What awaits the Democrats
2010 will not be a fun year for Democrats. They'll be forced to take their medicine in November for failing to move on any reforms of substance, whether it be health care, the economy and homeowner protection, civil liberties, or for their war mongering in far-off Muslim countries.
But the traditional news media won't paint the coming collapse that way, of course. The Republican Party will be the great beneficiary of the Democrats' destruction, and so the "revolution" will be sold as a rightward shift by the electorate. You and I will know better, though, because we know about
this little-noticed poll released during the Thanksgiving holiday.
The November '10 thumping will have nothing to do with conservatives racing to the polls in vast numbers, or moderates moving to the right. It will have to do with Democrats simply staying home on election day out of disgust. Call it the Obama Hangover.
The Research 2000 poll site, which surveyed 2,400 Americans between November 22 and 25, found that 40% of self-identified Democrats already say they "are not likely to" or "definitely won't" vote in next year's mid-term elections. Self-identified Republicans were
three times more likely to say they would vote next year.
Wow. Ugly.
Can we acknowledge finally that liberals simply don't have anybody for whom to vote? We want the U.S. out of war in the Middle East. We get war escalation from our president to the tune of $1 million per year
PER SOLDIER in Afghanistan. We want health care as in an inalienable right. We get 2,000 pages of giveaways to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
I say "right on" to stiffing the office-seekers. If we can't get principled, liberal contenders, then the next best option is to just stay home. Like that old bumper sticker says-- If God had wanted us to vote, he'd have given us candidates.
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I'm trying to figure out why the circumstances that led up to a single-car accident involving a sports celebrity who was neither drunk nor engaged in any criminal behavior is any of my business. It's a hell of a leap from car crash to marital infidelity for prying commentators and talking-head baffoons demanding a "full accounting" of the night's events. Even the biggest stars in the world deserve a fundamental right to marital privacy. Tiger Woods owes me nothing.
But then again, I don't buy Tiger Woods products. I've already sworn them off. I don't drink Gatorade. I don't wear Nikes. I don't have an American Express card. I don't drive a Buick. I have no idea what the hell Accenture is. Titleist is a dirty word with five too many letters. Tiger already lost me due to his true moral shortcomings-- that is, his partnership with Chevron (in a golf tournament he'll ironically miss this weekend), a global corporation that props up dictators and serves as one of the world's largest polluters; and his ongoing failure to address any of the long-standing charges of sweatshop and child labor employed in the manufacturing of Nike shoes. Tiger Woods owes
me nothing because I've never bought into him. As a man, he deserves respect for his right to individual privacy. As a corporate mouthpiece who pockets ten times more cash endorsing products than he does swinging a club, and even as a corporate "brand" in and of himself, he doesn't deserve
any privacy, and he certainly shouldn't expect it.
The Pujols statbook
Albert Pujols was awarded his third MVP trophy this afternoon, becoming only the 10th man in big league history to win as many in his career. The Cardinals firstbaseman will turn 30 in January. With this latest, he becomes the first unanimous MVP winner in either league since Barry Bonds in 2002, and joins Stan Musial as the only Cardinals player to win three times. Musial took the NL prize home in 1943, 1946, and 1948; Pujols now in 2005, 2008, and 2009.
The occasion provides an opportunity for us to study the future Hall-of-Famer at greater length-- in particular, his extraordinary stat-line over at that incomparable website-- baseball-reference.com.
As a kid, I loved to flip over my baseball cards and study the stats on the back. In those days, the Topps-brand cards would print a player's entire career numbers-- year by year-- on the opposite side of the color photo. Sometime around the mid-1980s, the card companies abandoned the practice in favor of a career line and typically just the most recent 3 or 4 individual seasons. In the early '80s, though, veteran guys like Pete Rose, Tom Seaver, Carl Yastremski, or Gaylord Perry would have the entire backs of their cards covered with numbers. Their 18 and 20 year careers left no room for "fun facts" or such trivia.
I digress. My point is that I've never seen anything to compare to
Pujols' line after his first nine big league seasons. The closest comparison, I guess, would be a sunset over the Pacific Ocean. It's just so implausibly... linear. There have been no inconsistencies, no dud seasons of any kind, not even dud individual single-season statistics. There have been no injuries to force anything more than an isolated trip to the 15-day disabled list. There have been no half-seasons, even when he debuted. Of course, it doesn't hurt either that he's played every season with the same team.
He broke in with a full (161 game) rookie season at the beginning of a decade (2001) and at the beginning of one of his decades (the age of 21). He's always finished with 600+ plate appearances, 500-something at-bats, 30+ home runs, a .300-plus batting average, and he's the second player in history (behind only Al Simmons) to drive in 100+ runs in each of his first nine seasons. At various times, he's led the league in the individual categories of runs, hits, doubles, home runs, total bases, intentional walks, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, OPS (slugging plus on-base), even grounding into double plays. (You ground into a lot of twin killings when you hit that many line drives.)
We've got to scrape the bottom of the barrel if we're looking for imperfections. The biggest ones I can detect are his first year when he struck out more times than he walked (he hasn't done it since and the positive gap keeps widening) and the summer he failed to score 100 runs (he finished with 99 in '07).
Just as an exercise, let's evaluate Pujols at his worst. If we take his
worst single-season number in each category, he still puts up these numbers--
BA: .314 ('02)
OBP: .394 ('02)
SLG: .561 ('02)
Runs: 99 ('07)
Hits: 177 ('06)
2B: 33 ('06)
3B: 0 ('08)
HR: 32 ('07)
RBI: 103 ('07)
BB: 69 ('01)
SO: 93 ('01)
TB: 321 ('07)
Miraculous.
In addition to all this, he has a Rookie of the Year award (although only one), a Gold Glove (he didn't win his second this year despite breaking baseball's single-season record for assists by a firstbaseman), and has five Silver Slugger awards-- at three different positions. He has never finished outside the NL top ten in the batting race, or in its MVP voting. In that MVP balloting, he has 3 second-place finishes to go along with his three trophies, and he only one time finished lower than 4th in the NL voting (9th in 2007).
He's a lifetime .322 hitter in the post-season, too, with 13 career post-season home runs (tops in baseball for the decade). That HR average figures out to better than 2-per-post-season appearance by his team during his career (6), and he won the MVP Award of the NL Championship Series in 2004. He got his most important baseball prize-- a World Series ring-- in 2006.
The numbers are easy to provide. The adjectives are hard.
November Knockout
I went to high school with a lot of interesting people, but only one grew up to become a professional wrestler. "The Real One" Rory Fox was a year younger than me in high school and a teammate on the baseball team. He was a terrific ballplayer incidently, and it's little surprise that he could build a professional sports career for himself that has now stretched longer than 10 years.
Rory was "Steve Moss" in those days, with at least one fewer persona than he has now, but still a few, including 'obnoxious Cubs fan.' (But aren't they all?) He was terribly likeable in those days, and of course, he's had no problem laying down tracks on a career as one of wrestling's ultimate 'good guys.' He's played the heel as well, I understand, but he's currently enjoying what will hopefully be an extended run as the people's hero as a headliner in the 3X Wrestling Circuit based here in Des Moines. Friday night, I had the pleasure of watching him perform in the ring for the first time.
It was a big night for Rory. He was getting a second shot at the 3XW heavyweight title. At Halloween Horror III in October, he had won an 11-man battle royal for a head-to-head shot at the belt later in the evening against the champ, "The Rebel" Jeremy Wyatt. A more sinister and contemptible character I've rarely come across.
In their late evening bout last month, Rory had Wyatt pinned to the mat, with the champion tapping the canvas multiple times in submission. But the referee didn't see the action. He had been "inadvertently" poked in the eye by Wyatt moments prior, and Rory's efforts went for naught. When Rory attempted to check on the ref's condition, he (unwisely in retrospect) turned his back on Wyatt, then endured a brutal, illegal punch to the Moss family jewels. Rory immediately went down on the canvas, and the unprincipled champion pinned him to retain the champions' belt.
That sets the backdrop for Friday night's
one-fall Main Event rematch, part of the 3XW "November Knockout" promotional card. And incidently, I hope everybody finds this all very interesting because this blog is going to be mostly about wrestling from today forward. Friday's match was even more heartbreaking for the fans than the previous. Wyatt entered the ring only after shamefully berating an innocent little girl seated right in front of us. He left the ring, unfortunately, still as champion. It appeared as if Rory Fox had claimed the title upon a pinning of Wyatt, only to have the match ruled a double-pin-- both wrestlers' shoulders down for the count-- and thus, a draw, with the defending champ keeping his crown.
I swear the officiating in these contests has been worse than that in this year's baseball postseason, certainly not to the level that a championship wrestling competition deserves, but the benefit is that all of you have a chance to see a Rory Fox/Jeremy Wyatt showdown one more time at New Year's Revenge, Friday night, January 1st, at the Des Moines Social Club. I would not want to be absent when Rory Fox takes the heavyweight title for the first time-- in his home state-- and gives that creep Jeremey Wyatt just a little bit of what he has coming to him.
A musical interlude
Quick, let's get this little girl out on stage and see what she can do to liven up the blog.
With her mother accompanying... ladies and gentleman, from earlier today...
my sister... Katya Moeller.
Matt Holliday and that damn agent
The St. Louis Cardinals are currently engaged in a not-too-subtle public relations battle with super agent Scott Boras. Outfielder Matt Holliday, who played the last two months of the 2009 season with the Cards, is considered the cream of the free agent crop during this off-season, and his agent Boras knows this. Per usual, Boras' tactics are aggressive and blunt. Additionally, he knows the Cardinals are somewhat over the barrel. They traded away quite a bit of minor-league talent to get Holliday this summer in what could wind up being an expensive rental that didn't result in a championship or pennant. The free agent class of sluggers this winter is atypically weak, and the Cardinals face a separate negotiation in the next year and a half to tie up Albert Pujols for the rest of our lives.
The Cardinals and their fans are accustomed to players accepting a discount to play in St. Louis. Mark McGwire was the first and most prominent to do it. The most lucrative player in the team's history gave the club a terrific deal in the late '90s, brought in gobs of dough and attention, then walked away from millions when he felt he could no longer play to his personal high standards. Big Mac had all the right in the world to make his choices, and they were just that-- choices.
Cardinals fans believe we help to create a baseball environment for players and their families that is second to none. Cards rooters are not just passionate-- we're
compassionate, warm and friendly, and it doesn't hurt that St. Louis is a one-newspaper town and that the team has had a terrific amount of success over the years and yet not so much as to lose life's perspective.
But there must be other nice places to play baseball too. New York City is structurally-incapable of doing St. Louis better than St. Louis, but I'm sure there would be something to be said for Holliday playing with $160 million worth of teammates in the Bronx and to have his choice of dates among the unattached and media-seeking starlets of Hollywood. (Oh, really, Holliday's married? Well, so was Alex Rodriguez, come to think of it.)
Still, many Cards' fans will have none of it, and Boras just finished playing the card a week ago that many St. Louis sports fans have never wanted to admit exists. He suggested that perhaps the Cardinals are not really a 'mid-market' team or handicapped thusly.
"I don't know what a mid-market franchise is. That's like a midsize aircraft carrier," Boras said. "They all have the potential to have an economic bomb. If you're drawing 3.3 million fans and you're averaging $50 a fan coming in, I just don't know that mid-market term. I'm trying to think if that's part of the laissez-faire system. I don't know."
Fifty dollars times 3.3 million, by my count, produces a profit of $165 million-- this for a team that pays out about $90 million in player salaries. The club has many other expenses to be sure, but also quite a bit of revenue beyond just gate receipts (think: advertisements that blanket the ballpark, internet, the vast merchandising, a consistent stream of playoff cash, a recent All-Star Game, etc.) On the web, Cardinals fans are responding to Boras' comments as if he'd suggested taking a saw to one of the feet of the Gateway Arch. I recorded some of the choice comments I've come across (all sic'd)...
-Wall streets greed has nothing on professional athletes and their agents. Good luck Holiday.
-Ridiculous. Why would Holliday even want an unethical agent like Boras? There are other agents who can get fair pay for their players without lying and cheating to drive up his price. Let's see how much of a man Holliday is. If he is like Boras, good luck and good riddance. He can take his bad fielding to another team.
-It's a shame borass is running the show & cards can't make in offer to Matt in person!... the agents are forming a monopoly on the players... Which in the end hurts baseball & the fans!
-Personally, if I were team ownership/management, I would simply have a standing rule... if Scott Boras is your agent, don't let the door hit you in the @$$ on the way out... I hate to break it to you, but Matt's marketable skill involves hitting a ball of string wrapped in cow skin with a stick. I'm sorry, but that is not a $20 million/year skill.
-Boras should burn in Baseball Hell for his role in ruining the game for millions of "regular" fans.
-"Mr Boras, I can give you our answer right now. Nothing. And I would appreciate it if you would personally pay for the gaming license yourself."
That last one is actually awesome. As a Cardinals fan myself, though, I'd like to thank Scott Boras for bringing the issue of the team's finances finally to light. It's definitely a question worth asking, and nobody's ever asking it in St. Louis. How much is the team actually making? The answer is not publicly known. I love how fans still almost universally believe that the amount they're paying to attend a baseball game has anything at all to do with how much the players are being paid on the field. Evidently, in this parallel universe, a club owner doesn't charge exactly the amount he or she thinks he can get for every product or service (hot dogs to Build-a-Bears) in an effort to maximize profit. So, somehow, a seat in a certain section of the park might command $45, but the owner of the club would only charge $20 for it if there's no more player payroll to have to cover? Even I recognize that this is preposterous economics, and I went to a state school.
How much is Matt Holliday worth to a ballclub? Is he worth $20 million or more per year? Likely to somebody. The key for me, as a fan, is watching how the Cardinals behave in all this, not Boras. Boras' agenda is always clear-cut. If the Cards decide Holliday's worth $20 million plus annually for 6 or 7 years, and that offer winds up getting topped, then I'll remember that the team has that type of coin to spread around elsewhere on the roster. Always remember, nobody's ever organizing bake sales to assist Major League Baseball teams.
Many baseball fans express that they want ballplayers to play for the love of the game, and that the Local 9 should be willing to take the field for meal money, yet there's a surprising lack of public enthusiasm here in the states for the Cuban national team. If Holliday departs, I'll lament that a gamble for investing in his services in July may have failed (we did win the division), but I won't hold the decision to leave against him or against the agent in his employ. At least we'll all be able to read about how much he's getting paid. The same can't be said for the Cardinals.
What I was reading this weekend
Nothing.
I was watching television at the 8th Annual Moeller TV Fest. Thanks to all for their contributions. The programs were captivating and hilarious. Your comments witty and insightful. I had to run the dishwasher twice. Things got a little crazy that way.
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The big sports story in Iowa last week was the top prep basketball recruit in state history, Harrison Barnes, signing a letter of intent to play at North Carolina. Fans of my alma mater, Iowa State, hoped he would choose the home team being that he's born and raised in Ames, his parents are a woman on the staff of the university music department and a former Cyclone cager, Ron Harris, and he's a high school teammate of the son of Iowa State head coach Greg McDermott. I admit my stomach was turning a little on Friday afternoon with the expectation that the Cyclones might be Barnes' upset choice of schools.
Barnes owes nothing to anybody but himself in making his choice, but if our world was set up just a little bit differently, he would understand that his best choice would be to skip college altogether and go make his fortune right away in the NBA. That college basketball racket is for the birds, cooked up to make coaches, administrators, and television executives rich off the efforts of young, unpaid athletes, and supported by the NBA so that they can have a developmental league they don't have to pay for. It's not even worth it for the books. He can always go to college later, and he'll get a lot more out of it academically when he can go without the distraction of playing ball. Iowa State's greatest player ever, Jeff Grayer, stuck around school for four years and boasts being the school's all-time scoring leader, but he busted up his knee during his junior year and surely cost himself millions of dollars over his playing career.
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The media war of words between Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston has no business being this fun. I can't get enough.
Says Palin on Oprah about her daughter's baby daddy and his possibly-nude Playgirl pictorial, "I don't think a national television show is the place to discuss some of things he's been doing and saying... By the way, I don't know if we call him Levi -- I hear he goes by the name Ricky Hollywood now, so, if that's the case, we don't want to mess up this gig he's got going.... Kind of this aspiring, aspiring porn -- the things that he's doing. It's kind of heartbreaking." (And incidently, who knew that Oprah would be a softer interviewer than even Larry King?)
Of course, Johnston says Palin's just being that way because she knows the goods he's "got on her" from his time spent in the Palin house.
I think I know why I dig it so-- they're bringing back the Larry Flynt/Jerry Falwell feud. That was fun.
Festival 8
Moeller TV Festival 8 commences today at noon at my home in Des Moines. Thanks for your submissions for the Open Remote segment. Phone or text me for directions at 515-249-3457. Here are the festival greetings from Aaron and me, as they appear in this year's festival program:
This Is It: Moeller TV Festival: The Movie
When the Moeller TV Festival was tragically killed this summer at the hands of shady doctors and predatory housing lenders, we were on the verge of our greatest comeback. Even though Chris's type-A personality and delusional political aspirations usually present him as the overriding "voice" of the festival-- running roughshod over the proceedings, constantly fiddling with the contrast on the TV, ordering the Top Chef guys (catering in the kitchen) to send out more mustard packets for the sub sandwiches-- I'll always consider the TV Festival my baby. With tears in my eyes, I immediately considered our lasting legacy and started to piece together these final programs for a special big screen edition of our late friend. This is what could have been.
I admit that before he died, his career was on life support. Known as "Freaky Festy" in the tabloids, Moeller TV Festival had come to be known as an oddity to millions. Despite the constant plastic surgeries and creepy allegations of plying underage viewers with "Jesus Juice" and then diddling with their things, I truly believe Fame at a Young Age was his great undoing. The Moeller TV Festival had so much notoriety from early on that he was simply ill-equipped to deal with it in an adult way. But when it comes right down to it, he had a lot of love in his heart and wanted nothing more than to share it with the world. Year after year, his love came out in his programming and when those great shows were on and we were laughing until our knees buckled and crying 'til our noses bled, it was absolute magic.
He was never better. WE were never better.
In fact, I think TV Festival's brother Jermaine said it best when he asked, "Can I sing at the funeral?"
So this is it. "Moeller TV Festival: The Movie". We have a great one this year, one that will last in perpetuity and keep reminding us of his eternal brilliance. Enjoy it. And be sure to log on to amazon.com to pre-purchase "Moeller TV Festival: The Movie: The Book," which further chronicles the dreams of the young dancers who only wanted to dance in front of thousands with the man that inspired them.
I've always loved you, knuckleheads, and I always will,
Aaron Moeller
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What famous television characters are saying about the Moeller TV Festival (interviewed by Chris Moeller)....
Sam the Eagle ("The Muppets"), "The Moeller brothers have presented some very WEIRD programs over the years, and I, for one, am simply appalled by the spectacle of these shows and presenting them for public viewing. I ask, what is the socially-redeeming value of a presentation entitled "Who Pooped the Bed?" This entire gathering is one of sick, degenerate, barbaric freaks. It is disgusting and distinctly unpatriotic to hold this event, not only one time, but once every year.
Latka Gravas ("Taxi"), "In my country, it cost 50 lithnich to attend a TV festival. And there is no TV, only the mountain people in the village to act out the favorite stories. It is a pain in the yatkabee. Thank you very much."
Al Swearingen ("Deadwood"), "Progress, I guess some would call it, that a pair of loopy-fuckin' Siamese monozygotic half-breeds could produce an event that calls to mind the fuckin' Romans to the Coliseum for an afternoon bloodletting. Don't I yearn for the days when men could announce their fucking intentions to lie the fuck back in their homes and massage their johnsons instead of descending like locusts upon a gathering of grab-ankled imbeciles. That's the fucking sum and substance of it."
B.F. "Hawkeye" Pierce ("M*A*S*H"), "TV Festivals would be commonplace all over the world today, if they would just put an end to this damn war."
Cliff Clavin ("Cheers"), "It's a little-known fact that TV festivals date back to ancient Mesopotamia, where they were organized by priests and thought to bring good fortune and a healthy childbirth to pregnant women. It's well-documented. There wer only two seasons on the early Babylonian calendar-- summer and TV Festival. In some parts of the Tigris-Euphrates region today, insurance offices still give away the old calendars.
Yakov Smirnoff ("The New Hollywood Squares"), "In Soviet Union, television festivals watch you."
Jeff "B-Dog" Boomhauer ("King of the Hill"), "Yo, man, I tell you what, man. That dang ole' TV festival, man. With the dad gum comment box. Talk about just keep quiet, man, write it on the card. Yeah, man, dang ole', tasty sandwiches, man."
Lucy Ricardo ("I Love Lucy"), (crying) "Rick-ee, I want to go to the Moeller Television Festival!"
Remembering the Armistice
We've reached another somber Armistice Day. Ninety-one years after the end of World War I, the United States military now engages itself not in one, but two wars simultaneously-- one for Iraq's oil, and one for Afghanistan's oil pipeline, both about extending America's capitalist and imperialist reach.
Our leaders tell us that the wars are about liberating people, but an estimated 128,000 to one million Iraqis are now dead, not liberated, just as there were two and a half million people dead from our excursion into Vietnam a generation ago, and four and a half million dead before that in Korea. In Afghanistan, we're "officially" in search of a Saudi nationalist hiding in the mountains, yet our strategy strangely is to bomb the Afghanis that live in the cities. No, our true mission there is to install and support the dictatorship that will most adequately protect the pipeline.
All but one of our World War I veterans is now dead, but our servicemen and women continue to be sold a phony bill of goods. The sad fact of the matter is that their deaths in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all been for naught. Americans have not been made safer. Our national interests have not been in jeopardy in any of these conflicts. The dead have been robbed by their government in the most heinous way imaginable-- their lives were taken under the false pretense of spreading and insuring liberty. In fact, the mostly-poor die in American-led conflicts so that rich men can stay rich.
The advocates-- the proverbial cranks and shafts-- of the war machine surely espouse an appreciation for the unequal sacrifice of our military veterans. They engrave their names on shiny walls, praise their courage on bumper stickers, and even believe perhaps that the futility of one person's death in war will be made somehow less by sending a next generation of soldiers into bloody conflict-- as if throwing one corpse upon another will help justify having thrown the first.
Armistice Day was originally established as holiday because our grandparents and great-grandparents were so universally grateful that World War I (and it was still simply "The Great War" at that time) had come to an end. There was recognition of that particular conflict as the epitome of war's fruitlessness. The Kaiser had been deemed evil and the war justified, but now 10 million soldiers were dead in the mud in France, millions more shell shocked, gassed, and crippled, and 40 million civilians joining them in graves across Europe. Recognizing the Armistice was meant to be an annual reminder of war's pain and suffering, an occasion to
denounce war, not one to wave nationalist flags, to parade around in mothballed uniforms celebrating the "glory" of war, to make wretched speeches flooded in hypocrisy, or worst of all, to make mockery of our decent impulse to honor our veterans.
The Kucinich barometer
If you're a progressive not sure of what to make of the 1,900 page health care bill passed by Congress on Saturday, then you probably first do what I do-- see if Dennis Kucinich voted for it.
Well,
he didn't. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat, says the legislation "locks us into a for-profit system that the government subsidizes."
"It's not going to save money in the long run," he said, "It's not going to provide the broad healthcare services the American people need. It's going to limit choices people have over a longer period of time, and people will have to buy private insurance. This bill doesn't effectively moderate what [insurance companies] can charge for premiums, or co-pays, or deductibles; it just says people will have to have insurance. Well, insurance doesn't necessarilly equate to care, and care comes at a cost."
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If you're not going to be at the Moeller TV Festival on Saturday, that's likely because you're planning to attend
the Eero Saarinen exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Saarinen is the architect of
the Gateway Arch in St. Louis,
my favorite example of "art for art's sake" in the heart of an urban metropolis, but also of such buildings as
John Deere World Headquarters in the Quad Cities.
Damn Yankees
During the early 1950s, a pair of writers named George Abbott and Douglass Wallop collaborated on the book for a Broadway musical that would be called "Damn Yankees." It told the story of a Washington Senators (team now defunct) baseball fan who makes a pact with the devil to help his team win the American League pennant. The title alluded to the general disdain that most baseball fans feel towards the richest, most-often-crowned team that also plays in the largest city in the United States and the Major Leagues.
Well, that richest team was just crowned again as World Champions last night-- and for the 27th time in their history. Twenty-seven is a lofty number to be sure, but let's surround it with a little context. During the middle part of the 20th century, the Yankees enjoyed their greatest stretch of success, virtually owning an era that stretched from the late '40s to the early '60s. The 2009 title, in contrast, is the team's first since 2000. Nine years isn't a long period of time, compared with Chicago or Boston championship droughts or visits by Halley's Comet. But if you consider the fact that the Yankees boast a $200 million and more payroll, $70 million more than the second-highest in the league and $130 million more than even the league median, your jaw begins to rise a bit.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your favorite team is the Minnesota Twins. They're the Minneapolis/St. Paul entry in the same American League, a circuit that the Yankees have won only 40 times in the last 89 years. Your team boasts a 26-year-old catcher (Joe Mauer) who is already one of the greatest sluggers at his position in the game's history. You have a recent (2006) league MVP patrolling first base, a former World Champion shortstop, one of the game's most-consistently dominant closers, and a solid starting lineup and pitching rotation that produced an 87-win season in 2009. Now suppose I tell you that next year, your team is allowed to keep all of its current players for the same price as '09, but that they're now allowed to
quadruple the size of that payroll. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
I won't join in with the chorus of Yankee-haters today that's going so far as to label the Yankees' 2009 championship illegitimate, but you'll forgive me if I also don't stare in awe of their recent. The Yankees, by all rights, should play in every World Series. Period. They can outspend their injuries and their contractual mistakes. They can replace the too-heavy player and coaching baggage at will. As Yankees, middling journeymen players get an October spotlight opportunity to become immortal, professional choke artists are afforded 8th and 9th chances at post-season redemption, and a career Yankee/team captain with Hall-of-Fame numbers comparable to a Paul Molitor gets a split-screen with Babe Ruth on a national Pepsi-Cola television ad throughout the season. Everything's better in the Bronx.
Is a salary cap a good solution in leveling the field? Maybe-- if it's important to you to have George Steinbrenner pocket an extra $80 to 90 million each year instead of spending it. We tried suppressing free agency once before, and the result was 20 Yankees championships in the 41 seasons between 1922 and 1962. Since Marvin Miller came on the scene in 1965, promptly liberating the players, the Yankees have claimed only seven more titles in 44 years. You'll forgive me if I'm not eager to race back in time to the so-called "Golden Age" of the game.
What about this idea? The luxury tax? Said tax is in place now and will cost the Steinbrenner clan upwards of $20 million next year, but it doesn't seem to have slowed them down much, and the smallest-market recipients of the Yankees' extra profits currently have no mandate or obligation to invest that money back into their clubs, and why are we subsidizing the most badly-run clubs anyway?
We could all try voting Republican. Despite the 27 titles, the Yankees haven't won one under a GOP presidential administration since Eisenhower. This is true, actually. Since prevailing over the Milwaukee Braves in '58, the team went oh for 5 under Nixon, oh for 3 under Ford, oh for 8 under Reagan, oh for 4 under Bush 41, and oh for 8 under Bush 43-- a combined zero for 28. Pretty amazing. Even the Florida Marlins, with their solitary pair of championships in 1997 and 2003, spread it around better than that. Also, the Supreme Court tried this solution in a celebrated judgement in 2000, and we all know how well that turned out.
No, friends, the solution is simple. A level playing field is, indeed, vital to the game, and the best way to achieve it is to bust up the New York City/Tri-state market. Franchises relocate, and when they do, the economic studies always suggest that it's the corridor linking Manhattan to the graceful estates of Connecticut that would best absorb an incoming Major League Baseball franchise. Let's hear no more talk of Portland, OR, San Jose, or Las Vegas. A true home team for the ESPN crew in Bristol, Connecticut is what we need.
Oh, Papa and Baby Steinbrenner will scream bloody murder at first with cries of "market-share-this" and "territorial rights-that," but sacrifice has always been the name of the game. Baltimore gave up its territorial rights to Washington D.C. in 2004, decades after Washington had graciously surrendered its to Baltimore; the two Chicago clubs opened their arms to a new team up the road in Milwaukee, twice; the Los Angeles Dodgers surrendered Orange County and San Diego in separate deals; while the Cardinals signed off on expansion in Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta over the years. "Break up the Birds," they shouted after the Cards won 9 pennants and 6 championships between 1926 and 1946.
Cut the Yankees in half, financially, and you've still got yourself two $100 million-plus payrolls, my friend-- and a matinee-idol shortstop for each side. The new NYC team should also play in the American League to maximize fairness. Sharing a city with a league opponent didn't prevent both the Giants and Dodgers from winning championships during their halcyon days in the Big Apple. And New York City baseball fans
deserve more baseball. Especially after their $850 million investment in the new Yankee Stadium as taxpayers
only created 15 new permanent jobs.
Hey, that gives me another
great idea. The relocated franchise could
also play its home games in the new Yankees Stadium. That's double the return on investment for city residents-- 162 regular-season games each summer in the Bronx, instead of only 81. The Cardinals and Browns time-shared old Sportsman's Park in St. Louis for 33 years, from 1920 to 1953, and the arrangement didn't keep the Cardinals from winning 9 pennants and 6 championships between 1926 and 1946.
I think this idea is a winner. Everybody comes out ahead-- the Yankees, the club owners, the players, New York City baseball fans, even the second-class baseball fans that live outside New York City. If Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez can live and work-- and win-- in harmony on the same side of the infield, than anything's possible inside that magical ballpark.
Any 'Hope' left?
You would think that anybody who had such low expectations for a progressive Barack Obama presidency would be incapable of feeling as disillusioned as I feel exactly one year after his election to office. In virtually every respect, 2009 has felt like a Year Nine of the George W. Bush White House:
-The Iraqi occupation is still a nightmare for the U.S. military and for Iraqis.
-The situation in Afghanistan is about to worsen as the president prepares to escalate.
-The reckless mismanagers of Wall Street have taken a potful of no-strings-attached bailouts, running in the trillions of dollars, but Main Street is still being neglected, and more and more homeowners are choosing to simply walk away from their mortgages, if they haven't already defaulted.
-Obama and his 'snake-in-the-grass' chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel are
working to gut the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, passed to protect consumers in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals.
-Single-payer health insurance, a safety net for each citizen in nearly every other country in the West, remains a pipe dream for Americans as the president promotes a health care initiative that would act as a bailout, in effect, for health insurance companies. He's even gone soft on the public option of late.
-Despite Democratic control over both houses of Congress, he has not led with action on climate change, labor and trade agreement reform, or gay rights.
The people spoke yesterday, and the evidence is that Obama is losing fast politically. The "bipartisanship"-focused, centrist Democrats were once again pummeled-- in governorship races in Virginia and New Jersey. Their wishy-washy fig leaves of reform are being rejected for the big-business-approved economic Band-Aids that they are. The young Obama voters that were going to change the world have gone back to their Facebook, their Hollywood escapism, and to burying themselves in their jobs, trying not to lose their employer-provided health care.
The policy on Afghanistan, as one example, has left Obama open to punishing attacks by Republicans, who should really have no credibility in offering advice on the war. They accuse the president of trying to "manage" the war, rather than to win it. Of course, the war is utterly unwinnable, but Obama endures the body blows because it's clear to all that he
is trying to manage it politically when the U.S. military should be out of Afghanistan entirely.
Has Obama broken many of his campaign promises? Not many that I can recall (the glaring exceptions being the issues of military commissions, private defense contractors, and state secrets). For the most part, we're getting the president that Barack Obama promised he would be, the one that had been validated in advance of the campaign by the Washington establishment. He promised a bipartisan, "centrist" government, and this is that product we're seeing now in all its glory-- compromise proposals in which only one side compromises, and a Republican/Blue Dog Democrat opposition so intense, so bought and paid for by special interests, that it was hellbent on opposing the president regardless of whether his agenda turned out to be a radical one or a moderate one.
The outlook for the nation isn't rosy on the one-year anniversary of Obama's historic election, but it will look even worse as we reach the two-year pole if Obama doesn't make a radical shift leftward in his outlook and agenda. If he refuses, the blood will be in the water and November of '10 promises to usher in a right-wing revolt in the midterm elections that will make the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 look like child's play.
The World Series issue
With this year's World Series, a Yankees series victory means the Cardinals become the clear-cut choice as National League team of the decade. Granted, this is a title as mythical as the college football national championship. Still, I'm rooting for the Phillies because they're not the Yankees. There are only three acceptable reasons for being a Yankees fan-- 1) you live in the South Bronx, 2) you currently play for-- or at one time played for-- the Yankees, or 3) an immediate family member plays for-- or at one time played for-- the Yankees (two or fewer generations ago).
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I nearly spit out my low-fat strawberry yogurt when I sat down to watch the World Series pre-game show Wednesday night. Sound techs at the new Yankee stadium piped in Darth Vader's "Imperial March" for the introduction of the Phillies' starting lineup, then, as the Yankees' starting nine was introduced, they blared the triumphant "Throne Room" piece that ended the first installment of "Star Wars" in '77. Uh, huh. That's right-- the Phillies are the Evil Empire, and the Yankees are the rebel alliance. I immediately recalled that scene in "Star Wars" in which Han Solo charged the blonde farmboy $1600 for a seat in the Millennium Falcon Legends Suite and then Lando Calrissian accepted the 10-year, $275 million contract to fly attack missions against the Death Star.
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Look no further than Pedro Martinez for evidence that club owners were colluding last winter in refusing to sign veteran free agents. A 37-year-old pitcher with a 214-99 lifetime record, 3,000+ strikeouts, a five-time league ERA champion, and a guy who threw six scoreless innings with six strikeouts and no walks during his showcase performance in the World Baseball Classic in March couldn't find work with any of 30 Major League teams, each of which always claiming to "never have enough pitching." Pedro wasn't signed by Philadelphia until August, and then for only $1 million, a little more than double the league minimum salary. He proceeded to go 5-1 over the last month and a half of the regular season, and has allowed only three runs in 13 postseason innings thus far. Fans of other National League teams, be sure to congratulate the Phillies on their 2009 league pennant. That should have been your team.
Generations of steroid use by players could still never come close to matching the scale of damage that's been inflicted upon baseball's competitive integrity over the years by club owners colluding to hold down player salaries.
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When I hear news stories like the one about the Philadelphia woman arrested for allegedly offering sex for World Series tickets on Craigslist, I have to just shake my head. Why in the fuck are our financially-bankrupt municipalities wasting time, money, and energy on policing that sort of activity?
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Why is it that when Andy Pettitte wins Game 3 of the World Series behind his own RBI single and a two-run homer by Alex Rodriguez, there's not a peep about steroids in any of the post-game commentary? Meanwhile, nearly every major sports website has a posted editorial by some nitwit columnist explaining why the Cardinals shouldn't hire Mark McGwire as their hitting coach even as said-columnist continues to whore the retired slugger for more column inches of income. Why doesn't McGwire absolve himself with the fans and the media, they ask, the way Pettitte did, or A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, or Jason Giambi? In other words, why wasn't McGwire a Yankee? Always remember that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds had already been marked for life as villains because of their exploits on the field. They slugged their way through both Ruth and Maris, and even Mantle (with his 54 "rivalry" home runs in '61) and laid claim to the most-prized individual achievement in all of Yankees history, lore and birthright-- the single-season home run record.
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Baseball is still the nation's punching bag of sport: It's steroids, next it's blown calls by umpires during the postseason. Meanwhile, the NBA is
more crooked than its ball.
