's credibility is the big loser.

*The phrase is mine. Yes, I do feel pretty damn clever.

The bell saves not against in rem seizure

2006-06-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

http://www.getdshirts.com/the_story.php

Dustin Diamond needs help, and I don't just mean his stand-up comedy act, which I would grade as a C at best.

The Duke Lacrosse Case - Solved at last, thanks to Encyclopedia Brown! It was Bugs Meany!

2006-06-09T18:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, I hate Collin Cowherd. Say what you want about Jim Rome, Jim Rome is generally offensive, so it doesn't really matter if he's right or wrong about something, you just know it's meaningless. Cowherd on the other hand isn't Jim Rome, he's a pale imitation of Rome who offends people by being a dipshit.

Today's topic, the report coming out yesterday that the second exotic dancer at the Duke Lacrosse party said the allegations were a "crock" and that she had spent the entire night with the first dancer.

Now I don't listen to the Herd with regularity, but the last time I did, Collin was going over the 400 reasons why it was a defense attorney's field day because of this same person contacting a New York publicist to see how she could "spin this her way". Today, he's going over why this destroys what's left of the case.

Basically, Cowherd's three premises besides 1) I'm a dipshit!.1) There's no DNA evidence. (Whee golly!)2) The dancer said that the allegations were a crock (at some point, the time frame on the report is not clear)3) You will distrust an exotic dancer because of what she does, as a matter of human nature.

I. All right, first, #1 is what is now gaining some academic tonnage in some circles as the "CSI Syndrome". Basically, because people are now aware of things like DNA testing, forensic sciences, and any number of absurdly preposterous technological advances they've seen on CSI and similar shows, they now EXPECT them and will make decisions based on them.
This is seriously problematic, since 1) these tests aren't as dispositive as people treat them because a) they can be tampered with, b) even if they weren't tampered with, you'd never know as a juror who's unfamiliar with electrophosphoresis, so unless you're abandoning your role as a juror, you really owe them absolutely no deference, because you're letting experts make your decisions for you and offer what essentially become legal conclusions. 2) Lots of cases will not have this kind of evidence or would be ill-served by wasting efforts running ballistics tests when you have 40 people who know the defendant and know he was the one who committed the crime. 3) Processes for separating DNA when there's a mixture of it introduce another layer of complication. 4) By having jurors who expect this evidence, we now create a new floor for cases. Rape cases won't be tried unless there's some sort of DNA evidence, because prosecutors don't want to lose. This is analogous to the disastrous rules that Congress added to the federal rules of evidence over everyone in America's objection (aside from NOW) that permit introduction of otherwise inadmissible past conduct by the alleged sex offenders. As a result of this rule, now a prosecutor will be less willing to bring charges at all if there's not a record of past sex offenses.

II. The second premise is utterly preposterous. If she described it as a crock, great for her, but you can't place any weight in it, because, as Cowherd pointed out on the previous show, she wants to "spin this for her". Well, this case is going down the crapper, so of course she'd say it's a crock. If in fact she said it ages ago, well, what made it more credible than what she's saying now? This thing has been a media frenzy from the outset. If you determine that the other exotic dancer lacks credibility (which I believe she does), then you have but one conclusion to draw from what she's said...and that's not a damn thing. Because it's not like she's only credible in one direction (like say, in making statements against interest), because she doesn't have an interest. If the victim says they're a crock, then it's pretty likely to be true (not absolutely likely, since in sensitive cases (domestic violence, sexual abuse) there's a lot of mental gymnastics in a victim I don't pretend to understand, but more likely). If some other stripper who has lost all credibility says it...doesn't change a thing.

III. I agree, although one caller hit him with a good response to this...she's a stripper, they're a bunch of horny kids who hired a stripper. Gotta say, if I'm really choosing sides on that one, it's hard to say that they're much better, and it's easy to make the argument that they're emphatically worse, since they've likely got a lot more options in life than a girl who becomes a stripper. I'm not saying it's true, but it's possible.

Two specious arguments he made sickened me. 1) The Duke lacrosse team was involved in more community service than any other Duke men's athletic team, 2) the Duke lacrosse team had the highest graduation rate. Well, as for #1, look at them, they're a bunch of rich white fraternity boys. "Community Service" dressed up as community service carries no weight to me, because I've been to college and would gladly rid the world of their community service in exchange for more people like my friends. Secondly, again, everyone graduated...well, they're a bunch of rich white kids. Basketball players don't graduate because they're not there to go to school (or do because Duke lets them slide by); football players don't have a 100% graduation rate because they too aren't there to go to school -- though judging by Duke's record, you'd never know -- and there's 120 players on the team. And there's the race thing. Sorry, but minorities graduate at lower rates, and people who come from lower-class backgrounds do as well. Those are two groups you won't find overly represented on Duke's lacrosse team, if for no other reason than the fact that lacrosse isn't really offered at a whole lot of inner city/rural area high schools. But good luck finding a high school without basketball or football.

As a final note, I should say, I'm pretty sure some of those lacrosse kids are guilty of something. Would I vote to convict? I'd want to based on the way their attorney has been trying to use the media to win his case, but no, I wouldn't. There's a reasonable doubt as to whether these were the guys who were doing whatever happened. In a house with 30 people in it, it'd be almost impossible to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that these three people in particular did the things they're alleged to have done. There was no way a rape charge would have stuck on these facts, and the prosecutor only ran with it to try and raise his name and then maintain it after it became a media frenzy. He ought to be disbarred for his own use of the media in leaking information and for putting the alleged rapists in the spotlight for as long as he has, because it eliminated any shot of a fair trial or a successful one.

Percy Walton and the contradictions of Demographic Assault

2006-06-05T15:11:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/06/05/walton.execution.ap/index.html
Here's why Atkins v. Virginia and Ford v. Wainwright were wrongly decided.
I couldn't possibly care less whether he's insane or retarded. Moral culpability has nothing to do with the reasons people are executed. I wish people would just say what they mean.

Type A - "Focus on the Family"
People who want him executed say: "we want closure for the family."
People who want him executed mean: "we want revenge."Nothing wrong with that, I like revenge as much as the next Edmond Dantes, but I also think that it's not something I want my government doing. I honestly prefer vigilante justice in the raw form. I'd much rather have a pack of thugs go after Andrea Yates than a sterile governmental facility.

Type B - "Not in my garden of earthly delights"
People who don't want him executed say: "he's insane, it's unjust to execute the insane."
People who don't want him executed mean: "It's unjust to execute anybody." OR "Find me a murderer who's not insane."

Sorry, I don't see a whole lot of people outside of Justice Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O'Scale who really think that there's a credible moral distinction between executing someone like Ted Bundy and executing someone who's insane.
This isn't the abortion rape & incest debate thing, which I find similarly misguided, if you're really pro-life and you can have any exceptions, you are exceptionally retarded. As soon as you step away from your moral absolutist position, you've lost all traction with your argument, because then you're engaged in O'Connor's garbage balancing tests, figuring out whether it's more wrong that the person was raped and has to carry a wonderful blessing from God or more wrong to kill the blessing from God.I'm not far off from either of the unspoken meanings in type B. I really think it's hard to classify people into the M'Naghten groups of incapable of appreciating that their action is wrong or not. Both people are totally mentally ill. If you kill for pleasure, you've got serious mental illness, you just might not have the right kind of mental illness. I'm not going to say that it's any more volitional, though, if you really have that all-consuming urge. The murderers who aren't mentally ill -- usually committing murders of policemen, other gang members, during robberies -- still would fall into my idea of mental illness, because I cannot honestly fathom the ability to kill another person as a volitional act. Apparently, there are millions of people who disagree with me, which is frightening, but necessary. (An army of conscientious objectors wouldn't have beaten the Nazis for long)

In any event, he's going to be executed, because the Supreme Court's not going to step in. Moreover, Tim Kaine is opposed to the death penalty, but had his hand forced in the election to vow to execute every person he saw. His re-election and his soul may depend on the choice he makes...but that said, he's a politician. He'll choose the former.

Baseball = federalism

2006-05-26T19:58:00.000-04:00

The Bizarre stat of the day belongs to Ken Griffey Jr.:Griffey has batted in the third spot in the order in each of the games he has started this season (he pinch hit once in the first spot in the order). Here's his stat line:.256 batting average, 6 HR, 26 RBI, 8 runs, 0 SB.6 HR, 8 RGriffey has scored a whopping 2 runs where he was driven in by someone other than himself. Those two occasions: a grand slam by Edwin Encarnacion on April 11; and a single by Rich Aurilia just three days ago. This is batting in the third spot in the lineup, where he should be getting driven in on a regular basis.

Let's compare him to the #3 batter of the woefully deficient Kansas City Royals. Doug Mientkiewicz: 1 HR, 13 RBI, 16 R. 15 times he was driven in by someone else.

How about the Pirates? Freddy Sanchez: 4 HR, 23 RBI, 18 runs. 14 times he was driven in by someone else.

While one could point out that the comparison is inapt because Griffey was injured for a fair period of time -- first, so was Mientkiewicz, secondly, he still has more RBIs than either of those players, there's a huge disparity that's unmatched. The disparity is far more appropriate for a leadoff man (for instance, Scott Podsednik with 13 RBIs, 35 runs; Joey Gathright 7 RBIs, 23 runs) than a guy who's supposed to be in the middle of an order, especially one that is nominally potent.

2006-05-25T15:10:00.000-04:00

This is a blog about federalism.