What's a Stolen World Series These Days?

1/13/2020

How charming it seemed, back in 2017.

I’d like to wax moralistic about the baseball scandal that got a manager and a general manager of a championship team fired on Monday.

I feel cheated because I fell in love with that Houston team three-four years ago, so much talent, so much charisma with Altuve and Springer and seemingly admirable guys like Hinch and Cora and Beltrán.

Now, as a Mets fan, I want to know how this scandal affects their new manager, Carlos Beltrán, but according to the commissioner, you can’t really bust a dugout full of players. (Plus, players have a union.)

So it seems Beltrán will be the manager. Just hide the garbage-pail cans.
So many scandals, so much cheating.

I'll admit, I used to think it was funny when ball players I knew were caught with sandpaper or thumb tacks in their pockets to doctor the ball, or a catcher had a sharp edge on his belt buckle so that the two-out, two-strike pitch would swerve downward, game over.

Then, a generation ago, everybody had new muscles all over them, and players were whacking 50 or 60 or 70 home runs a year. Looks to me like burly, wired pitchers were cheating, too.

Then again, out in the Real World, public figures are lying every time they move their lips, and have reputations for not paying their bills and cheating on their wives, while preachers tell their flocks to vote for them.

Just saying. No names mentioned.

After I absorbed the breaking news of suspensions and subsequent firing of Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, I flipped to the news section of the Times and read a piece by the great Michael Kimmelman. He is one of the jewels of the paper, who has morphed from art critic to covering the social implications of architecture over the world.

As described by Kimmelman, that new playground for the 1 per cent, known as Hudson Yards – Heaven forbid New York should try to house its working class – is trying to slip a two-out, two-strike pitch past the city by building a huge garage on the west side of the playpen for the rich. (Never mind that the city is already choking on cars, and trucks and limos, plus amateurs swerving around on rented bikes.)

The new garage would loom right where a much-needed rail tunnel to the American mainland should be rounding into shape – except that big-mouth Chris Christie blew up the project when he was governor of New Jersey. His one-finger salute to society is surely the first thing on Christie’s lifetime resumé.

Now, like some pitchers I used to know, the builder of Hudson Yards was going to slip one by the public. This little surprise would loom over the High Line, the quirky elevated walkway with the great views that has enhanced the city and even encouraged people to get out and walk. The friendly folks at Hudson Yards were going to pour the concrete and block out the view and explain it all later, as builders do all over New York.

Fortunately, Kimmelman and the NYT got word of this Down near the bottom, he included a quote from a state senator about the builder of Hudson Yards:

“The last thing New Yorkers need is a wall, and from all people, Steve Ross.”

That, Kimmelman dutifully noted, was a reference to Ross’s recent fund-raising efforts for, oh but you guessed it, President Trump.

It is not clear whether our public servants can undo the mischief, the trick pitch, from the Vaseline on the back of Steve Ross’ neck.

Meantime, the Astros will find another manager and general manager, and there will be a baseball season.
No matter who is ingesting what, or stealing what signals, the new season will somehow seem more wholesome than just about anything else going down these days.
                                            ###
Kimmelman's story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/arts/design/hudson-yards-expansion.html?searchResultPosition=2
Astros' cheating:
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/13/sports/baseball/ap-bba-astros-sign-stealing.html?searchResultPosition=1

Red line indicates proposed wall that would loom over High Line. Diagram from NY Times,

Hansen Alexander

1/15/2020 06:36:26 pm

A very well written piece, George, that flowed quite well for one with multiple subjects.

What's amazing to me, is that the Astros and Red Sox, like the Patriots, did not need to cheat with the long forbidden electronic means. They were two of the most complete teams in their winning years that I have witnessed in quite a while.

But you know, there's cheating and there's cheating, although such a strict moralist as yourself will not like this argument. Roughing balls up and cutting them was more or less considered part of the game unless you got caught. If you got caught, you paid the penalty, and moved on, like baseball's wonderful way of administering justice to players and managers who go too far, throw them out of the game. Ejections is the best justice in all of sport, IMO. Afterwards, cooler heads prevail, which we want.

So while baseball fans can wring their hands in outrage far better than fans in other sports, we have a system of justice that seems to work better than in other sports. Which is quite admirable, in my inexpert view.

Yours,
Hansen

George Vecsey

1/20/2020 10:45:50 am

Hansen, thanks, man. I agree about "gamesmanship" -- Briana Scurry cheating off the line in the shootout with China, She tossed...and she won. But using electronic aides specifically banned....you as a lawyer will know what I mean with the next two words: Potter Stewart.

bruce

1/15/2020 08:06:28 pm

george,

good to read that even tho you've been around for a while that you can still be disillusioned.

on the other hand, spring training starts in 4-5 weeks.

looking forward on your take on the blue jays, eh.....

my mother's 91st bday tomorrow.

you know yer getting old when your ma is into her 90s.

bruce

George Vecsey

1/20/2020 10:47:57 am

Bruce, my mom, approaching 90, would see her oldest child (me), a geezer, and she would shake her head as if to say, "How?"

Ed Martin

1/15/2020 10:46:58 pm

The Red Sox fired their manager, (under “The T?)

They are Looking for a new manager, clean slate. I understand the short list includes Pete Rose, Bobby Bonds, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Some say Brady is also being considered.

George Vecsey

1/20/2020 10:49:52 am

Bill Barr (Trump's Personal Lawyer) for GM.
Mike Pompeo (Protect your people) for MGR.
Only the best
GV

ANDY TANSEY

1/19/2020 07:49:36 pm

Wasn't there a theory that the Giants stole a sign before Bobby Thompson took Branca deep? To me, stealing signs should be legal. Catchers and coaches have always tried to disguise them so they can't be stolen, acknowledging that stealing them is part of the game. Just like American football, too many technical rules. Let the boys play the game - at all levels.

I'll stay out of the more serious fray, but Hudson Yards has affordable housing, though I've heard some ask how the posh elevators will be kept separate.

George Vecsey

1/20/2020 10:57:52 am

Andy: Great to hear from you. Hope all is well with you and your teams. I do separate the skills like signal-stealing from 2B from the technological spying, expressly forbidden. Plus, hitters are in terrible danger if they get wrong banging sound from garbage cans -- leaning in for a curve, and the pitcher throws high and inside? Willie Mays never wanted signals. Some old Giants admitted it 20 years ago. Saly Yvars, backup catcher from Westchester, offended Branca, They had played together in amateur ball. Sal Maglie part of that 1951 Giant team, used to teach pitchers in the minors. Pitcher friend of mine told me the other day that Maglie told his pitchers (Buffalo, 1965) that the hitter better hope his helmet was working, if he tried to take a peek at the catcher's signals Sal the Barber. It sounds brutal but also frontier justice., Then again, one of my good friends got hit by accident over the eye...lived to play again, but it was ugly (I saw it.) So I try not to be too glib about 90-plus fastballs. GV

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

What's a Stolen World Series These Days?

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