Hank from Tampa & Pacman

I’ve been fortunate, lately, in the teams I root against.

Rooting against a team delivers the same thrills and agonies as rooting for a team, in slightly muted form. As a Mets and Giants fan, I have the particular honor of rooting against the most hated/loved franchises in professional American sports: the Yankees and the Cowboys.

Some people argue that it is silly for Mets fans to root against the Yankees, since they do not compete with the Mets for divisional crowns or league championships. These people are morons.

Rooting for or against a team is never rational; it is driven by sheer emotion. The emotion that drives Mets fan to hate the Yankees was best articulated by the great Roger Angell, who described the peculiar fate of Mets fans, forced to live in a city surrounded by the smug exuberant hordes of Yankee fans.

Further, the Mets don’t have natural rivals. The only team that has shared a division with the Mets since 1962 are the Phillies, and until recently the Phils and Mets haven’t been good at the same time. The Mets rivals of the 80’s – the Cubs, Cardinals, and Pirates – are all in the NL Central now. The Mets chief rival in the Wild Card era, the Braves, spent the 70’s and 80’s in the NL West.

But the Yankees…they are always with us…

Hank from Tampa

And I’ve really been enjoying the Yankees lately. It’s not because they are in 4th place, behind the Tampa Rays. It’s not because A-Rod has joined Posada on the DL. It’s not because their young starters, Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes, are 0-6 with a combined ERA higher than the guy selling incense sticks at a Dead concert.

Don’t get me wrong – these are all wonderful things. (Well, maybe not Kennedy’s ERA, since he’s on my fantasy team…). But they are short-lived things. True Yankee-haters believe, even more than dedicated Yankee fans, the Yankees will always turn it around. Last year the Yankees had a much worse start, and still made the playoffs.

(Incidentally, it is the success of teams like the Yanks and the Boys [and Duke and Notre Dame, and recently, the Patriots] that makes it so fun to root against them. Rooting against the Clippers or the Arizona Cardinals has no thrill, since there’s no exquisite pain to put the joy in sharp relief.)

No, what is making the Yankees such an enjoyable spectacle is the wit and wisdom of Henry “Hank” Steinbrenner.

The Sports Guy has nicknamed him Tommy Boy, but that’s not quite right. Tommy Boy is too fun-loving, too gregarious. He’s also been called Mr. Hankee, Little Boss, and Yammerin’ Hank.

But I call him Hank from Tampa. It’s not very catchy, but I think that Hank Steinbrenner is the first professional sports franchise owner that has the same blustery, ill-informed, sometimes-accidentally-on-the-money opinions of a sports radio caller.

Mad Dog: Hank from Tampa, you’re on the FAN.

HfT: Hey Mad Dog. This guy who buried the Red Sox jersey in Yankee Stadium? I hope his co-workers kick the sh*t out of him.

The Yankees have been harder to hate lately. The team’s biggest jerks are gone (Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Roger Clemens). The October humiliations have lasted through the entire Bush Administration. The original Boss has become almost lovable with age. And the Yankee fans’ continued lack of appreciation for A-Rod almost makes you root for their best player.

But with Hank from Tampa, the magic is back.

Pacman to the Cowboys

As for the Cowgirls…it seems to me that Jerry Jones, who has always resembled the Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, had a meeting a couple years ago. It went something like this:

JJ: Here’s the plan. We need to assemble a roster of players that is most guaranteed to piss off this blogger, Keatang, who writes this thing called FreeTime.

Sycophant #1: Yes sir.

JJ: First, we need a pretty-boy quarterback with a name that sounds like he’s in a boy band.

S # 2: Right.

JJ: Then, after he wins a few games, we need to make sure the media goes overboard praising him, starts calling him a legend before he’s won a playoff game.

S #1: I’m on it.

JJ: Then, we need this pretty-boy to start serial-dating air-headed celebrities. And if we can get American Idol contestants involved somehow, that would be perfect.

S #2: Great idea, boss.

JJ: Also, we need to sign a selfish, loud-mouth, wide receiver. Chad Johnson or Randy Moss, maybe. Actually, no, make it Terrell Owens. We must have T.O. Keatang hates T.O.

S #1: You’re a genius.

JJ: Yes, I am. What else…oh, then we need to find a bona fide criminal. You know, someone with a long rap sheet, preferably involving strip clubs and guns. And he has to be really stupid. Ideally, it is someone whose best game ever came against the Giants.

S #2: It’s an honor to work for you sir.

JJ: Yes, well. This should all make us good enough to make the playoffs, where hopefully, horrible things won’t happen to us…really horrible things...

Dad vs. Robin

All week long I have felt like a Sitcom Dad:

“This week on Dad’s House, Dad uses increasingly wacky techniques to battle a pesky bird.”

You see, a Robin has been pestering me all week. At least I think it’s a Robin. My ornithological knowledge mostly comes from baseball hats. I can recognize Cardinals and Blue Jays from the St. Louis and Toronto sub-species, whose natural habitats are, respectively, the National and American Leagues.

The guy on my deck looks nothing like this guy. But still, I’m pretty sure it’s a Robin. In fact, according to Wikipedia it is Turdus Migratorius, the American Robin. I didn’t make that up; Turdus comes from the Latin word for Thrush. I’ve nicknamed him Dick.

Anyway, Dick has been flying into our sliding doors and kitchen windows all week. Thump! Thump! Thump! It's mating season and Dick, whose Mensa application has not been answered, believes that his mirrored image in our windows is a rival. So each day he comes to do battle in order to win the affections of the local lasses.

I got used to the thumping after a while. What I couldn’t get used to was the, um, what’s the right word? Well, let’s just say that I think I know why the word Turdus evolved from Thrush into an English slang word for other stuff. Because Dick is dropping tons of Turdus on our deck…

Avian Countermeasures

So I began to fight back. First, I sicced my dog on him. Unfortunately, my dog is a toy poodle. He looks like a fuzzy slipper. As Dave Barry once wrote about a sand shark, he is no threat to anyone unless he can somehow get hold of, and learn how to use, a gun.

Then I left 4 whiffle balls by the sliding door. The plan was to wait for Dick’s arrival, whip open the sliding door, and fling whiffle balls at him. Dick would be so intimidated by the fusillade of plastic spheres that he’d surrender, believing the rival in the window had developed some sort of super power. Alas, Whiffle-Hurling Dads are nothing against the power of flight, and he easily evaded my attacks.

It was time for a new stratagy. My attempts to convince Dick he’d lost had failed, so I decided to convince him he’d won. First, I hung a huge canvas tarp over the length of kitchen windows, securing it to the overhanging gutter with velcro. Then I stacked chairs, boxes, ladders and other bric-a-brac in front of the sliding doors. When Dick returned there would be no reflection. He’d be convinced the rival had fled, and fly off in victory.

Bumbling Sitcom Dads

If you have watched any sitcoms in the last 25 years, you have a premonition of disaster. You see, in the early days of television Dads were wise, benevolent, slightly detached patriarchs. Think Mike Brady or Father Knows Best.

But now? From Homer Simpson to Ray Romano, Tim Taylor to Jim Belushi, television Dads are clueless wonders, whose only domestic accomplishment was persuading a wise, benevolent (and sometimes, implausibly hot) woman to marry him.

When I finished construction of the Anti-Reflection Shield, my wife came down and eyed it warily. Her arched eyebrow would have been a signal to the live television audience that catastrophe loomed. Perhaps the wind would catch the canvas, ripping my gutter off the house. Maybe Dick would return with some sort of Robin Army, and launch assaults on the house. Or maybe the episode would end with Dad reclined on his leather chair with a newspaper and a satisfied grin…only to hear Thump! Thump! Thump! on the window by his chair.

But you know what? I think it worked. Dick, flush with victory, is probably off at the Robin Singles Club right now, regaling the chicks with stories of his bravery, how he defeated the Plastic-Launching-Robin-in-the-Window. He’s a hero.

I wish him luck.

A Soldier's Reading List

In her review of William Styron's memoir Havanas in Camelot, the New York Times' Michiko Kakutani slipped in the following parenthetical aside:

"How many Marines today, one wonders, turn to Keats,
Housman and Emily Dickinson in stressful moments?"

Kakutani's question was rhetorical, and the implication was that today's jarheads are immune to the wonders of literature.

As it happens, I'm involved with an organization called Operation Paperback, that collects "gently used books" and sends them to troops abroad. Most soldiers involved in the program ask for certain genres of books, like history, technology, and crime fiction. But some ask for very specific titles. This morning I received an email from the the good folks at Operation Paperback with some specific requests, including this one from a soldier I'll call Jim Domenico (I've changed his name to protect his privacy):

"Outer Dark", by Cormac McCarthy
"Hero with a Thousand Faces", by Joseph Campbell
"Catch-22", by Joseph Heller
"The Cement Garden", by Ian McEwen
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", by Robert Pirsig

McCarthy and McEwen are two of the finest writers in the English language today. Interestingly, both of Domenico's choices are of earlier, more obscure works. "Catch-22" is arguably the best novel of the Second World War. "Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a classic book about the psychological roots of mythology. (I don't know much about "Zen...", except that it is a cult classic.)

Domenico's choices aren't common, but not unique either. I've had requests for Shakespeare, Russian literature and philosophy, along with more popular works. It seems to me that the reading choices aren't widely different from the rest of us.

Tom Wolfe has long argued that the American novel has suffered because too many writers lead cloistered, writerly lives. They graduate college, go off to some bucolic campus to get their M.F.A., then move to Brooklyn or Berkeley and spend their lives surrounded by other writers. Wolfe argues that they should, like Hemingway and Steinbeck, go live in the real world, where their fiction will be informed and strengthened by living a non-writerly existence.

So too for readers. I've read much of Ms. Kakutani's work, and she is intelligent, well-read, and able to appreciate literature in a way that most of us can't. But I suspect Mr. Domenico, who is stationed in Baghdad, has seen things that she hasn't, and will understand the sacred violence of Cormac McCarthy's fiction, the madness of war in "Catch-22", and the heroic journeys of Campebell's mythic figures in ways that Kakutani can only imagine.

Warriors & Civilians

I am a fan of the counterintuitive. I’m attracted to counterintuitive ideas and intrigued by counterintuitive events and trends.

This election season a fascinating counterintuitive trend will get another test. For four consecutive Presidential elections, the candidate with the superior military background has lost to the candidate with a questionable military background. In three of them, a decorated combat veteran lost to someone who clearly went out of his way to avoid combat.

A quick run-through:

1992
Bill Clinton: No military background; used a variety of methods of avoid being drafted, including reneging on ROTC commitment

DEFEATED

George Bush: Enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday; flew 58 combat missions in World War II; won Distinguished Flying Cross, among other decorations

1996
Bill Clinton: see above

DEFEATED

Bob Dole: Enlisted in Army in 1942; served as 2nd Lieutenant in 10th Mountain Division; severely wounded in April 1945; won 2 Purple Hearts and Bronze Star (with “V” for valor)

2000
George W. Bush: served in Texas Air National Guard; probably used connections to avoid being sent to Vietnam; shirked some of his duties with National Guard

DEFEATED

Al Gore: turned down National Guard position; enlisted in Army; served in Vietnam in non-combat role (was a journalist)

2004
George W. Bush: see above

DEFEATED

John Kerry: enlisted in Navy Reserve while at Yale; served as Lieutenant in Vietnam; won Silver Star, Bronze Star, and 3 Purple Hearts

The 2008 election will pit John McCain (Silver Star, Bronze Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and the most celebrated prisoner-of-war in U.S. history) against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama – neither of whom served, but neither of whom went out of their way to avoid military service.

History as a Guide?
A look at Presidential elections makes it difficult to draw solid conclusions. It is true that the most prominent General in many of America's wars made it to the White House: Washington (Revolution), Jackson (War of 1812), Taylor (Mexican War), Grant (Civil War), and Eisenhower (WWII). And in the years after the Civil War and World War II, many Presidents were veterans.

[Sidebar: Civil War histories occasionally have passages like this one, from Bruce Catton's account of the Battle of South Mountain in Mr. Lincoln's Army: "Then the 23rd Ohio came up to help, and the two regiments went storming up the hill, firing as they went. The lieutenant colonel of the 23rd, a promising chap named Rutherford B. Hayes, was shot down, wounded; William McKinley, sergeant in the same regiment, was unhurt."]

But very often, civilians have defeated former officers. John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson in 1824; Martin Van Buren beat William Henry Harrison (whose nickname, Tippecanoe, came from his victory in a battle with Indians) in 1836; Lincoln defeated George McClellan in 1864; and so on.

The most interesting 19th century election is 1852 when Winfield Scott, America's greatest soldier between Yorktown and Fort Sumpter, was defeated by Franklin Pierce. Pierce served under Scott in the Mexico City campaign (Halls of Montezuma and all that), but was wounded when he fell off his horse. In the '52 election he was accused of cowardice in that war, but he still went on to defeat Scott.


What Does It Mean?
It's easy to read too much into this. One might think that after Vietnam, American voters had become so ambivalent about the military that we began choosing draft dodgers over war heroes. But if you look closely at the last four elections, you'll see that is an oversimplication

Bush 41 (certainly) and Bob Dole (probably) would have defeated Bill Clinton if not for the 3rd party candidacy of Ross Perot (US Naval Academy; used connections to renege on his commitment to the Navy).

As befits the agonizing closeness of the 2000 election, the military careers of Gore and Bush 43 probably didn’t seem that different to many voters. Gore was in Vietnam, but his fingers pressed typewriter keys rather than triggers, and Bush flew jets over Texas, which didn't seem so bad after Clinton. Both men were sons of prominent politicians and both wore uniforms, but neither saw combat.

John Kerry was forced to fight off the attacks of fellow Swift Boat veterans who questioned everything about Kerry’s military service. By 2004, Bush's National Guard story was old news, and attempts by 60 Minutes to resuscitate it backfired.

This election is much more of a straight-up race between a genuine war hero and someone who didn’t serve but has no military skeletons in their closet either.

Conclusion

There's no question that a succesful military background is helpful in one's political success. Being at the head of an army that won a war is a huge advantage and being a war hero certainly contributes to a story that resonates with voters. Indeed, the political careers of John McCain and John Kerry are almost unimaginable without it.

But ultimately, military service is just one factor among many when voters make their decisions.

If John McCain goes down in defeat this November, it will keep an interesting trend going. But it will have nothing to do with that trend.

The Losers Out Manifesto

In nearly all things, I am a moderate.

I have voted for Republicans and Democrats. I drink, but not to excess. I exercise but I’m not a fanatic about it. I go to Church, but not every Sunday.

In one thing only do I have a radical opinion – a position so outside the mainstream that I am looked upon with disdain. Strangers inch back in mute disgust and friends wonder if I harbor other immoral and dangerous beliefs. This disdain is accompanied by the fervent hope that I will not preach my heresies to convert them to my satanic ways.

You see, in pick-up basketball, I believe in Losers Out.

Street Sports: Mimicking the Real Game

In all pick-up sports, you modify the rules of the actual sport because you lack the necessary players, equipment, and/or playing surface to play by the official rules.

The most common baseball modification, used in Whiffle ball or stick ball, is automatic rules (ground ball past the pitcher is a single; line drive past the oak tree is a double; Eismann’s roof is a homer). You play automatic because you can’t put fielders on every base.

In football, it is common to replace line play with a Mississippi-count and to replace “10 yards for a first down” with “3 receptions for a first.”

And in basketball, the ingenious solution for a smaller group is the half-court game. Upon rebounding the opponent’s shot, a team must bring the ball “back”, generally to the free-throw line or beyond the arc, to re-set the court, as if you are now taking the ball the other way.

Winner’s Out?

But what if one team scores?

Here’s where pick-up ballers veer from the real rules. In real basketball, after a score the ball goes to the other team, who inbound and take it the other way. In other words, Loser’s Out. Every full-court basketball game in the world is played with “Loser’s Out” rules, from the NBA to CYO, from the Olympics to Intramurals, from Harlem to Hong Kong. Even pick-up full court is played Loser's Out.

But in half-court, for reasons nobody has ever been able to explain to me, we play Winner’s Out. After you score, you get the ball again.

This is an obvious perversion of the real rules and one that is easily avoidable.

I have asked many people why they believe in Winner’s Out. First, I get the same look I’d expect from the folks at Augusta National if I suggested they switch the Green Jacket to a Lavendar sweater-vest. Then, they sort of stammer out that it is the way it is done, the way it’s always been done, and begin to wonder how such a person as I had found his way to the courts.

When pressed for some practical reason to play Winner’s Out, for some explanation as to why the real rules are perverted, all they can come up with is, “When you score, you deserve a reward.”

This is not without precedence in sports. In football you are rewarded with more downs if you achieve some yardage. In baseball you get more at-bats if you keep getting hits.

But in basketball, Kobe has to run back on defense after hitting a shot. We should mimic that in street ball.

In addition to staying true to the rules of the game, there are practical benefits to Loser’s Out. Well, one anyway: it prevents blowouts. A 21-19 game is always more fun than a 21-6 win, even for the winners. But Winners Out naturally lends itself to blowouts

Progress

So I will continue my crusade for Loser’s Out, even if I’ve already failed in my own Sunday morning game. But I will do so with faith that progress is being made. For in my own research for this piece I learned that Hoop It Up, the largest half-court basketball organizer in the world, plays Loser’s Out.

They don’t call it that, though. This is from their Rules & Regulations:

No "Make It Take It":
The ball changes possession after each scored basket.

In addition, wise souls that they are, play "Everything Back". Don’t even get me started on that…


Editor's note: The eagle-eyed copy editors out there will notice I've switched back between Loser's Out, Losers Out, and Losers' Out. That's because they are all equally valid and I can't decide which one is correct. Hopefully William Safire will weigh in on this important question.

Defending the Piano Man

This July, Billy Joel will play the final concert at Shea Stadium – most famous (musically) for the Beatles’ 1965 concert.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that think Billy Joel is a cheesy pop singer utterly lacking in street cred; and those that can’t imagine why Joel – who has sold 150 million records, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by the coolest musician of the 20th century, won 6 Grammys, sold out Madison Square Garden a record 12 consecutive nights and married Christie Brinkley - could possibly need defense.

Wait… there is a third kind…as personified by Slate music critic Jody Rosen, who grew up loving Billy Joel, but when she got to college was informed that Elvis Costello didn't like him and promptly threw out her collection.

Damnit - this whole “there are two kinds of people in this world” motif is not working at all. For I am a fourth kind. Like Ms. Rosen, I grew up on Long Island digging Billy Joel, and I too went to college where my musical horizon expanded and realized that Billy Joel was exactly the sort of person the Clash were pissed off about. But unlike Ms. Rosen, I did not slink off in shame. He still has an un-ironic place in my collection.

(Shoot. There’s a fifth kind too: people who don't give a crap.)

So I guess I’m not really here to defend Billy Joel – I’m here to defend liking him. I realize it’s a ridiculous exercise on some level – I should be trumpeting the virtues of great artists who never found a large audience, like Richard Thompson, rather than a man that ranks 6th on the all-time best-selling list. But hey – us Long Islanders gotta watch out for our own.

You see, part of my attraction to Joel is purely parochial. Every musician comes from someplace, but that doesn’t mean the music is from that place. Frank Sinatra may have been born and bred in Hoboken but you’d never know it from his catalogue. The Beatles’ Liverpudlian roots are barely visible in their music or lyrics.

But other musicians are definitively from a specific place. Bruce and Jersey, of course. The Beach Boys and Southern California. Paul Simon has been influenced by music all over the world, but he’s a Queens boy at heart and his music shows it.

Billy Joel, like me, is a Long Island boy, a Nassau County south shore boy to be precise, and he views the Island, the City, and the whole Metropolitan area through those roots. I understand that’s not the coolest place on earth, but it’s where I’m from.

(Lou Reed’s a South Shore boy too - he grew up in Freeport - but when he sings about New York, it’s not my New York. I’m sorry, but I didn’t hang out at CBGB’s in the 70’s with skinny boys in eyeliner.)

I lived in Billy Joel’s New York, and he nails the place and its people in so many of his songs. I hung out at the Village Green (my high school is up the block from Joel’s), knew girls like Virginia, and delivered the edition of the Daily News with the “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” headline that inspired my favorite Joel song, Miami 2017 (The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway), in which he imagines what would happen if, indeed, New York dropped dead. Here’s a snippet:

Seen the lights go out on Broadway-

I watched the mighty skyline fall.

The boats were waiting at the Battery,

The union went on strike-

They never sailed at all.

They sent a carrier out from Norfolk-

And picked the Yankees up for free.

They said that Queens could stay,They blew the Bronx away-

And sank Manhattan out at sea....

You know those lights were bright on Broadway-

But that was so many years ago...

Before we all lived here in Florida-

Before the Mafia took over Mexico.

I am a card-carrying Yankee-hater, but even I have to admit no other New York team works in that line.

Four-Tool Player
I’m also a big fan of what I call 4-tool players in music – guys and gals who write the music, write the lyrics, sing the song, and play the instrument.

Mick Jagger is a special guy, but he’s only a 2-tool guy, and anyone who has endured one of Mick’s solo records understands that he’s the musical equivalent of a DH. It’s like watching David Ortiz flop around first base with a borrowed mitt. The rock and roll pantheon is filled with DHs – Elvis Presley, Bono, even talented musicians like Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen. The guy Joel is most compared to, Elton John, needed Bernie Taupin in the back room to “put down in words” the lyrics to his songs.

Joel plays a mean piano, of course, and even Ms. Rosen acknowledges he’s practically a savant when it comes to writing melody. He’s not a poet, but his lyrics can be touching and funny, and music fans will be singing along to Piano Man long after Elvis Costello has faded to an asterisk. His voice handles the slow numbers better than the fast ones, but it does the job.

In the age of American Idol, when all you all need is a good voice and a decent back-story to become a star, I like the 4-tool guys.

Baby Grand
Billy Joel could have been born at any time and been a successful musician. His real crime, from a critics’ perspective, is that he was born in a time when piano-playing rock stars were deeply out of fashion.

Piano got off to a great start in rock and roll. Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were terrifying parents and inspiring air pianists long before the guitar secured its place as the ultimate rock instrument. By the 70’s, few major rock bands had a pianist in its core lineup, and those that did (Skynyrd, Petty, The Band) were still guitar-driven. The Big Four (Beatles, Stones, Zep, Who) all used hired help on the keyboards, as did the biggest bands of the 80’s and 90’s, U2 and REM. Elton John hardly helped the cause of rock star pianists with outfits like this.

One of the great albums of this period, Springsteen's Born to Run, is drenched in piano. But Bruce couldn't risk the lounge lizard associations of him and pianist Roy Bittan on the cover, so went instead with this much cooler - and now iconic - shot of Clarence and his sax.  

So along comes Joel, a pianist determined to play rock and roll. And indeed, his worst music (Movin’ Out, the entire Glass Houses album) are his attempts at pure rock and roll.

But his best music – the early stuff before The Stranger (especially as captured on Songs in the Attic), the underrated The Bridge, and his paean to the 50’s, An Innocent Man (which has grown on me over the years) – are timeless albums. They could have been released at almost any time in the 20th century.

Billy Joel, had he been born 50 years earlier, might have made even greater music. His gift for melody and his piano playing would have been just as strong – and he wouldn’t have had any temptation to add the sometimes lame rock effects we saw in songs like Sometimes a Fantasy.  Songs like She’s Got a Way, You’re My Home, and of course, Piano Man, could have been written in any decade of the 20th century. And for that reason, I suspect, he’ll hold up much longer than bands-of-their-time like the Clash.


Best of…

Like every fan of every artist, my favorite Billy Joel stuff is not the stuff you hear on the radio, but the stuff that never makes it there. So click here (iTunes required) for my own greatest-hits package for Billy Joel…

The Apocalypse Postponed

Last week Madonna and Mariah Carey both passed Elvis Presley on all-time singles lists. But this week I'm pleased to report that the great Van Morrison has, for the first time in his illustrious career, a Top 10 album.

Keep It Simple barely slipped in, charting at #10 in Billboard's Top 200.

Great Expectations

Last week I wrote that true conservatism or liberalism is driven by our view of human nature, and the type of government that is best suited to it. I linked to a piece by David Mamet in which he realizes that his view of human nature made him a natural conservative.

In the April 17th issue of Rolling Stone, the musician Dave Matthews gives an interview on Barack Obama in which he shows how many Obama supporters are true liberals, in the sense that they believe Barack Obama can inspire us to change the world. This is in line with the perfectionist view of human nature. Here’s Matthews:

“The most important qualification a candidate can possess is being able to inspire people to want to do things for the country. He makes me feel like it’s possible to change the world…it’s a rare jewel that can move us to be our very best.”

I realize Dave Matthews is not the spokesperson for Obama supporters, but I think his views are representative. Reading this – and many other things like it – makes me realize how high the bar will be for an Obama Presidency. McCain supporters have reasonable expectations for a McCain Presidency. They expect (or hope) that:

- The recession will end at some point (they usually do)
- Troops will stay in Iraq, but the situation will slowly improve
- Diplomacy with our allies will improve
- The Iranian threat will be contained through some combination of stick and carrot
- Dems and GOPers will work together in greater harmony
- US soil will remain immune from terrorist attacks, as it has since 9/11, without the use of torture

Obama supporters, on the other hand, have rather higher hopes:

- The recession will end at some point (they usually do)
- U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq will begin immediately and have no negative consequences
- America will earn back the world’s respect (Matthews: “Electing Obama will so radically change how the world views us, in a positive way.”)
- Dems and GOPers will work together in greater harmony
- The Iranian threat, if there is one, will be contained through diplomacy alone
- Many more Americans will have their healthcare paid for by the government through tax increases that only affect the super-rich
- The environmental threat will be beaten back without impacting the economy
- US soil will remain immune from terrorist attacks, as it has since 9/11, without torture, Gitmo, profiling, and some sections of the Patriot Act

The point here isn’t that McCain will be a better President. Rather, it’s that expectations for an Obama Presidency are going to be significantly higher. McCain (and Clinton) supporters are hoping for a good President; Obama supporters are expecting a great one.

Obama seems to be a smart politician, so I suspect that we will begin to see a change in his rhetoric – slowly at first, after he wins the nomination, and more aggressively if he wins in November - in order to begin tamping down those expectations.

In fact, if you dig deep into the issues section of his website, you will see that he has left himself wiggle room on most issues.

For example, he promises to have American troops out of Iraq within 16 months, but adds “if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.” Anyone who has followed things closely knows there is already an organization called Al Qaeda in Iraq. In addition, most of his environmental promises have outcomes that are planned for 2025 or 2050.

My hope? If he is elected, I hope his supporters are right. Greatness does, in fact, come along once in a while, and often from unexpected places.

Happy 47 Day

It's April 7, when worshippers of the number 47 celebrate this seemingly random number that is so important in so many of our lives.

The Prophet Jordan first told me of the power of this number, as we rode a train into the city for a Cards-Mets game in September, 1985. He said the number 47 appears in important and random times more than any other number. I dismissed him, of course.

But the Mets won that day with Jesse Orosoco (#47) getting the Win, and Joaquin Andujar (#47) taking the Loss. I was intrigued. After that, the number 47 began appearing everywhere I looked. About a year later the Mets won the World Series, with none other than Senor Orosco on the mound.

The Skeptic Windex told me I was crazy. "Choose any number", he said, "and watch how often that appears. Try 56." So I did - and the Gods punished me. A week later Lawrence Taylor, the ultimate 56, tested positive for cocaine.

I turned back to the 47 Gods and was rewarded...in January of 1991 Scott Norwood of the Buffalo Bills lined up a 47 yard field goal to defeat my New York Giants - and shanked the most famous field goal miss in NFL history.

I confess my faith was shaken in 2000 during the Subway Series. The official image of the series was the number 47 - created by the logos for the 4 train (which goes to Yankee Stadium) and the 7 train (which goes to Shea). The Yanks beat the Mets and I felt forsaken. But I remembered that the Goddess 47 (it's a nonbinary God) counts Yankee fans among her faithful too.

Sixteen years later, in another January football game, another Laurence (Tynes this time) lined up for another 47 yard field goal to put the Giants back into the Super Bowl. He kicked it through, and two weeks later the Patriots were 18-1.

Don't fight it. The power of 47 is undeniable. And Happy 47 Day.

(for more info, go here).

Leatherheads...

...opens Friday. Will George Clooney end his box office slump?

Heck, I don't know. On the one hand, it has a good cast, has been massively promoted (including a Super Bowl spot), and has that Titanic-like appeal to men (football!) and women (romance!). John Krasinski seems ideally suited to the task of succeeding Matt Damon (who succeeded Brad Pitt, who succeeded Noah Wyle) as George's I-kid-him-because-I-love-him-surrogate-younger-brother. I'm also a fan of two other people associated with the flick: Rick Reilly, who co-authored the script, and the great Randy Newman.

On the other hand, the public's fascination with George Clooney hasn't translated into ticket sales.

But there is a huge obstacle to this movie's success: what on earth convinced the powers that be that the ideal time to release a football movie was the opening week of baseball season?

As anyone who wastes their time at this site knows, I'm a bit of a football fan. Through December and January I wrote thousands of words on everything from the Brady-Manning rivalry* to coming up with a name for the David Tyree catch. I did a piece examining the experience of every single coach who ever won the Super Bowl. I wrote Peter King satires. I was ecstatic about the Giants winning the Super Bowl. I like football.

[*Isn't it still amazing that some of you, if even momentarily, thought I meant Eli?]

But, you know, it's April. Rogers Hornsby once said he spends the winter staring out the window waiting for Spring. Well, spring is here, baseball has started, and every team in the majors is within 3 games of first place. Is this the time to release a movie about the origins of the National Football League?

I confess to knowing next to nothing about release strategies for major motion pictures. But George's next movie, with the Coen Brothers, is due in September. Maybe that one has Oscar hopes, so it needed to come out during football season.

But I'm guessing Leatherheads will be (choose your own awful football metaphor):

• sacked on 3rd & long
• intercepted in the end zone
• miss the extra point
• called for holding
• flagged on the play
• fumbled at the goal line

I got it: upon further review, the call is reversed. They should've opened this movie in October.

There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit. ~Al Gallagher, 1971

Update (4/6/08): Leatherheads is being roughed up by critics. A.O. Scott of the Times, one of my favorite critics, closes his negative review with this paragraph:

"What is harder to comprehend is how [the director] Mr. Clooney turned out such a sloppy, haphazard and tonally incoherent piece of work. “Leatherheads” lurches hectically between Coen brothers-style pastiche and John Saylesian didacticism, while Mr. Clooney works his brow and his jaw and waits in vain for his charm to kick in and save the day. Unless he’s just vamping until the director shows up and gives him some clear instructions."

The box office disappointed as well. It's a bad weekend for the last movie star.

Elvis has Left the Building

This week, Mariah Carey passed Elvis Presley on the "Most #1 Singles" list with a song called Touch My Body. She has 18, and only trails The Beatles, who have 20.

This very same week, Madonna passed Elvis on the "Most Top Ten Hits" with something called Four Minutes.

Comment would be superfluous.