Moneyball

For our Disney vacation, my wife and I made the mistake (in the interests of saving money) of getting just one hotel room, with the kids (age 3 and 5) sleeping in one bed and us in the other. The problem, of course, was that they wouldn’t go to sleep, and there was nowhere else for us to go. Watching TV was out, and so it was that I spent much of the evenings of our vacation sitting on a bathroom floor, drinking cheap Australian Shiraz out of a plastic cup and reading a book I got for Father’s Day, Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.
Lewis’ book has been extensively reviewed elsewhere (see Dr. Manhattan’s review here and a writeup here by Matt Welch for examples from the blogosphere), so I’ll add my own two cents (or so) without rehashing the whole thing:
1. I’ve never read any of Lewis’ books before (I know, for a guy who works as a securities litigator I’m told that I ought to have read Liar’s Poker), and knew him mostly as a Berkeley liberal who writes mediocre and sporadic columns on travel and parenting for Slate. To be honest, then, when I saw that Lewis had written a book called “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” my first instinct was to assume that the book would be another compliation of the conventional wisdom: payrolls imbalanced, standings imbalanced, money dictates success, we need to reduce income inequality, etc. I’d already read that case laid out as well as it goes in Bob Costas’ Fair Ball, and really didn’t have the stomach to wade through it again. So, it was with some surprise that I read the early rave reviews revealing that the book was, in fact, the story of the development of sabermetrics and how it came to be that Billy Beane implemented sabermetric principles to run the Oakland A’s.
2. When I am reading a book that deals with a subject I know intimately, the first thing I look for is the absences: does the author miss obvious points? Does he ignore important developments? I’m more likely to buy into his descriptions of things I don’t know if he’s nailed the ones I do.
Lewis does. Every time. He goes through Beane’s history with the Mets, rather than presenting him fully formed as an executive. When he introduces Chris Pittaro, now an A’s scout, he doesn’t forget the one thing Pittaro is known for, which is Sparky Anderson’s outlandish hyping of Pittaro in the spring of 1985. When he discusses Scott Hatteberg’s reverence for Don Mattingly’s patience at the plate, Lewis remembers to remind the reader that Mattingly himself didn’t walk that much. Lewis notes the relationship of sabermetrics to Rotisserie baseball, but remembers to note the contradiction in Roto’s old-fashioned reliance on Triple Crown stats and steals. Time and again, going through the story of sabermetric analysis, Lewis gets it, even to the point of mocking favorite targets like Joe Morgan, Bud Selig and the Elias Baseball Analyst. On the other hand, the book was somewhat sparse on one thing I would have liked to have learned, which was why the A’s soured on Carlos Pena; the only thing Lewis really shows us is that Pena was swinging at too many pitches.
3. Lewis’ frame of reference in the bond trading business is apparent; he frequently compares Beane to a bond trader in his dedication to making deals based on superior information.
4. One thing that’s interesting is that the book focuses less on the A’s application of known, established truths and more on an area where the leading analysts remain on somewhat shaky ground: the amateur draft. Most analysts continue to believe that there’s an important place for traditional “tools/observation-based” scouting in the draft, particularly as regards high school players. But the A’s have apparently decided to avoid high school players altogether — a defensible decision, perhaps, given their low budget and their confidence in their metrics for measuring college players. But an ideal draft strategy would take some high school players; Connie Mack loved college players too, but that didn’t stop him from snapping up Jimmie Foxx. Lewis makes a persuasive case for Beane’s strategy, and the story is in some sense more dramatic because the jury is still out.
5. I do have to wonder why Beane let this book get written. A few baseball bloggers have (fairly enough) mocked Joe Morgan for implying that Beane himself had written the book, but Morgan’s larger point is valid: it’s clear that this book contains an awful lot of the ‘inside’ insights of Beane and his staff, gathered with Beane’s approval: their draft strategy, how they evaluate players in trades, how Beane manipulates other GMs. If I’m another GM, I’d race out to read this just to get the scoop on how one of my competitors does his business. Lewis implies two motives: First, Beane is frustrated at the lack of recognition he gets for his talents; Lewis discusses this explicitly as the motive for Beane’s public courtship by the Red Sox. Second, Beane really thinks the other GMs are all so dumb they won’t read or understand the book anyway. Which may be true of some of them, but it suggests an arrogance that could cost Beane.

More on Affirmative Action

Two good followups: Stanford Law School professor Marcus Cole, on Volokh, pouring further scorn on Maureen Dowd’s “assum[ption] that Clarence Thomas, and all successful African Americans, owe their success to Affirmative Action as the but-for cause of their success,” and Michael Kinsley’s devastating column slicing through the nonsense in Justice O’Connor’s compromise solution. (link via Sullivan)
Charles Krauthammer offers a dissenting view: that as bad and dishonest as the Court’s opinion was, it’s a good thing that the Court didn’t close off democratic debate on the issue as it has on, say, abortion.

We Own Your Opinions

One of the most offensive arguments about affirmative action is perfectly captured by Maureen Dowd’s broadside against Clarence Thomas:
He knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race. . . . The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received. . . It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race. . . .It’s impossible not to be disgusted at someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder after himself. So maybe he is disgusted with his own great historic ingratitude.
Eugene Volokh rightly takes to task the idea that good judging requires a judge to be biased in favor of “gratitude” for whatever social privileges he’s obtained in his life. But the problem goes deeper than that.
You see, for its supporters, affirmative action isn’t the repayment of a debt after all: it’s a loan that can and is called in whenever needed. Justice Thomas hasn’t simply been given a helping hand and set free; rather, he’s required to declare perpetual fealty to the cause of racial preferences, even when his better judgment and his understanding of the law tells him otherwise, because he owes. His very thought is shackled by the stigma, so gleefully thrown in his face at every opportunity: we bought you, and we expect you to stay bought! You’re nothing without us! You really think you are qualified for the job you hold, or even for your degree to practice law in the first place?
Read Dowd’s piece and ask yourself if she really believes that Clarence Thomas has earned the right to make up his own mind. So much for dignity and respect.
Of course, to complete this picture, it’s also fair to note that if Justice Thomas supported racial preferences in higher education, conservatives who oppose such preferences would also be all over him for being corrupted by the programs to which he was indebted. (As I’ve pointed out before, and as Dowd raises again, a similar stigma sticks to those, like President Bush, who got into college as children of alumni). But does that make preferences better? Either way, Thomas is damned by his history; he is not free, in the way that you or I are free, in the way that someone about whom it is known that he has made it on his own merits is free. Is that the legacy we want for still more generations of African-Americans — unfree to act, rather than be acted on, unfree to think, rather than be thought about?

Selling Himself Short

Due to travel, I missed last Sunday night’s Met-Yankee game noted by The Mad Hibernian here. What continues to amaze me is Armando Benitez’ unerring instinct for driving down his trade value whenever the Mets are looking to move him. The latest fiasco should be a vivid reminder of why the Red Sox, in particular, should want no part of a guy who can’t handle anything resembling a high-pressure game.

I’m Back

Got back late Thursday night from a family vacation at Disney World, and I’ve been digging out ever since. There’s much to blog about, from the Mets-Yankees series to the Supreme Court’s busy week, although I see that The Mad Hibernian has been manning the battlements here all week. Unfortunately, because I was traveling and for reasons I’ll explain later, I didn’t get to see much baseball this week.
If I was really ambitious, I could make an Al Haig declaration (“I’m in charge here!”) while Glenn Reynolds is on vacation. As usual, though, I’ll just be scrambling for enough time to catch up.

Out of Blog Experience

I’ll be away from the blog for a few days; blogging will resume next Friday or next weekend (other than my co-bloggers, that is). See ya then.
I did have one milestone this week: I finally got the last of my blog archives moved over from Blogger (the September and August stuff).

Shinjo!

A real defensive clinic put on last night by Tsuyoshi Shinjo in the Mets’ loss to the Yankees, between throwing out Robin Ventura by about 30 feet at third base (erosion is faster than Ventura) and robbing Alfonso Soriano of a home run in center.
We Met fans take our entertainment where we must.

Pitches Per Inning

Joe Sheehan has a tremendously important article (not subscriber-only, for once) — with some data I hadn’t seen before — explaining (at least partly) one of baseball’s greatest mysteries: why pitchers can’t throw as many innings as they used to. Without direct pitch count data, Sheehan approaches the question from a variety of other angles, noting the steady long-term rise of walks + strikeouts/game, the dramatic recent spike in power production from players on the right end of the defensive spectrum (catchers and middle infielders), which raises the stress levels on pitchers who have to fear the longball all the way to the bottom of the lineup (the DH rule has also contributed to this). It’s a must-read.

The Famous Process

The first step on the “road map” to peace in Israel and Palestine is supposed to be stopping terrorism. This is a bad idea. I’m not opposed to a “peace process.” But the key to understanding the uses and limitations of such a process is that you can’t negotiate about terrorism.
Some people say that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. Not so; sometimes, there’s nobody else to talk to. Once you’ve decided not to kill them, talking always has to be an option.
But you can’t put terrorism on a negotiating table, for three interrelated reasons:
1. Negotiations require parties who can be held responsible.
First, you have to find someone willing to take responsibility for having ordered or at least permitted terror attacks in the past. But even if you get there, who will be willing to admit to responsibility for more attacks in the future? It’s the easiest thing in the world to let attacks happen, blame them on “extremist militants,” and then complain about a “cycle of violence” when the other side backs out of the agreement.
2. Successful negotiations require that proportional consequences for violations be set out in advance.
The core of a negotiating process isn’t just concession and agreement to the current deal; it’s also agreement to what happens if part or all of the deal breaks down. But negotiating responses to terrorism is problematic in the extreme. Anything that’s subject to negotiation is legitimized, and the responding party may find its freedom of action restricted. And how do you negotiate meaningful provisions that put an acceptable price on this? “Could you stop sending teenagers to blow up restaurants, please? What do you want in return? What do you want for blowing up just a few less civilians? How about just not blowing up any little children for a few weeks? Our lawyers have drafted some reps and warranties, and even an arbitration clause in case there’s any disputes over whether you’ve exceeded your quota . . . Take a look at the language and get back to me in the morning.”
3. Negotiating over terror gives independent terrorists and outside agitators an incentive to wreck the deal.
If terrorism is part of the contract, then somebody who’s cut out of the deal can break it by sponsoring attacks. This relates back to problem #1, but it’s a distinct problem — there are the separate issues of one side creating “deniable” terror attacks and that side negotiating in good faith but actually being undercut by extremists.
The way to make any peace process work is, instead, to just take terrorism off the table. You don’t have to say, “no negotiations until it stops,” although you can reserve the right to respond to attacks outside the process. Instead, the process should be not a peace process (the very phrase assumes that there’s a legitimate military conflict going on, which there isn’t) but an independence process, with steps on both sides building towards the creation of meaningful Palestinian institutions. Israel has to deal in hope: a carrot to give ordinary Palestinians hope that peace will produce positive results, and a stick to remove any hope that terror will accomplish anything. De-linking terrorism from negotiations to the greatest extent possible is the only way to make use of both carrot and stick.
Which doesn’t mean you can’t put things on the table that aid in Israel’s security; but they have to be concrete positive steps or steps tied directly to responsible parties (conficating a certain amount of weapons, ceasing the use of hate-inspiring textbooks in schools, etc.) rather than negative promises about terror attacks. That’s the only way to make a process function in a contructive way.

McCain on WMD

This is why I still love John McCain, even after all the other crap: McCain tears apart the idea that Saddam had no WMD. Jed Babbin at NRO has more on this theme, from a highly-placed British military source. Don’t forget that Saddam’s army in the field had gas masks — ever wonder why?
If McCain decides to leave the Senate (or as long as Arizona has a Republican governor), Bush should keep McCain on the short list to replace Powell or Rumsfeld if either ever steps down (the current leader of that list is Condi Rice; I could see Rice at State and McCain at Defense if the incumbents leave, and both would sail through the Senate, whereas Paul Wolfowitz would not).

Ssssidney

If you’re inclined to waste your time on Sidney Blumenthal and Whitewater, this is an amusing battle in which Blumenthal accuses the New York Times of being part of a right-wing attack machine (re-read that carefully, I’m not kidding), mostly on grounds that the Times reported Whitewater at all (in March 1992) and then failed to report on various Whitewater developments later that purportedly cast the original article into doubt. Former editor and current interim editor Joseph Lelyveld responds by tearing Blumenthal’s smoke-and-mirrors critique to pieces. (I noted Lelyveld’s review of Blumenthal’s book here).
Dick Morris, meanwhile, charges Lelyveld’s Times with pro-Clinton bias on Whitewater, and as usual with Morris’ charges, he himself is a prime conspirator. (Take anything Morris says with a grain of salt, although the evidence he cites of the puff piece he describes is certainly supportive.) Ironically, Morris and Blumenthal both cite the Times’ non-reporting of Whitewater stories as indicative of bias.
The funny thing is how Clinton partisans try to attack the Times and investigative reporter Jeff Gerth for bringing Whitewater to light at all. Why is that so important? Well, because much of the Clintons’ subsequent misbehavior in response to the investigation can only be justified if you start with the premise that there was nothing at all that should ever have been investigated.

Table Games

An interesting article on how Keith Hernandez (and, unsurprisingly, fellow Mets broadcaster Howie Rose) is hooked on Strat-O-Matic baseball. Ballplayers generally don’t seem like the types for these games, but I have always wondered whether there were any ex-Major Leaguers out there who got into table games or Rotisserie after their playing days. Of course, the fact that Hernandez had been grounded in the percentage-based world of table games before he made the majors seems unsurprising, given the kind of player he was.
(Link via Clutch Hits).

Unprecedented?

Joe Sheehan, predictably, defends Roger Clemens’ snit over his Hall of Fame plaque (Link is subscription only). But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is Sheehan’s statement that “[Roberto] Alomar may eventually be regarded as the first Hall of Famer who could not be associated with any team.”
This is monumental ignorance of history. First of all, there have been plenty of journeymen Hall of Famers even in recent years — Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, Hoyt Wilhelm (Sheehan does mention Ryan). And if you dig further back, there are many other players no more associated with one team than Alomar — Rabbit Maranville, George Davis, Jim O’Rourke, Dan Brouthers. I’m sure this was a throwaway line, but Sheehan should know better.

Labashing Hillary

This is just savage (and justifiably so) — Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard, on the unreadable Hillary memoir:
Who else could seriously write of her grade-school appointment as “co-captain of the safety patrol” “This was a big deal in our school. My new status provided me my first lesson in the strange ways some people respond to electoral politics.” . . . Every detail of her life is wrapped in a tidy little pre-package–containing all sorts of do-goodnik asides ready for a campaign bio or a stump-speech moral. Conceiving Chelsea? “We weren’t having any luck,” she writes, “until we decided to take a vacation in Bermuda, proving once again the importance of regular time off.” Most people would just be happy to be having sex in Bermuda. She has to prove the importance of taking regular time off. Her delivery of Chelsea? An excellent opportunity to work in the factlet that Bill accompanied her into the operating room for her C-section–an “unprecedented” move at Baptist Hospital, though “soon thereafter the policy was changed to permit fathers in the delivery room during cesarean operations.”
A hike through Yellowstone with Chelsea and Bill? “America’s national parks have provided a model and an inspiration for other nations to protect their national heritage,” and oh, by the way, she almost forgot to mention: “Bill announced a historic agreement to stop a large, foreign-owned gold mine on the border of Yellowstone from threatening the pristine environment.” Vince Foster, one of Hillary’s best friends in the world, committing suicide? She interrupts news of his death to tell us that right before she was notified, she’d been on a trip to Japan, where she “met with a group of prominent Japanese women–the first of dozens of such meetings that I held around the world–to learn about the issues women were facing everywhere.”
Even when Hillary is going through her lowest moments, she manages to find a sanctimonious silver lining. . . . Remember the Rose law firm billing records that turned up in a White House closet months after they were subpoenaed by prosecutors? They got lost in the shuffle when “we found ourselves in the midst of a major renovation of the heating and air-conditioning systems to bring the White House up to environmental energy standards.”
Even the failure to stop genocide can be turned to political advantage. The death of one million Rwandans which the administration did nothing to stop? “It would have been difficult for the United States to send troops so soon after the loss of American soldiers in Somalia and when the Administration was trying to end ethnic cleansing in Bosnia,” she explains. “But Bill publicly expressed regret that our country and the international community had not done more to stop the horror.” Public regret? How do you say “thanks for nothing” in Tutsi?

Where Are The WMD?

There’s been an awful lot of talk lately, including demands for a response from the left side of the aisle, about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, leading to two types of charges. Some critics argue that there never were any WMD, and further that the Bush Administration and the Blair Government either had bad intelligence, exaggerated the intelligence they had, or outright lied to justify the war. Others argue that the inability to find WMD means that the WMD got away somehow, and that this is an indictment of the allies in general and the Bush Administration in particular on the theory that they failed to put enough troops on the ground to secure all the sites ASAP. Right now, there are still more questions than answers, but I think it’s worth going through the questions to focus on which ones need an answer:

Continue reading Where Are The WMD?

Bad Intelligence?

The finger-pointing dynamic is now in full swing in the intelligence community, with these front page pieces here and here in USAToday seeking to explain the hazards of gathering intelligence in Iraq:
Saddam Hussein would say, ‘If we’ve got a spy on the 5th floor of the building, take everyone on that floor out and chop them up into little pieces’

Hysteria

For a good laugh, go to Democrats.org, click on “Supreme Court Countdown” New Flash Animation about half way down the page toward the right.
This is really, really going to get ugly, considering how nasty this stuff is before Bush has even announced a Supreme Court pick. Much uglier than the partisan smear campaigns against Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer (oh, wait . . . ). The funny thing is how the Democrats may be arguing that a Supreme nomineee is a right-wing lunatic compared to Rehnquist. I bet the Chief Justice gets his reputation rehabilitated in one heck of a hurry if he steps down.

Private Lynch, Revisited

The Washington Post’s revised account of the tale of Jessica Lynch is a bit less spectacular than its earlier story. But, really, if you forget the earlier version and read this with an open mind, you come away tremendously impressed with what she and her comrades in the 507th Maintenance Company went through, with the daring and devotion of the rescue team, and with the heroism of the Iraqi who passed the word that freed her.
The story is, essentially, Mogadishu all over again (although contrary to predictions, we only had one Mogadishu in this war). It’s worth remembering again the sacrifices that entails.

JINX

In progress: Jae Seo at work.
New York 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0
Florida 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
UPDATE: That didn’t take long. Perfect game over.
SECOND UPDATE: Seo leaves with a hand injury, which is deeply worrisome, but with the assistance of David Weathers and Armando Benitez, the Mets face the minimum 27 batters en route to the third one-hitter in as many days for or against the Mets.

Pitching Around .204

Interesting decision last night by Dusty Baker and/or Joe Borowski at the end of the Cubs-Reds game: 4-3 Cubs lead at home, tying run on second base, Adam Dunn at bat, Barry Larkin on deck, and the Cubs choose to pitch around Dunn, walking him on four pitches, to put the winning run on first and face Larkin. Here are the options:
Dunn: .204 batting, .528 slugging
Larkin: .254 average, .388 slugging
It’s not a slam-dunk either way, but a hit ties the game; why not face the guy hitting .204 rather than (1) giving up 50 points of batting average and (2) replacing the risk of a game-winning homer with the risk of a game-winning double (Larkin has 6 extra base hits in 67 at bats, not much less than Dunn’s 22 homers in 216 at bats)?
In the end, it worked: Larkin struck out on consecutive check swings. And maybe Baker was looking beyond the year-to-date stats and thinking that Dunn is still a coming superstar, and Larkin is finished. Still, it’s an interesting question.

Is This New?

I’m not an expert in this particular area, and it may well be that I’m forgetting a case from my Federal Courts class that ruled on this point previously — an interesting aspect of Justice Scalia’s opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court yesterday in Virginia v. Hicks, which overturned a decision of the Virginia Supreme Court finding a statute overbroad under the First Amdendment, was the holding that Virginia had standing to bring the case to the U.S. Supreme Court based on its “injury-in-fact” in being unable to enforce the statute. The salient point here is that the state’s standing to sue was determined at the time the case was brought into federal court, at the certiorari stage, rather than as things existed before the litigation was filed. This, of course, also relates to one of the side issues in Bush v. Gore — i.e., the fact that the Bush campaign’s standing to raise constitutional issues was determined on the basis of how things stood after the Florida Supreme Court’s decision. The other interesting aspect of Hicks in this regard is the state having standing to defend its statutes in federal court, where it could not have enforced them in the first place.

Watch The Trailing Leg

Let’s face it: there’s really nothing the Democrats can do to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. Which is not to say he can’t be beaten, just that what can do him in is mostly a combination of external circumstances (the economy, setbacks in the war) and missteps by the Administration. The only Democrat I’d feared in terms of his ability to create his own buzz independent of pre-existing anti-Bush sentiment was John Edwards, but Edwards increasingly looks like just a pretty face who’s in over his head.
Rand Simberg notes the more interesting question, one that the Democrats have to think long and hard about: how will the presidential ticket affect the rest of the ticket, in terms of turning out the Democratic base without turning off the mainstream? Among other things, this is one reason I’m not excited about the idea that Al Sharpton could run an independent campaign: who do you think Sharpton’s voters will support for Congress?
I suspect, contrary to Simberg’s speculation, that a far-Left candidacy like Howard Dean’s would be a bad thing for the Dems, since it could convince a lot of voters that the party has lost its mind, and put a lot of moderate candidates in the same bind that swallowed so many moderate Senators in 2002. I’ll have more thoughts as we go about what the best answer is.
Of course, if you wanted to design a perfect candidate to challenge Bush, you’d want someone who could pose as a moderate; who had impeccable national-security credentials; who’s got a long record as a spending hawk; and who is personally identified with opposing the cozy relationship of big money to power in Washington.
Then again, we’ve seen that perfect candidate already, and he lost to Bush in the primaries in 2000.

RELIGION: Heretics?

The most important news these days is the news from Iran; the Revolution may be nigh, with unrest growing rapidly and visibly in the run-up to another year of general strikes planned for July 9.
Instapundit notes a statement from Iranian academics that charges that the theocrats aren’t just tyrants, they’re heretics too:
More than 250 university lecturers and writers in Iran signed a statement calling on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (search) to abandon the idea that he is God’s representative on Earth. . . . Khamenei has the final say on all matters. The ruling clerics regard him as God’s representative and say his word cannot be challenged. “Considering individuals to be in the position of a divinity and absolute power … is open polytheism [in contradiction to] almighty God . . . ” the statement said.
I guess this answers the question I raised in October:
“maybe I just don’t understand Islam well enough, but to my ears, the whole sharia-courts phenomenon thoughout Islamist societies seems to be blasphemous and idolatrous by its very nature . . . Can somebody who knows more about Islam explain to me how this arrangement doesn’t effectively set up the sharia court itself as the object of worship, obedience and devotion, under the harshest of penalties, and in substitution for the devotion of invidual conscience directly to divine authority?”

Mort! Mort! Mort!

Lileks compares Bill O’Reilly to Morton Downey jr. (if you don’t remember the late 80s, let’s just say that Downey was the original right-wing TV populist, and he smoked like a chimney). Vodkapundit still thinks Pat Buchanan is a better analogy. I tend to agree with Lileks that O’Reilly’s the classic example of a guy who rises, and falls, for a reason. If he’s lucky, like Rush Limbaugh, he’ll survive passing his prime without crashing and burning like Downey.

“[N]ot just the right last name”

Patrick Ruffini notes the irony in a rather egregious example from John Edwards of what, if said by a Republican, would almost certainly be a career-threatening racial slur: the charge that Miguel Estrada is unqualified to be a federal appeals judge, and was nominated just for his ethnicity:
“I think we need more Hispanics on the federal bench, but we should choose people because they have the right record, not just the right last name”
I know Bush hates demonizing his opponents, but somebody needs to very publicly tear Edwards a new one over this comment. As Ruffini notes, the real irony is that Edwards is the one who’s painfully short on qualifications (to be president, that is). Estrada has a resume to die for, and is, if anything, overqualified; every job he’s had is an extremely hard one to get in the legal world, and he’s done them all with great distinction. But apparently it’s OK to run down those qualifications because he’s Latino.
I’ve been slow to consider the Democrats’ behavior in this case to be racist or a genuine problem with Latino voters — I always thought it was completely bogus for Clinton to play the race card every time one of his African-American nominees got held up — but there’s no question in my mind that Estrada has been targeted (in ways that other equally conservative white male nominees haven’t) specifically because the Democrats fear that his nationality and life history, combined with his evident brilliance, would make him a potent Supreme Court choice.
Targeting a man for defeat to public office because of his race — isn’t that the sort of thing Democrats were supposed to be against? (Don’t bother answering that).
(Link via The Corner).

WMD Revisionism

John Stryker at Sergeant Stryker has been performing an important public service for the pro-war camp in laying out the record of charges made by the Bush Administration detailing the dangers of Saddam’s WMD (mostly chem- and bio-weapons) programs before the war; check it out here, here and here.
We may never learn the whole truth about Saddam’s weapons. But it does bear examining how we knew what we thought we knew.

Back in the Vodka

Stephen “Vodkapundit” Green is back after a long layoff. I can well understand the need to take a break from blogging. But I have to say, as somebody who blogs around the edges of a 60-70-hour-a-week job, I had some trouble understanding why Green couldn’t drop by once a week or so and write 2-3 lines to let us know he was still there (from reading his bio, it’s not even clear that Green needs to work for a living).

The Master

I meant to link last week to this interview with Bill James over on Slate. Among other things, James continues to defend his views on Mike Stenhouse (he’s done a bit of rethinking on Brad Komminsk and Doug Frobel). And there’s this:
[W]hat do you think of the prospects of using play-by-play analysis to differentiate players’ defensive skills? Is it possible to draw a meaningful separation between data and noise at the play-by-play level?
Yes, it is possible. But … this is among my primary projects right now, and I don’t want to talk about the sauce while it’s still in the skillet.
Sounds like some new defensive measures are on their way . . .

Neglecting Iraq?

I’m hesitant to push too hard in either direction on the quality of the occupation in Iraq; what we really know is pretty sparse. Phil Carter gave the Army’s perspective, and one I respect, that more troops are needed; Carter was particularly concerned about the looting of an Iraqi nuclear facility, which is the one thing in the whole post-war period that genuinely concerns me. Even recognizing that we couldn’t shift gears overnight from war-fighting to securing every site in sight, I have yet to hear a good answer on why the nuclear facility was left unguarded.
Daniel Drezner opined a few weeks back that the Bush Administration in general
focuses like a laser beam on a key priority for several months, ignoring any criticism from outsiders. It then achieves its priority, earning plaudits for gutsiness and discipline. Immediately afterwards, however, drift sets in, unexpected complications arise, events beyond the Bush team’s control create new obstacles to policy implementation, and things appear to fall apart.
I had a couple of different thoughts on this:
1. It’s Perception: Bush’s opponents are better able to selectively pick out details that go awry when they criticize his day-to-day management. War with Iraq or the passage of a tax bill is an up-or-down thing, so it’s hard to spin his victories as defeats. Rebuilding Iraq will inevitably have both successes and failures, and we’ll still be arguing a decade from now which was which. In the interim, small details (even bogus ones like the supposed massive looting of the Baghdad Museum) can be touted to a public that has little reliable first-hand information from which to weigh the evidence.
2. It’s Bush’s Way: Bush functions best when he can set clear goals and get everyone on his team pushing in the same direction. He functions less well in situations that demand less leadership and more hands-on detail-oriented management. In other words, he has the virtues of a good chief executive rather than a middle manager.
3. It’s the Nature of the Presidency: Presidents — indeed, governments as a whole — tend to be more successful when they can bend the vast resources of the government to a single, measurable objective, and tend to do less well in managing complex situations. Indeed, I’d argue that this is one of the basic insights of conservatism: governments are good at “linear” objectives like fighting wars and moonshots and less so at things that involve a lot of small daily adjustments to react to changing circumstances. (Charles Krauthammer has made this point repeatedly).

Bonfire

Ken Rosenthal spreads the rumor that Joe Torre might be replaced next season by Bobby Valentine or Lou Piniella. Mmmmmm . . . havoc:
“George is going to want someone to burn a clubhouse down,” one executive says. “He doesn’t want a campfire. He wants a bonfire.” …
Well, these are the right guys. Both have their strengths as managers, but they’re both awfully volatile, and Piniella’s failed in the Bronx before. I can’t imagine either of them lasting more than 18 months at the helm after replacing Torre.

BASKETBALL: No Breaks For The Nets

The NBA Finals were so exciting, even Bill Simmons, who wrote a whole column hyping the Nets-Spurs matchup (Page 2 headlined the piece “A series you can’t afford to miss”), announced after Game 4 that “this series has been a disappointment in every sense of the word.
Now, I didn’t get to see a whole lot of the series myself, but this paragraph from Bill’s preview didn’t really gibe with my experience as a basketball fan:
The best lesson from this series, especially if New Jersey wins: Fast breaks matter. Wait a second, you’re telling me that it’s easier to score in transition — when you have numbers, when the other team is running backward — then when your opponent has a chance to set up its defense? What a wacky concept!!!!!
As I think the series bore out, this is backward: fast breaks are a by-product of winning basketball, not a cause. It’s like big innings in baseball — while it’s true that some teams are more cut out for them than others, the fact is that you don’t decide, “let’s have a lot of big innings”; you build for success, and the big innings come. Fast breaks are like that; you can try to push the ball as a philosophy, but the things you need to do well to get fast breaks are more important than the decision to have them.

Today’s Met Game

I particularly enjoyed watching Reyes sprint around the bases after his grand slam; Burnitz also had a pretty quick home run trot. I guess when Steve Trachsel’s pitching, you do what you can to get the game moving.
The ball was really jumping the whole series with the Angels; besides Reyes’ poke to very short left field, Saturday night’s game saw Garret Anderson hit one out on a low outside pitch that he had to reach out and lunge for.

Presidential Candidate’s Review

Gearing up for the 2004 election, this weekend’s newspapers have a slew of articles providing background information on presidential candidates: the Boston Globe on local favorite, John Kerry; the Washington Post on Joe Lieberman ; and the NYTimes on a potential GOP candidate in 2008, George Pataki. Note that, for the Democrats, 2004 may be the year of John Kennedy — both Lieberman and Kerry are claiming a connection to JFK.

Liar’s Baseball?

Michael Lewis, author of the classic Liar’s Poker, has a new book out that tracks Billy Beane and his efforts to build a successful and affordable team over the course of the 2002 season. I have not yet read the book, so I can’t recommend it, but I’ll be sure to read it before I pick up Hillary Clinton’s new addition to the literary world.

Best Defensive 3rd Baseman Ever?

During the Yankees/Cardinals game, Tim McCarver declared Scott Rolen the best-fielding third baseman in the history of the game. An example of typical McCarver hyperbole? McCarver had previously thought that Mike Schmidt was the best ever, but changed his mind when Schmidt’s former teammate, Larry Bowa (and no friend of Rolen’s), declared Rolen better than Schmidt. Interesting to note, McCarver never mentioned Brooks Robinson during the course of his discussion.

Alomar, Part II

Following up on The Crank’s call to platoon Roberto Alomar, the following is Alomar’s batting average against lefties over the last few years: .338 (1999), .318 (2000), .279 (2001) and .204 (2002). This decline has continued into this year: he’s hitting .138 against lefties.

Not The Usual Suspects

Recorded for posterity, today’s AL Batting Average leaders:
1 Melvin Mora, Bal .366/.466/.598
2 Bill Mueller, Bos .344/.403/.550
3 Hank Blalock, Tex .344/.402/.563
4 Michael Young, Tex .335/.373/.478
5 Ichiro Suzuki, Sea .333/.377/.444
6 Milton Bradley, Cle .332/.439/.500
7 F. Catalanotto, Tor .331/.372/.528
8 N. Garciaparra, Bos .327/.359/.581
9 Rocco Baldelli, TB .327/.355/.462
10 Eric Byrnes, Oak .326/.393/.540
Yup, it’s still early . . .

Lazy Europeans

A piece in last Sunday’s New York Times had some fascinating details about the decline in the number of hours worked by the average European, its connection to the decline of the European economies, and a possible explanation: the demise of the Protestant Work Ethic. Of course, this raises some chicken-and-eggery with regard to the European cradle-to-grave welfare state . . .
Here are the key numbers:

According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average working American spends 1,976 hours a year on the job. The average German works just 1,535 � 22 percent less. The Dutch and Norwegians put in even fewer hours. Even the British do 10 percent less work than their trans-Atlantic cousins. Between 1979 and 1999, the average American working year lengthened by 50 hours, or nearly 3 percent. But the average German working year shrank by 12 percent.
Yet even these figures understate the extent of European idleness, because a larger proportion of Americans work. Between 1973 and 1998 the percentage of the American population in employment rose from 41 percent to 49 percent. But in Germany and France the percentage fell, ending up at 44 and 39 percent. Unemployment rates in most Northern European countries are also markedly higher than in the United States.
Then there are the strikes. Between 1992 and 2001, the Spanish economy lost, on average, 271 days per 1,000 employees as a result of strikes. For Denmark, Italy, Finland, Ireland and France, the figures range between 80 and 120 days, compared with fewer than 50 for the United States.

1,535 hours; by my count, that means that if the average German worked an 8-hour day 5 days a week, he or she would get . . . 14 weeks of vacation??? (Yes, I’m aware that part of the issue is shorter workdays and sick leave and part time jobs, but still).