The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Wednesday, October 14, 2009

   I’ve tried for many years to resist the siren call to nationalistic hysteria when it comes to the Olympics, preferring instead to focus on the achievements of the athletes as opposed to whichever flag hey might be toting, but my parochial leanings do bubble up sometimes when the International Olympic Committee gets into the act.

   With that backdrop, I found it more than a little disheartening a couple of weeks ago when Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Games received such a decidedly unenthusiastic response from that august body – go ahead and read a bit of sarcasm into that – and later from people in this country who roundly cheered at the news of the early demise of the Chicago bid.

   I can promise you that the people (even political commentators, who are technically people, too) who so gleefully applauded the IOC’s officious dismissal of Chicago probably don’t know too much about the inner workings of that group. If you think the denizens inside the Beltway have the inside track on hypocrisy, deceit, pomposity and back biting, meet their European mentors who have refined all of that to an art form. You couldn’t even fantasize about making Hypocrisy an actual Olympic event, since the very best practitioners wouldn’t be able to compete because of a conflict of interest.

   But what really frosted my grommet about all of this was the simple idea of Americans cheering at something so starkly disappointing to many of their fellow citizens. I fully understand that America is not the center of the universe and that from a global view it’s presumably exciting that the amateur athletics spectacle will be going to South America for the first time. That’s fine.

   But I can’t ever recall another IOC vote in my lifetime where people cheered about an American city coming up short in a bid vote. Even if you are opposed the idea of a Windy City Olympics on more defensible grounds – like the possibility of staggering cost overruns being saddled on the local populace – that didn’t seem to be what we were witnessing in this case.

   Gee, I’d hate to see the Olympics become politicized (Hint: more sarcasm).

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 5:25:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, October 12, 2009

Tiger misses cut in Sunday New York Times ...
Posted by T.S.

   Let’s stipulate that I’m a big New York Times fan. The Sunday Times is a treat of the first order, so the disappointment I felt yesterday was all the more acute because it happened in the Times.

   I’m tempted to suggest that the absence of any real Presidents Cup coverage in an 11-page Sunday Times Sports Section is a reflection of the arduous times faced by print publications, but, come on, we’re talking about a nifty international golf competition involving the top players in the world.

   I can't get over the notion that countless newspapers, magazines and any number of businesses at large seem to be doing everything they can to send their print customers online rather than enhance the print product they just shelled out $6 for. See, I am so mad I purposely ended a sentence with a preposition.

   Anyway, how could you figure that in the Sunday New York Times there would be 21/2 inches of agate type listing the results from Friday. Might as well have skipped the whole enterprise altogether. And this with Tiger Woods himself prominently leading the charge.

   Don’t get me wrong; this is not some heightened jingoism where I am appalled because my hybrid golf/patriotic impulses have been stifled. Even leaving the flag waving aside, it was a major event with all the best players and most certainly worthy of more coverage than it got.

   And while I am on the subject of my favorite newspaper, I might as well throw in how aggravated I am that the Times continues to cling to the pretentious nonsense of initial caps (or "title caps" if you prefer) in headlines. Grrrrrrrr.

   For an institution that prides itself on conveying information, this particular foible is particularly galling precisely because it confuses and misinforms instead of what it is supposed to be doing. When you capitalize everything, there’s no ability for the reader to tell which words are proper nouns. That’s disinformation. And it ain’t fit to print.

   I know it’s something that separates the New York Times from other newspapers, but there’s a reason the others don’t do it. It’s asinine, and thus unworthy of a great newspaper.

Monday, October 12, 2009 3:47:48 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, October 08, 2009

The Twins appear to be chronic overachievers ...
Posted by T.S.

It’s only the remarkable immediacy of the Internet that allows me to go out on a limb and say nutty things like this: The wretched imbalance in Major League Baseball payrolls means that – over the long term – smaller-market teams like the Minnesota Twins will perhaps be able to compete adequately over the course of a season and win a division title or wild card berth here and there, but ultimately are doomed against the likes of the Yankees in the postseason.

   I’m gonna look pretty silly if the Twins somehow pull something out against New York, but even then it wouldn’t mean I was wrong. Part of the wonderful charm of baseball is that the unexpected – sometimes even the unimaginable – can happen, but in a game that prides itself on anointing greatness only over an extended, even arduous schedule, the percentages favor the club with the greater manpower.

   Now one of the important things that mitigate this factor is pressure. I’m convinced that a team like the Yankees is quite properly handicapped by the almost unrealistic expectations that come with having all that high-priced talent. Everybody from the various Steinbrenners on down anticipates and expects that they will win in these payroll mismatches, so the underdog typically faces a relatively relaxed situation.

   But trying to identify those instances when the pressure cooker prompts professional athletes to choke is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible, unless your name is Johnny Miller. But I seemingly digress.

   My basic point is that while the Twins appear to debunk the idea that teams with lower payrolls can’t effectively compete against mucho-dinero behemoths like the Yankees, the reality may be that they can in fact compete only to a degree.

   It’s perfectly understandable that baseball would have moved to the tiered playoff system and then ultimately add the wild-card element, given the huge population growth that the country has undergone in the 40 years since the “new” system was established. But back in 1968, coming out on top after a 162-game ordeal put a club immediately into the World Series: nowadays it puts a team into a truncated playoff dance for a chance at getting into the World Series.

   If I were a fan of a small-market team, I would find it deeply unsatisfying to find my guys in the playoffs against a ball club that was paying its guys twice as much dough as my guys were getting. Especially if my guys were typically getting rudely bounced out most of the time.

   Thank God I root for a big-market juggernaut like the Mets.

Thursday, October 08, 2009 4:38:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Phillies ruefully return Ryan HR ball to 12-year-old ...
Posted by T.S.

   Since I used to live near Philadelphia but never remotely embraced the Phillies because of my Shea Stadium heritage, it is with some stifled glee that I read about a public relations snafu the Eastern Division Champions have wrestled with for the last three months.

   Apparently, it took a threatened lawsuit from a Flordia attorney to get the Phillies to return the ball that Ryan Howard socked for HR No. 200, which would have been notable enough, but it also marked the fastest trek to that milestone in major league history.

   According to the story in the Miami Herald, Phillies officials approached the 12-year-old girl who caught the ball, brought her into the clubhouse and offered her a trade of another baseball (signed by Howard) in exchange for the historic homer. There was no suggestion of any hot lights being applied and certainly no allegations of waterboarding, despite the inherently suspicious proximity to Guantanamo Bay, but the youngster ended up surrendering her treasure.

   After the little girl got home, her parents realized what had happened and consulted an attorney, who ultimately started contacting the Phillies to get the ball back.

   Here’s where I think it gets fascinating. After more than two months, the lawyer quite astutely sent one of those threatening letters right at the end of the regular season, and by Tuesday the little girl had her ball back.

   According to the Herald, the Phillies did not return a phone call Tuesday, with the reporter noting that the club officials have other things on their minds with the start of the Playoffs today.

   What I find so intriguing is that the Phillies presumably caved because they didn’t want TV announcers jabbering during Game One against the Rockies about how the club got into an unseemly tussle with a 12-year-old girl. I guess I would be surprised if the story doesn’t still manage to pop up in some fashion.

   But just to show you that I am hardly holier than thou or even the Phillies, I have an admission to make after 50 years. In 1959 in Muskegon, Mich., I hosed my best friend by engineering a grotesquely lopsided trade with his younger brother that left me with Rodney’s entire first series of 1959 Topps, this coming at a time when 9-year-old Rodney was at the dentist.

   I feel great shame.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:13:15 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Favre and Namath know about self-inflicted pressure ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ll say one thing for Brett Favre: I can’t recall another professional athlete in my lifetime putting himself into a bigger pressure cooker situation and then still managing to deliver the goods in a fashion that makes it difficult even for his most aggrieved detractors to find something to complain about.

   I gotta admit, I hadn’t figured he’d be able to adapt so quickly to a new team, though it naturally helped that he is so familiar with the Vikings’ offensive scheme.

   I was also surprised that the game itself managed to virtually live up to all of its hype, which was about as pronounced and protracted as I can recall for a regular-season NFL game. It crossed my mind that it might end up like a Super Bowl where the expectations often prove impossibly grandiose, but this was a really exciting football game from start to finish.

   I suppose one of the few people who might understand the kind of self-inflicted pressure that Favre faced would be Broadway Joe Namath, he of brash prediction of a New York Jets victory in Super Bowl III over the heavily favored Colts.

   Of course, all of this means that a certain Nov. 1 rematch at Lambeau Field. I took a flyer and offered a prediction on last nights game, but I think I’ll wait a few weeks before offering an prognostications about that one.

   Heck, we may even be thoroughly fed up with the hype by the time that contest actually rolls around.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009 5:54:25 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Monday, October 05, 2009

Confronting the cognitive dissonance of Viking Favre ...
Posted by T.S.

   Back in my final year in the Navy in 1972, I lived in Arlington, Va., and worked at the Pentagon and was always amazed how crazed the local populace would get over the Washington Redskins. I had lived in Wisconsin, Michigan, metro New York and Upstate New York as a kid, so was used to enthusiasm directed at, in chronological order, the Packers, Lions, Giants and Jets, but the Redskin mania seemed like something else entirely.

   As an outsider, I kept my mouth shut in the middle of all that “Hogs Hysteria,” but just generally assumed there was nothing else like it in the country. Uh, huh.

   That was, of course, until I made my return to Wisconsin after a mere 36 years an encountered people willing to attend a professional football game with an enormous plastic cheese thingy on their heads.

   All this is prologue, of course, to the approach of the Monday Night Football clash between the Packers and the Vikings, either the Game of the Century or a really noxious sideshow, depending upon your persepctive.

   Given that my return to Central Wisconsin precisely coincided with the arrival of Brett Favre on the scene, I’ve been able to enjoy his Green Bay tenure and even root for him last year as Jet. I’m not sure what tonite is going to bring, though it’s a fair guess that dismay and disappointment have the pole position, to mix my sports metaphors a bit.

   I say that because the cognitive dissonance for Packer/Favre fans is going to be nothing less than epic. The hype has meanwhile been so overwhelming that a very real possibility exists that the outcome – whatever that may mean – could end up not being able to live up to all the expectations.

   The enthusiasm for the home squad is so deeply entrenched that simply prognosticating about these kind of important matchups can be risky. That said, one could ask what is the point of working in a communications medium that touts its immediacy and then meekly declining to take advantage of same.

   I fear the Vikings will prevail in this one, not because of Favre’s alleged rabid desire for revenge, but more importantly because the game is being played in that goofy Hefty garbage bag stadium.

   A post-mortem on the morrow figures to offer more areas for commentary.

Monday, October 05, 2009 5:09:18 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, October 01, 2009

T206 collection leads to tape of LBJ extortion of Chief Justice ...
Posted by T.S.

   It started innocently enough. I went to the www.net54baseball.com site in search of blog kernels, and promptly came upon a site dedicated to the childhood tobacco card collection of famed Georgia statesman Richard B. Russell.

(http://baseballcards.galib.uga.edu/?Welcome).

   That was a fairly innocuous but intriguing start. I had just finished reading Master of the Senate by Richard Caro about LBJ’s years in the Senate, which included a great deal of information about the famous Georgian who had been Johnson’s mentor but was also a formidable opponent to civil rights legislation throughout his time in public life.

   Turns out, Russell kept a cigar box of his childhood tobacco cards, which in turn ended up in the larger research collection at the Russell Library. I am the ultimate cyber dunce, so it took a little wranglin’ to get around the site, but it’s worth it because the library researchers did a nice job of putting the cards in the broader historical context of the period. If you go to the site, don't click on the section that says "Browse the guides to the Richard B. Russell Jr. Collection," unless, of course, you want the broader picture. Instead, click on the various sections on the left-hand side under "Additional rResources," which takes you through his collection.

   It was while I was grazing around in cyberspace to research this blog that I then came upon a listing about LBJ’s efforts to get Russell to be a member of the Warren Commission, which provided the official investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. This too, I remembered from the book.
   Russell had resisted joining the Commission because it was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, not surprisingly despised by Russell because of their, uh, divergent views on civil rights. LBJ then convinced Russell to join the Commission by recounting to his mentor how he, Johnson, had convinced the reluctant Chief Justice to head the historic investigation.

   When Warren balked, LBJ mentioned that J. Edgar Hoover hhad some fascinating information about the Chief Justice and a certain visit to Mexico City, whereupon Warren started to cry (LBJ said) and quickly changed his mind and said he would do it.

Yikes! I’d always known about J. Edgar Hoover’s legendary “files” that reportedly kept just about everybody in government under his heel, but I was still impressed that LBJ would not-so-subtly threaten the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with the possibility of revealing details of some sordid event in Mexico City. He even made him cry. And here we thought that political hardball was a product of this millennium.

I’ve always contended that baseball cards can be a great educational tool, but even I never imagined just how true that observation can be. I’m not sure it works quite as well with a stack of canary yellow 1991 Fleer, though.

Thursday, October 01, 2009 3:32:50 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The curious tale of shortstops in the Hall of Fame ...
Posted by T.S.

   I read the other day that Omar Vizquel intends to take up bullfighting in the offseason. I guess that’s cool; certainly the “sport” has a different cultural significance in Venezuela than it does in Vermont.

   Of more interest to me is the ultimate fate of Vizquel’s Hall of Fame chances, and those of his fellow countryman, Dave Concepcion. The former seems like he ought be a surefire Hall of Famer once he actually deigns to retire, maybe not first ballot, but eventually, but then you would think the same thing about the latter.

   Concepcion was the best shortstop in the National League in the 1970s, and yet he got very little love from the baseball writers, ending up with about 16 percent in his final year under the scrutiny of the BBWAA in 2008.

   My Concepcion theory would be similar to my explanation of why Gil Hodges is still on the outside looking in: too many teammates from one of the great all-time ball clubs are installed in Cooperstown, so the last guy has to struggle to get voters to remember the depth of his contribution.

   With Hodges, it’s trailing Pee Wee, Duke and Jackie; with Concepcion, it’s even more complicated. Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan are Hall of Famers, and Pete Rose is a de facto Hall of Famer. The result is that a wonderful shortstop ends up denied for the moment at least, and that’s too bad.

   It’s also ominous in the long term, because the new voting arrangements for Veterans have really raised the bar in terms of any individual player’s prospects for getting a nod significantly in defiance of the results of 15 years of voting by the BBWAA. That was the goal when the system was revised several years ago and it seems to have been achieved. It’s one of those things in life that is laudable in theory but problematic in practice for the individuals affected.

   I have a sneaky suspicion that Vizquel is not going to have smooth sailing to Cooperstown despite having career numbers either indistinguishable from or in many instances better than his most suitable comparison player: Ozzie Smith.

   He’s 42 now and still playing in a part-time role, so it’s almost a certainty he can’t hang around long enough to snag the 300 or so hits he would need to get to 3,000. He shouldn’t have to reach that particular milestone number to get elected, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt.

   As it stands, I figure it will hurt him having played substantial chunks of his career for four different teams. That ain’t fair, but I am convinced it’s a factor in how a player is preceived by the voters.

   It also doesn’t help that the Hall of Fame roster for shortstops is kind of an odd listing mostly made up of guys with a decided turn-of-the-century or Depression era look to them.

   It’s ironic that one of the most important positions on the field should get short shrift in Hall of Fame balloting, especially when you consider that from Little League all the way to the high school level, the best athlete on the squad often ends up at shortstop. But in the near six decades of Major League Baseball since the end of World War II, only a half dozen or so shortstops have been inducted, and one of those: Ernie Banks, wasn’t really a shortstop for more than half of his career.

   Since Pee Wee and Rizzuto, there have only been Luis Aparicio, Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken. It’s true enough that there are plaques awaitin’ for Derek Jeter and A-Rod (spare me the chest thumping about steroids), but in the meantime it would be nice to see Concepcion get his due.

   Hell, the way Vizquel is hanging around, it’s not clear his first vote will come before Jeter’s anyway.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:41:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Lotsa golf, with apologies to Rogers Hornsby ...
Posted by T.S.

“I don’t like golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to chase it.”
   – Rogers Hornsby

   I promised a report on five days of golf in northwestern Wisconsin, and just in case there are any avid golfers in my readership, I feel obligated to deliver. I understand that this kind of entry is more in the spirt of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Fark or the like, but in the current climate that’s not a criticism, merely an observation.

   After getting back from Milwaukee early Saturday morning (Sept. 19), we drove to Rhinelander, Wis., for 18 holes, then on to our lodging at the Lac Courte Oreilles Casino in Hayward, Wis. We then went on to play 36 holes each day for the next four days, 10 rounds of golf on seven different courses. All of the courses were swell, a couple were so nice we played them twice. Not so much as a drop of rain in four days.

   While Tiger & Co. were readying for the Tour Championship and the wrapup of the better configured but still confusing Fed Ex Cup $10-million bonanza, I was launching drives deep into the spectacular North Country woods, playing often narrow, hilly courses with a reckless abandon worthy of a hacker with more than two-dozen brand-new golf balls safely ensconced in the bag. When we returned on Wednesday evening, I had lost every last one of them.

   I also lost $200 at the casino, though not in the typical fashion (and, hopefully, not permanently). Clever rube that I am, I got snookered by a rougue ATM machine, not by a slot machine or a black jack dealer. Took my ATM card and then defiantly refused to render me any cash whatsoever.

   It wasn’t until a day after I got back home that I confirmed with my bank that indeed I had been momentarily hosed by – gulp! – yet another computer, those modern marvels that everybody swears by but I seem to routinely want to whack with a sledgehammer. I have been undertaking to get the error fixed and am reasonably confident of a happy ending.

   It’s a pretty good marker of how much fun we had on the vacation that I didn’t let that minor incident even remotely bother me at the time. We ate like hedonists, including several big, fat steaks and world-class ribs at the original Famous Dave’s not far outside of Hayward.

   Anybody wants more detail than that feel free to contact me through the comments section or e-mail me directly. Great fun, and assuming I get my $200 back, I wouldn’t even hesitate to recommend the casino for lodging and gaming.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I would avoid the ATM machine at the front entrance.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 3:37:53 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Miller Park is great, but weenies need a nudge ...
Posted by T.S.

   At the risk of creating something that sounds like a fourth-grader’s report on what he did over the summer vacation, I herewith offer a few observations from my recent Milwaukee Brewers/Northern Wisconsin Golf Outing. This at least explains why I haven’t blogged in nearly a week, since my computer literacy extends to this office and doesn’t travel with me on actual vacations.

   I’ve been to a handful of Brewer games over the years since Miller Park opened, most notably that icky All-Star Game that never reached an acceptable conclusion in 2002, but it wasn’t till this last one that I realized that the unique nature of a roofed facility actually makes it look small. That’s not a criticism, just an observation.

   Having walls that go all the way around a stadium cuts off that wonderful expansive view from beyond the outfield wall; either that or as I age things that used to seem massive to me now appear much smaller. I visited my old ship, the U.S.S. Midway four or five years ago at the harbor in San Diego where it’s now a museum, and it seemed small to me now. Maybe it was because it was docked next to one of those cruise ships, which weren’t nearly as large in 1970 as they are today, or in any event weren’t docked next to us 40 years ago.

   Back to Milwaukee. The Brewers have cheerleaders, which I didn’t know. SCD’s managing editor Tom Bartsch tells me that they are only there on certain days. Again, not complaining, since I haven’t reached the point yet of bemoaning the inclusion of scantily-clad hot young babes at almost any venue short of funerals and bar mitzvahs, but I wasn’t expecting it.

   It’s hardly insightful to point out that modern-day baseball clubs labor frantically to provide countless “entertainment experiences” along with the rudimentary baseball game on the field, but I still find it overwhelming. I contend it's a reflection of the grand corporate belief that in order to attract fans it has to somehow augment its product to the point of silliness. Considering the corner that MLB has painted itself into requiring so many millions of dollars in revenue – much of it from corporate “fans” whose interest and understanding of the game is fairly questionable – it’s understandable that they feel they must gussy up their package, but ....

   The formula for a great ball game is still stunningly simple at its core: the game itself, the players, the stadium, and, drum roll, please ... the food. I will probably get in trouble for this, but the food at Miller Park was lackluster at best, and I am being gentle here. Ballpark food doesn’t have to suck; I have had great ballpark fare at Jacobs Field, for example (do they still call it that?).

   Sigh. I guess I really am an old geezer. Forty-five years ago when I started going to Mets games at Shea, the weenies were probably just as pathetic, but I was in such a state of elevated consciousness that I didn’t even notice.

   Still, I’ll never get to the point of crabbing about going to a baseball game. But the quality of the food would improve dramatically as we headed north into the wilds of the Wisconsin wilderness for five days of golf.

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:15:47 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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