Trump Is at Yogi's Proverbial Fork in the Road

I wonder what his good friend Bibi is telling Donald Trump about the need to show strength in the face of unprovoked attack, about the need to strike quickly to teach miscreants a lesson that Israel, er, the United States is not to be trifled with. Of course Bibi Netanyahu would like nothing more than the U.S. annihilating Iran’s power. Ditto the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump and some of his advisors, notably National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, want regime change in Iran. They hope to see an Iran not led by a religiously despotic ayatollah. Iran’s last regime change occurred in 1979. Since then the United States has had six regime changes led by half a dozen presidents with divergent world views. Given this historical perspective it is more likely there will be a new president of the U.S. before a new ayatollah with a fresh view that America is not satan. 

Rather than react rashly to the downing by Iran of an unarmed intelligence gathering drone early Thursday morning, Trump trod cautiously, even providing Iran with a plausible explanation for the assault, that a stupid officer went rogue and fired the surface to air missile that shot the drone out of the sky above the Strait of Hormuz. It was an uncharacteristic response from Trump. 

Or was it? A certified bully, Trump, it could be said, reacted just as any bully would when confronted. He cowered at the prospect of actual confrontation. Iran is not like Syria that was in no position to retaliate when Trump twice ordered cruise missiles to strike Syria after Bashir al Assad rained down chemicals on rebels. 

Perhaps Trump’s wariness was the result of an underreported fact about the incident. The drone was capable of flying at 55,000 feet, a height believed to be above Iran’s defensive capabilities. Wrong. “That is a demonstration by the Iranians that they have that capability, something the United States will take note of in the future,” according to The New York Times.

Perhaps Trump’s pulpit has more than bluster. We learned Friday morning he authorized three strikes on three targets. But with 10 minutes to spare, he cancelled the counterpunch. 

Politico reported he said he felt such a move was “not proportionate” to Iran’s attack on an unmanned drone. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world,” Trump tweeted.

Besides Bolton and Pompeo, and perhaps Vice President Mike Pence, the only disappointed faces most probably are in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem. No one should embrace the idea of a war, but a proxy war by America against Iran would be welcome in those Middle Eastern capitals, even if Iran fulfilled a threat to retaliate by launching missiles into their countries. “Minor” damage and casualties would be a small price to pay for the elimination of an existential threat. 

Iran has complicated the calculus, asserting it exhibited restraint by not shooting down a military transport carrying 35 servicemen that accompanied the drone (how they knew the number of passengers was not explained). 

Trump is at a critical juncture. Yogi Berra allegedly said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Trump must now choose the path his administration will take and project during his presidency. He blasted Barack Obama for not following through on his threat to punish Assad for use of chemical weapons. 

Few people especially politicians believe Trump is a man of his word. With scant credibility to marshal international or domestic allies Trump must engage a strategy few believe he has any idea how to originate, much less implement (https://nyti.ms/2L3jliS). 

Economic Lessons From An Early Age

Choo Choo Coleman is back in town.

I wasn’t a NY Mets fan growing up, nor at present, but I saw Choo Choo play for the Mets in the old Polo Grounds, the team’s first home before Shea Stadium and now Citi Field rose in Flushing Meadows. It was at the Polo Grounds I witnessed first-hand the mastery of Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers. At the Polo Grounds, pitchers would warm up before the game near their respective dugouts. As Koufax warmed up, my brother and I made our way to the front row. I still can visualize the 12-to-6 curveballs Koufax spun during his warm-ups, hear the thumps of his fastballs as they hit the catcher’s mitt.

Choo Choo (nobody called him Coleman) came back to New York for the first time since 1966 to be a featured guest at baseball memorabilia shows and a baseball writers’ dinner (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/sports/baseball/mets-choo-choo-coleman-50-years-later.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=sports).

One of the foundations of any sports show is the showcasing and trading of baseball cards. Like most youngsters I had a massive baseball card collection, cleaned out one day by my mother. I didn’t have a hard to secure Rogers Hornsby card, but I had my fair share of Mickey Mantles, Yogi Berras, Roberte Clementes and Stan Musials.

Baseball cards were not just for collecting. They were also for playing with, often in ways that were sort of like gambling. Just like pitching pennies, where the winner is the one who flicked a penny closest to the wall, kids would cast cards toward a wall. A variation on this game was tossing a card towards a wall already targeted by your opponent; if your card landed on top of your opponent’s, you claimed his card. If it didn’t, he took yours.

Another game entailed holding a card to a wall and letting it tumble down. Your opponent won your card if his fell on top of yours. He lost his if it didn’t.

A fourth game was dropping cards from your hand to match the front or back of your opponent’s cards. One trick we used—if you wanted the card to land on its picture side, you’d hold the card with the back facing out. Fifth game variation: dropping cards from a wall, your opponent trying to match the fronts and backs.

Baseball cards were not just gambling devices. Using clothes pins, kids affixed cards to bicycle wheel spokes to make clicking noises while speeding through neighborhoods. Of course, I didn't do this because I never learned to ride a two-wheeler as a child.

Cards were also used to set up a defensive field in a game of marble baseball. If a batted marble rolled to a pre-determined spot on the field without first touching a card, you reached base safely. But if a marble skimmed over a card, you were out.

Perhaps the greatest contribution baseball cards made to the youth of America was their part in our education into the ways of capitalism.

Baseball cards were our currency of exchange We learned about supply and demand. We learned not all cards had equal value. We learned how to trade for the cards we wanted. We learned how to be good losers. We learned how to size up the competition, how to stay away from sharpies, how to exploit suckers. We learned fortunes could be won or lost in an hour. We learned sometimes it's the smart thing to walk away during a hot streak, that success can be fleeting if based on the flip of a card.

We learned, ultimately, that not everyone shared our values, that what we thought was gold our mothers thought was trash.

We learned to forgive, at least on the outside, but never to forget the simple joys of baseball cards.

And lest anyone think I'd forgotten, mom also threw out my comic book collection.

Radio Daze

One of the news items on the radio this morning made my head swivel. AIG, the massive financial services company that a few years ago earned the tag as the worst company in America is now selling reputation insurance.

Talk about chutzpah!

In 2008, AIG received $68 billion from the federal bailout program. Now it is pushing ReputationGuard, designed, according to the Associated Press, to “help companies protect their reputation in the event of major corporate crises such as executive scandals, product recalls, data breaches and other ‘reputational threats.’"

The idea of reputation insurance is catching on, what with viral Internet campaigns maligning companies and individuals, often without their immediate knowledge. But the thought of AIG benefiting from this form of insurance is truly hard to swallow.


WFAN sports radio hosts Evan Roberts and Joe Benigno were talking football quarterbacks in the midday hour, mostly criticizing NY Jets QB Mark Sanchez. They bemoaned that most young quarterbacks don’t get the opportunity to spend a few years backing up a star, learning from him, as Aaron Rodgers did for the Green Bay Packers, understudying Brett Favre for four years.

Yeah, said Roberts, he learned not to throw the “killer pick” or take the “killer pic,” references to Favre’s tendency to kill offensive drives by throwing an interception (a “pick” for those not familiar with football parlance) and also for Favre’s infamous offensive picture texting of his body parts.


Though I’m not a Jets fan I couldn’t help but be amused by one listener’s call-in to WFAN about the fortunes of the team. Instead of the team’s slogan being “ground and pound,” he said, a more apt description would be “grunt and punt.”


Online gambling was reported the other day by WCBS 880 News to be under consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives as a revenue-generating scheme. Now, I’m not against legalized gambling, but it seems peculiar to me that the Republican-controlled House would favor such a move as many of its core constituents are Christian conservatives who oppose such activity.

Still, illegal gambling is estimated to be a $6 billion industry, and Uncle Sam would love to get a piece of the action. It’s impossible to control gambling, much the same way Prohibition was impossible to police effectively. At least when Prohibition was repealed the government started collecting excise taxes again on the liquid refreshment. It’s the same argument the gambling advocates push, as do those who want to legalize marijuana and other drugs.

A revenue source or a source of deprivation? You choose.


Last week the NY Times ran a picture of Sandy Amoros catching Yogi Berra’s curling fly ball in the last game of the 1955 World Series, a catch credited with helping secure the first and only championship for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here’s a link to the picture: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/10/06/sports/Y-JP-VECSEY.html?scp=2&sq=sandy%20amoros&st=cse

Several interesting points about the picture and what it says about baseball 56 years ago, and I’m not referring to the fact that it was a day game: Well, it was a day game, and left field was the sun field at the old Yankee Stadium. Yet few fans wore sunglasses. Amoros was playing in short sleeves; most of the fans were men wearing suits and ties. A sizable number wore hats, not baseball caps, but real old men’s hats, fedoras. Though I’m sure most in the picture were younger than my 62 years, they sure look older than I am. Few women and almost no child can be seen. The fans in the front row mostly stayed in their seats; almost none ventured to catch a Yankee souvenir before Amoros could reach it.

My Twice Broken Heart

I relived one of the most disappointing days of my childhood the other day.

October 13, 1960. Because it was a Jewish holiday (Shemini Atzeret), I was not in school. I was able to watch the live broadcast of the seventh game of the World Series between the NY Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the game some have called the best ever played in the fall classic, the first final game ever won by a walk-off home run, the game the Yankees lost on Bll Mazeroski’s bottom of the ninth home run, the same Bill Mazeroski who hit the winning home run in the first game of the series.

For 50 years that game resided in memory banks and a few assorted clippings. But earlier this year a black and white kinescope of the color broadcast was discovered among the treasures of the late Bing Crosby, a minority owner of the Pirates whose superstitions wouldn’t let him view the game in person (he chose to go to Paris, instead). He asked an associate to film the game, which after he viewed it, was consigned to his proverbial closet until found several months ago. MLB Network aired the game earlier this month accompanied by comments from sportscaster Bob Costas and former players.

Aside from breaking my Yankee heart all over again, here are some observations a now 61-year-old baseball fan takes away from viewing the tape and comparing it to today’s ball games:

• The afternoon game attracted men in suits and ties (many doffed their jackets in the warm sun). Most men didn’t wear hats. Women did.

• No beer was sold inside Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. Fans brought their own into the park.

• Among the starting 18 players, only one was a person of color, the Pirate’s Roberto Clemente of Puerto Rico. Elston Howard, the Yanks’ Afro-American catcher (Yogi Berra played left field), was injured and could not play.

• No hitter wore batting gloves. They all used white bats, with no pine tar on the shafts.

• Five home runs were hit. Not one player grandstanded at home plate admiring his shot.

• The home plate umpire ruled supreme. Not once did he consult another ump to determine whether a batter checked his swing.

• Players wore their pants to the mid-calf, unlike today’s athletes who either wear them down to their shoes or cinched up at the knees.

• Lots of players tried to bunt, even power hitters such as Clemente, Roger Maris, Bill “Moose” Skowron, and Bob Skinner.

• With a runner on first base, a wide camera angle from behind home plate was able to show the pitcher, batter and runner in a single frame so the viewer could see if a steal or hit and run was on.

• The game had a rapid pace. Pitchers wasted little time between pitches. Hitters did not stray from the batter’s box after every pitch. No pitching coach made a trip to the mound, Only managers Casey Stengel for NY and Danny Murtaugh of Pittsburgh visited the pitchers. Relief pitchers walked to the mound.

• There were few mound conferences between pitcher and catcher. But as with today’s game, invariably catastrophe struck after such a confab. Mazeroski’s game winning homer came on the first pitch after catcher John Blanchard conferred with pitcher Ralph Terry. NY's Tom Stafford gave up a two-out, two run single to Bill Virdon after a talk with Blanchard in the second inning; Clemente dribbled a run-scoring infield single in the eighth inning after Blanchard met with Jim Coates; and Hal Smith stroked a three-run homer that same inning after, you guessed it, Blanchard again met with Coates. (Terry, fyi, almost lost the 7th game of the 1962 series against the San Francisco Giants. Though he had held the Giants to just four hits while protecting a 1-0 lead, he faced Willie McCovey with two outs and runners on second and third in the bottom of the ninth. McCovey ripped a line drive that would have scored both runners for the series win had the ball not gone directly into second baseman Bobby Richardson’s mitt for the final out. Richardson, by the way, was one of the former players at the airing of the Pirates-Yankees series clinching game. Richardson was MVP of the series against Pittsburgh. Terry was the MVP of the 1962 series.)

Mazeroski’s homer was not a cheap shot. It went more than 400 feet over the left field fence and broke the hearts of more than a few Yankee fans, young and now old.

Pinstripes Forever

Perhaps it was the graininess of the black and white photo in Friday’s NY Times (sorry, it wasn’t posted on the Web site so I can’t provide a link). Or maybe it was his straight-on-to-the-camera pose. Or the close-cropped hair that seemed to show a receding hairline more pronounced than Joe Torre’s. But in that newspaper photo with his former skipper at a benefit dinner Thursday night in support of Torre’s charitable work, Derek Jeter looked old. And very corporate.

He was wearing a pinstriped suit. Jeter may have been sending a subtle message to Yankeedom in his first experience as a free agent that pinstripes year-round are his most comfortable attire.

Torre wore pinstriped suits on and off the field, as well, but it’s now three years since he gave them up on the field. Of course, managers are more expendable than the faces of franchises. The Yankees have had four iconic managers—Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Torre. Huggins died in office in 1929. The other three, despite each winning multiple American League pennants and World Series, wore out their welcome in the Bronx, at least in the minds of team executives.

During the same time, the Yanks have had six players whose identities were forever linked to their franchise—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Don Mattingly and Derek Jeter (you can argue about some others, such as Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson, and Mariano Rivera, but none of them would be the cover boy for an era of Yankee baseball). All but the Babe came up through the Yankee system and played all their games for New York.

It seems everyone has an opinion on Jeter’s future value to the Yankees, in terms of how many years his next contract should cover, how much he should be paid and what position he should play.

I’m already on record as biased toward Jeter, so here’s my suggestion: He should get a three year contract. One year option clause. $18 million a year (he made $22.6 million in 2010) with annual incentives if he bats better than .300, scores more than 100 runs, knocks in at least 70 runs and makes fewer than a dozen errors. He should play shortstop. Pencil him in to play the field 130 games. He should not move to third base as Alex Rodriguez plays superbly there and A-Rod’s range is also diminishing, so putting him at shortstop would not solve any defensive gaps in the infield. Possibly in year two or three of the contract, Jeter might share designated hitter chores with Jorge Posada, but only if the Yanks have a competent shortstop who can hit at least .260.

This arrangement might not make anyone happy, but it’s in the best interests of all who want to see Derek Jeter in pinstripes for all his playing days.

The Major, The Navy, and a Simple Word

The celebration of the late George M. Steinbrenner III continues, with some of his admirers advocating his immediate election to the Baseball Hall of Fame rather than making the legendary, controversial owner of the NY Yankees wait several years as other mortals must.

The last two weeks have been particularly sad for Yankee fans. Aside from Boss George, we lost Bob Sheppard, the longtime “voice of the Yankees.”

Equally poignant was the death of Ralph Houk, the Major, a true World War II decorated hero, who managed the pinstriped boys in The Bronx for 11 years, winning three straight pennants (1961-63) and two consecutive World Series (1961-62). Houk’s first three years as Yankee skipper spanned the last glory years of Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and Roger Maris. He returned for a second stint as manager during the nadir of the franchise, taking over in 1966 and staying until the end of 1973, Steinbrenner’s first year as owner. It’s no coincidence Houk left the Yankee dugout when he did. His managerial philosophy could not have been more diametrically different than Steinbrenner’s.

“I don’t think you can humiliate a player and expect him to perform,” Houk was quoted as saying.

The bottom line is this: when Houk was given great players, the team won. When his roster had aging or mediocre talent, like Horace Clarke, the team failed. The same can be said for Steinbrenner’s bullying manners. When he paid for the right players, they won. When he bought the wrong players, they failed to win.


Ask Not...: It’s a very simple word. Only three letters. A-S-K. But this word is among the most mispronounced in the English language. Listen, not even too carefully, and too often you will hear someone say “aks” instead of “ask.” Education or socio-economic environment or race doesn’t typecast offenders. One of my former staffers made this egregious mistake, and believe me, when a reporter/editor says in an interview, “May I aks you a question?” it doesn’t reflect favorably on the publication or the writer.


The Navy in Afghanistan: It’s upsetting to learn two U.S. sailors ventured into harm’s way in Afghanistan, with one killed and the other taken prisoner by Taliban forces. First question that came to mind—why is the Navy represented in a landlocked country? Second question—why would these sailors voluntarily travel into a danger zone?

The NY Times tried to answer the first question with the following sentence in a Sunday article: “Although soldiers make up the lion’s share of American forces in Afghanistan, which is landlocked, most bases have a mix of service members, including from the Navy.”

My hypothesis for the second question is these sailors were part of a Special Operations unit. Otherwise, I can’t figure out why any sailors are there.

The frantic efforts to find and retrieve the captured serviceman will give Americans a greater appreciation for what Israelis are going through the last four-plus years, since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas and taken to the Gaza Strip.

What Price Glory?

Baseball has always had more than its fair share of colorful, if not controversial, team owners.

Calvin Griffith famously, infamously, moved the Senators from Washington, DC, to Minneapolis to become the Twins because he was under the impression no blacks lived in Minnesota. Walter O’Malley broke the hearts of Brooklynites by moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, while orchestrating the shift of the Giants from Manhattan to San Francisco. In so doing, O’Malley brought major league baseball to the west. Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck were unique in their times; Finley transplanted the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland and won three straight World Series, 1972-74. He was an early proponent of inter-league play and using colored baseballs. Veeck was no promotional slouch—he originated exploding scoreboards after home team home runs and once sent a midget up to bat, telling him to crouch real low and, under penalty of being shot, not to swing at any pitch. He walked on four pitches.

Even before his death Tuesday at 80, George M. Steinbrenner III was acknowledged as the most renowned and influential team owner, of any sport, of the last three decades. He and his fellow investors bought the once proud but foundering NY Yankees for less than $9 million in 1973. Today, after 11 pennants and seven world championships, the team is said to be worth more than $1.6 billion. The papers and airwaves have been full of mostly fond remembrances of Boss George, of how he changed the face of sports, of how he brought a business mentality to baseball, of his “win at all costs” mantra.

As I write this on the night of July 14, it’s appropriate to recall this is Bastille Day, the commemoration of the start of the French Revolution when the peasantry and middle class rebelled against the tyranny of the privileged aristocracy. Boss George, or should I say, King George, treated all who worked for him as serfs. It doesn’t bother me that he made Oscar Gamble shear off his afro, or Johnny Damon his long locks. Anyone fortunate to play a child’s game and consider that a profession, a profession that pays them way beyond the income of the average wage earner, should swallow hard and live with such petty demands. But no one should be fired because they delivered coffee 20 minutes too late for their boss’s patience, as Steinbrenner once did to a secretary. It’s permissible to require discipline and accountability, even to have no tolerance for critical mistakes. But no one should lead an enterprise where everyone works in fear.

I’m an avid Yankees fan. I relish the titles won in 1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009 during the Steinbrenner years. But at what cost? At what price of human dignity? Too many Yankees fans are either too young or too forgetful to remember how Steinbrenner shamelessly dumped Dick Howser as manager after the team won 103 regular season games but lost three straight in the playoffs to the Kansas City Royals. How he publicly ridiculed players like pitchers Ken Clay and Jim Beattie after poor games. How he tormented Billy Martin by demanding he fire his friend, pitching coach Art Fowler, how he undermined the authority of pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, how he tried to discredit Dave Winfield, how he fired Yogi Berra after 16 games despite promising his job was safe for the season. Too young, too forgetful, or maybe too caught up in following a winning team instead of following a winning philosophy of life.

Yes, there are legions of stories about Steinbrenner’s charity, about his giving a second chance to people like Steve Howe, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and to those he offended. Even Yogi forgave him. I’m not ready, just yet.

Winning at all costs. That’s the same credo behind Nixon’s Watergate, behind the current GOP’s anti-Obama strategy of roadblocking all Democratic initiatives even if it means the masses suffer and the country stays mired in economic turmoil. Winning at all costs was behind Madoff and other recent financial debacles.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe being over 60 means I just want people to respect each other. I want to respect people considered to be icons. It’s okay for them to have some warts. They’re people, after all, and nobody really is perfect.

Watching an ailing, aging George Steinbrenner pass from vibrancy to slow death was grim spectacle. My parents, similarly, lingered beyond productive, cognizant years. I can relate to the Steinbrenner family’s feelings of loss. But Yankee fans need to step back and view in perspective the pact they made with Boss George. Just as we continue to debate the wisdom of the bombings of August 6 and 8, 1945—the ultimate win at all costs actions—so too must we weigh the reign of King George.