Inspector General

Good to see that Ashcroft has recused himself and put a professional prosecutor at the head of the Valerie Plame leak investigation. I don’t personally know Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney for Chicago, but I know him by reputation and know people who know him; he’s a career prosecutor who made his name with the first World Trade Center bombing cases (among other things, I believe he was the lead prosecutor on the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman); I’m sure he’ll be thorough and dogged, but unlike outside prosecutors (i.e., Independent Counsels), he has other things to do and won’t spin this into an endless investigation if more pressing matters need the resources. A good call.
I still maintain that the best way to handle politically charged investigations would be to create a separate department of an Inspector General. Such a department could be built around the current Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, which has a perenially full caseload with corruption in state and local governments, contracting, police corruption, etc., and thus would not be like an Independent Counsel, tempted to blow one investigation out of proportion. But the head of the department could be someone less political than the Attorney General (whose role in law enforcement, Supreme Court litigation and sometimes judicial selection makes him or her an inevitably controversial figure) and selected specifically for the trait of bipartisan respect. Once selected and nominated, an IG would be nearly impossible to fire over a single investigation in the absence of obvious abuse. And you could also consolidate the civil IG offices of various executive departments, which can be prone to the same problems as IC offices, thus avoiding the usual trap of new departments that duplicate existing ones.
And pay for the savings by abolishing the Commerce Department. Everyone wins!

BASKETBALL: Blocked Out, Part II

Further to my point of yesterday about blocked shots, there’s some debate about their value. Doug Turnbull assesses the value of a block at a full 2 points per block – thus, he values a man who scores 10 points per game and blocks 4 shots per game the same as an 18-a-game scorer. John Hollinger, in the Basketball Prospectus, values a block as about the same as the negative value of a missed field goal, which he values at around 0.72 points (the figure varies by certain measurements pegged to league averages).
Who’s right? Well, sophisticated analysis of basketball statistics is still in its adolescence, if not its infancy. Wait and see.

BASKETBALL: Blocked Out

One of my recent interests has been simulated basketball on WhatIfSports.com, a site Bill Simmons got me interested in (on the baseball side) in its infancy some two years ago (my username is crank, for those of you who are denizens of the site). In typically backwards fashion, renewing my interest in basketball’s statistical past has revived my interest to some extent in the current game, but that’s a topic for another post.
One of the great imponderables in NBA history – with which the “WIS” site has to struggle, since it includes players going back to the Fifties – is the tabulation of blocked shots prior to 1973-74, when the league started counting them. There are few more frustrating unknown statistics in professional sports than Bill Russell’s blocked shots; Russell’s statistics (despite adequate scoring and assists averages and great rebounding numbers) are otherwise not really impressive enough to equal his reputation, but if we had shot-blocking numbers, there would be something closer to a quantifiable way to measure his defensive greatness. WIS pegs him around 5-6 blocked shots per game; I’ve heard people who saw him play quote figures as high as 10. That’s probably Old Fogeyism talking, but then, there were an awful lot of missed shots in those days, and Russell was on the court for 44-46 minutes a night.
Anyway, one thing I noticed that was unique and repeated in several sources without an explanation of where it came from was the ABA’s single season blocked shots record: 422 by Artis Gilmore in his rookie season in Kentucky in 1971-72, an average of just over 5 a game — one of only two seasons of 400 blocks (the other is the NBA record of 456 by Mark Eaton in 1984-85) in the recorded history of professional basketball and almost 150 above Gilmore’s next highest total. What’s unusual is that basketball-reference.com has nearly no record for anybody else’s blocked shots but Gilmore’s for 1971-72. Yet, the NBA’s official website cites the figure in Gilmore’s bio; so does Gilmore’s own personal website; so does ESPN.com.
If anyone knows the true story of how they came up with this figure, I’d love to hear it.

From The Department of Not Moving On

Another one you might have missed, that I noticed I never got around to blogging: in August, the D.C. Circuit rejected most of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s request for reimbursement for their attorneys’ fees incurred in the course of the Whitewater and related investigations (although President Clinton did not seek reimbursement for the Lewinsky investigation, as per his agreement with Robert Ray resolving the charges arising from that case). The Clintons argued that they were statutorily entitled to reimbursement on the theory that the fees “would not have been incurred but for the requirements of” the Independent Counsel statute (the Ethics in Goverment Act) — i.e., that “1) if not for the Act, the case could have been disposed of at an early stage of the investigation; and 2) they were investigated under the Act where private citizens would not have been investigated.”
These arguments, of course, echoed the defense of the Clintons from the beginning: nothing to see here, old news, we were cleared by Arkansas regulators, nobody but Ken Starr would have investigated this stuff, yada yada yada.
The key passage:

Two years before the appointment of Independent Counsel Starr, a criminal referral was submitted by the Resolution Trust Corporation to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas alleging illegal activities involving Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, and naming the McDougals as suspects and the Clintons as witnesses. When in early 1994 the Attorney General appointed Robert Fiske as regulatory independent counsel, she gave him broad authority to investigate the Clintons’ relationship with, inter alia, Madison Guaranty and the Whitewater Development Corporation. And when we appointed Kenneth Starr as statutory independent counsel in the summer of 1994, at the request of the Attorney General we granted him investigatory authority almost identical to Fiske’s. The IC’s final report on the Whitewater matter states that “[t]he breadth of the criminality already uncovered by the Fiske investigation in part contributed to the length of time necessary for the statutory Independent Counsel to complete his work.” See Robert W. Ray, Final Report of the Independent Counsel, In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association, Vol. I, 21 (2001). Taking all of the above into consideration, we harbor no doubt that in the absence of the independent counsel statute the allegations surrounding the Clintons, Madison Guaranty, and Whitewater would have been similarly investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
The Clintons nevertheless argue that the DOJ would have conducted a substantially lesser investigation than that of the IC. The facts would not appear to substantiate this argument. Another independent counsel, albeit regulatory, had been appointed to investigate the matter, and in the short period he was in office he conducted an extensive investigation spending several hundred thousand dollars.

Indeed.

RELIGION: Random Thought

From a friend, who asks: why is there so much overlap between (a) those Americans who criticize our foreign policy for being too “unilateral” and (b) those Americans who feel that American branches of world religions need to ignore, if necessary, criticisms from their overseas branches when pressing for changes in doctrine (e.g., relating to abortion, ordination of women, homosexuality, etc.)?
But then, “unilateral” means “in opposition to Continental Europe,” whereas criticism from Third World Christians generally gets discounted; they apparently are supposed to be seen, not heard.

Changing the Subject

The Weekly Standard had an interesting and sympathetic profile of Dick Gephardt some weeks ago, including some good Dean-bashing. I tend to like Gephardt when I’m just reading about him – on paper, you can make him sound like Harry Truman – but every time I see the guy he’s just so full to the brim with idiotic cliched soundbites that lack even a semblance of logic or coherent thought that I have to turn off the TV. He probably is a decent guy, but listening to him drives me up the wall. The problem is one that’s endemic to many Democratic politicians (Howard Dean is actually a rare exception): he talks down to his audience like he’s speaking to a bunch of grade school students.
Barring a catastrophe in the war on terror or a major economic reversal, I still can’t see Gephardt going anywhere, or the Democrats winning in November, unless something happens that forces the candidates to change the subject from war and taxes. Dean is Bush’s ideal matchup — and the one the true believers on the Left want — because they both want to run on war & taxes, and the two are diametrically opposed on both questions. Other than Gephard’t’s trade-war talk, none of the other Dems have been able to change that definition of the agenda. And as we know, he who sets the agenda usually wins.
One thing I’ve been kicking around is whether the cultural issues will matter. A friend suggested that culture issues are bigger now than they were in 1992, but I don’t really buy it; if anything, the cultural fissures were more pronounced that election year. 1992 saw Buchanan’s “culture war” speech – the battles of that era seem tame only because we’ve gone so much further down the slippery slope. 1992 was “the year of the woman.” Dan Quayle v. Murphy Brown. It was 1992 that the Supreme Court upheld Roe v Wade (or, as Scalia pointed out, completely rewrote Roe under the guise of being bound by precedent). The LA riots were in April 1992. And, of course, Bill Clinton was one big walking cultural issue.
Culture is a big subtext, particularly if Dean wins. But the main topics will still be taxes and war.

“Blacks”

This NY Times article on programs to keep African-American men enrolled in college has an interesting sidebar on the Times’ site: the “Times News Tracker” says you would receive an email about the article if you had chosen one of the following four topics as one of your alerts:
Teachers and School Employees
Blacks
Equal Educational Opportunities
Education and Schools

Now, I’m really no expert on political correctness, so maybe this is just me, but isn’t it considered bad form these days to use the term “Blacks” as opposed to “African-Americans” or, failing that, “black people”? Just has a ring of Strom Thurmond about it, as in, “I’d like to get the news about the Blacks.”

Calderon Gone

Sad news with the death of Ivan Calderon, who was murdered Saturday in what sounds like a gangland-style killing. Calderon had his ups and downs, but was the best player on his team in 1987 (when he batted .293 and smacked 28 home runs for the White Sox) and 1991 (when he batted .300 and stole 31 bases for the Expos). His career was derailed by injuries at the age of 30 (or so), and he last appeared in the majors at age 31 in 1993.
Calderon, on why he preferred playing in Montreal: “The games go quicker, and you can get back to the clubhouse and eat.”

Split Deck of Cards

Was there a team in baseball with more dramatic platoon splits up and down the lineup in 2003 than Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals? I doubt it. You’d be sorely tempted to throw nothing but lefthanders against the Redbirds if you saw these splits:

Avg vs RHP Slg vs RHP OBP vs RHP PLAYER Avg vs LHP Slg vs LHP OBP vs LHP
.292 .631 .405 Jim Edmonds .225 .577 .320
.306 .534 .390 JD Drew .218 .418 .306
.281 .446 .358 Tino Martinez .235 .346 .323
.271 .414 .326 Fernando Vina .163 .245 .236
.290 .378 .358 Orlando Palmeiro .182 .200 .224

But then, you’d want to re-consider when you look at the other side of the ledger:

Avg vs RHP Slg vs RHP OBP vs RHP PLAYER Avg vs LHP Slg vs LHP OBP vs LHP
.350 .646 .434 Albert Pujols .387 .732 .458
.316 .434 .364 Edgar Renteria .391 .670 .503
.287 .516 .370 Scott Rolen .283 .575 .427
.226 .320 .302 Mike Matheny .340 .480 .384
.238 .351 .295 Eduardo Perez .353 .667 .459
.267 .379 .306 Bo Hart .300 .433 .344

If the Cards think they are ‘solving’ a problem with lefthanded pitching by dumping Drew and Tino, they may be mistaken; those guys were actually doing a good job of inducing teams to throw lefthanders at the rest of the lineup. It’s harder to project what this means going forward, since some of these splits (e.g., Renteria and Matheny) are unlikely to remain as dramatic in the future.

New Categories

Those of you who prefer to skip to the baseball content, or who want to check the category archives, may have noticed that three of the categories here (Baseball, Politics and War, my three main areas of interest) load very slowly due to the huge number of entries since the blog started in August 2002 (as well as a few oddball archived emails from before that date). To remedy the problem for the new year, I’ve renamed the old categories (“Baseball 2002-03,” etc.) and created a new set of categories (“Baseball 2004,” etc.) to hold this year’s entries. I’ve also changed the link at the top of the page so it goes to the Baseball 2004 category, and I’m notifying the few sites that link to my baseball category page rather than the main page to fix their URLs.
If you’re looking for baseball entries from 2003 and earlier, click here for the Baseball 2002-03 category.

Horrors!

Bathroom fixture company American Standard is holding an “America’s Ugliest Bathroom” contest. Check out the seven finalists between now and the end of January for a true parade of horrible decor (A brown mosaic-tiled bathtub! A lime green tub laid in pink plush carpeting!) as well as an object lesson on why the Fifties, the Sixties, and the Seventies should never return.

It’s Not Just The Defense

Josh Heit, trying to find a silver lining in Aaron Heilman’s disastrous debut season, looks at David Pinto’s new defensive metrics and suggests of Heilman:

The conventional wisdom is that he sucks and needs to go back to AAA. However, he did lose 8.6 outs (137 expected) to his defense (I�d probably blame, in order: Roger Cedeno, Robbie Alomar, and Joe McEwing. The Mets do keep showing up near the bottom of David�s studies, if you look at some of the other data sets). He may have just suffered a string of bad defense.

I’d like to believe that’s the core of the problem too, but . . . well, I don’t doubt that Josh is right that Heilman suffered from bad defense (although it’s a bit unfair to blame Alomar, given that he was traded on July 1 and Heilman threw most of his innings after that). But Heilman’s problems ran a good deal deeper than defense. The real problem is that Heilman allowed 41 walks and 13 home runs in 65.1 innings of work, an unsustainable rate (5.65 walks and 1.8 HR/9 innings, if you’re keeping score at home).
On the other hand, Heilman struck out just over 7 men per 9 innings, so he must have been fooling someone. I thought I’d take a look, via Aaron Haspel’s search engine, to see how many other pitchers have had a season like Heilman’s and see if (1) any of them managed to pitch effectively despite the walks and dingers or (2) any of them ever developed into good pitchers. I ran the search for pitchers who issued 40 or more walks and allowed 10 or more homers in a season of less than 70 innings.
Unsurprisingly, the results were ugly. Only 5 of the 17 pitchers had ERAs below 5.60, and only one (Bill Scherrer at 4.36 in 1985) had an ERA below 4.70. Let’s review the list, from best ERA to worst:
1. Bill Scherrer, age 27. 1-3 with a 5.98 ERA the rest of his career, all in relief.
2. Brian Oelkers, age 25. Never pitched in the majors again.
3. Dave Campbell, age 26. Never pitched in the majors again; went into broadcasting.
4. Bob Gibson, age 27. No, not that Bob Gibson. 6-7 with 11 saves and a 3.90 ERA the following year in 92.1 innings, but basically washed out of the majors after that.
5. Jose Mesa, age 33. Mesa got worse the following year (5.36 ERA) before recovering to save 97 games with an ERA of 2.76 his first two years in Philadelphia. Has to be considered a modest success.
6. Mike Mohler, age 24. Had a little success in the majors, with a decent year and a half as a middle reliever at ages 26-27 after being returned to the minors. Career high in wins: 6. Career record: 14-27, 4.99 ERA.
7. Steve Barr, age 24. Never pitched in the majors again.
8. Matt Karchner, age 29. Notched 15 saves and a 2.91 ERA the following year, then regressed and appears to have left the game after three seasons of struggles.
9. Doug Bochtler, age 27. Pitched just 21 more innings in the majors.
10. George Susce, age 24. Susce pitched in Fenway in the late 50s, a tough place to pitch. Had a 3.67 ERA his first year away from the Fens, but wound up with a short, unsuccessful career.
11. Dave Boswell, age 25. A 20-game winner the previous year, Boswell threw just 29 more major league innings. I believe he had injuries.
12. Jon Garland, age 20. The youngest of the bunch and still a work in progress; Garland managed a 3.69 ERA in 117 innings the following year and has been just below a league-average starter since then.
13. Heath Murray, age 28. Has pitched just 12 major league innings since.
14. Clint Hartung, age 27. Never pitched again and was converted to an outfielder.
15. Bob Welch, age 37. Retired immediately thereafter.
16. Dick Starr, age 30. Never pitched in the majors again.
17. Roy Halladay, age 23. Had a 10.64 ERA in 2000, arguably the worst season a pitcher ever had in that many innings. Was returned to the low minors but returned a completely reworked pitcher the following year (2001), with a much higher strikeout rate. Won 19 games in 2002 and AL Cy Young in 2003.
This is a fairly grim list, although not completely hopeless. Heilman’s 24 and had no prior major league success, so the best comps include some of the most successful ones, like Garland and Halladay, but still includes plenty of disasters. Of course, Halladay’s stuff was electric before his blowout in 2000, and Garland also has physical gifts that Heilman lacks. Heilman also struck out more batters than any of these guys but Gibson, although the higher-K members of the group aren’t a hopeful bunch.
Heilman was just plain bad in 2003, defense or no defense, and history suggests only an outside chance that he’ll ever be an effective major league pitcher.

An Orange Christmas

So, we took the kids up to the top of the Empire State Building yesterday, Orange Alert or no Orange Alert. Naturally, they were thrilled to be in the tallest building in NY (we still haven’t told them about the World Trade Center, and I think by now they’ve forgotten I worked there).
You know, I’ll never carry a rifle in this war, never go to a foreign combat zone, and I don’t confuse my part in this with those who do. But there is a role to play for the rest of us back home, particularly New York, the City with the Big Bullseye, and that’s just to hold our ground and not let our daily business be affected by threats. It’s the least we can do.

Christmas Songs

OK, in the spirit of list-making, I’ve drawn up a list of my favorite popular music performances of Christmas songs. Not necessarily favorite songs, as much as favorite recorded performances. Thus, for example, I haven’t included “Joy to the World” here, even though it’s just about my favorite Christmas hymn, because I have yet to hear any one artist put to record a version of the song that can match a church choir raining down the hymn as you process out of Mass on Christmas morning, an experience that’s about as close to God as man gets on this earth. A few others missed the cut as well because I couldn’t think of one definitive performance, like “Let it Snow! Let it Snow!,” and I left off the songs from one of my favorite Christmas movies, “Scrooge,” starring Albert Finney, since on their own they aren’t really that Christmasy. I wound up with 17 tunes that made the cut.
Here we go:
17. Bing Crosby – Adeste Fidelis (O Come All Ye Faithful) – Crosby does the Latin version of this, interspersed with the modern hymn in English, in a way that perfectly captures the virtues of the old Catholic Church.
16. Bruce Springsteen – Merry Christmas Baby – An excellent tune, albeit a bit less Christmasy than some of the others on the list. Clarence Clemons’ sax carries this one.
15. Elvis Presley – Blue Christmas – Elvis wouldn’t seem to go with Christmas, but he gets it right with “Blue Christmas.”
14. Various Artists – Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Yes, it combines 80s cheesiness with liberal condescension, but the impulse – giving to the less fortunate at the holidays – has its heart in the right place, and this is a fun song.
13. John Lennon/Yoko Ono – Merry Xmas (War is Over) – See #14; Lennon’s wacky peacenikery strikes the right note for a Christmas aspiration, even if it was foolish politics at the time (after all, the Vietnam War didn’t really end until one side was overrun and enslaved by the other).
12. Burl Ives – Holly Jolly Christmas – I left off the list songs that were truly inseparable from TV specials, like the themes for the Grinch and the Heat Miser, but this tune (always identified with Rudolph) makes the cut. Ives’ voice is like a warm fireplace and a cup of hot chocolate all by itself.
11. Johnny Mathis – Winter Wonderland – One of the oddities of Christmas music is that people will listen to artists from genres they wouldn’t listen to normally; you wound’t catch me listening to Johnny Mathis any other time of year. But at Christmas time, he’s one of the ones who makes his annual reappearance.
10. Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song – You know, the “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” song, Cole’s signature tune.
9. Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas is You – I’m not much of a Mariah Carey fan, but there’s some decent stuff on her Christmas album, and this old-time Motown-style tune is really good; if she did a whole album like it, she could revive her career in very short order.
8. Bing Crosby – White Christmas – The all-time classic.
7. Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – I first came to know this one through the U2 version, which is quite good, but Love’s voice gave this song just a little extra emotion. I’m very partial to “A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector,” which remains the greatest Christmas record ever made (in spite of Spector himself being a psychopath); besides the two songs listed here, many others were close runnerups to other versions.
6. Gene Autry – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Autry’s gentle, genial version still tops what’s come after it.
5. Leon Redbone/Dr. John – Frosty the Snowman – Thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump . . . Redbone and Dr. John complement each other perfectly.
4. Harry Connick jr. – (It Mus’ve Been Ol’) Santa Claus – It’s very hard to write a new Christmas song that stands up to the classics, but this one, from Connnick’s Christmas album from about 10 years ago, is as close as it gets, with just the right mix of humor and Christmas magic.
3. The Ronettes – Sleigh Ride – Another Phil Spector production.
2. Bruce Springsteen – Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town – Bruce just owns this tune. I saw him perform it live in 1992, complete with a dancing Christmas tree onstage, albeit without Clarence Clemons. Brought the house down.
1. Bing Crosby – I’ll Be Home For Christmas – Well, that’s what we all want – home for Christmas. Of course, this song had its heydey when millions of Americans could only listen to it on Armed Forces Radio somewhere in the South Pacific, or in Europe or anywhere else but home.
Honorable Mentions: “Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You,” by Billy Squier; and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” which barely elicits a chuckle today but which I thought was the funniest thing I ever heard when I was about 8 years old.

It Gets Late Early Around Here

For a little perspective on the Democratic primaries — or, perhaps, perspective on how they’ve changed in 12 short years — check out at least one national poll for the Democrats in December 1991 (source: Daily Kos), which in theory should be the same point in the process as we’re at today:

Mario Cuomo – 33%
Jerry Brown – 15
Douglas Wilder – 9
Bob Kerrey – 8
Tom Harkin – 7
Bill Clinton – 6
Paul Tsongas – 4
Undecided/Others – 18

Of course, #1 never entered the race, which is much like the current polls would look if they were still listing Hillary! in every poll. It may be harder for anyone today to roar from the back of the pack this late in the game, especially where Howard Dean has already pulled the same trick.

Speaking Seuss

We’ve had my son (age 6) reading to us every night to develop his reading skills, and he often picks Dr. Seuss books. These are good enough for his reading level, but what strikes me in particular is that Dr. Seuss’ books are especially good training for public speaking, because their natural rythms and obvious stresses give the reader clear cues to modulate his or her voice. I’ve been wondering if Dr. Seuss’ books might be good training, even for teaching older kids to speak in public, kids as old as 11-15 or so. I’ve dealt a bit with kids that age in mock trial programs, as well as remembering what they can be like from my own high school days, and you can see that, when called on to speal in public, most of them — even the smart ones — give off a dull, mumbling monotone. I would think that a good way to break that habit would be to give them something simple to read that forces them to be more expressive, and perhaps the more advanced Dr. Seuss books – the Horton books, Thidwick, Solla Sollew, etc. — are just the trick.

Red Dawn

Last entry for today, I promise. After Tim Noah and others complained about the US military naming the operation that captured Saddam Hussein after the cheesy 80s movie “Red Dawn” (about a ragtag band of Americans resisting a Soviet invasion), Eugene Volokh observed that the title probably was just picked by some soldiers who liked the movie without thought for the wider propaganda value, and Eugene and Sasha Volokh marshalled the evidence on the film’s popularity with soldiers.
Let me add my own experience. Each summer, the US Military Academy at West Point offers an “Invitational Academic Workshop.” You spend a week at the Point, get an overview of what the school has to offer academically and militarily, and generally get to see the life of the cadets up close but without too many of the hard parts. At the time, at least, I believe the main criteria for attending was a high PSAT score, which wasn’t really a great predictor of interest in a career in the military, but the workshop was good propaganda for West Point (an important consideration for any public institution, especially with a population of academic high achievers who could go on to other influential positions in life), and it was a good recruiting tool for those who were so inclined. (The program still exists today, although it looks like they’ve changed the criteria a little).
Anyway, I attended in a brutally hot week in June 1988, the summer before my senior year of high school. It was a fun week, we had a little taste of the ‘gung ho’ with being roused from bed around 6am with a loudspeaker blaring, in succession, the opening monologue from Patton and the song “Danger Zone” from Top Gun. We didn’t get to do too many of the outdoor activities – it was 104 degrees out, and they wouldn’t even let the cadets exercise – which was fine by me, since I was about 5’9″ and 110 pounds at the time and almost as nearsighted as I am today.
Getting at long last to the point here, one highlight of the week was a showing of Red Dawn. Remember, this is 1988, the last summer before the Soviet bloc unraveled, and the cadets were mostly kids who chose a military career during the Reagan years. Let me tell you: you have not seen Red Dawn until you’ve seen it with an audience of West Point cadets during the Cold War. There was much rejoicing at numerous points in the film when the Rooskies got their comeuppance and the homeland was defended. And who knows? Probably a few of those cadets are officers in Iraq now, probably a good ways up the chain of command by this point.

Apes and Ebola

This MSNBC report has a disturbingly grim analysis of the future of the great apes, noting specifically that the ape population in Africa has been decimated by ebola epidemics. I’m certainly nobody’s idea of an environmentalist, but this is clearly something we need to do something about — the great apes are our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, and would represent a particularly egregious loss. Unfortunately, the article suggests that people working to address the issue don’t even have a good idea of a solution to implement in the Magical Land of Unlimited Resources, let alone in the world we live in.

Quotes of the Week

Saddam Hussein, on the American GI: “Why didn’t you fight?” one Governing Council member asked Hussein as their meeting ended. Hussein gestured toward the U.S. soldiers guarding him and asked his own question: “Would you fight them?”
A US official, on Saddam’s capture: “We can now determine,” he said, “if he is the mastermind of everything or not.” The official elaborated: “Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?”
And two from last week:
Tom Maguire, on Howard Dean: “[W]ill centrists peer in confusion at their television screens and wonder, who is this little man yelling at me, and why is his face so red?”
Tom Burka, with a little humor: “Gore To Claim He Invented Dean, Says GOP”
(Read the whole thing; link via Plum Crazy)

Block Head

As you can see, I’ve discovered a new code for block quotes, and I’m going back and forth between the quote-in-a-box look and just doing italics. I’d still prefer to find a way to indent quotes without the box surrounding them, plus the box appears to interfere with the line breaks inside the block. Useful suggestions are appreciated.

Dean Doctrine

Howard Dean’s major foreign policy address on Monday was probably a mixed bag politically; while Dean’s anti-war crusade was yet again upstaged by reality, he once again succeeded in framing the public debate as Dean vs. Bush, and in the primaries, that’s what you need.
On the substance? Well, Dean argued that he wouldn’t abandon the idea of pre-emption, but (1) would stage a preemptive attack only where an “imminent” threat existed and (2) doesn’t think Iraq met that test. It’s a politically clever tactic, since it wouldn’t necessarily tie down his own freedom of action as President in another case as dramatically as if he rejected preemption entirely, although it does call into question his judgment and does indicate a return to pre-September 11 policy (i.e., Operation Desert Fox vs. Gulf War II as the logical response to Saddam). Of course, I disagree completely with Dean on this.

Continue reading Dean Doctrine

Low Status

So, according to Bob Raissman, Brian Cashman’s office is set up so people have to walk through it on the way to the men’s room?
Real morale-builder, that Steinbrenner. Of course, Page Two reminds us that there are many worse jobs than Cashman’s; this job description was particularly unappealing:

In the track-and-field world, there are certain young men who are summoned to perform a peculiar task. Prior to a sprint, the starting blocks must be held in place. The job consists of sitting on the ground, placing a foot behind each block, and gently applying pressure. The hazards may be few, but they are specific. Should one allow the blocks to slip, wobble or (gasp) make a distracting noise, it could lead to a false start, or even disqualification.
Bear in mind, this is the world of the sprinter � perhaps the most tightly wound, highly insecure of all competitive athletes. Should something go wrong, and that athlete is disqualified, you think part of his ire won’t rain down on the poor youngster crouching in paralyzed fear behind the starting line?
The other hazard is one of proximity. A sprint is nothing more than an extended explosion. When hamstring muscles flex, quadriceps tighten and glutes tense, a certain unplanned action may take place. And when there’s an explosion � of the flatulent variety � there are surely better places to be. Such are the hazards of a job where one man’s ass is only inches from another man’s face.

BASEBALL/ Ruben the Cat

Kevin Drum linked last Friday to a page on the White House site about India, the Bushes’ cat. I, too, had been unaware that the Bush family had a cat, but more amusing is this tidbit:
Named for former Texas Ranger baseball player, Ruben Sierra, who was called “El Indio”
Just cracked me up that the President of the United States has a cat named after Ruben Sierra.

Quiet Company

Stuart Buck links to an interview with leading Supreme Court advocate Carter Phillips, who observes that Clarence Thomas is hardly unusual, even by the standards of recent history, in rarely asking questions at oral argument:

When I argued in 1981, you could pretty much bet you weren’t going to get any questions from Justice [William] Brennan [Jr.], and you might get one question from Justice [Thurgood] Marshall. Justice Blackmun would ask a question that you weren’t always sure you were quite ready for because you could never quite understand necessarily what the purpose of the question was, although I think he usually had one. And my old boss, Chief Justice Burger, very rarely asked one. I don’t think he ever asked me a question at all in the years that I argued there.

Of course, Thomas’ detractors, who use his silences to paint him as a stupid man, are generally huge fans of people like Brennan and Marshall.

Holiday!

As you can tell from the fact that I’ve been blogging during the business day, I’m home today, and will be off from work with a much-needed vacation until the new year. There will still be some days when I’m too busy to blog with holiday commitments, but I’ll try to keep things going around here, plus I’ve got a few major baseball projects (the first of which was the Alexander vs. Gibson column) in the pipeline that I’ll be getting ready behind the scenes.

Union Don’ts, Part II

Brian Gunn at Redbird Nation points us to this statement by Harvard Law prof Paul Weiler – a labor law expert who teaches a seminar on sports law at HLS and had written a textbook on the subject – on the A-Rod mess:
It’s a basic feature of collective bargaining that’s to stop the bosses from insisting that one of the workers take less money in order to keep a job, . . . The difference is, he’s not a nurse making $22,000 a year, he’s making 22 million bucks a year. But it is that basic principle that they want to adhere to.
Professor Weiler either misses several key points or at least is quoted in a way that obscures them; the difference here is a lot more significant than the money:
1. Unlike your typical employee working under a collective bargaining agreement, A-Rod has a guaranteed contract. Thus, the Rangers may threaten his ability to keep his job, but they can’t take away his $25 million salary.
2. A-Rod didn’t agree to less money to keep his job; he agreed to it to take a better job, with a winning team in a big market.
If accepting less money to play for a winner was good enough for Michael Jordan, why can’t Rodriguez be allowed to do the same thing? Frankly, the idea that this will lead teams to screw their players out of contracts isn’t persuasive; few teams can afford to just punitively bench a guy who is a good player making millions a year, and if they cut him, he can sign elsewhere and keep the money. The parade of horribles presented by the union just bears no relationship to the real world of Major League Baseball.
The owners have been in the wrong on many occasions in baseball, but this isn’t one of them.

Now 81% Pro-Bush!

So I took this online quiz to see who I support for president (duh!), and here’s what I got:
Your Results:
1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Bush, President George W. – Republican (81%)
3. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (51%)
4. Edwards, Senator John, NC – Democrat (48%)
5. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT – Democrat (46%)
6. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO – Democrat (45%)
7. Libertarian Candidate (42%)
8. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH – Democrat (35%)
9. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (29%)
10. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR – Democrat (24%)
11. Phillips, Howard – Constitution (24%)
12. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. – Democrat (17%)
13. Socialist Candidate (16%)
14. Green Party Candidate (14%)
15. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (14%)
16. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL – Democrat (9%)

(Link via Tung Yin)
No surprise at the top, although I’d have thought it was closer to 90%. Can it really be that I agree with John Kerry more often than not? I mean, I know Kerry’s been all over the map on a number of issues, but I’ve been listening to Kerry for years (particularly when I was in school in Massachusetts for seven years), and I can’t ever remember him saying anything I agreed with, whereas I can think of several issues on which I’ve agreed with Lieberman, from war to capital gains tax cuts. It’s also interesting to note that for all his “electability” talk, Clark is even further away from my side of the political spectrum than Dean is, which I take as a sign that unlike Dean, Clark hasn’t been thinking seriously about politics long enough to dissent from his party’s line on anything.

Union Don’ts

So, the Player’s Union has (for now) killed the Red Sox’ deal for A-Rod because they refuse to let a player renegotiate his contract for less money than he signed for. There’s apparently a rule in the Collective Bargaining Agreement on this (David Pinto has more; start here and scroll down).
Leaving aside the language of the rule, I think the Players’ Union’s position is stupid and bad for the players. First, if the goal of the union is to get big contracts for the players, this is an incredibly stupid way to go about it. Look at this from the perspective of the Rangers: one of the biggest fears owners have in signing big contracts is that the team’s needs will change and they won’t ever be able to get rid of the guy. By telling the Rangers they can’t trade A-Rod if the deal is contingent on a restructuring he himself accepts, you are forcing them to keep stewing in their own juices with a player they’d rather trade, and all because Tom Hicks signed A-Rod to a big contract. Think: what effect will this have on Hicks’ willingness, or the willingness of other owners, to sign such megabucks deals in the future?
If I’m the union, I want to do everything I can to make teams think of top-of-the-market free agent contracts as the thing to have. Every team wishes they’d signed Barry Bonds or Greg Maddux in 1993, or Reggie in 1977.
A-Rod is — other than the aging Bonds — the best player in baseball today. He just won an MVP Award; the year before, he set the all-time single-season home run record for a shortstop. He’s stayed healthy, busted his butt for the Rangers and done everything you could ask him to. And yet, as things stand today, most teams are thanking their lucky stars they didn’t sign A-Rod; the owners think of his contract as a disaster for the Rangers. The Boston deal could change that, and help show that a player with the game’s biggest price tag can be part of a positive story; keeping Rodriguez bolted in place will just underline the folly of the contract, and deepen the resolve of individual owners – even without collusion – never to give anybody that kind of money again. Why on earth would the union want to do that?
Joe Sheehan argues that critics of the union’s position are using a double standard:

There’s a reason why Tom Hicks and John Henry have the net worths that they do, and I’d imagine that both would laugh you out of the room if you ever suggested that there were touchy-feely reasons for leaving forty million bucks on the table. Why they get to be businessmen, while Alex Rodriguez gets held to a different standard, passes understanding.

Gene Orza from the Players Union makes a similar point in an email to David Pinto:

Why should A-Rod be held to a different standard then the owners with whom he’s negotiating? He’s being asked to forfeit something like 50 million dollars; you think Tom Hicks and John Henry got to where they are today by walking away from that kind of money?
A-Rod shouldn’t be allowed to tear up his contract in the same way that Tom Hicks shouldn’t be allowed to.

These guys are the ones with a double standard. Isn’t Hicks allowed to tear up the contract if A-Rod holds out for more money? Is Orza really saying that if a player wants to renegotiate — or just wants to sign a long-term deal before his current contract is up — the owners have to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t tear up the contract and give you more money, come back when you’ve played out the end of the deal”? If that’s the rule, it’s news to me. In fact, owners do this every day. A-Rod just wants the same rights that Tom Hicks has: the right to put more of his own money on the table if that’s what it takes to win. Shame on the union for telling him otherwise.

Gibson and Alexander

This is a column I started three years ago, and just recently wrapped up.
Gibson and Alexander, Alexander and Gibson. Let’s hit the books and take a look back . . .
Who was a better pitcher � who did more to help his teams win � Pack Robert “Bob” Gibson, or Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander? In the popular imagination, the answer is easy. Gibson was voted to the All-Century team. Lefty Grove, Christy Mathewson and Alexander were the only three 20th Century pitchers to win 300 games and win more than 64% of their decisions (Roger Clemens has since joined them); in the balloting, Gibson (with 251 career wins and a .591 career winning percentage) drew more votes than all three combined. It�s not just the public at large; when the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) named its top 100 players of the century, Gibson was 17th, Alexander 25th. What got me thinking particularly about the comparison between the two was Sports Illustrated; SI�s state-by-state list of the top athletes of the 20th Century placed Gibson directly above Alexander among athletes from Nebraska.
Besides both being from Nebraska, both men were late bloomers; Gibson arrived in the majors at age 23, but struggled with his control and didn’t have his first good year until age 26, and didn�t really blossom until they expanded the strike zone the following year. Alexander didn’t even enter professional baseball until age 22 (in 1909) and had his career set back when he was nearly killed after being struck in the head by a thrown ball while running the bases in July of 1909. When he did arrive in the majors two years later he immediately led the league in wins and set a rookie strikeout record that lasted 73 years.
Stylistically, they were complete opposites. Gibson was a classic power pitcher, with a high leg kick and over-the-top delivery; his favorite pitches were High and Inside, Higher and Further Inside, and Right Down Your Throat. Alexander was a sidearmer who threw so many tailing sinkers that he was known as “Old Low and Away.”
Incidentally, it was probably the sidearm delivery that allowed both Alexander and Walter Johnson to throw so many more innings than their contemporaries. Many pitchers, like Christy Mathewson, threw straight overhand by the early 1900s; Alexander and Johnson were among the exceptions. (Johnson once complained that his shoulder hurt just watching Smokey Joe Wood�s overhand delivery).
There are more than a few reasons to narrow the statistical gap between the two; but as I discuss below, I can’t shake the feeling that Gibson’s higher standing is mostly a matter of good press notices. But Alexander was the better pitcher.
Let’s look at the record:

Continue reading Gibson and Alexander

Um, We Got Him, Too

Aaron Gleeman has the rundown on why Mike Cameron should hit a little better at Shea than he did at Safeco, where he had just horrendous home/road splits. I have mixed feelings about the Cameron move, since I generally believe in the notion that a rebuilding team should focus its energies on rebuilding, and signing a 31-year-old outfielder whose primary asset is his legs seems a little too Vince Coleman-ish to me. Then again, like Matsui (at least by reputation), Cameron is a spectacular defensive player and not terribly overpriced; this is more like the acquisition of Cliff Floyd than like the catastrophic acquisitions of Mo Vaughn and Tom Glavine. He’ll definitely help in the short run, and in particular the Cameron/Matsui/Reyes combination up the middle should do wonders for the Mets’ pitching staff. On the downside, Cameron’s low batting average and high strikeouts will make him a prime target for the boo birds when the team inevitably slides well below .500.
Also of note: Cameron’s steals dropped off to 17 last year from 34 and 31 the prior two years, and steals are something that usually doesn’t come back. Despite their speed, neither Cameron nor Matsui should be expected to run much. But the team will look far different on the basepaths than in the era of Olerud, Ventura, Zeile, and Vaughn.
Further on the downside is this: Cameron’s comps at baseball-reference.com are as follows:

Similar Batters through Age 30
Ruppert Jones (946)
Dave Henderson (939)
Tom Tresh (938)
Tommie Agee (936)
Cory Snyder (934)
Dwayne Murphy (930)
Johnny Briggs (929)
Darrell Evans (928)
Larry Hisle (926)
Ray Lankford (921)

This list is worrisomely similar to the one I noted at the time for Matt Lawton when he arrived in NY; everyone on the list but Evans (who’s not really a similar player) and Lankford was washed up or close to it by age 31.
I’m much more opposed to the Mets’ rumored interest in Brian Jordan, who’s exactly the type of player that got them where they are today, and who would seal off the outfield; I’d much rather start the season with an opening to audition young players alongside Cameron and Floyd than with a set-in-stone veteran lineup.
Or, of course, Vladimir Guerrero; the great ones, when still young, are always worth it. If the Mets signed Guerrero, it would overnight begin to make sense to gear up to win now.

From The Department of, “They Never Learn”

Hey, Phillies phans: if you liked Jose Mesa and Ricky Bottalico, you’ll love Roberto Hernandez! This about says it all:

Hernandez, 39, will serve as a middle innings reliever with the Phillies. With Atlanta last season, Hernandez went 5-3 with a 4.35 ERA in 66 games. He allowed 104 base runners in 60 innings, while striking out 45.

(On the upside, at least they’re only giving him a 1-year, $750,000 deal, so maybe Ed Wade has learned a little something).

Carl Everett?

I mean . . . Carl Everett?
Then again, since Major League Baseball owns the Expos, I guess they figure they can recapture most of his salary in fines . . .
So, Guerrero is gone, to where yet we don’t know. Vazquez is gone. Even Michael Barrett is gone, to Oakland . . . the Expos still have a few young guys who can play some ball (Nick Johnson, Jose Vidro), but overall, this team is a disgrace. At least a contraction draft would have assured a fair distribution of the Expos’ players.
Last month, MLB.com asked the rhetorical question, “How much does Frank Robinson love managing?” I guess we’re going to find out.

BLOG/ Manning The Post

I’ve signed on as a contributor to The Command Post; you can see my first entry here. Given my already busy schedule, I don’t expect to be a regular contributor, least of all during times like this when the more regular contributors are posting breaking news at a frantic pace, but it made sense to get posting privileges over there for those times when I do see something noteworthy that hasn’t been posted, especially during the slower periods in what still promises to be a very long war against terrorism and the tyrannies that support it. It’s not a big part, but I’ll do my bit.

RELIGION: Sympathy for the Tyrant

Jason Steffens reminds us to pray for Saddam rather than exulting in his humilaition, which is a more Christian impulse than I’ve been able to muster . . . it’s very good advice, although I’d point out two things:
1. Saddam’s abject humiliation may be a good thing even for Saddam, and is certainly a good thing for the rest of us, because it presents the only practical hope for triggering some remorse on his part. Yes, we believe that the Lord can soften the hearts of the worst sinners, but our faith also tells us not to rely too heavily on miraculous intervention. I’ve always thought that the most important moment in law enforcement — and this applies as well to international affairs — is the point at which either (a) the defendant finally admits that he did what he’s accused of, it was wrong and he’s rightly punished for it, or failing that (b) the point at which society makes him stand and accept that judgment. Saddam needs to be brought to that point and broken of his defiance, and abject humiliation is a good way to do it.
2. This is a different point, since it relates less to Saddam’s humiliation than to the appearance of the same, but of course we need to publicly humble Saddam not only as vindication and relief to his former subjects but as an object lesson to other dictators and tyrants. Taking joy in that lesson is, as well, a positive good.
UPDATE: These guys would agree.

Atta-Nidal-Saddam Link

Looks like that Telegraph report is getting lots of attention in the blogosphere and even some attention in the mainstream media. I’m still skeptical, but this is too important a story to let pass without investigating it thoroughly.
UPDATE 12/18: More on this to come, but Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have done some digging and think the memo is probably, as suspected, some sort of forgery. Their evidence isn’t ironclad, particularly since they haven’t seen the document or investigated its provenance, but they cite FBI records showing that Atta’s movements are mostly accounted for in the spring and summer of 2001 – making it unlikely, though not impossible, that he could have slipped off to Baghdad for three days – and they note that the Telegraph reporter simply says he got it from “a ‘senior’ member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was ‘genuine,'” and the Iraqi National Congress thinks the document is bunk.
Good leg work on this by Isikoff and Hosenball; this story needed to be checked out, and it looks like they scooped everyone else in doing so. Stay tuned to see if there’s anything else to this story.

KazMat’s Record

This Baseball Prospectus analysis from two years ago is still the only thing I’ve seen trying to give a systematic review of significant Japanese hitters and how their numbers would translate in the U.S. Clay Davenport estimates Kazuo Matsui’s 1997-2001 numbers as averaging out to .283/.543/.374 with 41 homers, 79 walks, and 119 strikeouts (interestingly, KazMat doesn’t steal bases despite a reputation for blinding speed).
Davenport’s translations seem to overproject Ichiro and Hideki Matsui, specifically their home run power (Tsuyoshi Shinjo comes in closer to his Japanese numbers). I’d expect the same from the new Matsui – maybe a .280 hitter with 20 homers instead of 40, especially at Shea.