What Courage Means

Yesterday, as I was enjoying a rare glimpse of baseball on the MLB's site, I saw these players all sporting numbers they don't normally wear:
Caption: Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman faces Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins in the top of the ninth inning in Cincinnati, April 15, 2013.

Image credit: Screenshot of Major League Baseball video by Cujo359

Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day, when all players in Major League baseball wear Jackie Robinson's number to celebrate his leading role in desegregating baseball.

What did Robinson have to endure to do this? It doesn't take much imagination to realize that he would bear the brunt of taunts from both the fans and his fellow players. Any fan of the game would know there would be lots of physical intimidation from the latter. What most of us might not have imagined was what was probably the hardest part of Robinson's experience:

[Dodgers general manager Branch] Rickey had warned Jack – that’s what his friends and family called him – that the worst kind of race-baiting would come his way, and that he’d have to keep his cool.

Are you looking, Robinson asked Rickey, for a black man “who is afraid to fight back?”

“I need,” Rickey replied, “a player who has the guts not to fight back.”

Jackie Robinson and Remaking of Baseball

Caption: Jackie Robinson in 1954.

Image credit: Bob Sandberg/Look/Wikimedia

That was the deal Rickey and Robinson struck. For the first year, Robinson couldn't retaliate. As that quote implies, this wasn't in Robinson's nature. He was a former football player, and someone used to responding to force with some of his own. Yet in the Major Leagues of 1947, he'd have to endure bean balls, spikings, and more for an entire season, and not retaliate. Rickey knew that if Robinson did retaliate, then they would be blamed, not the bigots and racists who committed the offenses.

Why did Rickey do this? No doubt, part of the answer is that he thought it was the right thing to do, but part was that the Dodgers were always the also-rans in New York City baseball behind the more successful Yankees and Giants, and black ballplayers were an untapped resource of talent. Why did Robinson do it? Reading his Wikipedia bio, it's clear that part of the reason was that he wanted to do something for his fellow African Americans. He was in the March on Washington long after his playing days were over. He remained both an outspoken critic of baseball's racism and a proponent of its reforms. But part of the answer also had to be that he loved playing the game.

Rickey and Robinson had personal and self-serving reasons for doing what they did. That doesn't change the fact that what they both did, particularly Robinson, took a lot of courage and fortitude. We seem to have a paper cutout idea of what courage means - that it only takes courage to do good things, or to do them for someone else's benefit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Courage is knowing it's likely you'll be hurt and suffer abuse, but doing what you need to do anyway. Courage is sometimes not hurting someone else, even when every part of your being screams that you should. Even if what those two men did had only been for their own self-interest, it still made our lives better, and it still would have taken more courage than many of us have had to summon for so long. That's why we honor them.

Jackie Robinson's life had many things to teach us, but in light of recent events, I think the most important lesson it taught us is what courage is, and how powerful a force it can be.

Strange Event Of The Day

Caption: A guy dressed in green felt delivering season tickets? Not even close to the strangest thing. In some parts of the country, in fact, this is a disturbingly common occurrence.

Image credit: Screenshot of this MLB video by Cujo359

Yes, this really is something that doesn't happen to everyone:

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Charlie Manuel occasionally reminds people he has been in baseball 50 years. He has seen almost everything.

But it took until Sunday for a grown man pedaling a tricycle to crash into him on the field.

Tricycle collision gives Manuel a good laugh

I've read a lot of things today, including some folks trying to sound like they understand what happened in the recent Italian elections (does anyone, really?), and the usual run of strange things at Space.com and NASA. This is the strangest, and second strangest isn't even close.

After all, when you're standing on a grass and dirt surface, the last thing you'd expect to be hit by is a tricycle, no matter what the age of the driver.

Major League Baseball wins that competition today.

Football's Almost Over: 2013 Edition

Caption: The Vince Lombardi Trophy. At the end of each Super Bowl, the team with the highest score gets to keep this thing. Don't ask me why - it's just one of the rules.

Image credit: BrokenSphere/Wikimedia

Yes, it's finally here once again - the day the pre-game interviews finally end, and seventy or so large men push each other around in the mud for three hours until a champion is crowned. Sports fans may recognize this event as the Super Bowl, the National Football League's championship game. People who aren't sports fans, but who have the misfortune to live in America at this time of year, certainly do.

Since this year's game will be in the New Orleans Superdome, though, there won't be much mud. If that's what you're looking for, you'll probably have to go elsewhere.

The only reason I even remembered that this was Super Bowl weekend was that I was grocery shopping on Friday. The nice lady who was checking the groceries asked me "Are you ready for Super Bowl weekend?"

To which I replied, "Umm, sure. Who's playing?" She didn't know, either.

It turns out that it's the San Francisco 49ers playing the Baltimore Ravens. San Francisco's baseball team won the World Series this year, so that alone would suggest that someone else should win here. The Ravens are also the team Baltimore finally ended up with after the city told the Colts they couldn't have everything they wanted, because there were a lot of people who need financial assistance and transportation there. Or something. Anyway, the Colts started playing their home games in Indianapolis, which seems to have upset at least a few people in both cities. Nothing tugs at the heart-strings of city managers like the sound of rich middle aged white guys whining that now that their pro football team is gone, they don't have anything to do with their kids on the days they have custody. So the Ravens were born. In addition, while both teams have won the Super Bowl, the 49ers have won five times, most recently in 1995. I suppose if I were rooting for someone, it would be the Ravens.

The truth is, of course, that I don't care. According to this barely readable preview, this will be a game where matchups are key. Or something. The truth is that the NFL seems like 20-plus versions of the same team nowadays. It's one of the reasons the game is so boring now. Most games, the only real mystery is how many times they'll pass on first down.

For those who do care, or work for someone who does, here are the important points:

• Game time is 6:30 PM Eastern.
• The game will be broadcast on CBS in America.
• Beyonce is the pop star who will be providing half time entertainment. It might be more fun to put on her latest album and lip-sync it, but I'm sure you'll think of something.

If anyone finds out who won, please leave a comment.

What's In A Name?

There are quite a few objections to team names I don't understand, but this isn't one of them:

All major Native American organizations have called for the Washington pro football franchise to end its team's despicable name. Why? Because it's a racial slur and – no matter how many millions it spends trying to sanitize it and silence native peoples – the epithet is not, was not, and will not be an honorific.

Washington 'Redskins' is a racist name: US pro football must disavow it

I seem to remember objections being raised about the names of the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians baseball teams, for instance, and I really don't get that. This I get. Would anyone name their team, say, the "Indianapolis Honkies"? I don't think so. The closest I can come to an offensive stereotype in team names is Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish", and even there I'd have to say that it would probably be best for those offended by that name to acquire a sense of humor. Aggression, after all, is considered a good thing in many sports.

But the name of our nation's capital's football team is singularly offensive. Not only has the term been a historically demeaning one, but it reminds us of the long, sad history of relations between the indigenous population of the United States and those of us who came afterward. Maybe it's good to be reminded of that once in a while, but I'd rather we came to realize that it was a bad thing, that racist attitudes of some of the newcomers were a big part of that reason, and we don't think those racist attitudes were OK.

This is why, on the rare occasions when Washington's team does something notable, I've refused to refer to it by its team name, and will continue to not refer to it that way.

It may not rank high on the list of crimes committed by America these days, but I agree that the NFL ought to change it.

But There's No Crying ...

Image credit: Hugo Fernandes/Wikimedia

Baseball isn't professional wrestling. It actually is a contest of skilled athletes trying to compete against each other in a game that doesn't have a predetermined outcome.

But, as MLB notes today, that doesn't mean that everything you see is on the up-and-up. For instance, the arguments managers supposedly have with umpires during the game sometimes go like this:

"I remember a manager yelling and screaming and coming out and saying, 'I have to get run,'" said umpire Ted Barrett, who has governed big league games for 19 years. "So I tossed him, and he starts ranting and raving about how bad his team is. 'My pitcher is terrible. My bullpen can't get anybody out. My hitters haven't hit a ball out of the infield in three days. My clubhouse guys serve crappy food.' And on and on.

"I started chuckling at him, and the guy gets up in my face and says, 'Don't you laugh. If you laugh, then they know this is all an act.' So I did everything I could just to bite my tongue."

“My Pitcher Is Terrible, My Bullpen Can’t Get Anybody Out”: What Managers Really Yell About While Arguing With Umpires

I think most fans who haven't played the game at that level have, at times, wondered just what these arguments could possibly be about. There you are, distracted by the lump of mustard that just dropped from your hot dog onto your lap, and you can tell the umpire made the right call. The fans know it, and even the sportscasters know it. Yet here's an argument. Now I know there's an alternative explanation for the stress having finally gotten to yet another big league manager.

Of course, like jumping from the top turnbuckle without hurting yourself, there is some skill involved:

One such circumstance arose when Terry Collins was leading the Angels in the late 1990s. After a questionable call, Collins sought out Scott and told the umpire, "You know what, Dale? I know that was the right call. But we [stink]. You have to run me."

Scott told Collins he needed him to display more emotion and conviction to warrant his dismissal, so the manager flung his hat and Scott pointed him to the exit.

“My Pitcher Is Terrible, My Bullpen Can’t Get Anybody Out”: What Managers Really Yell About While Arguing With Umpires

There may not be any crying in baseball, but that doesn't mean you don't need The Method.

Baseball's Over: 2012 Edition

Caption: San Francisco Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro hits a bloop single off Detroit Tigers relief pitcher Phil Coke to drive in the winning run in the final game of the 2012 World Series.

Image credit: Screenshot of Major League Baseball/Fox Sports broadcast by Cujo359.

Somehow, it seems appropriate that a bloop single from a Giants player who is having his best season at age 36 is an appropriate way to close out this series. Marco Scutaro drove in Ryan Theriot, who was playing the role of designated hitter for the National League team, in the top of the tenth inning. Then relief pitcher Sergio Romo, who had to take over the role of closer when Brian Wilson was injured, retired the top of the Detroit Tigers' batting order to preserve the win.

There are a lot of sports "experts" who are probably wondering, as this guy did, how they could have gotten this series so wrong. Most all of them picked Detroit to win in a walk. That the Giants won instead should prove, if any proof is needed, that there's usually something these guys forget about. In this case, they seem to have forgotten that a team that is as scrappy as this year's Giants proved to be tend to play above expectations. This time was no exception. Plus, as some of the Fox commentators noted tonight, the Giants clearly have one of the best pitching staffs in the league.

Even though it was a sweep, only the first game was a lopsided win. I don't think the Tigers have anything to be ashamed of. The thing to remember about this game is that teams often match up in ways that don't make sense. How a team's batters are able to deal with another team's pitchers, and their defensive strategy, can be a hit or miss thing. When guys like Marco Scutaro and Gregor Blanco end up being two of the most valuable players in the postseason, it's pretty clear that in a series of just a few games anything can happen.

It was an entertaining Series, perhaps because I didn't have a favorite this time. Until recently at least, neither of these teams had been appearing in their respective pennant races. On that score alone, it was more interesting than usual. But excellent play and close games made it a good one.

Well, That's Over With

Caption: Most Phillies highlights this year came courtesy of the Phillie Phanatic.

Image credit: Screenshot of this Major League Baseball video by Cujo359

A year after winning a club record 102 games, this year's Philadelphia Phillies barely managed to break even:

The Phillies finished 81-81, snapping their run of nine consecutive winning seasons. It is a minor accomplishment they finished .500, considering they stood 14 games under .500 on July 13 and traded Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino before the July 31 Trade Deadline.

But finishing .500 is just a very small consolation prize for a team that had won five consecutive National League East championships and will miss the postseason for the first time since 2006, making way for the younger and immensely talented Nationals.

Phils finish up at .500 after loss to Nats in finale

The Washington Nationals are probably the only good news in those paragraphs. The erstwhile Montreal Expos moved to our nation's capital a few years ago. They look to be a much better representative than the generally dreadful Washington Senators of a generation ago. At 98-64, they have one of the better records in baseball this year.

The Phillies, on the other hand, might best be exemplified by the fortunes of star pitcher Cliff Lee, one of the few bright spots of the Phillies' last World Series appearance. This year, despite being one of the top starters in Earned Run Average (ERA) and Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP), and having pitched the entire season, he ended up with a 6-9 record. Lack of run support, bad bullpen performances, and fielding miscues all led to his lack of wins. After all, losing nine games in a full season isn't bad for a starter.

Losing their two best power hitters - Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, not to mention their two best left-handed batters, for most of the season was a tough break, but the rest of the lineup hit worse than normal, with the exception of Carlos Ruiz. Utley and Howard are back, but the lineup needs more help. Starting pitcher Roy Halladay wasn't himself this season, and it showed. It would help if they were better at fielding, too.

So, maybe next year.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the Washington Nationals, and to Detroit's Miguel Cabrera for winning that rarest of batting titles, the Triple Crown.

That's More Like It

September 11 is a day that will go down in history. The Philadelphia Phillies finally made it to .500:

PHILADELPHIA -- It has been a remarkably hard climb back.

But the Phillies are .500 for the first time since June 4 following Tuesday's 9-7 victory over the Miami Marlins at Citizens Bank Park. The Phils, who have won six consecutive games, are 71-71 as they make an improbable push for a National League Wild Card with 20 games to play.

Phils hold off Fish, win sixth straight, return to .500

Yes, as incredible as it seems, both they and the Brewers still have a chance. I don't like the new playoff system, but at least it's keeping folks interested in the season a while longer.

I think this calls for a Phillie Phanatic video, don't you?

Image credit: Major League Baseball

If you're here expecting somber remembrance of past horrors, you came to the wrong place. If that's not enough reason, try here or here.

The Press' Priorities, And Ours

Caption: The first Stanhope press for the German newspaper Iserlohner Kreisanzeiger und Zeitung

Image credit: Bubo/Wikimedia

Dan Hind makes an interesting point about the priorities of the press, and the relationship of those priorities to those of the public in an a column at Al Jazeera:

There is no evidence that the public would only want stories about Rihanna if they were given some say in shaping the editorial agenda of news organisations. There is no evidence that people would spend most of any research funds they controlled on psychic pets and cancer-curing vegetables. I am sure that neither of these people would dream of making a similar, unfounded generalisations about any group of adults in society. Imagine for a moment the uproar if they did. But they are happy to assert that the public as a whole is so witless that it cannot decide how to spend its own money.

Fear of the people: A critique of scientific orthodoxy

There are a few points I can think of making here:

First, I have no idea who Rihanna is. My guess is she's a celebrity of some sort, probably in show business. Yes, she's a singer, or so MTV and a fairly large swath of the English-speaking public seem to believe. She's trending on Twitter, or was. I've never trended on Twitter, so I guess you could say that's another thing I don't have personal experience of.

Still, there's something I do have experience of, and that's the public's priorities. I don't blame Ben Goldacre, a science journalist Hind criticizes in that column, for writing that much of what the public would do with research funds, if given the chance, would be trivial or nonsensical. Still, as Hind points out, there's plenty of trivial research that's funded by supposedly serious organizations. That's the nature of the beast. Someone was fascinated with why hair, amber, and gold leaf stuck together sometimes, and a couple of centuries later I can write to the world on a preternaturally complex device in a coffee shop miles from any big communications centers.

So, my guess is that it might benefit us to put a small amount of research funding into the hands of amateurs, because every once in a great while, they'd come up with something few others would. Most of it would be pure nonsense, though. If that's elitism, sue me.

The other point is this one - why do we talk about things like Rihanna, or the Phillies, or any other bits of trivial nonsense that seem to lead the "most popular news" lists most days? I can tell you one thing: it's something to talk about with people you have nothing else in common. Back when I worked among conservatives, that was something you could usually talk about with no more than mildly spirited disagreement. In fact, it's sometimes a good insight into peoples' thinking on other issues. Conservatives tend to be much more likely to give up on a sports star when it looks like his skills are waning, for instance.

Which brings us to a reason that all that trivia is so popular - many of us are at least somewhat interested, even if only in self-defense. It's hard to say that about politics, economics, most science, or just about anything else, particularly if it requires a lot of time and some smarts to understand. And, as Hind says, that's not a reason to think that it's really a priority with us. It's just something we can talk about without killing each other.

This is a reason I discount the idea that the press' priorities are their readers' priorities. They're not. The press, mostly, is motivated by profit. We readers are motivated by wanting to know about the things we want to know about. Sometimes those motivations coincide, but I think it's safe to say that they don't at least as often.

UPDATE: I corrected the spelling of Dan Hind's name. In the initial version of this article, I'd spelled it right three times, and wrong once.

A Moment Of Zen. Or Not...

It's been a while since we've seen the Phillie Phanatic here, so I thought I'd provide a fresh moment of zen:

Video credit: Major League Baseball

Then it occurred to me to wonder why he was dancing with Ugandans. There isn't a large Ugandan population in Philadelphia that I'm aware of. It turns out there was a logical explanation:

The first team from an African nation to win a game at the Little League World Series visited Citizens Bank Park today as guests of shortstop Jimmy Rollins. The Uganda Little League Team received custom hats as part of their visit to the clubhouse.

Rollins hosts Uganda Little League team

Rollins, an African American, has been a fixture in Philadelphia for almost a decade. He was the league's Most Valuable Player in 2007, and he's one of the Phillies players whose jersey number is quite often visible on the backs of fans at their home park. None of this sounds terribly remarkable nowadays, but anyone who remembers how things were for black players on the Phillies roster when I was growing up would probably have a different perspective.

Back then they had a young player named Dick Allen. Allen was strong, had quick hands, good baserunning skills, and was at least an adequate fielder, despite having been converted to third base in his rookie season. As Wikipedia notes, however, things were very rough for him while he was playing in the City of Brotherly Love:

Non-baseball incidents soon marred Allen's Philadelphia career. In July 1965 he got into an infamous fistfight with fellow Phillie Frank Thomas. According to two teammates who witnessed the fight, Thomas swung a bat at Allen, hitting him in the shoulder. Johnny Callison said, "Thomas got himself fired when he swung that bat at Richie. In baseball you don't swing a bat at another player—ever." Pat Corrales confirmed that Thomas hit Allen with a bat and added that Thomas was a "bully" known for making racially divisive remarks. Allen and his teammates were not permitted to give their side of the story under threat of a heavy fine. The Phillies released Thomas the next day. That made the fans and local sports writers not only see Allen as costing a white player his job, but freed Thomas to give his version of the fight.

...

Some of the Phillies' own fans, known for being tough on hometown players even in the best of times, exacerbated Allen's problems. Initially the abuse was verbal, with obscenities and racial epithets. Eventually Allen was greeted with showers of fruit, ice, refuse, and even flashlight batteries as he took the field. He began wearing his batting helmet even while playing his position in the field, which gave rise to another nickname, "Crash Helmet", shortened to "Crash".

Wikipedia: Dick Allen

Allen was said to have a bad attitude, but throw enough batteries at most people and their attitude can go bad.

Another black player, Curt Flood, refused to be traded to Philadelphia, because the atmosphere was so bad for African-American ballplayers. Ironically, Dick Allen was one of the players involved in that trade.

So, fast forward from that situation to today, and it does seem a little amazing that a Phillies mascot would be dancing with a bunch of African kids during a game. It's even a bit amazing when you discount the fact that they somehow persuaded all those kids to dress like the mascot.

You can look at this as a sign of progress, and I think it is. Unfortunately, just a few miles away from the Phillies' spring training camp in Clearwater, Florida, some attendees to one of our major parties' political conventions reminded us that we still have a ways to go:

Tampa, Florida (CNN) – Two people were removed from the Republican National Convention Tuesday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Multiple witnesses observed the exchange and RNC security and police immediately removed the two people from the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Two people removed from RNC after taunting black camera operator

Racism doesn't affect me in my day to day life. I'm white, and I live in one of the more enlightened regions of the country. Still, every once in a while I'm reminded that it still exists in America, and there are still clearly places where people feel no reluctance to express those feelings.

It's a bit sad that a bunch of people dancing around in green felt have a lot more sense than some of the people who are attending one of the conventions that will choose our next President.

But that's the story of America in the early Twenty-First Century in a nutshell, isn't it?

Evolution Happens In The Unlikeliest Of Places

Caption: A rotary printing press that looks to be from the early 20th Century. It's now an exhibit in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, in Paris.

Image credit: Carol Guillaume/Photopedia

Glenn Greenwald published an interesting article yesterday on an opinion piece by CNN reporter LZ Granderson. Granderson's essay extols the virtues of government secrecy, and the respect that journalists like him, apparently, have for it:

We are a nosy country.

Though to be fair, it's not entirely our fault. Between the 24/7 news cycle, social media and reality TV, we have been spoon fed other people's private business for so long we now assume it's a given to know everything. And if there are people who choose not to disclose, they must be hiding something. Being told that something's "none of your business" is slowly being characterized as rude, and if such a statement is coming from the government, it seems incriminating.

Times have changed. Yet, not everything is our business. And in the political arena, there are things that should be and need to be kept quiet.

Don't be nosy about Fast and Furious

Greenwald referred to this as a "self-mocking" column. What he meant by that isn't that Granderson is being sarcastic writing what he did. Rather, he thinks that Granderson really believes it. I've read the column in its entirety, and I have to agree that it looks like Granderson is serious. If what has actually happened here is that we've ventured into Poe territory, where it's impossible to tell the difference between an honestly expressed opinion and parody, then it probably makes little difference, because, as Greenwald points out, there are so many other journalists who clearly do believe this with all their hearts:

Recall that on the day that WikiLeaks began publishing diplomatic cables — revealing all sorts of deceit, corruption and illegality — CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was completely indifferent to the revelations themselves, but was furious that the U.S. Government allowed these disclosures to take place and thus forced him and his viewers to learn what the U.S. Government and its allies were doing in the dark. Or recall the debate I had with CNN’s Jessica Yellin and Fran Townsend in which both insisted that WikiLeaks should be criminally prosecuted for the leaks it enabled. Or just survey the bizarrely personal, unprofessional and falsehood-filled expressions of contempt for Assange that have been spewing forth from the British media class, many of whom (not coincidentally) were and are ardent, public supporters of the war policies he helped to expose and subvert and, more generally, religious believers in the inherent Goodness of the West and its governments’ conduct in the world.

CNN journalist: don’t be nosy

The sad fact is that journalists like Granderson, or at least, the LZ Granderson who wrote that column (see Afterword), are the successful products of the journalistic ecosystem in which they find themselves. They certainly are not an aberration, and given the way things work in DC and America generally, no one should be surprised.

To see why, let's sidestep for a moment into the question of what evolution really is. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that evolution was the spread of excellence.

Win One For Chooch

Caption: Philadelphia Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz hits a game-winning home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates, June 26, 2012.

Image credit: Screenshot of a Major League Baseball highlight video by Cujo359

As injustices go, this is a small one. Still, it's bugging me for some reason:

Carlos Ruiz is losing ground in his quest to be the starting catcher for the National League in the All-Star Game.

He is in third place in fan voting with 2,448,942. He trails San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey by 887,040 votes. Posey has 3,335,982 votes. St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina is second with 3,119,530 votes.

Ruiz entered Monday ranked third in the NL in on-base percentage (.418), fourth in batting average (.348) and seventh in slugging percentage (.560) and batting average with runners in scoring position (.351). But it looks like the Phillies' slow start and his lack of name recognition compared to Posey and Molina are hurting him.

Ruiz needs votes for starting spot in All Star Game

Ruiz, known as "Chooch" to many Phillies fans for reasons I can't explain, has been one of the best catchers in the league for the past six seasons, and yet has yet to be invited to the All Star Game. Like the MLB article says, he's having a terrific season this year, all the more remarkable because he's almost alone among Phillies hitters in being able to find the ball and hit it somewhere useful. He's also been one of their better clutch hitters lately, not that this would take all that much.

Buster Posey and Yadier Molina, the other two catchers mentioned in that article, are also having good years, and they've had exemplary careers, albeit a rather short one so far in Posey's case. All three deserve to go. It would just be nice if all three got the recognition they deserved, instead of leaving it up to an All Star ballot that names several players who have yet to play a game, and fans who can vote over and over again despite not knowing who is even having a good year on all those other teams.

If you'd like to do something about that, the article goes on to say:

Fans can cast their votes for starters up to 25 times at MLB.com and all 30 club sites -- online or via mobile device -- using the -- 2012 All-Star Game MLB.com Ballot until Thursday, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Ruiz needs votes for starting spot in All Star Game

There's nothing we can do about our economy's spiral into third world status, losing our civil liberties, or our short-sighted foreign policy, but this we can do something about.

So, fans, vote early, and vote often.

UPDATE: The first edition of this article said that Ruiz has been one of the best catchers in the league for the past five seasons, but that phrase left out the 2006 season, which was a pretty good one. That's why it now says "the last six seasons".

Putting The Fu In Funky

I don't know about you, but I can use a laugh right now:



Image credit: Screenshot of this MLB video by Cujo359

If you just have to know more, go to the image credit link and watch.

How are the Phillies doing, you ask? They're several more games under .500 than the last time I answered that question, and they don't look to be changing direction anytime soon.

Thank goodness for the All-Star break.

Thought For The Day

Yes, posting has been pretty scarce around here of late:

Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog

but reading hasn't...

After reading this on the Phillies' website today, I once again wondered about how it is we mark some things as being significant:

It was [Phillies first baseman and sometime designated hitter Jim] Thome's 607th career home run, and his 99th with the Phillies. If he hits one more with Philadelphia, he will become the fourth player in baseball history to have 100 home runs with three teams (Indians, White Sox and Phillies). He would join Alex Rodriguez (Mariners, Rangers and Yankees), Reggie Jackson (A's, Yankees and Angels) and Darrell Evans (Braves, Giants and Tigers).

Blanton, Thome team up to top Twins

The particular field of endeavor here, of course, is baseball, but this sort of thinking seems to apply to just about any field of interest where people keep score - sports, politics, biology. I haven't looked, but I suspect it's just as likely that no more people than those listed have hit 99 home runs for each of three teams, or 98, for that matter. Yet the number 100 seems magical somehow, in a form of statistic that few players could even remotely qualify for. After all, quite a few ball players haven't hit 100 home runs (or 99) in an entire career. A few of them are in the Baseball Hall Of Fame, in fact.

One of them is named John "Home Run" Baker.

Yes, it's a nice round number, and not many people have reached it. I suppose that's the reason, but in a sport that's full of such distinctions, it's hard to ignore them after a while. In baseball, if you go by how people talk about these things, hitting .300 is much more of an achievement than hitting .299, and driving in 100 runs much more of an accomplishment than only driving in 99. Yet, the skill and effort required is basically the same. At the end of a season, one good or bad at bat (NOTE 1) could make the difference in either category (NOTE 2).

I suppose that when we live in a world of computers and online information, this sort of thing is inevitable. There are undoubtedly people toting up how many football teams have scored ten touchdowns in a fortnight, or how many Presidential candidates won more than 300 electoral votes. To me, the important things are that it takes 270 electoral votes to become President, and you don't need to score any touchdowns at all to win a game, provided you get close enough to the end zone for a field goal.

And as John "Home Run" Baker proved, sometimes fewer than 100 home runs is still plenty.

UPDATE/Afterword: I'm sure someone will notice that John Baker (also known as Frank Baker) played almost his entire career in the dead ball era of baseball, when home runs were much harder to hit. This is yet another reason why I say that the way to evaluate an athlete's greatness, or any other professional I suppose, is by his standing at the time, not by numbers like career home runs. Even in baseball, where the rules and the strategy have been pretty constant for more than a century now, that's true. Quite a bit has changed, both in the game and in related fields like sports medicine and nutrition.

UPDATE 2: Added the words "in a seaon" to NOTE 2.

NOTE 1: An intentional walk could be the difference, too. For those who aren't fans of the game, a walk (intentional or not) does not count as an at bat. That means that it isn't counted when figuring a batter's average. Yet, a batter has no control over whether he is walked intentionally or not, other than being a good enough hitter to be worth walking intentionally, which is something most everyday players are.

NOTE 2: Typically, a full time Major League ballplayer will have more than five hundred official at bats in a season, and will appear at the plate at least that many times. When rounded to the nearest thousandth, that can be the difference of one at bat.

Your Weekly Dose Of Zen

It's been two weeks since we last saw the Phillie Phanatic. Here he's joined by Paula Abdul:

Video image credit: Major League Baseball

[Click on the image credit link to be see the video full size.]

Ironically, Ms. Abdul is doing a tour for MLB's prostate awareness campaign, according to this video. Why is that ironic? Watch the video, particularly the middle portion. I've never seen so much green fuzz move so fast.

I have to express my admiration for both performers here. I think if I tried to do crossover steps on that surface in either kind of footwear, I'd break an ankle.

How did the game go, you ask? The Phillies dropped their sixth straight, and they're back under .500. Here's another bold prediction for 2012: If they don't step up their game, they will be very lucky to avoid the NL East basement this season, Ryan Howard or no Ryan Howard.

Rolllin'

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies, Major League Baseball, and Tina Turner, your moment of zen:

Image credit: Major League Baseball, who must have left that embed link there for a reason...

You're welcome.

Something It's OK To Hate

Image credit: Keith Allison/Wikimedia

As a baseball fan who doesn't live in New York City, I've always hated the New York Yankees. At least, I hated them in the sense that I always rooted against them, no matter who they were playing against. For that reason, I used to hate seeing Mariano Rivera show up on the mound, as I wrote here:

This was another good game, with excellent pitching by Phillies starter Pedro Martinez and Yankees starter A.J. Burnett, and by Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera. Rivera pitched the last two innings to preserve the win.

F*ck The F*cking Yankees, Pt. 1

Still, it was just because when Rivera came on that any chances of the team the Yankees were playing would take the lead largely vanished. That's why I really hated to read this today:

For years, he'd run around the outfield shagging fly balls during batting practice. It was part of his conditioning routine and part of what he seemed to love about his job. To see him out there trotting around the outfield, laughing with teammates, was to see a man who seemed to be having the time of his life.

When Rivera crumpled to the warning track holding his right knee Thursday in Kansas City, time seemed to stand still for an entire sport. He suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament, which will sideline him for the remainder of this season and perhaps forever if he was serious about retiring.

It's hard to imagine life without Mo

It was once said of Joe Dimaggio, the great Yankees center fielder of the war years, that he retired because he couldn't be Joe Dimaggio anymore. I suspect that is true of Mariano Rivera, too. He's been one of the best for nearly two decades now. If he thinks he can't come back and still be Mariano Rivera, that will probably be it.

I hope that day isn't here yet. Still, like most baseball fans, I wish him luck recovering, and hope that he can come back and still be Mariano Rivera for a while longer.

Just maybe for another team...

Awesome Image Of The Day

As Professor Brian Cox would say, we live in a world of wonders, and it's my mission to bring them to you whenever I can:

Image credit: Screenshot of this MLB video by Cujo359

If you want to see the tape, go to the image credit link. It might work, though I must warn you that I don't think Major League Baseball's website designers even understand the concept of a permalink. You should be able to get there from the Phillies home page for another day or two.

Baseball Whiffs Online

I was almost tempted to buy Major League Baseball's Game Day service, until I read the fine print. The executive summary of the fine print is that, even though you're paying more than $100 to see baseball games on your computer, you won't be able to see the games your local team is playing. You won't be able to see the ones that conflict with the game of the week, either. Plus, there are some others you won't be able to see.

But that's not the best part of the MLB online experience, though. I went to check the schedule to see what might be available, and here's what the Philadelphia Phillies schedule looks like:

Image credit: Screenshots of MLB website pages by Cujo359

And here is the Seattle Mariners':

Of course, things have gotten worse since the last time I mentioned MLB's online presence. Now, not only can I usually not get to the GameDay page except by trial and error, but I can't read half the schedule.

And these guys think that I'm going to pay $110 or more for a season of this kind of online incompetence, on the off chance that there's a game on that I want to watch, that hasn't been blacked out.

Idiots.

Saturday Entertainment: Point And Counterpoint

I only saw about the last three minutes of this year's Super Bowl. In the time I was watching, the New York Giants scored a touchdown to go ahead, yet the folks who were interpreting the game for us said that this was a dumb thing to do. I thought that scoring so you could be ahead at the end was the objective of this game, but apparently, as has been the trend, the game is getting more complicated.

Thus, I felt ill prepared to write the usual incisive post-game analysis Slobber And Spittle readers have come to rely on.

Still, even having missed most of the game, I heard about this commercial:



It's Clint Eastwood at his dramatic best, narrating what I suspect will be one of the more memorable Super Bowl commercials ever. True to his usual on-screen persona, he's that gritty tough guy who sometimes need reminding that he has a heart, telling us we're gritty, tough folks who sometimes need reminding we have a heart, and we're not going to let a little thing like an economic downturn get us down. It's for the Chrysler Corporation, whose products and economic outlook are both looking considerably better than they were three years ago, thanks partly to the actions of both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration to make sure Chrysler and the other U.S. automakers had financing when they needed it.

I've discussed before the fact that manufacturing firms will often need financing to keep going. Improvements to production facilities are expensive in many industries. There are also economic downturns and sales downturns, when a company might need financing to weather the storm.

The plain fact is that it wasn't the auto industry in America that failed, it was the finance industry. It caused the crash of 2008, and it refused, even after a huge bailout, to help American industry deal with its economic woes. I supported both the Bush and Obama Administrations on this issue, and that's part of the reason why.

Sadly, not everyone agrees. There seem to be quite a few folks who think that we can do without a manufacturing base in this country. Second City Television puts that notion in the perspective it deserves, with its own parody of the Eastwood Chrysler commercial:



In particular, it calls out a Mitt Romney op-ed that appeared in the New York Times back in 2008. In the grand tradition of sportscasters who think that scoring a go-ahead touchdown is a dumb idea, he wrote this:

If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

The idea that you can make a manufacturing company better by starving it of funds is insane, but it's one that people who have made their living by destroying companies, which is what Romney used to do, tell themselves and anyone else stupid enough to believe it. Romney appears to believe that instead of making things that people value here, we should instead become a nation of people who sell our "intellectual property" to each other. We should, in other words, become vampire capitalists like him, or work on the domestic staff of folks like him.

I don't fault Romney particularly among our current crop of presidential candidates on economics policy. None of the likely candidates for either party betrays the slightest idea of what really makes a national economy function. Obama has surrounded himself with the same Wall Street pirates who made the economy crash in 2008. Romney is one. That's the main difference there. Ron Paul's views on economics are mostly either insanely foolish or foolishly insane, and neither Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich has a clue.

I think these politicians must get their economics advisors from the same school that produces the sportscasters who advise against scoring a go-ahead touchdown at the end of a game.

What people ought to remember is that Romney was writing that editorial about what George W. Bush did. Barack Obama supported that decision with more loans. Neither is a flaming liberal. Both realized that we couldn't afford to let an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans in high paying jobs go bankrupt. The loans have been repaid, and Detroit automakers are back to making useful products again. That's more than we can say for the finance industry, despite the massive bailout it received.

What I love about these two videos is that in a way they're both saying the same thing. A point is made in one using straight drama to make its point, and the other uses biting sarcasm as a counterpoint.

Enjoy your Saturday.