The Chris Moeller Archives

The new rules in baseball

Baseball “super agent” Scott Boras doesn’t like the new free agency rules that award a draft pick and additional compensation dollars to the free agent’s departing team. His use of the word “corrupt” to describe it is out of line because it’s the result of collective bargaining, but he’s right that it’s not a beneficial clause for the players and indicative of too many recent "give-backs" by the Players Association even as the sport enjoys unprecedented business growth.

Under the new agreement, Type A and Type B (upper tier) free agents cost their new teams a chunk of the dollars that each is allocated for signing bonuses with drafted players. As a Cardinals fan, I’m thrilled that the division rival Brewers have signed former Cards pitcher Kyle Lohse at the cost of three years, $33 million, the surrendering to the Cards of the 17th pick in this summer’s amateur draft, and $2 million dollars from their bonus pool besides. The Cardinals currently have one of the top rated minor league systems in baseball (maybe the best in my lifetime), and the Brewers are considered to be near the bottom, so this only helps to widen the talent gap and suggests even a little desperation on behalf of the Brewers. But this isn’t good, generally, for the livelihoods of the collective group of ballplayers we all cheer for when it creates a competitive disincentive to sign them.

Boras is describing this new rule like it’s a mold for a modern collusion scandal, but it’s not exactly that. Improving your club through the amateur draft is a legitimate business strategy, and holding on to valuable amateur picks is vital for some clubs in a baseball economy that’s famously lopsided between clubs. The sad part is that the new compensation rules are going to have the opposite effect of their intent. They will not balance competition, as promised, and the Brewers forfeiture of both dollars and a draft pick in this case bears this out.

The issue comes down to understanding the greatest lie that exists in the sports labor world-- that free agency is the cause of competitive imbalance. In fact, the opposite is true. A system of player freedom prevents the top clubs from hording all of the top talent. Now here’s you: So what about the Yankees then, smart guy? Here's me: What about ‘em? They outspend their competitors by a country mile, this is true, and they’ve won seven total championships since Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were declared free agents by an independent arbitrator in 1976, the action that formally began the era of free agency. That’s seven championships in 37 years, not a number that suggests incompetent play or management, but it's nothing compared to the 20 championships the team won in the 54-year period that preceded it when the club could often boast both the best and second-best player in the American League at any given position.

Another error committed by the Players Association in the 2011 CBA was agreeing to even more drug testing—including, for the first time, blood testing for Human Growth Hormone. (Yes, it's spring so I'm back on this topic.) This is one area where union leaders need to do a better job of educating the rank and file. The PA’s founding director, Marvin Miller, was on public record before his death opposed to any drug testing in the business whatsoever. That was the wise position. A majority of players have demanded it because, even though it’s wildly intrusive into someone’s personal life, they have wanted to increase the public perception that they were “clean.”

Years later, the results speak for themselves. After a decade of drug testing in both the major and minor leagues, some players are being tested multiple times a week, and the testing is more rigorous than in any of the other North American team sports, yet professional baseball players are still routinely looked upon with suspicion. New batting records are still the cause of whisper campaigns inside and outside of locker rooms, and there exists a constant media narrative about the legitimacy, or illegitimacy, of any individual accomplishment in the sport.

Baseball’s drug testing program has brought about multiple claims of false positives, a curiously-disproportionate number of positive results and suspensions for players who are of Latin descent, and at least one high profile example of a test being mishandled by the employer, causing a 50-game suspension to be reversed. Really the only difference between now and ten years ago is that the baseball bosses get to take more urine—and blood—from their workers. Agreeing to increased testing was a surviving remnant of the old paternalism that seeped through the game up until two generations ago.

Drug testing in the American workplace has increased more than 300 percent since the 1980s, yet there is no proven link between more testing and the stoppage of drug use. Millions of Americans are required to prove their innocence in random drug tests each year through their employer despite no evidence that they are using drugs and even when they aren’t suspected of drug use. The lack of privacy legal protections in this area is just one of those seemingly-millions of concessions that have been provided to corporate America without regard to human liberty. Blood tests and urinalysis can also have the intrusive quality of potentially revealing to your boss private medical conditions, and ones that have nothing to do with either drug use or the performance of one’s job. This includes pregnancy for women and genetic predisposition for specific diseases. Remember that your employer is also your health care provider in most cases.

Drug tests do not measure on-the-job impairment, only that a substance has been ingested at some point in the past. This is directly applicable to Major League Baseball (even if the potential revelation of pregnancy is not), especially in respect to participants who use medical substances in connection with injury rehabilitation-- and a who’s who of the Mitchell Report reveals that rehab is a major factor in linked drug use.

Most Americans would likely tell you that they consider drug testing to be reliable, yet simultaneously, I’m sure also you’re very familiar, for example, with the fact that ingestion of poppy seeds on a baked good can produce a positive test for heroin. Ibuprofen has shown up as marijuana on drug tests, and a prescription drug for Parkinson’s disease, Depronil, has shown up as an amphetamine on standard tests. You would have a hard time making the argument that baseball players require the same public safety scrutiny in their alertness as we wisely require of airline pilots or commercial drivers.
-

Right on cue then comes the annual Forbes magazine report on the estimated financial worth of each MLB team. This is the one that league officials are always disputing even as the sale price of clubs continues to keep general pace with the appraisals. Forbes suggests that the value of the clubs overall has increased 23% in only one year, which is an astronomical bump, the biggest in the 15-year history of the report. And if you're like me, and you enjoy online stories about corporate greed, get this: just last week the owners took action to end the pension plan for their team employees who do not wear the team uniform. Yeah, that seems about right.

---

I like how the Forbes magazine website has a "Thought of the Day." For March 27, 2013, that quote is from James Russell Lowell. I'm not going to Google him. "Endurance is the crowning quality, and patience all the passion of great hearts." You'll miss the quote if you skip the advertisement and "Continue to site."

---

My Facebook page shows me an advertisement today from "Emily's List." The political action group declares "We Love Hillary," and praises Hillary Clinton for coming out publicly in favor of same-sex marriage. Did anyone else notice that she announced her support the same day that Bill O'Reilly did? That's a profile in political courage is what that is. Where's the "We Love Bill" ad? Emily's List is an organization that supports pro-choice women who run for Congress or governorships (well, Democrats only), but to my knowledge, Hillary Clinton isn't running for anything.

---

I appreciate and respect all of the people who have expressed through social media their religious opposition to same-sex marriage. And that's why I oppose the movement to force each of these people to marry someone of the same sex.

posted by CM @ 9:36 PM 0 comments

Clarity about what's in the Business section you never read

The news media obsesses over the economy—and on a micro scale, typically, not a macro. How did a particular stock fare today? How did it do for the fiscal quarter? That kind of thing.

Now, here are a couple of simply ridiculous economic statistics on a “macro” scale:

1) Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans grew by an average of only $59 over the 45-year period of 1966 to 2011.
2) Incomes for the top 10 percent of earners rose by an average of $116,071.

Obama is a socialist. The end.

posted by CM @ 6:46 PM 0 comments

Wikipedia Mysteries, Pilot

The trophy for moving one's life from fame to total seclusion and public retirement goes to Ruth Ann Steinhagen of Chicago, Illinois. Do you know who this woman is of whom I speak? Small chance. Know what became of her? I'm quite positive you don't.

Ruth Ann Steinhagen became famous in the summer of 1949 for shooting Eddie Waitkus, All-Star first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. She induced him to a hotel room in her hometown and shot him in the chest. She was only 19 years old at the time. The shot barely missed Waitkus' heart, but the ballplayer survived, even returning to baseball to help the Phillies to the "Whiz Kids" National League pennant of 1950. After Steinhagen was released from a mental institution in '52, where she had received electroconvulsive therapy, Waitkus declined to press charges. (This was the golden age of gentlemen.) He died in 1972 of esophageal cancer after reportedly suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for years due to the shooting.

This incident of celebrity-based violence was the inspiration for the 1952 Bernard Malamud novel "The Natural," which, in 1984, became a popular and quite marvelous feature film starring Robert Redford as a wounded pitcher-turned-slugger of Arthurian proportions, and Barbara Hershey as his obsessed admirer.

So what did become of Ruth Ann Steinhagen? Would it surprise you to know that she died on December 29th of last year? In the six decades after her release from the hospital, it seems she moved in with her parents and a sister. The parents both died during the 1970s, and the sister died in 2007. She lived in the same house for her final 42 years, only a few miles from the now-demolished Edgewater Beach Hotel on Chicago's north side where she shot Waitkus. She never spoke publicly about the incident.

So obscure had she become in the intervening years that her death did not get noticed by the news media until last week, at three months distance, when a Chicago Tribune reporter happened upon her death record while researching another story.

Ruth Ann Steinhagen, one-time subject of lurid fascination slipped into what was likely a merciful obscurity.

Tomorrow on Wikipedia Mysteries: A famous musician is shot dead in New York City's Central Park more than three decades ago. What became of his songwriting partner? Who are these two men? That's tomorrow on Wikipedia Mysteries, only on the CM Blog.

posted by CM @ 5:31 PM 0 comments

Today's slavery

Honest question: Is it possible there is as much slave labor today as there was a century ago? Working conditions have greatly improved in many corners of the world. But because they have, those areas simply don't manufacture much anymore. Almost all of our shoes and clothes are sewn together in sweatshops, and mostly by children. Our food is harvested and processed by workers that are denied health care and enslaved by massive debt, wage theft, threats of deportation, and in many cases, sexual assault. Our vacations are made possible by slaves toiling at hotels, restaurants, and amusement parks. Your iPad was produced in a slave labor camp in China. In fact, if you inventoried the items in your house, I venture to guess that the number of slave-produced products would far outnumber the ones produced at a living wage.

In the U.S., labor laws exist but have no teeth. Our "job creators" withhold passports and Social Security cards, and threaten families with devastation if wage crimes are reported. There are parasites in this economy, as Mitt Romney tells private audiences, but they're the bottom feeders that do much of the employing, and cheat on their taxes besides. Verizon, General Electric, Boeing, and most of our major energy companies, such as Apache, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Consolidated Edison, are among those corporations that effectively don't pay taxes. Apple and Google are both lobbying Congress for an additional repatriation tax holiday that would save corporations more than a $1 trillion in taxes from offshore profits. Yet these are the great American companies in the 21st century? My ass. They are bloodsuckers.

This is a Constitutional crisis. The Thirteenth Amendment strictly forbids slavery and indentured servitude. Pity this 1865 modification of our founding document doesn't get as interpreted as formally as the Second Amendment by the capitalist class. It's the slavery we've always known-- with only a more sophisticated P.R. machine.

posted by CM @ 7:00 PM 0 comments

How the Catholic church is like the radio business

One morning about a decade ago I sat in a staff meeting at WHO Radio where the discussion topic was ratings. The program director explained his department's strategy to this end: The trends were alarming. Millions of listeners had abandoned radio and they were never coming back regardless of what what any of us did. The cause was technological, he said, and the goal now was to get the remaining listeners to listen for as long as possible each day.

This was a shocking concession to me. We were no longer "broadcasting," according to my definition of the word. We were instead, I guess, "narrow-casting."

It had been pretty obvious that this had been the thinking in the front office for some time. Listening to WHO for an entire day meant having to tolerate the voices of essentially one reactionary, right-wing gasbag after another. At the time of the meeting, the station, which promoted itself as "the state's" radio station, had not one left-of-center political voice on the air during any daypart. The jukebox played as an almost 24-hour-a-day free commercial for the Republican National Committee, even though Iowa had not given a single electoral vote to the Republican presidential candidate in almost twenty years. This was-- and is still-- curious to me. Anecdotally, I knew several hundred Iowans, at the time, living in several different counties, all within the tower signal of the radio station, and discounting my co-workers, I think about six of these people listened to the station.

There wasn't even an attempt at the appearance of political impartiality. The PD argued that even one liberal voice on the station would only cause the remaining listeners to tune out during that time of the day-- and as was always the thinking in Radioland: if they tuned out, they might never come back. It was hard to argue with that logic, considering the dye that had been cast already so long before.

It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. Our industry wasn't dying of natural (read: technological) causes. It had been murdered by program directors like this one who didn't know what people wanted to hear. Those of us still working at the station were being semi-officially charged now with simply providing emotional comfort for the most aged and infirm of political ideas. Rush Limbaugh's job, as Bill Maher once described it, was "to scare white men as they get in their trucks at lunchtime," and our job at his affiliate station was to administer the intravenous Limbaugh drip. A 50,000 watt radio titanic was taking on increasing amounts of water, and we were re-arranging the furniture on the lido deck.

Salon's film and social critic, Andrew O'Hehir, argues that the Roman Catholic Church is engaged in the same sort of narrow-casting, as it were. The church has abandoned the reforms of the early and mid-'60s Vatican II council, and in doing, have also abandoned the hope of expanding the church of the faithful. To paraphrase Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, who was referring to the then-famous purge by the Soviets in Russia, the Catholics "are going to be fewer but better." A Dominican priest named Edward Schillebeeckx called the finished product "the monolith church... a ghetto church, a church of the little flock, the holy remnant."

O'Hehir, the son of parents that left the church rather than stay married to their first spouses, presents the more radical position that the papacies since Vatican II, those of Karol Wojtyla, Josef Ratzinger, and now Jorge Mario Bergoglio, are not even legitimate within the church. Under the Council of Constance, 600 years old next year, "a council trumps a pope," and the rulings made by Vatican II have never been formally overturned. Nevertheless, since the '60s, the hierarchy of the church has taken more authority from the people, and what is a church if it is not the people? That's my heritage in Martin Luther theology bubbling up though. He argued that there was no infallibility in the priesthood, which shouldn't seem like a radical hypothesis today. Yet even today, the Protestant churches inspired originally by his study seem to favor an authoritarian church. In the void, women of empowerment, gays and lesbians, and conscientious objectors, among others, seek spiritual strength elsewhere.

---

My fiance is on spring break this week and not a single day out of nine is forecast to rise above 40 degrees in temperature in Des Moines. Has anyone else noticed that we didn't have a winter until Groundhog Day? I'm starting to doubt rodent-based scientific methodology.

---

I will not refer to her hereafter as my fiance. I'm still mad at the French for their refusal to join the war coalition in 2003. She's my "freedom partner."

posted by CM @ 2:58 PM 1 comments

Heroes of journalism

Poor Bob Woodward. There’s nothing sadder than an establishment figure falling out of favor with the establishment. I find it instructive that the Washington political class perceives his greatest crime last week (when he accused an administration official of threatening him) to have been jeopardizing his access to power. To the "insiders," access is the currency that matters most. Bob’s the most “serious” of journalists, you understand. He doesn’t bring a left-wing or right-wing "agenda" to the table. He's not a "blogger" lounging around at home in his bathrobe. No, he dines with fellow insiders at the swankiest restaurants in Georgetown, and the power elite, even within the corridors of the White House, take his calls.

---

Very coincidentally, Watergate was in the news this week-- at least in some ghettos of our journalism metropolis. It seems that President Nixon put the burglars to use against the Democrats because of his fear that they had evidence he had sabotaged the Vietnam peace talks in pursuit of victory in the '68 campaign.

Newly-discovered documents (linked again above) also show that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, as long rumored, did have a secret deal with the Iranians then in 1980 not to release the American hostages until after that year's election. This covert agreement between Reagan and the Ayatollah got two aides to Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr executed when they moved to make it public. It's the Iranian hostage conspiracy that makes the Argo plot line look like a church picnic.

The establishment media today doesn't cover the new evidence that's being uncovered (and declassified) in these criminal cold cases. Just think of all the Bob Woodwards that could have their journalistic reputations damaged if they did.

Why does shit in American politics always have to be worse than even you think it is?

posted by CM @ 7:17 PM 0 comments

Looniest Tunes

The Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies are still the best cartoons of all-time. These are my five favorites-- all seven-minute masterpieces. The second and fourth are in the National Film Registry. Enjoy! There are links!


For Scent-imental Reasons, 1949-- Shower habits are said to be more lax in France, but I don’t think that was the source of inspiration for Pepe Le Pew, that suave skunk of Paris instantly infatuated with the le purr of a lovely female cat accursed by a strip of fresh paint. Le Pew’s introductory episode in theaters in ’49 won its animators an Oscar, and the star won legions of admirers. The funniest moment of the short has recently been restored for most television airings in the U.S. after years of censorship. (When will broadcasters realize that these cartoons are meant for adults?) Driven to the brink of suicide over his unrequited love, Pepe points a pistol to his temple, and then the gun fires, off camera. Pepe’s panicked paramour relents at this extreme gesture and runs to his side. “I missed,” he confesses to her, “fortunately for you.”

One Froggy Evening, 1955-- This one and only short featuring Michigan J. Frog plays out like an episode of the Twilight Zone. During one of those urban renewal demolitions so au courant in the mid-‘50s, a construction worker discovers a living frog inside a time capsule that’s been dislocated from a building cornerstone. Documents in the box are dated 1892, and the ageless frog that emerges from it turns out to have multiple, and seemingly-marketable, theatrical skills-- singing, dancing, tightrope walking-- and even comes with little required overhead as he already has his own top hat and cane. Though the frog’s repertoire is a bit musty, even by mid-century standards, his talent is undeniable. The one inescapable problem is that the little green monster will only perform for the solitary audience of his new owner. This short has no spoken dialogue, the only verbalizing coming via the ragtime and Tin Pan Alley tunes croaked out by the Jolson-esque amphibian. Based on a true story.

Little Boy Boo, 1954-- My favorite Looney Tunes character, by a country mile, is Foghorn Leghorn. The most famous chicken on the Warner Brothers lot is a good ole’ country boy who dispenses down-home wisdom and simply will not stop talking. He wears boxers under his feathers and knows only some of the words to "Camptown Races." In Little Boy Boo, Foghorn is charged with making a man of the widow hen's bookish son, and the boy, I say boy, turns out to be the perfect comedy foil for the imperious, oversized rooster who prides himself on his innate intelligence, but who ruffles the feathers of almost everyone he meets.

Duck Amuck, 1953-- Do animators harbor secret resentment towards their more famous subjects? In Duck Amuck, the resentment is not very secret. In an early frame, Daffy Duck (in period costume as a musketeer that suggests he’s trying to broaden his dramatic range) literally runs out of background. In front of a white screen for the next six minutes, his unseen illustrator beyond the fourth wall puts him through torture, starting off with just embarrassing costume changes, but moving on to a plane crash, an ocean drop, and full amputation. Do you get the feeling that animator Chuck Jones had been called a “slop artist” one too many times during his life?

Woolen Under Where, 1963-- The decade-long battle between Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog is remembered today mostly for its allegory. Through seven different shorts and 11 years, they danced the dance that wolves and sheepdogs must dance. Wolves have a biological imperative to try and steal any and all livestock they can carry off the farm, and sheepdogs are trained to protect sheep. But those two unfortunate—and unrelated—facts don’t mean that the two canines can’t still be friends after the work day has ended. Woolen Under Where is the last of the Ralph and Sam shorts, and by this episode, they have become roommates. They go to work together. They even help each other punch the clock. In the episode’s final Act, Ralph has aimed five cannons at Sam, along with a pair of rockets or short-range missiles, a loaded crossbow, a sword, and a sledgehammer. A guillotine waits to drop above Sam’s head, and the edge of the observation cliff has also been rigged to collapse beneath him. Below the ledge, a pool of alligators snaps hungrily in anticipation of the falling corpse. But once more, Ralph fails to get the master switch pulled in time. Perhaps tomorrow.

That's all folks.

posted by CM @ 9:22 PM 0 comments

Len Bias is drugs

If Len Bias were still alive, he would be turning 50 years old this year. Hard to believe, but it's been 27 years since the college basketball standout died of cardiac arrhythmia brought on by an overdose of cocaine. He's died a million times again as the national poster boy for the dangers of drug use, and anti-drug warriors are battling to keep him that ever longer, recently staving off a legislative effort in his home town in Maryland to erect a statue of him. The warriors' mission, it seems, is to make sure that the man never be remembered for anything other than his drug use.

The legacy of Bias is a sad one, and it's not just his death. It's the life of the anti-drug hysteria that grew up in its wake-- mandatory prison sentences for recreational use, the institutional re-enslavement of African-American males via the national penal system, the epic failure of the national D.A.R.E. program (founded, lest we forget, by paramilitary thug Daryl Gates of the Los Angeles Police Department), the loss of all perspective on performance-enhancing and performance-altering drugs in the sports world and beyond. Author Dan Baum called Bias "the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs." It's been a wild 27 years, ain't it?

posted by CM @ 7:22 PM 0 comments

Lightning Rod

Good for Dennis Rodman! He has invited a shitstorm upon himself by visiting North Korea as part of a basketball-related (unofficial) humanitarian trip. He doubled down while he was there by calling the ruling family of Kims there “awesome” and “great leaders.”

The former NBA’er is off most of the public radars at this point in his life, but the security state and its cultural class will flock back to him briefly now just for the purpose of hammering him. He'll be called silly and unimportant because what he's doing threatens the principles of permanent war. His opening four words to Kim this week, "I come in peace," still carry with them the baggage of revolution. He'll get the non-political, celebrity version of the Ralph Nader/Noam Chomsky treatment. I’ve already seen Rodman referred to in print this week as ignorant, brainwashed, an attention whore, a desperate former celebrity, and that’s just from one article in New York Magazine. Notice how this "neutral report from CNN makes snide, pointless reference to the fact that Rodman's basketball nickname is "Worm." Notice also how South Korean and U.S. military exercises in the region are referred to in the story as "routine," while North Korea's nuclear program is presented as menacing.

Rodman, always at the rhythm of his own internal drum, is actually showing here that he understands the true definition of diplomacy. Kim Jong-un is fresh to power in North Korea. He's certainly the son and grandson of a pair of tyrants, and a young tyrant himself. But tyrants lead many of the nations on Earth (including this one if we're applying the title fairly). Most of these global tyrants are our allies, or at the very least, open to conversations with the United States. American diplomats travel to Saudi Arabia, to Russia, to China, to Chile, and to Israel, but North Korea, for geopolitical reasons dating back to the Cold War, remains in that special category of our greatest enemies. They are cut off from diplomatic niceties, they are the unpredictable, most dangerous of threats. Like the Hun and his band before them, and the Bolsheviks, and the fascists, and the communists, and the Islamic terrorists.

Most nations can drift on and off our radar as enemies. We publicly approve of some their actions, and renounce others. But these top echelon security threats are always needed to justify the size and scope of the military-industrial, corporate-intelligence state. They allow us to keep our populace sufficiently fearful, to justify extrajudicial aggression, to dismiss pacifists as weak, to question the patriotism of our dissenters and exploit them with violence, to demand always-greater government secrecy, to abate public opinion generally, and to move more money- through the expunging of public services, regressive taxation, and open government bribery-- from the hands of the poor into the pockets of the rich.

Is a retired, forty-something, former rebounding machine highly-visible enough anymore to threaten the efficacy of this well-oiled machine? Probably not. But better safe than sorry.

---

It turns out that the boardroom vermin at a dozen tobacco companies have been ordering their cigarettes to be filled with cat litter, and in so doing, also avoid paying better than a billion dollars in taxes. You know I’m starting to think that maybe cigarette smoking isn't so good for you.

---

The ultimate shaming moment for both the New York Times and Washington Post was the moment that they each received the whistle blowing “Collateral Murder” military video and the millions of accompanying, implicating documents from Bradley Manning in 2010, and then failed to act upon them. Of course we know that the Post and their “embedded” reporter, David Finkel, had already seen the video. This article describes the timeline and details of Manning approaching the two newspapers. As a bonus, it also provides the text for part of Manning’s impassioned, persuasive court testimony on Thursday. I fear that the justice system's ultimate shaming moment is about to arrive.

---

Remember the excitement 18 years ago when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino finally appeared together on screen. It was in Michael Mann’s crime picture Heat. The two celluloid standouts had never worked opposite each other before, the closest being when they appeared in alternating time periods of The Godfather Part II. The wait was well worth it, the electricity palpable in Heat between the two leads.

That’s the same excitement I feel every time I watch Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins on screen together in Justified.

posted by CM @ 11:15 AM 0 comments