Manny Roulette

I’m fascinated by the Red Sox decision to put Manny Ramirez on waivers, thus allowing any major league team to claim him, provided they pony up the 5-year $100 million price tag remaining on his contract. The move has been widely interpreted as a dare to the Yankees to take on Ramirez, and the Boston Herald reports that that’s where Manny would like to land.
There are three obvious points:
1. Manny is the best hitter in the American League, as one can see from a variety of available evidence; he was second the AL in OPS in 2003 and in 2002, and led the AL in Equivalent Average (EqA, the Baseball Prospectus offensive metric) in 2003 and in 2002. As a general rule, you don’t give up players like that lightly when you are a contending team, as the Red Sox indisputably are.
2. Manny’s a bit of a dog and a bit of a hot dog, and alienated a lot of people this season. There are some people who would like to get rid of him for that alone, plus he’s not a real good fielder or baserunner, and tends to be injury prone.
3. As a general rule, very few players are worth $20 million a year for five years, given the cost of available alternatives, and still fewer who are turning 32 next season. Assuming that the Red Sox have a reasonably fixed budget, that’s money that could be spread around to pay for a lot of players.
The trick, though, is not to make any one of these points a knee-jerk reaction (“Manny’s great, you can’t let him go!” “He’s a bum anyways!”).
So, do you let Manny walk? I figure the Yanks won’t get him, actually; teams with lesser records get first call, and among other teams, he fits too well with the hitting-desperate Dodgers, who just yesterday cut Brian Jordan and Andy Ashby to clear some major salary space. Manny would slide right into the role vacated by Gary Sheffield in LA.
Personally, while I can see the overall logic, my take is that if you’re trying to win now, you need to put the extra money into improving other parts of the team right away; the problem us that because there’s really no weak spots in the lineup to add offense back to make up for losing Ramirez (unless you expect the Sox to bag Vladimir Guerrero, who’s the only remotely available player who’d be an upgrade), the move only makes sense if (1) you’re going to turn around and use the cash to shore up the starting rotation or (2) you’re actually trying to save money instead of trying to win.
Shoring up the rotation, though, isn’t as easy as it sounds; pitching is hard to come by even when you have the money to spend. There are only seven free agents who might give the Sox some real bang in the rotation:
Bartolo Colon
Andy Pettitte
Roger Clemens
Keith Foulke
Greg Maddux
Kevin Millwood
Esteban Loaiza
Of those, Clemens remains most likely to retire; the Yankees will not allow themselves to be outspent by Boston on Pettitte; Maddux is old and not all that durable; Foulke, while an outstanding closer who probably has the stuff to be a starter, is nonetheless an unproven commodity as a starter; and Loaiza has a long record of mediocrity behind his one year of big success (in which he threw about a fifth of his innings against the Tigers). That would leave the Sox with just two genuine places to spend the money — Colon and Millwood. This is problematic as well: first, those guys would know they can drive a hard bargain; the Phillies in particular will likely make a big push to re-sign Millwood; and Colon’s conditioning doesn’t exactly suggest he’d be a better long-term investment than Manny. (The possibility of a swap of Ramirez for former Red Sox pitching prospect Curt Schilling is more intriguing).
Besides, there may be cheaper ways to help the rotation. I still think you can get part of the way by investing some patience in Kim and Fossum, although it may be that Kim needs another change of scenery (I’ll be very happy with Jim Duquette if he starts next season with both Kim and Foulke at Shea Stadium, but that’s another story). Yes, $100 million’s a BIG CONTRACT — but I don’t see where the Sox wind up coming out ahead on replacing Ramirez.

No Plan

Classic Goldberg File yesterday on the Democrats’ new charges against Bush’s Iraq policy; this alone was worth reading the whole column:
Of course, the administration does have a plan. And central to that plan is, well, spending money to rebuild Iraq. The Democrats make it sound like all the U.S. Army is doing in Iraq is having one giant-sized Chinese fire drill every day. One can just imagine John Kerry going to the local garage:
Kerry: I won’t pay you to fix my car until you have a plan.
Mechanic: Um, I do have a plan: You pay me. I replace the engine I just took out. Your car works. That’s the plan.
Kerry:How can you say you have a plan? Look at the terrible shape my car is in. It’s worse than before; there isn’t even an engine.
Mechanic: You’re an idiot.

Sharpton vs. Dean

This whole business of Al Sharpton accusing Howard Dean of having an “anti-black agenda” is just endlessly amusing on many levels, but also revealing. The charge itself is bogus, of course; Sharpton picks two facially race-neutral issues that have killed the national Democrats in the past (guns and the death penalty), and lumps them in with Dean’s 1995 statement (apostasy!) that “I think we ought to look at affirmative action programs based not on race but on class,” which of course Dean instantaneously disavowed and promised to have no other gods but race-based affirmative action, thus forestalling the inevitable plagues of frogs, locusts and boils.
First of all, this is a big moment for Dean: you haven’t really arrived in American politics until you’ve been called a racist by Al Sharpton.
Second, it is almost certainly not a coincidence that this comes immediately on the heels of Dean gaining the endorsement of Rev. Jesse Jackson, and I suspect it has a lot more to do with Jackson than it does with Dean. [UPDATE: My bad. It was an endorsement by Jackson’s son, who’s a Congressman. The larger point remains valid, since Sharpton timed his attack to coincide with the first significant African-American support for Dean]
Third, it’s pathetic that Dean won’t respond in kind. I know the front-runner needs to look above it all; and I know that most Democrats figure they will look like racist bullies if they go out of their way to make an issue of Sharpton and his long record of hate-filled ranting and dishonesty. But Sharpton took a swing at the king in the bluntest terms possible, and was disingenuous in doing so; surely if he’s ever going to be fair game, it’s now. This should be every Democrat’s dream: a chance to denounce Sharpton and everything he stands for in a context where you won’t get blowback for being “divisive” as you would if you went out of your way to go after him. Instead, Dean runs scared. If Dean doesn’t have the cojones to criticize Al Frickin’ Sharpton, the man’s got no business running for president.
Fourth, notice how all of Dean’s statements giving a little ground to the Right — on affirmative action, Medicare, etc. — are from about 1995, right after the Gingrich sweep of Congress. That says something too: Dean smelled which way the wind was blowing in 1995, and floated some trial balloons to see if he could position himself as a moderate. One wonders if he was thinking nationally already at that point, or just worried about keeping his job in changing times. Either way, he’s clearly decided to set a different course since then.

Luskin In His Heart

Instaman notes that Donald Luskin is threatening to sue Atrios over calling him a stalker, which was Paul Krugman’s charge. Luskin does some valuable work dismantling Krugman’s unhinged and fact-challenged rants, but he often gets himself too worked up, and this is just way over the line for a fairly simple internet spat. Den Beste has some thoughts on what real libel is here (and on why these are tough claims to win here), and I’ll say that for a non-lawyer he’s got a pretty good handle on the basics.

Free Drugs For The Rich!

It still amazes me that Tom Daschle and other Democrats have seriously considered holding up the (unfortunately) popular prescription drug entitlement in protest over a “means testing” proposal that would deny federal handouts to the Hated Rich. (Link via Kaus). Is there a worse combination of bad policy and dumb politics? I mean, the only justification here is the Dems’ “if we let somebody out eventually everyone will leave” theory (see also school choice, Social Security, etc.), but that’s a hard argument to get people to swallow.
UPDATE: Lileks has a slogan for those who want to link this type of thing to cost savings from not spending $87 billion to rebuild Iraq: Insurance for those who can already afford it, and screw the needs of our conquered nations!

My G-G-Generation, N-R

Nothing sets this site apart quite like my ability to start things I never get around to finishing. But let’s see if we can’t push to the finish line my series looking at famous people in my generation, i.e., born between October 1969-October 1973; here’s Part IV of V. (If you’re interested, check out Part I, Part II and Part III).
Robb Nen, MLB
Phil Nevin, MLB
Gena Lee Nolin, actress
Ed O’Bannon, NBA
Chris O’Donnell, actor
Chad Ogea, MLB
Shaquille O’Neal, NBA
Rey Ordonez, MLB
Terrell Owens, NFL
Gwyneth Paltrow, actress
Chan Ho Park, MLB
Jay Payton, MLB
Barry Pepper, actor
Amanda Peterson, actress
Andy Pettitte, MLB
Kristie Phillips, gymnast
River Phoenix, actor
Martha Plimpton, actress
Jorge Posada, MLB
Megyn Price, actress
Bill Pulsiher, MLB
Brad Radke, MLB
Manny Ramirez, MLB
Gabrielle Reece, volleyball
Trista Rehn, bachelorette
Errict Rhett, NFL
Arthur Rhodes, MLB
Manon Rheume, hockey
Alfonso Ribiero, actor
Denise Richards, actress
JR Rider, NBA
Kelly Ripa, actress/talk show host
Mariano Rivera, MLB
Willie Roaf, NFL
Dave Roberts, MLB
Grant Roberts, MLB
Glenn Robinson, NBA
Felix Rodriguez, MLB
Ivan Rodriguez, MLB
Elisabeth Rohm, actress
Rebecca Romjin-Stamos, model
Jalen Rose, NBA
Kirk Rueter, MLB
Winona Ryder, actress
For men of my generation, even old married guys like me, all you have to do is say the name “Amanda Peterson,” and you’re 16 again . . . yes, it was less than a decade ago when Ed O’Bannon was in college . . . Barry Pepper is just one of several of the guys on this list who played the soldiers in “Saving Private Ryan”; that movie hit guys like me so hard in part because we were just the age of the cast. By now, I’d identify more with Hanks . . . River Phoenix has been dead for many years now, and as Bill James once said, you can’t get older than dead.

BASEBALL/ Deacon Phillippe

I see that Reese Witherspoon had a baby boy, and named him “Deacon.” Now, given that her husband is actor Ryan Phillippe, this would make the boy Deacon Phillippe. Well, since Deacon isn’t exactly a common first name these days, that set me a-thinkin’: is he named after the six-time twenty-game winner (born Charles Louis Phillippi) who pitched for Honus Wagner’s Pirates in the early part of the century, won 3 games in the inaugural World Series, never had a losing season and finished his career with an admirable 189-109 record and a 2.59 ERA despite not arriving in the major leagues until age 27? Is Ryan Phillippe a relative (the original Deacon died in 1952), or perhaps a baseball fanatic? Or was there some other origin to the original Deacon’s nickname (a literary reference I’m missing here?) that the new baby shares in common?

Fat of the Land

Speaking of lawsuit mania, McDonald’s has settled a suit brought by a 420-pound man who claimed disability discrimination (oh, the irony) based on his weight. The amount of the settlement was undisclosed and may well have been just for nuisance value, but what caught my eye was the claimed damages of $300,000 for loss of a $6.75/hour job. I ran the numbers, and this comes to 44,444.44 hours of work. Assuming that the hourly wage has a constant present value of $6.75, working 40 hours a week, that comes out to 1,111.11 weeks of work, which assuming 2 weeks off a year (for the sake of argument) would mean holding the job for 22 years.
Leaving aside the question of how many people actually work at McDonald’s for 22 years, isn’t it wonderful that people think our legal system can be used to get paid for 22 years of dreary, unfulfilling work — without having to do the work itself?
(Yes, I know the article says he also wanted an order to give him the job, but if the damages aren’t supposed to be a substitute for salary, then they are really just pure fluff pulled from the air).

The Facts Do Not Conform To The Theory

Aaron Gleeman on Derek Jeter’s vaunted reputation as “Mr. Clutch” in the postseason:
The situations one would want to look at in trying to determine the Clutchness of a player would seem to me to be the following:
– Runners in scoring position
– Runners in scoring position with two outs
– Close and late
The first two are self-explanatory. “Close and late” is defined as “results in the 7th inning or later with the batting team either ahead by one run, tied or with the potential tying run at least on deck.”
In other words, how does someone do when the game is on the line? When the going gets tough and the tough get going. When the s— hits the fan. When the men are separated from the boys. When (insert your own cliche here).
Here are Derek Jeter’s post-season numbers
[batting/OBP/slugging] in those situations from 2000-2003, combined…
Runners in scoring position: .214/.421/.357
Runners in scoring position with two outs: .188/.381/.375
Close and late: .176/.263/.323

(emphasis added).

17200 or Bust

Law.com reports that a ballot initiative is underway to repeal those portions of California Business & Professions Code 17200 that permit the filing of mass actions challenging “unfair” or “unlawful” business practices without proof that the plaintiff was injured or even ever did business with the defendant and without meeting the standards for class actions. I’ve previously commented here on this liability monstrosity, which to me at least is the single most business-unfriendly aspect of California’s uniquely business-unfriendly legal environment.
While I think it would be a wonderful thing to return to the core principle of law that only one who has been harmed can sue, I’m not so sure the initiative process is the best way to do this. First, the plaintiffs’ bar will be very well-funded and is likely to distort the issue; they’re already framing this as a question of “the ability of private attorneys to prevent impending harm to the public by filing suit,” which is ridiculous. The statute, as currently used by the plaintiffs’ bar, doesn’t aim at preventing businesses from commencing conduct that will cause grave harm; rather, it is more commonly employed to tie down companies over existing business practices that can’t be found to have caused actionable harm under traditional legal principles. Second, the new Governor has promised to make 17200 reform a key part of his revival of the business environment; while Schwarzenegger may well fail in getting legislative action on this (the plaintiffs’ bar has such a tight grip on the legislature that before the recall the legislature was pressing to expand 17200), he should be given a chance to prove that it can be done through normal channels; the initative process should, at most, be a last resort for the Governor to go over the heads of the legislature if they obstruct any changes.

Okrent

As The Mad Hibernian notes below, Dan Okrent is taking over as ombusdman at the New York Times; ScrappleFace had a great comment on this.
Besides rotisserie baseball, Okrent should be revered by baseball fans everywhere for an even more important discovery: he’s the man who discovered Bill James and introduced him to a mass audience, over some resistance from traditional journalists and “fact-checkers” who just assumed that James’ opinions and analyses could not be correct because they conflicted with conventional wisdom. Dr. Manhattan saw the significance for the Times of James’ challenge to conventional wisdom back in July: “This story has additional resonance in light of the Jayson Blair scandals.”
Yes, it does. Okrent will need that same iconoclastic streak if he wants to make a dent in the way the NYT peddles conventional wisdom today.

Moral Victory

One of the more tiresome arguments we often hear trotted out by Yankee partisans whenever they face the Red Sox is that the rivalry is one-sided; to Yankee fans, the Sox are just another foe to roll over, and the only wins that matter are championships.
The reaction of many Yankee fans to the team’s World Series defeat this year gives the lie to this; as the New York Daily News reports, many Yankee fans are looking back at the defeat of the BoSox in the ALCS as a moral victory:
Like many of the five dozen or so fans who gathered outside Yankee Stadium to give thanks and perhaps snag an autograph from a favorite player, Boaz found a silver lining in the season – at least they beat Boston.
“They could never have lived that one down,” said Boaz, an unemployed market researcher from the Bronx.
“To knock our archenemies out of the World Series and keep the curse alive meant more to me than beating the Marlins,” crowed Tony Apuzzi, 37, a New Rochelle schoolteacher.

And, of course, some Yankee fans reacted with a tried and true strategy:
The crowd was at one point taunted by a small group of neighborhood kids who had discovered a novel way of dealing with defeat – switching sides. They proved their newfound allegiance by chanting “Let’s Go Marlins” at the Yankee fans.
“The Yankees, man, forget them,” said a disgusted Ricky Nigagliono, 13. “How can they let another team win on their home field?”
“The Marlins, they’re nice,” said Roger Reyes, 12. “The Yankees, they got old people, that’s why they’re wiped out.”

Ouch.

Shame

I noticed last week that The New Republic’s website was running banner ads in its righthand column for “Shattered Glass,” the new movie about Stephen Glass, the reporter who used TNR’s pages to perpetrate a journalistic fraud as notorious, in its day, as Jayson Blair’s. Presumably — unless I’m missing something — those ads were paid for by the studio. I know it’s been years now — Glass is gone and his editor, Michael Kelly, is dead — but shouldn’t TNR be ashamed to get advertising revenue from a fraud on its readers?
(Blair’s fraud, by the way, has now inspired episodes this season of at least two of the “Law & Order” serieses – dramatic overkill, anyone? Doesn’t Dick Wolf have the power to let one L&O know from which headlines the other is ripping?)
UPDATE: Howard Kurtz noticed the same thing but doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue if TNR isn’t embarrassed by references to the scandal.

Drafting The Kids

One thing I laughed at last night was Harold Reynolds saying that the Marlins’ success disproved the idea that you shouldn’t draft high school pitchers (gee, who do you think he was talking about?), given that Josh Beckett, Brad Penny and Dontrelle Willis were all drafted out of high school. Of course, this might be a more salient critique if the Marlins had actually drafted all three of these guys, but instead they got Willis in the Matt Clement trade and Penny in the Matt Mantei deal. Nobody ever said picking up prospects who had already had some minor league success was unusually risky just because they had been drafted out of high school.
No, for once I think Phil Rogers is right: you can’t really draw any broad lessons from the Marlins. A few small lessons, perhaps — I may take a look at some of those — but the bottom line is that this was a pretty good team that got hot and got lucky at just the right time.

Partisanship and Accountability

Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias mull the helplessness of the Right in Britain and Canada, the feelbleness of the Left in Israel, and the pitiful condition of Britain’s Left in the 1980s, but don’t seem to understand why this happens to opposition parties in parliamentary states. In fact, American liberal commentators generally don’t seem too interested in exploring why it is that politics in parliamentary systems is different from politics here in the U.S.; but in fact, the differences are fundamental and go a long way to showing the superiority of the American system, as well as the ways in which our own system could be improved upon:

Continue reading Partisanship and Accountability

The Cavalry Never Came

Well, this time the cavalry didn’t come. Flamethrowing ace on the mound, a 2-run lead, 5 outs away from the championship — you were thinking, as I was, “here we go again.” The comeback begins. But this time, that’s how it ended. In fact, Josh Beckett threw just 11 more pitches after getting to the talismanic “5 outs” mark, getting a GIDP from Nick Johnson, flies to what’s left of Death Valley in left from Bernie Williams and Hideki Matsui, and a weak grounder from Jorge Posada.
Beckett also, in the process, saved the idea of the complete game. After watching Mark Prior and Pedro Martinez — arguably the best pitcher in each league this season — wilt in the heat of defending a 3-run lead in the 8th inning, managers everywhere had to be revising even further downward their willingness to let their hoss finish what he started. Tonight, pitching on 3 days’ rest, Beckett finished the job. Not bad for a guy whose career record stood at 9-11 with a 3.69 ERA entering the All-Star Break this season. My hat is off to Jack McKeon; he was right on the call for Beckett on 3 days’ rest, and I was wrong.
Did the Yankees choke, in losing such a hard-fought series to an opponent over whom they were favored? I explored this question at length two years ago:
It really all depends how you look at the postseason. There are those, like me, who believe that baseball games are basically determined by four things: (1) talent, including not just physical talent and skill but the collection of abilities ranging from concentration to judgment of the strike zone and on the basepaths that separate good players from bad ones; (2) strategy; (3) matchups, i.e. the fact that the righthanded-swinging 1953 Dodgers would fare much better against Randy Johnson than would the 1927 Yankees; and (4) timing or luck, which may or may not be the same thing. The first is paramount over the long regular season, provided that the strategy isn’t so totally awful that a team squanders its ability to put the best talent on the field. In the postseason, though, the other three factors loom much larger because the games are closer, they’re head-to-head rather than against a cross-section of the league, and with fewer games a single blunder can turn the tide.
* * *
But there are also those, most prominently among pro-Yankees sportswriters, who view the postseason as a sort of mythical proving ground where true champs are separated from “phony” stars who don’t really “have what it takes” . . . Thus, winning in the postseason becomes proof of a form of moral superiority, or is seen as somehow revealing who is truly the better team. The media loved, for example, revelling in how the Mariners’ 116 wins “don’t mean anything now” once they lost to the Yankees — as if the entire regular season was an illusion and in 6 games the shadows had now been cast off to reveal, with Platonic insight, the actual form of the best team in the American League. We heard variations on this line for three years, but the problem with the argument is that it provides no room for the best team to lose – if you lose, by definition, you are no longer “a champion.”
Did they choke? Sometimes you put your best pitcher on the mound, and he gets beat. Happens to everybody. Except the Yankees, we were told. We were told wrong.

(On a personal note, my predictions for the postseason wound up 4-3, but one thing I called before the NLCS: “Great matchup of young arms, with Josh Beckett and Kerry Wood making The Leap and Prior already there.”)

Wells Falls Down On The Job

Two questions about the Yankees’ Game 5 fiasco:
*If David Wells knew before the game that his back felt bad, why didn’t he tell Torre to have somebody up in the bullpen just in case? Why did Contreras apparently come in without being properly warmed up?
*Isn’t it possible that Wells’ back tightening up had something to do with the fact that his last start was on one day of rest, awfully short rest for an aging pitcher who’s already not the picture of fitness?

CIA Cover Stories

Former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in The Weekly Standard about Valerie Plame and what CIA cover stories are really about, and characterizes the charges of Bush Administration critics who have jumped on the story as “wildly overstated”:
Cover is the Achilles’ heel of the Operations Directorate. If you have a basic understanding of CIA cover, you can figure out why the over-the-top charges against the Bush administration in the Wilson matter make no sense. . . .
The key fact about CIA cover is that the vast majority of all case officers overseas “operate”–try to spot, develop, recruit, and run foreign agents–with little or none of it. . . .
The Bush administration’s critics in the Wilson affair should be commended for worrying about the possible “blowback” on foreign contacts when operatives like Valerie Plame are exposed. The odds that any of her contacts are suffering, however, are small: Casual, even constant, open association with CIA officers isn’t necessarily damning even in countries that look dimly upon unauthorized CIA operational activity within their borders. . . .
And if Plame, as has been suggested, was overseas as a non-official cover officer, known in the trade as a NOC, her associations are even less at risk, since foreigners have vastly more plausible deniability with NOCs, who are not as easy to identify as officially covered officers. It is important to note that if Plame was ever a NOC, her associations overseas were jeopardized long ago by the Agency’s decision to allow her to come “inside”–that is, become a headquarters-based officer . . .
This officially sanctioned “outing” of NOCs is a longstanding problem in the CIA, where non-official cover officers regularly tire of their “outsider” existence (“inside” officers dominate the Directorate of Operations). It is not uncommon to find former NOCs serving inside CIA stations and bases in geographic regions where they once served non-officially, which of course immediately destroys the cover legend they used as a NOC. Foreign counterintelligence services naturally assume once a spook always a spook. Since foreign counterespionage organizations often share information about the CIA, this outside-inside transformation of NOCs can readily become known beyond one country’s borders.
Whether or not Valerie Plame was engaged in serious work inside the Agency’s Non-Proliferation Center, one has to ask what in the world her bosses were doing in allowing her husband, a public figure, to accept a non-secret assignment which potentially had a public profile? Journalists regularly learn the names of clandestine-service officers. Senior agency officials may well have thought very little of Ambassador Wilson’s “yellowcake” mission to Niger, which explains CIA director George Tenet’s statement about his ignorance of it. They may have thought Wilson an ideal candidate for this low-priority, fact-finding mission. But neither is an excuse for employing a spouse of an undercover employee if senior CIA officials thought Plame’s clandestine work was valuable. The head of the Non-Proliferation Center ought to be fired for such sloppiness.

Read the whole thing.

TMQ Talk

I was proud to be one of the early linkers to FootballOutsiders.com, a site that tries to do for football what Baseball Prospectus does for baseball; one of the lead writers, Aaron Schatz, was an early reader of this site. Now, FootballOutisders has become the official safe house for news on Gregg Easterbrook’s football column after his firing by ESPN.com; check out his statement here, which is bowed but not broken:
Though I apologized and deserved to be criticized, I didn’t think I deserved to be fired by ESPN. But then, I didn’t think Emmitt Smith deserved to spend his final year with the Arizona Cardinals, either. Both things seem to have happened.

The Tough Questioner

At a time when he’s under fire yet again, this May 2001 New York Times profile of Don Rumsfeld is interesting, in retrospect:
Mr. Rumsfeld, now 68, is back at the Pentagon’s helm. And once again he is arguing before a wary Congress that the armed forces need an expensive face-lift to counter emerging threats like terrorists with biological weapons and potentially hostile nations with long-range ballistic missiles.
In the coming weeks, Mr. Rumsfeld will begin making his case for adding billions of dollars to the current defense budget and increasing President Bush’s proposed $324 billion Pentagon budget. His goal is to transform the military into a more agile, lethal and stealthy force, and to build a costly and unproven missile shield.
Though Americans may feel safer today than in decades, he asserts that “weakness is provocative,” that the nation is in danger of growing complacent and that the military must remain strong enough to deter and punish aggressors in this “dangerous and untidy world.”
“If things are not bad, why do you need to change anything?” Mr. Rumsfeld said in an hourlong interview this week in his Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac. “And, of course, that’s exactly when institutions suffer. If they think things are good, and they relax and don’t recognize the changes taking place in the world, they tend to fail.”
Critics contend that Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush’s other top advisers have exaggerated the military challenges facing the United States and that he is arguing for a missile shield at a time when, at least numerically, the missile threat has lessened.
* * *
“The weapons of mass destruction are more widely dispersed,” he said. “And they are in the hands of people who are different than the people who had them 25 years ago.”
* * *
Aides have become accustomed to a deluge of “snowflakes” from Mr. Rumsfeld � a seemingly endless flurry of questions, problems or assignments he dictates into a Dictaphone and has transcribed by secretaries and dispatched to all areas of the Pentagon. Responses are expected to be terse: as much information and as little prose as possible.
* * *
“It’s wrong to allow people to develop a zero tolerance for risk,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. “We would not have airplanes if the first 20 times the Wright brothers crashed and failed we said, `Stop it, don’t try it again, you’re wasting money.’ ”
Indeed.

Beckett’s Charge

I have to agree with David Pinto, who crunches some hypothetical numbers on the topic, that starting Josh Beckett on 3 days’ rest in Game Six would be a necessary evil if thge Marlins’ backs were against the wall (although recall that the Red Sox didn’t do that with Pedro in the ALCS even when it meant starting John “Line Drive” Burkett), but starting him with a 3-2 series lead is just not a good idea and reeks of Bobby Cox-style foot-shooting. In fact, I’d say that while it looks like he’s going for the jugular, Jack McKeon is really managing scared, afraid to keep his ace in the hole for Game Seven. I’m not even 100% sure that I buy McKeon’s core assumption here — that Carl Pavano is so much better than Mark Redman that it’s worth throwing both Pavano and Beckett on short rest, although Redman wasn’t the same pitcher in August and September as he’d been at the beginning of the season.

“Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in blackjack.”

Bill Simmons has some choice words from the oppressed and traumatized denizens of Red Sox Nation, who are pining for regime change (hint: Bobby Valentine’s available):
While watching the NFL, my wife once asked me, “Which guy is the quarterback?” She literally knows nothing about sports. Yet last night after the Bernie Williams hit in the eighth, she kept asking, “How come that guy is still pitching?”
* * *
The Ethiopian guy who collects the money looks awful. Like he hasn’t slept in days. I ask him if he’s doing OK. He says, “I have never felt so awful. Not even when my own father died … my own father. I have only been in this city for a few years, so I’m new to this. I don’t know how you people do this. In my neighborhood are lots of college kids from New York, and they were cheering after the game ended. I am a peaceful man … a PEACEFUL man I tell you … but I swear to you I went outside looking to fight some Yankee fans … just awful.”

I Think Baseball Is Trying To Kill Us

I really, after rooting my guts out against both of these teams, didn’t think there was any way I’d get emotionally involved in this World Series, and although I’ve been in a Yankee-hating rut I managed to skim by Games 1-3 without doing so. But tonight (like Aaron after Game 1) it was all there again: Clemens, a big comeback, an extra-inning marathon, the specter of Mariano, a walk-off homer. Man, I’m exhausted.
I’ve been skeptical of the Marlins’ ability to stay with the Yankees, and they needed this game to make this a series; now we’ve got one, and it will head back to the Bronx to end it all.
A handful of thoughts during the game:
I liked Derrek Lee’s attempt to fake the pickoff throw getting away in the first inning — he did this spin move where he looked like the ball had been overthrown — but Soriano wouldn’t bite. . . Bottom 1, they’re getting sappy about Clemens already. But this might not be his last appearance; presumably he’ll be ready to relieve in Game 7 (on 3 days rest) if it goes that far, and maybe Game 6 as well. . . . the Thundersticks are back! . . . that kid who caught Cabrera’s homer looked pretty psyched . . . Clemens looked early like he had nothing; I was ecstatic when I saw Weaver get up in the first . . . they showed the list of guys who had 4 or more World Series wins and were undefeated, and except for Jack Coombs they were all Yankees . . . Bernie slapped the first pitch of the second for a single so effortlessly you’d think he was hitting off a tee . . . they keep comparing Clemens going out while still effective to Koufax or Jim Brown, but that’s ridiculous; those guys were young and still the best in the game. They mentioned Elway, who’s a better comp . . . I have to say, Clemens really isn’t a bad hitter for a guy who rarely swings a bat . . . Carl Pavano showed tonight what the Expos saw when they traded Pedro for him and Tony Armas . . . yup, Urbina’s still got the Red Sox thing going . . . top of 10, Buck & McCarver talked about Jeter swinging for the fences with two outs, but it looks like Chad Fox had the same thought since he went way up and in on the first pitch . . . they mentioned Giambi having just 5 RBI in the postseason, but he deserves plenty of the credit for winning Game 7 against the Sox for those two homers; they’ve been a bit overshadowed . . . it’s still wierd to see people dripping sweat and fans in tank tops for October baseball . . . I thought for sure Cabrera would end the game in the bottom of the tenth . . . I agreed with McCarver that it was crazy to walk the bases loaded and then bring in Looper cold with no margin for error, but he sure made McKeon look good . . . not to cast aspersions on the guy, but Weaver looks stoned; it’s just the overall look, with the narrow eyes, the pasty complexion, the scruffy hair and the cap pulled down too far . . . now, both Alex Gonzalezes are heroes in Florida.

BASEBALL/ Auto-Response

Eugene Volokh complains that he got the following non-response from ESPN.com to his email about Gregg Easterbrook’s firing:
From: ESPN Support
To: volokh@mail.law.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Other
Hi Eugene,
Thank you for contacting us.
We appreciate your interest, but that is currently not a feature on ESPN.com.
Regards,
Patty
ESPN.com
https://espn.go.com/

He then notes that other readers got the response I got:
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 08:54:13 -0700
To:
Subject: Re: NFL
From: ESPN Support
Hi,
Thank you for contacting us.
We appreciate your comments and are considering your opinion. We will
forward your comments along to the appropriate department for review.
Regards,
Jesse
ESPN.com
https://espn.go.com/

It appears that Volokh’s problem was that he selected”Other” rather than “NFL” in the drop-down subject menu on ESPN’s contact page.
Meanwhile, Ralph Wiley throws out the ceremonial first race card in ESPN.com’s post-Limbaugh/post-Easterbrook era:
Dub’s theory on baseball curses is that everybody sort of avoids what he calls the truth about them; teams that were — or are — historically dismissive and smugly cruel about its black folks — those are the teams that stay cursed. . . . Maybe one day the Cubs and the Red Sox will get out of historical denial, ante up and kick in, pay off whatever their psychic debt is, and move on.
Um, a little history? Since the breaking of the color barrier, six all-white teams have won the World Series:
1947 Yankees
1949 Yankees
1950 Yankees
1951 Yankees
1952 Yankees
1953 Yankees
The Yanks waited nine years to integrate — longer than the Cubs but not as long as the Cardinals (three World Championships since 1947), and when they finally brought in Elston Howard, Casey Stengel reportedly watched him in spring training and remarked, “they had to go and get me the only n_____r in the world who can’t run.” But that history’s lost on Wiley and his race-is-everything meme. (Wiley also throws in a shot about the Marlins playing “non-sabermatrician style,” but I’ll leave that for another day).

Another Reason to Hate The Yankees

Now, I’ve got a number of reasons to hate the Yankees and to lose a good deal of the fun of watching baseball when it’s a series between the Yanks and an overmatched opponent, as it appears we’re seeing now. Those reasons go back to my grammar school days as a lone Mets fan in the late 70s and early 80s, getting backed over by more than a few Yankee bandwagons.
One of the most common reasons for disliking the Yanks got some concrete affirmance yesterday with the release of Major League Baseball’s final salary figures, showing that the Yankees spent $164 million on their major league payroll this season, compared to $119 million for the next-highest team (the woeful Mets), $106 million for the next-highest playoff team (the Red Sox), and $54 million for the Marlins. Even relatively wealthy clubs like the Braves ($95 million) and Cubs ($83 million) were left in the dust.
Let’s put that in percentage terms:
Outspent the #2 team by 37.8%
Outspent the Red Sox by 54.7%
Outspent the Braves by 72.6%
Outspent the Cubs by 97.5%
Outspent the Twins by 287.7%
Outspent the Marlins by 303.7%
Outspent the A’s by 328%

Plus, the Yankee payroll was even higher (projected at $180 million) in mid-July, before they traded Armando Benitez for Jeff Nelson.
That’s just orders of magnitude beyond anybody else in the game, outspending even the #2 team by more than a third. Try starting a rotisserie league some time with an extra $100 on your budget and see how hard it is to win. And the stated payroll ignores a bunch of other factors: certain payments to ex-players; payments to bonus-baby minor leaguers; $5 million for Joe Torre; more money for player scouting, advance scouting (you hear so much in the postseason about the Yankees’ vaunted advance scouts), etc. The real gap is considerably larger.
As Doug Pappas of the Baseball Prospectus (subscription required) estimated (even using the lower figure of $149 million from the Yankees’ season-opening payroll), the Yankees were by no means the smartest or most efficient team in the game in spending their money to produce winning baseball, in terms of marginal dollars (above the minimum payroll) per marginal win (above the record you’d expect from a replacement level team); they just had a whole lot more to throw around.
Here’s the problem: like most fans, I tend to like to look at the game through the eyes of a general manager or manager, and ask myself, if I were running the show, what would I do? Who would I trade, who would I keep? That’s the stuff of Hot Stove League intrigue and second-guessing (and first-guessing) that makes the game fun and worth the investment of time in crunching stats and the like to really understand why teams win and lose.
But when you look at the winning teams and ask yourself what they are doing right, you come to a cold realization: no matter what he does, the general manager of your favorite team can’t emulate the Yankees or duplicate their success. Nobody else has Brian Cashman’s budget. Could other GMs do what Cahsman does; could other managers do what Torre does? We can’t find out, because they won’t get the chance unless they get hired by the Yankees, and then they won’t have competition from an equal.
There are usually two related counter-arguments to this. One is to say that Mets and Red Sox fans can’t talk, since our teams are among the best-funded and in any event, look how poorly the Mets spent the money they did have this year. Fair enough, but (1) as you can see, even the Mets still aren’t in the Yankees’ neighborhood, (2) as Pappas points out, even with the Yankees having made some good decisions with their farm system and the like, they have also spent plenty of money unwisely, but can afford mistakes others can’t, and (3) the issue isn’t how good a particular rival is, but whether they could ever compete on an equal footing with the Yankees.
In fact, the Yankees almost certainly could and would spend even more money if pushed to do so. When the Yankees go after a free agent, do they get him? Nearly always; I can hardly remember one they really wanted and didn’t get. When a Yankee’s contract is up, do they run the risk of losing him, as happens to every other team? Other than Tino Martinez, who they let go to pursue Giambi, the last major free agent loss before this season was John Wetteland, and even then the Yanks didn’t expend a lot of energy to keep him, given that Rivera was ready to move up (in fairness, the Yanks did let Mike Stanton and Ramiro Mendoza go this year, but replaced them with other expensive middle relievers).
The second objection is the Baseball Prospectus line, which is to argue that Steinbrenner is making a return on his investment and other teams could afford to spend more as well. First of all, it’s obviously not true that everyone else can afford to spend money like the Yankees, or it would be likely that at least someone else would try to do so. Second, since when is the fun in the game asking yourself, “if I were a billionaire owner, how much money would I spend on the team, given market size and the eslasticity of demand for tickets and premium cable TV”? That’s a long way from why most of us fell in love with the game as kids.

To Baghdad

I missed blogging this at the time, but Frank Gaffney had an important point on NRO two weeks ago that I’d been thinking about myself: to transform the debate on Iraq, President Bush should go to Baghdad:
By so doing, the president will have an opportunity to see for himself the facts on the ground. Having just returned myself from a trip to Iraq and meetings with most of the senior civilian and military personnel in the theater, I can attest that there is simply no better way to take stock of the conditions that exist � and those that are being brought about, thanks to ever-more-effective collaboration between U.S. and Coalition personnel and the Iraqis.
Mr. Bush’s personal visit will also afford him a truly unique opportunity to convey a surpassingly important message to both our troops and the people they are helping to experience and secure freedom: We are unalterably committed to realizing that goal.
A presidential trip to Baghdad will also compel the American and international media to address the real progress being made on the ground in Iraq � not just the random attacks there and other over-reported setbacks. It should be accompanied by a call for news organizations once again to embed journalists with Coalition forces, ensuring that their success in securing the peace is as faithfully and as accurately covered as their success in winning it.

As Gaffney points out, both Powell and Rumsfeld have made the trip already, so the logistics of security should already be in place. Personally, I’d suggest that if bolstering morale is part of the mission, the president should go on a holiday to visit with troops who have spent more than a few holidays away from home — Christmas would be best for that reason, but would probably be a non-starter (given the diplomatic sensitivities of being too overtly Christian a celebration), so I’d suggest Thanksgiving. Such a trip would hardly be unprecedented; Eisenhower went to Korea, remember. But if memory serves correctly (I could be wrong), no American president went to Vietnam.
Speaking of Vietnam, somebody needs to send a rescue party there to bring back Ted Kennedy, who’s apparently stuck in a time warp; check out this hilarious fisking of his latest diatribe, which reads like something from a bad campus newspaper. (Link via Michele).

Not Free

This Reuters report on a UN study has some fairly damning conclusions about freedom of speech and thought in the Arab world, despite some fairly flimsy attempts by both Reuters and the UN to blame this on the US:
The U.S.-led war on terror has radicalized more Arabs angry both with the West and their autocratic rulers who are bent on curbing their political rights, a U.N.-commissioned study released Monday showed. . . . Arab disenchantment was deepened by autocratic rulers who were given a “spurious justification for curbing freedoms on the pretext of fighting terrorism” by Washington’s war on terror.
Of course, it’s “Washington’s war.” No mention of terror’s war on the rest of the world. I don’t doubt that repressive Arab regimes that have lined up on our side (like Egypt or some of the small Gulf states) have used the war on terror as yet another justification for the same old repression, but this is really a footnote to the real story:
Arab countries lagged other regions in dissemination of knowledge. Readership of books was relatively limited, education dictated submission rather than critical thought, the Arabic language was in crisis. . . . The report said even a best selling novel sold on average only 5,000 copies compared to hundreds of thousands elsewhere. . . The number of books published in the Arab world did not exceed 1.1 percent of world production though Arabs constitute 5 percent of the world population.
It cited official educational curricula in Arab countries that ” bred submission, obedience, subordination and compliance rather than free critical thinking.”
* * *
The U.N. also touched on the state of Arab universities, decrying lack of autonomy and the direct control of governments that ran them on political whims. . . . No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire millennium, equivalent to the number translated every year into Spanish.
Research and Development in the Arab world did not exceed 0.2 percent of Gross National Product (GNP). . . The number of telephone lines in Arab countries was barely one fifth of that in developed countries.
Access to digital media was also among the lowest in the world. There are 18 computers per 1,000 people compared to a global average of 78. Only 1.6 percent of over 270 million Arabs have internet access, one of the lowest ratios in the world, the report said.

It’s no wonder that paranoia, delusional ideas and ridiculous propaganda can be so easily disseminated in countries that lack even the most rudimentary forms and traditions of free expression. More’s the point: remember this the next time someone tries to complain about U.S. ‘cultural imperialism’ in the region. Arab culture is choking to death as it is, at the hands of its own leaders. Freedom can only be an improvement.

Loria

Things you maybe didn’t know about Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria: in 1968 he wrote a book drawing life lessons from the Peanuts comic strip. You can see the book jacket here. I actually own the book second-hand and have read it, although I can’t seem to locate my copy at the moment. It’s typical of the genre, philosophical but not deeply so, and painfully earnest in its approach; you would probably only enjoy reading it if you’re a serious Peanuts afficionado, as I was at one time (as a kid I read nearly all the strips going back to 1952 as well as a biography of Charles Schultz). Of course, I also found it a bit amusing for the time-capsule nature of a book commenting on life in 1968.

TMQ Sacked?

I’m doing work tonight, so I’m actually listening to the game on the radio and don’t have much time to blog, but let me just say that I agree completely with Instapundit and the many others he links to that the apparent summary firing of Gregg Easterbrook (the Tuesday Morning Quarterback) by ESPN Page 2 is just an appalling overreaction, even worse than ESPN’s treatment of Rob Neyer some years back. Plus, the hypocrisy of an organization that pushes Easterbrook and Rush Limbaugh out the door for mildly inappropriate references to race and ethnicity while continuing to employ Ralph Wiley – who generalizes about race as often as Neyer cites statistics – is jaw-dropping.
Email ESPN here to let them know you want your TMQ back.
UPDATE: Aaron Schatz adds his two cents on why he’d be glad to have Easterbrook writing at FootballOutsiders.com. My own take is that Easterbrook’s comments don’t seem to be intentionally anti-Semitic, but they certainly crossed a line by pushing certain buttons (Jewish studio heads, greed, etc.) that have been too familiar hobby-horses for anti-Semites, so I can readily understand why offense was taken. More on this later, but this whole thing reeks of a game of “gotcha” with no application of common sense or perspective.

Yankees in Four

Yes, I’m going out on a limb here, and yes, I may be reacting emotionally. But where the postseason is concerned, gut-level predictions are often as effective as more rational ones. My predictions for who would win the postseason serieses are 3 for 5 so far, missing only the two Cubs serieses.
The template here is 1999: the Yankees defeated the Red Sox and went on to face the mighty Braves, who had triumphed in an epic and exhausting six-game series with the Mets. Great things were expected of that series, but it was a massive anticlimax, with the Braves rolling over and playing dead for the Yanks. The only reservation I have here about a similar prediction is the fact that the Yankees have to start Wells on very short rest in Game One. But I fully expect the Marlins, after all the hype and exceitement, to be flat against the Hated Yankees.

Ledeen at Work

This AP article has a fascinating angle: apparently Michael Ledeen has been trying to get the CIA to investigate possible transfers of enriched uranium from Saddam Hussein’s regime into Iran five years ago, but past credibility problems with Ledeen’s contact have led the CIA to be skeptical.
At this distance it’s impossible to tell who’s right here, but it makes for a good yarn, and it’s a reminder of the uncertainties inherent in the intelligence business. How can you trust a guy who lied in the past – but how can you turn him away, with potential information like this?

A Lie, But Not Clark’s

Spinsanity does a good job of unraveling the controversy surrounding Wesley Clark’s much-touted supposed claim that people close to the White House had called him on September 11 to urge him to falsely claim a connection between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks. The conclusion: what Clark actually said amounts to a lot less than what people on the Left claimed he’d said; commentators like Paul Krugman and Michael Moore exaggerated Clark’s statement, and commentators on the Right – in their zeal to disprove the claims of Krugman, Moore and others – unfairly claimed that Clark had made more sweeping and unfounded accusations than what he’d actually said. Here’s The Krug’s version of this particular Big Lie:
Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from “people around the White House” urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein.
It appears that the truth is just that in the days after September 11, Clark talked to a guy at a pro-Israeli think tank in Canada who thought Saddam might be behind the attacks and urged Clark to raise the possibility. But the real fault here has to lie with the paranoids on the Left who used and abused Clark’s statement to attack the Bush Administration. And people wonder why conservatives think Krugman can’t be trusted?

Your Marlins Fans

Dave Barry has the scoop on Marlins fans:
I’m a huge Marlins fan. I’ve been following this plucky team ever since they beat the San Francisco Giants, which was, what, nearly a week ago. I live and die by this team! When they win, I drink champagne and dance all night. This is also what I do when they lose, because there is no point in wasting champagne. But I dance in a more subdued manner.
(Hat tip to Baseball News Blog).
Of course, this is unfair; Marlins fans are very devoted to players like Dan Marino and (what’s that you say? Oh.) . . . seriously, ownership has treated Marlins fans with poorly disguised contempt, yet twice in seven seasons, they’ve been treated to a World Series. It hardly seems fair either way, and it’s no poor reflection on Miami fans if they’ve been bandwagon-jumpers, and tentative ones at that. But really, there were other fans who deserved this more.

Post Not Alone

Turns out the NY Post wasn’t the only one, according to a posting on Romanesko:

10/17/2003 12:23:32 PM
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
From NORM CLARKE: The Chicago Sun-Times had a first-edition blooper too. Sports columnist Jay Mariotti had to file before the game ended, he had the Red Sox beating the Yankees and he ripped the Tribune Co. for not spending money on the Cubs. Look at the Red Sox, he said, spending $125 million on a team going to the World Series. Oops.

Curses!

Well, I feel a little better this morning (but plenty tired; it’s a two-coffee morning for sure). If you haven’t figured out from the post below or some of the others on this site, I’m not entirely rational where the Hated Yankees are concerned (the Mets, yes, as much as I’ve suffered with them over the years, but not the Yankees) . . .
You’ve probably seen sci-fi or horror movies where there’s one character who’s hyper-rational (usually a scientist) and keeps insisting that there’s no such thing as (insert the film’s particular horror here) until something happens (usually a face-to-face encounter) that makes it sand-poundingly obvious that this is precisely what’s at work. This year’s LCS had to have that effect on people who argued that curses, hexes, jinxes and just plain bad mojo surrounding the Red Sox and Cubs were just a myth of some sort (if you could buy stock in Dan Shaughenssy, he’d be up 50% at the opening bell this morning). Adding insult to injury was the Sox losing twice with San Pedro de Fenway and the Cubs losing back to back with Prior and Wood.
I’m not even sure I have the heart to soak up much of the commentary; I haven’t seen Lupica’s inevitable “Yankees have more class than loser Red Sox, their pathetic fans and their little dog too” victory lap column, although I guess I’ll make time to read Bill Simmons’ next attempt to place this in the Levels of Losing (pretty high, I’d guess, what with the involvement of Clemens).
UPDATE: Simmons weighs in:
Twenty minutes after the Yankees eliminated the Sox, I called my father to make sure he was still alive.
And that’s not even a joke. I wanted to make sure Dad wasn’t dead. That’s what it feels like to be a Red Sox fan. You make phone calls thinking to yourself, “Hopefully, my Dad picks up, because there’s at least a 5-percent chance that the Red Sox just killed him.”
Bill also explains why he had that “now I believe in the Curse” moment. Read the whole thing.
Also: The New York Post prematurely buries the Yankees (maybe they were counting on this); David Adesnik goes straight to Lamentations; and Art Martone’s wrapup includes the quote of the day:
“(Jeter) told me, ‘The ghosts will show up eventually,’ ” a breathless Boone said after the game.
Finally, for those ripping Grady Little for leaving Pedro out there a few batters too long, it could be worse: in 1925, Bucky Harris left a 37-year-old Walter Johnson in to lose Game 7 of the World Series 9-7 after leading 6-4 entering the bottom of the seventh inning; Johnson went the distance in the game (in a torrential downpour, no less), allowing 9 runs on 15 hits, including 8 doubles and two triples (the 25 total bases surrendered by Johnson in one day is a World Series record unlikely to be broken), including the game-winner, a 2-run ground rule double by Kiki Cuyler into the darkness in right field with two outs in the bottom of the eighth.

The Dream Dies

Dreams do come true in life. David does beat Goliath. Hollywood endings do happen.
But not in the Bronx. The New York Yankees were put on this earth for one reason — to remind us that Goliath usually wins, and that Hollywood endings are the stuff of dreams precisely because life so rarely works out that way. Cubs fans believed; Red Sox fans believed. Yankee fans just expect, and they are yet again rewarded. Yankee Stadium remains the place where dreams go to die.
Let’s back up a bit, skipping around as I made notes . . .
Inning 1: You could tell this was a big one when Clemens got a standing O on the first pitch of the game.
Bravest guy in the house? Right behind the dugout on the 1B line, there’s a guy in a Mets jersey. At a Yankee-Red Sox game. Only in New York.
Why is Soriano hitting leadoff, and Giambi hitting seventh? This is nuts. The lineup should be Johnson and Jeter 1 and 2 (either order has its advantages), then Giambi, Posada, Soriano, Bernie.
Pedro left his fastball at home. I’ve said in the past that at his peak, I’d rather have San Pedro de Fenway on the mound to pitch the big game than anyone else, ever. His peak looks gone, but I’d still take him over anyone today but Randy Johnson.
Inning 2: Enrique Wilson throws the ball away . . . bad sign for the Yanks. Defense can kill you in games like this.
Inning 3: Lots of full counts on both sides, it seems.
Doesn’t Karim Garcia look like one of the Sheens? And David Ortiz definitely has the Mo Vaughn glare going.
Inning 4: Nixon does it again! I almost missed that one, it happened so fast.
I almost feel bad for Clemens at this point. Mussina comes in to relieve.
It occurs to me that if the Sox win, the two wild cards match up in the Series. But at least on the AL side, there’s not much doubt that we’re watching the two best teams in the league right now, is there?
Jeter rushes to the bag to turn the 6-3 double play; for the first time since I’ve watched Jeter, he looks desperate, less than 100% certain the Yankees will win.
Inning 5: Giambi has the solo homer. Solo homers in a game like this, you don’t mind so much; let the Yanks keep hitting fly balls.
The announcers are talking about instability — the Yanks have sure gone through some players this year.
Top 7: Nomar swings at Nelson’s first pitch of the night. Jeff Nelson. Why?
Bottom 7: Pedro’s thrown just 79 pitches through 6; maybe I was wrong about the deep counts. 9 outs to go. I’m thinking: maybe the Sox need to win this game — what better way to get even the most jaded Sox fans’ hopes up (only to dash them cruelly, at the hands of a fly-by-night franchise) than to vanquish the Yankees in the ALCS? It’d be like the US hockey team losing the gold medal match after beating the Russkies in 1980.
The announcers are officially in “Red Sox victory lap” mode, which proves George Santayana’s point.
8 outs. Posada flies out deep to Damon. 7 outs.
Matsui is grimacing something fierce; for all of his face-of-stone look, Matsui can really wear his heart on his sleeve sometimes.
Pedro to Giambi, throwing 92, 93. His velocity’s increasing. Giambi homers; Damon just misses catching it. 4-2 Sox. Sox still may need one more run to put this away.
Millar falls down, can’t get to the bag, I write down, “uh oh . . . it’s a game again . . . this is bad.” Play has that kind of look to it.
Pedro starts out up and in on Soriano. Warning? I’ve got your warning right here. Is this the last inning for Pedro?
Rivera’s up in the pen — down 2, but Torre smells blood.
1-2 to Soriano, Pedro hits 94 on the gun. Jeter doesn’t look worried anymore; none of the Yankees do. 2-2, Pedro goes outside, 95 mph.
Pedro throws one belt high, right in Soriano’s happy zone — but just outside. Whiff.
Top 8: Nelson’s back. 2-0 pitch goes way inside to Manny . . .
Wells comes in; this is like the All-Star Game, one top starter after another. Ding dong; Ortiz goes deep off Wells, looks like Wells is buying the keg for the next game. So much for the tight game. 8 homers now, they say, in 26 games vs. Yankees; that works out to 50 on a full season.
Bottom 8: Pedro still has trouble throwing strikes to Nick Johnson (this may not be coincidental to Johnson’s strike zone judgment).
5 outs.
Jeter doubles. Bernie drives him in. Grady sticks with Pedro to face Matsui, and Matsui doubles. Second and third, one out. Now, McCarver says they should have brought in Embree to face Matsui.
Posada up; gotta get Posada, Giambi’s on deck and we’ll see Embree to face Giambi.
My notes here: “tie game Damon can’t throw . . . Sox doomed . . . Rivera will come in – can’t win”
Embree saws off Giambi, Wilson comes up and is hit for. McCarver’s still harping on Little leaving in Pedro to face Matsui and Posada, like Red Sox Nation won’t do that tomorrow. McCarver: “Sometimes the manager has to overrule the superstar.” I pointed out two years ago why this is BS coming from McCarver, who loves to recount the story of Bob Gibson demanding to keep the ball to finish Game 7 in 1964.
Timlin vs. Garcia, now; 2 on 2 out, 3-0 count. Timlin walks him. Will Soriano repeat Game 7 heroics from 2001? Walker wow! What a play to rob Soriano. On the replay it’s like watching two separate games – Yankees whirling around the bases, fans starting to rise — and there’s Walker, snagging the ball.
Top 9: Need a base hit from Walker here to take the lead. 1-1. 1-2. Rivera has the hammer . . . a flair to Soriano . . . out.
Bottom 9: Jeter whunts – whiffs on the bunt, but it’s not strike 3 yet; now it is. Timlin’s still in; for some reason I’d thought they’d changed pitchers. He’s been so good in this postseason and Bernie so bad, it’s a question of whether something will give or momentum will hold. Walker wow! again, this time a leaping grab. So much for the iron glove reputation. So much for something giving.
Top 10: Ortiz chugs into second with a double, and this time they run for him. Ortiz just is Mike Easler, in a lot of ways – big, scary-looking guy, scary hitter, a bit of a late bloomer. Millar’s too eager here, jumping at Rivera’s first offering. Popup.
Bottom 10: Wakefield’s in, not Williamson. Why? Bring in the closer; screw getting a lead, if somebody else gives up a run, the game’s over. Plus, Wakefield brings Mirabelli with him, so Varitek (due up next inning) goes out, and Ortiz is already out.
Top 11: Nothing good can happen as long as Rivera’s still out there. Contreras is probably next. Mirabelli looks . . . well, like a bad hitter up there.
Bottom 11: Torre won’t warm up anyone else; he doesn’t want the Sox to think they’ve got hope of outlasting Mariano.
Boone . . . TV turned off. Headed downstairs to blog. Not happy about how this season turned out. You suffer all year with a dreadful team, you get a little involved in the postseason, and at the end of the day it’s the Fish and the Damn Yankees. That’s just the way life is sometimes.

BASEBALL/ Baseball and Politics

Dan Drezner has a post on the connections between sports and political affiliations. I don’t really buy it, but it’s interesting reading. Maureen Dowd uses a Cubs lede to a typically incoherent column. And Jonah Goldberg rips on something I’d meant to get to: the ridiculous New York Times editorial (No longer web-accessible) effectively rooting for the Red Sox, which is practically a parody of the old line about a liberal being a man too fair-minded to take his own side in an argument. Leaving aside the Times’ bias (i.e., the fact that the paper part owns the Red Sox), the sentiment is wholly one of, shall we say, guilt at siding with the winners.
It’s not that I object to New Yorkers rooting for the Sox; like most Mets fans I know, I’m pulling for them mostly out of hatred for the Yankees. And I wouldn’t object to the same sentiment from an out-of-town paper; I was pulling for the Cubs, after all. It’s that the Times is supposed to be one of the Yankees’ home town papers, and has certainly never been exclusively a paper of Mets partisans. But the Times won’t take the side of its own readers.

On To Game Seven

I figured this out the other day . . . you would think, what with the Yankees’ mystique and their storied history, that the franchise’s record in Game Sevens would be the stuff of legend. You would be wrong. The Yankees have not won a Game Seven in 41 years, since Bobby Richardson caught McCovey’s liner to end the 1962 World Series. Their overall record in deciding* Game Sevens? 5-6:
1926 World Series: Loss. Babe Ruth caught stealing to end the game.
1947 World Series: Win.
1952 World Series: Win.
1955 World Series: Loss. Johnny Podres, the Sandy Amoros catch.
1956 World Series: Win.
1957 World Series: Loss. Shutout by Lew Burdette.
1958 World Series: Win.
1960 World Series: Loss. Bill Mazeroski’s home run. Casey Stengel fired.
1962 World Series: Win.
1964 World Series: Loss. Bob Gibson stifles a Yankee rally in the 9th, dynasty ends.
2001 World Series: Loss. Rivera finally blows one.
Curse? Did someone say Curse?
* – Not including their loss to the Giants in Game Seven of the best-of-nine 1921 World Series.