A Look Back at Life Magazine March 7, 1949

Ever since Gilda retired two months ago our lives have changed in obvious and some not so subtle ways. We no longer wake up before 6 am to get Gilda to work in Manhattan. We often can stay in bed past 9 or even 10 am, and I am talking weekdays! With eight hours or more of sleep I believe my apnea is diminishing. 

I won’t bore you with more details (maybe in another post) except to say that her retirement meant we were able to celebrate my 70th birthday together all day Wednesday. Truly enjoyable. 

But to return to my opening comment about changes to our lives for one more example, Gilda has embarked us on a decluttering crusade worthy of Marie Kondo. Having tackled our attic in pre-retirement mode, she thrust her shovel into the detritus of our children’s former bedrooms and the living room. Marie Kondo says jettison anything that doesn’t give you joy. Of course, that presumes joy is shared, or not, by both partners. As a mild hoarder I can attest that I find more joy in our miscellaneous possessions than Gilda does. 

Which brings me to the central theme of this blog. Gilda wanted to throw out a collectible issue of Life magazine dated March 7, 1949, the day after I was born. Now, I know many people collect facsimiles of a newspaper front page of their birth day, not realizing that the stories reveal what happened the day before their birth. 

Life magazine was a weekly back then. Each issue costs 20 cents; yearly subscriptions $6. 

Leafing through the edition I retrieved from the disposal pile, I paused to read interesting editorial and advertisements as current back then as they are today.  Israel was a topic of debate in 1949, the year after its founding. A letter to the editor from Walter Fried of New York, N.Y., stated “I am glad to see that your attitude toward the new state of Israel has changed” from being against the formation of the new state “or rather you were against the way in which it was formed.”

Turning the page I came across an ad for an Anglia economy car built by Ford in England. What intrigued me was the gas mileage for the 4-cylinder two-door vehicle—up to 40 miles per gallon! Most cars today cannot match that efficiency. 

Bryce Harper just signed a 13-year contract with the Philadelphia Phillies for $330 million. It is part of free agent legacy in baseball attributed to the actions of Curt Flood in 1969 and later by Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith in 1975. But how many of you know about Danny Gardella and his 1949 battle to invalidate the reserve clause that bound players to their teams even after their contracts expired? Read more about Gardella’s bid to crack the reserve clause by clicking on this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Gardella

Presidential pique with journalists as well as presidential cussing did not begin with Donald Trump. Or with Harry S. Truman. Life noted his displeasure with Drew Pearson, reporting, “Pearson approached the President face to face after a press conference—and some observers had the impression Truman would gladly have taken a swing at Pearson if a Secret Service man had not moved in.” 

Jim Acosta of CNN, are you paying attention?

Life further noted that Truman used the term “s.o.b.” in public, a rare display of vulgarity by a president back then, but apparently not in the age of Trump. 

A few weeks ago the military was chastised for the poor condition of housing for servicemen and their families. Here’s a headline from Life: “New Army Has a Housing Scandal. It finds that Fort Dix GIs live in shacks and even a chicken coop.”

Inside Life’s 138 pages fashion was presented, as well. The big trend of the day—“Slit skirts, they show a little more leg.” The slits could be from four to nine inches long, in back or up the side of the skirt. 

“The new style has an interesting by-product: under the right conditions of light and motion a spectator can catch a fleeting glimpse of the long-veiled upper calf and knee.” 

Sacré bleu! Can nothing be left to the imagination!?!

With the failed Trump-Kim Jong-un summit in Vietnam fresh in mind, here’s Life’s March 7, 1949, nine page report, “Indo-China: It is rich, beautiful colony which France may lose.”

The prescient series of articles came five years before France withdrew from Vietnam after its defeat at Dien Bien Phu and 26 years before the last American died in a war that took 58,220 U.S. lives and some 3.2 million Vietnamese from the North and South. 

Life ceased weekly publishing in 1972, the year I began my career as a journalist. 

Picking a Favorite Football Team, Songs of My Parents, Punishing Helmet Hits

It is six days until kickoff of Super Bowl LII Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and the defending champions the New England Patriots. If my father were alive, there’s a good chance he would be rooting for the underdog Eagles.

Not that he handicapped any games. He barely knew what football was, the American version, that is. Growing up in Poland he knew football for what we call soccer. But I digress. 

After arriving on American shores in 1939, my father had a difficult time learning the intricacies of what was then, and by some still is, considered the national pastime, baseball. Occasionally he would watch parts of a game with my brother Bernie and me. It was our mother who took us to ball games until Bernie was old enough to escort me to Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium without adult supervision. 

Football was not a game my father ever spent any time watching. Because of his bald pate, he did, by the way, bear a striking resemblance to Y.A. Tittle, the “Bald Eagle” Hall of Fame quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers and, late in his career, the New York Giants, the team he led to three consecutive NFL Eastern Conference titles in 1961-62-63. Alas, he never was able to win a championship. 

Thirty-seven years ago my father got caught up in the frenzy of football memorabilia. As Bernie recalled, in late December 1979, Dad, an independent apparel manufacturer, surprised him by saying he was rooting for Philadelphia to win its next game. Bernie asked if he knew whether the team was playing football, basketball or hockey. “I don’t know, or care,” he replied. “I only know that if Philadelphia wins and plays next week, then I have an order for 10,000 green T-shirts with white sleeves!”

It was the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a divisional playoff game. Philadelphia lost, 24-17. 

There are no shirt orders on the line for this Super Bowl matchup. I am rooting for the Patriots. Except when they’re playing the Giants, I favor New England. Their quarterback, Tom Brady, is just the best to watch dissect a defense. There are no other indispensable stars on the team. 

I want New England to win, as well, because our grandson Finley has become a Patriots fan and wears a Brady jersey while watching games. He began life as a Giants and Eli Manning fan, as his father, Dan and mother, Allison, and grandfather are. But living outside Boston the transformation into a Patriots booster was inevitable. 

To my knowledge, he has not succumbed to becoming a Red Sox devotee. I’m counting on his parents to keep him a Yankees fan. 

  

Sing a Song: When you’re in a reflective mood, do you find yourself humming or singing a song? I often do. But they’re not songs of my youth or adulthood. They are songs my parents sang.

My mother always had music playing in the background. Mostly American standards played on WVNJ-AM or WPAT-FM. She enjoyed Broadway musicals and operas. But the only two songs that resonate among memories of my mother were sung by Kate Smith and Jo Stafford.

“When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” was Kate Smith’s theme song. I remember the lyric Mom sang as, 

“When the moon comes over the mountains

Someone waits for me” 

but the actual lyrics are, 

“When the moon comes over the mountain

I’m alone with my memory

Of you”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOvmnQjOxPU

When she was in a more jocular mood Mom would sing the Jo Stafford song: 

“Shrimp boats is a-comin’ 

Their sails are in sight 

Shrimp boats is a-comin’ 

There’s dancin’ tonight”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dz1YRXdOA

Dad, on the other hand, did a virtuoso performance of “Home on the Range.” He’d belt it out whenever we’d be driving close to home after a family outing. Bernie says he liked that song because it was one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favorites. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_YK7ebcZ2o)

And Dad would sing late in the afternoon in his factory, usually while repairing a recalcitrant Merrow sewing machine. I can still see him hunched over the black machine, but I cannot place any melody.

Back to Football: There is one other star, maybe even a superstar, player on the Patriots. He’s Rob Gronkowski, a tight end who is a favorite receiver of Tom Brady. But it’s not certain he will play because he is recuperating from a concussion suffered when his helmet was hit by a defender’s helmet during the Patriots’ victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Helmet to helmet hits are the scourge of football especially now that concussions are considered the reason many players develop brain injuries. Yet defenders persist in leading with their heads when making tackles. 

There’s a simple way to reduce helmet to helmet injuries and other violent acts that lead to injuries: Suspend without pay the offender for as long as the injured player misses playing time. If the egregious incident occurs late in a season or playoff game the offending player’s punishment carries over to the following year if the injured player has a lingering injury. If it is a career ending injury the guilty party would be suspended for a full year in addition to any games left in the current schedule.

Faced with the loss of salary and playing time, tacklers will not risk butting helmets and coaches will go back to teaching fundamentals of football that do not include head to head contact.

My Tom Hanks Moment and Other Odds and Ends

Did you see the article or hear about Tom Hanks finding in Central Park the lost student ID card of a Fordham University undergraduate and then tweeting his discovery, “Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx.”? 

The tweet included a picture of Hanks holding the photo ID card (http://strib.mn/1Lh7Mhv) (http://www.today.com/popculture/tom-hanks-finds-fordham-students-lost-id-wants-give-it-t48601)

Though we live during a social network age largely populated by the young, believe it or not Lauren did not have a Twitter account. She was thus oblivious to her star-savior until one of her professors sent her a link to Twitter. Now she’s into her 15-minutes of fame and has appeared on television.

I bring this to your attention because of my own quest to return a picture of a comely looking college student I found as I walked across the quadrangle of Brooklyn College one day in the fall of 1969. She appeared attractive enough to ask out (this transpired just weeks before my Gilda Days began, so please don’t think I was two-timing my future wife). 

Back then not everyone could marshall the resources required to find the pictured coed, whose name was either Judy or Linda—both monikers were written on the back of the photo. I, however, was editor-in-chief of Calling Card, the newspaper of the House Plan Association. I had the means and the moxie to print the head shot on the front page of our next issue under the headline “Lost & Found.” 

Sure enough, my scheme produced the intended result. Judy-Linda showed up a few days later at the Calling Card office. Alas, I didn’t ask her out. Her picture did her more than justice. 

No word on what she thought of how I looked.

Time to catch up on some recent newsworthy events:

Our long (two years, a looooong time for Yankee fans!) national nightmare is over. We are back in the baseball playoffs. Well, by the time I got around to actually posting this brief, our time in the playoffs was mercilessly brief. We succumbed 3-zip to the Houston Astros. 

Our beloved Bronx Bombers were flawed in more ways than I care to recount. But we still won more games than 11 other teams in the American League and 10 in the National League and that is good enough for me. Twenty of those other teams failed to make the playoffs.

Did anyone else see a similarity between the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, when she testified before Congress recently and Claire Underwood, the wife of the fictitious Frank Underwood of House of Cards? Tall, with short blonde hair and a self assurance that refuses to fade when confronted by men of intolerance and ignorance.

As the saying goes, it is hard to put the cat back into the bag once it is out.

It doesn’t matter who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the rogue Kentucky county clerk who has denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Plenty of ill-informed people will believe the pontiff endorsed Davis. Like corrections buried deep inside a newspaper, the story line too many people will remember is the pope greeting Davis and giving her a crucifix, not that he was duped into meeting her by his representative in Washington. 

The lesson we can all take away from this affair is that even the Vatican is not off limits to political machinations (of course we knew that already but this was a very public display of a subjective agenda meant to undermine and embarrass a popular pope while advancing rigid church dogma not sufficiently supported in public by the leader of the Catholic faith).  

Let ’em Go: Government officials have admitted it is hard to stop American zealots from traveling to ISIS-controlled regions to join the Islamic terrorists. I say, “Let ’em Go.”

But with a caveat—revoke their American citizenship so they can’t return easily to the United States, or, at the very least, incarcerate them if they show up on our shores. 

Let them go to get killed in the desert. If they find living in this country so terrible, let them discover what life in the caliphate will truly mean. Let them go inflict mayhem on other Muslims if they can, not as some sleeper terrorist on unsuspecting Americans inside the U.S. I am not anti-Muslim. It’s just that it is time for the vast majority of Muslims to stand up for their religion and exterminate the cancer from within. Outsiders cannot do it without fomenting anti-Western civilization hatred.  

Play Ball

I knocked in the go-ahead winning run in our temple’s season opening softball game Sunday, striking another blow for almost-over-the-hill ballplayers. 

To be truthful, I shouldn’t really categorize my effort as a “blow.” And “knocking in” conveys the image of a powerful drive. What really happened is I came to bat with one out and runners at the corners (that’s first and third for those who don’t know baseball parlance). The circumstance called for situational hitting, so, being a decent switch hitter, I batted lefty as a ball hit to the right side has more of a chance of scoring the runner from third. 

I took a mighty swing (that part is true). The ball dribbled just to the right of the pitcher’s mound. In my youth, I might have run fast enough to beat the throw to first. Or at least make the play close. At 66, I made it about a third of the way down the line before giving up. I was out but the runner on third scored, the second of our runs in a 4-1 victory. 

Between innings the umpire mentioned he considered calling me out for an illegal swinging bunt. He didn’t. Perhaps he had pity on me. I was, after all, older than him. 

Now that the major league baseball season has started I am back to my normal after-dinner cleanup routine. Normal, that is, when the NY Yankees are playing night games. As I wash the pots and pans I listen to the game on television.

Last Friday the Yanks were tailing the Boston Red Sox 3-0 early. I turned off the TV. Gilda asked why. I said I was not into self-inflicted torture, which watching the Yankees this year seems to be almost a certainty. Before going to bed around 11 I checked my iPhone to see the score. It was 3-2, the Yanks coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth. As Gilda was trying to go to sleep I put the set on mute and watched the futility until, until, until Chase Headley hit a game-tying home run to send the game into extra innings. 

I wasn’t tired so I kept watching, and watching and watching as inning after inning prolonged the contest. I stayed up through a 15 minute power failure at Yankee Stadium. In the 16th inning David Ortiz hit a solo home run for Boston. In the bottom of the 16th Mark Teixeira tied it with a home run. Gilda woke up, saw the TV was still on, asked what was happening, and went back to sleep. She woke up again after the 18th inning to learn Boston had once again gone ahead by a run and the Yankees had tied it up for a third time in their half of the inning. 

In the 19th inning Boston scored again while the Yanks did not. A game I had turned off around 8 pm Friday had lasted until 2:16 am Saturday. I had watched the last three hours and 16 minutes in silence. And self-inflicted torture.

From Wal-Mart CEO to Owner of the KC Royals

David Glass stood before exultant fans in Kauffman Stadium Wednesday evening. As television cameras recorded the scene, the 79-year-old owner and chief executive of the Kansas City Royals thanked the faithful for their support of his team that, by virtue of their four game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles, is headed to the World Series for the first time since 1985. Indeed, this is the first time in 28 years that the Royals had qualified for any post-season activity.

Glass has owned the Royals since he shelled out $96 million in 2000. For the seven years prior to his ownership he was the CEO of the baseball franchise founded by Ewing Kauffman, who died in 1993. During Glass’ tenure as head Royal, Kansas City was a model of ineptitude, setting records for annual futility. Fans were infuriated, believing the team was more concerned with fielding the lowest paid roster in the sport than with being competitive. This year’s payroll started at $92 million, 19th out of the 30 major league teams.

Paying low wages was something Glass was all too familiar with. You see, from 1988 to 2000, Glass was president and CEO of Wal-Mart. And that’s where my connection to David Glass lies. As head of Wal-Mart, succeeding founder Sam Walton, Glass oversaw its growth from $20.6 billion to $191.3 billion, from 1,381 domestic stores to 4,190 stores in countries as diverse as Great Britain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, China and Germany. 

He has a wry sense of humor. He could be self-effacing. He would tell the story of the time Walton tried to recruit him in 1962 when he was invited to attend the opening of the second Wal-Mart, in Harrison, Ark. At the time Glass was a financial officer with a small drug store chain in Springfield, MO. As related by Vance H. Trimble in his biography of Walton, Glass said, 

“It was the worst retail store I had ever seen. Sam had brought a couple of trucks or watermelons in and stacked them on the sidewalk. He had a donkey ride out in the parking lot. It was 115 degrees, and the watermelons began to pop, and the donkey began to do what donkeys do, and it all mixed together and ran all over the parking lot. And when you went inside the store, the mess just continued, having been tracked in all over the floor. 

“He was a nice fellow, but I wrote him off. It was just terrible.”

Fourteen years later Glass joined Wal-Mart.

I met Glass about three years later. He was not the most approachable of Wal-Mart executives. Behind his resonant baritone voice I always suspected he did not like sharing anything with the press. And this was before his signature moment with the media. That occurred in December 1992 on NBC Dateline. Glass was confronted with allegations Wal-Mart suppliers in Bangladesh employed underage child laborers, that the company’s vaunted Made in America program was a sham.

Glass, at the time, had bushy, dark eyebrows that slanted up his forehead. With the Dateline camera angled from below his seat, he was the picture of Mephistopheles. He was the picture of evil incarnate.

Glass stormed out of the interview. Though he returned to face the Dateline cameras weeks later, the damage to his and Wal-Mart’s reputation was done.

Over the last five years the Royals have been more competitive. Their general manager, Dayton Moore, has made many shrewd roster moves. As he stood on the infield stage under a black League Champions hat, David Glass could only hope fans would be more appreciative of his management of their beloved, long-suffering Royals. It would help if they won the World Series. 

Ameriland, Signing Off, LSMFT, Dancing at Roseland

It’s too late to affect this year’s ranking on the Social Progress Index, released Thursday by the Social Progress Imperative, but if the United States wants to improve upon its embarrassing 16th place finish, just ahead of Belgium, Slovenia and Estonia, we have to change the name of our country to something like Ameriland or Unitedland. 

Why? Because the top four countries incorporate “land” in their names—New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland and Netherlands. Even Ireland finished ahead of us, in 15th place out of the 132 nations rated in the Social Progress Index. Only Poland (32) and Swaziland (108) failed to capitalize on having “land” in their name. 

I will refrain from making any snide comments about America’s less than stellar scores in areas such as health and wellness, plus tolerance and inclusion. You can review the entire list by clicking on this link: http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1102138/social-progress-index-results-heat-map.pdf 

Signing Off: With my illegible scrawl of a signature I could have been a modern day ballplayer, according to an article in The NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/sports/baseball/in-an-era-of-squiggles-you-cant-tell-baseball-the-players-without-a-handwriting-analyst.html?_r=0). Of course, to get to the major leagues I might have had to upgrade my skills a little (okay, a lot). But I definitely would have made the first string when it came to passing out indecipherable signed baseballs.

I recently looked at my Social Security card, issued when I was 12 or so. Each letter in my signature is carefully drawn. Today, you could barely make out the “M” in my first name. After that it’s a swirl ending with a flourish. 

The major league baseball season has begun. The temple league softball season starts April 13, but I think I will mostly observe the games in my second retirement from the diamond, unless my team is in dire straits of needing a pitcher at the last moment. I’d rather spend time in bed Sunday mornings than kick-starting my aching back out of bed at 7:20. 

LSMFT: When I was growing up, LSMFT was an acronym everyone recognized—Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. Lucky Strike sponsored Your Hit Parade, weekly viewing in the Forseter household. I don’t recall whether Your Hit Parade got cancelled before or after cigarette advertising was banned from the airwaves, but LSMFT vanished from my and most everyone else’s consciousness.

Until now. I keep hearing those initials, followed by the word “productions,” broadcast on public radio. So I went on its Web site and became more confused. Under LSMFT Productions, LTD, the tagline says, “Staging powerful and provocative New York Theater since 1997.” 

Okay, but two paragraphs later it says, “LSMFT Productions was conceived in 2008, as a non-profit organization by Artistic Director and Producer Leo Farley.” So which is it, 1997 or 2008? It’s all very confusing.

Dancing Away: Roseland, the iconic ballroom dance hall just north of Times Square, will close April 7 after entertaining New Yorkers and other hoofers since 1919, the last 58 years at its current location on Broadway at 52nd Street. 

I never made it inside Roseland, but Gilda’s mother did. As a young widow with three children, Rose Barasch often went to dances at Roseland. It was there she met Gus Angelo, her second husband who could assuredly be described as the true love of her life. 

Gus epitomized a “salt of the earth” person. Rarely, if ever, did I see him without a smile on his face. Rose was not a good cook, but he ate her food with gusto, without complaint. He taught Rose to drive when she was in her late 50s. He took her for a lesson one Sunday to the E.J. Korvette’s parking lot off Bay Parkway in Brooklyn. This was before Sunday Blue Laws had been lifted, so the lot was empty except for a solitary police car. A solitary, stationary police car. Which Rose promptly drove Gus’ car into. 

Getting back to Roseland, dancing must have been in Rose’s blood. With boyfriend Moishe, Rose’s mother would dance into her 90s, winning competitions in senior centers. They were a spry, diminutive couple, resembling Hummel figurines as they waltzed across the dance floor. 

Gilda likes to dance, though not with the same passion as her mother and grandmother. But she does enjoy Dancing with the Stars. Does that count?  

February 16 Is a Day I Will Always Remember

Eighteen years ago today it snowed. Ten  inches. I had reservations on a flight to Orlando to attend my magazine’s largest annual conference, SPECS. I never made it down to Florida. Yes, the airline canceled my flight. But even if it had taken off I would have remained on the ground. Two hours before my scheduled departure time I received a call informing me my mother had died.

Eighteen years. In Hebrew, letters are assigned a numerical equivalent. Eighteen is a combination of a chet for eight and a yud for ten. As a word the letters spell out the word chai. It means alive, living.

Though she probably would not classify herself as one, my mom was an early liberated woman. She worked from the time she graduated from high school in 1936. She was, in the vernacular of the time, a full-charge bookkeeper. She could easily have been a CPA. As a young woman she was sassy and strong-willed. She also was quite handsome. That is, when she took the time to tame her frizzy hair. After marrying my father in 1942 she became more than just a partner in his home. She became his business partner as well. She took care of the office while he ran the factory where they produced half-slips and panties and, in the latter years, t-shirts.

In her eulogy back in 1996 my sister noted how our mother was not a 1950s stay-at-home type like those of our friends. Mom used to say my feeble eating habits as a toddler drove her back to work, but the reality is, she could not be content sitting at home, though she still remained active in the PTA and sisterhood of her synagogue and our elementary school. She was a good cook of Jewish cuisine (Dan particularly loved her chicken soup with noodles) and a gracious host for Rosh Hashanah and Passover meals that could number as many as 40 guests. She left Thanksgiving chores to one of her sisters, like her, liberated working women.

She wasn't afraid to travel by herself. In the summer of 1957 she journeyed to Israel, Italy and France by herself as our parents could not close the factory to vacation together for extended periods of time. As I looked at film of her trip I was amazed to realize she was just 40 that summer.

She instilled culture into her children. Every year she would take us to an opera at the Met. She'd also take us to a Broadway show. We would accompany our parents on weekends in the Catskills or Lakewood. She taught my brother and me to play ball. She took us to baseball games.

I've painted a positive picture of our mother. In her final years, however, she suffered from an addiction to cigarettes and the congestive heart failures they caused. Cigarettes robbed her of strength and cognitive functions. A diabetic, she endured a below the knee amputation and was in the hospital awaiting a second amputation when she succumbed to heart failure 18 years ago today.

It’s hard to recall her early vibrancy, so pronounced was the change in her twilight years. But those are the times I want to remember and if I concentrate real hard I manage to hurdle the chasm of a life too soon confined to sitting by the living room window of our Brooklyn home, the smoke of an ever present cigarette wafting above her head.

Snow Day Thoughts: LinkedIn, Water Pipelines, and Baseball Sans Derek Jeter

They’re coming out of the woodwork. Like characters from The Walking Dead, people I hadn’t heard from in years have been sending congratulations messages and asking to re-connect, all because I failed to update my LinkedIn profile. So, they all think I am celebrating my third year anniversary at Green Retail Decisions as director of industry relations when in truth I stopped consulting for them last summer. Still, it’s nice to know some people still care enough about me to want to keep the relationship alive ... 

I cleared 11 inches of snow from the driveway and walkway around noon today. Thank god I bought that snowblower a few years ago. Waiting for the second round of snow from this storm …

Perhaps you’ve thought of this idea as well: If we have the capability to build the Keystone XL (crude oil) Pipeline from Canada to Nebraska, a distance of 1,179 miles, with the hope there won’t be any negative environmental impacts from leaks or spills, why can’t we build a water pipeline to take the inevitable runoff of spring flooding along the Mississippi River in Iowa and points south to the parched Texas landscape, a distance of about 1,000 miles? Or maybe divert flood waters from the Missouri River to Denver? Sure, each would be a massive project, but would provide jobs and much needed drought relief. Plus, we wouldn’t have a catastrophe if a few gallons of water leaked along the way. 

I just did a Google search and found several entries outlining the difficulties of advancing these projects, from structural, financial and, even more importantly, political perspectives.  We had massive public works projects during the Depression and the building of the interstate highway system beginning in the 1950s. But it is doubtful all the stars would line up to implement any such tasks in this day and age ...

O Captain! My Captain! I don’t mean to trivialize Walt Whitman’s tribute poem to the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, but one of the first thoughts I had upon hearing of Derek Jeter’s pending retirement from the NY Yankees at the conclusion of the 2014 season was the opening lines of the poet’s elegy:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

Nobody can play forever. Jeter’s departure, along with that of Robinson Cano in free agency and the joint retirements of Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte in 2013, will leave no internally grown superstar among pinstriped players. What a pity. The long line of Yankee greats, that started with Gehrig and wound its way through DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, Ford, Howard, Guidry, Munson, Mattingly, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera and Jeter appears to be, at best, in hiatus.

My hope, probably shared by anyone who has appreciated Jeter’s professionalism, is that injury will not mar his final trip around the basepaths of major league baseball. Let’s hope that just as Mariano enjoyed a splendid comeback year after his injury-shortened 2012 season, Jeter will play to the level of 2012 when he led the American League in hits with 216.   

Front Row Seating and a Farewell to Cano

I showered twice Saturday, once of my own choosing, once not. My morning shower was part of my daily ablutions. Nothing unusual about that.

My second shower took place shortly after 8 pm as I sat in the first row of the Playwrights Horizons main stage theater on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Last week, you may recall, I recounted one of the hazards of front row theater seats when Rosencrantz, or was it Guildenstern, slipped off the stage onto my lap during a performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Saturday night I was initiated into another peril of Row A seating. One of the actors was particularly energetic in his vocalizations. He projected more than just words. I was shocked the first time he appeared before me and sprayed forth from the lip of the stage. I was more or less ready the next time he stood before me. I cowered in my seat to reduce my exposure.

Fortunately, he next chose to deliver a long, excitable monologue from the center of the edge of the stage, affording me a profile scan of his features and an arced view of his projectile strength. To those sitting before him it must have felt as if they had a front row seat at Sea World without the benefit of plastic raincoats to protect them from Shamu’s exuberance.

It's an unfortunate byproduct of elocution for some actors. Indeed, in one scene where the sprayer and another thespian held drinks as they stood face to face, I observed the second actor place his right hand across the mouth of his glass to shield it from any more liquid enhancing his drink.

All in all, just another night at the theater.

It was a New York Yankees baseball cap like many others, different only in that it was a promotional hat embroidered with the name of the sponsor—Canon—across the center of the back. Its potential struck me immediately. I gifted the hat to our daughter-in-law Allison who realized right away that with a little deft unstitching she could change the Canon hat into an homage to her favorite Yankee, Robinson Cano. 

Despite living in the Boston area for the last 16 years, Allison remains a die-hard Yankees fan. I tried to text or call whenever Cano made a highlight reel play, in the field or at bat, that contributed to a Yankees win. There won’t be anymore of those calls now that Cano has opted to sign a free agency deal with the Seattle Mariners for 10 years and a reported $240 million. 

I’ll miss seeing Cano turn double plays with seemingly little effort, race into short right field with his back to the diamond to basket catch a fly ball as it dropped over his shoulder, range far to his right to snare a hot shot up the middle and accurately cannonball a throw to first base to deny a batter a base hit. I’ll miss how easily he could flick his bat and deposit a single or double to left field, or when the team really needed it, pull a pitch into the right field seats for a home run. I wish him success, though not when he’s facing the Yankees.   

I can’t blame him for turning down the New York proposal of seven years for $175 million. Nor can I fault the Yankees for not matching the Mariners’ offer. Baseball is a business. Cano is a superstar. But even before Cano was a superstar, before he made his first million-dollar-a-year salary, Cano revealed the true measure of his impact as a human being. Cano bought an ambulance for his impoverished home town in the Dominican Republic. He has since donated eight ambulances, medical supplies, paramedic crew training and children's toys and has plans to finance and build a hospital. 

Talking in Shul, Playing Ball, Dino Sex

Gilda forwarded an article to me from, appropriately enough, The Forward, a newspaper that during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century as a Yiddish newspaper serving the mostly Eastern European influx of Jewish immigrants, dealt not only with news of the day but also with setting social mores for the “greenhorn” population (The Forward now is available on-line, in English). The article that caught her attention chronicled the efforts of Orthodox rabbis to control incessant talking in the pews during services (http://forward.com/articles/183217/rabbis-declare-war-on-chit-chat-in-synagogue/?p=all). Though a minor nuisance in Conservative and Reform temples, kibitzing, gossiping, chit-chatting is a constant background drum in Orthodox synagogues. 

I grew up in an Orthodox shul, currently am a member of a Conservative temple and have attended services in Reform and Reconstructionist houses of worship. I, thus, have reason to believe my theory of congregant conversation has legitimacy. It’s simply a matter of whom you sit next to.

In Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist temples husbands and wives sit together. Unless they’re not on speaking terms, they’ve had ample opportunity to exchange thoughts in the privacy of their home, or in the car, or maybe over dinner in a restaurant. Sure there would be something fresh to talk about at temple, say, how the bar-mitzvah boy’s mother was dressed appropriately, or not, but by and large there’s not much new to say.

On the other hand, Orthodox synagogues segregate men from women. Husband and wife are seated next to people, usually friends, they might not see during the week. There’s lots to discuss: business, sports, politics, children, TV, movies, the list goes on and on. It’s simply a matter of being social trumping absolute devotion to prayer. Those Orthodox rabbis can pray for divine help all they want, but it will be to no avail. 

What do baseball fans want? Championships, of course. But realistically, they want to see their team play meaningful games in September. Against the odds, the injury plagued, elderly NY Yankees are  playing such games. Even the devastating losses to the Boston Red Sox this weekend could not alter the fact that the games were meaningful.

I can say the same thing about our temple softball team. Last Sunday, September 1, we had to win to make the playoffs. We did, 7-6, behind a rousing five-run ninth inning rally we almost squandered by giving up three runs in the bottom half of the ninth. Today we played another meaningful September game. We lost by a score too embarrassing to publish, but we had fun, and that’s what really counted.

Sexual Fantasies: I’ll end today with an off-beat item too amusing to pass up passing along. Ever wonder how dinosaurs procreated? Can’t say I ever did, but this link to a story from Radiolab from NPR will provide some fanciful notions on how they got it on, or  should that be “in”? http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blogland/2013/aug/06/subtle-mysteries-dinosaur-sex/ 

Derek Jeter to the Rescue?

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? 

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” 

Today's “Mrs. Robinson” lyric might substitute Derek Jeter for Jolting Joe.

Derek Jeter might play again for the NY Yankees this weekend. It’s not just the Yankees who need his bat and presence back in the lineup. Major League Baseball needs Jeter. With his clean cut image and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, his drug-free career, Jeter will be called upon to rescue America’s one-time pastime from its steroid and performance enhanced nightmare. 

Forty-five years ago, when Paul Simon included Joe DiMaggio in his iconic send-up of Mrs. Robinson, it perplexed many, including DiMaggio. Simon, who attends many games at Yankee Stadium, explained in a March 9, 1999, New York Times Op-Ed piece after the “Yankee Clipper’s” death a day earlier, that the line was meant as a sincere tribute to DiMaggio's unpretentious heroic stature, in a time when popular culture magnifies and distorts how we perceive our heroes.  

"In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters,” wrote Simon, “we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his (former) wife (Marilyn Monroe) and the power of his silence” (http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/09/opinion/the-silent-superstar.html).

Many thought Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers was cut in the mold of Jeter. We have learned otherwise. We already knew Alex Rodriguez was no Derek Jeter. Fans of the NY Mets and baseball were caught off-guard when pitching sensation Matt Harvey said in recent interviews that he wanted to be like Jeter, not the Jeter who has conscientiously led his team to five World Series championships without a hint of scandal or bravado, but rather he wanted to date fashion models like Jeter, to own the best bachelor apartment in Manhattan like Jeter, to sign a $200 million contract like Jeter (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets-ace-matt-harvey-derek-jeter-model-article-1.1401745). Some have excused the 24-year-old’s comments as the musings of a still immature player who has yet to complete his first full year in the big leagues. Of course, Jeter never publicly made any such pronouncements after he joined the Yankees just before his twentieth birthday. Harvey also posed nude for ESPN The Magazine. Harvey seems to be channeling A-Rod, not Jeter.

Jeter is not the only star who can soften the glare of the negative spotlight baseball is under. His teammate Mariano Rivera, who received the adulation of fans and other players during last week’s All-Star Game, showed again why he is respected. WFAN reported Wednesday that when Rivera noticed a portrait of 2011 MVPs Ryan Braun (National League) and Justin Verlander (American League) hanging in the visitors’ locker room of the Texas Rangers Monday, he told an attendant the picture should be removed. It was gone the next day. 

It might be, probably is, asking too much of Jeter to be an impact player during the last third of the season. He’s already a freak of nature for performing at the level he has these last few years as he approaches his fifth decade of life. Perhaps we should be content that Rivera has defied Father Time. Jeter has earned his place as an honored and honorable face of baseball. Then again, unlike Alex Rodriguez, as the post-season has shown, Jeter does not let pressure affect his game. He just might be the catalyst the Yankees and baseball need to make this season memorable in a good way.

The Jackie Robinson Story vs. 42

Having just seen 42, the biopic of Jackie Robinson’s struggle to break the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947, last Sunday, I was intrigued to watch the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story starring Jackie Robinson that was aired on Turner Classic Movies Friday afternoon. 

Biopics are usually quite syrupy. They play loose with some facts. Comparing two cinema treatments of the same story left me perplexed as to which one was more accurate. In some instances, both films produced shoddy history.

Take, for example, the simple facts of when, how and where the Brooklyn Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1947. In The Jackie Robinson Story, the Dodgers clinched in front of their home fans at Ebbets Field. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and a man on second base, Robinson tied the score with a double. He scored the deciding run when the next batter singled him home. 

In 42, the Dodgers were shown playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Robinson hit a late inning home run to win the game. General manager Branch Rickey, the driving force behind baseball integration, was not at the game. He was depicted back in Brooklyn listening to a broadcast as he never played in or watched a baseball game on a Sunday, a promise he had made to his mother, a devout Methodist, as was Rickey. 

So here’s the truth—Robinson had little to do with winning the pennant-clinching game. Actually, no Dodger deserves credit. The Dodgers captured the National League flag that year after the second place team, the St. Louis Cardinals, lost a night game at home on September 22 to the Chicago Cubs. For good measure, the Dodgers went out and won their game the next day against the New York Giants. The score was 6-1. Robinson played only part of the game. He went hitless in two at bats. He had no runs batted in. He was removed from the game after batting in the fourth inning, with the Dodgers leading 2-1. 

September 23 was a Tuesday. Rickey would have been at the game. It was, after all, a home game, at Ebbets Field. 

FYI, Dan Bankhead picked up a four-inning save for the Dodgers on September 23. Bankhead was an Afro-American teammate of Robinson. 

In The Jackie Robinson Story, a spring training exhibition game between the Dodgers and their farm team, The Montreal Royals, had to be cancelled because the city of Sanford, Fla., would not permit white and Negro players to be on a field at the same time. In case you’re a little startled, yes, that’s the same Sanford, Fla., that George Zimmerman hails from. I’ll let you draw any conclusions as to how prejudices have changed, if at all, in the ensuing 66 years.  

I'm Really Sick This Time

My wife and friends all think I'm a hypochondriac so there's no additional shame in telling you I feel lousy. I'm sick. No temperature, but I've got a hacking cough, sore throat and a stuffed nose. I've felt this way for about six days now, which means about another four to seven days of misery. I don't even get the benefit of staying home from work since I don't have an every day job anymore.

Tuesday morning around 5:30 I finally succumbed to my hypochondria and looked up strep throat on WebMD.com. I lacked the symptoms. I checked out how to treat a plain sore throat. It advised to take pain killers to relieve the discomfort of swallowing. It worked, so I’ve continued medicating, have gargled with salt water and imbibed cups of tea laced with honey. 

Finley’s not aware of it, but I’m blaming him for this health setback. Come to think of it, Dagny had a running nose when they were here for Passover. Hmmm ... I rarely get sick. I’m more prone to complaining about body aches (which are real, trust me, but are mainly due to my disinterest in exercising, stretching, limbering up). Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to the joys of grandparenthood. 

Colbert Joins the Attack: Move over, Mel Brooks. Stephen Colbert has joined the ranks of those who make fun of my given name.

During Monday night’s Colbert Report, the comedian was riffing on the liberal initiatives of Pope Francis, specifically his washing the feet of two women as part of last Thursday’s pre-Easter celebration. Colbert even went so far as to state, “There were no women in the Gospels. It’s a common mistranslation. Jesus was actually born of the Virgin Murray.”

Then he showed a picture of a cloaked man, which, to be honest, didn’t really look like me but did bear a striking resemblance to Gilda’s brother Carl. 

Five Finger Discounts: Did you see the article in today’s NY Times about retailers using databases to screen out job seekers who might have been involved in stealing from a previous employer? (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/retailers-use-databases-to-track-worker-thefts.html?hpw&_r=0)

It’s no secret employee theft is a bigger problem than five-finger discounts perpetrated by customers. So controlling internal theft is a big issue for retailers. 

The Times article dealt with prospective employees. For those already on the payroll, Kmart had a different tactic to thwart theft. I’m not sure if Kmart is still doing this, but years ago its store managers used to monitor the level of purchases made by their store staff. They reasoned that employees could not find merchandise such as paper products or toiletries for less than what they would pay at Kmart. So if someone wasn’t buying such goods at work, they probably were secreting the stuff out the back door. Closer observation of the suspects ensued. 

Brooklyn On My Mind: Next Friday, the movie 42 will premiere. It’s a biopic of Jackie Robinson. From the clips I’ve seen it looks like a winner.

I can’t remember actually seeing Jackie play in person for the Brooklyn Dodgers but I’m sure I did. Growing up in Brooklyn, we had a sweet access to Ebbets Field. If you sent in a quarter plus 10 wrappers from a Borden’s Ice Cream bar, you’d get a general admission ticket for a seat along the left field foul line. I wasn’t a Dodgers fan, but my brother Bernie was, so he took me along to games. 

Bernie has fond memories of visiting Ebbets Field, sitting in box seats behind first base with our mother, courtesy of tickets provided by one of our father’s sales representatives, Mr. Schaenman, who had an office in the Empire State Building. I can remember going to his office, riding the ear-popping elevators up to the sky to his office to pick up tickets for games, to Yankee Stadium for me, to Ebbets Field for Bernie, until they moved to Los Angeles, that is. After that Bernie would take me to Yankee games, though he didn’t become a fan. We’d always have box seats at Yankee Stadium, low enough that after the game we’d be close to the field and able to walk out on the outfield grass to the massive exit doors in center field (it was a different time back in the 1950s and early 1960s.) 

Anyway, Bernie remembers a game at Ebbets Field when he arrived early to watch batting practice. Though he tried to get a baseball hit into the stands, he couldn’t. At the end of batting practice a policeman suggested he go after a ball headed for the seats, but he got there too late. The ball dribbled back down onto the field. However, Billy Loes, a Dodger pitcher, retrieved it and handed it to Bernie. I don’t remember us ever having a baseball, but I must have been less than seven years old when Loes played in Brooklyn, and I never played catch with a real baseball. Too dangerous. You miss catching a baseball and it could knock your front teeth out. That’s what happened to a friend one year at summer camp where they specifically told us not to play with a baseball. Too dangerous. They were right. 

Bernie says he lost the ball a year or two later while playing on the street, probably down a storm sewer. Sewers were a real hazard when playing in the street or even on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. We’d lose at least one ball each time we played, until our arms were long enough to fish the sphere out of the sewer. No, we didn’t actually reach the bottom of the pit with our fingers. We’d elongate a wire clothes hanger, fashion one end into a loop, then go fishing for the ball down the sewer. Most times we’d reel in our lost balls, though they were usually Spaldeens or Pensie Pinkies—lightweight pink bouncers. Baseballs, being far more dense, were difficult to raise up. In case you suspect I’m making up this sewer fishing, here’s a corroborating post from another blogger: http://stillabrooklynkid.blogspot.com/2011/08/games-we-played-spaldeens-and-sewers.html. 

Tigers Lose; Yanks, Mets Win

The Detroit Tigers did more than just lose the World Series to the San Francisco Giants Sunday night. They purged New York baseball of two forgettable, embarrassing memories.

Detroit reached the series this year by emasculating the Yankees. They swept the Yankees four straight, limiting New York’s scoring to just three innings over four games (39 innings). Their chief nemesis was a former Yankee, left-handed relief pitcher Phil Coke. He completely shut down the Bronx Bombers in all four games. Miguel Cabrera, this years triple crown winner and certain most valuable player, catapulted the Tigers into the World Series by smacking a home run in the final win over the Yankees. Detroit’s starting pitchers—Doug Fister, Anibel Sanchez, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer—manhandled the Yankees. Yankee fans were depressed.

Oh how emotions can change in a week. Detroit’s bats went as silent as  the Yankees’. San Francisco’s pitchers shut them out in two games. Detroit scored runs in just four out of 37 innings. They were as inept as the Yanks had been when hitting with runners in scoring position. Fister, Sanchez, and Verlander lost games. In perfect payback, Coke lost the final game.

The Yankees and their fans could feel a little less frazzled by the team’s failure in the playoffs.

And for good added measure, the NY Mets, their former all-star outfielder Carlos Beltran and their fans may sleep a little easier after watching Cabrera take a called third strike to end the Series when all of Detroit was hoping for a home run to tie the game, or at the very least a hit to prolong the contest. Shades of Beltran standing immobile at the plate, his bat on his shoulder, to end the seventh game against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2006 National League Championship Series.

Vindication?  No. Absolution? No. Just recognition that hitting a baseball, especially at a critical time, is among the most difficult sporting feats. New York baseball, once the home of the Giants, salutes the world champions for giving us back some measure of sanity and acceptance that every season cannot end with a salute down the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan.

Be Prepared

If I were president of the United States running for re-election and faced with a shifty opponent, I’d marshal all my resources in the coming days to react swiftly and humanely should a crushing blow land. I’m talking, of course, not about Mitt Romney but rather a transmuted Hurricane Sandy, or the “Frankenstorm” being predicted to strike the Eastern Seaboard and parts of Ohio and West Virginia as early as Sunday after Sandy’s winds mix with an early winter storm coming from the west. Politicians can’t do anything to prevent storms, but they sure can suffer the consequences if they fail to react appropriately (see George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina, or New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the snowstorm that buried Queens). 

So, President Obama, forget about any planned campaign stops early next week. Your priority is to appear presidential. Get yourself to the stricken areas lickety-split. Make sure FEMA responds in a timely manner. Declare disaster areas and the availability of emergency relief funds. Don’t let Romney say you’re ignoring the pain and suffering of people in the affected areas as you care only about keeping your job. 

Speaking of keeping a job, word came yesterday that Mariano Rivera, the NY Yankee relief pitcher beyond compare, is considering retiring rather than return post-injury to the 2013 roster. Why would the all-time saves leader not want to try another run for glory? Doesn’t he want to re-unite with Derek Jeter, once he recuperates from his injury, and possibly Andy Pettitte should he decide to come back? 

Perhaps Rivera’s been pondering the team’s playoff futility record over the past 12 seasons. Eleven playoff qualifications, World Series appearances in 2001, 2003, and 2009, but just one title (2009). Better than most teams, but surely not up to the standard the Yankees set for themselves. Their hitting prowess seems to vanish all too often in the playoffs, as it did this year. Too often the team’s closer has not even entered a game, so why put oneself through more than six months of practice and games? Rivera has nothing to prove. He is the best. He already has five World Series rings.

Time to spend more time with his family. My guess is Rivera will opt to conditionally retire from baseball. He won’t come back unless his successor, Raphael Soriano, decides to leave the team or gets injured. So, Yankee fans, be prepared to never hear “Enter Sandman” ever again, except for the day Rivera’s uniform number 42 is officially retired. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed fewer posts of late. Not that there’s less to write about, it’s just I am very discouraged by the quality of the rhetoric in this campaign and the inability of too many Americans, especially women, to grasp the social changes that would transpire if Romney wins. Romney may claim to tolerate a woman’s right to an abortion in cases of rape, incest or danger to her life, but he lacks the spine to stand up to the ultra-right wingers, which include his vice presidential running mate, who want to outlaw all abortions and even believe contraception is heinous and should not be permitted. Nor does Romney champion equal pay for women. Nor does he support funding for Planned Parenthood which provides health care, not just abortion services, to millions of women who cannot afford regular doctor’s visits. Romney says hundreds of thousands of women lost their jobs during the Obama years. The actual figure is less than 100,000, bad, yes, but understandable given the economy Obama inherited. Romney blasts Obama for investing stimulus money in failed companies. He says half of the companies that received stimulus funds have filed for bankruptcy. CNN, however, points out just 8% of the stimulus companies have failed, compared to 22% of the companies Romney invested in during his years at Bain Capital. 

I don’t normally watch Fox News. I admit most of what I view of it comes from clips on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. Snippets can be made to sound whichever way you want them to sound, but when they play an extended clip you really have to wonder how these people get away with what they say. Take, for example, recent comments by Peter Johnson, Jr. Saying that he had no evidence to back up his claim, Johnson opined the deaths of our Libyan ambassador and three other Americans were acceptable to the Obama administration if it meant militants would be appeased. What upsets me is that Johnson, or apparently anyone on Fox News, can make a claim without evidence. What upsets me more is that people take these rants as fact. That they believe the birthers. That they care about what Donald Trump says. 

In the ongoing rage over Republican comments about rape, one has to be struck by the fervor these GOP candidates possess that God intended these despicable acts to occur. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, that they truly believe all events are God’s will. With that reasoning in mind, why is it they deny the legitimacy of Obama’s election in 2008? Are they willing to work with him if he wins re-election, for surely God would have shown his pleasure in Obama if he triumphs a second time? Are they prepared to accept God’s mysterious ways if Obama emerges victorious from the fires of election politics and Electoral College mathematics? They may be true believers, but doubtful they have it within their souls to go that far in service of their deity.

Prophecy Fulfilled

After complaining all season long about the inability of the NY Yankees to hit with men in scoring position, to score runs other than by hitting the ball out of the park, am I justified in being depressed about their futile performance in the post season? I meant to post this entry two days ago but was too depressed to write it. Imagine how bad I’d feel if I had not anticipated the result.

Making it past the Baltimore Orioles in the first playoff round did not camouflage their flaws as a team. Nobody wants to lose but what's galling to Yankee fans is the way the team went down. They batted like Little Leaguers swinging at balls way inside, outside, in the dirt or at eye level. Pitches down the middle they took for strikes. They tried to hit an impossible five-run home run each at bat. They don't employ situational hitting. No sacrifice flies. No hitting to the opposite field to advance a runner. The few times they worked a full count they usually wound up striking out. It was painful to watch, especially when the graphic displayed by TBS showed them swinging at balls and taking strikes. It was painful because most of the pitchers who dominated them were just mediocre. They've made them into giant killers. The Yanks turned journeymen Phil Coke and rookie Drew Smyly into a latter day Sparky Lyle and John Franco. At the same time Yankee hurlers pitched their hearts out most of the time but received little support at bat or in the field. 

It was a total team loss. They couldn't hit, hit with power or with men in scoring position, they couldn't pitch perfectly and their fielding lapses—not always errors—led to decisive runs. The only things they didn't do wrong was run the bases poorly or hit into double plays. But for those you have to have men on base and the Yankees had depressingly few such opportunities.

Total domination. Don't fool yourself into believing the outcome would have been different had the Yankees won the first game. They'd have lost the series 4-1. Their only moral victory was knocking out the Tigers’ closer in game one. It didn't matter.  Years ago the NY Football Giants routed the San Francisco 49'ers 49-3. SF wide receiver Jerry Rice was asked if the game would have turned out differently if he hadn't fumbled without being touched on his way to an easy touchdown on his team’s first possession. Yes, he conceded, the final score would have been different. It would have been 49-10. Rice comprehended the total annihilation his team had sustained. No Yankee or fan should delude themselves into thinking any differently even had Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera been upright and active.

So what should the Yankees do? It begins by first recognizing that the first order of baseball business is making the playoffs. They succeeded this year, and most other recent years, but it will be harder to win their division given a resurgent Baltimore team and what should be an improved Toronto squad once all the injured Blue Jays heal. The Yankees keep getting older while the opposition gets younger and hungrier. 

What can be done? The Yanks are set at first, second and shortstop. Alex Rodriguez at third is a high-priced singles hitter. But he's still good defensively and as long as you only expect 20 or so home runs a year from him you won't be disappointed. He won't be able to carry the team for games at a time. Singles hitters aren't expected to.

Should they resign Ichiro Suzuki? Only if they commit to a more Punch and Judy National League style of play. Scrap the home run strategy. Scratch out runs by stealing bases. Hitting behind the runner. Hitting to the opposite field. Sacrifice bunt. Sacrifice fly. Turn the Bronx Bombers into the Bronx Bunters or Bronx Afterburners. Turn Eduardo Nunez into a left fielder to keep his bat in the game. Shift Ichiro to right. Commit to Brett Gardner as your center fielder. Trade Curtis Granderson for a starting pitcher and an outfield or infield prospect. Let Nick Swisher go, or sign him and then trade him for another starting pitcher. Resign catcher Russell Martin. For the bench resign Raul Ibanez, Jayson Nix, and Chris Stewart. Find a right-handed batting replacement for Andruw Jones. Perhaps young Melky Mesa. Overall, instead of the 245 home runs the Yankees hit in 2012, they’ll be fortunate to hit 150, but total run production might not drop too much because of more rallies.

The go-go strategy works only if pitching is tight. Yankee starters next year could include C.C. Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Andy Pettitte (if he chooses to return), Michael Pineda and Ivan Nova. Plus anone they might get for Granderson or Swisher. It's a good, not great, starting rotation, but competent enough to keep them in games provided the bullpen is solid again. So I’d keep Boone Logan, David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, Clay Rapada, Cody Eppley and Raphael Soriano, along with a returning Mariano. The pitching should be good enough to get them back into the playoffs. After that it’s a crap shoot. Remember, the team has lost when trying to bomb its way to a championship. It would be exciting to watch them slap some hits, run, and hit and run their way to a title. 

Some final baseball thoughts: The Detroit Tigers deserved to beat the Yankees. Their star players came through in the clutch, as did their role players and rookies. A total team effort. At least Jeter didn’t have to be part of his team’s debacle, though he might always remember his inability to drive in the winning run in the 10th inning of the first game prolonged the game in which he was injured in the 12th inning. Second, at least A-Rod didn’t make the last out of the season. That “honor” went to Jayson Nix. Third, in the words of Mike Lupica, The Daily News sports columnist and ESPN radio host, today marks the official start of the football season in New York (though it might have unofficially started with Jeter’s ankle injury which has been described as more common to football players than baseball players).

Second Looks at FDR, Trickle Down, Talk Radio and Yankee Playoffs

The calendar may read 2012 but take a look at this news clip from September 29, 1936 (courtesy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). You can speed through the first minute of the 2:30 minute video if you don’t want to hear Stewart’s cheeky analysis of Republican budget promises, but do view Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s biting sarcasm as he describes Republican interest in providing Social Security, work for the unemployed and saving people’s homes during the Depression: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-9-2012/democalypse-2012---vague-against-the-machine---the-numbers-guy. Oh how similar it sounds to today’s political discourse. 

Mitt Romney has been getting lots of mileage from his transformation of the anti-GOP phrase “trickle down economics” into an anti-liberal entitlement message of “trickle down government.” Are Barack Obama and Joe Biden going to be swift enough with retorts to point out all the trickle down government benefits one-percenters like Romney and Paul Ryan get from off-shoring their money while corporations get energy and farm subsidies and other tax benefits for locating businesses in specific communities? Obama blew his first opportunity during last week’s debate. There are three more head-to-head formats to challenge an ever-position-changing Romney.

It’s probably safe to say most leaders of big businesses favor Romney and his lower taxes, fewer regulations stances. But few corporate biggies, I would venture to say, are so openly blatant in their assessment of what would trickle down to their workers if Obama is re-elected. If he wins, David Siegel told his 7,000 employees, their jobs at Westgate Resorts would be at risk. "If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company," he wrote in a 1,400-word e-mail. "Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone."  http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/09/news/economy/siegel-email-employees/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Riding home from Massachusetts Monday afternoon, with Gilda reading from her iTouch, I listened to some sports radio. Eventually she wondered how I could listen to such drivel. She was right. It was quite banal. But I just couldn’t tolerate hearing more presidential politics from the talk shows. At least with baseball or football talk I could laugh off the stupidity and inanity of the callers and hosts. What’s the worse that could happen? The Yankees could lose the playoff series to the Baltimore Orioles. It’s not as if the nation would reverse gear and go back to the 1950s in its treatment of minorities and women. At least I hope it wouldn’t. Wait a minute ... in the 1950s the Yankees won eight American League pennants and six World Series; the NY Football Giants played in three championship games, winning one. Maybe the 1950s wasn’t such a backward decade, after all.

Seriously, all my fretting about the Yankees not making the playoffs this year is forgotten, though the reasoning behind my worries continues. Throughout the 162-game regular season the Bronx Bombers displayed an aversion to scoring unless it was by the long ball. But home runs are hard to come by in the post-season, and the first two games showed their vulnerability. With the exception of Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki, they all seem to be swinging for the fences instead of practicing situational hitting. 

Alex Rodriguez, as always, is the lightning rod for fan discontent. So many fans want him demoted, either taken out of the lineup for tonight’s game or moved lower in the batting order from his usual third spot. Manager Joe Girardi won’t grant their wishes. A-Rod is batting third, followed by Robinson Cano and then Nick Swisher. 

Swisher is one of my favorites, but he has been dreadful for many years in the playoffs when batting with runners in scoring position. He has one hit in some 33 at-bats. So don’t be surprised if Girardi has the left-handed hitting Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for the switch-hitting Swisher in a critical spot late in the game against a right-handed pitcher. Even if Baltimore countered with a left-handed pitcher, Yankee fans might feel there’s more of a chance for a hit with Ibanez swinging the lumber. He did, after all, bang two big home runs to tie ball games in the ninth inning and added a game-winning single in the last week of the season. If Swisher doesn’t want to be replaced when the game’s on the line, he has to produce earlier in the contest en route to a Yankee rout of the Orioles.

Summer's Over

Another summer gone by, another summer I didn’t learn how to swim. Can’t blame anyone but myself this time. I only dipped into a pool once, despite Ken’s entreaties that he had not yet completed his self-appointed task of teaching me to frolic in deep water. 

I didn’t ride a bike again, either. And from the following headline my reluctance has been validated: 

“Meijer Stores Recalls Bicycles Due to Fall Hazard”.

The accompanying report said pedals were detaching or coming loose during use, 29 times, causing 16 minor injuries. I stopped riding some 10 years ago, not because my bike was coming apart, but rather because I kept falling. 

Softball Update: One more game in the regular season coming up next Sunday. We’ve won three games so far (out of 15), which in this league qualifies for the playoffs because, believe it or not, there’s a team more challenged than we are, and all but the last place team gets into the post-season.

I’m not a Roger Clemens fan, but it’s nice to see a geezer trying to make a comeback. I can advise him from personal experience it’s no fun discovering new injury points. My left knee, which I sprained during the last inning of one of our early wins two months ago, still bothers me and now seems to “crack” all the time, especially when I turn sharply to the left (I know, don’t do that, but it’s hard not to when the staircase to upstairs in our home veers left at the raised living room landing).

As long as we’re talking sports, the NY Yankees lost again today, 4-3 to the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yanks’ lead over the Baltimore Orioles is just 1 game, just 2-1/2 over Tampa Bay. A month ago New York had a 10 game margin. 

Throughout the year it’s been either home run power for the Bronx Bombers or futility in hitting with men in scoring position. Though they knocked in three today without the benefit of a home run, in the critical ninth inning when trailing by the tie-breaking run given up in the bottom of the eighth, they twice failed to drive in the tying run in from second and then third base.

Even more of a problem is their batters have come up with an imperfect solution to their puny performance. Over the last month they’ve had so few hits that they place relatively few runners in scoring position. 

Age coupled with the long baseball season seem to have caught up to too many of their players. I can't blame injuries. All teams have them. But few teams are as vulnerable to being tired at this time of the year as the Yankees. I am getting myself mentally prepared for October baseball without pinstripes.

Horse of a Different Color: One of my conservative buddies during the Olympics sent me an email about Ann Romney’s dressage horse. Here it is:

“So the Romneys are selfish for keeping a horse? 

- Employing a groom with a family to support 

- Paying for feed that’s sold by someone with a family to support 

- Transported in trucks by someone with a family to support 

- And manufactured in a factory by people with families to support 

- From stuff that’s grown by farmers with families to support

- And having a barn built by construction workers with families to support 

- With materials trucked by drivers with families to support 

- From factories with workers with families to support.

“Sounds to me like that one horse has done more to put Americans to

work than that horse’s ass in the White House.”

Can’t fault those conservatives for not being imaginative in their attacks. Here’s how I responded: 

“By that reasoning passing the massive Obamacare bill gave work to all those lobbyists, all those typists and collateral people who trucked the bill to Congress, all the commentators who wrote and talked about it, etc., etc., etc., and their families. 

"In the end, Romney’s horse was like him. All show on the outside, but soft inside.”

Sewer Commissions and Other Noteworthy Beats

Over the course of many years as a journalist I’ve been approached by numerous students and recent graduates enamored with the idea of becoming a reporter. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, I attributed it to the Woodward and Bernstein effect. Everyone wanted to be a crusading investigative reporter, exposing their own Watergate scandal to topple an administration. In the most recent decade interest in journalism has been jump-started by the Internet. With a laptop, or even a smart phone, anyone who could master technology could become an on-the-spot reporter.

When asked about the profession, I would counsel that most practitioners struggle to make a living, that the life of most reporters is one of drudgery, of going to one sewer commission meeting after another. Not that sewer commission meetings aren’t important. They are extremely vital to homeowners who desire to rid themselves of septic tanks by hooking up to the municipal waste system. It’s just not a very glamorous beat. 

But leave it to Linda Greenhouse, the former Supreme Court reporter and current blogger for The NY Times, and now a senior fellow at Yale Law School, to plumb the depths of a sewer commission dispute from Indianapolis to cast some perspective on how the Court may rule in the most important case before it, the validity of health care reform commonly called Obamacare. She doesn’t project how the Court will rule, but her analysis is intriguing. Here it is: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/when-enough-is-enough/

Weariness has overtaken me. Though an admitted political junkie, I need a break from the never-ending cycle of presidential election news, especially when Romney refuses to provide specifics about his programs and the press lets him get away with it, the most recent case being their inability to pin him down on whether he would repeal Obama’s executive action not to deport under-30 illegal immigrants brought into the United States by their parents when they were young. Barring any action that may demand immediate commentary, I plan to step back from tossing more pabulum onto the pap pile until the nominating conventions. 

I’ll be more than mildly surprised if I adhere to this intention. Perhaps to make up for leaving you with less than a complete plate of political goodies, I’ll link you to commentaries I find interesting (in other words, ones I agree with). Here’s the first, from Timothy Egan: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/the-clown-and-the-cop/

If I’m not going to write about politics, will sports assume more importance? Nah, but I do have to admit I was guilty a few weeks ago of not remembering the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. Back on May 22 I lamented how long a season it might be considering how poorly the NY Yankees were playing. 

Fast forward to today. The Yankees are in first place in the American League East. They’ve won eight in a row. Their pitching has been exceptional. As soon as they really start hitting (that means you A-Rod, Teixeira and Martin), they have a real shot at justifying their big salaries. Saturday they finally won a game without the benefit of a home run. The summer is looking better with each passing day. 

Union Blues, Email Blues, Baseball Blues

Union Trouble: A federal judge has ruled a large retail company violated federal labor laws and had intimidated workers seeking to become the first unionized store in the chain. He set aside the vote taken last June to deny unionization and ordered a second election be held.

Sacre bleu! Had Wal-Mart once again infuriated the populace, supplying more ammunition to those who would keep it out of the Big Apple while they happily shop in discount store heaven at Tar-jay? But wait. Zut alors! It was not Wal-Mart that incurred the wrath of Steven Davis, an administrative law judge with the National labor Relations Board. It was Target!

As I’ve said on numerous occasions, Wal-Mart and Target act essentially alike in most operational matters, such as hourly pay scales, benefits including health insurance, and a fervent anti-union bias. Wal-Mart bears the brunt of most objections because it is much larger than Target and, to be honest, the elites who govern municipalities and those who comment on it prefer the décor and merchandise inside a Target store to that of Wal-Mart. It’s only recently that union leaders, who allowed Target to gain a foothold in New York City without serious objection, have finally turned their sights onto the bullseye-logoed chain. 

"When Target tries to open stores in this city, we'll bring this decision to the City Council," said Pat Purcell, assistant to the president of Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. "This is important information we need to disseminate. This is not the image people had of Target a year ago." 

Email Screeds: My retired friend Gary sent me a video of divers swimming around a coral reef. Beautiful video, but as you may know, coral reefs are dying because of too much pollution and intrusion by humans. So what's the solution—let them die off or place restrictions (yes, by government action) on their use so that they may be enjoyed forever and contribute to ocean life (and that of mankind, as well, through the food chain)? 

It's a tough choice. Do we care just about our pleasures and the here and now, or do we care about future generations? 

Being retired and recuperating from knee surgery, Gary has too much time on his hands, I believe. He’s always sending me right-wing screeds, most of which he doesn’t bother to vet through Snopes.com or some other source. In the last few days no fewer than 10 emails. 

One of the latest I received had two parts, the first citing an article reportedly from Investors Business Daily that compared medical statistics compiled by the United Nations for the United States, Canada and England. By wide margins the U.S. came out ahead in the following categories: percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis; percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months; percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months; percentage referred to a medical specialist who sees them within one month; number of MRI scanners per million people;  percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health”.

All this by way of getting to the email’s central first point—England and Canada have national health insurance; the U.S. doesn’t, thus underscoring why we have better health care and should resist Obamacare.

Assuming the data was correct, I pointed out to Gary another United Nations study, this one of life spans among 194 countries. In that study, the United States came in 38th, with an average life span of 78.2 years for everyone, 75.6 for men and 80.8 for women. The United Kingdom (England is not broken out separately) ranked 20th, with an overall average of 79.4 years, 77.2 for men, 81.6 for women. Canada was number 12, with an overall figure of 80.7 years, 78.3 for men, 82.9 for women.

So I guess if you want to live longer the U.S. isn't such a good place to reside, compared to 37 other countries including England and Canada.

By the way, a Central Intelligence Agency study ranked Canada in 13th place, the United Kingdom 28th and the United States 50th!

The second part of Gary’s email focused on allegations President Obama’s cabinet lacks members with prior business experience (only 8%), as compared to previous administrations going back to that of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s another falsehood spread by right wingers, I told him, but even if we assume the numbers are correct, here are some interesting points to be extracted from the bogus data: 

Harding, Coolidge and Hoover each were said to have had more than 40% of their respective cabinets stocked with business experienced secretaries. Yet they failed to monitor excesses of industry and business and led us into the Great Depression and couldn't get us out of it; Reagan’s cabinet was said to have 56% with business experience, yet he raised taxes 11 times; George W. Bush supposedly had 55% with business experience, yet he led us into the worst recession since the Great Depression. 

In other words, having businessmen in your cabinet does not necessarily lead to having a smart cabinet, one that knows what to do with the economy or has compassion for the common man.

Baseball Redux? From my birth in 1949 until I was 16 years old, there was one constant in my sporting life. Except for 1954 and 1959, I could count on the NY Yankees being in the World Series. They won 14 American League championships in the span of 16 years, converting nine of those pennants into World Series victories. 

From 1995 through 2011, the Bronx Bombers displayed an equally prodigious appetite for post-season play. They participated in 16 out of 17 playoffs. They represented the American League in seven World Series, winning five. 

But this 2012 season has all the earmarks of 1965 when the Yankees collapsed after losing a seven-game World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. Interestingly, St. Louis won the baseball title last year, again in seven games, this time over the Texas Rangers, the new powerhouse of the American League.

In 1964, the Yankees had a 99-63 record. In 1965, the Yanks tumbled to a 77-85 record as their stars, including Mickey Mantle, Joe Pepitone, Tom Tresh, Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek, Clete Boyer, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, Jim Bouton, Mel Stottlemyre, and Al Downing, all seemed to get old at the same time. 

After 42 games this year, one-quarter of the schedule, the Yankees record is 21-21. Age apparently has overtaken this year’s roster. I’m not going to pile on and relate the causes of their ineptitude. You can read about it on any sports page or listen to it on any sports radio or TV show. I’m just going to note I’m old enough to have enjoyed two exceptional periods of baseball productivity. When the first ended in 1964, Yankees fans suffered through a drought of 11 years of early season-ending good-byes. 

No Yankees baseball in October was especially hard given the pathetic play of the NY Football Giants during that era. I fear the Yankees have entered another baseball desert wasteland. I hope I’m proved wrong. I’ll check back with you in October (if not sooner), but at least the Giants appear to be on solid ground.