Mighty Brobeck Has Struck Out

Mighty Brobeck has struck out. I guess innovations like taking payment in the stocks of internet companies didn’t turn out to be much of a financial plan. A friend who used to work there emailed me the poem “Ozymandias” (“‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains.”). An appropriate sentiment.

Fisking Gary Locke

Man, the Democrat who did the response was a weenie. I mean, the response to the State of the Union is always miserable – I’ve felt sorry in years past for the pitiable responses the Democrats do, and I was incensed during the Clinton years at the weakness of Republican responses. It’s not a partisan thing; it’s just impossible to compete with the president on his big night. But the Dems picked a small state governor who’s in serious political hot water back home. The response itself is an awful mishmosh; let’s walk through it, skipping a phrase here and there:
Good evening. I’m Gary Locke, the governor of Washington state. It’s an honor to give the response to President Bush on behalf of my family, my state, my fellow Democratic governors and the Democratic Party.
Note who comes last on the list. (“Mr. President, the Locke family has a bone to pick with you!”)
My grandfather came to this country from China nearly a century ago and worked as a servant. Now I serve as governor just one mile from where my grandfather worked. It took our family 100 years to travel that mile. It was a voyage we could only make in America.
Yup, still talking about the Locke family.
Many of the young Americans who fought in Afghanistan, and who tonight are still defending our freedom, were trained in Washington state.
If Rick Perry said something like this, it would come off as, “Texas can kick Afghanistan’s ass all by itself.” Coming from Locke, it adds to the overall impression that the speech is more about “hey look at me, ma!” than anything the rest of the country cares about. Joe Sixpack just got up to get a beer.
But the war against terror is not over. Al Qaida still targets Americans. Osama bin Laden is still at large. As we rise to the many challenges around the globe, let us never lose sight of who attacked our people here at home.
Meaning, presumably, NOT IRAQ. And since when do we know for a fact that bin Laden is at large, as opposed to MIA/KIA? Who knows? GARY LOCKE KNOWS!
We also support the president in working with our allies and the United Nations to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. Make no mistake: Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant, and he must give up his weapons of mass destruction.
Unless the French say we shouldn’t do anything about it. Then, we would be making a mistake. But I get ahead of myself.
We support the president in the course he has followed so far: working with Congress, working with the United Nations, insisting on strong and unfettered inspections.
I suppose the “We” is now the Democrats, as opposed to the Locke family, but I could be wrong. Some of them sure didn’t sound like they supported the course President Bush followed throughout 2002. But then, “yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone . . . ”
Implied here, of course, is that when the going gets tough, “we” won’t be so supportive.
We need allies today in 2003, just as much as we needed them in Desert Storm and just as we needed them on D-Day in 1944, when American soldiers, including my father, fought to vanquish the Nazi threat.
Back to the Locke family’s need for international cooperation. As Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, the allies were a little more militarily important on D-Day than they are now.
He must convince the world that Saddam Hussein is not America’s problem alone; he’s the world’s problem. And we urge President Bush to stay this course, for we are far stronger when we stand with other nations than when we stand alone.
“He,” I guess, is the President (either that, or it’s Locke’s dad again). More seriously, it’s amazing that the Democrats are still speaking in the future tense about this. The case has been made to the point of being a dead horse; granted, the president laid out some new allegations last night that will need to be backed by evidence before the Security Council, but anybody who’s not listening by now is never going to. There’s the same false dichotomy again between standing “with other nations” and “alone,” ignoring the real possibility of standing with many nations but not all of them.
I have no doubt that together, we can meet these global challenges.
Except that we won’t be behind you when the crap hits the fan, Georgie Boy. Then, you’re on your own. Brave, brave Sir Gary!
Democrats have a positive, specific plan to turn our nation around.
To be fair, this is where I turned the radio off and read the rest this morning. If you read on, you will note that unlike the president’s tax plan, the Democrats’ is too “specific” to explain the specifics so the average American can understand what they actually plan to do. Just a general commitment to some undefined tax credits.
Some say it’s a recovery, but for far too Americans, there’s no recovery in our states and cities.
At this point, I get the sneaking suspicion he’s talking about state and city governments.
There’s no recovery for working Americans and for those searching for jobs to feed and clothe their families.
Ah, those “working Americans” again, as opposed to people who pay taxes on the income they make from . . . doing what?
States and cities now face our worst budget crises since World War II. We’re being forced to cut vital services from police to fire to health care, and many are being forced to raise taxes.
Now, we’ve got the real gripe here, and the real reason they picked a governor. After all, when the Democrats in Congress vote to raise taxes, they can’t well say that Bush is “forcing” them to do it. Of course, I assume that none of these states and cities spend money on anything less vital than police, fire and emergency health care.
Our plan provides over $100 billion in tax relief and investments, right now. Tax relief for middle class and working families immediately.
But we think that it’s reckless for the president to ask for tax cuts to be accelerated. If the president’s plan is too expensive, why boast about the size of your own? Me-too-ism stinks no matter which side of the aisle it comes from.
Substantial help for cities and states like yours and mine now. Extended unemployment benefits without delay for nearly a million American workers who have already exhausted their benefits.
More relief for governments! And we can’t get the economy moving again if we’ve got a bunch of people around who want to work, can we?
President Bush has a very different plan. We think it’s upside down economics; it does too little to stimulate the economy now and does too much to weaken our economic future. It will create huge, permanent deficits that will raise interest rates, stifle growth, hinder home ownership and cut off the avenues of opportunity that have let so many work themselves up from poverty.
Like the “permanent” deficits from the Reagan years, remember them?
We believe every American should get a tax cut.
Well, except that we’re against any plans for tax cuts for some of those people, plus we were against the president’s last plan to give everyone a tax cut. But other than that.
In 1999, an Al Qaida operative tried to enter my state with a trunk full of explosives. Thankfully, he was caught in time.
If only Gary Locke had been governor of New York, September 11 would never have happened!
Now, a year and a half after September 11th, America is still far too vulnerable. Last year Congress authorized $2.5 billion in vital new resources to protect our citizens: for equipment for firefighters and police, to protect ports, to guard against bioterrorism, to secure nuclear power plants and more. It’s hard to believe, but President Bush actually refused to release the money. Republicans now say we can’t afford it. The Democrats say: “If we’re serious about protecting our homeland, we can and we must.”
This sounds like a valid criticism, although there’s more than this to many of the disputes over the routing of funds. But note that distributing some earmarked appropriations to Governors Like Gary Locke! is absolutely the only deficiency he identifies in our homeland security. Bold new ideas, this party has!
In my state we have raised test scores, cut class sizes, trained teachers, launched innovative reading programs, offered college scholarships, even as the federal government cut its aid to deserving students. Democrats worked with President Bush to pass a law that demands more of our students and invests more in our schools. But his budget fails to give communities the help they need to meet these new, high standards.
Same basic theme here: all would be peaches and cream, if only the president would send Gary Locke more money!
On this issue, the contrast is clear. Democrats insist on a Medicare prescription drug benefit for all seniors. President Bush says he supports a prescription drug benefit, but let’s read the fine print. His plan only helps seniors who leave traditional Medicare. Our parents shouldn’t be forced to give up their doctor or join an HMO to get the medicine they need. That wouldn’t save Medicare; it would privatize it. And it would put too many seniors at too much risk just when they need the security of Medicare.
As usual, no proposal by Democrats to “save” Medicare, just load more freight on a sinking ship.
Environmental protection has been a tremendous bipartisan success story over three decades. Our air and water are cleaner.
Gee, now they tell us. Back in the Reagan years, there was nothing but bipartisan success on this issue! Says the Democratic Response! And they even admit that the sky is not falling!
But the administration is determined to roll back much of this progress.
How?
[I]nstead of opening up Alaska’s wilderness to oil drilling, we should be committed to a national policy to reduce our dependence on oil by promoting American technology and sustainability.
I guess he missed the stuff about hydrogen cars; to be fair, I’ve always hated the fact that the “response” by either party just ignores whatever the president just said. Lawyers have to wing it on some details their closing arguments; can’t politicians add a few things off the cuff? Just turn off the teleprompter for 30 seconds and talk turkey?
We will fight to protect a woman’s right to choose, and we will fight for affirmative action, equal opportunity and diversity in our schools and our workplaces. Above all, we will demand that this government advance our common purpose and not pander to narrow special interests.
Do I even need to point out the contradiction in those two sentences?
This is not an easy time. But I often think about my grandfather, arriving by steamship 100 years ago. He had no family here. He spoke no English. I can only imagine how he must have felt as he looked out at his new country. There are millions of families like mine, people whose ancestors dreamed the American dream and worked hard to make it come true. They transformed adversity into opportunity. Yes, these are challenging times, but the American family, the American dream, has prevailed before. That’s the character of our people and the hallmark of our country. The lesson of our legacy is, if we work together and make the right choices, we will become a stronger, more united and more prosperous nation.
Besides finishing the speech back under the shade of the Locke Family Tree, this closing stinks because it contradicts the gloom-and-doom substance of the speech. Locke wasn’t selling hope here, he was selling Hard Times. If he was going to be consistent, he could at least mention how the McKinley Administration helped out his grandfather by giving block grants to the governor of Washington . . .

Violence In Prime Time

If Bill Clinton’s presidency was X-rated for explicit sexual content, last night’s State of the Union Address had to be at least PG-13 for graphic violence:
The dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages � leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained � by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.
Sometimes, the truth hurts. I’m obviously familiar with all this, but for a good number of viewers at home, it must’ve been jarring stuff; it was good to hear it all laid out.
On Iraq, Bush made it very plain that — unlike Ted Kennedy, who fatuously insisted in post-speech comments that inspections were working and should be given more time — the inspections game is over, and no more stock need be put in it:
U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them � despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them. . . . The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses. . . . Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families.
Saddam might be given a little more time to have a “Scrooge on Christmas morning” type conversion between now and when the Security Council, following next week’s meeting, comes to a resolution (I expect it will take 2-3 weeks). But Bush finally gave away his assumption that war is coming, despite his repeated recent protests that his mind wasn’t made up yet:
[A]s we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies � and freedom.
Granted, this is qualified by the prior sentence’s “if war is forced upon us,” but it sure sounded like the president knows this is coming now.
Other thoughts on the speech:

Continue reading Violence In Prime Time

Dobby Putin

This sounds too wacky to be true; the London Evening Standard claims that the makers of the latest Harry Potter film may be sued in Russia — presumably by Vladimir Putin — on the theory that Dobby, the computer-generated self-flagellating house elf in the movie, bears too close a resemblance to Mr. Putin. I swear I am not making this up; judge for yourself. (Link via Drudge).

The UN and Mediation

So Bush may have to leave the UN behind, and go with a “coalition of the willing.” Let’s admit the obvious Texas analogy -“coalition of the willing” is basically another term for “posse.” Jacques, Gerhard, the marshal’s got six or seven armed men and a couple guys carrying provisions, and he’s leavin’ town with or without y’all.
Still, in spite of its many flaws, the UN continues to have its uses. When it does act collectively, however rare that may be, it adds an additional layer of legitimacy, like when the Senate votes unanimously on something. But the President doesn’t stop governing when the Senate isn’t unanimous. The UN also facilitates the habit of diplomacy and multilateral agreements, each of which have their uses.
It’s like mediation. Any litigator will tell you that mediation is a useful tool in resolving some disputes. Mandatory mediation is a waste, because some disputes won’t settle that way. And making mediation the only method of dispute resolution would be absurd, because sometimes you can’t get agreement and often the lack of agreement works to benefit a wrongdoer, who is never held to account. Besides, mediation with no threat of litigation is toothless.
None of the presidential candidates should understand this better than John Edwards; what would he say if we told him that lawsuits were illegal, injured people have to just mediate. He’d blow his stack, that’s what. The US should have the same view when people say that UN dispute resolution is the only way to go.

Gary Hart Soundbite

I saw Gary Hart on CSpan the other night; he was before some highbrow audience bemoaning the fact that debates reduce candidates’ positions to slogans. It’s true as far as it goes, to a point, but:
1. Not if done well – the 2000 debates were quite substantive.
2. Except McCain, GOP politicos don’t usually feel the need, preening before audiences who eat this stuff up, to complain that their elegant ideas are too complex to be grasped by the common man. Could you see Bush or Reagan doing that?
3. I bet John Edwards knows that you can cram plenty of substance into a 90-second sound bite.

WWSHD?

Nikolas Gvosdev of the National Interest argues, on NRO, that Saddam wants us to go to war with him now.
I agree with most of what Gvosdev says: (1) inspections are bad PR for Saddam and (2) Saddam’s natural instinct and the culture of Arab despotism is driving him in the direction of preferring war. I also think that preference is being accelerated as it becomes obvious that the alternative strategy of delay is a dead end.
But I disagree on Gvosdev’s critical unstated assumptions: (1) what Saddam wants may still be what we want. If our national interest supports war, why care what Saddam wants? (2) Saddam’s regime is built on fear, not respect; he lost the respect of his people when he lost the Gulf War, possibly earlier due to the Iran-Iraq war. The inspectors don’t threaten Saddam’s ability to inspire fear; the key thing that the inspectors did the other day to underline that was turn over a defector to Saddam’s “authorities.” Thus, prolonged
inspections will not overturn the regime. (3) We can’t afford to wait. The risk of terrorism is such that we can no longer afford to prolong it. As Peggy Noonan notes, George W. Bush is losing sleep over this possibility, and rightly so (although unlike Noonan I suspect that what keeps him up at night is precisely the fact that he can’t prove the connection between Saddam and international terrorism that he and many of the rest of us feel in our guts). (4) We must act now or never. The diplomatic cost (and cost economic uncertainty cost) of keeping our attention and diplomacy focused on Iraq to the exclusion of other hot spots is prohibitive if it continues much longer, and the American public will lose the sense of urgency needed to fight (it’s starting already). If we back down now, we can’t rev the war machine back up.

Howard The Dean

George Will captures Howard Dean:
“Son of an affluent Long Island stockbroker (George W. Bush’s grandmother was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Dean’s grandmother), Dean attended private schools, then Yale, before moving to Vermont, a state whose most famous company is an ideological ice-cream maker (Ben & Jerry’s) and whose one congressman, Bernie Sanders, is a New York-born socialist. Dean signed the law that made Vermont the first state to give legal standing to same-sex unions.”

SUVs

Jonathan Adler’s able two-part defense of the SUV against attacks by Greg Easterbrook of the New Republic (part two is here) is persuasive on most points, but the central question is unanswered: is it right to have cars on the road that present, by their size, weight and high bumpers, such a high risk to others? Adler isn’t really sure:
While shrinking SUV size might improve car safety, it is incontrovertible that increasing the weight of passenger cars by 100 pounds would almost certainly reduce highway fatalities by over 300 per year. These results are consistent with other studies, such as that by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety which concluded that “the high risks of occupants in light (and small) cars have more to do with the vulnerabiltiy of their own vehicles than with the aggressivity of other vehicles. “Traveling in a larger, heavier vehicle reduces your risk of being killed in a crash,” notes Dr. Leonard Evans, president of the International Traffic Medicine Association. “There is no more firmly established conclusion in the vast body of traffic safety research.” In other words, if the primary aim is to increase automotive safety, the Easterbrook’s target should not be SUVs, but smaller, less-expensive cars. “Upsizing the car fleet may well be the most important step we could take toward improving safety,” notes Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
To his credit, Easterbrook admits that federal studies make clear that “the most dangerous vehicles for their occupants are compact and sub-compact cars,” not SUVs. He even suggests that the government should ban such “econo-boxes.” Yet all this demonstrates is Easterbrook’s willingness to tell other people what to drive. He evidently places little value on the ability of consumers to purchase the cars of their own choosing.
In other words, people driving smaller cars are risking their lives, but they should be able to make that choice. As a matter of theory that makes economic sense, and maybe I’m grouchy about this issue because I just had to buy a minivan after my car got totalled by a minor fender-bender with a high-riding SUV. But Adler doesn’t really answer the question: assuming (as is the case) that many people drive small cars because that’s all they can afford, shouldn’t there be a greater burden placed on SUVs for the hazards they present to such drivers? (Granted, trucks present even greater risks, but trucks (1) serve a valuable economic purpose and (2) are subjected to stringent regulations, including a separate licensing regime). At a minimum — and I don’t know if this is true — the auto insurance market should be made to internalize, for SUV drivers, the cost of accidents between SUVs and non-SUV vehicles.
In short, I’m sympathetic to Adler’s individual-autonomy concerns, as well as to the more general sense in Easterbrook’s pieces that people who drive SUVs in urban or heavily populated areas tend to be unreasonably aggressive drivers. There has to be a solution that lets people choose SUVs for their virtues while compelling them to bear the SUV’s social costs.

Hall of Fame Outfielders, 1920s-1930s

There are many, many, too many outfielders in the Hall of Fame from the 1920s and 1930s. Just counting the white Major Leagues, there are 20 outfielders who are in the Hall of Fame largely or entirely for their play in those two decades, and four others who were active and in their primes for a substantial number of seasons in those years. 24 outfielders — 12 who played mostly or entirely in the NL, 12 mostly or entirely in the AL — at a time when there were but 16 Major League teams. Hit a fly ball in those years, and the chances were good that a future Hall of Famer would catch it, and the chances decent that to do so he’d call off another future member of the Cooperstown fraternity.
This, by any standard, is too many. Greatness should not be so commonplace; when it is, it’s not greatness anymore. Careful inspection makes clear that no use of the term “great” can have meaning if it’s stretched so far as to cover all 24.
So, which ones were the true greats? There are many ways to answer that question, but one simple way is to look at each season and figure out who the best in the business were. These guys were competing with each other to see who could help his team win more games. There were winners, and losers. In 1923 or 1937, who was the best in the business, and who was just another one of the guys?
The simplest credible way to measure value is Bill James’ Win Shares system, with which many of you will no doubt be familiar. In a nutshell, James measures the number of runs a player is worth to his team offensively, and his share of the runs his team saves defensively, and computes a �share� of the team�s overall wins, with each share worth 1/3 of a win. There are two main sanity checks on the system: (1) most teams have a similar relationship between their runs scored and allowed and the number of games they win; and (2) a team�s total Win Shares are always equal to three times its wins, so the system can�t over- or under-value players by that much, since the total Win Shares on the roster have to add up to a real-world measurement of success.
For a general idea of standards, 20 Win Shares is a real good player, 30 (worth 10 wins a year) is a �major star� type season for an everyday player, 40+ is �superstar having a career year� territory, and 50 puts you with a handful of the best seasons ever. (Over 60 in a season is territory reserved exclusively for pitchers who threw 5-600 innings a year before they moved the mound back in 1893). 348 career Win Shares and above is almost all Hall of Famers, 291-347 is more Hall of Famers than not, 256-90 is still well-populated with Hall of Famers, and below that is mostly the rare player who�s been immortalized.
What I decided to do, besides just looking at career totals, was figure out the top 6 outfielders in each league, each season from 1913 to 1942, ranked by Win Shares. I then added up the total times a player finished in each position, and assigned a scoring system. The scoring was somewhat arbitrary, but I awarded 10 points for being the best outfielder in a league, 8 for second (the gap reflecting the value of being the best), 7 for third, 5 for fourth (another gap when we reach the second team), 4 for fifth, and 3 for sixth (I didn�t start at 1 because I didn�t want a 1st place finish worth 8 times that of sixth; just over 3 seemed fairer for these purposes). If two players tied for a rank, they each got full points. The goal was to measure, in essence, comparitive Peak Value. You can re-score the results yourself if you like, but I think this ranking at least tells us a little. Here we go:
1. Babe Ruth, 149 points, 756 career WS. Best in league: 13 times. Top 3: 15 times. Top 6: 16 times. (I�ll render this as 13-15-16 as I go).
I didn�t spend all those hours with the Win Shares book to prove that Babe Ruth belongs in the Hall; the main point with Ruth is that the scores of all the AL outfielders are lower because the Babe, cranking out 45 WS seasons like clockwork, never gave anyone else the chance to finish first as they might in the NL.
2. Mel Ott, 113 points, 528 WS, 6-12-13.
Not Ruth, but plenty dominant.
3. Tris Speaker, 100 points, 4-10-13
4. Ty Cobb, 84 points, 2-7-13

I�ve undervalued these guys because I started counting in the middle of their careers, but, again, there�s no controversy yet.
5. Paul Waner, 82 points, 423 WS, 3-8-12
6. Earl Averill, 77 points, 280 WS, 2-9-10

Averill was the dominant outfielder in the AL for two years between Ruth and Joe D, and the second fiddle to those guys for 7 other seasons. This study confirmed for me that, despite the shortness of his career, Averill was the type of major star who belongs in Cooperstown.
7. George Burns, 66 points, 290 WS, 3-6-10
Yes, for all its profligacy, the Hall missed one. This was George Burns the Giants leadoff man, not the 1926 AL MVP. Burns, a prototypical leadoff guy, played for 3 pennant winners (1913, 1917, and 1921), and the Win Shares system ranks him as the best outfielder in the NL in 1914, 1917 and 1918, the best defensive outfielder in the league in 1922, and the best hitter in the entire league in 1914 and 1919. His career wasn�t that long, and the limited CS data available suggests that he was a terrible percentage base thief, but Burns would certainly not embarrass the Hall by his presence.
8. Al Simmons, 64 points, 375 WS, 2-5-10
I would have expected Simmons to do better, but he and Harry Heilmann suffered from the inability to lead the league in the presence of Ruth, and Simmons� peak wasn�t really that long. We�re still in Cooperstown territory here, though; Simmons� numbers are so titanic that you can let out a lot of air and he�s still a great player.
9. Joe DiMaggio, 63 points, 387 WS, 4-7-7
And this is just the first half; I stopped counting in 1942.
10. Zack Wheat, 62 points, 380 WS, 2-6-9
11. Max Carey, 60 points, 351 WS, 2-6-9
12. Goose Goslin, 57 points, 355 WS, 0-5-9
13. Joe Medwick, 57 points, 312 WS, 1-5-9
14. Edd Roush, 50 points, 314 WS, 2-5-7
15. Harry Heilmann, 49 points, 356 WS, 0-5-8

These six all hold up well to scrutiny; each spent about half a decade as one of his league�s first-team outfielders and another half in the second team, and most of them managed a year or two as the best in the circuit. I�m still skeptical of Roush, who never batted .360, hit 10 homers, drove in 90 runs, scored 100, stole 40 bases or drew 50 walks in a season. But the Win Shares system recognizes him as a defensive stud and a guy who had many of his best years before scoring got out of hand. Reluctantly, I guess I�d say he�s been properly enshrined.
16. Ross Youngs, 46 points, 206 WS, 1-4-7
Youngs almost stacks up with the group above in peak value, but he had his last star season at age 27 and died of a degenerative disease at age 30. He was generally the best player on a team that won 4 straight pennants and 2 World Championships. I can live with giving him the benefit of the doubt. But now we�ve got one Hall of Famer per each major league outfield for the two decades; let�s cut the line here.
17. Hack Wilson, 44 points, 224 WS, 2-5-5
18. Kiki Cuyler, 43 points, 292 WS, 1-4-7

I like Cuyler�s package of skills and find it hard to believe he wasn�t more valuable than Roush, but both Cuyler and Wilson had too many holes in their careers, in some cases self-inflicted, to give them the benefit of the doubt in a crowded field.
19. Shoeless Joe Jackson, 42 points, 294 WS, 1-5-6
We�re cutting off Jackson�s prime a bit here; he�d be in the Hall of Fame if he deserved a shot, and he would have been way high on the list if he hadn�t been banned after 1920.
20. Benny Kauff, 41 points, 175 WS, 2-4-5
Another guy who was banned; Kauff is overrated here because he gets credit for being the best player in the Federal League for two years, but he was still a star in the NL for a few more years.
21. Bobby Veach, 37 points, 265 WS, 0-3-7
22. Gavvy Cravath, 37 points, 202 WS, 2-3-5
23. Ted Williams, 35 points, 555 WS, 2-4-4
24. Wally Berger, 35 points, 241 WS, 2-3-5

No immortality for these numbers, although Williams was just 23 when I stopped counting; remember that when you look at the guys below him on the list.
25. Heine Manush, 30 points, 285 WS, 0-3-5
26. Earle Combs, 27 points, 227 WS, 0-2-5
27. Indian Bob Johnson, 27 points, 287 WS, 0-3-5

Two guys who got into Cooperstown on batting average and little else, Manush and Combs were stars in their day, but rarely among the real elite and not long enough in the next tier. Johnson, a player of similar value but for bad teams and with a broader package of skills, is today a completely forgotten man.
28. Chuck Klein, 23 points, 238 WS, 0-1-5
29. Babe Herman, 23 points, 232 WS, 0-2-4
30. Charlie Keller, 23 points, 218 WS, 0-2-4
31. Enos Slaughter, 22 points, 323 WS, 1-2-3
32. Ken Williams, 22 points, 202 WS, 1-2-3

Leaving aside Slaughter, who went to war for 3 years and then had the rest of his career outside the scope of this study, you�ve got 3 guys — Klein, Herman and Williams � who put up numbers that looked much more impressive before we saw with our own eyes what an extreme hitter-friendly context could do for a guy like Dante Bichette. Klein was indeed the best of the bunch, but it�s hard to reconcile the appearance of a high peak with a guy who but once (1933) belonged in the league�s best outfield. Keller, on the other hand, was 25 and just getting rolling in 1942, and would have had a serious Hall of Fame case had he stayed healthy and out of the military.
33. Sherry Magee, 19 points, 354 WS, 0-2-3
34. Lloyd Waner, 19 points, 245 WS, 0-1-4

Is there no justice? Remember that Magee�s best years were before 1913; he was the best player in the National League in 1910. Waner was . . . well, a guy who hit some singles, occasionally a star-caliber player but often not a particularly good player at all.
35. Lefty O�Doul, 18 points, 144 WS, 1-2-2
36. Ival Goodman, 18 points, 144 WS, 1-2-2
37. Harry Hooper, 17 points, 321 WS, 0-1-4

I dunno, when I think �Hall of Fame,� I don�t genereally think �Ival Goodman.� Like O�Doul, Goodman was momentarily a major star, and the moment passed quickly, although in Goodman�s case it did get him to two World Serieses with the Reds. As you can see from the career totals, Harry Hooper was twice the player these guys were over the course of his career, and he might have scored a little higher if I�d gone back a few more years. But Hooper as a Hall of Famer is ridiculous; Hooper was an outstanding defensive outfielder and an all-around fundamentally sound player, and he was steady and durable for 17 years. But besides his glove and a knack for drawing walks, Hooper didn�t do anything outstandingly well, and he wasn�t a huge walks guy either (career high: 89). I dare you to explain how Hooper should be in the Hall of Fame while George Burns and Dwight Evans aren�t.
38. Sam Rice, 16 points, 327 WS, 0-0-5
39. Dode Paskert, 16 points, 227 WS, 0-2-2
40. Joe Vosmik, 16 points, 159 WS, 1-1-3

Rice, like Hooper, was incredibly consistent and durable, and Rice has some added footnotes � he missed a year after being drafted into the Army in World War I and also got a late start in the majors because he�d joined the Navy at age 23 after his parents, wife and two children were killed by a tornado (Rice saw combat in the Navy, landing at Vera Cruz in 1914). When he did reach the majors, it was as a pitcher. Without those interruptions, Rice could easily have had 3700 hits in the major leagues, and maybe you�d have to consider him as a Don Sutton type candidate, a minor star of truly exceptional consistency over an exceptionally long time. But as far as peak value, Paskert and Vosmik, two truly unmemorable players, were among the many better than Sam Rice. I think I�d leave Rice out, although it does bother me that I�d basically be counting him out for years that he was wearing his country�s uniform.
41. Pete Reiser, 15 points, 125 WS, 1-1-2
42. Dutch Zwilling, 15 points, 61 WS, 0-2-2
43. Ben Chapman, 14 points, 233 WS, 0-1-3
44. Chick Hafey, 14 points, 186 WS, 0-0-4

(Zwilling only scores for his Federal League years).
There you have it: Chick Hafey, Hall of Famer, the 44th most dominant outfielder of his era. It must have been the durability he showed over his, er, 13-year career, in which he appeared in more than 138 games twice, both when past his prime. In 1928, Hafey�s best season (138 games, .337, 27 homers, 111 RBI), he finished 12th in the NL MVP voting; teammate Rabbit Maranville got more votes as a 36-year-old, .240-hitting shortstop who batted just 366 times. Hafey was a lesser player by far than Pedro Guerrero, Gary Sheffield, or Fred Lynn. He�s the last Hall of Famer on this list, so I�ll stop here.
24 Hall of Famers; for opposite reasons, I�d maybe keep Sam Rice and Ross Youngs, and I�d maybe put in George Burns. But the guys who clearly just don�t cut it: Hack Wilson, Kiki Cuyler, Heine Manush, Earle Combs, Chuck Klein, Lloyd Waner, and Harry Hooper, and Chick Hafey. They were good, very good; but they were never close to the best of their generation. The Hall of Fame should demand that.

Baseball’s Underappreciated Great Teams, 1900-1949

Originally posted on Projo.com
Starting this week: a three-part history column. Let’s take a look back at successful teams from each decade of the 20th century that have fallen away a bit from popular memory or haven’t been given their due:
The 1900s: The 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates
103-36 (.741), First place by 27.5 games, no postseason, 5.58 R/G (runs scored per game), 3.17 RA/G (runs allowed per game), league average 3.98/G.
Histories of the game tend to leave off 19th century baseball with the 1897 pennant race and pick up 20th century baseball with Christy Mathewson throwing three shutouts in five days in the 1905 World Series, filling the interregnum with accounts of the crises and interlocking ownerships that led to the contraction of the National League from 12 teams to 8 after the 1899 season, the founding of the American League in 1901, the jumping of players like Nap Lajoie to the AL and the litigation that sprang up in their path, the refusal of John McGraw’s Giants to play in a World Series in 1904, and the ultimate peace between the leagues under which the 1905 Series kicked off the new era. The game on the field underwent a number of dramatic changes in this era, with several developments, most notably the foul strike rule (in the 19th century, a foul ball was not a strike) leading the transition from baseball’s highest-scoring era in the 1890s to its lowest in the following decade. Mathewson’s throttling of Connie Mack’s A’s signaled the arrival of that era as well.

Continue reading Baseball’s Underappreciated Great Teams, 1900-1949

“[T]his looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.”

Call me an optimist, but I’ve been surprised that the conservative commentariat and the blogosphere have not had more to say about President Bush’s press conference yesterday, at which he gave the clearest signals yet that he is out of patience with the inspections farce and is ready to go to war to “disarm” Iraq:
Q Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. The French are saying they would block a U.N. resolution authorizing force on Iraq. Are you frustrated by these comments? Can you still reach a consensus?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Adam, first of all, it’s important for the American citizens and the citizens around the world to understand that Saddam Hussein possesses some of the world’s deadliest weapons. He poses a serious threat to America and our friends and allies. The world came together, including the French, to say he must disarm. He’s not disarming. As a matter of fact, it appears to be a rerun of a bad movie. He is delaying, he is deceiving, he is asking for time. He’s playing hide-and-seek with inspectors.
One thing is for certain, he’s not disarming. So the United States of America, in the name of peace, will continue to insist he does disarm, and we will keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein.
Angle.
Q Mr. President, when do you intend to make a decision about whether or not the inspection process is — actually has any hope of really disarming Saddam?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s clear to me now that he is not disarming. And, surely, our friends have learned lessons from the past. Surely we have learned how this man deceives and delays. He’s giving people the run-around. And as many of my advisors said on TV this week, time is running out. I believe in the name of peace he must disarm. And we will lead a coalition of willing nations to disarm him. Make no mistake about that, he will be disarmed.
Q When — how do you decide when that moment comes that you need to make a judgment?
THE PRESIDENT: I will let you know when the moment has come. (Laughter.)
Q Mr. President, who is in that coalition of the willing now? Are France, Germany out?
THE PRESIDENT: You will find out who is in the coalition of the willing. It is very much like what happened prior to our getting a resolution out of the United Nations. Many of the punditry — of course, not you — (laughter) — but other punditry were quick to say, no one is going to follow the United States of America. And we got a unanimous resolution out of the United Nations.
The United States has made it clear our intention, and our intention is to work with the world for Saddam to disarm. He’s been given ample time to disarm. We have had ample time now to see that the tricks of the past — he’s employing the tricks of the past today. He’s giving people the run-around. He wants to play hide-and-seek. He’s got a vast country.
He wants to focus the attention of the world on inspectors. This is not about inspectors; this is about a disarmed Iraq. He has weapons of mass destruction — the world’s deadliest weapons — which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies. He has been told to disarm for 11 long years. He’s not disarming.
This business about, you know, more time — you know, how much time do we need to see clearly that he’s not disarming? As I said, this looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.

Changing Sox

If Tom Gordon is healthy – big if – he should be better for the White Sox than Antonio Osuna. Why, again, did the Yankees part with El Duque for Osuna? The Red Sox are also busy accumulating cheap bats, which spells ill for Brian Daubach. The downside of having both Jeremy Giambi and David Ortiz is that they are both DHs (Dave Nilsson, at least, can catch and play first). I suppose they are counting on the frequency with which Giambi and Ortiz get hurt (a la the Giambi/Saenz platoon in Oakland). The Sox will also need to work on getting Ortiz’ plate discipline back; he hit well last year but his walks and OBP dropped off.

Hired Gun

If you wondered, as I have, who the mean candidate will be in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, here’s one early indication: Al Gore/Gray Davis hatchet man Chris Lehane signs on with John Kerry. Lehane was one of the people who, to me, symbolized the mindlessly partisan, tactics-oriented, soulless mean-spritedness of the Gore campaign. I mean, I’m all for negative campaigns, if it means holding the other side accountable for its follies, and every politician has weaknesses that can and should be exploited. But there’s a certain breed of politico that instinctively goes for the cheapest shot possible, for the smear that takes 10 seconds to launch and works precisely because it takes more than one news cycle to get the truth out in return. The Republicans have some of those guys, to be sure – the worst example I can think of was Al D’Amato’s 1998 campaign against Chuck Schumer, where D’Amato focused on preposterous attacks on the workaholic Schumer’s attendance record in the House – but they seem to have gravitated heavily to the Democrats in recent years, and both Gore and Davis have hired nothing but these types of people, entirely eschewing anything that would resemble a positive, optimitsic message, a constructive solution, or an intellectually honest position.

Mosely Braun’s Friends

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that if Democratic operatives, including Terry McAuliffe and Donna Brazile, are encouraging Carol Mosely Braun to run for president, their goal must either be to (1) undercut Al Sharpton or (2) generally fracture the African-American vote in a way that reduces its influence in the primaries. The former, at least, is a laudable goal. It’s also possible that they are just eager to get the former senator out of the race against Peter Fitzgerald – their best bet for capturing a GOP Senate seat in 2004 – and afraid of the bad press in the black community if they just tell her to go take a hike.

Kangaroo Jack

Now, I haven’t seen the movie, although I did sit through what I believe was the longest trailer I’ve ever endured in a theater. But ‘Kangaroo Jack’ looks like the stupidest kangaroo movie since ‘Mathilda the Boxing Kangaroo.’ Which would be saying quite a lot, except that I can’t think of any other movies starring a kangaroo. I guess there’s a reason for that. On the other hand, unlike Mathilda, at least Kangaroo Jack doesn’t feature a guy in a kangaroo suit that looks like it was rented from a Halloween costume store (“Quick, Elliott, we’ve got to finish this scene in time to get the security deposit on the kangaroo suit back!”)

Ritter Compromised

Turns out that former UN inspector Scott Ritter, a formerly tough critic of Saddam who performed an abrupt about-face a few years ago to become an apologist for the Iraqi regime, was busted by upstate New York police in June 2001 for “ha[ving] a sexual discussion on the Internet with an undercover investigator he thought was an underage girl.” This explains volumes. Has Ritter been blackmailed by the Iraqis? Have his own sins made him squeamish about judging even mass murderers, or eager to be reassured of his own moral refinement by declaring himself a Man of Peace?

Colonoscopy

The shameful Bartolo Colon trade: Strictly from the Hated Yankees end, this does not look great. I’ve been a fan of Osuna in the past, but in recent years he has been neither healthy nor outstandingly effective (1.36 baserunners/IP last season, which is uuuuugly). The Yanks could probably use 6 or 7 starters this year, given the age of the staff (granted they have 8, but Hitchcock stinks). I don’t know much about the prospect. Then again, the Yankees achieved their top objective, which was keeping Colon out of Fenway.
The Expos got totally raped here. Liefer’s a decent lefthanded bat, although his career numbers are not that great, and Biddle has a good arm, but this isn’t close to equal value, and there’s no high-upside prospect to give a fig leaf of this being anything but a salary dump. El Duque is old, injury-prone, and was never a #1 starter; I think he can still pitch, but he’s thrown 200 innings just once for the Yanks. If he started 26 games, 155 IP with a 3.60 ERA for the Yanks, he’d probably go 11-6; with Montreal, that will be worth 6 or 7 wins. Colon, by contrast, is a horse; he averaged nearly 110 pitches a start and threw 130 pitches in a game twice last season. He’s worth something to the Yankees, who have depth and will clearly be a contender this year. Montreal, without Colon, will not. He’s of little more use to them than Irabu and Yoshii were.
For the White Sox, Christmas came late – trade one half-decent reliever, one half-decent young pitcher, and one corner infielder who’s 28 and never had an everyday job, and get one of baseball’s best pitchers in return.

2004 Notes

Bob Novak’s Saturday column had some good notes, including John Edwards ducking Tim Russert. Joe Lieberman was on Conan last night; I guess he’s warming up for Leno and Letterman, who must shake their heads when they think of how their shows have become important stops for any aspiring Leader of the Free World. Want your finger on the nuclear trigger? First you have to sit down with this guy from Indiana who made his name wearing a suit of Alka-Seltzer and dropping bowling balls and watermelons off a tower . . .

Lileks Fisks LeCarre

Some days, Lileks is preoccupied with his toddler daughter or some piece of pop culture. I enjoy those columns. But he’s always at his can’t-miss best when some fool decides to spew the whole tired litany of anti-American agitprop, in this case an op-ed piece in the London Times, by the spy novel writer who uses the pseudonym “John LeCarre,” which is helpfully titled — for the subtlety-impaired – “The United States of America has gone mad.” As usual, Lileks v. LeCarre is such a lopsided battle it isn’t even fair, but it is funny.

Steyn on Ted K

Mark Steyn with a skewering of the Ted Kennedy apologia in the Boston Globe:
How many changed lives justify leaving Miss Kopechne struggling for breath for hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy’s car? If the Senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been okay to leave a couple more broads down there? Such a comparison doesn’t automatically make its writer an a——, but it certainly gives one a commanding lead in the preliminary qualifying round.
But among the orthodox left the Clymer/Pierce view is the standard line: You can’t make an omelette without breaking chicks. This is subtly different from arguing that a man’s personal failings are outweighed by his public successes. Rather, they’re saying that a man’s personal flaws are trumped by his ideological purity, regardless of whether or not it works.

Brief of the Day

The New York Times tells us:
President Bush has asked administration lawyers to present him with a brief arguing that the University of Michigan’s programs for using race in admission decisions go too far, officials said today. The officials said Mr. Bush was prepared to have the government file the papers with the Supreme Court on Thursday, a move that would inject the administration into one of the largest affirmative action cases in a generation. But the White House said Mr. Bush had not yet given the final approval to move ahead. And it was unclear how sweeping a stand the administration would take on the fundamental question of whether race may ever be used as a factor in higher-education admissions decisions.
Leaving aside for the moment the politics of the issue, what I find hilarious is the suggestion that Bush decides, on Tuesday, that he wants the Solicitor General’s office to prepare a Supreme Court brief on a constitutional issue of colossal importance. As if legal briefs of this nature grow on trees, rather than being wrung in blood from a staff of lawyers over a period of weeks or months (yes, I’ve written briefs in a day, but not for an appellate court and certainly not on an issue that I expect the U.S. Supreme Court to settle for all time). The article later says that “[o]fficials have been wrestling over the wording of the brief,” which hints at reality. The truth is that the bulk of the brief needs to have been written by now, unless they’ve actually gone to the extraordinary, although I’m sure not unprecedented, step of writing more than one version of the brief.

Why Not North Korea?

I’m not exactly breaking news here, since Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan have already linked to this, but Orson Scott Card’s analysis of the North Korea situation is the best I’ve seen. If you want three reasons why we’re not at war with North Korea, they would be, in order:
1. China
2. North Korea can nuke Seoul, and
3. We haven’t spent the past year building international support.
Card nails the China question. John McCain also has a fine piece in the Weekly Standard, with less emphasis on China and calling for some of the more aggressive moves that Card seems skeptical of. McCain is right that negotiating with the North Koreans is nonsense, but he doesn’t really address the issue of whether we should be negotiating with China.

The Korea Trap

As has been often remarked, Bush’s genius the past year and a half has been in maneuvering his critics into calling for precisely what he intends to do. Is he up to the same tricks in North Korea? Listen to the peace crowd — they’re suddenly all hawkish on Korea, albeit only because they think they can score points in the Iraq debate by showing how Bush is using a double standard that shows that his motives in Iraq are related to (1) the oil bidness, (2) anti-Arab bias, or (3) a personal vendetta inherited from Dad. The case for confrontation with Korea is stronger, they argue. Why isn’t the Bush Administration taking a tougher line?
But their focus, as always, is only on today. Is Bush a step ahead of them again? Because when the war with Iraq is over, and Bush announces that he is taking a tougher line with Korea and that the case for confrontation with Korea is stronger even than with Iraq, what will they say?

RELIGION: MY DREAMS, THEY AREN’T AS EMPTY AS MY CONSCIENCE SEEMS TO BE

Much as I’d like to ignore the story, the Pete Townsend thing is hard to avoid, when the man has been such a foundational figure in modern rock. It ain’t exactly a secret that Townsend’s lyrics are full of stuff that’s hardly G-rated. He sang about homosexuality in “Rough Boys,” to say nothing of the lyrics to “5:15” Heck, his most prominent work thirty years ago was about a boy who withdraws from the world after being sexually abused by an older male relative. At the time, people thought of this as a metaphor.
Nonetheless, even if it turns out – as it appears – that Townsend has been consuming child porn, regardless of the purpose, we can still enjoy his music. In fact, one of the benefits, for political conservatives, of the idiot leftism of so many actors, musicians, etc. is that we learn early to distinguish between the artist and the art.
Thus, when Robert George on NRO comments that “Pete Townshend[‘s] arrest on child-porn charges must cause CBS and the producers of CSI a little discomfort (Its theme song is, “Who Are You”),” I say: No, it shouldn’t. Say what you will about the man, the song “Who Are You” is not just great rock & roll, it is, in fact, a song about man’s search for God – an angry expression of that search (“tell me who the f__k are you?”), to be sure, but the lyrics include a description of Jesus’ love for sinners that most Christian rockers would give their right arm to write:
I know there’s a place you walked
Where love falls from the trees
My heart is like a broken cup
I only feel right on my knees
I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still recieve your kiss
How can I measure up to anyone now
After such a love as this?

FIAT IN ILLINOIS

I go back and forth on the death penalty. I’m 100% certain that it’s morally appropriate to put terrorists to death; that’s really no different in my mind from killing soldiers as they invade your shores. The nature of terrorism, moreover, is such that a terrorist remains a threat even in prison: a threat of becoming a cause celebre. a threat of indoctrinating others, etc. Plus, terrorists are notoriously hard to deter; any weapon at hand must be considered. There may be cases where it’s more prudent not to execute terrorists, but as long as we are agreed that the only question is what is prudent in our own best interests, we’re on the same page.
Beyond terrorism, I have my doubts, mostly about the point at which it becomes impossible to reconcile being pro-death penalty and being a pro-life Catholic. And clearly, the situation in Illinois suggests that the criminal justice system there may have had more than its fair share of flaws. But one thing remains true: the more I see and hear from opponents of the death penalty, the more I tend to support its continuation.
Outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan has commuted the sentences of everyone on death row, more than 160 people, mostly murderers. I haven’t followed the individual cases, but apparently Governor Ryan hasn’t either; he just decided that the Illinois justice system was so broken that no death sentence could be trusted. Convictions, yes; not death sentences. Many of those spared were people about whom there was no doubt as to their guilt; if there were some cases of wrongful convictions, however, their bids for release from life in prison fell on deaf ears.
There are a lot of arguments out there, but I can’t get past this one question: if George Ryan really didn’t have the time or the moral courage to face up to the individual cases and decide between those that deserved clemency and those that should go the way the jury sent them, he had a simple option: just focus on the most obvious abuses, and let his democratically elected successor – Rod Blagojeoveohcihsch – handle the rest. Executions aren’t being carried out; there was no urgency to the matter. The people elected a new governor, and one from the party that is traditionally more skeptical of the death penalty. Why could the people’s choice not be trusted with this duty?

Shinjo Returns

I have no real problem with the Mets re-signing Tusyoshi Shinjo, who should help the outfield defense. He can’t hit enough to play every day, but he’s a useful fourth outfielder. I stand by my initial assessment of Shinjo as a Japanese Darryl Boston, an athletic and fundamentally sound outfielder who could play every day if he was a more disciplined hitter and made more consistent contact.