Little Darling, It's Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter

2/12/2019

New Shea, Tuesday, from the 7 line. Photo: Andrew Tansey.

Now the Mets have Jacob DeGrom's former agent working as a general manager, negotiating DeGrom's contract -- with an imposed deadline of opening day. What could go wrong, in a franchise that let Tom Seaver get away?
But at least many of the Mets were in Florida on Monday, stretching and throwing, scratching and spitting, doing what ball players do. We survive vicariously.

Dominic Smith greets Jeurys Familia as the big fella returns from his strange exile. Photo: Newsday.

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
---"Here Comes the Sun," lyrics by George Harrison, from "Abbey Road," 1969.
Say, what happened that year?

Andy Tansey

2/12/2019 05:49:32 pm

It won't be the first time I've said this, but back when being a bully, while not nice, was not illegal, 10-year-old boys could be mean in 1969. A 10-year-old Yankees fan living in a Flushing ZIP code in 1969 could be made to turn colors and jump on the bandwagon in October. The psychological scars have faded but endure. The name Swoboda still brings fond memories. Frank Robinson played for the O's.

doo-do-do-doo

George Vecsey

2/12/2019 06:19:05 pm

We need to ask Rocky about his memories about FRobby. Rocky is a Baltimore kid....He must have gotten some stick that winter...GV

Peter Kennedy link

2/13/2019 08:47:24 am

Thanks, George. Spring Training, finally!

On a different subject, speaking of Dom Smith, would you please share your "Who's at First" scenario for the 2019 season?

Cheers, Peter

George Vecsey

2/13/2019 02:58:01 pm

Peter: Just scanned the roster. Bernie Madoff Era Lives.
I see two nice players -- Conforto and Nimmo.
Not at all sure about Rosario.
First base? Maybe Marv Throneberry. Maybe Tim Harkness.
Smith looked a little more trim in first spring photo.
My Mets consigliere just texted: "Cano? TJ Rivera? Smith? D'Arnaud? I could see Cano, if McNeil continues to hit."
But Mets seem to disdain McNeil, despite his low salary and high BA. He is not a launch-arc flailer the analytics crowd seems to favor.
Is it time to quote Dante yet? ("lasciate ogni speranza..." etc.)
GV

Josh Rubin

2/13/2019 11:07:50 am

I am in wait-and-see mode. Good pitching (hope the rotation holds together this time). A few big, but uncertain, bats. I don't know where the spark or the engine is that will drive this team.

George Vecsey

2/13/2019 03:03:13 pm

Josh: Wait, I forgot, Tim Tebow is on the roster. One of these years we are going to have that frolic.
Former agent working the other side of the street,
Dante lives!
GV

bruce

2/16/2019 07:47:18 pm

george,

what the hell does this have to do with the blue jays?

big hype about vlad being with the team this season.

supposedly the #1 prospect in baseball.

george harrison wrote some great songs....a bit overshadowed in that particular group.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Little Darling, It's Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter

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