Sunday, September 30, 2012
Tolerance
I know a lot of religious people. They possess strong faith and it forms a
major portion of their lives. They also,
however, seem to keep their faith a private matter, and although they are not
hesitant to discuss it, none of them try to proselytize or convert others. How they filter their professional and
personal decision making through the lens of their beliefs is kept to
themselves. I will say that I have never
sat at a meeting and heard anyone ask “What dispo would Jesus offer?”
My friends accept that
I don’t share their faith, and while they occasionally shake their heads at me,
and perhaps even offer a prayer for me, I think they respect me for who I am,
even though many probably believe I am destined for eternal damnation.
I fear this attitude is not universally held among Americans
with strong religious faith. Thousands
rallied in Philadelphia yesterday at “The America for Jesus 2012” prayer rally,
according to the Associated Press.
Broadcaster Pat Robertson proclaimed, apparently to wide support, that
“This nation belongs to Jesus, and we’re here today to reclaim his
sovereignty.”
Come again? Robertson
believes all of America, the entire 50 states, and all 300 million plus of us
“belong” to Jesus? Or is he saying that
the assets and resources of America belong to Jesus. In other words, that those who do not accept
Jesus are somehow either not part of America or not entitled to share in
America’s wealth?
Perhaps he was being metaphorical, meaning that he believes
the American people are predominantly composed of those who accept Jesus as
God. Still, how does that mean he views
those who do not share that belief? One
could take it to mean that we are not part of his America.
His further statement is more confusing and troubling, that all
those thousands rallied to reclaim Jesus’s sovereignty. I am pretty sure we have never had a
sovereign in America, even metaphorically.
And certainly while there were many periods and places in history where
conservative Christians held sway, I don’t believe at any time did people proclaim
Jesus as king of America.
Millions of people came to this country, pretty much from the
time of its founding, seeking religious freedom and tolerance. Certainly many sects came which practiced
some level of intolerance in their communities, but very few people have ever
viewed America as a place where only a single religious belief was
accepted.
I am pretty sure the Founding Fathers did not view America as
belonging to any one religion, and I am positive that they adamantly opposed
any sovereigns. Whether the Constitution
enacted a firm wall between church and state is somewhat open to debate, but
that it dictates that no religion predominates and others must be accepted,
cannot be disputed.
My ancestors came here in response to a promise that America
offered opportunities unavailable to Jews in Europe. I am sure they understood that most Americans
were members of different religions, but I think they believed that should they
work hard, follow the laws, avoid offense, and, to a certain extent swallow
some anti-Semitic prejudice, that America would accept them. And when my father and his generation, born
in America, achieved the America dream, they felt that they belonged here. I certainly feel that I do.
Robertson’s comments, as reported, can be seen more as
rhetoric than literal interpretation of American life. Perhaps he was merely rallying people to
accept the tenets of his religion, and his belief that following those
teachings will create a better society.
Other speakers, however, come across as less tolerant and more ridiculous.
“[S]peaker CindyJacobs has blamed a mysterious Arkansas bird-kill last year on Obama’s repeal
of the policy know as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ which allows gays and lesbians
to serve openly in the military.”
Do people really believe this stuff? If God has such a problem with gay members of
the military, why not kill them directly?
Why should God work in such obtuse ways?
I don’t mean to denigrate Cindy’s religion, just her
statement. Lots of disasters befall the
world every day. Any of them could be
blamed on God’s displeasure with what people are doing. The dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor,
perhaps they pissed God off, too. (I
know of no fossil evidence of dinosaur homosexuality.)
The lives of many people around the world have been ruined and
lost over religious intolerance.
Religious factionalism dominates the politics of much of the world, and
is the number one reason a world war is never far away. As Americans we need to accept that others’
beliefs are different than our own, but that all of belong to a single nation,
subject to no one belief or sovereign.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Pity the poor Packers
As a lifelong Chicago Bears fan I am all broke up that the
Packers lost a game they should have won.
Wah, Wah, Wah. Had it been
anybody else I might have actually had a twitch of remorse, but the
Packers? Let ‘em suffer. You don’t think these guys have gotten the
benefits of some bad calls over the years?
I have hated the green-and-gold my whole life, just as every
Bears fan does.
My earliest football memories are seeing Vince Lombardi
holding his clipboard while Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung, Bart Starr and company
ran roughshod over the NFL. Most people
are too young to remember that the Bears were the Monsters of the Midway in the
early days of the NFL, and were powerhouse all through the 1950s. In 1963 I remember watching the Bears play
the New York Giants for the NFL championship.
There was no Super Bowl then, the AFL still considered by
those of us in old-line NFL cities to be little more than a glorified minor
league with gimmick rules like the use of two-point conversions. Championship of the NFL was world
championship. Owners had not yet figured
out that universal television coverage was the key to untold riches, and so
home games were blacked out. This
actually prevailed into the 1970s in most places. When we moved into an apartment in 1968 one
of the selling points was that with a good antenna it was possible to pick up
the Bears broadcasts from a station in South Bend, IN. (It turns out that trying to watch a game
from there required staring through static so bad it looked as if every game
was being played in a blizzard. Games in
actual blizzards were indiscernible.) So
our only option in 1963 was to head to McCormick Place a giant convention
center to watch the game on closed-circuit television.
Actually, this was really fun. Sports is always best when watched in a
crowd. (Well, as anyone who knows me
understands, I exempt baseball when watched in a crowd of people who don’t
understand, don’t care about, and are not watching the game, which pretty much
describes Coors Field. In those circumstances
watching the game without the crowd around is a pure experience comparable to,
I imagine, watching the sunrise from the top of Mt. Everest or viewing a meteor
shower on a completely dark night.)
McCormick place held hundreds of people, almost all men and boys. Like any football game we ate hot dogs,
bought a program, and cheered loudly.
The Bears, led by Bill Wade and Mike Ditka beat Y.A. Tittle, Frank
Gifford, and the Giants 14-7. I remember
my dad taking off his heavy winter coat and laughing at how comfortable we were
inside while those at the game were freezing.
(Game-time temperature was four degrees.)
The Bears soon fell into a state of embarrassing ineptitude.
It got so bad they finished 1-13 in 1969, and didn’t even get the first draft
pick. They lost a coin flip with the
equally inept Pittsburgh Steelers who chose Terry Bradshaw. The Bears then traded away the second pick
for three no-names to, of all teams, the Packers. The rest, of course, is history. Bradshaw is in the Hall of Fame with four
Super Bowl rings, and the Bears have only a single world championship since
(albeit with the greatest time in football history).
The Packers, of course, ruled football in the late 1960s,
winning the final NFL championship before the merger and then the first two
Super Bowls. I will never forget the
famous “Ice Bowl” game of December 31, 1967.
The Packers played the pre-Jerry Jones Cowboys, not yet calling
themselves America’s Team, and still a sympathetic underdog. A year previous the Packers eked out a
victory over the Cowboys in Dallas when Dan Reeves dropped what appeared to be
an easy touchdown pass. As dedicated
Packer haters my brother and I sat down to hopefully watch the Cowboys prevail
in the rematch.
As everyone now remembers, the weather in Green Bay was
brutally cold. Each time the teams lined
up before the snap the steam of their breath obscured the line of
scrimmage. This time, the Cowboys took
the lead late in the fourth quarter, even though they were obviously struggling
in the brutal weather. Reeves seemingly
had redeemed himself, throwing the touchdown pass which gave his team a 17-14
lead. But an entire quarter remained.
Sure enough, with a little over four minutes to go, the
Packers drove almost the length of the field.
The shadows were long, and the temperature had dropped down to artic
levels. My brother Mark and I inched
closer to the tv. (Remember, a big
screen back then was 21 inches. We were
fortunate to have one of the few colors tvs on the block.) Our parents weren’t home and my brother and I
had eaten tv dinners on folding tv tables.
The remains of our meals still sat on those tables. As the Packers moved closer and closer the game
got more tense, and my brother, 17 years old, strong and athletic grew more
agitated. He was more invested in
football than I was. He hated the
Packers. I didn’t like them much, but I
respected the hell out of them. To me,
the Packers won because they deserved to win.
I didn’t like that but I accepted it.
But my brother wore his devotion to the Bears closer to his heart.
At any rate, we knelt in front of the tv, pulling for the
Cowboys to finally dispatch their, and our, hated rivals. The Cowboys were a likeable bunch, despite
being coached by the Plastic Man, Tom Landry.
Don Meredith played quarterback, perhaps the most happy-go-lucky player
in league history. Reeves was a
good-old-boy. His touchdown pass went to
Lance Rentzel, a smooth wide received who married starlet Joey Heatherton,
making him one of the most envied men in America until he exposed himself to a
10-year-old girl years later. Dallas
featured Bullet Bob Hayes as the other wide received. Hayes was the Olympic gold medalist in the
100 meter dash in 1960, and though his hands were not nearly as talented as his
feet, he brought a level of excitement to every play where Meredith had time to
throw.
But as time wound down, Bart Starr, at the time heralded as a
great leader, but now forgotten as a Hall of Fame quarterback, led his team
closer and closer to the end zone.
Somehow it felt as if Packer victory was inevitable, and yet Mark and I
clung to hope that maybe this year would be different. Closer and closer the Pack moved, the clock
ticking down but their drive moving closer.
The Cowboys then seemed to find new life, twice stuffing runs on the
one-yard line. With only 16 seconds left
the Packers faced the play of the year—third and goal from the one. By now Mark and I were inches from the
screen. At the snap both lines collapsed
into a frozen pile of large bodies, but we could see clearly Starr following
his Hall of Fame linemen over Dallas’s huge defensive line and into the end
zone for a 20-17 lead. Mark
erupted. “God damn it,” he shouted, loud
enough to rattle the windows. Right next
to him stood one of those folding tv tables.
Mark pounded it with all the force in his fit 17-year old frame. The table shattered, splinters flying by my
face. The Packers had won, and we had
lost some furniture.
Green Bay, of course, went on to win the Super Bowl,
cementing their legacy. Through the
years the Packers have tormented the Bears, and yes, I cringed when the Packers
beat the Bears in Soldier Field two years ago on their way to a Super Bowl. So, while I revile the replacement referees
like everyone else, I will shed no tears for the Green Bay Packers.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Boring baseball stats
One of my fascinations with baseball is the statistical
analysis and recordkeeping unique to the game.
Because the game has changed very little in the past 120 years or so (I
mean the basic rules and structure of the game, not necessarily the way it is
played or the size of the players), it is easy and fun to compare players
across the decades. Statistics are the
way of doing that.
Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs can be lined up against Roger Maris’s
61 and Ken Griffey’s 56. (I will not
compare Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, or Sammy Sosa to anyone as I do not consider
their statistic to be valid.) The advent
of Bill James and the statistical revolution has brought us wonderful tools for
measuring players. The internet allows
armchair analysts like me to revel in masses of statistics not even imagined a
generation ago. My favorite website for
this is baseball-reference.com.
One of my favorite sections of the website is it leaders
list. Instead of keeping lists of a mere
top 10 or even top 100, it is possible to view the top 1000 of many stats. I love to look way down these lists to see
how players of today stack up. If you
don’t like baseball stop reading now, the rest of this blog is a look at stats.
Of the more than 17,000 players who have played in the majors,
only 1002 have hit as many as 80 home runs.
Eighty is not a huge number, considering the record approaches ten times
that. And yet, only about five percent
of the players in history reached that.
Mostly the bottom of the home run list is populated by guys who hung
around for a while and homered every so often.
Former Rockie Clint Barmes is on there, as is grizzled veteran Omar
Vizquel who manged to put 80 over the fence in 24 years.
But I am more interested in how young guys stack up. Giancarlo Stanton has not yet celebrated his
23rd birthday, but he has 90 homers, putting him in a tie for 875th
with people like Sid Bream, Daryle
Ward and Wally Pipp. At that level he
can move up quickly. His next homer will
raise him into a tie for 862d. A 30 homer
season at age 23 will get him into the top 630 or so. Jay Bruce of the Reds is the same age as my
daughter (25), but he has hit 133 career home runs, ranking him 541st. He needs only seven more to crack the top
500. An impressive feat should he do it
soon.
Of course, these lists are populated with guys who put up big
numbers early then saw their careers derailed by injuries or who just stopped
hitting. Wily Mo Pena hit 56 homers
before his 25th birthday and ended up with only 84. Ken Harrelson had 125 big flies by age 27 but
only hit six more.
Sometimes a guy’s accomplishments slip by me. Mark Reynolds, now of Baltimore, is known
more for striking out more often than anyone else in history (more than one
third of his outs made are by strikeout), and yet there is he tied for 356th
with 179 home runs. Justin Morneau’s
career has fallen on hard times following his concussion a couple of years ago,
but he has hit 204 home runs to get into the top 300 all time. Jason Bay has been a flop with the Mets, but
only 273 players have hit more home runs.
Derek Jeter is not really a home run hitter, but he has outhomered all
but 191 players (he is 11th all-time in hits).
Pitchers today, of course, don’t secure near as many wins as
they did in the past, but looking at the all-time victories leaders still is
interesting. Our old friend Jeff Francis
has gained five wins this year, despite the Rockies unusual pitching
usage. He is now tied for 978th
all time with 66. He might catch Ubaldo
Jimenez, whose total of 69 victories has taken him into the top 915. I doubt he will get many more. At 878 sits the sad case of Dontrelle
Willis—46 victories before turning 24, 26 wins in the seven years since. Tim Lincecum at age 28 has won 79 times, good
for 795th, but he too seems to be on the downswing. His teammate Matt Cain is a year younger and
has 83 wins, putting him in 746th place.
King Felix Hernandez is stuck playing for Seattle, which is
too bad. If he can engineer a trade to a
better team he might stand a chance to really move up this last. As it is, he is already in the top 600
pitchers with 98 wins. Jered Weaver’s 18th
win last night was the 100th of his career. That might not seem like a lot, but only 586
pitchers have gotten that many. Old
Jason Marquis has never won more than 15 in a season, but he has hung around
long enough to taste victory 112 times, good for 475th. Justin Verlander doesn’t turn 30 until
February, but he has moved up to 409th all time with 121 wins
(against only 65 losses). How high is
his ceiling? Forty-five more puts him in
the top 200. CC Sabathia went to the
Yankees, perhaps the best place to rack up wins. He now has 189, is only 32, and finds himself
tied for 140th all time with Yankee Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez. Then there is Arvada native Roy
Halladay. The veteran has 198 wins. Probably not enough to get him to the iconic
level of 300, but still enough to put him in the top 112 all time. Nine more puts him in the top 100.
Anyway, this is what I do when I am bored. There could be a lot more of this, but I am
sure no one cares.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Too fat to be executed
If you wonder about the future of the death penalty you need
only to look no further than death row in Ohio, where a convicted murderer has
filed a request with the federal court to stay his execution on the grounds
that he is too fat. I am not making this
up. Apparently his lawyers assert this
his massive, 480 pound body would fail to allow the needle containing the
killing drug to access his vein properly, that the gurney would not be strong
enough to hold him and that the drugs would cause a “torturous and lingering
death.”
Before you scoff and call this ridiculous, you need to know
that in 1994 a federal judge prevented the hanging of killer Mitchell Rupe in
Washington, finding that his weight of over 425 pounds would cause decapitation
during his hanging, and such a penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. Rupe was remanded for a new trial (unclear
why just another kind of execution could not have been performed) where a juror
held out against the death penalty, allowing the fat man to die of liver disease
in prison.
I want to set aside the reaction of “I really don’t care how
long it takes a murderer to die or how much he might suffer in the
meantime.” We long ago prohibited
torture as punishment for crimes, no matter how heinous they might be. That the too fat to die argument is made with
a straight face, and was allowed on at least one occasion to prevail, provides
sufficient indication that public sentiment for the death penalty is waning,
and that courts’ willingness to allow for continued executions is on the
decline.
A man who is fit enough to kill is now arguably too fit to
die. Death penalty opponents now will
try anything to avoid an execution.
Should this guy succeed, I can see the next argument being one of equal
protection. Why should a fit individual
die when a fat man gets to live?
American beliefs about justice are continually changing. The death penalty is becoming a relic of a
past age. Too many legal challenges, too
many innocents released from prison, and too many costly appeals have drained
the penalty’s effectiveness, and altered the public’s appetite. While perhaps never viable as a deterrent, it
now barely survives as punishment. Soon,
I believe, most American states will abolish the death penalty, either through
statute, as a result of court rulings, or through just plain unwillingness on
the part of the prosecution to spend the massive financial and personal
resources necessary to seek its imposition.
If a man can be too fat to execute, and we know some can be too mentally
disabled, then how many other circumstances would also prevent the ultimate
penalty?
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