The 2009 Johnny-Bingo Awards

The suspense is over. It is time for the 2009 Johnny-Bingo Awards, given annually to the Best Books Read by Yours Truly this year.

(Go here for last year’s awards)

The award is named for the first book I remember calling my favorite – something about two boys, a dog, and a bank robber. Or maybe it was two bank robbers, a boy and a dog. Or maybe two dogs…anyway, the point is that I am the judge, jury and executioner for this, the last major literary prize handed out this year.

Okay, maybe it’s not such a major prize. But given the way the other literary prizes have been operating this year, I think I have a chance to pass them in prestige.

Take the Nobel Prize in Literature (please). This year the Nobel folks took a lot of heat for their selection of President Barack Obama for the Peace Prize. But that head-scratcher obscured the fact that the Nobel Prize in Literature went to Herta Muller, a Romanian writer so obscure that the response even in Romania seemed to be “Yay!!! Um…who?”

The Nobel Lit folks have made it clear that they despise American literature and are determined to give Nobels out to every obscure novelist on earth before the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, or Joyce Carol Oates grace their stage. The National Book Award on the other hand is, you know, the National book award. For Americans. It states quite clearly in their bylaws that the nominees be American.

Well, here are the nominees for this year’s National Book Award in fiction:

- Colum McCann, an Irishman born in Dublin, currently residing in New York.
- Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian who moved to America in 1992.
- Marcel Theroux, son of the American writer Paul Theroux, who was born in Uganda and now lives in London.
- Daniyal Mueenuddin, who grew up in Pakistan and Wisconsin, lives in the southern Punjab, and is currently spending a year in London.
- Jayne Anne Phillips, born in West Virginia and now living in New Jersey.

Can I get a “USA! USA!” chant?

The J-B Rules
I’m not as sophisticated as those other folks. I don’t read obscure Romanian novelists, I’ve never heard of Daniyal Mueenuddin, and am frequently seen with a paperbook thriller in my hand. I’m also ashamed to admit that most of the books I read are written by (gasp!) Americans – and the worst kind of Americans, the ones that are born here, live here, and write about here. Insular bastards. (Maybe I should call these the Johnny-Jingo Awards. The Bonny-Jingo Awards?)

The Johnny-Bingo Award(s) have one judge – me – and one rule: all eligible books must have been finished by me in 2009. As I said last year, it could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before the calendar turns, it could be a winner.

Let’s look at our finalists:

Best New Crime Novelist
Famed restaurant journalist Peter Romeo was surprised – maybe even embarrassed - to hear I had never read Dennis Lehane or George Pelecanos and pressed copies of their novels on me. I also read the newcomers Josh Bazell and Stieg Larson and tried out Stuart Woods for the first time. The first three get the coveted Keatang recommendations but we can only have one winner in the category and it is…Dennis Lehane! (please hold your applause till all the winners have been announced)

It was a tough race and I suspect that Mr. Pelecanos and I will be spending a lot more time together. But if you like your crime novel heroes hard-boiled, wise-crackin’, and existentially dark, Lehane is your guy. Be prepared though – the capacity for evil in his bad guys, not to mention his good guys, will make you weep for humanity.

Best History Book about Post-War America
I read a lot of history but they tend to cover that short period between 500 B.C. and 1945. I’m less interested, for reasons I can’t defend, in books about the post-war period. But this year I took two plunges into the 60’s (An Unfinished Life: John Kennedy 1917-1963 and Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965) and one into the 00’s (Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan).

One thing about history books about the 1960’s…there is a lot of sex! JFK makes Tiger Woods look like the Dali Lama. And MLK – well, this is a worshipful book about the Reverend but there are transcripts from his hotel room romps that made me blush. You don’t see this in books about the Founders. Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton both got around but were fortunate enough to do so before tape recording and the FBI.

Pillar of Fire is the greater book of the three and destined for a long shelf life. But I too often got lost in the huge cast of characters and couldn’t find my way out. The book assumes knowledge of racial politics of the period that I don’t have. Horse Soldiers is a terrific story and I heartily recommend it – especially if like me you are sick and tired of the media’s treatment of America’s soldiers as either villains or victims. This is a story of true American heroes. But the writing is a little bit hokey.

Unfinished Life gets the nod. Biographer Robert Dallek doesn’t shy away from the glamorous (and sordid) stories about the Kennedys, but at its heart it’s a study of the Cold War at its peak, and the important role JFK played in it.

Best Book in an Unclassifiable Category
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is Harry Potter meets Less Than Zero meets The Narnia Chronicles. If that sounds like something you might like, you will.

Christopher Moore’s Fool comes with the following warning:

This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, spit infinitives, and the odd wank. If that sort of thing bothers you, then gentle reader pass by, for we only endeavor to entertain, not to offend. That said, if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened onto the perfect story!

I enjoyed Fool, but the nod here goes to The Magicians.

Best Big Ideas Book
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb is one of those books whose big idea – that human history is shaped more by huge unforeseen events rather than occurring in a predictable flow – is one that I totally bought, even if I bickered with Taleb in the margins along the way.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan is one of those books whose big idea – that large-scale modern food production does more bad than good – is one that I totally disagreed with, even though I enjoyed nearly every page of the book.

Nod to Taleb, since his ideas, unlike Pollan’s, are unlikely to lead to global starvation, not to mention federal regulations telling me to eat my locally-grown organic spinach.

Best Book of the Year
And the winner of the Johnny-Bingo Award goes to…none of the above! Scanning over my book log for the year, I keep coming back to Freedomland, a 1998 novel by Richard Price.

Price is one of those writers whose every sentence is so damned good, you give up any hopes of writing a novel yourself. It’s not just the quality of the prose though; underneath that graceful prose is knowledge born of hard-earned reporting. But it’s not just knowledge, gracefully presented. There is wisdom in Price’s work.

The folks who give out Nobel Literature prizes claim American novelists are insular. Freedomland is proof they are wrong.

Congratulations to Mr. Price, who is not only the 2009 Johnny-Bingo Award winner, but the most underrated American novelist working today.

Liars & Tigers & Bears

Moments ago, I walked by the desk of a colleague, Casey Clark. Casey is a remarkable man – a video golf instructor, a juggler of home repair tools and the organizer of the only NFL Elimination Pool that provides email pool updates peppered with Shakespearean quotes.

Casey and I occasionally talk golf – he’s a real golfer and I’m a hacker – and as is my wont I popped into his office, picked up his putter, and began rolling putts across the carpet.

“Case,” I said, “We haven’t talked about Tiger yet. Do we have anything to add to this subject that hasn’t already been covered?”

“You know,” he said, leaning back, “I’ve been thinking of Kathy Whitworth.”

I stopped mid-putt. Casey is a man of great erudition – the man uses quotes from Macbeth to tweak someone who picked the Steelers in an Elimination Pool for crying loud – so I was surprised he brought up a woman I presumed was one of Tiger’s Back Nine.

“Is that the one from California?” I asked.

“No, no, no. Kathy Whitworth has the record for Tour victories, with 88. I assume she had reconciled herself to the fact that her record would fall to Tiger, but now? Who knows? Maybe the old girl will keep her record.”

Among other things, Mr. Clark is the former editor of Golf for Women magazine, so he knew whereof he spoke. Kathy Whitworth has the record for tour victories, albeit of the LPGA variety. Sam Snead is first on the men’s list with 82. Jack Nicklaus has 73 and Tiger has 71.

Of course, the record most golf fans know about is 18 – the number of majors won by Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear. Can Tiger catch Kathy, Jack, and Sam?

I’m not as classy as Casey, so I mused that Tiger has just, cold turkey, given up the two things that had seemingly taken up nearly all his waking hours and provided most of his joy: golf (voluntarily) and sex (involuntarily). I’m not sure if this will save his marriage, but it definitely won’t help his chances of catching the Golden Bear. Let’s go to the stats.

Numbers Game
This is Freetime, and when Freetime talks sports, it talks numbers. And here are some numbers.

Tiger just completed his age 34-season with 14 majors. Jack, at the same age, had 12.

But Jack had a big year at age 35, winning the Masters and the PGA in 1975. After that, age seems to have caught up and the wins came much more slowly. Over the next four years, his age 36-39 years, he won only one major, the 1978 British Open. He then had a huge 1980, his age 40-season, winning the U.S. Open and the PGA. It appeared he would never win another major until his stunning Masters win in 1986, at age 46. 18 was the new standard.

As for Tiger, he is coming off his first Major-less year since his age 29-season. He is still, clearly, the best player in golf, and had a remarkable season coming off knee surgery. But to be shut out in your age 34 season while chasing Jack is costly. If he is shut out again in 2010 - either due to self-imposed exile, distracted play, or the sheer difficulty of winning Majors - he and Jack will be tied at 14 at age 35. And who knows what the future will hold?

It should be noted that winning Majors after age 35 has proven very difficult. Tom Watson won 8 Majors, including 5 from 1980 to 1983 - but at age 33 he was done. Arnold Palmer, after a similarly torrid run from 1960-63, won the Masters at age 34 and never won again.

Tiger has lost a lot since Thanksgiving. His reputation, some sponsorship dollars, and possibly his marriage. What we won’t know for several years is whether or not he lost the chance to catch the Golden Bear, and thus the opportunity to be known as the Greatest Golfer Ever.

Or as Casey said, quoting the Bard, "Oh judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason!"

Bill Blinks at Peyton's Place

Most commentators are drawing the wrong lesson from Bill Belichick’s decision to go for it on 4th and 1 against the Colts. They think it was about Belichick. In fact, it was all about Peyton Manning.

As I argued last year, Manning-Brady is the greatest individual rivalry in team sports history. At first, it followed the usual Stats Monster vs. Mr. Clutch debate; Manning put up the monster statistics and Brady won the Super Bowls with game-winning drives. In this regard, it was similar to the other great individual rivalries: Wilt vs. Russell, Marino vs. Montana, ARod vs. Jeter**.

* This is where Babe Ruth and Wayne Gretzky stand alone. They were Stats Monsters of the highest order and ran out of fingers to put rings on.

Then two things happened. One, Manning won a title. That’s not unusual. Critics of great athletes in team sports who claim certain guys lack the magical something required to win a championship are often proven wrong (see: Rodriguez, Alex, 2009). But then something truly unusual happened: Tom Brady became a Stats Monster in 2007, putting up single-season numbers that rivaled Manning’s 2004 season and Dan Marino’s 1984 season. This simply doesn’t happen.

Peyton Manning, meanwhile, has continued his morphing from mere Stats Monster to the most dangerous player in football, a guy who is on that rarified level of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – guys who aren’t simply better, smarter, and more prepared than everyone else – but the guy who has all of those things AND has the desire and the coolness to rip your heart out and then toss it carelessly aside.

The Sports Guy, a Brady acolyte who used to belong firmly to the “Manning is a mere Stats Monster” camp acknowledged this in his piece before Monday night’s game.

And Bill Belichick acknowledged it when he went for it on 4th down. The Colts may not have a running game. The Colts may have Reggie Wayne and a bunch of rookies at wide receiver. The Colts may have had Dallas Clark successfully limited by the Patriots’ linebacking corps.

But the Colts have Peyton Manning. And Bill Belichick did not want the ball in his hands under any circumstances.

Only a few years ago, many people still gave Brady the nod as the best QB in football, or at least tied with Manning. But now, most people seem to think of them as 1 and 1A. Indeed, a poll of Hall of Fame quarterbacks, announced during the broadcast, showed that they picked Manning over Brad by 13.5 to 2.5 (with one of Brady’s supporters being Terry Bradshaw, an above-average but not great quarterback who won 4 Super Bowls).

The only question now for Manning is this: will he go down as the greatest of all time?

The Iron Clipper

Which of the following Yankee Dynasties was the greatest ever?

+ The Ruth/Gehrig Yankees
+ The Joe DiMaggio Yankees
+ The Mantle/Berra Yankees
+ The Reggie/Billy Yankees
+ The Jeter/Mariano Yankees

(Yeah, it’s questionable including Reggie/Billy since 2 titles does not a Dynasty make. But I think that 2 consecutive titles qualifies, otherwise you couldn’t include the Big Red Machine. If you disagree, write your own damn blog.)

The answer is: None of the Above. At least according to David Schoenfield, who ranked all 27 Yankee champions on ESPN’s Page 2 this week.

Extrapolating a bit from the Page 2 list, the greatest Yankee dynasty was one that, quite frankly, I didn’t know existed: the Gehrig/DiMaggio Yankees, which won 4 consecutive World Series from 1936 to 1939.

(Yeah, it’s questionable including 1939, since Gehrig gave his famous “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech on April 30th after playing in only 8 games. But I’m going to count it since his spirit was on that team. If you disagree, write your own damn blog.)

Anyway, like most people I associate Gehrig with Ruth, and think of Joltin’ Joe as sort of being on his own. It surprised me to learn that the Iron Horse and the Yankee Clipper were teammates for nearly four seasons, from 1936 to 1939, and the Yankees won the World Series in every one of those years. And it further surprised me to see Page 2 rank those 4 teams as being 4 of the 8 greatest Yankee champs ever – mixed in with the ‘27 (#2), 98’ (#3), ’53 (#6), and ‘32 (#7).

As I mentioned in my Jeter piece a few weeks back, I think Gehrig is the most underrated of the Yankee greats, and this information only strengthens that opinion. He won 3 titles with Ruth and 3 titles with DiMaggio (not counting 39). He had 13 monster seasons in a row. Mix in the fact that he was born, raised, educated, played and died in New York City and I think it’s a shame that he is not accorded quite the status of Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle and Jeter.

As for me, the fact that I, as a card-carrying Yankee hater, can write a piece like this only moments after another title, just shows how mature I’ve become in my old age. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to re-watch the entire 2000 World Series on DVD, and try to figure out how my beloved Mets lost to the crappiest Yankee champ ever.

Update: The New York Times on Sunday wrote a similar piece as ESPN, ranking all 27 champions. And while they didn't agree on every point, there was definitely some cross-over, with the 1939 team ranked 2nd, and the other Gehrig/DiMaggio teams in the Top 9. Who knew?

Who Won Tuesday?

Political commentators– whether they are conservative or liberal; thoughtful or angry; intellectually honest or hopelessly partisan; penetratingly insightful or galactically stupid – and whether or not they ply their trade in television, print, or radio - have one thing in common. They analyze election results in terms of which political party won the day.

The read on Tuesday, generally, was that Republicans won the day. Gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, two states that voted decisively for Barack Obama in 2008, gave the GOP reason to celebrate. Democrats took what cheer they could from a Democratic victory in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, in which one of their own defeated a Conservative party candidate that was endorsed and supported by such GOP heavyweights as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.

But the real winners on Tuesday were the largest and quietest group of American voters. There will be no victory parties, no spinning to the press, no acceptance speeches and no oaths of office – but the winners on Tuesday were your friendly neighborhood moderates.

The Misunderstood Moderate
There are several problems with the way moderates are characterized by the political press.

First, we are not the same as Independents. Many moderates belong to political parties, but represent the more moderate wing of that party. Most Northeast Republicans, for example, are moderates, as are many Southeast Democrats.

Second, we do not hold moderate views on every subject. We tend to be moderate on some subjects such as abortion and interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists. But we can often be well to the left or the right of the major parties on other issues. For example, many Northeast Republicans favor gun control, while most Democrats with national ambitions make sure to get their picture taken shooting ducks.

And third, we care about politics. The independent voter, especially those that only vote during Presidential election years, tend to be apathetic about politics, and their votes tend to be more personality-driven than issue-driven. But the true moderate cares deeply about politics, is highly informed, and votes in off years…he just doesn’t vote for the same party all the time. National and local issues and even broader strategic goals play a part in which lever gets pulled.

Moderates Win! Moderates Win! The-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e Moderates Win!
I won’t go into detail on what happened Tuesday – there is plenty of good analysis in the mainstream media for that. But the bottom line – GOP victories in blue states and the hard right getting a bloody nose in upstate New York – were both good things for moderates, both cautionary tales to the partisan leaders of both parties that the center will hold. To Pelosi and Rush, we say a pox on both your houses.

Now if we can just do something about gerrymandering…

Vote for Pedro

A Surprisingly Short Baseball Post with only One Goofy Statistic

Many people believe that Sandy Koufax's run from 1963-1966 was the greatest in baseball's history. They are wrong.

As spectacular as he was (and I'm not saying he wasn't), Koufax played in an era when spectacular pitching performances were commonplace. He posted ERAs under 2.00 3 times, but from 1962 to 1972 the league leader in ERA was under 2.00 12 times, capped by Bob Gibson's record-setting 1.12. In addition to playing in a pitching-friendly era, Koufax played in a pitching-friendly park, Dodger Stadium.

On the other hand, let's look at the fellow starting for the Phillies tonight, and his run from 1997-2003. Pedro Martinez won 5 ERA titles, the same as Koufax, and posted some ridiculously low ERAs, including twice below 2.00. He didn't win as many games, but that was a product of his era, not his pitching. And he had a ridiculously high winning percentage, over .700 every year.

But here's the thing: he played in the homer-happy millenial era. He faced a DH, he faced guys juiced on steroids, he played in that dinky park in Boston.

During this 6-year period, the six highest single-season HR totals in the history of the game were recorded.

There's a statistic called Adjusted ERA+ that looks at a pitcher's ERA, and adjusts it for the league average and the parks he pitches in. By this measure, Pedro had 5 of the greatest 20 seasons since the First World War, including #1 all time, his 2000 season. Koufax's best season, 1966, is good for 34th best.

To put it in golf terms, Pedro shot a 63 playing Bethpage Black in U.S. Open conditions, while Koufax shot a 62 at the Hartford Open.

I've always been somewhat mystified by the awe people have for Sandy Koufax. Not only was he not quite as special during that 5-year period as people think, but that 5-year period represents nearly his entire career. He was in the majors for 8 mediocre seasons before that, during which he went 54-53 with an ERA over 4.

Pedro not only exceeds that period, he bookended with four strong seasons in Montreal, and a decent if injury-marred period with the Mets. And if the Phillies win the World Series, he'll be the first pitcher in history to win a Cy Young and a World Series in both leagues.

Maybe then he'll receive the awe deserves.

Bonus Fun Facts: If you don't feel like clicking the link above, I'll share with you some highlights. Besides Pedro, the other stud on the list is Walter Johnson with 4 seasons in the Top 30. Greg Maddux has the #2 and #3 seasons, but doesn't appear again. Kevin Brown made a surprise appearance. And in case you needed any more reasons to watch this kid, Zach Greinke cracked the Top 20 with his 09 season. This is all based on ignoring the pre-WWI seasons.

The Winter Classic

The Yankees equipment manager, Rob Cucuzza, is getting ready for the playoffs. He’s gathering up dozens of pairs of polypropylene* thermal underwear, cold weather batting gloves made with Aegis Micro Shield technologies, officially licensed New York Yankees earmuffs - and for the coaching staffs, fur-lined parkas.

*The polypropylene material used in some cold weather gear was developed by a Nobel Prize winner, back when Nobel Prize winners had to, you know, do something in order to win

Mr. Cucuzza has a collection of high-tech cold weather gear that would make Ernest Shackleton weep with envy. And he’s gonna need it because it’s frickin’ cold in New York. As Game 1 of the ALCS starts tonight, the temperature is forecast for 42 degrees, lower with the wind chill. And the baseball playoffs are still scheduled to go another two and a half weeks.

It wasn’t always this way. Babe Ruth and the 1927 Yankees won the World Series on October 8th. Mickey Mantle celebrated the 1956 title on October 10th, and that series went the distance. In 1978, Reggie Jackson had earned his Mr. October moniker by the 17th, and that included an ALCS. Heck, even Derek Jeter and the 1996 Yanks - the first Yankee team to win a championship in the Wild Card era - had wrapped things up by October 26th.

This year, the World Series won’t even start until October 28th. Even if it’s a sweep, it’s guaranteed to go until November. If it goes the distance, Game 7 will be on November 5th. If the Yankees win, they’ll have to combine the Canyon of Heroes parade with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. (They'll probably let Jeter ride in Santa's sleigh, and Yankee fans will truly believe he was more clutch than St. Nick)

Luckily, I’m not the kind of guy who just sits around and complains about the old days. I bring solutions. And I know how to fix baseball.

Cold Teams
But first, a little more complaining, because cold weather is only part of baseball’s problem. The other, more insidious problem, is that crappy teams keep winning the World Series. Think I’m kidding? Let’s look at recent history.

2006 Cardinals - LaRussa's team scratched out 83 wins during the regular season, had the lowest winning % of all 8 playoff teams, and a losing record in August and September.  But they got hot for a couple of weeks and were crowned World Champion.

2004 Red Sox - a very good team, but not good enough to win the AL East. In 2004 they became the 4th Wild Card team in 7 years to win the Series.

2003 Marlins - this time of year, all the "experts", from Steve Phillips to Mike Francesa to the nameless newspaper guys, give their "predictions" about who will win the World Series. The 03 Marlins are a constant reminder as to why these predictions are useless, as everyone had them rated 8 out of 8 of playoff contenders that year.

2000 Yankees - the worst regular season team of the Torre era. They won 87 games, lowest of all the playoff teams, and fewer than every Yankee team since. But the AL East wasn’t very good that year, and 87 wins was good enough for a divisional title. Most years, this team wouldn't have made the playoffs.

Fixing Baseball
How, you are wondering, will I kill both birds with one stone, hit both balls with one bat, field both grounders with one glove? Easy - end the regular season on the last Sunday of September, and add another Wild Card team. Here are the Rules of the FreeTime Playoff system:

1. No matter what, the season ends on the last Sunday in September. If the last Sunday is September 25, that is when the season ends. If the last Sunday is September 30, that is when the season ends. No nonsense like this year when regular season games were being played on October 4.
2. To accommodate rule 1, if necessary the season will start in late March, add more day/night doubleheaders, and/or take fewer days off.
3. All Northern teams will open up on the road. Send the Phillies and Mets down to Miami and Atlanta for the first week of the season.
4. Now, comes the radical part: add a Wild Card team and a round of playoffs to each league.
5. The regular season ends on the last Sunday in September; immediately following the two Wild Cards in each league will play a Mon-Wed 3-game series.
6. The winner of that series - road-weary and pitching-depleted - will immediately fly to the home city of the team with the best record in the league to start the Divisional Series on Thursday.
7. At this point, we essentially resume the same schedule we have now. But because our regular season has ended in September, we have guaranteed the playoffs will not extend into November.

The main benefits of this system should be obvious:

1. An extra Wild Card team keeps more cities interested in baseball late.
2. However, we have made it MUCH harder for a Wild Card to advance. The punishing schedule should eliminate most mediocre Wild Cards going all the way.
3. We have restored something resembling the old Pennant Race. The reward for League Best Record - getting to play a tired, depleted Wild Card team - has real value, rewards season long success, and makes the likelihood of the worthiest team winning higher.
4. The owners and television - Gods that must be given tribute - get their due. More playoff games, a greater likelihood of great teams advancing, and more meaningful September games for more teams.
5. The World Series is finished in October - as God and Kenesaw Mountain Landis intended.

Bob Costas and other "purists" will hate this. But remember something about the purists - they don't care whether or not your team is playing meaningful September games because they get to go to the action wherever it is.

And ignore everyone who complains about the power of television. Television wants the most fans possible to see the games - a desire that dovetails with the needs of the most fans, no? Costas might like afternoon playoff games, but the rest of us have to go to work.

And as for the Yankees and Angels, bundle up. It's cold out there.

The Stolting Five

Thorbjørn Jagland. Kaci Kullmann Five. Sissel Marie Rønbeck. Inger-Marie Ytterhorn. Ågot Valle.

Do you know who these people are? All of them are Norwegian politicians. All of them at one time or another was a member of Norway’s Parliament, the Stolting. Jagland was even Prime Minister of Norway for a couple years in the mid-90’s.

Oh, and they are also the folks responsible for selecting the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. (The other Nobel Prizes are selected by various committees in Sweden, but the Peace Prize is selected by a committee appointed by Norwegian Parliament.)

There is going to be a lot of debate about whether or not President Barack Obama should have received the Nobel Peace Prize. Two things that may get lost in the debate, but that I think of central importance, are:

* A prize that is decided by less than half a dozen Norway legislators should not get everyone so excited. Norway has roughly the population of Alabama, and its legislators aren’t exactly major players in world affairs. We shouldn’t care who wins, or who gets passed over, or what it all means. It doesn’t - well, it shouldn’t – mean anything.

* Jagland and his posse aren’t doing Obama any favors. As I’ve written before (see here and here), Barack Obama labors under oppressive expectations and this prize – which is based entirely on expectations and not at all on accomplishment – just adds to those expectations. It shouldn’t (see above), but it does.

Update (10/15): The Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang reported today that 3 of three of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama. "VG has spoken to a number of sources who confirmed the impression that a majority of the Nobel committee, at first, had not decided to give the peace prize to Barack Obama." VG said that Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, Kaci Kullmann Five, and Aagot Valle all had objections. Perhaps I should re-name this post "The Stolting Two."

The Nobel Peace Prize is only one of the Nobel prizes under fire. As I wrote back in December, the Nobel Prize for Literature becomes more ridiculous each year (add Herta Muller to a list that doesn’t include Nabokov, Joyce, or Updike). And the brilliant essayist Nassim Taleb is personally (if somewhat quixotically) lobbying the King of Sweden to cancel the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Econ­omic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, or as its usually mislabeled, the Nobel Prize in Economics.

So as you contemplate President Obama’s selection, you shouldn’t be angry or elated (depending on your worldview). Apathy is the appropriate response.

Update (10/13): Via Taranto (who also compared Norway's population to Alabama's), a blog post from George Friedman of Stratfor, who goes into greater detail about the Stolting Five, and what Obama's selection means about European politics. First, he says:

"Two things must be remembered about the Nobel Peace Prize. The first is that [Alfred] Nobel was never clear about his intentions for it. The second is his decision to have it awarded by politicians from — and we hope the Norwegians will accept our advance apologies — a marginal country relative to the international system. This is not meant as a criticism of Norway, a country we have enjoyed in the past, but the Norwegians sometimes have an idiosyncratic way of viewing the world."

He argues persuasively that Barack Obama may not end up becoming the President that Europe so fervently hopes for:

"The Norwegians awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the president of their dreams, not the president who is dealing with Iran and Afghanistan. Obama is not a free actor. He is trapped by the reality he has found himself in, and that reality will push him far away from the Norwegian fantasy. In the end, the United States is the United States — and that is Europe’s nightmare, because the United States is not obsessed with maintaining Europe’s comfortable prosperity. The United States cannot afford to be, and in the end, neither can President Obama, Nobel Peace Prize or not"

Saving the World

Iran's Nuclear Plant is Obama's First Great Test

When John F. Kennedy was running for President – and in his Senate career before that – he was primarily interested in foreign policy, and generally indifferent towards domestic policy.

There were several reasons for this.  It was partly, most biographers believe, to distinguish himself from his powerful father, who had a nearly infallible hand in domestic politics, but blundered spectacularly on the world stage, prepared to surrender Europe to Hitler and Stalin.  It was partly, perhaps, because he desired greatness, and Presidents don’t get monuments on the Mall for the passage of domestic legislation.  And it was partly because the subject of foreign policy intellectually engaged him in a way that, say, the economy did not. 

 But it was also because, as he himself put it to a reporter five days after his election, ”because the issue of war and peace is involved, and the survival of perhaps the planet, possibly our system."

Kennedy’s political career spanned the tensest moments of the Cold War, so I believe he was right to think that the most important job of the American President in that time was to avoid nuclear war. 

We are now nine months into the Obama Administration, and it’s been a shaky nine months on the world stage.  From the serious (last week’s surrender to Russia on the European missile defense) to the symbolic (Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber) to the silly (his gift to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a box set of American movies that are incompatible with British DVD players), we’ve learned that the world’s problems didn’t go away just because Dubya moved back to Midland. 

But it is Iran that is proving to be Obama’s true testing ground.  I believe that he has blown every single move so far – but that it is still within his power to make his mark as a statesman. 

His first blown move was the announcement, as a candidate, that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and Korea in his first year as President, without preconditions.  His rival for the nomination, who is now our Secretary of State, called this announcement "irresponsible and naïve”.  Most would agree. 

His next blunder was in the aftermath of the June 12 Iranian election.  Thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the clerical tyranny of Tehran, and hoped for some rhetorical support from the American President.  They got very little, very late. 

Now comes news that Iran is building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel. Since Iran has 300 years reserves of oil, as well as a crumbling economy, we can safely ignore Tehran's claims that the plant is for energy purposes.  Iran is obviously making a significant investment in the development of nuclear weapons.

Obama is determined to be the anti-Bush.  Bush went to war in Iraq over the belief that Iraq had WMDs - a belief shared by the intelligence services of France, England, and Germany, most of the former Senators in the Obama Administration, and the eponymous members of the Clinton/Gore Administration.   

Obama seems determined to act in completely the opposite way with Iran - to, as he put it in his inaugural speech, "extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

It should be obvious that Iran is unwilling to unclench its fist, and that Obama risks looking like those fools on the rooftop in the movie Independence Day, joyfully welcoming the alien ships to Los Angeles, right up the moment they got vaporized.

But I believe Obama is smart and flexible, and realizes it is now time to be tough - while still maintaining his commitment to diplomacy.  The key here is Russia and China, both of whom have been unwilling to look the other way as rogue nations like Iran do what they like, as long as they keep the oil pumping.  

If President Obama can somehow unite international opposition to Iran, and back that opposition with meaningful sanctions and the isolation of Iran, he can redeem his current feckless approach. And if he recognizes that his true job is nothing short of saving the world, rather than saving General Motors, he will earn the respect of the world.  

 

Chasing Tris Speaker

My Final Word on Derek Jeter

On August 16th, Derek Jeter had 3 hits. Two of them were significant as he tied and passed Luis Aparicio for the most hits by a shortstop. Three weeks later he passed Lou Gehrig on the all-time Yankee hits list.

Except for a few passing references, I haven’t spoken much about Derek Jeter on this site. But among my friends and email correspondents, I am well known as a boorish and boring critic of The Great Mr. November. His “records” got me thinking about his lifetime statistics, and made me realize my opinion of him is improving, even if I don’t shy away from my earlier criticisms.

My Jeter Obsession has gone through 3 phases:

Phase 1: The Big Three – 1996-1999
In the late 1990’s, baseball fans noticed the American League had 3 great young shortstops – Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Nomar Garciaparra. When Miguel Tejada hit 30 homers and drove in 115 runs in 2000, the group added a fourth member, three in the AL East. It was a bounty of greatness at a position that had seen few truly great hitters.

Jeter immediately became the biggest star. A-Rod was putting up better numbers (and was rumored to be a better fielder) but was stuck in the baseball backwater of Seattle. Nomar was in Boston, but the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry was nowhere near as hot in the late 90’s as it is now, and Nomar played in relative obscurity. Jeter, meanwhile, playing on four championship teams for the most famous sports franchise on earth, was a fixture on national television.

Plus, he was handsome, graceful, charming – a media and fan favorite. This combination launched him to national fame and convinced many baseball fans he was actually better than A-Rod and Nomar.

Which, naturally, was madness. Here are the seasonal averages of the Big 3 from 1996-1999:

Jeter: .325 BA, 17 HRs, 82 RBIs, 124 Rs, 17 SBs

A-Rod: .304 BA, 37 HRs, 113 RBIs, 117 Rs, 28 SBs

Nomar: .337 BA, 28 HRs, 96 RBIs, 110 Rs, 13 SBs

Three excellent players obviously. You can make a case, I suppose, that the late 90’s Jeter was as good as the others, but this would be a novel baseball argument. Nomar hit for more power and a higher average. A-Rod hit for far more power, stole a few more bases, and was no slouch in average. You’d need to be a Yankee fan or a lazy announcer to think Jeter was the best of the three.

Still, the young Jeter, through the 2001 season, was a genuinely great hitter, even if he wasn’t quite as great as his rivals.

Phase 2: Stealth Decline and Attack of the Stats Geeks, 2002 - 2008
Two things happened in the first decade of the 21st century – both largely unnoticed by Madison Avenue and the average fan, but of keen interest to close watchers of baseball statistics. First, Derek Jeter saw a steady decline in his hitting, and second, he became the whipping boy for a new breed of stats geeks called Sabermetricians.

Attack of the Sabermetricians
Let’s take the sabermetricians first. Armed with calculators, spreadsheets, and advanced degrees in statistical analysis, they began creating and popularizing a form of statistical analysis that went way beyond the traditional triple crown categories. They had been around a while – the patron saint Bill James published his first Baseball Abstract in 1977 and his disciple Rob Neyer had been writing a popular column on ESPN.com since 1996. But it was Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller Moneyball, about the Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane and his adoption of these new metrics, that introduced the broader baseball world to things like OPS, Win Shares, and Pythagorean Winning Percentage.

Jeter became an irresistible target for the Moneyball crowd. Stats geeks, more than anything else, seek to bring down the overrated and rise up the underrated. Jeter, through no fault of his own, was the most lavishly praised player in baseball.

Announcers gushed over every thing he did - he'd get more praise for hitting a ground ball out that moved a runner over than the next guy would get for doubling the runner home. He appeared in commercials with Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, two guys who were indisputably the best in the world in what they did*. Fans, even non-Yankee fans, seemed to truly believe that Jeter’s singles were more valuable than A-Rod’s homers.

* I used to imagine Albert Pujols or Vladimir Guererro, sitting at home after another .340/40 homer season, wondering why a guy who hit .310 with 14 homers was appearing in Gatorade commercials with Michael Jordan while they were stuck doing spots for local auto dealers.

But the other reason stats geeks wrote so damn much about Derek Jeter is that, well, he’s Derek Jeter. He was the most famous player on the most famous team in baseball. An article claiming he was a statistically horrible fielder was more likely find a larger audience than, say, an article on how Kevin Youkilis has a higher VORP than Carlos Delgado.

The Stealth Decline
But the more interesting thing, one that to this day I’m amazed so few people have noticed, is that he ceased to be a great hitter.

In 1999, Derek Jeter had a genuinely great season, based on traditional statistics, sabermetric statistics, or any other way you want to measure it. In the traditional Triple Crown categories he hit .349 with 24 homers and 102 RBIs. For the sabermetricians, he had an .OPS of .989 - higher than ARod and higher than that year's AL MVP, Ivan Rodriguez (though not nearly as high as Nomar, who had a spectacular season).

He was 25 years old, an age when most guys have yet to reach the peak of their powers. But it turns out Jeter had maxed out. He took a step back in 2000, and again in 2001, and continued to decline through the 2005 season. He bounced back a bit in 2006, and and remained a good player, even a very good one. But the promise of power shown in those 24 homers went away, he didn’t seriously threaten for another batting title, and his OPS showed a steady year-on-year decline. Quite simply, he was not a great hitter.

For a comparison, click here and here, and compare Jeter to Gehrig. Gehrig had his breakout season in 1927, at age 24. It was an eye-popping season – he hit .373 with 47 homers, 175 RBIs and an OPS of 1.240. Wow. But he hadn’t peaked – he followed it up with 11 more spectacular seasons – each one better than Jeter’s best season. He had a good season in 1938 at age 35, and then had his career cut short by disease.

Jeter, by contrast, spent his age 26 through 35 seasons as a good, but not great hitter, that never approached the across-the-board success of his age 25 season.

Despite the decline, announcers, sportswriters and fans breathlessly spoke of Jeter as if he was the same great hitter that burst on the scene in the late 90’s.

Phase 3: The Rethinking Things Era

As the 2005 season was closing, Derek Jeter was on his way to becoming the most overrated player in the history of American sports.

Imagine a gathering of the Baseball Gods, Hitters’ Division. There is Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez.

And in walks Derek Jeter. He alone would have no home run titles or batting titles. His best MVP performance was a distant 3rd – despite the luck of always playing on a playoff team. His lifetime average is a shade over .300. He led the league in Hits one year, but led in Plate Appearances that year too. He led the league in Runs Scored once, but playing leadoff for the Yankees tends to help that out.

In fact, there is only one individual statistic that Derek Jeter has consistently placed in the Top 10 in the league in: Salary. Since 2000, he has ranged from 3rd to 6th in that coveted individual category.

But…but…something else happened in the intervening years. A bunch of things, actually. Alex Rodriguez was outed as a steroid user. So was Tejada. Nomar Garciaparra had a series of injuries and became a backup. And Derek Jeter just kept getting hits. Lots of them. Every year.

Not as many as Ichiro. And on the all-time list he still trails such such non Hall of Famers as Al Oliver, Vada Pinson, Andre Dawson, and Harold Baines.

But, he’s only 35 and having his best season since 1999. He has more hits than Pete Rose - the all-time leader at 4,256 - had at the same age. I charted out Jeter’s shot at reaching the highest levels of the hit list. And here are my conclusions:

• Rose's record is in reach, but he'd need to average 175 hits a year till he's 44


• Joining Rose and Ty Cobb in the 4,000 hit club is more achievable - though it probably still means avoiding injury and playing well into his 40's


• Much more achievable and interesting, is 3,500. Only five players are on that list: Rose, Cobb, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, and Tris Speaker


• And finally, if he sticks around for 3,500, he only needs 15 more to pass Tris Speaker, and place him in the Top 5

Projecting the Captain's Legacy

All in all, Derek Jeter is the weakest hitter to ever be mentioned as one of the all-time greats. But if he pursues, catches, and passes Tris Speaker and breaks into the Top 5 hit list, I promise I will declare him to stand proudly with the elite.

If not - he will assume a proud place among the lesser Hall of Famers, with Tony Gwynn and Robin Yount, rather than Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. And I'll be the jerk in the corner pointing out that Yount had two MVPs and Gwynn had 8 batting titles, whereas Jeter needed Mariano and 23 other guys to get him his jewelry.

On Snobbery

Yeah, I've basically taken the summer off from blogging. But I am publishing elsewhere. Here's a piece about the difference between food snobs and chefs, published in the August 3 issue of Nation's Restaurant News:

Click here for article.

The Last Clooney Update

In February 08 George Clooney was at the height of his powers. Michael Clayton was up for 6 Oscars, including Best Picture, he himself was nominated for Best Actor, and Time Magazine ran a cover story calling him "The Last Movie Star". If "last", that would logically imply that he was the 'biggest', not to mention the 'only.'

I wrote a post suggesting that, perhaps, he's not a movie star at all. He is a good actor who appeared in some very good movies, but has neither the track record of iconic movies (think Bogey in Casablanca, African Queen, and The Maltese Falcon) nor a succesful enough box office record to merit that kind of praise.

It's been rough sledding since then. Leatherheads and Burn After Reading, combined, did less than $100 million at the box office, and were critical flops as well.

And in Hollywood, they seem to finally be catching on. A story last week in the LA Times said, about Will Ferrell:

He's in danger of becoming the comedy equivalent of George Clooney, someone who enjoys a great deal of goodwill but who isn't actually a real movie star…

Deficit-Shmeficit

A Coffee Klatsch Conversation


What follows is an email conversation among The Coffee Klatsch, a group I introduced to y’all in the last post. The participants are Yours Truly (Keatang), Cormie, JShin, and Stod.

I’ve lightly edited the transcript. The flow is occasionally awkward because some emails crossed each other and are not a direct reply to the one above. Also, I pick up the thread somewhat mid-stream - it started out as a discussion about possibly doing some group blogging, which led to a discussion about what topic we'd discuss, which led to the incredibly exciting subject of the federal deficit, which led to a bit of a free-for-all...

I hope you enjoy.


Cormie
Heck, let's just avoid politics, we hacked that stuff to death over the years. How about we all watch the the Elvis Costello interview with the Police on You Tube and start with, why does Sting so obviously hate Stuart?

Where does Elvis C. fit into the pantheon of great pop musicians?

Why is Mel Gibson having an eighth child with a new girlfriend?

Why do "Buffalo Wings" confuse Californians?

Why do parents fart so freely around their children?

Rush Limbaugh and drug addiction? (now here might be where both sides could opine, and keep it funny).

So many topics, so little time.

Keatang
Here's a potential topic, though one that may get a little outside our comfort zone. Actually, no, we'd all end up sounding like idiots. But still, I'm curious...

I've always been a deficit-shmeficit guy. Meaning: when others are worrying their little heads about the size of the federal deficit, I always say, deficit-shmeficit. I don't base this on any sort of rational understanding of how the federal debt impacts the economy generally, but more because, in my life as a voter we've gone from Ross Perot's the-sky-is-falling alarmism to Bush & Gore debating how to spend the surplus to the Age of Obama in which, according to one thing I read, we will triple the size of the Bush deficit.

And that's assuming some fairly optimistic things about the economy over the next few years. And it assumes that the spending doesn't even get worse with Democrats in complete and total control (an assumption that, in my opinion, would require that you have the IQ of trout).

Suddenly I'm not so deficit-shmeficit. I'm more like, holy spit, by the end of Obama's second term we are going to be so broke that Joe Biden will be in the White House kitchen preparing grilled cheese and PB&Js for state dinners.

JShin, meanwhile, has brought up the deficit more than once through the Bush years as a source of worry. And I'm guessing now that it’s his guy in office, he's more like, deficit-shmeficit...

So: are me and JShin both total hypocrites, changing our mind to suit our politics? Or our respective volte-faces somewhat defensible (mine because a trillion dollar deficit is one thing and a 3 trillion dollar deficit is another...and Shin's because who cares what the deficit is if Obama gets everything else right).

Thoughts?

JShin
I'm more deficit-shmeficit than I used to be, truth be told, but not because of Obama or Bush, but more because I want to see some money flowing right friggin now, if you know what I'm saying. I also don't understand the economy for a minute. Christ, like you said, we went from an economy where we had a ridiculous surplus just a few years after we thought we'd never dig out, and then not much later we're looking at the worst financial crisis in almost a century. Seriously, what makes sense? The economy is Orwellian to me. Up is down. Profit is loss. Greed is good. All that kind of carp.

And again, I think it does often come down to the color of the uniform. What can Cheney say about Obama's handling of the deficit now? Sure, he can rip him a new one for not aggressively interrogating alleged terrorists because it's something different than the way he did it, but Cheney was definitely a deficit-shmeficit guy, so he's got to walk the tightrope there.

The Democrats will surely spend, but they got a good head start going with the last eight years. For a conservative administration, they threw the crap around like they were Democrats. Dang. I should have loved Bush, but I just couldn't.

Cormie
Politics is still a tough topic for me in the klatsch. Back in the year 2000 there were at least 3 topics that we didn't discuss in our emails; deficits (didn't have 'em), torture (didn't do that), and photographing body bags at airports (nothing to see).

To begin any political discussion without starting with the ill cast of Bush's shadow over our lives in the present tense, is a willful act of amnesia, self delusion, or an abstract gift to evil men who should be in jail. If our national dialogue is still dishonest enough to allow Cheney to take credit for Sept 12th onward, while disavowing equal stewardship of Sept 11th, our fears so primal that we cannot stomach a terrorist in a maximum security prison on US soil; then why have dialogue at all? I'm a trout and you're all eagles. We've got the sky to talk about, why dwell in the muck?

Shin
Whoa, throwing down the friggin gauntlet. Looks like we have our pot-stirrer. Our Jane Curtin. Well, allright, Corms, you incorrigible slut, actually I don't have a good rebuttal. Cheney makes me want to vomit, and I may have mentioned pity for Bush, but I also pity some people that I really really can't stand and have done hurt to me or my children. So it's not like I've forgiven the btard or something....

Keatang
Okay then, no politics…how about that new Green Day album?

Stod
That's political, isn't it? Or at least, they swear a lot on it. One of my son's teachers or a friend's parent objected to the album being played in public somewhere because of the language (shows you how clued in I am here). My son really, really liked their last album - probably one of the fundamental albums of his lifetime – but he said he doesn't really like what he's heard off the new one.

Anyway, we could debate profanity on music cds. Actually, I might as well confess: I rented a best of Britney Spears album from the library! I hope no one sees it on my desk, but I confess, I always liked the song "Oops I Did It Again" and figured ah, why not rip it. Now that I listen to it, though, maybe it's not as good as the first time I heard it while driving into Las Vegas.

Cormie
Green Day. Possibly the one discussion that would drive me to talk politics. Here's what this trout thinks.

To talk about deficit concerns is naval gazing. We spend freely to assuage our fears, on bombs and prisons and non-stop rendition flights, but we have pangs of concern when it's saving jobs, homes or health care. We can talk all we want, but we are never more than one attack away from falling off the fiscal wagon. We need to manage our fear, insist that our politicians not fear monger, and learn to live in the world--not exempt from it.

Also. Spending 'got worse' with Republicans in complete control. I think it's fair to assume that this trajectory would've continued under a Republican administration. (It's not like Arnold has done much to change the trajectory that got a democrat recalled).We spend because we fear. We Americans like to privatize wealth and keep risks social. This cognitive dissonance is something we seem to be comfortable with, at least until China stops buying our currency.

We're selfish--money to ourselves good, money to others bad. We may change our minds when the next swine flu becomes a true pandemic and the 'consumer choice' of health care becomes a social issue as we find ourselves surrounded by 30 million uninsured carriers.

I have more, but need to get back to work.

Swing away, Keatang. I'm throwing high and inside.
Cormie McTrout

Keatang
Sorry for the delay in response - I took a sick day today. Spent the morning watching West Wing re-runs. Now there was a noble Democratic President in action - if only those evil Republicans would get out of his way. (In this morning's episodes, President Bartlett was trying to broker a Mid-East peace agreement, but House Republicans wouldn't support it unless he supported a tax credit. Jerks. Can't they see he's trying to save the world?)

More importantly, sorry for the trout crack. I meant it as a throw-off and not to offend. Let me state it more soberly: I believe ANY political party with control of the House, Senate, and White House will spend in an irresponsible manner. When the majorities are strong and filibuster-proof, that is more so. When there is a crisis, that is even more so. And yes, when it is the Democratic Party, look out. So to say deficits and spending concerns is navel gazing seems going too far. Surely there is a point where massive, unsupportable spending becomes dangerous.

Then again - maybe not. The Second World War was pricey and the United States economy seemed to rebound nicely after that. Deficits-shmeficits.

The bigger issue is this: are we allowed, in any way, to criticize any policy of the Obama Administration? Or are you saying that we should all just agree he's better than Bush and bless everything he does?

Two other notes: my wife told me last night that Billie Joe Armstrong said he's going to start giving more thought to how his lyrics affect his kids as they get older. And Stod: I hope you realize we're publishing this whole conversation on my blog. Britney Spears, huh?

Shin
Whoops, didn't realize we were already in blog world. I'll try to hold out on all my little "friggin's" and "carps" from here on.

Like I said, I'm a biiiig fan of Obama, but don't find any problem in having problems with his problems. I like and don't like the fact that pundits are always applauding his political savvy, always making the other guy stick his foot in his mouth first, and thus Obama smelling, well, unlike a foot. Not that I don't like the pundits saying that, but it makes me wary of Obama as a Machiavellian genius, who may be up to grabbing the reins that Cheney made more accessible to an American president. And I think he's been, for lack of a better expression, a bit limp-wristed around some of the current gay issues, most particularly gays in the military

Stod
You sick, too? I have a monster cold...so much writing to do but it's tough today. Two thoughts keep seeming very far apart. And now I've discovered that the Dodgers are playing the Cubs at Wrigley on the tele this afternoon! On right now. How nice it would be to make myself a hot toddy and just watch a ballgame. WGN is really destructive to my home work habits.

Another song I hesitate to admit that I like is "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. The video is a hoot. I guess I go for that pop vampy stuff from time to time.

I think the deficits or whatever you'd call them at this point are very definitely a concern for the future of this country. I feel like we're living in Britain during WWII, when the war basically destroyed their treasury and the Americans took a good grip of Winston's balls and told him that the British Empire was dead, long live the American Empire. Time to learn Mandarin!

Shin
I don't see why we can't go politics. We would need comments like Cormie’s “I'm a trout and you're eagles” one to liven up a boggy blog day. I found it offensive in the same way that I found some of Keatang’s “please stop poohpoohing on Bush” comments. They titillate, which is perky and bouncy, which is good for the audience.

I was and am a firm believer that what this country needed -- more than it needed Anita Ekberg or Sophia Loren -- was Obama in that seat instead of McCain or many others. I am constantly soothed by his language. I always felt like a foreigner (not in an American or anti-American or that kind of sense, just linguistically) listening to Bush and I always felt less secure, in just a scared human kind of way after hearing him speak. It seems that we were on the brink of disaster and Bush just hoped that the disaster would hold off until after the elections. I don't know that, it's purely conjecture, but he seemed so remote at the end of his era, that it made me want to scream.

I'm glad that Obama has called torture what it is and said we won't do it, I'm not so concerned about not seeing more torture photos, I'm dumfounded that he hasn't done more about things like gays in the military, I'm concerned about the deficit, I pray each day that the stimulus moves something in my direction, I feel like the world situation is as volatile as ever, but I'm glad he's up there representing me and my fellows.

I don't know jack about Green Day, and Britney Spears makes me want to turn and run.

Cormie
Navel gazing, or perhaps it’s analogous to the purchasing of indulgences in 1546. We behaved poorly for a number of years, spending on unnecessary war and turning a blind eye to the supplemental budget requests that made the hemorrhage of money, from public to private hands, so conveniently opaque. Perhaps now we sleep better spending a few precious moments wondering about the well being of our yet to be sired grandchildren. We must be good people if we worry about such things, mustn't we? Perhaps its analogous to acid rain and global warming, situations brought about by enormous aggregation of individual poor behavior--Hummers in the driveway, McMansions in the newly drained everglades.

It's navel gazing because the only action point to each of these three things solely resides in the personal. We can worry about the national deficit, but we will have no effect on it. All we can do is live within our proper sense of proportion and humility and render ourselves immune to the deficit's effects. The payoff is muted.

A frugal family who lives within their budget and sets aside the rainy day retirement money can expect to bear more than their fair share of the ARRA, subsidizing the fools and dreamers who bought NINJA loans to finance their dream vacations, subsidizing the loan professionals who fleeced the lambs then doubled down with default swap bets that the lambs would bleed, subsidizing stupidity.

But what options do we have? I'd rather place my money on the bet that will pay off with assimilated, educated Americans who drive ambulances, teach schools, and contribute to the subjunctive hope that is America, than spend my dollars building higher walls and deeper moats to keep the preterite masses at bay. I'm with Garrett Keizer, and wish to live in a world where disposable income does not require the blood of disposable people.

To me, Obama gets a pass for now. He's been handed the largest shit sandwich I've ever seen. Smaller men would be choking on it. I'll hold off on criticizing until he starts trying to serve up some of his own.

And yes, he's improvising. He doesn't know what to do. Tim Geitner has no clue. For that matter, why are bankers deciding how to fix the banks? It's like asking a surgeon how to fix a backache, "why, surgery of course!" Ask a chiropractor and no doubt a different answer would be offered. Quite frankly, I'd like to stop asking Yale and Harvard graduates their opinions on anything.

Don't worry about the trout. I liked the trout.

Keatang
Largest shit sandwich? Hardly. I’d put Washington, Lincoln, Johnson (Andrew), Hoover, FDR, and Nixon on the list of Presidents who got handed Carnegie Deli whoppers compared to Obama’s Subway footlong.

Three of those guys made it to the pantheon and three of them, well, not so much.

The three of them that made it to the pantheon may have also wished to live in a world that did not require the blood of disposable people, but it didn’t work out that way. FDR presided over a war that killed 50 million people around the world. Lincoln’s war killed 600,000 Americans. Washington, of course, was a peacetime President, but a wartime General with no Jeffersonian illusions about war and peace.

Obama’s a historic President at a historic time and I like the idea of debating if he’s making the right decisions. But I have no interest in playing the role of Roman centurion, shouting up to Obama “If you are the son of God, come down from the cross”. You want to give him a pass, we’ll give him a pass. After all (as he tells us in every press conference) it’s not his fault. (I have to add, though, that in all my Lincoln reading, I can’t recall Lincoln bringing up Buchanan at every turn…)

Next topic? Ah, but feel free to take last licks…

Shin
Just a quick rebuttal for Cormie, in spite of agreeing with your comments (FDR and Lincoln were dealing with Colossal Poo Whoppers. Corms mentioned the largest McTurdwich he'd "ever seen," so, in a sense, he is correct there, too.

Cormie
The tone-deaf nature of email has always made it a challenge, for me at least, to write politics. Perhaps I'm too shy about using the ASCII smiley face. My head was in deficits, not George bashing, and my opinion is that we are too easy on ourselves, too forgetful of how we got to where we are, and not willing to make hard choices about what needs to be given up when the belt needs be tightened.

Perhaps my last two years at an eco company have radicalized my vernacular and I'm more shrill than I realize. Perhaps it's why Malcolm Gladwell, the Sports Guy, and myself, all suggest staying away from politics.

As for shit sandwiches, I guess I could cast the net wider than my email's intent, my lifetime. When I look at a destabilized Pakistan, and the regional super-power Iraq, and the bellicose crackpot North Korea, I'd suggest that, if nukes were an ingredient in the sandwich, the closest sized shit sandwich was primitive (proto) man staring up at the K-T asteroid. And really, in regards to Obama, banks, Yale.....if our politics can't envision a world where our good fortune doesn't have a concomitant dedication to the health and well being of all peoples and planet, then to hell with both parties. We can find a better way, or else the burblings of a starving third world, choking on our fumes and learning to read in a madrassa, will find the way for us. :-)

The Coffee Klatsch

Way back in, oh, 1993 or so, my company, a San Francisco based magazine publisher, installed an email system. This brought a wonderful improvement to workplace communication – and a new way to gossip and b.s. with co-workers. It was the first truly valuable cyberslacking tool.

Soon, I and three other guys – Cormie, JShin & Stod - began an email conversation, one that that has continued to this day. Early on, we gave ourselves the not-particularly original name of The Coffee Klatsch, and it stuck. By the end of our collective time at this company, we were geographically scattered – to New York, Western Massachussets, San Francisco, and San Mateo, CA. Today, none of us work there. But the email conversation goes on.

(Like the Beatles, we had a fifth member in the early days – two of them, in fact. Snowman was the first, JPoth the second. A few guest players – Billy Prestons, if you will – joined in the occasional thread, but it was mostly the four of us.)

What did we talk about? Well, let’s see…

Baseball – Mets, Giants, and Red Sox; the usage and value of statistics; pre-season predictions; the morality of some kinds of cheating (steroids) vs. others (spitballs); and more

Football – Giants and 49ers mostly, with a bit of Raider love

Women – our co-workers, and in one memorable moment, Jennifer Aniston

Music – all over the board, from Townes Van Zandt to Steely Dan to Billy Joel to the San Jose Symphony

Fiction – a heavy emphasis on Cormac McCarthy, but with many many other authors from Thomas Pynchon to JK Rowling

History – a lot of Lincoln, a strong dose of John Adams, a dash of the Federal Road, and much more

Kids – we have 9 between us

Politics -

Ah, politics. The damn thing nearly cracked up over politics. Politics was always a core issue in the conversation, with our worldviews ranging from Far Left to Center Right. In the 90's, when the country's primary political argument was about the biological nature of that damned stain, we had a lot of fun with political conversation. But the Bush years brought a level of passion and acrimony to politics that hadn’t been seen in this country since the Vietnam War. And as our disagreements heightened over the overall Bush response to terrorism, well, things got tense, and we retreated to the sanctuary of sports and music.

But now it is the dawning of the Age of Obama, the man who promised us a post-partisan world. And I wondered if, perhaps, we could start talking politics again. So we started an email conversation that I thought I’d share with you.

But first, here are the four contributors (I wrote Stod's and my bio; JShin and Cormie wrote their own):

Keatang : Well, this is my blog, so maybe you know me already. Click here for a link to a post that I wrote on the anniversary of FreeTime which gives you an idea of who I am and what I write.

JShin: Cathy to Cormie's Patty, if you go back far enough to remember the Patty Duke Show, i.e., "one pair of matching bookends, different as night and day," ideologically fairly closely planted on the spectrum, but stylistically large lakes -- if not oceans -- apart. Good cop to Stod's crazy cop. I love these guys, but I also love to hate 'em, which I guess makes us good blog fodder.

Cormie: Born comfortable on the left coast, Cormie got angry in the mid 80s and never quite recovered. He left a middle middle finger dangling from a tree on the bank of the Yaquina river in the hopes that George W. Bush would someday take up rafting

Stod: Stod is a writer/editor with one foot firmly planted in the future (he writes about advanced technology from Silicon Valley) and one in the past (he does so in an office piled high with old newspapers). He believes Glenallen Hill is the most underrated outfielder of the 1990’s, and still blames Robbie Robertson for the breakup of The Band.

So anyway, in the next couple of day or so I’ll post the first Klatsch Convo on the exciting topic of: The Federal Deficit! Betcha can’t wait…

This Will Kill You

Some friends of mine have a new book out – and what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t shamelessly plug it?

Harvey Newquist (or as he’s known in print, HP) and Rich Maloof have just published This Will Kill You: A Guide to the Ways in Which We Go (MacMillan). Jim Shinnick, designer extraordinaire illustrated the book. I can’t improve upon the promotional copy:

No other book has ever peaked under the Grim Reaper's robe in such a straightforward and irreverent way. With a foreword by a physician at the Mayo Clinic , an afterword by a funeral director, lists of history’s most notable deaths, and a unique death rating system, everything you need to know about the ways in which we go are included in these pages.

I don’t know Mr. Maloof but can vouch for the wit and creativity of the other two. HP has published books on such diverse topics as space, the internet, guitar gods, and neurology. Jim is the finest designer I’ve worked with in twenty years of publishing (if you need good design work, check out his work here).

I suggested to them that they promote the book via an elaborate literary hoax – specifically, that they should fake their own deaths in ways featured in the book. But they don’t seem to be going for it.

Anyway, click here and get yourself a copy.

Update: I just bought my copy at Borders on Park and 57th and it was prominently featured in the 'Recent Releases' table as soon as you walk in.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Dave's - and all the other chains too

I wrote an article for the May 18th issue of Nation's Restaurant News.  I submitted it with the above title, but the editors changed it.  The rest of it is pretty much unchanged from what I submitted.

Anyway, click here if you're interested.  

This, That, and the Other

My last post was March 30th, which means for the first time since I started this thing in 2007 I've gone a whole month without posting. Sorry, but as Luther says to the parking garage attendant in 48 Hours, "I've been BUSY!!"*

* That line is not funny, creative, or even relevant to the plot; but the actor says it with such freaky vehemence it has become an oft-repeated crack among my friends.

Actually, I haven't been that much busier than usual, but I finally got talked into joining Facebook and Twitter and have wasted valuable time there that I should have spent in self-indulgent twaddle here.

I do have a piece coming out in the May 18th issue of Nation's Restaurant News, where I work in my non-FreeTime. I'll link to that in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, a few things I've been thinking about lately...

Divisional Mirrors

Has anybody else noticed that the AL East and the NL East are built exactly the same? Each division has:

• A New York team in a new stadium that buys up the most expensive free agents and crashes when the leaves turn (Mets and Yanks)
  
• A recently crowned World Champion from a city that was a big deal during the American Revolution (Phillies and Red Sox)
  
• An underpaid Florida team with lots of nice young talent and an apathetic fan base (Marlins and Rays)
  
• A crappy doormat team located near our nation’s capital (Nationals and Orioles)
  
• A team from a mid-size city that won multiple titles in the 90’s but has struggled recently (Braves and Blue Jays)
  

Okay, the last one is a bit of a reach, but the others are kind of interesting, no? Yeah, you're right, it's not that interesting. Let's try something else...

Cultural Observations: Towards a Theory of Snobbery

A few years back I read an article in the NY Times that got my attention. (I’ve googled and yahooed away for this thing but can’t find it) The basic idea was this: professional musicians are less snobby about music than music fans. Music fans get all hung up on genres and cool factors, whereas for musicians it’s all about the music. Supremely cool musicians are sometimes fans of supposedly square ones. Miles Davis dug Bing Crosby. Robbie Robertson and the Band saw genius in the perfectly crafted pop songs of Neil Diamond, whereas their own fans couldn’t see past the sequins and clunky lyrics (“I am a chair?”)

A friend of mine is a professional musician and I asked him if he agreed with this. Here is his response:

Musicians, at least the ones I know and work with, like stuff that is interesting regardless of niche. The folks I know in the Berkeley Symphony still rave about the Metallica collaboration a few years back, and the Zappa works in the 90s. My best gig two years back was playing with the Santa Rosa Symphony behind Beatlemania. The chills I got playing the car horn while 4 Beatle lookalikes sang Penny Lane in front of me. What a day.

One exception--none of us like gangsta rap. No artistry or musicality.

One surprise--classical musicians and jazz musicians will rave on and on about Primus

I see something similar in the restaurant business. Foodies are deeply snobby towards chain restaurants whereas actual culinary professionals are often impressed by the work of chains. They know, in a way that mere foodies never could, that rolling out a good-tasting, low-cost, consistent dish in hundreds or even thousands of locations takes impressive culinary ability.

More importantly, they focus on the food itself, and not the idea of what the food is supposed to represent.

Does this apply in other arts? I suspect so - critics and cinephiles may mock big-budget movies, but I wonder if people in the movie business understand that the talent of, say, James Cameron is rarer than the talent of Alexander Payne.

Literature is an exception. I suspect the museum arts like painting and sculpture are too, but am getting well outside my comfort level here.

I'm still working on this theory (hence the "Towards" in the title) but wanted to get the conversation started.

Reading Recommendations

• Portfolio magazine folded last week, two years and $100m after Conde Nast launched it. Portfolio had its moments, and one of those was this excellent piece by Michael Lewis about the end of Wall Street. It's worth printing out, getting a comfy seat, and reading.
• When Patrick O'Brian died a few years ago, devoted fans of his Aubrey/Maturin series (the basis for the Russell Crowe film Master and Commander) went into mourning. If you're one of those, I'd like to recommend James Nelson's "Revolution at Sea" trilogy. Yes, Nelson is a bit of a copycat, but he knows his seamanship, and since its the American revolution rather than the Napoleanic wars, it has the advantage of writing about people, places and battles I'm more aware of. O'Brian blurbed his first book, too.
• Also worth checking out is Christopher Buckley's blog on the Daily Beast. Buckley is the son of conservative icon William Buckley who shocked the conservative establishment with his endorsement of Obama. Anyway, his writing fills me with despair - I know I'll never be that good. But I read him anyway...

The Next Lines Flick

Like many males of my generation I have millions of movie lines in my head, many of them from flicks that starred SNL alumni. Animal House, Caddyshack, Fletch, Stripes, The Blues Brothers - my friends and I can spend hours together conversing in nothing but movie lines.

A handful of movies from the last decade have made it into this pantheon as well. The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, and pretty much the entire Will Ferrell catalogue.

There is a trailer out now for a movie called The Hangover.  The producers have either put every single funny moment in the trailer, or its going to be one of the funniest guy flicks ever made.

One reason to hope that the movie will live up to its trailer's promise: the trailer leaves open the mystery of what actually happened the night before. If the filmmakers deliver there, we may have a comedy classic on our hands.

March Madness: Heaven without the Stars

A while back I wrote a piece called Swimming is Boring in which I made the case that swimming was, well, boring. Sure, Michael Phelps was a huge star in the middle of an awesome accomplishment, but the actual sport – white guys swimming back and forth – was kind of boring.

Is it possible that the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is the opposite? The actual games are thrilling. Anybody who watched Nova-Pitt or Siena’s double overtime victory over Ohio State can attest to that. But the players – I’m sorry, scholar athletes – are, um, how do I put this? Let's just say you should enjoy them now, because if recent history is any guide, these guys won't be tearing up the NBA anytime soon.

This wasn’t always the case. For a long time the NCAA tournament was a showcase for future NBA legends, a place to see players on the verge of becoming the greatest athletes in the world.

MOP Tops

From 1955 to 1961 the winners of the Most Outstanding Player (MOP) of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament were:

1955: Bill Russell

1956: Hal Lear

1957: Wilt Chamberlain

1958: Elgin Baylor

1959: Jerry West

1960: Jerry Lucas

1961: Jerry Lucas

Pretty impressive, huh? Not only did all of them but Lear make the Hall of Fame, they were each honored in 1996 as being among the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history. Plus, while Jerry Lucas was winning MOPs the best player in college hoops was Oscar Robertson, who appeared in two Final Fours. That run was nearly equaled in 1979-1984:

1979: Magic Johnson

1980: Darrell Griffith

1981: Isiah Thomas

1982: James Worthy

1983: Hakeem Olajuwon

1984: Patrick Ewing

That's 5 more members of the NBA's 50 Greatest (and the 6th, Griffith, won NBA Rookie of the Year). That's not counting Indiana State's Larry Bird, who faced Magic Johnson in the 79 title game, or Clyde Drexler, Olajuwon's teammate at Houston. Oh, and the year Worthy won the MOP the title-winning shot was hit by his freshman teammate, kid named Jordan.

In the 30 years between 1955 and 1984, the MOP was won by a future Hall of Famer 15 times! (That's not counting 2-time MOP Bill Walton who won an NBA Finals MVP and was named to the NBA's Fifty Greatest - but isn't in the Hall of Fame).

Starless Nights at Today's Tourney

But don't look for today’s NBA superstars in a March Madness highlight film.

Lebron and Kobe are the monster stars of today’s NBA, but neither played college ball. Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal had distinguished college careers, but neither played in a Final Four.

Chris Paul made it to one Sweet 16. Kevin Garnett and Dwight Howard skipped college. Steve Nash won a first round game with Santa Clara, then jumped to the NBA. Chris Bosh spent a year at Georgia Tech then turned pro. Dirk Nowitzki and Yao Ming came from abroad.

Of today's big stars, only Dwyane Wade played in the Final Four. But Kansas whipped his Marquette team by 33 in the Semis, so it wasn’t exactly a game for the ages.

As for the MOPs since 1984? Hoo boy. Glen Rice had a 15-year career, going to 3 All Star games. Carmelo Anthony has made two All Star teams and has a shot at a good career. But after that it's pretty grim. Mostly a bunch of guys who barely played in the NBA, much less starred.

Who Cares?
Does any of this matter? Probably not. The sport’s popularity continues to surge, for a bunch of reasons.

First of all, there is the power of the office pool. More than five million brackets were filled out on espn.com, including one by Barack Obama (I hope he’s better at his day job). Don't ever bet against a sport that has a huge gambling component.

Second, there is the built-in renewable fan base of the student populations of hundreds of Division I schools.

Third, great sporting events don't need future legends to be great. The Olympics prove that every four years, never more so than the Miracle on Ice team.

And finally, as someone who has been lucky enough to have gone to a Final Four/Championship weekend (North Carolina's 2005 title), I can tell you it is a very special event.

Still, something has been lost in the process. When casual fans like me think back to the 1998 NCAA title game (featuring Most Outstanding Player Jeff Shepard! And leading scorer Michael Doleac!), it won’t be with the same recollection of those great tournaments of the mid-80's.

The new one-and-done rule means that future Kobes and LeBrons have to play one season of college ball. So maybe we’ll get a glimpse of these undisciplined freshman on the way to NBA riches. But don't get your hopes up - even Magic and Bird didn't do their thing as freshmen.

Ah, who cares? Three of my Final Four teams are alive and if North Carolina takes the title I’ll win my office pool. Go Tar Heels!

Yanks & Rebs

What do Robert E. Lee and Derek Jeter have in common?


For a couple years now I’ve been wrestling with an important question - why do Yankee fans hate Alex Rodriguez so much?

It’s not because of the steroids. He was being booed at Yankee Stadium long before the steroids story broke. And admitted steroids users like Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi have been welcomed back with open arms.

It’s not because he hasn’t won a championship. Don Mattingly never won a championship or even led his team to the playoffs, and is far more beloved than many players who did.

It’s not because he hasn’t performed up to expectations. He wins the MVP every other year.

It’s not because he doesn’t play hard.

It’s not because he’s a really bad guy. Yeah, he has some annoying personality traits, but he doesn’t carry loaded guns to nightclubs or watch dogs kill each other for fun. Besides, arrogant image-conscious super-jocks are the norm, not the exception.

Is it because he has played poorly in the post-season? Yeah, that’s part of it, certainly. But the Yankees as a team have been so thoroughly awful in the post-season since Mariano blew the save in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, it wouldn’t have much mattered if he played a bit better. (The Yankees led that pivotal game 2-0 till the 5th inning, thanks to a 2-run home run by…Alex Rodriguez).

It’s tempting to say it is some combination of all the above. That would be an easy explanation and it’s mostly true. But there is a bigger picture here – and I think I know what it is.

The real reason Yankee fans hate Alex Rodriguez so much is that…well, let me tell you a story about the Civil War.

The Lost Cause

The Confederate States of America was, for a “country” that existed all of four years, quite a patriotic place. The Confederates believed in themselves. They believed in their cause. And they absolutely believed they were going to win the Civil War. It’s 150 years later and some folks in the Deep South still wave Confederate flags and put “Hell No, We Ain’t Forgettin’” bumper stickers on the back of their pick-ups. All this for a nation that spent its entire abbreviated existence fighting a war it lost.

So you can imagine how they felt right after the war ended. They were angry and confused and needed to blame someone. One could argue that Robert E. Lee would receive some of the blame. It was Lee, after all, who advocated the strategy that lost the war.

Lee believed the South should engage the Union in massive set-piece battles. If they won enough of them, he reasoned, the North would lose their will to fight, European nations would recognize the Confederacy, and the South would win the war.

And it nearly worked. At Bull Run and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville the South showed they could whip the Yankees (the Union army kind; not the Bronx Bombers kind). War support in the Union wavered. European diplomats watched closely. But Lee, who was so gifted at getting the measure of his opponents on the field, underestimated the lanky bearded fellow in the White House. While Lee methodically ground down Northern war support with bullets and cannon balls, Abraham Lincoln built it back up with words, words, words. Union armies stayed on the field, Europe stayed on the sideline, and the South ultimately lost.

You can make a very good case that Lee should have followed the strategy that George Washington followed in the Revolutionary War. Washington knew he was outnumbered and outgunned. But he also knew that he didn’t have to win the war – he just had to avoid losing. So GW avoided set-piece battles at all costs, nipped at British ankles when he could, kept his armies in the field with minimal losses, and finally struck at Yorktown when absolutely everything was in his favor. Checkmate.

By contrast Lee, an aggressive and pugnacious general chose to fight one battle after another. And he lost. So he should get some of the blame, right? No way. Lee was the great hero of the South, the master of those early victories

Therefore, Jefferson Davis took the fall. He became a disgraced figure in the South in the years after the war. Not a single ounce of blame could fall upon the majestic silver-maned head of Robert E. Lee.

Yankee Doodle Dandy
What does any of this have to do with the booing Alex Rodriguez is treated to at Yankee Stadium?

Let me take you back to November 4, 2001, at approximately 11:38 PM EST. Mariano Rivera took the mound in the bottom of the 9th with a 2-1 lead in hand. Three more outs and the Yankees would win their 5th title in 6 years.

It was certain the Yankees were going to win that night, and it was starting to seem as if the Yankees were always going to win. Baseball would become like tennis in the Federer era – one great champion would win nearly every title.

But Mariano blew the save, of course and the Diamondbacks won. And the Angels won the next year and the Marlins the next. Then came the awful collapse against the Red Sox (2 more Mariano blown saves), then the 3 consecutive 1st round losses, and then finally missing the playoffs entirely in 2009.

Yankee fans are not happy about this. They were supposed to win all – or at least most – okay, some of the titles. But despite signing every monster free agent available, despite the gap between them and the 2nd highest paid team growing every year, they enter their 9th straight season without a title.

Who to blame? Well, one could argue that the likely candidates would be Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

How has Mariano done the last 8 years? In 2001 he became the first closer in baseball history to blow a Game 7, 9th inning save, the ultimate blown save. In the catastrophic 2004 ALCS collapse he blew not one, but two saves, both series-clinchers. Has he pitched well? Yes. Has been clutch? Ah, no.

As for Jeter, he reached his peak as a player in 1999 when he hit .349 with 24 homers and 102 RBIs. Or if you prefer sabermetric numbers an OBP/SLG/OPS of .438/.532/.970. Jeter dropped off in 2000 (.339/15/73 and .416/.481/.897) and again in 01 and 02. During the Yankees 8 year title drought Jeter has had only great offensive season (2006) and never hit again the way he did in 1999.

People are always telling me that you can’t measure Derek Jeter with statistics – you can only measure him by the little things he does to help his team win. I guess he hasn’t done quite as many little things the past eight years.

What you end up with is all this Yankee fan frustration and it has to go somewhere. But none of it can fall on the heads of Jeter and Rivera, or even Posada. Very little can fall on the heads of the lesser free agents the Yankees have collected this century. Ownership is essentially off the hook – the Boss has won too many titles and is too frail now to catch any heat. Management, in the form of Torre and Cashman, took some criticism, but they too have a bunch of titles they can claim some credit to.

And so all this rage falls on the head of one person – the guy who far and away has the best single season on the team every year. Alex Rodriguez is the Jefferson Davis of the New York Yankees.

And if you think this is a lot of words to expand on such a meaningless subject, let me just say I'm a Mets fan who remembers the 2000 World Series...and Hell No, We Ain't Forgettin'.

The Death of Rationalization

[A slightly different version of this piece appears in the February 16 edition of Nation's Restaurant News.]


In the 1983 film The Big Chill, Michael (Jeff Goldblum) and Sam (Tom Berenger) have the following exchange:

Sam: You're rationalizing.

Michael: Don’t knock rationalizations. I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.

Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?


I thought of that exchange at lunchtime on January 5th while contemplating the menu board at Cosi. It was the first day back to work after the New Year, and I was on the classic New Year’s Resolution Diet. Five straight weeks of holiday feasting and I was tipping the scales at – well, it doesn’t matter exactly what I was tipping the scales at. Let’s just say that if you were a gambler who bet the Over, you won.

So on the first lunch day of the work year, I headed to Cosi on 56th Street in Manhattan for a salad. The salad would not only begin the process of creating a newer, slimmer me, it would also make me feel better about myself. After all, what could be a healthier life choice than a salad for lunch?

That’s when I saw the menu board.

You see, New York City has joined the list of U.S. municipalities that have enacted menu labeling laws, requiring chain restaurants with a certain number of units to post nutritional information. So I was now fully aware of how many calories each and every salad contained.

The Cosi Signature Salad for example, a tasty confection with mixed greens, fruit, nuts and gorgonzola was 611 calories. But, the menu helpfully informed me, I could “Lighten Up” – meaning, I could halve the cheese and swap out the sherry-shallot vinaigrette for the low-fat sherry-shallot vinaigrette, and that would lower my calorie count to 371. But not so fast - the warm artisan bread that comes with the salad is an additional 211 calories.

Now I’m the kind of guy that enjoys a good rationalization around food. I like to order the Cobb Salad, loaded with eggs, bacon, cheese, maybe a creamy dressing, and then say to my wife over dinner, “I’m hungry. I only had a salad for lunch.”

But menu labeling is putting the kibosh on that.

There are some interesting philosophical, political, and economic debates around menu labeling, and I’ve been following them with interest. Issues of freedom, personal choice, consumer protection and even culinary creativity all come into play. (Not to mention the fact that it probably doesn't work: years of nutritional labeling on consumer packaged goods have not made America any thinner).

More importantly, as a person who draws his paycheck from the restaurant industry, I’m nervous about any regulation that could put more pressure on restauranters, who are suffering dearly as people cut back on eating out.

But none of that concerned me as I stared at the menu. I wanted to have a salad with lettuce and fruit and an exotic dressing. I wanted my full serving of gorgonzola and my tasty artisan bread – and I wanted to feel that I had made a healthy choice. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Menu Police wanted to make darn sure that I knew exactly how many calories that was going to cost me (822). He was taking away my rationalizations. If the Cosi Signature Salad was 822 calories, I shudder to think what my precious Cobb Salad goes for.

So I lightened up, cut the caloric intake to 582. And felt a little bit guilty with each nibble of bread.

Oh, and at 4pm I was starving. I grabbed a bag of candy from the vending machine and scarfed it down with nary a glance at the label. It was delicious.

Sour Grapes

A couple of bitter, whiny Super Bowl observations from a Giants fan who still can't believe Plax shot himself...

The Greatest Ever?
Everyone from Roger Goodell to Peter King to NBC is rushing to call SB43 the "greatest ever". Really?

The greatest thing in sports is the upset. There's a reason every sports movie ever made - from Rocky to The Bad News Bears to Hoosiers - is about upsets. Even the movies that don't seem to be about upsets - think Bull Durham - are about the underdog struggling for some measure of respect.

We remember Broadway Joe's guarantee and Dwight Clark's catch and the Miracle Mets and the 04 Sox because they weren't supposed to win.

Last year, the Wild Card Giants beat the undefeated Patriots with a 4th quarter TD drive that included Manning-to-Tyree. This year, the heavily favored #1 seeded Steelers going for their 6th title beat the 9-7 Cardinals, one of the most legendarily inept franchises in professional sports history. Yesterday was the very opposite of an upset, whereas SB42 was the greatest upset since Al Michael asked us if we believe in miracles.

And while yesterday's finish was amazing, it wasn't much of a game before then, was it? The teams combined for 18 penalties and 162 penalty yards, both good for second most ever. And according to Boomer Esiason, the refs could have flagged the Cardinals on every play for holding.

Everybody just relax on this "greatest game ever" nonsense.


Steelers, Cards, Ravens, Eagles Share Something
Another Giants thought...Peter King did his year-end Fine Fifteen this morning and ranked the Giants 7th. Obviously Steelers and Cardinals are 1/2, and I get you have to go 3/4 for the Eagles/Ravens. Then he goes Titans 5th . Okay, defensible so far.

Then - the Patriots 6th. You know, the Patriots - who didn't make the playoffs. The Patriots - whose schedule was softer than Matt Lauer's Obama interview. The Patriots - who had 6 games against playoff teams this year and went 2-4. (One of those wins came against the Dolphins, who beat the Pats 38-13 earlier in the season; the other came against the Cardinals, in a game that was meaningless to Arizona).

Then the Giants 7th.

I know I know I know I know I know I know IT DOESN'T MATTER where Peter King ranks the Giants. I know I know. Believe me, I know.

Still, let me leave you with this fun fact. Two weeks ago the Eagles, Cardinals, Ravens, and Steelers all gathered for Championship weekend. What do those four teams all have in common?

All four of them lost to the Giants this season. Has this ever happened in NFL history? I'm too lazy to do the research (so much for your stubborn facts, Keatang!), but I strongly doubt it.

In fact, the Giants went 6-1 against playoff teams this year. And the only team they lost to was one they had already beaten (Eagles), and it was the week the Plax thing broke and it was a fairly meaningless game for the Giants. But I'm not bitter.

Pitchers and catchers report in 12 days.

"Billy Powell...On the Piano"

Billy Powell, the keyboardist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, died this week at the age of 56. That’s him, with the bird in hand.

Skynyrd has seen more tragedy than the Kennedy family. Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines died in rock and roll’s second most famous plane crash in 1977. Guitarist Allen Collins was paralyzed in a car accident in 1986 and was dead from complications four years later, at 38. Bassist Leon Wilkeson was found dead in his hotel room in 2001, age 49, from “natural causes”. Powell becomes the 5th member of the band* that won’t qualify for a senior discount at the movies. That’s a high mortality rate, even for a band that had 7 members in its standard lineup.

Lynyrd Skynyrd is the anti-Spinal Tap. Whereas Spinal Tap’s drummers die in large numbers, in Skynyrd everyone but the drummers die. Bob Burns and Artimus Pyle continue to march to their own beat.

* My definition of “the band” includes any one in the lineup for the 5 studio albums and 1 live album released between 1973 and 1977. The army of players that have joined the group since its reformation in 1987 do not qualify. In fact, with Powell’s death, only one original member is in the band that calls itself “Lynyrd Skynyrd”. Can we please stop this charade now?

I met Billy Powell once. It was the fall of 1981 and my friends and I went to see the Rossington Collins Band at the now-defunct North Stage Theater on Long Island. I grew up on the Island, and for some cultural reason I can’t explain, Long Island was a big fan base for Southern Rock* bands. The Allman Brothers famously did an annual New Year’s Eve concert at the Nassau Coliseum. Marshall Tucker’s last performance together was on the island. Even minor southern rock bands like .38 Special would sell out the Coliseum.

* Southern Rock as a term was always a bit of a misnomer. The three aforementioned bands, for example, are all quite different in their influences. The Allmans were very much a blues rock band, Marshall Tucker almost a straight country group, and .38 Special more an 80’s pop band. The Allmans had more in common with Eric Clapton than they did with Marshall Tucker and .38 Special was closer to Bon Jovi than Skynyrd. Bands like Creedence and the Eagles shared a lot of musical territory with so-called Southern Rock bands but came from California and avoided the tag. Another example of why musical labels are ultimately useless.

Where was I? Right, the North Stage theater, November 1981. My friends and I got there early and found ourselves in an alley next to the theater, ogling the tour bus. Suddenly, the stage doors opened and out walked…The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band! Sure, technically, it was the Rossington Collins Band but RCB was formed by the surviving members of Skynyrd and they were all there. Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, Billy Powell, Leon Wilkeson.

Remember, this is 1981. MTV had aired its first music video in August of that year but hadn’t made their cultural mark yet. It was 15 years before internet ubiquity, 20 before Wikipedia, and 25 before YouTube and concert sites like Wolfgang’s Vault. Even VCRs were rare, so concert movies like The Last Waltz and The Song Remains the Same could only be seen in rare midnight shows at select theaters.

So if you loved a rock band – and I loved Skynyrd – the only source of information was the albums. We would study the liner notes and stare at the pictures, filling in gaps with bits of information we picked up in Rolling Stone or the radio. Except for monster acts like the Beatles, the average music fan had seen very little video footage of their favorite acts.

And suddenly these people – these people whose pictures I had stared at for hours on end – were walking right by me! Right by me and into the diner next door!

What to do? We didn’t want to interrupt our heroes, but we also couldn’t let this moment pass. Luckily one of my friends, Brian Buchauer, had courage for the rest of us. He walked into the diner, up to the table, and introduced himself to the band. The four of us shook the hands of whichever band members were in reach. And the one who stood out the most was Billy Powell – for the simple reason that the same fingers that played the legendary piano piece on Freebird live – not to mention my all-time favorite piano solo on Skynyrd’s cover of J.J. Cale’s Call Me the Breeze – were covered with rings.

I’ve seen some famous people in my life. I was in a store with Julia Roberts. I rode an elevator with Pete Townsend. I had a 5-minute conversation with Joe DiMaggio. I even spent the weekend with Miss America (true story, but for another day). But that moment will remain my favorite brush with fame.

Brian Buchauer, rest his soul, was killed a few years later in a motorcycle accident. Fitting, perhaps, that I’ll always associate him with this band that has seen so much tragedy.


[hat tip to Brian's science fair partner Windex, who was with me in that diner 28 years ago (damn we're getting old!) and had some input on this piece.]

More blogs on Powell:

- this one, on Paste Magazine, contains links to some of BP's best solos
- from Ginger, who worked with BP

Most of the other blog posts are useless. Quick re-hash of the news accounts and an embedded YouTube video...

Greater Expectations

[This is a sort-of follow up to a piece I wrote last April called Great Expectations. I started it right after the inauguration but then got distracted by important stuff like Skynyrd pianists and the Super Bowl. I think it's still relevant, though not as relevant as it might have been Inauguration Week. ]


When Barack Obama took the oath of office he did so with the highest incoming approval ratings of any President, at 72%. In a distant second place, at 58%, was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This is a remarkable thing. Eisenhower possessed, to put it mildly, a stronger resume. He had, you know, led the armies that defeated the greatest evil in the history of mankind (that's a defensible statement, ain't it?). Obama's greatest accomplishment, on the other hand, was the winning of a U.S. Presidential election. Which can't be that hard; after all, George W. Bush did it twice.

The psychology behind this is fascinating but not the subject of this post. I'm more interested in what he does with it. After all, the confidence the American people have placed in President Obama is both a blessing and a curse.

It's a blessing because it gives him enormous political capital, and plenty of room to make mistakes.

The media are so enthralled with him, he could personally chop the fingers off a suspected Al Qaeda operative in the Oval Office on live television, and the New York Times would merely express "slight misgivings". Hollywood is so star-struck he could direct a remake of Howard the Duck with Paris Hilton and Jean Claude Van Damme and he'd be applauded for his artistic integrity. Europe is so smitten he could - hmmm, what would be a terrible thing to a European? Europe is so smitten he could threaten to protect them from Russia with American missiles and they'd actually thank him for it.

But it's not just Hollywood, the media, and Europe. Those high approval ratings show that so much of the country is looking to President Obama to be our next Lincoln, our next FDR. The halo that would have been over Obama's head in normal circumstances has been amplified by the economic collapse. Americans believe we are in one of the great crises in our history and need a Great Man to see us through.

But these expectations are also a curse. As I wrote back in the earlier Great Expectations piece, supporters of Hillary Clinton and John McCain had fairly reasonable expectations for their candidates. But supporters of Barack Obama have wildly unreasonable expectations for their President.

I won't go into all the major problems we're all hoping he can solve - we've been down that road a lot. I'm just very interested to see how he uses these expectations as a political tool to accomplish his goals, while simultaneously trying to avoid the pitfalls of adulation.

It's my read on Obama that he is far more practical and pragmatic than his most idealistic followers. And it's also my read that a lot of Americans are going to cut him a lot of slack.


Policy issues aside, it'll be fascinating to watch him manage these expectations.

Inaugural Thoughts for Republicans

Back on Election Day I promised to write a piece called "10 (or so) Reasons that Conservatives Should Lie Back and Enjoy the Age of Obama - or at Least not Move to Australia." Well, it’s Inauguration Day, so it’s time to start this piece…

Why Australia? Well, obviously a conservative isn’t going to move to France, that promised land of Streisands and Baldwins, who are forever promising to leave America in the wake of a Republican victory. But Australia? They speak English, have excellent beer, raised the man who gave us Braveheart and Lethal Weapon, and supported the war in Iraq. It’s the anti-France!

But as wonderful as Australia may be, it's awfully far, and the whole winter in July/summer in December thing would be a big adjustment for us Americans. So I suggest Republicans stay here in America. And I'd like to offer, free of charge, some reasons why distressed Republicans should feel okay about the 2008 election.

1. The Republican Party needed a kick in the teeth. The control of the House, the Senate, and the White House led party leaders to a level of hubris and arrogance that was unacceptable. If, for example, Bush and Company had worked with Democrats on issues that even now Obama supports (like wiretapping), they would have had a far easier time of things. But they had come to believe they could do what they wanted when they wanted how they wanted. This election – not just the Presidential election but the overall ass-kicking the GOP received all over the country – was necessary for the long-term health of the party.

2. More than ever before – wait, that’s not true – more than in recent history, we need the support of our allies. For various reasons, Barack Obama is beloved in much of the world, and this is potentially good for the future success of American diplomacy. The popularity of Obama will provide cover to world leaders, particularly in Europe, who already want to provide more overt aid to America in the fight against radical Islam.

3. Barack Obama does not seem to suffer from the taint of ideology. Many Republicans feared during the election season that he was a radical in moderate’s clothing. And to be sure, his associations with the Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers suggested this was possible. But everything he’s done since his election suggests he’s the person that readers of Dreams of My Father thought he was – an extremely pragmatic man who is supremely capable of thinking objectively and with logic and reason about any individual subject.

4. The only people who seem genuinely unhappy with Obama’s appointments are the far left. This is an encouraging sign.

5. All economies – but the American economy in particular – run on confidence. I’m not quite sure why so many Americans have invested so much confidence in an unproven leader, but we have. That confidence is not enough – by a long shot – for an economic recovery. But it is a prerequisite for it.

6. I have always believed that any responsible person who receives daily intelligence briefings (and thus, knows how dangerous the world is) and is responsible for the safety of the American people, would recognize that there is some gray area between civil liberties and safety. There is not, as he stated in his inaugural address yesterday, "a false choice between our ideals and our safety". Rhetoric aside, Obama has proven me correct. His support of wiretapping, his flexibility on Iraq timetables, and his almost leisurely pace on the “closing” of Guantanamo Bay, suggests that the apocalyptic rants of people like Frank Rich are fine for the New York Times but is not a luxury the occupant of the Oval Office can afford.

7. A while back, Peggy Noonan wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy could be derailed by the quality of her voice. That sounds like a superficial argument, but it is not. Americans live with our President, and it’s important that we like them. Barack Obama, with his transcendent speaking voice and his preternatural calm, is an extraordinarily soothing and likable presence. It’ll be nice to have him around for four years or so.

8. While I'm nervous that most of the governing and banking classes suddenly think state control of business is a swell idea, Obama's economic appointments have definitely leaned more towards the free market thinking of Clintonism than the quasi-socialist claptrap of John Edwards and the editors of The Nation. So my guard is still up on his economic team, but I'm happy so far.

What's that, 8 reasons? That's good enough.

Sure, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical (click here for 7 in particular). Especially with Reid and Pelosi riding in positions of power. Think about those two long enough and any confidence that Obama inspires ebbs away faster than your 401k.

But this is a week for hope. God knows we need it.

Nobodies & Hot Streaks

A Couple of NFL Thoughts

Last year, as the Giants made their historic Super Bowl run (yes, I said historic; want to make something of it?), this site was pretty much taken over by my NFL ramblings. This year, not so much. But with the Super Bowl set, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

Nobodies Rule

In February of 07 I wrote a piece called Losers & Nobodies in which I argued…well, here’s what I said:

If you were the GM of an NFL team with a head coaching vacancy, which of the following should you hire:

a) A proven winner, like Super Bowl Champ Bill Cowher
b) A proven loser, like Cam Cameron
c) A complete nobody, like Jim Harbaugh’s brother.

If history is any guide, hire the nobody. If he’s not available, hire the loser.


As it turns out, FreeTime must be required reading in NFL front offices, because Nobodies were hired in huge numbers in the weeks after this was posted. John Harbaugh in Baltimore, Tony Sparano in Miami, Mike Smith in Atlanta, and Jim Zorn in Washington.

And it turned out splendidly for those teams. Harbaugh’s Ravens played in the AFC championship game, Sparano’s Dolphins had the greatest regular-season turnaround in the history of the sport, and they both lost out on Coach of the Year to Smith. (Zorn got off to a hot start then faded, but had his team in playoff contention in the extremely difficult NFC East).

And in two weeks, two Nobodies from the Hiring Class of 2007 will meet in the Super Bowl. Mike Tomlin and Ken Whisenhunt were both unknown entities to most NFL fans when hired two years ago.

More proof, as if we needed it, that history and facts are more valuable than conventional wisdom.

NFL GMs: there is no reason to throw money, power and private jets at the Bill Cowhers, Mike Shanahans, and Jon Grudens of the world. Get yourself a Nobody.

The Hot Team

A cherished myth of the NFL is that the hot team coming into the playoffs is the one to look out for. Peter King, in this morning's MMQB writes:

It's never been truer that the hottest teams, and the healthiest teams, are the ones with the best chance in January.

Oh my God, really, Peter? I love Peter King. I read MMQB religiously. He works hard, he talks to everyone in the NFL seemingly every waking moment, and he just seems like an amiable likable guy. But he does like that conventional wisdom nonsense.

How could anyone argue that the Arizona Cardinals were the hot team coming in? It was clearly Carolina, maybe the Eagles. The Cardinals were about the coldest team to ever enter the playoffs, and it had no impact on their knocking off 3 straight wins.

But conventional wisdom dies hard. It's more stubborn than facts.

The 2008 Johnny Bingo Awards

Yes, it’s time for the least-anticipated literary awards of the year – the Johnny Bingo Awards!

The nice thing about being judge and jury for an award nobody cares about is I can change the rules every year without protest. And I’m changing the rules again. Last year I gave out a bunch of different awards in different categories. And in the years before that I simply gave out one award. But this year I’m going to name five finalists and then pick a winner. (That’s my plan now anyway; it could change in a few paragraphs)

Luckily, no matter how ridiculous I make it, I can't make it sillier than the Nobel Prize in Literature, bestowed annually on obscurities and mediocrities, the only qualification being that the winner not be American.

This award too has only one criterion – for a book to be eligible, I had to have finished reading it in 2008. It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before Dick Clark’s puppeteer walks him through the New Year’s Eve Countdown, it can be a winner.

But before we hand out this year’s awards, I’d like to say a few words about books I don’t read.

A Few Words About Books I Don’t Read
I don’t read books written by people who got famous doing something different. So you’ll see no sensitive novels by Ethan Hawke or counterfactual histories by Newt Gingrich. Kirstie Alley’s How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Confidence: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star might be a literary masterpiece, but I’ll never know it.

I don’t read current events books. Perhaps I’ll expand this thesis in a larger post, but I don’t think current events lend themselves well to book form. First, not enough time has passed for perspective. And second, events have a way of overtaking the book. I tried to read George Packer’s Assassin’s Gate last year, and while parts of it were excellent, as I got to the last few hundred pages it was clear that the Iraq he was writing about was different than the one that existed by the time of my reading. So I stick to magazines and newspapers for the events of the day.

I don’t read memoirs, particularly memoirs by people who’ve led massively self-(and others) destructive lives, but who’ve now put all the pieces together and found wisdom. Somehow I’ll muddle through life without their wisdom.

I don’t read books by Mitch Albom.

Apparently I don’t read books by women. This isn’t a policy but it appears to be the truth. I didn’t read a single book written by a woman in 2008. I did better in 2007, thanks to Barbara Tuchman and J.K. Rowling. Considering how much I enjoy the works of those two women in particular, as well as the histories of Catherine Drinker Bowen and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I may have to correct that.

Which reminds me – I don’t read books that everybody else is reading. I’ve been a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin since before she became a television star and I’ve read more Lincoln books than most, but I’ve kind of avoided Team of Rivals because everybody else is reading it. I will read it eventually, but long after the rest of the world has lost interest.

There are all kinds of exceptions to these “rules”. I’ll read Mark Bavaro’s new novel because one of the best presents I got this Christmas was an inscribed copy of it. I read Bill Bryson’s Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir because it was written by Bill Bryson.

I also read Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father*, which breaks most of my rules: it’s a memoir, it’s a current events book (sort of), it’s written by someone who doesn’t write books for a living, and it’s a book everybody was reading. But I was very interested to read a book written by a Presidential candidate long before he was one.

* a mini review: it started out fascinating and impressive, but became dreadfully boring and self-absorbed. Hopefully not a harbinger for his Presidency…

There is no exception to the Mitch Albom rule.

So, without further ado the five finalists are:

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1845
Daniel Walker Howe

We tend to think of the years between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War as boring. Not as boring, perhaps, as the Era of Obscure Bearded Presidents (1872-1896), but still pretty boring.

Yeah, Andrew Jackson was a colorful guy, but everyone else seemed small by comparison – dwarfed by the shadow of the Founders (Adams and Jefferson died in 1824) and the specter of the Civil War (Lincoln, Lee and Grant walked the earth, but few knew who they were.).

Even the 2nd most famous guy of the period, John Quincy Adams, was the less famous son of a Founder who can’t even get a monument on the Mall.

But Howe – who has the great gift of weaving diplomatic, political, and economic history into a compelling whole – shows that the period was, as the sub-title says, transformational.

(For an excellent review on WHGW, go here.)

Duma Key
Stephen King
As I said earlier, I tend not to read things everybody else is reading. Thus, I’ve read very little John Grisham and Stephen King through the years.

But this year, in separate acts of airport desperation, I bought Grisham and King paperbacks. The Grisham book – The Brethren – was entertaining but nothing special; it was like one of Elmore Leonard’s lesser works, peopled with quirky Florida lowlifes. But Duma Key grabbed me by the collar and wouldn’t let go.

It’s odd that King is still considered a horror novelist. The Shawshank Redemption, based on a King novella, is by one measure the most popular movie ever made – and there is not a supernatural moment in it. The same is true of Stand By Me, based on a King short story. But I guess it’s hard to shake the image left by books/movies like Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Semetary.

Duma Key is about a middle-aged guy who – like King – was severely injured in an accident. While recovering he discovers he has untapped powers as a painter – well, for a description of the book go here. All I’ll say is that King’s genius stems in part from his storytelling, in part from his ability to tap into our fear – but mostly from his understanding of human emotion.

I realize I might be banned from the unofficial book snobs’ club, but what King is up to in his later years just might be called literature.

The Spies of Warsaw
Alan Furst
Speaking of popular fiction that borders on literature…

There are some authors who sell only a fraction of the books John Grisham sells, but whose fans are even more devoted. Furst’s novels, all set before or in the early years of World War II, has a devoted following and I number myself among them.

The books are formulaic – one or more Europeans, recognizing the impending calamity of war with Germany and presented an opportunity to do something about it, do something about it. Gauloises are smoked, cafes are visited, and Polish countesses slip into bed with French naval attachés.

But Furst’s novels prove that formulas executed with literary style and thorough historical research are as impressive as any higher-brow work.

Blue Latitudes: Sailing Boldly Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
Tony Horowitz
I think of myself as a knowledgeable guy, historically speaking. But reading Blue Latitudes, I was shocked at how ignorant I was of the accomplishments of James Cook.

Most discoverers happen upon their discovery – the Hudson River, America – and, if they survive, tend to stay in that part of the world looking for more stuff or head home to enjoy their fame. But Cook travelled all over the world, to places untouched by Europeans, multiple times. New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, parts of Alaska. He circumnavigated the globe multiple times and covered 140 of the 180 degrees of the earth’s longitude.

But most people don’t know Captain Cook from Captain Hook. Tony Horowitz, former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and author of Confederates in the Attic, sets off to find out why. Part travelogue, part history, Horowitz re-traces Cook’s voyage, and interviews just about anybody he meets along the way in search of Cook’s story and his legacy.

Cook’s is a great story – and Horowitz is wonderful company for the telling of it.


Corelli’s Mandolin
Louis de Bernières
You know the old phrase, “the book was better”. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a terrible Nicolas Cage movie, but this is an excellent novel, set on a small Greek island during the Second World War.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but check it out here.


And the winner is…hmmm….well I liked all of them, obviously. But none are books I’ll be talking about five years from now. I’ve already forgotten what The Spies of Warsaw is about (that’s the problem with formulaic fiction – no matter how good it’s executed, the details slip away).

Oh, I’ll give it to What Hath God Wrought. Congratulations, Mr. Howe. You must be proud.

The Demeanor Fallacy

Eric Mangini has had his ups and downs as head coach of the New York Jets.

His first season was all up. He took over a Jets team that was 4-12 the year before and coached them to a 10-6 record and a playoff berth. He became a New York folk hero, dubbed ManGenius by the tabloids. He even made a Sopranos cameo.

But season two was a downer as the Jets fell back to 4-12. And season three was a roller coaster ride. A shaky beginning, a terrific middle, and a horrible end.

And this morning the Jets took the New York Post’s advice (DUMP ‘EM) and fired their precocious head coach. The Times’ story on the firing echoed a theme I’ve heard a lot the past few weeks in the tabloids and on talk radio:

"Mangini has been criticized for a lack of emotion in his coaching style..Fullback Tony Richardson said he had never seen Mangini show frustration. He does not storm around the practice fields, spew invective or flip over water coolers."

In fact, this lack of emotion is the only criticism cited in the story, suggesting that if Mangini had expressed more emotion the Jets may have been more successful.

This is a logical fallacy. The syllogism goes something like this:

+ Coaches with placid sideline demeanors can’t win

+ Coach X has a placid sideline demeanor

+ Therefore, Coach X can’t win

But of course, the NFL is filled with stone-faced winners. Tom Landry had 20 straight winning seasons, five NFC titles, and two Super Bowl wins without ever changing expression. (His Hall of Fame bio’s first words are “noted for impassive sideline demeanor”.) Statuary is more expressive than Chuck Noll, who won four Super Bowls. And Bill Belichick, to quote Dorothy Parker’s quip about Katherine Hepburn, “runs the gamut of emotions from A to B”.

Meanwhile, the NFC’s version of the New York Jets – the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – featured a coach, Jon Gruden, who is so emphatic on the sidelines that his nickname is Chuckie, from the horror-movie doll. Gruden’s passion did not prevent the Bucs from collapsing in nearly identical fashion to the Jets.

The Torre Stare

We’ve been here before. Joe Torre took over as manager of the New York Yankees in 1996, and proceeded to go on the greatest run in recent baseball history. Four World Series championships, six AL crowns, and eleven straight playoff appearances. Except for walks to the mound, Torre spent the entire eleven years on the bench, arms crossed, staring out at the field. But in his final year – a year in which he once again made the playoffs, he was ripped in New York for not having enough fire.

Alas, having too much fire is also a crime. When Tom Coughlin was, experts all agreed, the worst coach in football, his biggest problem was sideline histrionics. When he won the Super Bowl those same experts agreed that he did so because he followed their advice, and got his demeanor to just the right temperature.

This doesn’t just apply to coaches. Eli Manning appears at all times to be in a medically-induced coma. In the early promising part of his career it was lauded as a plus. In the middle shaky part of his career it was derided as a minus. Now, with a Super Bowl ring and a #1 seed, it is once again a positive. Just wait, though – if the Giants lose to the Falcons in two weeks, the sports psychologists will change their minds again – stoicism will be renamed placidity, calmness will be reclassed as indifference. "Look how excited Matt Ryan is", they'll gush.

The Reason - and a Prediction

There is, I believe, a reason for this. Most football fans, myself included, don't know enough about the complex game of modern football to truly judge a coach on his merits. Very few fans are capable of dissecting the Jets' blitzing schemes or interior line play. I've never heard Pete from Passaic call the Fan to complain the Jets' don't disguise their run formations well enough, or suggest ways to exploit the weak-side linebacker in the Miami defense.

So in our ignorance we go overboard on the things we do understand. That is why clock management mistakes and 4th down decisions are overamplified by fans and media. Even the dumbest among us can form an opinion on these things.

And a coach's demeanor? In the absence of substantive criticism, which most of us are ill-equipped to make, it's an easy one to go after.

I try to stay away from predictions, but I’m going to sneak out on a limb here. Eric Mangini, who at age 40 has had winning seasons in two of his three seasons as head coach, will be hired somewhere else, maybe a struggling team that experienced failure under a fiery coach.

That team will be successful early in Mangini’s tenure. And fans will nod their head knowingly, saying, “It’s his sideline demeanor. He exudes calm, which is just what that team needed.”

Men Without Hats

Foul ball!

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the youngest elected President in United States history. As he went through the carefully orchestrated ceremony of the day, he did so hatless. Kennedy believed hats made him look old so he refused to be photographed in one. Considered the most glamorous and sophisticated man in the world, JFK’s bare head was a dagger to the hat industry, whose sales dropped precipitously and never recovered.

That’s how the story has always been told anyway. An entire book was even written about it (Hatless Jack: The Presidency, The Fedora, and the History of American Style). It turns out to be a myth, though, effectively skewered by Snopes.

Still, something happened. Men used to wear hats. Picture large crowds at, say, a baseball game from the first half of the 20th century and every guy’s got a fedora, a bowler, a derby – some kind of stylish headgear. The ubiquity of hats was perfectly captured in a scene from The Big Chill. William Hurt is watching an old black & white movie on TV when Jeff Goldblum asks what’s happening in the scene.

“I think the guy in the hat did something,” drawls a stoned Hurt.

Cut to the TV, showing dozens of 1930’s era guys wearing hats.

Then there was this exchange from Seinfeld*:

Elaine: You should have lived in the 20's and 30's. You know men wore hats all the time then.

George: What a bald paradise that must have been! Nobody knew!

* Seinfeld is to 21st century Americans what the Bible was to most of Western Civilization for thousands of years – the text that provides wise and relevant quotes on nearly every subject.

Government Bailout for Hat Industry?

I bring all this up because we’ve had some nasty weather in New York lately. Snow, sleet, howling wind, freezing rain. And as I walk the city streets I see men in suits coping with the weather in one of four ways:

- Baseball hat
- Wool cap
- Umbrella*
- Bare head

The first two look ridiculous with a suit. The third is overkill. And the fourth is too stupid to merit comment.

* There are, of course, two types of umbrellas. The tiny ones, which aren't much bigger than a hat. And the huge golf umbrellas. I have a message to those guys with the huge ones, the ones that are designed to cover Tiger Woods, his caddy, his golf bag, and the entire 14th green: Everybody hates you.

A handful of us, me included, were wearing wide-brimmed hats. Mine is a brown Indiana Jones-type thing. I get a lot of abuse for this hat, best summed up by my son as I returned from work one evening.

“You wear that in public?” he asked.

But it’s a wonderful thing. It keeps my head warm. The wide brim collects flakes and repels light rain. And in my opinion, it’s rather stylish. All I need now is for hats to come back in style so I can wear it with slightly less embarrassment than I do today.

And there is one man who has the power to bring it back. On January 20, 2009, the glamorous and sophisticated Barack Obama will take office. Will he go bareheaded, a la the mythical Jack Kennedy? Or will he don a snap-brim fedora, tilted at a rakish angle. If he does the latter, look for the comeback of the hat industry.

Now that’s change I can believe in.

No Glib Title Today

I haven’t written much about the economic crisis. As near as I can tell, the sharpest economic minds on earth have no earthly idea what is going on, how it happened, who gets the blame, what to do about it, or how it’s going to end. So what can an English major like me possibly add to the conversation?

Then again, the whole purpose of having a blog is to offer uninformed opinions nobody asked for.

Let’s go back for a moment to the Fall of 2001. The country was in a recession. The dot-com crash had started in March 2000, wiping out paper wealth in the trillions. Numerous corporate scandals, most notably Enron, had more Americans than usual thinking public companies were running elaborate shell games. And two planes flew into buildings in the financial center of planet Earth, killing thousands and paralyzing the global economy.

At the time I thought, we’re really in for it now.

But amazingly, we weren’t. The American economy shrugged off the triple body blows of Dot-Com, Enron, and 9/11 like they were love taps. By 2003, the recession had ended, and the American economy began adding jobs by hundreds of thousands per month and seeing its usual 2-3% growth rates. (The bad news for Bush is that nobody seemed to notice this astonishing success story because Iraq was in flames. Now, nobody is noticing the astonishing success story in Iraq because the economy is in flames.)

At the time I thought, wow, this economy can really take a punch. Or three.

So when this latest storm came along, I remained optimistic longer than most, because I had developed this profound belief in the resiliency of the U.S. economy. That’s not to say that I thought we were recession-proof. Only fools and madmen believe economies can completely insulate themselves from periods of recession. I just thought we’d have 2-3 quarters of negative growth and then whoever won the election in November would get credit for a recovery that was going to come anyway.

But now – who knows? The sharpest economic minds on earth still seem baffled, but there is general agreement that it’s going to get worse before it gets better – especially when the next two shoes drop (the credit card crisis and the effects of growing unemployment). I can only console myself that these guys have been so consistently wrong on just about everything else that they’ll be proven wrong again. And hope that, once again, the American economy will defy expectations and reveal its underlying strength.

To sum up, I’m just like the sharpest economic minds on earth. I have no earthly idea what is going on, how it happened, who gets the blame, what to do about it, or how it’s going to end

So for now, I'll console myself with this: the Mets just added two great arms to their bullpen. Bring on the Fightin' Phils!

Note: Instead of wasting your time here, you should read the work of someone who has a rare combination of deep knowledge, clarity of writing, and intellectual honesty. That guy would be Robert Samuelson at Newsweek. He’s my go-to guy on economic issues. Check out his archive here.

Couples in Canton

As I wrote recently…of the twelve NFL head coaches elected to the Hall of Fame during the Super Bowl era, ten coached a Hall of Fame quarterback and one coached a guy who should be in the Hall and may yet make it(Ken Stabler). Only Joe Gibbs went to Canton alone.

In yesterday’s Monday Morning Quarterback, Peter King identifies 7 head coaches who will be Hall candidates in the coming years. Five of them – you guessed it – coached present or future Hall of Famer quarterbacks:

Mike Shanahan (John Elway)
Bill Belichick (Tom Brady)
Dan Reeves (John Elway)
Mike Holmgren (Brett Favre)
Tony Dungy (Peyton Manning)

The sixth is Marty Schottenheimer. Schott doesn’t strike me as a Hall of Famer, but he is sixth all time in Wins (and may not be done). Still, it’s hard to imagine him making it without a Super Bowl appearance.

The seventh is Bill Parcells. Parcells coached a bunch of good quarterbacks – Simms*, Bledsoe, Testaverde – and of course, started the “legend” of Tony Romo. But none are in the Hall.

* Simms may have made the Hall if he didn’t get hurt in the 12th game of the 1990 season. Assuming the Giants still won the Super Bowl that year, Simms would have 2 Super Bowls and 200 TD passes (he finished with 199). That, and the fact that the media likes him personally may have been enough to push him in.

Parcells vs. Gibbs would make an interesting debate. If we assume the five guys above make the Hall and Schottenheimer doesn’t, Parcells and Gibbs would be the only two Super Bowl era coaches in the Hall – out of 17 – who didn’t have a HoF quarterback. In fact, the two coaches won 5 Super Bowls with 5 different quarterbacks – Theismann, Simms, Williams*, Hostetler, and Rypien.

* Both Simms and Williams had days that Hall of Famers can only dream about

But who is better? Gibbs has 3 Super Bowls to Parcells’ 2. But Parcells took four teams from the pits to the top (or neat-top), a remarkable record. And that’s not counting what’s going on in Miami right now.

I'm inclined to give the nod to Parcells, because I think there is no greater proof of coaching ability than turning losers into winners multiple times. But then, I'm a biased Giants fan.


P.S. I learned something fun doing this: Jimmy "How 'bout them Cowboys!" Johnson isn't in the Hall of Fame (but this Jimmy Johnson is). I'll have to do a reverse on this someday - see how many quarterbacks made it in without a Hall of Fame coach. But the overrated Troy Aikman is one of them.