2003 HOF Ballot

I eventually intend to get out my Hall of Fame column on Projo. Here’s the Executive Summary of who I would vote for, ignoring a few of the most ridiculous candidates:
Eddie Murray – IN. No question. A major star for 7-8 years, a solid and incredibly durable and consistent producer for 18.
Gary Carter – IN. Find me ten better catchers, I dare you. Has been unfairly penalized for sticking around too long; if he’d retired after 1987 he’d have gone in a decade ago.
Bert Blyleven – IN, Jim Kaat & Tommy John OUT. You’ve read my take on that before; Blyleven lost more games than he should have, given his teams, but such was the fate of a #1 starter in an age of giants, and of a guy who took seriously the duty of saving the bullpen by staying late in close games. His numbers may not look much better than John’s and Kaat’s, but he played in a later generation, facing more DHs and never tasting the big strike zone of the sixties.
Rich Gossage – IN. Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith – OUT, for now. I’m not ready to put in a great closer with a comparably short career, or a merely good one with a very long career. If we put in Lee Smith, is John Franco a Hall of Famer? Gimme a break. But the Goose was dominant for a long time and useful for many more years, and he worked 130 innings a year at his peak. We’ll never be embarrassed to see him as an immortal.
Jack Morris – OUT. Again, I could conceivably be persuaded otherwise, but Morris wasn’t that great at preventing runs, which is supposed to be his job.
Jim Rice, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Andre Dawson – OUT. I go back and forth on Rice, who was a monster hitter for more than a decade but benefitted from a small park, wasn’t a great runner or fielder, and hit into too many DPs. Murphy and Parker didn’t stay on top long enough.
Dawson? Lou Brock’s career OBP was .344, and he played in the pit of the Sixties. No other Hall of Fame outfielder has a career OBP below .350. Dawson’s was .323. You do the math.
Alan Trammel – OUT. I put him out, while I would have voted Whitaker in, because Trammell lacked consistency and didn’t get on base as much. 150 more Runs and 80 more RBI, a higher career OBP and SLG – it all adds up. Another guy I could be persuaded on.
Sandberg – IN, I think. When he was playing, Sandberg seemed like such an obvious Hall of Famer it was never really argued about. Some of that was a Wrigley illusion, and sure, he didn’t walk a lot, and yes, his great seasons weren’t that many. But the man was the definitive slugging second baseman back when such things didn’t roam the earth, and he was a tremendous glove man.
Keith Hernandez, Steve Garvey, Don Mattingly – OUT, although I still waffle on Keith. I’ve covered these three before; Mattingly was a star for only a few years, Garvey had too many weaknesses and also didn’t last that long at his peak.
Dave Concepcion – OUT. Done that one too – a team with Concepcion as its best player would finish no better than .500. Morgan, Bench, Rose and Perez would have won without him.
Darren Daulton – OUT. Catchers break your heart, they do. Daulton had his moments. He was a much better player than the similarly skilled Mickey Tettleton (OUT, also), since he had a throwing arm.
Sid Fernandez – OUT, but with better stuff than half the pitchers inside. He’s not alone in that distinction. Fernando’s OUT too, with only half a Hall of Famer’s career stuck to more than a decade of an old man with no fastball. Then again, Darryl Kile should be so lucky.
Brett Butler – OUT. Closer to Cooperstown than you think, but no with power and some atrocious caught stealing figures, Butler needed to do better than his impressive .379 OBP to be an immortal.
Vince Coleman – OUT. The Kingman of steals; deserves the honor of “most steals by a non-Hall of Famer.” Assuming the voters don’t screw Tim Raines (who ought to go in as a no-brainer), that is.

The Southern Strategy

I don’t usually link to Pat Buchanan, but Pitchfork Pat was present at the creation of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy,’ and he has a few words for its critics:
Richard Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column on the South (by this writer) that declared we would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the “party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.” In that ’66 campaign, Nixon — who had been thanked personally by Dr. King for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 — endorsed all Republicans, except members of the John Birch Society. In 1968, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew for V.P. Why? Agnew had routed George (“You’re home is your castle!”) Mahoney for governor of Maryland but had also criticized civil-rights leaders who failed to condemn the riots that erupted after the assassination of King. The Agnew of 1968 was both pro-civil rights and pro-law and order.

Shrewd Pickups; Francisco Cordero

A few shrewd pickups this week: the Mets bring on Rey Sanchez, who’s a better, cheaper, more versatile and friendlier version of Rey Ordonez; the Blue Jays, not coincidentally the one team with a Baseball Prospectus alum in the front office, pick up the multitalented Frank Catalanotto (although I’m less thrilled about the salary-cutting expedient of putting Catalanotto in the outfield to replace Jose Cruz jr.); and the Rangers bring aboard Esteban Yan, a good arm who should be a useful setup man.
Strangely, the ESPN report on the Yan signing says that Francisco Cordero “could be ready to take over as a closer by” 2004. Cordero converted 10 of 12 save opportunities on the season and posted a 1.79 ERA, striking out 41 batters while allowing just 46 baserunners in 45.1 IP. After June 1, he was 2-0, 10 of 11 in saves, 0.47 ERA, 38 IP, 25 H, 0 HR (you read that right – none), 8 BB, 38 K. Four months, 33 games, ten saves in eleven tries, two runs allowed. Cordero will be ready to close before Uggie Urbina is.

Steyn on Barry

The incomparable Mark Steyn: the “sub-Carvillian hit-job on Trent Lott’s replacement, Bill Frist, is even more pathetic than usual, resting as it does on the notion that attacking Marion Barry is an obvious ‘racial code.’ If Democrats really want to take the view that an incompetent crackhead is beyond criticism because of his race, then feel free.”

Rangel’s Grandstand

Charles Rangel calls for a return to mandatory military service. Now, I don’t dismiss out of hand the possibility that this may be necessary at some point, although it doesn’t seem at the moment that a lack of manpower is our primary national security problem. But Rangel doesn’t even pretend to be talking about national security needs:
The Korean War veteran has accused the Bush administration and some fellow lawmakers of being too willing to go to war with Iraq. . . . “When you talk about a war, you’re talking about ground troops, you’re talking about enlisted people, and they don’t come from the kids and members of Congress,” he said. “I think, if we went home and found out that there were families concerned about their kids going off to war, there would be more cautiousness and a more willingness to work with the international community than to say, ‘Our way or the highway.'”
This captures perfectly why people don’t trust the Democrats, as a party, to deal seriously with wartime issues. Rangel wants to make a political point, and in many ways a racial point (he ‘explained’ his vote against war with Iraq as being based on the fact that there were too many African-Americans in the military) – and to do it at the expense of having a serious policy on national security. Disgraceful. And, of course, a racially charged argument like this is a hand grenade thrown into the foxholes of the various Democratic political contenders, most of whom will likely show the courage of their convictions by trying to ignore it.

Merry Christmas

With Christmas upon us, it’s time to cut back the blog for the next two weeks; I’ll be blogging either sporadically or not at all between now and January 3 or so. Merry Christmas, and a happy and healthy New Year to all!

“State-funded Jew-hating Canadians”

Mark Steyn with a great column on David Ahenakew, the Native Canadian “leader” whose pro-Hitler remarks have provided a mirror image on the Trent Lott controversy for the left north of the border:
Re-run the video of Strom Thurmond’s birthday party: After the usual Viagra and Hooters gags, Senator Lott says he’s proud his state voted for Strom in 1948. There’s a bit of nervous laughter — it’s audibly different from the Viagra yuks — because the crowd can sense this is a step in a direction most of them don’t want to go. Strom himself has long since disavowed his segregationist past. And then Lott goes and says, if Strom had won, we wouldn’t have had all these problems we’d had over the years. And that nervous laughter dies. You can hear an intake of breath. The audience understands a line has been crossed.
Nothing like that happened at that FSIN meeting. Mr. Ahenakew was supposed to be addressing health issues but lurched off instead into his historical digression. And the crowd took it in their stride, as if it’s perfectly routine for their “respected elders” to start droning on about how the Jews started the Second World War. The sense of when a code has been breached is very important to a society’s health. Senator Lott did not call for the return of lynching. He didn’t say that the sight of those fellows hanging from trees taught an important lesson to uppity Nigras. But, even so, his audience understood. Mr. Ahenakew’s didn’t, and that speaks poorly for them, and their grubby third-rate leaders . . . FSIN Vice-Chief Lawrence Joseph blames the media: “It’s f—ing garbage. What was your intent to print that story?” he told the paper. “It should not have even been pursued.”
* * *
State-funded Jew-hating Syrians are pro-Syrian. But state-funded Jew-hating Canadians, like Mr. Ahenakew, hate Canada, too. What a fine testament to our tolerance: Our intolerant bigots are intolerant even of us, and we don’t mind! In fact, we encourage it! Fire on law enforcement, and we back away, promising to be more “sensitive” in our policing. The Supreme Court of Canada in its April 23rd 1999 ruling that judges must pay “particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders” all but formalized the de facto two-tier justice system. If Mr. Ahenakew ever did get to “fry” six million Jews, the Supreme Court would rule the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal an infringement of his aboriginal rights and insist that he can only be brought before a First Nations “sentencing circle.”
Kathleen Parker, on the other hand, notes that at least in the U.S., hate speech like Mr. Ahenakew’s is legal – and why that’s a good thing.

The Crime Dog Collared

The Dodgers have significantly upgraded at first base by replacing Eric Karros, who is finished as an everyday player, with Fred McGriff. The Crime Dog is old and his future is probably short, but he can still hit and he keeps himself in good shape. Meanwhile, the Mets have been humiliated once again. When the Yankees announce that they are going after a guy like Hideki Matsui, it’s as good as done – nobody else even gets in the way. The Mets, though, wound up botching the announcement of Norihiro Nakamura’s apparent signing, and now they’re back to plan W (Ty Wigginton) at third base.
Oh well, maybe they can trade Glavine for Kevin Millwood . . .

Think Floyd

I like the Mets’ signing of Cliff Floyd, although I probably shouldn’t, given his gruesome injury history. Of course, the overall strategy of trying to win NOW still stinks, but in the context of that strategy, at least Floyd is in his prime and a truly outstanding hitter (Chief Nakamura seems to fit the same description).

Looking A Gift Ace In The Mouth

I’ve said before that the buyer of Braves pitchers should beware. That goes double when the Braves all but give away a guy like Kevin Millwood to a division rival for weak-hitting Johnny Estrada after a good year by the 27-year-old Millwood. Yeah, the Braves had to dump somebody with six starting pitchers aboard, but would they trade Millwood to the team that is likely to be their chief rival for the NL East if they thought he was 100% healthy?
Then again, Mac Thomason has the Braves fan reaction.

Davenport Translations From Japan

Clay Davenport’s translations, courtesy of the Baseball Prospectus, of Japanese league stats from 1997-2001 for new Hated Yankees outfielder Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui, now age 29:
Year—Avg/OBP/Slg
1997–.278/.396/.528
1998–.276/.402/.538
1999–.277/.392/.572
2000–.305/.430/.627
2001–.313/.442/.586
5 Yrs-.290/.413/.570
Likely new Mets 3B Norihiro Nakamura, also 29:
1997–.248/.327/.451
1998–.267/.359/.508
1999–.276/.367/.513
2000–.285/.376/.590
2001–.333/.432/.639
5 yrs–.283/.374/.543
Matsui looks like the better hitter, but Nakamura has been rising in recent years, and may well justify the Mets’ decision to let Edgardo Alfonzo go. I like the bold move on the part of both teams.
(Check Davenport’s full report for more detailed stats and his projections on other hitters)

The Great White Defendant

The Trent Lott saga is over, a week after it should have ended, as Lott steps down as Majority Leader but will remain in the Senate. The finishing blow for Lott seems to have been the decision by one of his two chief rivals, conservative stalwart Don Nickles, to throw his support behind the White House’s favored candidate, outgoing National Republican Senate Committee Chairman Bill Frist. Our good friend Larry said about a week ago that Lott would last until today, so he gets the prognosticator’s prize.
In a way, the conservative furor over Lott reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, in which he talks about cops and prosecutors in the Bronx, sick of taking race-related heat for prosecuiting so many African-Americans and Latinos, and their excitement at finally getting their hands on “the Great White Defendant.” I’ve about beaten this issue to death here – I’m hoping to “move on,” like the man said – but a lot of the visceral reaction from conservatives was the opportunity to show that we are not, in fact, the racist lynch mob that the Democrats and their media allies would have people believe. And how better to prove that – and also, how better to prove that we’re not like the sycophantic Democrats who rallied around Clinton when he finally got caught – than to take down one of our own?
As to the likely new Majority Leader, my all time favorite Frist quote is from the press conference when he took over the NRSC two years ago:
“I spent every day for twenty years waking up, training in the morning, working through about every other night for one thing, and that is to be within forty-five seconds, within forty-five seconds, to be able to cut out the human heart.” After some uncertain laughter among his leadership colleagues, Frist added, “Under anesthesia.”
Funny how this controversy, like most other political and international controversies over the past three years, has worked itself out exactly the way George W. Bush wanted it to. Branch Rickey – whose fingerprints are also on this particular controversy, if you think about it – used to say that “Luck is the residue of design.” Bush gets lucky way too often to assume that it’s coincidental.
Meanwhile, Drudge picked up on a report of a Democratic Senator with kind words for someone much worse than Strom Thurmond circa 1948. Will this story have legs? Probably not, especially coming the Friday before Christmas, but it’s a nice reminder of the kind of thinking that does not deserve to hold responsible positions of authority.

Inside Blogball

This is as inside-blogball as it gets, but at the bottom of the page I have a script that tells me where visitors are coming from, if 2 or more come here from the same page in 24 hours. Today, I noticed a bunch of visitors from Dr. Manhattan’s Blissful Knowledge page, which has a permalink to this site. I checked his site to see if he’d mentioned something here today, but no. Then I’m cruising on Instapundit’s site, and lo and behold – a link to Dr. Manhattan! It was the extra traffic (the “Instalanche,” as it’s known) from Instaman’s site that provided spillover traffic here.
However you arrived here, welcome.

The Weekly Standard on Lott

The Weekly Standard, doing its share of the all-Lott-all-the-time routine, has two priceless quotes.
Frederick Douglass: “There never was yet, and there never will be, an instance of permanent success where a party abandons its righteous principles to win favor of the opposing party.”
On Jan. 28, 1931, in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill expressed his disgust at Ramsey MacDonald’s government: “I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as the ‘Boneless Wonder.’ My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing to my youthful eye, and I have waited 50 years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”

Big Trouble

My wife and I rented “Big Trouble” recently. You may remember what happened to this movie – it was made from a hysterically funny first novel by Dave Barry (the book was funnier than I expected, and I had pretty high expectations given that Barry is the funniest man alive), but because the plot revolved around a nuclear bomb on the loose in an American city (well, Miami, anyway), the film’s projected release in fall 2001 had to be pushed back to the spring, and the movie bombed (so to speak) at the box office.
Go rent it. It’s not as good as the book – it’s always hard to live up to the book – but it’s mostly faithful to the book and a very funny film. It’s also wall to wall with familiar faces – Tom Sizemore from ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ Janeane Garafolo, Stanley Tucci from ‘Big Night,’ Puddy from Sienfeld, Dennis Farina from ‘Crime Story’, Andy Richter from the Conan O’Brien show – which is one reason I’m sure the studio was crushed that it failed. Tim Allen actually has surprisingly little comedic heavy lifting to do as the star; he mostly plays the straight man. In a way, we’ve moved on to living with the terrorist threat to the point where maybe it’s not so bad to laugh at the dark humor of ‘Big Trouble.’ If you can get past that, it’s a very funny movie.

Zeile For The Bronx

I have to consider Todd Zeile a good pickup for the Yanks. Zeile’s finished as a regular, but he’s basically the same player as Coomer at this point, except that he walks more, plus he’s a good clubhouse guy and a Torre guy. They didn’t really overpay for him either; it’s a 1-year deal, and while you could get a young player to do about 80% as good a job for a quarter of the money, the Yankees have the money to spend and are in contention.

Bush’s Trumpet

America’s news service, the Voice of America, carries the Bush vs. Trent Lott story to the world – but note the headline here: “Bush Rebukes Senate Leader Over Racially Sensitive Remarks.” Shouldn’t it be racially insensitive remarks?
Another sign of bad news for Lott – I get the RNC’s “eChampions” emails, and the latest one (Friday) prominently touted Bush’s rebuke to Lott (but said nothing about Lott’s apologies). When your own party is looking to get distance from you in its mailings to party faithful, that’s bad news.

Trent McCain

Trent Lott’s BET appearance, embracing affirmative action in its every form and effectively promising to support reparations for slavery, is his McCain moment. McCain is still a Republican in many ways, and belongs in the GOP caucus. I voted for him in the primaries, and I’m still not convinced he would not have made a good president himself. But McCain is totally unfit to be Majority Leader because remorse over the Keating Five scandal has driven him to crusade against his own party’s position on a significant issue – campaign financing – which in turn has led him to fall in with his new ideological bedfellows on other issues of greater public importance.
Lott’s new embrace of racial preferences and the like may well be a sham – it probably is – but Republicans can’t run the risk of being led by another McCain, a guy who pours buckets of boiling scorn on his own party out of guilt.

Helms and Evolution

One guy the Braves won’t miss is Wes Helms, picked up by (of course) the Brew Crew, the masters of mediocrity. I tell you, if baseball was truly Darwinian, the Brewers would be stuffed in a museum by now.
And the Mets would be sinking into the tar pits.

Byrd Lands

I like Paul Byrd – I’m a sucker for guys with pinpoint control. So naturally I was grinding my teeth when the Braves signed him. Maybe they all won’t work out, but adding Byrd, Hampton and Ortiz should give Atlanta fans some comfort that the rotation won’t disintegrate without Glavine and maybe Maddux, and Smoltz won’t be stretched beyond his bullpen role.
Why do I suspect that the Braves aren’t paying Byrd a whole lot more than the Mets gave Mike Frickin’ Stanton? Not that Stanton’s necessarily a terrible pickup – I have my concerns, though – but three years, nine million dollars for a setup man, when they had to let Alfonzo and Steve Reed go to save money?

Freed!

Naturally, I love the Red Sox and A’s pickups of Jeremy Giambi and Erubiel Durazo. With their defensive and health problems, both are ideally suited to DH on teams deep enough to run someone else who can hit out there when they aren’t healthy. It’s a good fit, and with Mark Grace and Jim Thome under contract, neither guy was going to get playing time. Durazo now fills the John Jaha role in Oakland. On the other hand, adding both Giambi and Todd Walker . . . well, both are good players, and cheap, but both share some weaknesses, which is to say everything but hitting righthanded pitching. (Well, actually Giambi can hit lefties too, although he’s tended to be platooned in the past).
Is Giambi the Bruce Chen of hitters?

Caveat Emptor

Not sure I exactly understand this Russ Ortiz for Damain Moss deal, other than that it appears to be driven by the Giants dumping salary. The two pitchers are not terribly different in quality; Ortiz has more experience and is more of a known quantity, Moss is lefthanded and if healthy has a bigger upside. There are signs for concern: Ortiz’ K rate was way down this year, while Moss gave up too many walks and home runs to sustain an ERA in the mid-threes unless he shows improvement. But both are basically guys who are likely to be productive pitchers but could go either way in any given season.
IF healthy, I say of Moss. The health and performance record of pitchers traded away or let go by the Braves is pretty grim – Neagle, Avery, Mercker, Lilliquist, Jason Schmidt, John Burkett, Bielecki (twice), Terrell Wade, Clontz, Chen, Pete Smith, Rocker, Russ Springer, Andy Ashby . . . it’s not an unbroken record; Chen pitched OK for the rest of the year before coming unglued, while Schmidt and Lilliquist recovered to become useful pitchers after initial struggles. Paul Byrd and Odalis Perez became All-Stars, and Mike Stanton’s done just fine. And a few of those guys (particularly if you include Mark Wohlers) started struggling before they left Atlanta. Still, the overall picture very strongly suggests a team you shouldn’t deal with for pitching.
(See, I nearly made it all the way through the post without slamming the T__ G______ signing).

Gooooose

If there’s one reliever on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who deserves to be elected, it’s Goose Gossage. One little useful fact: from 1977 to 1984, an 8-year span, the Goose’s teams exceeded their “Pythagorean Projections” – the number of games they’d be expected to win based on their runs scored and allowed – by 21 games, almost 3 full games a year. The biggest effects came, generally, in some of the seasons when the Goose pitched the most – 1977, 1980, 1984. Dan Quisenberry has a similar, even more impressive record: for the six seasons of his prime, from 1980 to 1985, the Royals exceeded their Pythagorean record by 20 games. Bruce Sutter’s teams exceeded their Pythagorean records by 19 games over 9 years (1976-84), although the biggest damage (+7) was done when he was a rookie setup man; the numbers break down to +16 for his first three seasons and +3 for the next 6 years when he was mostly used in save situations, albeit with a much heavier workload than the modern closer. Does this prove anything? Logically, you expect teams with great bullpens to win the close ones. It’s noteworthy in Gossage’s case that the biggest seasons were the ones when he was paired with other good relievers (Kent Tekulve, Ron Davis). I think some studies have shown a slight overall effect for teams with good bullpens (witness the Braves this year), but at a minimum, it’s an extra feather in a guy’s cap if his team won an unusual number of close games when he owned the 8th and 9th innings.
Lee Smith? -8 games from 1982 to 1995. I don’t hold Smith responsible for that, but it’s another fact suggesting that his impact on his teams was less significant than guys like Gossage and the Quiz who threw 100-135 IP a year with ERAs in the low 2s and the 1s.

Baseball Blogging

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it harder to make a battery of casual blog entries about baseball than politics, despite having much to say about the former. I think it’s because politics lends itself more to straight-out application of opinion, logic and principle – at least the issues I tend to talk about often do, and I tend to shy away from the fact-based heavy lifting, beyond easily checked stuff like debate transcripts and vote totals. On baseball, though, I’m more inclined to assume that people read my stuff looking for harder-edged analysis with citations to the evidence, and it’s harder to find the time to do that on my schedule. It’s ironic, really.

Lott Critics In The Open

National Review publishes an open letter from the incoming Republican majority leader of the Colorado state senate, calling for Trent Lott to be replaced. His conclusion: “I can’t forget my experience 30 years ago during Watergate. As a young Nixon staffer torn between partisan defensiveness and principle, I learned the importance of not letting ourselves be paralyzed from holding our own leaders to a high standard, merely because we are so offended by the motives and methods of those on the other side who are howling for blood. The hypocrisy of Lott’s enemies in no way excuses the wrongness of his statements. Republicans can find a better Majority Leader. We should do so.
What the writer neglects to mention – though as a Watergate-era staffer he must remember it – is that while many GOP leaders took sides against Nixon in that battle, one of the GOP congressmen on the House committee to vote consistently against the would-be impeachers was Mississippi congressman . . . Trent Lott. Of course, Lott wasn’t the only one; George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole were also among the bitter-enders defending Nixon. But the parallel is telling: in 1973, Lott didn’t know when it was time to tell a Republican president when to leave, and in 1998, he wasn’t willing to pitch a battle to tell a Democratic president when to leave. In 2002, he hasn’t shown any awareness that it’s his time to leave.
(UPDATE: Dave Kopel’s companion piece on NRO points this out as well, noting that Lott did eventually vote to convict Clinton after having hobbled his trial, and noting that Thurmond did the same after having defended Nixon to the bitterest end).

HALLELUJAH! FREE AT LAST!

THE CURSE HAS BEEN LIFTED, THE STONE REMOVED, THE LIGHT HATH COME SHINING THROUGH ON THE WARM GREEN GRASS! HOPE SHALL SPRING AGAIN!
This weekend was open season on albatrosses, and I’ll have more on the rest later (for starters, Andrew Sullivan has some good shots at Al Gore, Trent Lott and Cardinal Law). But I loved the opening of the NY Daily News’ writeup on the most indefensible of the bunch:
Rey Ordo�ez’s late-September declaration that Mets fans are “stupid” proved to be his final act as a member of the team. The shortstop was dealt last night to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team short on fans.

Failing To Hustle

Rob Neyer on the ESPN poll on Pete Rose:
Skipping to Question No. 5, “What is the worst transgression in baseball?” presents four choices. And this is where I lost some hope, because here are the results:
Betting on baseball games 19.5%
Failing to hustle 21.0%
Using steroids 28.7%
Using cocaine 30.8%
Our time on this earthly sphere is finite, so I won’t bother arguing that anybody who voted for “Failing to hustle” over “Betting on baseball games” is a stark raving lunatic. If you actually believe this, I’ve already lost you.
Well, maybe, Rob. But maybe some of those people noticed a critical absence from the poll: throwing games. If some people thought that what Swede Risberg and Lefty Williams did falls closer to “Failing to hustle” than to “Betting on baseball games” (after all, the Black Sox didn’t wager on the series; they were paid to lay down), I’m not gonna argue with them. I’ve beaten this point near to death by this stage, but there is a difference, just like there’s a difference between taking huge campaign contributions from people interested in your decisions and actively selling those decisions for sacks of cash.

Paging Senator Freud

Lord knows I’m no fan of Al Gore, but the opening paragraph of this item is just a horrendous piece of pop-psychoanalysis masquerading as a ‘news’ article:
Al Gore, the defeated presidential candidate in 2000, has indicated to friends he is to abandon the quest to become president that his domineering father urged on him as a child.
Indeed, one of the reasons why Gore thinks the media has a conservative bias is because the media in general have been very hard on Al Gore. In most cases fairly, I should add; in some cases unfairly and in others too soft on Gore by a long shot. But Gore’s perspective on the media is first and foremost shaped by how they treat him.

The Lott Fallout

The National Review Online continues its saturation coverage of the Trent Lott story with a blaringly headlined editorial calling on Lott to resign as Republican Senate leader, and noting that NR had called for Lott’s head four years ago. The succinct statement of Lott’s moral culpability:
Minority leader Tom Daschle’s initial reaction . . . to Lott’s remarks was essentially sound � Lott misspoke. But Lott misspoke in a particular way, one freighted with symbolic significance. Many southern whites of a certain generation have a shameful past on civil-rights issues. This doesn’t necessarily make them reprehensible people, or mean that they are racists today. But, when they are public figures, it is reasonable to expect from them an honest reckoning with their past, and, of course, an awareness that a reckoning is necessary.
This is basically the same point the Supreme Court seemed to be leaning towards making in the cross-burning arguments this week: sometimes, words and symbols have a history, and you invoke that history at your peril. That’s why being a Nazi is merely scorned in the United States, but illegal in Germany.
The Wall Street Journal also essentially asks Lott to step down. It’s not entirely accurate, as the Journal suggests, to say that conservatives led the charge against Lott’s remarks, but certainly many more conservatives outside of politics piled on the issue early than did liberals in journalism or the other usual sites of outrage. The Journal also strangely suggests that John Kerry has been the most vocal of the Democrats’ presidential hopefuls on this, which he hasn’t; to his credit, albeit with his usual smarmy overstatement, Al Gore was ‘fustest with the mostest’ in this fight. Peggy Noonan also has a wonderful column accusing Lott of playing the race card and telling him to go; it’s worth reading in its entirety.
On the legal front, I have to think the number one casualty of the Lott brouhaha is Charles Pickering. George W. Bush has suggested that some of the judicial nominees killed in committee – namely, Priscilla Owen, the Fifth Circuit nominee who became a key issue in the Texas Senate campaign – would be revived, and with Pickering’s son elected to the House from Mississippi and Lott stepping back up as majority leader, it seemed like Pickering would be back too. But Pickering is a white Mississippian, he was charged with racial ‘insensitivity,’ he was basically sponsored by Lott, and in the current circumstances, that combination will almost certainly make him too hot to handle. It’s unfair to him, but that’s the way it goes; at least he’s still got that life tenure as a US District Judge.

Clutch Enough

If you had a pitcher with these stats in the regular season:
28 G, 2.80 ERA, 176.2 IP, 165 H, 43 BB, 116 K
You’d say the guy was pretty damn good, especially these days, especially if ALL his starts were big games against playoff teams. If I told you that he went 11-12 (with 1 save) in those 28 games, you’d probably recognize that he’d just had some hard luck.
That’s Greg Maddux’s playoff record since coming to Atlanta (he did get clobbered in his first playoff series with the Cubs in 1989 at age 23, but the overall ERA is still 3.23). He’s been consistent, too – even in samples as small as 6 innings, Maddux has had an ERA of 3.00 or better in 14 of his last 16 playoff serieses. Granted, Maddux’s overall record in Atlanta is better than that – in fact, his overall record since 1988 is 265-134 (.664 winning %) with a 2.68 ERA – but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Somehow, though, people seem to think of him as a playoff underachiever.

Lileks Goes Christmas Shopping

Lileks goes Christmas shopping with his toddler daughter: “[W]e went down to the children�s book section of Barnes and Noble. I was looking for gift ideas; she seemed to like the Curious George backpack – it looks as if the little fellow is clinging to your back. Very cute. It would be different if he had red eyes and sharp teeth, of course; if the bag looked like that, I�d train Gnat to run around screaming whenever she put it on, shouting GED OFF! GED OFF MONKEY! Just for fun.”