Hillary Meter
There seems to be an inverse relationship between the amount of wisdom a Democratic donor possesses and the amount of money they have just burning a hole in their pocketbook. Even as she continues to lap the party field in fundraising, the latest poll shows Hillary Clinton is as unelectable with the general population as she's ever been. Only 26 percent of Americans say they would
definitely vote for Senator Clinton if she runs for President in 2008, matching her lowest recorded tally by independent pollster Rasmussen Reports, and marking the sixth consecutive poll by that company (dating back three months) that shows solid support for the former First Lady under 30 percent. The number who say they would definitely vote against her (41 percent) also matches a high over the past year.
And who can blame the average voter. The party's long-neglected base sees in Clinton a candidate who backed the Iraq War, holds no public regret over it, and now opposes our military withdrawal, supported the Patriot Act, stooped to sponsoring an anti-flag burning bill, stood with Senator Rick Santorum on a measure to censor the internet, and on the whole, legitimized the Republican Senate agenda by racing into photo ops with Trent Lott, Bill Frist, Newt Gingrich, and Tom Delay. Activists feel betrayed, while conservatives aren't intrigued for even a second.
At this point, it's inconceivable that Hillary Clinton could convince me to vote for her in either the Iowa caucus or, God forbid, the general election. I'm left with too much doubt over what it is she truly believes in, and the closer we get to the election, the more her naked opportunism and pandering will ring false.
The Eckstein Effect
I had another deep thought at Busch Stadium Monday night. You know, we've been told recently-- and often-- that the current era of baseball will now forever be defined as 'The Steroid Era.' Home run and slugging tallies since the mid-'90s will have de facto asterisks even if the sport's commissioner, as expected, chooses not to apply real ones. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Ken Caminiti and Rafael Palmeiro will be only a few sluggers whose legacies, right or wrong, will be forever entwined with chemists and pushers peripheral to the game.
But some of us have been arguing from the beginning that other factors in the game have had much greater impact on the comparative statistics across generations of play that make baseball so unique among its peers. Ballparks are more intimate again for the fans, as they were from the game's genesis up until the early 1960s. Fences were moved closer to home plate in recent years, not just in from the outfield but in foul territory, detracting from what was once a pitcher's favorite spot in the ballpark. The balls are clearly harder than they've ever been, and I suspect we can trace that change directly to the specific point in the 1990s when Puerto Rican women were replaced on baseball assembly lines by machines that naturally wound the thread tighter. (Anyone who's tried to remove a car tire that was fastened with a drill rather than a mechanic's bare hands can vouch that these machines mean business.)
Pitchers, meanwhile, have largely abandoned the big overhand curveball in favor of a more level-- and therefore, dangerous-- breaking pitch called the slider. The strike zone grew significantly smaller for a time, and I'm surprised that experts so rarely refer to official scorers' drastic reduction in the issuance of fielding errors since the 1980s. That particular change hasn't led to more home runs, but it's naturally served to increase batting, slugging, and earned run averages.
My point, at last, is not that a Bonds or Canseco is most symbolic of the era. Home run hitters hit home runs. Always have and will. Their names have been linked to steroids, and so these other more crucial elements of our time will wind up factoring very little into their legacies. That's why the microcosmic player of our time is Cardinals' shortstop David Eckstein. And Mr. Eckstein, I assure you, has never used a steroid in his life.
Eckstein is listed as five feet, six inches tall and 170 pounds, which must be soaking wet, because I'm lithe at 170, and nearly half a foot taller. He throws the ball from the hole at short with all the strength of a Pony Leaguer, and with the distance of an Olympic shot-putter. He doesn't employ an uppercut swing at the plate, and only rarely cheats in the count or on the first pitch to try and pull one into the seats straight down the left field line. Yet, last year, he hit eight home runs, and that only
tied his career high. Hall-of-Famer Ozzie Smith was the same kind of offensive player. He had a similar career batting average on the same team playing the same position, and actually had more hits for extra bases. But he hit a total of 28 home runs throughout his entire 19-year career. Eckstein has already hit 26, just a month into his sixth season.
I contend that it is not steroids at all, but a combination of these other factors that has caused the current offensive explosion in baseball, and with more home run records crashing down this month amidst strict Congress-approved drug testing, it's time to relegate the steroid hype to the ash heap of debate.
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You look like a fella that needs an update on the Great Pujols. He tied the Major League record for homers in April last night with number 13, and is on pace for a season total of 91. At first base, Pujols is being singled out in a new book called "The Fielding Bible," published by Baseballinfosolutions.com. The website credits Albert the Great with 42 "saves" on errant throws to first in 2005. The Cubs' Derrek Lee comes in a distant second with 23. And
Lelands Auction House in New York is auctioning off the first Cardinals' home run at the new Busch Stadium (struck by Pujols) beginning on May 8th. The opening bid is $5,000.
Baseball's All-Star Voting began yesterday, and just a reminder that the fact it begins so early in the season means it's designed to reward the great consistent players and stars of the game, not the half season wonders. (Hint on behalf of the game's 2006 TV ratings: Maybe it's best not to have another All-Star Game without Derek Jeter.) Let's stuff the box and see if we can't help Phat Albert break the all-time voting record. Future Hall-of-Famer Scott Rolen and the sabermetricians' CFer of the decade, Jim Edmonds, are still winning choices at their respective positions, and don't forget also that David Eckstein is the microcosmic player of his time.
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I've got another great blogsite for you.
Ken Levine must be having a wonderful life. Not only has he been a radio and television broadcaster for the Orioles, Mariners, and Padres, he's written and directed television scripts for the likes of "M*A*S*H," "Cheers," "Wings," "The Simpsons," "Frasier," and "Everybody Loves Raymond." He wrote
37 episodes of "Cheers," including my all-time favorite in which Cliff was a contestant on "Jeopardy," as well as the minor league mascot episode of "The Simpsons" entitled "Dancin' Homer."
Fear of brown people
Public opposition to the naturalization of undocumented Mexican immigrants has been disguised as concern over national security, but it's really been driven by fervent xenophobia and racist wordviews. The ongoing cover-up of this fact is finally going up in smoke, thanks to the flap over a Spanish-language recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Do everyday Americans truly give a rat's ass what any musicians do with their interpretations of our national anthem? Up to this point it seemed the song had already been done in every conceivable style-- as jazz instrumental, backed by a drum machine, sung by rock and blues musicians, and recorded as a Gospel hymn. It's probably been performed with dueling banjos. But our President cares deeply about the latest artistic threat to Francis Scott Key's Greatest Hit. "I think the national anthem ought to be done in English," he said today in the Rose Garden, then added, "I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn English"-- a statement of such individual hypocrisy from President Lil' Abner that it threatened par with his global lectures on human rights.
The Spanish-language recording of the anthem is the work of a British record producer named Adam Kidron, who's calling it an ode to the millions of immigrants seeking a better life in the United States. It's hard not to also see and hear echos of historical precedent in U.S./British relations. During the American Revolution, the lyric of Britain's anthem "God Save the Queen" gave way to "My Country, 'tis of Thee" in the colonies.
The border issue, as a whole, has demonstrated that Jim Crow is alive and well in America. It has provided political cover for the Haters on right-wing radio, the internet, and even in our Congress. U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa sent a letter to newspapers this week pronouncing that an Hispanic economic boycott such as Monday's National Day Without Immigrants meant "there would be no one to smuggle across our border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States...The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day... Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded... Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime." Not surprisingly, this type of rhetoric is leading to Civil Rights-era-style violence in our least-evolved suburban backwaters. Late Saturday night, two white teenage boys in Spring, TX severely beat, burned, and sodomized a 16-year-old Hispanic boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old white girl at a party.
If you're not yet on the side of amnesty for undocumented residents or for creating a path to citizenship for our Latino neighbors and your fellow laborers, these are your cohorts. It's gut-check time again in America, and I believe that
su hermosura estrellada yet waves over the home of the brave.
"Luxury Lounge"
Skip to the third paragraph of James Wolcott's
4/25 blog entry for a rather negative assessment of this week's episode of "The Sopranos." I tend to agree, though the scribe neglects to mention the affecting Artie Bucco plot that really served as the episode's main arc.
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Sorry I've been out for a week. I didn't expect such an extended absence. I made a second trip to St. Louis for a ballgame Monday night. Busch Stadium tickets will be harder to come by this summer and I've had to get some trips out of the way before starting my new job, which by the way, began today. I should be posting more on one or more of these recent developments later in the week.
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Moeller TV Listings -- "Saturday Night Live" will devote an entire broadcast to writer Robert Smigel's "Saturday TV Funhouse" shorts this coming weekend. The New York Times has
more with the author. My favorite was the one with Jesus coming down to Earth on Christmas, and Honorable Mention to one that, due to its datedness, they probably won't run on Saturday-- Tom Snyder interviewing Dolly Parton.
Hu invited him
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has been one of the few Representatives and one of the fewer elected Democrats that has been willing to call Presidents Clinton and Bush to the mat on their coddling of the Chinese government.
This link is to an op-ed piece Pelosi wrote for today's Los Angeles Times. The piece was published three days after
surgeons in Britain accused China of selling human organs harvested from executed prisoners.
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And
some positive press for Bill Maher.
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4/22/06 update: Chinese "democracy" is beginning to take root in America. A CNN reporter was thrown out of Hu Jintao's welcoming ceremony Friday after asking the Chinese president whether he had seen student protestors gathered on the campus green of Yale University. A school spokersperson said the reporter was "invited to cover an event, not hold a press conference." A protestor at the White House who shouted phrases like "Stop oppressing the Falun Gong (a Buddhist-based spiritual sect banned in China,)" and "President Bush, stop him from killing!" was arrested and prosecutors are seeking charges that include willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official.
The blessed event
The spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes has entered the world this week just in time to publicize her mother's appearance in "Thank You For Smoking" at a multiplex near your home. Here's the perspective of author and blogger Walter Kern on the girl's birth:
Of all the world's great traditions of exploitation-- master over slave, husband over wife, rich man over poor man-- parenthood is the most absolute and the least subject to scrutiny or pressure. Not only do the stronger parties involved have the right to construct the weaker one's reality and then imprison their subject inside of it, they have the right to create the subject at a moment not of its choosing and not necessarily to its advantage. For Holmes and 'Cruise' to have marched a helpless new spirit into the global media s***-storm that they, their publicists, and the clerical overseers have been whipping up for many months now should not only be an actionable infraction but a grave reminder to all of us not to toy around with the unformed soul material.Suri, lovely child, you are free. You just don't know it yet. You don't even have to, ultimately, keep that name they gave you. You can be an 'Amy' like your friends. None of what happened is your responsibility. Your mother, she chose to relinquish her personal liberty. Your father, he chose to forsake his humanness. But you, at eighteen, as an American citizen and-- in the words of Desiderata-- 'a child of the universe' will have the right to hop any bus you want and take it as far as you want and never return.---
I caught that "Thank You For Smoking" last night, and came away disappointed. As a satire, I don't think it forced me to think in a different way. The central character, a slick tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart, failed to grab me or provoke any empathy or intrigue. It's worth a look on a cheaper movie format down the road, though. The opening title sequence is impressive, Robert Duvall's worth watching in anything, and the guy who plays Rob Lowe's secretary steals the show.
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The Great Pujols' next hit will be the 1,000th of his career. The 26-year-old slugger needed five years and a couple weeks to brush against this plateau. Baseball's career record is 4,256 hits, held by Pete Rose. Do the math, people.
My first trip to Busch
I got my first glimpse of the new Busch Stadium yesterday-- a chance to sit in the bleachers and watch the Cardinals and Reds on a gorgeous Easter Sunday. Three aspects of the park are remarkably similar to the old one-- the colors (fans dressed in red and red seats, and a green grandstand,) the route from Iowa to the ballpark, and Albert Pujols. You may have already heard that Pujols thumped a game-tying two run homer in the 5th, added to a one-run lead with a solo shot in the 7th, and then walked off with a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, down a run. The game feels like the equivalent of going to see Michael Jordan and watching him score 60.
As for the ballpark, it still feels like a work in progress, and I'm not talking about the section of seats in left that hasn't opened yet. I'm talking about the little things in a total ballpark experience that may not seem like much to casual fans, or even serious fans in casual baseball cities, but mean the world to hard-core fans in baseball's best city. I'm not a bleacher fan, anyway, so that detracted from the experience, but perhaps unfairly. On a bright day, it was difficult to pick up the ball out of the white shirts behind home plate. I had to crane my neck around to get information for my scorecard. Lineup changes were posted remarkably slow, and a couple Reds pinch-hitters' names never appeared. The outfield scoreboard has more info than ever on out-of-town games (batters and baserunners,) but less it seems on the game we're all there to watch. If you miss a play result, the player's batting history for the game is gone for good, and the sound system went virtually undetected by outfield patrons. Sound is one of the most difficult things for architectural engineers to calibrate, but I missed the booming reverberations of the PA announcer and organist off the coliseum-style pavilion of Old Busch.
The thirdbase side "balls-and-strikes" scoreboard has yet to be installed, and the firstbase side is half reserved for this ridiculous gimmick in which fans can text-message public comments from their wireless phones, presumably even from home. My brother, an employee of the particular phone company offering the service, spent the first two innings and $2.99 waiting for his "Go Reds" to appear on the board. It's all just another way for cell phone users to become more of a nuisance at the ballgame.
The view from behind home plate is utterly spectacular, with the Gateway Arch towering over the skyline in right-center field, but you don't get the sense you should that you are in the home of one of baseball's most storied franchises. The team's retired numbers are lost in the centerfield picnic area amidst a sea of advertising (of which only the classic Budweiser banner atop is acceptable,) Rogers Hornsby, the greatest secondbaseman in baseball history but a man who played before uniform numbers, and long-time broadcaster Jack Buck are not remembered at all, and the team's 16 National League pennants and 9 World Championship flags are nowhere to be found.
Hopefully with time, the new mailing address will precipitate a whole new rededication of all these elements, and they'll remember to leave space for a new statue to accompany Stan Musial's at the ballpark's entrance. The Great Pujols is already leaving an imprint inside.
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As promised last week, here's the account of that other time I believe a higher power may have been speaking directly to me. Esquire magazine published an issue devoted to "What I've Learned"s. "What I've Learned" is a one-page collection of wisdoms and witticisms from older celebrity men-- and some celebrity women-- relaying the knowledge they've accumulated during their lives and careers. For example, Negro Leaguer Buck O'Neil: "A nickname means you belong," and Homer Simpson: "I don't need a surgeon telling me how to operate on myself."
This issue had pages upon pages of such pearls, and the last page was devoted to a clever scribe's listing of Almighty God's "What I've Learned"s. The final nugget (out of possibly a thousand in this particular magazine) was "Always finish off a shave with cold water. It's better for your pores." As coincidence might rather have it, that just happened to be the week I switched from an electric to a straight razor, and let me tell you, my skin immediately appreciated this helpful hint. Clean, open pores going on four years now.
An early obit?
One of my coddled old videotapes is a self-recorded ABC special honoring Sammy Davis Jr.'s 60 years in show business in 1990. Sammy was only 64 when the benefit for the United Negro College Fund was organized, which tells you, among many other things, just how early Davis' career began when he joined his father and uncle as "the Will Maston Trio" on the old black vaudeville, or "Chitlin,'" circuit. The real goal of the televised tribute was to honor Sammy Davis' entire life, as he was coping by then with the late stages of throat cancer. He was no longer capable of speaking above a whisper, and he wore an ascot around his neck to hide the rather gruesome effects of his illness. He would be dead within four months.
The entertainment revue was a "who's who" collection of some of the biggest names of the 20th century, and it was absolutely the greatest gathering of 1980s stars that ever assembled in one venue during the era. The old-guard names, appearing live or in archived film, have almost all past-- Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle, even some of the younger performers like Gregory Hines and Richard Pryor, but the fates of these stars are relatively envious compared with some of the younger stars who performed or paid tribute to Davis that night. Watching the special now, I realize, first and foremost, how much African-American culture influenced the childhoods of white kids during the 1980s, but also how the culture exacts a heavy toll on the black community, and how difficult it can be at times to see clearly into the lives of seemingly successful people.
When I give you the list of participants that night, I suspect you'll be hard pressed to decide which is the most tragic figure-- Mike Tyson, or perhaps Michael Jackson? You could make a strong case for either. Certainly, Bill Cosby's walked through hell on earth, but he remains a source of pride and strength to all people, and likewise, Magic Johnson and Stevie Wonder. But
my choice for the most devastating case of personal and professional decline, perhaps
socially-, but undoubtedly
self-induced, is Whitney Houston.
Her voice was angelic. When she sang that she "want(ed) to dance with somebody," I dreamed that I would one day be her partner. When she was "saving all (her) love," a tiny part of me believed that she was saving it for our blessed wedding night. When she delivered the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl, I came the closest I ever had, or ever would again, to enlisting in the Marines. And when she appeared on a solo television concert in the mid-1990s, wearing a floor-length, form-fitting gown held up by the thinnest of spaghetti straps, and the dress hung from her shoulders and sweaty bosom like a gift waiting to be unwrapped on Christmas morning, it was one of two times in my life that I thought God might have been speaking to me. (I'll share the other with you in the next day or two.) I'll paraphrase God: "This is why you should be grateful you're a man."
This discussion is all just an end-around to provide you with a link to
a much more coherent article about Houston's fall from the top of the music world. It would be hard for me to ever accept that it wasn't her marriage to Bobby Brown that proved to be her unraveling. In retrospect, the coupling looks like one of those Kevin Federline situations in which the vulnerable starlet chases the puddle-deep poseur just to piss off her business managers. "Where do broken hearts go," indeed? At least I still have Lisa Bonet.
Now he tells us
What a shameful fall from grace for Colin Powell. In the late 1990s, the military commander and media darling could write his own ticket in Washington. He'd have destroyed Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race if he'd chosen to pursue the Republican nomination. But then, as Secretary of State, he made that infamous presentation to Congress in 2002, delivering a trumped-up case for war against Saddam Hussein complete with false claims that the Iraqi dictator had pursued ingredients for manufacturing nuclear weapons. Powell left the cabinet in deafening silence as Bush began his second term, but thanks to the whistleblower, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whom the president then set out to destroy, the public found out what a miniscule threat Hussein actually posed.
Today, the Washington Post
reveals that Bush continued lying about the presence of WMDs even 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, claiming that "biological laboratories" had been seized when, in fact, they hadn't and he knew they hadn't. And now Powell claims that he and the experts from the state department never believed that Iraq was an imminent nuclear threat. "That was all Cheney," is his direct quote, and at that, one that
still covers for the president. And you thought the Democrats lacked for courage.
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Baseball's hit king, Pete Rose, told a Las Vegas radio audience last week that amphetamines, recently banned from the game after decades of widespread use, pose less of a threat than steroids to the integrity of baseball. "I can't tell you who took them or who didn't (during the '60s, '70s, and '80s,) and I really don't care."
He told FHM magazine in its April issue that
he used amphetamines, or speed, as a player. "If you did an analysis and compare them to steroids, one thing amphetamines aren't going to do is make you stronger." "Amphetamines aren't going to get you over an injury faster," he told KBAD radio.
To FHM, "Some people call them amphetamines, but they were diet pills. If steroids don't help you, why the hell do they take them?" An interesting thought and an admirable admission, but couldn't the last question also be asked of amphetamines?
Busch Stadium III, Day I
PREGAME-- Ah, the soothing sounds of Ernie Hays' Yamaha AR80 electric organ. It doesn't look like the old ballpark, but it sounds like it. I tune to the Cardinals' first game at new Busch Stadium, telecast on Fox Sports Midwest, and during the Milwaukee Brewers' starting line-ups, I google the ballpark organist and get hooked on
this terrific article from a St. Louis newsweekly, complete with a litany of the subject's dirty jokes. Ooh, here come the Budweiser Clydesdales. I don't have time to google them. Manager Tony LaRussa said he signed with the Cardinals to see the Clydesdales, and then the brewery sold the team right away (1995.) The animal-loving skipper finally got to see them on the field at the last game at Old Busch and then the ultimate indignity-- the dalmatian ignored him.
The all-time greats circle the ballpark in convertibles-- Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst, Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, and Fredbird, followed by LaRussa, the coaches (Larry Walker!) and players. The fans rise in unison to sing the national anthem. Cy Young winner and MVP Chris Carpenter and Albert Pujols throw out the ceremonial first pitches to the Cardinals' last winners in those categories, Bob Gibson and Willie McGee. Baseball City, USA. America at its most wholesome. I'm reminded of a moment from an Opening Day past-- St. Louis becoming the only city in the U.S. where an elderly man (Musial,) clad in red blazer and red shoes can hold a crowd of 50,000 enthralled with an harmonica rendition of the national anthem.
FIRST INNING- The first pitch in stadium history is a ball high and away from Mark Mulder to Brady Clark. The second pitch is the first out, a line drive to secondbaseman Aaron Miles. 1-2-3 inning. Cardinal Juan Encarnacion becomes the first baserunner, being hit in the hand by a pitch from Toma Ohka. Pujols walks. Edmonds flies to center, and Juancion tags to third. Then it happens, 3:28 central time, the first ever "fake to third, fake to first" stepoff play, courtesy of Ohka. Broadcaster Joe Buck calls attention to the significance. It's a misnomer, though, that the ploy never works. I've seen it work three times in my life on television, but then I watch a lot of baseball. Rolen walks, and So Taguchi lines to a leaping shortstop to end the first scoring chance. TIED, 0-0
SECOND INNING- The first ever hit comes from Carlos Lee and it's followed by the first home run by Bill Hall. Damn. The first HR in the old park was by a visitor, also-- Felipe Alou, but the Cardinals won the game in extra innings. Bottom 2, the Brewers' RFer drops a fly ball, drawing attention to a major change from the old park-- the sunfield is in right, rather than left. With two out and one on, David Eckstein records the first Cards' hit, a bunt single. This is a good omen for Eckstein. Broadcaster Mike Shannon had the first Cards' hit in the old park, and he's been given steady employment by the ballclub for the succeeding four decades. Juancion grounds out. The Birds have already left five runners on base. BREWERS LEAD, 2-0
THIRD INNING- All ground balls off Mark Mulder. A one-out single by Brady Clark past a diving Miles, but a DP follows. It's a quick infield. St. Louis has a colorful ground ball history. Whitey's Rabbits in the 1980s made a living out of hitting ground balls on Astroturf and using their speed to circle the bases, but prior to that, old Sportsman's Park/first Busch Stadium, had a renown diamond as well. It was rock hard because of the heat of the St. Louis summer and the fact that either a Cardinals or Browns game was being played there every day. I'm reminded of the classic line from the old lefty Dave LaPoint about Wrigley Field's high grass infield in Chicago, "They mow it with a helicopter." The Great Pujols leads off the bottom of the third with a 445 foot bomb into the leftfield bleachers. He is the greatest player in the game, the greatest Cardinal since Musial. Edmonds breaks up a key twin-killing, and St. Louis scratches another run on 2 hits and a sac fly. TIED 2-2
FOURTH INNING- Mulder works out of a one out jam. Ohka doesn't. Scott Rolen delivers a bases loaded, 2 run double. I expected Fox Sports Net to show more of the new ballpark, but there hasn't been much. The coolest thing is having the Arch in the background. What an underrated American monument. What I like most about it is that it has no practical purpose. It's art for art's sake. Former Redbird Tim McCarver thinks the state of Illinois should build a giant statue on the other side of the river of a man holding a croquet mallet. CARDS LEAD 4-2
FIFTH INNING- Mulder throws up another goose egg. The player I currently call my favorite, Jim Edmonds, christens the park with one of his patented diving catches, battling the sun to boot. I'm waiting for his first opportunity to scale the centerfield wall and rob a homer. The wall has been lowered from ten feet to eight, surely with Diamond Jim in mind. CARDS LEAD 4-2
SIXTH INNING- Commissioner Bud Selig sits in the broadcasters' booth with Buck and Al Hrabosky. Buck asks the obligatory steroid questions, and almost gets the commish to criticize the Wrigley Field grounds crew. Mulder continues rolling. CARDS go quietly, still LEAD 4-2
SEVENTH INNING- Mulder posts another donut, then batting for himself, deposits a line drive over the boards in right field. What a beautiful day this has turned out to be, beautiful weather in St. Louis (as well as Des Moines.) Nice ballgame. CARDS LEAD 6-2
EIGHTH INNING- The Brewers and the Cardinals each hit a ball that dies at the warning track. I like the way the ballpark is playing. Three home runs have been struck, but the old Busch played livelier in the daytime so that might be the case. I like the initial balance of offense and pitching. That sun in right and center field could wind up being a major nuisance, but then again most day games won't be played in April starting at 3 o'clock. I'll spare you, for now, my theory as to why baseball parks (like the old Busch) should position their centerfields in the southeast corner of the park, and it's not because it has to be behind secondbase, smartass. CARDS LEAD 6-2
NINTH INNING- Another nailbiter for the Cardinals' bullpen. Today's hero, Mark Mulder, takes the field to wrap up the complete game, but he gives up a lead off hit and LaRussa grabs the hook. Former Cards 1st round draft pick Braden Looper, back in the organization after stints in Miami and New York, comes on and gets a double play ball, but then coughs up a double to Bill Hall, who already has another double and the historic first stadium HR. An RBI single follows, and LaRussa opts for closer Jason Isringhausen, who grew up an hour away from the pitcher's mound. He surrenders an RBI single and a walk, bringing the go-ahead run to the plate, but then induces a slow roller to first. Albert Pujols wins a sprint to the bag, reminiscent of last year's MVP race, and
That's a Winner. CARDS WIN 6-4Stay tuned for the "Star of the Game" and "the Scoreboard Show," coming up next.
Baseball by the numbers 4/9/06
96 -- Wins the Cardinals have averaged per season over the last six.
607 -- Career double hit by Craig Biggio Friday night in Houston, moving into tenth place on the all-time list. For the record, Pete Rose is 2nd on the list with 746. Not bad for a "singles hitter."
541 -- Reason that I despise ESPN: This morning they did two minutes of highlights and analysis of the Oklahoma Sooners spring football game.
91 -- Number of Opening Days held at Wrigley Field. And evidently, it's finally run out of hot water for the visitors' locker room. After Friday's game played during 30 degree temperatures and a 25 mph wind, the Cardinals returned to a clubhouse with five minutes of warm running water. CF Jim Edmonds called playing at Wrigley "a complete Class A experience."
37 -- Combined number of games the Cardinals finished ahead of the Cubs in 2004 and 2005. No connection to the previous item, I'm sure.
498 -- Reason that I despise ESPN: Their obvious belief that the rules of news and entertainment separation don't apply to
sports journalism, i.e.
Bonds on Bonds.0 -- Strikes taken by new Cardinals Aaron Miles and Juan Encarnacion in the ninth inning of yesterday's game, trailing 3-2.
12 -- Hitless at-bats to start the season by the Cubs' new rightfielder Jacque Jones, including 6 strikeouts. Let me take this opportunity to propose this trade to Cubs fans-- Jones for Encarnacion ??
176-6 -- Greg Maddux's career record when he gets five or more runs of support. Like an idiot, I thought the Cardinals still had a good chance of winning Friday when, down 5-0, Edmonds led off the seventh with a home run and Scott Rolen walked.
9/2/86 -- Date Maddux recorded the first of his 319 wins in the majors. How far back does Maddux go in Cubbydom? His first victory came in relief of a game suspended by darkness, two years before lights were installed at Wrigley Field.
1-50 -- Reasons I despise ESPN: Chris Berman
5-0 -- The Milwaukee Brewers' record this morning.
0 -- Number of nights I've lied awake so far this season worrying about the Brewers.
Rallying for fairness
Vanity Fair editor James Wolcott, from his blog:
"White riot/I wanna riot/white riot--a riot of my own" sang-chanted the Clash on their first album, and that seems to be the rallying cry of angry white middle-aged pundits and radio hosts fed up with having Mexican flags flaunted in their faces like the dancing skirts of haughty senoritas. Skilled in the military art of shooting off their mouths, these are dime-brained demagogues ready to inflame ethnic and national antagonisms and defend the Alamo all over again, even if it means expelling millions of immigrants already here and then constructing "a (columnist Charles)
Krauthammer Wall of non-Frank Gehry design" that will endure as a testament to the marriage of nativism and neoconservatism.Hear, hear.
The National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice culminates this
Monday, April 10th. Around the country, people will be rallying in support of principled immigration reform and against U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 4437, which would criminalize illegal immigrants and make felons of those who assist them. Hundreds of thousands are expected to take to the streets in large U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. A rally in Iowa is scheduled for Sunday afternoon at one o'clock at Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines. Count me in.
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Undocumented workers are often blamed for driving down U.S. wages, but it's really the corporate fatcats and their marionettes in Washington who have been denying millions of hard-working Americans a living wage. According to census data printed in last Sunday's New York Times, the median household income fell 3.8 percent, or $1,700, during the period of 1999 to 2004 despite the fact that average productivity climbed three percent per year.
The minimum wage has not been raised in eight years. In 2006, for the first time in history, a full-time U.S. worker earning the minimum allowable wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment
anywhere in America at market rates. Meanwhile, the CEO of ExxonMobil earned roughly $13,700 an hour in 2005.
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Things have gotten so gloomy in America that even fortune cookies are scaling back their optimism. This is absolutely true-- my fortune at lunch read "Your are not illiterate."
The missing links
Here's my free advice to CBS upon their hiring of Katie Couric as the anchor of the Evening News. If you're serious about making major changes to the traditional format, the first one should be eliminating the commercials. All of the executive hand-wringing seems to be over how to do anything different than what all the networks are doing now-- that is, cramming as much news into 20 minutes as possible. The audience, and by extension, the ad rates, are dwindling anyway. Why not load a full 30 minutes of news and features into each half-hour, and let America know you're the first network finally willing to commit to a news division devoted to public service on the publicly-owned airwaves and away from the profit-driven mindset that has robbed every news organization of much of its credibility and audience? The entire CBS network and news division would benefit from the public relations move, and they could make up the revenue from the boosted status of their prime-time news specials and magazine programs.
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Creationists,
start your spinning...
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Here is an article for all of you people who mooch off my HBO, and those of you waiting for that DVD release of the second season of Carnivale that may never come. I dedicate the link to all of you Home Box Office subscribers who keep your lips zipped about plot points so graciously and thanklessly so that others might eventually catch up.
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The average ticket price for a Cardinals game this year is third in the league behind only the Red Sox and the Cubs. The average price of $29.78 is a dollar more than even a Yankees game. Major League Baseball needs to share evenly the local television money each of its teams receives, and the Cardinals need to stop taking their fans to the cleaners. Consider what the Cardinals have added financially over the last few years (courtesy of hardballtimes.com): another record-breaking season in ticket sales last year (3,500,000+,) an expectation of the same amount of customers this year at higher prices and with more luxury suites, a seat license program that netted $40 million this winter, a 20-year stadium-naming agreement on the new stadium with Anheuser-Busch (undisclosed terms, but estimated at about $40 million,) $42 million in tax breaks from the state of Missouri, an auction of old Busch Stadium memorabilia last fall that netted more than $6.5 million, a controlling interest in a new radio network (including full ownership of the flagship station,) money earned from appearing the playoffs five of the last six seasons, $23 million from MLB for their websites, the XM satellite radio deal, a new contract with ESPN, and the sale of the Washington Nationals, and a decreased revenue-sharing burden from an MLB deal with the Yankees that allows teams to deduct stadium building expenses from the common pool.
All of that, and still the Cardinals start 2006 with a $2 million reduction in player salaries. Last year's annual Forbes Magazine investigation into how much MLB teams are
really worth (not what the teams' claim in their books) had the Cardinals franchise tag at $220 million more than what the club owners paid for it ten years ago, and that doesn't factor in a finished ballpark. Needless to say, I expect General Manager Walt Jocketty to be very busy at the trade deadline this summer. He's been the team's true MVP for a decade.
Low and wide right
Blog contributor Aaron Moeller "texted" me from Cincinnati this morning-- he and his traveling companion scored Opening Day tickets for this afternoon's tilt between the Reds and Cubs at the Great American Ballpark. Not that he needed them, but he's on strict orders from me to boo President Bush, who's on-hand to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. (I also instructed him to boo Carlos Zambrano.) Where once the nation's chief executive would travel to D.C.'s R.F.K. Stadium or Baltimore's Municipal Stadium or Camden Yards to chuck the first eephus pitch of spring, Bush and Dick Cheney have toured the country the first Monday of each April to repay political favors, and in the case of 2004, sway swing-state voters.
Bush, as everyone knows, has deep roots in the game of baseball. Before he was the nation's First Hypocrite in the war on steroids, he owned the Texas Rangers' clubhouse where Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro were injecting themselves with "the juice" on a semi-daily basis. Before being recruited by his Daddy's wealthy friends to a life of public service and corporate thieving from inside the nation's highest office, Dubya was recruited by a different group of wealthy friends to front a tax fleecing venture in the greater Dallas area that today is called The Ballpark At Arlington. The gist of the development plan was that area residents would foot the bill for a new baseball stadium for the local team, and in return, the team wouldn't pack their bags and leave town for a different host city. With a new ballpark in tow as private asset, Bush and his puppeteers would then sell the baseball franchise for ten times or more what they paid for it-- which they did just prior to Bush's first campaign for Texas governor. It became the first and only time George W. Bush ever made money in the private sector.
In 2004, after his own largely-unsuccessful attempt to rob Missouri taxpayers of their hard-earned tax dollars, former Bush partner Bill DeWitt recruited the President to the St. Louis Cardinals' then-ballpark to throw out the first pitch of the season. (Missouri was considered a swing state in the 2004 presidential campaign prior to John Kerry's wind-surfing escapade at his Cape Cod estate.) Thirteen months after the launching of the Iraqi war, there was a mixed reaction for Bush at Busch Stadium, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uncovered shortly after that the stadium's sound operator had piped in artificial applause to cushion the President's reception.
This winter, another of the President's former partners, Bob Castellini, took over a controlling interest in the Cincinnati Reds so Bush is on-hand today to tour the clubhouses and take the pitchers' mound at yet-another of baseball's publicly-financed, but privately-held stadiums. Since the Reds' previous owner, Carl Lindner, was also a "Texas Ranger," and in his case, that's just a GOP financial contributing designation, Bush follows a long line of Republicans to the Opening Day mound in Cincy. Former President Bush, an Astros fan, threw out the first pitch in 2003, and Dick Cheney endured a mild cardio workout a year later.
Politics has no business mixing with baseball, and I've about had it with the Cardinals' ownership. It's one thing to invite the President to Opening Day, it's quite another to ignore half of your fanbase. Bill Clinton grew up a Cardinals' fan, listening to KMOX Radio and Harry Caray in Hot Springs, but he's never been invited to a Cardinals' game, and I contend it was a purposeful cultural slight when the Cards invited only country and Christian contemporary singers to perform the national anthem and God Bless America during the 2004 World Series, two weeks before the national election. For pity's sake, you have legends Chuck Berry and Nelly making music history in St. Louis, and the ballpark feels like an evening at the Republican National Convention.
The early reports from Cincinnati are coming in, and the first are that Bush was received warmly. It's also noteworthy, however, that he took the field along with several wounded Iraqi veterans. Reds' pitcher and former Cardinals' gas can Kent Mercker showed the President his Bush/Cheney hat, the President spent some extra time with superstar Ken Griffey, Jr., and the Prez's first pitch sailed high and wide. Forty dollar tickets were running $150 each on the street and many fans didn't make it inside in time to see the first pitch due to added security. Were Reds' fans Paula Martin and Rita Bartels excited? "It's really not worth all this for the President," said Bartels, 39, "but I'm a big baseball fan." Both women said the long lines and $150 each were worth it when they saw Cincinnati native Nick Lachey in concert.
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McCarthyism update: Many country music radio stations are refusing to play the Dixie Chicks' new single three years after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London concert audience that she was ashamed George W. Bush was her President. Greg Mozingo, program director for WIL-FM in St. Louis says the lyrics of the new single "Not Ready to Make Nice" are too polarizing and that many listeners complained when the song was introduced. "With the hard feelings out there, especially here in the heartland, combined with in-your-face lyrics, I don't think that boded well for them." God forbid that music actually say something.
The song is available on the Chicks' website. (Warning-- link has immediate audio.)
