Deck the Hall

  Two weeks ago the Baseball Writers Hall of America released the results of the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame selections and for only the second time in 40 years not a single player received the 75 percent of the votes required for entry to the Hall. It wasn’t as if this year’s ballot included a bunch of nobodies, it was full of baseball legends. There was Barry Bonds, seven time MVP as well as the single season and all-time home run leader; Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro who are eighth, tenth, and twelfth respectively on the all-time home run list; Roger Clemens, number 9 on the all-time wins list and third on the all-time strikeout list; Craig Biggio, whose 3,060 hits place him 21st all time; and Mike Piazza, regarded by many as the best hitting catcher ever.

  It’s no mystery why no one was selected to the baseball Hall of Fame. This was the first year on the ballot of the most successful suspected cheaters in baseball history (Bonds, Sosa, and Clemens). Bonds was never proven guilty of steroid use, but he acknowledged using the cream and the clear version of steroids with plausible deniability by saying that his trainer thought it was flaxseed oil. Sosa tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in a leaked MLB test in 2003. Palmeiro tested positive for steroids less than 6 months after wagging his finger at Congress telling them “I have never used steroids. Period.” in sworn testimony. McGwire admitted using steroids after years of denial in order to avoid the questions dogging him after he decided to become the Cardinal’s hitting coach.

  That leaves Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, and Piazza. Clemens was accused of using steroids by Brian McNamee, his personal trainer and the same man who shot Clemens' wife up with HGH (which Clemens’ wife admitted to taking but said it wasn’t in the presence of her husband). Former teammate Andy Petitte said under oath that Clemens told him he took HGH. The government took Clemens to trial for lying to Congress about never taking performance enhancing drugs, but the case fell apart when Petitte backed off his testimony and McNamee revealed the needles he saved from injecting Clemens were stored in an old beer can and Clemens was acquitted.

  There are allegations of Piazza’s steroid use. But where the statistics of Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, and Palmeiro have them being much better in their mid to late 30’s than at any other point in their careers, Piazza was a beast of a player in his 20’s (hitting .320 + with 30+ homeruns), and as he moved into his 30’s managed to maintain his power numbers at the expense of his batting average, got hurt at the age of 34 and was a journeyman until his retirement at 38. Biggio had a longer career arc, but he never hit over .300 after the age of 32, although he did have a suspicious increase in his power numbers at age 38 and 39.

  Most of the sportswriters that I follow say that while Piazza and Biggio are worthy Hall of Famers, the reason they couldn’t be voted into the Hall is because of the cloud the steroid issue has put on baseball statistics. Statistics that would have been Hall worthy in the 70’s or 80’s look plain after the steroids era. Some even say that because the players union stonewalled drug testing efforts at every turn, even the ‘clean’ players benefitted from users in the form of greater salaries and therefore no player from the steroid era belongs in the Hall.

  I don’t like the idea of Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire and the rest of the steroid cheaters getting in the Hall of Fame but it won’t be the end of baseball if they do and someday they probably will gain entrance. Gaylord Perry won 314 games and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991 in his fourth year of eligibility. Gaylord Perry was long suspected of throwing spitballs (a baseball loaded up with lubricant like Vaseline or K-Y Jelly that makes it curve in unpredictable ways). Perry was ejected from a game for cheating and after his career ended made a successful living on the banquet circuit bragging about his prowess at cheating and not getting caught. My point is that since some cheating has always been accepted in baseball keeping the current steroid cheaters out of the Hall of Fame is just a matter of being on the wrong side of a line that will likely shift as the years go by.

  Lance Armstrong recently admitted he cheated to win his seven Tour De France cycling championship, but that only had any impact because of his LiveStrong charity and his celebrity status as an American dominating a foreign sport. I don’t know many people who can name any of the other Tour riders. The steroid cheaters were a much bigger deal because baseball is a much bigger deal than cycling even if Lance Armstrong is arguably a bigger celebrity than any of the individual cheaters.

  I can even see a future where the steroid users will be celebrated as pioneers instead of their current pariah status. A compelling argument can be made that taking substances to enhance performance is perfectly acceptable in all other fields except sports. It’s OK to give children and adults drugs because they have attention deficit disorder. If a co-worker of mine that takes Adderall for their attention deficit disorder gets a promotion and I don’t, is that fair? Why should my children have to compete for college scholarships against other kids that have to take Prozac to function normally? Aren’t they taking performance enhancing drugs? I’m not saying people shouldn’t be allowed medicine in order to perform their best; I’m just saying that not allowing a professional athlete to use drugs to perform at their best could be seen as hypocritical Stone Age thinking at some point in the future. I don’t think I’ll ever come around to that point of view, but I’m something of a dinosaur anyway.

  I think the real damage done by the baseball cheaters and Armstrong is that any exceptional performance now comes with a suspicion of cheating. Derek Jeter is climbing the all-time hits leader charts. At the age of 38 Jeter had his best season in four years and the whispers of steroid use popped up. As big a Yankee fan as I am, I can’t say that in 10 years Jeter won’t be on the Oprah Winfrey Show talking about his steroid use. In 2009, Jose Bautista was a journeyman 28 year old outfielder who had never hit more than 16 home runs in a season. When Bautista hit 54 home runs in 2010 and 43 in 2011, it was immediately assumed that he had found a way to take performance enhancing drugs undetected.

  This immediate conclusion of cheating even cropped up in the chess world recently. Earlier in the month in Croatia, Borislav Ivanov had an exceptional performance in the Zadar Open. Ivanov finished third with a performance rating of 2697 that was over 400 points higher than his 2227 rating. In the first seven rounds of the nine round tournament he played 6 grandmasters, winning three; losing one; and drawing two. Ivanov was accused of cheating and searched for electronic equipment. Nothing was found, but the tournament organizers suspected Ivanov was receiving signals via skin implants and stopped the live broadcasting of the games before Round 8. When Ivanov lost his next game, this was generally accepted as proof of his cheating, but there was no explanation as to how he won his last round game against yet another grandmaster.

  Chessbase provided a link to a video by FIDE Master Valeri Lilov where he runs through all Ivanov’s games against the strongest computer engine (Houdini 3). Lilov shows how almost every one of Ivanov’s moves as the number one choice of the computer engine and makes a convincing argument that Ivanov was cheating except that when Ivanov’s moves don’t agree with the computer Lilov brushes it aside as a mistake in communication or a computer accident. It seemed to me that Lilov had made up his mind and was using his analysis to validate his conclusion.

  I don’t know if Ivanov was getting secret signals and I know that cheating in chess crops up from time to time, but it would be nice if an exceptional performance could be celebrated first and suspected second. The top ranked chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen from Norway recently shattered Garry Kasparov’s record high rating (2851) in the recent for the highest rating at the London Chess Classic earlier this month. Carlsen has obliterated the competition at the Tata Steel Chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands with a score of 5 wins and 4 draws. Carlsens’s rating is now 2869 which is almost 60 points higher than his closest competitor. If this string of sterling performances continue, how long will it be before Carlsen is accused of cheating?

Talking Baseball 2012

  On July 18th, the Yankees had a record of 57-34 and a 10 game lead on the rest of the division, as well as a 10 game lead in the race for the 5th best record in the league. The playoffs seemed assured but the Yankees have been worse than a .500 team since that record of July 18th and entering today’s action are tied with the Baltimore Orioles for the division lead with a record of 78-61 and just 2 games ahead of the Rays and Angels for the last playoff spot.

  The Yankees have a favorable schedule over the last 4 weeks of the season with only 7 games against the other playoff contenders (today’s game at Baltimore and 3 home games against the Rays and A’s), but the way they have been playing nothing can be taken for granted. The Yankees have had their share of injuries and coped well with most of them. Eric Chavez has been putting up numbers close to his days as an all-star 3rd basemen with the Oakland A’s in place of Alex Rodriguez, closer Soriano has been almost as good as the irreplaceable Mariano Rivera, and the mid-season pickup of Ichiro Suzuki has been made the loss of Brett Gardner a non-issue. The injuries to the starting pitchers have exposed what was already a weakness. Michael Pineda, the big off-season pickup was lost for the year in training camp, whatever value 39-year old Andy Pettite was going to bring to the table went by the boards with his broken ankle in June, and CC Sabathia’s has been on and off the injured list for the first time in his Yankee career (I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before given his extra weight). Ivan Nova has regressed from last year and is now hurt while Phil Hughes and high-priced free agent Kuroda alternate excellent games with poor performances. Freddie Garcia has performed about as well as expected but expecting him to anchor the rotation is a bit much to ask at this stage in his career. I was hoping Derek Lowe might be able to fill in as a spot starter, but he has shown very little in his limited action. It’s possible that the Yankees can sneak into the playoffs, Sabathia, Hughes, and Kuroda all go on a hot streak, and another World Series championship makes its way to the Bronx, but as inconsistent as the starters have been this year, I'm not expecting to have to dip into my piggy bank for a championship t-shirt and cap this year.

  I’m more of a Yankee fan than a baseball fan so I haven’t been following the day to day operations of the rest of the league, but one of the stories that caught my eye is the attempt of the Pittsburgh Pirates to have their first winning season since 1992. On August 8th, the Pirates had a record of 63-47 and only needed to go 19-33 the rest of the way to get to the 82 wins needed to ensure a winning record. Today the Pirates stand at 72-66 and now need a record of 10-14 to get to their promised land. I don’t know if the Pirates can find a way to get a winning record or even sneak into the playoffs (they are currently tied with the Dodgers a game behind the Cardinals for the fifth and final wild card spot), but if they do I have to say it’s about time. They are on pace to draw more than 2 million fans for the first time since their new ballpark opened in 2001 so the fans are showing that they will support a winner. The Pirates have consistently sold off any player of promise for the last decade but they may finally have a franchise building block in 26 year old outfielder Andrew McCutchen. If the Pirates can get into the playoffs, then there’ll be even less of an excuse for the Midwest most futile team, the Kansas City Royals to not have a winning team. The Royals last winning record was in 2003 and while they have had 2 winning records in the last 20 years, they’ve also lost 100 games 4 times in that span (the Pirates have lost 100 games only once in the last 20 years). The Kansas City fans have even supported their team through this pair of losing decades with over 2 million fans attending games every year since 1988 (except for the strike years of 1994 and 1995). The Royals are run by former Wal-Mart CEO David Glass and while he looks like he is running the operation like a Wal-Mart baseball team by cutting costs, he has continually hired highly regarded baseball minds to run the operation and has made a few free-agent signings, but the free agents and young players never seem to pan out.

  The other baseball story that caught my attention is the implosion of the Boston Red Sox. After firing Terry Francona, the only manager to have won a World Series for them in the last 90 years (and he won 2) for failing to make the playoffs for the second year in a row last year, Theo Epstein, the boy wonder General Manager, left the Red Sox to take over the Chicago Cubs and attempt to break their 100+ years streak of zero World Series championships. After the revelations that the Red Sox players had been lazy and lax under Francona the new Sox GM (Ben Cherington) hired Bobby Valentine as the new manager. Valentine is the polar opposite of Francona and was quick to try to assert his authority by taking on longtime Sox favorite Kevin Youkillis in the media saying that Youkillis had lost his passion for the game. A player revolt nearly ensued and Youkillis was traded to the White Sox in a deal that saw the Red Sox get some utility players in return for paying the bulk of Youkillis’s salary. The Red Sox played better after the trade, but Valentine continued his confrontational ways, causing him to receive the dreaded vote of confidence from ownership, who also claimed that they were trying to still win this year. After dropping hopelessly out of the race with a 6-14 start to August, the Red Sox decided to punt the season and traded a quarter of a billion dollars in payroll (Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett) to the LA Dodgers. Since then, the Sox have gone 4-11 to fall to last place in the division for what could be a long stay in the cellar. The Red Sox hired the wrong manager for their players and don’t want to admit it was a mistake. Instead, they’re getting rid of all the players. There’s still a lot of young talent on this team but Bobby Valentine will alienate every player from the Francona era because that’s what Bobby Valentine does. I expect the Red Sox to get Valentine to quietly resign at the end of the year and use the money they don’t have to pay Gonzalez and Beckett to get some new free agents for 2013, but it pleases me to no end to see an organization that was a hallmark of efficiency and genius turn into a bumbling shell of itself. Because while there is nothing I like to see more than the Yankees win, seeing the Red Sox embarrass themselves comes a close second.

Making Something out of Nothing

  At work on Wednesday I didn’t have any meetings or phone calls so I could just sit at my desk and program. The cubicles in my workplace are arranged so we can ‘collaborate’. I can turn around and see the other 3 people in my cubicle block. This would be great except that while I hardly ever collaborate I can hear everyone else around me collaborate. I get easily distracted, so I normally put earplugs on and listen to my amazing iPod. Sometimes I’ll listen to the Des Moines sports radio station KXNO using the iHeart Radio application, but most of the time I’ll listen to music from the Rhapsody music service I subscribe to. I listen to a lot of different music but this past week I’ve been listening to one of my favorites (along with Johnny Cash), John Lennon. There are some things I hear from his music that I violently disagree with (‘Imagine there’s no heaven’…’God is a concept by which we measure our pain’), but I find so much more in his music that captures a lot of the way I see the world (‘Everybody’s talking but no one says a word’, ‘There’s room at the top they’re telling you still, but first you must learn to smile while you kill’) that I never get tired of listening. It may not be timeless music but it’s my times music.

  On this Wednesday afternoon I didn’t listen to music or sports radio because the Yankees were playing a rare day game (against the Cleveland Indians). Thanks to my mlb.com radio package, I can listen to any baseball game on the internet so I could listen to the Yankee broadcast in WCBS in New York. The big news before the game was Yankee ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia going on the disabled list with a strained groin. After taking a 2-1 lead into the 5th inning of the game starting pitcher Andy Pettitie got hit by a line drive oand left the game which was determined later to be a broken leg. That allowed Yankee broadcasters John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman free leave to discuss how the Yankees would patch up their starting pitching during the dull spots that occur in even the tensest baseball games. The Yankees managed to squeak out a 5-4 win with the Indians having the bases loaded before finally making the last out. It was a great game to listen to not the least because of the outcome.

  Once the Yankee game was over at 3pm, I saw that the Mets were beating the Cubs by a score of 16 to 1 in the 7th inning. I decided to listen in on the Cubs broadcast because broadcasters will talk about anything to avoid talking about the game when their team is losing 16 to 1. The Cubs, who are on their 104th season without a world championship and 68th year without even a world series appearance are spending this season battling the San Diego Padres for the worst record in baseball with 28 wins against 49 losses in their first year under the stewardship of Theo Epstien, the former Boston Red Sox boy genius who was hired away to run the Cubs this past winter. I picked up the game in the top of the 7th inning and play by play man Pat Hughes was talking with Jane Lynch, one of the stars of the TV show ‘Glee’ (which I have never watched, thank you). Lynch was going to sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ during the 7th inning stretch and talked about how thrilled she was and how nervous she was about getting the words right since other celebrities have been skewered for not knowing the words to the song (like Ozzy Osbourne did here). Every so often, Hughes would mention if a Met player got a hit or made an out while Lynch was talking and then the inning was over. Lynch sang the song expertly and after some commercials, we were off to the bottom of the 7th. Hughes and his color analyst Keith Moreland talked a bit about how the rest of the game was still really important for the Cub players to ‘get in a good groove’ for future games and show management that they ‘belonged in the big leagues’. Then Hughes discussed Jane Lynch’s theatrical resume, noting she hosted the Emmy’s last year and was in the Three Stooges and also mentioned that she was an animal lover but failing to mention she is in a same sex marriage (I only bring this up because I bet they would have mentioned her husband if she had one).

  Since a Cub had actually reached base, the inning was still going on when Hughes was done with Jane Lynch’s resume, so he switched to telling us about ‘This date in Baseball History’ until the inning was over. Did you know that on June 27th, 1977 Willie McCovey became the first player to hit 2 home runs in an inning twice? Or that on the same day in 1982 the Atlanta Braves tied a major league record with 7 double plays in a 2-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds? Finally, the inning was over and we went to the 8th with the Mets still leading 16-1.

  In the top of the 8th, Hughes played selections from the late Ron Santo's CD in his series of Baseball’s Geatest Announcers. He played the Santo telling the story of how he couldn’t find his toupee and he wouldn’t leave the hotel room for the game without it until one of the broadcast gofers found it stuck to the bottom of his breakfast tray. By the time that story was over the Mets had 2 runners on and it looked like another big inning, so Hughes switched to baseball trivia and had one of the gofers ask him and Moreland questions. The first one was to see if they could name all 6 Boston Red Sox players who won the rookie of the year. Fred Lynn was identified, but then the Mets hit a double play and ended the inning after getting another run and we went to the bottom of the 8th with the score 17-1. Hughes and Moreland spend the rest of the game guessing all the Red Sox rookies of the year (missing the immortal Don Schwall’s 1961 award), but they were obviously milking the question. Every time they guessed a player that didn’t win the award, they’d spend a batter or so talking about how good they thought the player was and trying to figure out who won the award instead that year. Finally the game was over and the Cubs announcers proceeded with the day’s lowlights and were off the air in 15 minutes.

  Pat Hughes is one of the best baseball broadcasters around and Wednesday’s game was a great example why. There are only 60 major league radio broadcasting jobs around and almost every one of them is filled by a top professional who can make a tense 5-4 game sound exciting, but only the best of the best can fill in 90 minutes and can keep their listeners entertained during a 17-1 pasting as well as Pat Hughes did.

  Inspired by Pat Hughes, I had my own moment of making something out of nothing on Friday as I was heading to work. As I turned off the interstate onto the street where I work, I got stuck behind a driver education car that was going 5 miles an hour, putting their left turn signal on at every opportunity, and slowing to a stop before deciding to continue to the next street or driveway where a left turn could be made. I was only 4 blocks from work and it was taking forever, but I was listing to Travis & Tim on 1460 – KXNO (Des Moines sports radio) and they were having their Friday penalty box segment that allows the users to air their gripes by placing people in the ‘penalty box’. I called the show and ranted about the driver’s education car and put it in the penalty box as well as giving the make, model and license plate of the car. The hosts were giggling when I gave the license plate and told me I had to practice more assertive driving, so I honked my horn and they erupted in laughter (You can listen to it here at the 40 minute mark). I ended up winning a $20 gift certificate to a place called the ‘Chicken Coop’ for having the best penalty box call. I didn’t like getting stuck behind the only driver education car I’ve ever seen at 8am in Des Moines, but I’m happy to have turned the incident into $20 of chicken and I’ll toast student drivers everywhere when I’m eating the free meal they helped me get.

The Great Rivera

  Mariano Rivera of the Yankees set the all time saves record this week when he saved his 602nd game against the Minnesota Twins on Monday afternoon. Rivera came up as a starter/reliever in 1995 when the Yankees made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years and in 1996 became the set up man for closer John Wetteland. He was almost unhittable as a relief pitcher and was a big factor in the Yankees winning the World Series for the first time in 18 years. After 1996, the Yankees cut Wetteland loose and Rivera became the closer and the Yankees haven’t had to worry about that position for the last 15 years, except for rare occasions when Rivera gets hurt and has to miss a week or 2.

  There have been plenty of teams that have won championships with average hitting or average fielding or average starting pitching but I can’t remember a team that has won a championship without a great closer or at least one that is on a hot streak. The great Atlanta Braves teams of the 90’s had 3 ace starting pitchers in Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine but were constantly undone by having closers that were has-been retreads like Alejandro Pena and Jeff Reardon or psychos like Mark Wohlers and John Rocker. The only championship the Braves won was in 1995 when Wohlers didn’t melt down like he did in 1996. The Braves were up 2 games to 1 and had a 6-3 lead in the 8th inning, but Wohlers gave up a 3 run homer to Yankee journeyman Jim Leyritz and was basically finished as a major league closer from then on. By contrast, the Cincinnati Reds won the 1990 World Series with average pitching, average hitting, but the killer bullpen of Randy Myers, Rob Dibble, and Norm Charlton (aka The Nasty Boys). If the Reds had a lead after 6 innings, the game was for all purposes over. The starting pitchers knew they just had to keep their team in the game for 5 or 6 innings, the hitters knew that if the game was close they could win if they just scratched out a run or 2, and their opponents knew that any small mistake in the late innings of a close game would lead to an almost sure defeat.

  In Rivera’s first year as closer in 1997, he blew a save against the Indians to cost the Yankees the playoff series and I wasn’t sure he had the guts to be the closer, but he proved me wrong with clutch pitching to help win the next 3 World Series and has been almost unhittable for another decade after that, even well into his 40’s. Except for a receding hairline, Rivera looks the same as he did 15 years ago. He’s lost 5 miles off his fastball over the years, but has been blessed with great health, pinpoint control, and late movement on his pitches. He also has the one thing a great closer must have, which is a good temperament. Rivera has pitched for the Yankees his whole career. Losing is not tolerated in New York and the pressure is magnified when a blown save will make headlines in all the daily papers. Could you imagine driving to work and turning on the radio to hear people calling in griping about the mistakes YOU made on your job yesterday? A lot of relievers can have a stellar year or 2, but when they hit a slump and attract media criticism, they quickly circle the drain and become a ‘Where are They Now’ question. Rivera has had to deal with slumps and even blowing the World Series in 2001 and yet he still is going strong and I’ve never heard him lash out at the fans or writers like other players do when they hit a slump. Trevor Hoffman, whose record Rivera just broke, is a great pitcher but he has spent his whole career in San Diego and pitched in just one World Series in which he promptly blew the save in Game three against the Yankees in his only World Series appearance. Who saved the game for the Yankees? Yes, the great Rivera.

  I’m not trying to make light of Hoffman’s accomplishments but the fact is he racked up a lot of his saves in no-pressure situations for the loser Padres and his blown saves made all the difference between his team finishing 4th instead of 3rd and giving the San Diego fans yet another reason to look forward to football season, while Rivera has performed in the crucible of New York for a team where his perfection is not only expected, it is taken for granted.

  Is Rivera the greatest relief pitcher of all time? I'd give him my vote, but but not just based on the counting of saves. Relief pitching has evolved to the point that half of the pitching staff is reserved to get a slim lead after 5 innings to a dominant closer like Rivera. Last week the Yankees lost 2-1 to the lowly Seattle Mariners in 12 innings and Rivera didn’t even play. He was not going to pitch unless the Yankees had a lead with an inning left and only then Rivera would come in to save the game. 40 years ago, the best relief pitcher would come in after the starter and pitch for 3 or 4 innings even if they couldn’t get a save. In the early 70’s the Yankees traded a ham-an-egger 3rd baseman named Danny Cater to the filthy Boston Red Sox for a left handed relief pitcher named Sparky Lyle. It was one of the great steals of the 20th century. As a left-handed pitcher, Lyle was prone to give up big hits to right handed batters off the short ‘Green Monster’ fence in Fenway Park’s left field, but when he moved to Yankee Stadium with its 450 foot left field fence, those big hits became long outs and Lyle became the first true weapon out of the bullpen. But Lyle wasn’t used like relievers today. He would routinely come in when the score was tied or the Yankees were even losing and the bigger the game, the earlier he would come in. From 1972 to 1978, the least amount of innings Lyle pitched was 82.1. By contrast, Rivera has only pitched over 80 innings twice in his entire career (107 in 1996 before he was the closer, and 80.2 in 2001) and Hoffman went over 80 innings in a year 3 times with a high of 90 as a rookie. In 1977 Lyle pitched 137(!) innings in 72 games and was the first relief pitcher to win the Cy Young award as the best pitcher in the American League. In the current baseball climate the manager and pitching coach would be fired for abusing a pitcher like that but it was par for the course 35 years ago. Lyle’s reward for leading the team to the World Championship at the cost of years off his career was to be demoted to a setup man for Steinbrenner’s new toy, Goose Gossage and his 100 mile an hour fastball. Gossage pitched 134 innings in 1978. Gossage never impressed me as much as Lyle. It seemed to me that a good hitter would always take his fastball and put it in the seats for a home run. I recall George Brett and Kirk Gibson winning some big games against him that way. Lyle had a great slider and I don't remember anyone hitting a big home run off him.

  How many saves could pitchers like Lyle and Gossage have racked up if they had been used the way Hoffman and Rivera were? I don’t know if they would have hit 600 but they surely would have had hundreds more. And I’m not even talking about the other relievers of the 70’s and before. If I had to take one reliever to save a game that my life depended on, I think I’d probably take Lyle since he was a hero of my youth. But my life would also be in good hands with Rivera. He is such a great closer that when I think of him, instead of thinking of all the times he closed out a playoff or World Series game, I think of the shock and disbelief I felt at the handful of times he didn’t get the job done (2001 World Series Game 7, 2004 playoffs against the filthy Red Sox Game 4, 1997 vs. the Indians). I’m lucky that I’ll be able to someday tell my grandchildren that I saw both Sparky Lyle and the great Rivera pitch.

Original Thinking

  After Saturday’s chess tournament, I requested feedback from the parents of the participants and I got more than my fair share. Most like the change because it keeps players that have morning or afternoon activities involved in chess, but there some who didn’t like a tournament with only 3 rounds because they didn’t get to play anyone at their own level. Tim McEntee came up with a brilliant suggestion on the pairings that I’m going to experiment with, but otherwise I’m going to leave the format alone for a few months and then reevaluate. When I can count on a hundred players a month, I can see having a morning, afternoon, and an all-day tournament, but that’s a ways off.

  I like the format for a lot of reasons, not the least because it’s original. Just like the Big Money Blitz tournament earlier this month, I can’t remember anything like it being done. The next BMB is being planned for October and I hope Cub and Tim see an increase in participation. They are looking for ways to maximize participation by tweaking the prize fund and format. I’ll be watching carefully for clues to see what works and what doesn’t to apply to my next adult tournament.

  A great international chess tournament called the World Chess Cup is going on in the far away land of Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The tournament takes 128 of the best players in the world and they play a series of 2 game knockout matches. If the match is tied after the 2 games, the match is decided on the third day with a series of rapid games at quicker and quicker time limits.The winner of each match moves on to the next round and the loser goes home. Most of the super-elite GM’s stay away from this tournament because it’s easy to lose one game and be eliminated and it gets ridiculed by some chess writers because it’s not as classical as a formal chess tournament which is either a 8 to 12 player all play all or a 12 or 24 game championship match between 2 players, but I think this is the best tournament of the year. A 2 game match is no different than a 12 game match that’s tied 5-5 after 10 games except we get rid of all the preliminaries and get right down to business. The tournament is only slightly less fast paced than a major tennis championship and features upsets (like US Grandmaster Sam Shankland defeating former world Championship finalist Peter Leko of Hungary) and former top shelf players like Judith Polgar (who made the final 8) and Leko struggling to capture their old form to regain a place on the world chess stage. For the most part, the top seeds make it to the final 4 or 8 players, but along the way there are all kinds of interesting matchups. If the World Chess Federation could find a way to get round of matches done in a day or half a day and have the tournament done in 1 or 2 weeks, I think this format would be great for a professional chess tour just like the tennis and golf tours. As the tournaments moved around the globe, each one would have a lot of the players from the home country competing for a spot in the 128 or 64 player field as the lesser players wouldn’t be able to afford the travel expenses.

  Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has done something original for this year’s attempt to win the World Series. He hasn’t picked up any big name players. I’m not sure there were any top pitchers on the market and I’m glad top prospect Montero didn’t get traded, but I wish the Yankees had another top-flight starting pitcher. The filthy Red Sox’ recent meltdown has left the division open for the taking, but unless young pitchers Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova step up, Sabathia and the cast-offs currently making up the starting pitching can’t win the World Series. The bullpen is championship caliber and the offense is starting to look like the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ offense of the glory days of the 1990s’ that made the starting pitchers throw so many pitches that they had to leave the game to lesser bullpen pitchers, but I can’t see Burnett, Hughes, Nova, Garcia, and Colon competing with the top pitchers from Detroit, Tampa Bay, Boston, Philadelphia, or Milwaukee. I’m sick of even seeing Burnett take the mound. He pitches just badly enough to lose and just well enough to keep cashing checks (yesterdays 11 strikeout win to boost his record to 10-11 notwithstanding). Even Sabathia hasn’t been dominating this year despite his 19 wins. They are mostly the product of getting a lot of runs from the offense and giving up a lot of base runners but relying on strikeouts to give up very few runs. That is a formula for beating bad teams and losing to good ones. The playoffs will be long on good teams while all the bad teams will be home for the winter. The Yankees will have to get very lucky to win a World Series. I’d be happy if they won the division, which has only happened once in the last 4 years.

  Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has broached the idea of expanding the playoffs to include another wild-card team. The 2 wild card teams will play a series to determine who will move on. One of the purported benefits is that the wild card teams will wear out their pitching playing each other and not be as competitive against the division winner they would face in the next round. I wish Selig would just say that more playoff teams mean more playoff games and more playoff games mean more money for baseball. Adding more wild card teams won’t make September any more exciting except for the 5th and 6th best teams in the league fighting for a playoff spot reserved for division losers (and not even the best of the losers at that). There hasn’t been a division race worth adding to the classics since the wild card was instituted in 1995, because now when the 2 best teams in the league battle for a division title, the loser doesn’t go home, they just make the playoffs as the wild card anyway. And no baseball writers are waxing poetic over the battle between 2 teams that weren’t even the best in their division trying to win the consolation playoff spot. And at the same time Selig is trying to expand the playoff field, he is also trying to game the system so the wild card teams are at a severe disadvantage in the playoffs that are being expanded for them to compete in.

  I would offer Selig an original way to lower the competitiveness of the baseball wild card teams. Don’t let them in the playoffs. Give each league’s division winner with the best record a first-round bye and have the other 2 division winners battle it out. If baseball needs to make up for the loss of 6 to 10 playoff games, make the remaining playoff and World Series a best out of 9 or best out of 11 instead of the current best of 7. I’m not too worried about the ‘tradition’ of the best of 7 World Series. That train left the station a long time ago when teams started winning the World Series without winning their division. I have an even more radical idea for baseball. Since the record books have been corrupted by steroid cheaters like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro, why not throw out the record book and start over. I’d like to see teams play only on the weekend instead of the current 6 games a week. Imagine every team putting their best 3 pitchers on the mound every single weekend. As a Yankee fan, I’d be thrilled to never have to see A.J. Burnett take the mound in pinstripes again.

Unwritten Rules

  On Sunday, Detroit Tiger ace pitcher Justin Verlander took his 100 mile an hour fastball into the eighth inning of the game against the visiting Los Angeles Angels with a 3-0 lead having given up no hits and within 6 outs from his second no-hitter of the year and a chance to be only the 4th pitcher since 1900 with 3 or more no-hitters. Angel shortstop Eric Aybar led off the inning with a bunt that Verlander mishandled and threw away for an error, allowing Aybar to get to second base where he scored on a pair of ground balls. Only 4 outs away from the no hitter, Verlander gave up a single to Maicer Izturis to bring the Angels to within 3-2 and finish his no-hit bid.

  After the game, Verlander said Aybar’s bunting was “bush league” or poor sportsmanship. Aybar’s response was that he bunted because he’s not a power hitter and bunting is a good way for him to get on base and he also mentioned that Verlander told him he’d ‘get him’ next year. There was also an incident where Angel starter Jered Weaver threw a pitch over the head of a batter after Tiger Carlos Guilen took his time admiring his long home run off Weaver.

  I knew about the ‘unwritten rule’ of just putting your head down and getting around the bases after a home run, but I’d never heard about the rule against bunting to get a hit until the opposing pitcher has given up a hit. There was another incident a couple of months ago when Big David Ortiz of the filthy Red Sox got all upset against Orioles Kevin Gregg for pitching too close to him in a game 3 weeks ago and then mocking him for not running out the popup he hit to the outfield.

  Baseball has a lot of ‘unwritten rules’ and most are pretty nonsensical. If you don’t want someone to preen after they hit a home run, don’t let them hit one. And I don’t see anything wrong with bunting even if the other pitcher has a no-hitter going or even stealing a base with a 10 run lead in order to score another run. I remember Phil Rizzuto complaining when a Yankee opponent would pull a stunt like that and his broadcast partner Bill White would say, “Are the Yankees still trying to win the game?” When Rizzuto would say of course they were, White would pounce and tell Rizzuto that in that case the opponent should get as many runs as possible. I don’t know what got into Gregg’s mind to bother an opponent for not running hard. Just let him be lazy and reap the benefits when a player drops a pop up and still throws him out at first base.

  There used to be an unwritten rule about payback for a pitcher that threw at a batter on your team, but it has been lost in history. The payback involved a hitter bunting the ball down the first base line in order to make the pitcher field the ball and then instead of running TO the base, the batter runs THROUGH the unsuspecting pitcher, who has his back turned on a perfect bunt. I used to see this in the 70’s (especially on teams managed by Billy Martin), but the last time I saw it pulled off was by Toby Harrah when he played for the Yankees in 1984. I was a pretty good bunter and managed to pull this off in a fast pitch softball game once. I was catching and the pitcher smacked me in the elbow with his bat while taking some exaggerated warm-up swings in the batter box. He then let me know that if I didn’t like it, I should back up in the catcher’s box or else I’d get more of the same. When it was my turn to hit, I bunted down the line and nailed the guy with a beautiful flying tackle just as he bent over with his back to me to field the bunt. We ended up throwing punches, but at least the other guy didn’t have a baseball bat in his hands.

  Chess has quite a few of its own unwritten rules. The handshake at the beginning and the end of the game is not required, but everyone does it. Most people (me included), just give a perfunctory handshake, but there is the occasional ‘hand-cracker’ or the 2 finger ‘I can barely bear being in contact with you’ handshake guy.

  Another unwritten rule between more advanced players is to be a gracious loser. When one side has an overwhelming advantage, the other player does not play it out to checkmate, but resigns the game in a mannerly fashion. I’ve seen more than my share of games where a strong player would make an equally strong opponent checkmate him with a queen and king vs. king situation. Normally, this is a sure sign of bad blood, but in a blitz game or when the winning player is short of time, anything goes. I was at one tournament where the player who was losing just sat at the board for more than an hour until his time ran out, whereupon he picked up his scorebook and pencil and left the playing area without so much as a nod to his conqueror.

  At a tournament in New York, my opponent was adjusting the pieces every 20 seconds or so, but only while it was my turn to move. I thought it was against the rules and asked the tournament director, but he said while there was an unwritten rule against it, it was not illegal. I know now that there were a number of rules about distracting your opponent that could have been invoked, but none of that helped me from getting distracted and losing a game.

  One unwritten rule I rarely follow at the chess board is to go over the game after it’s over unless it’s the last game of the day. I’d much rather get a nap and relax to prepare for the next game. I’m sure some people think it’s really rude, but when I’m playing, the goal is to do my best and my psyche isn’t helped by finding all the ideas I overlooked moments before I have to play another game.

  An unwritten chess rule that can be broken to advantage is that when there is a great difference in the ratings of the players, the lower rated player should not offer a draw because the higher rated player will never accept it and that the lower rated player should be honored to accept the draw offer of the higher rated player. The higher rated player will use the latter ‘rule’ to offer a draw in a losing or lost position and allow the lower rated player to grab a few rating points rather than test their technique against a superior player. As a lower rated player, I’ve found that the moment I make the draw offer to a higher rated player is when they are most likely to be over-confident and careless for a move or two. The lower rated players draw offer is almost an extra move when played properly.

I would have asked which of the genuises at the Bondurant Git 'n Go decided to label a 5 ounce 500 calorie pack of Twizzlers as a 'Healthy Treat!, but I think there's an unwritten rule against it. Anyway, they were probably off for the day working on their Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

A modern-day legend

  The Yankees’ Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays today with a third inning homer off the Rays best pitcher, David Price. Because Jeter is a Yankee his chase for 3,000 has been more closely followed than the recent quests of Craig Biggio and the steroid user Rafael Palmeiro to reach the 3,000 hit milestone. I knew when he got to 2,000 hits at the age of 32 and was still averaging 200 hits a year that unless he got injured, he’d get to 3,000 and there was an outside possibility of his reaching 4,000. The decline in Jeter’s abilities over the last 2 years makes 4,000 hits out of the question. The next big Yankee milestone will be in 2 or 3 years when Alex Rodriguez will be due for his 3,000 hit (He’s 250 away). Rodriguez will get a big media treatment when his time comes, but the Yankee fans will give him the same lukewarm response that Roger Clemens 300th win got in 2003. This is understandable, since Jeter is a homegrown Yankee product, while Rodriguez and Clemens were products of other teams who came to the Yankees for money and the chance to win the championship they could never lead their teams to.

  Because he is a Yankee, Jeter has come in for a large share of criticism from the national sports media outlets like ESPN for signing a big money contract this past winter ($51 million over 3 years) and hitting leadoff even though he turned from a .320 hitter with some pop to a .270 hitter with almost no power. They’ve even been bringing up how Jeter refused to move to third base when Rodriguez (an All-Star shortstop) was signed.

  Normally I have nothing nice to say about the Yankees spending top dollar for players that are past their prime. In the 70s, Steinbrenner won a couple of championships while paying top dollar for players in their prime like Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, and Goose Gossage, but in the 80’s and early 90’s the other rich owners beat the Yankees to the prime free agents while Steinbrenner overpaid for over-the-hill players like Ken Griffey Sr., Davey Collins, and Ken Phelps and mediocre players coming off their best year like Pascual Perez, Ed Whitson, and Steve Kemp. Meanwhile the Yankees slid into mediocrity and finally became a last place team managed by a Stump Merrill. With Steinbrenner suspended, the Yankees slowly rebuilt the farm system with players like Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite, and Mariano Rivera and picked up inexpensive free agents that other teams thought were over the hill like Paul O’Neill and Wade Boggs instead of trading the jewels of the farm system for star players looking for a buck. Once the team had established itself as a contender, star pitchers like David Cone and Jimmy Key, and John Wetteland were purchased and the team finally made the playoffs in 1995 after a 14 year drought.

  The Yankees lost in the 1995 playoffs to the Mariners, but retooled for 1996 by getting the Mariner first baseman Tino Martinez to replace the retiring Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi at catcher, and giving the shortstop job to Derek Jeter. The Yankees won the World Series in 1996 and 3 more from 1998 to 2000. There were a lot of factors leading to the championships, but from a Yankee fan’s perspective, after 18 years of no championships, the winning started when Jeter showed up and in Jeter, Pettite, Rivera, Williams, Posada, O’Neill, Brosious, Martinez, etc., this generation of Yankee fans had a group of legends to match Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from the 20’s, Joe DiMaggio and Gehrig in the 30s, Dimaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle in the 50’s, Mantle, Ford, and Roger Maris in the 60’s, and Thurman Munson (my favorite player as a kid), Ron Guidry, and Graig Nettles in the 70’s.

  Not only is Jeter a modern day legend on the field, he has never disgraced himself off the field the way Tiger Woods and Roger Clemens have with their infidelities or Clemens, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, etc. have with their steroid use. A guy like that should be able to play for the Yankees for top dollar as long as he wants based on his past service and hopefully he will recognize when it’s time to retire and I won’t have to see him hanging on hitting .191 with the Pirates, Royals, or some other loser team.

  The reason that Jeter didn’t move away from shortstop in 2004 to make room for Rodriguez was that Jeter didn’t have the arm to play third base and the Yankees had no room in the outfield. It was best for the team that he played shortstop. The reason that Jeter is batting leadoff this year is that the Yankees don’t have a leadoff hitter. Gardner steals bases like a leadoff man but doesn’t get on base enough and can’t hit lefties. Granderson is fast like a leadoff man, but he is in the top 10 in home runs and is needed hitting later in the order. Jeter is the best fit at leadoff. If the Yankees still had Johnny Damon, Jeter would be hitting second or seventh. He has always bounced around the lineup and hit whenever he was needed and never complained about it either. I’m sure his pride will be hurt when he is moved down in the order, but at the moment, the Yankees don’t have a lot of options at leadoff.

  Getting 3,000 hits makes Jeter a sure-fire Hall of Famer. You may think that he was already a lock, but there is an anti-Yankee bias for the HOF and I could see the same argument used against Jeter that kept Phil Rizzuto (Yankee shortstop from 1941 to 1955 and 1950 AL MVP) out for 30 years. The argument against Yankees seems to be that if you take them off the championship teams, you remove a lot of their Hall of Fame argument. To me, that is a lot of nonsense. The Yankees have always been able to have any player they wanted on their roster, and yet they chose Rizzuto be their shortstop when they won 5 World Series in a row from 1949 to 1953. Being a shortstop on a dynastic team should be proof of a Hall of Fame resume instead of an argument against it.

  It bothers me a lot to see the media nip at the heels of a champion like Derek Jeter, who has always done what’s best for his team, but that’s what the media does best. It’s a shame he is at a reduced level of ability at the same time he is getting all this attention for his 3,000 hits. It makes people forget what a great hitter he was in his prime, hitting over .300 with 200 plus hits almost every year, and that doesn’t even count all the clutch plays he’s made in the playoffs and World Series. I was happy to see him go 5 for 5 in today’s milestone game to help people all over the country see the Jeter that Yankee fans have been treated to for the last 17 years. Jeter will be as big a legend to Yankee fans 50 years from now as Mickey Mantle is to the 70 year olds today and DiMaggio, Gehrig, and Ruth were to their fathers and grandfathers.

A new baseball season

  The 2011 baseball season started 2 weeks ago and the Yankees look to be a good but not quite good enough team, the same as last year. There are a few differences. Andy Pettite is gone and Phil Hughes has seemingly melted down but no able replacements have stepped up. The Yankees bought the scrapbooks of Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, but Garcia has only pitched an inning and Colon has given up a lot of runs in his first 2 appearances. I have some hope that both can contribute. Colon has eaten himself out of the league but he has struck out 10 batters in 6 innings and may pitch great in his quest for one last big payday. Garcia is a professional pitcher and he can contribute innings if nothing else. But Hughes was supposed to challenge to be the best pitcher in the league instead of the worst. He looks like he’s hurt to me and that would be a big blow. The hitting and bullpen should be good enough to win with any average pitcher, but you can’t win in October without top shelf pitching.

  Speaking of top shelf pitching, the bullpen has been outstanding. Mariano Rivera has been unhittable even at the age of 41, Chamberlain has been great now that he is not pitching in high-pressure situations, and Rafael Soriano has been very, very, good except for one bad inning against the Twins where he walked the bases loaded. Most of the Yankee fans were drooling for Cliff Lee, but Soriano was the guy I wanted them to buy. Lee pitched good against the Yankees, but he wasn’t so hot in the World Series against the Giants when he was expected to carry the team and I don’t think he could be successful in New York. By getting Soriano, the Yankees took a hard to replace closer away from the rival Devil Rays and they get a year to see if he can pitch in New York and replace the great Rivera. You can’t really replace a once in a lifetime pitcher like Rivera, but Chamberlain wilted as the set up man last year and if you buy a closer that can’t pitch in New York the season could be shot before June. I was very impressed with the way Soriano bounced back from his bad outing against the Twins to help with the win 2 days later.

  It’s too early to tell about the offense. Cano is still an All-Star and Rodriguez is off to a good start, but just like last year the outfield doesn’t have the pedigree of a world champion. Gardner hasn’t hit well since June of last year, Swisher doesn’t inspire my confidence, and top backup Andruw Jones is a guy who no one wanted for the last 3 years. After his fine playoffs last year, I was expecting Granderson to get off to a hot start, but it is another slow start. I don’t know what to make of Jeter. I had no problem with the Yankees paying him whatever was necessary to keep him in the pinstripes, but facts are facts and the facts say it is time to think about a replacement. It is hard to think of the Yankees without Jeter, but Jeter isn’t Jeter anymore.

  Despite all the Yankees problems, the season is only 9 games old, they are only a game out of first, and ahead of both the filthy Red Sox and the pesky Devil Rays. I'm sure both teams will be back on top of the standings battling the Yankees before long. I’ve been catching a lot of the games on the radio via mlb.com. It is the best bargain around. For 14.99 a year, I get access to every team’s radio broadcasts. Younger fans like the MLB.com TV internet package, but I’m used to getting my baseball on the radio where you can be doing something else and almost listening to the game in the background, letting the announcers voices clue me in to pay extra attention.

  I’m not as much of a baseball fan as I am a Yankee fan, but the cool thing about baseball is that your favorite team is playing 6 days a week as opposed to football when each game is almost a national holiday because you have to wait another week for the next game.

Bending and Breaking Wills

  The Yankees are looking like toast after losing 2 games against the Rangers by a combined score of 18 to 3. They finally had a lead going into the 6th inning, but Burnett gave up a huge 3 run homer and the rout was on. There were a lot of chances for the Yankees to score some runs early, but the big hit never came and they had to settle for one run at a time. After the Red Sox disaster of 2004 I know anything is possible, but the beatdown the Rangers are putting on the pitching staff is not leaving me optimistic that the Yankees will to win is not broken. But at least they are still playing, which they wouldn't be if they hadn't made a miracle comeback in Game 1 of the series.

  There have been a huge battle of wills in Iowa this election season. Last year the 3 Iowa Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled that same-sex marriages are legal in Iowa. The majority of Iowans are perceived to be against allowing same-sex marriages and the state legislature could have allowed this issue to be decided on a referendum vote, but by not voting to have a referendum, they are attempting to have their cake and eat it too. They can pick up votes proclaiming their ‘personal disapproval’ or same-sex marriage but how they have to ‘uphold the law’ then getting campaign contributions from the ‘same-sex marriage lobby’ for not allowing the referendum.

  Iowa has a system in place where the Supreme Court justices must stand accountable to the voters in a ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ vote. I’ve never given these ‘judge’ votes a lot thought, but this year opponents of same-sex marriages from all around the country have thrown a lot of money into voting these judges out. There are plenty of politicians of both parties bemoaning the precedent voting the judges out would cause.

  I don’t really care one way or the other about same-sex marriage, but I’m glad my kids are almost grown up so I wouldn’t have to explain to my child why their teacher Mr. G, has a husband. What all the politicians are missing is that people are upset because they don’t feel they have a say in this matter. 3 people on a court say something that is unpopular with the majority of the population and has not been allowed for 150 years is now allowed immediately and the politicians make excuses to not allow the people they govern to vote on the matter (Here is Governor Chet Culver’s explanation - it is the ‘party-line’ of the politicians who feel this way when forced to clarify their positions). This up or down vote on the judges seems to be the only way left for the people to make their opinions on this matter felt.

  In a speech last week, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus said that the will of the people is expressed in the state constitution and claims her critics “wants our judges to be servants of this group’s ideology, rather than servants of the law.” She also said that “The people always have the last say about the content of meaning of the constitution…As you know, however, amending the constitution is a difficult and slow process. It is much easier for some people to simply complain about lawless courts running amok and exceeding their authority.”

  Ternus is comfortable in claiming she is merely upholding the laws of the State, but then complains the campaign to unseat the judges is an attempt to intimidate judges. But the retention vote is also a law of the state. It is a check on the power of judiciary. If judges make unpopular rulings, they can be voted out. I kind of like the idea. There would be a lot less fighting over the Supreme Court nominees if they weren’t appointed for life.

If you build it, will they come? *

  Last month I wrote about the poor attendance at the Iowa Open and noted that I would be having a chess tournament in Marshalltown on October 9th with a $5 entry fee. Since then, I was able to waive the entry fee to the tournament and anyone can play for free if they just let me know they are going to attend up to the day before the tournament.

  I thought a free tournament would attract at least 40 players. 3 days before the tournament, I have 27 players signed up, including 5 players from our local club. This is slightly disappointing but not unexpected, since Marshalltown is a 45 minute drive from Ames, an hour drive from Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and 2 hours from Iowa City, which are the major chess centers in the state. I’m sure there will be a few players who decide to play on the spur of the moment, so I should top the 30 number. My major goal for this tournament was to bring in some outside competition for our Thursday night club members and that will have been accomplished.

  A possible problem I may have is if the players who have pre-registered don’t show up to play. I’m obligated as the tournament director to assign pre-registered player a first round game. Normally, if someone doesn’t show up, their opponent receives a free point and the entry fee is forfeited, but in this case there is no entry fee. I don’t expect any problems, but it is something to be aware of.

  Because Marshalltown is central to most of Iowa’s major chess centers, I generally get an eclectic mix of players who don’t normally play each other, so I’m looking forward to a great tournament. I’m hoping I get the chance one day to try this same free chess tournament concept in Des Moines or another large city, but for now, I can say that in Marshalltown at least, it I build it, they MIGHT come.

  A side benefit of the tournament has been to get me back into the mind set of running tournaments as I gear up for my Des Moines scholastic series. Ordering trophies and prizes, sending out emails, getting the tournament posted on-line, making sure my tournament box is supplied with pens; tape; and other materials, and all the other little things that go into putting on a tournament took some getting used to, but at this point, I can just relax and watch the Yankees in the playoffs today and tomorrow while on Friday I can celebrate the 54th anniversary of Don Larsen’s pitching the only perfect game in World Series history for the Yankees against the Dodgers at the same time as my 50th birthday.

  I was hoping to relax watching baseball, but not only did Halladay of the Phillies pitch the second postseason no-hitter in baseball history (sullying the uniqueness of my birth date), the Yankees are losing 3-0 in the 5th inning. When Sabathia is winning, he look like a BIG man to me; but when he is losing, he just looks FAT. If you think it is hypocritical how my perception of a player can change with a home run or 2, remember the word fan is derived from FANatic.

* The actual line from the movie 'Field of Dreams' is "If you build it, he will come", but it seemed a little poetic licence was in order.

Getting your head on straight

  The Yankees have finally clinched a spot in the playoffs, but have stumbled badly by losing 6 of 8 games after winning the first 2 games of a 4 game series against the Devil Rays. They went from having a 2 game lead on the rest of the league and having the home field advantage until the World Series to the likely wild card spot. In order to get to the World Series they’ll have to win 2 series on the road. I have very little faith that the Yankees will be playing long in October. The pitching has been atrocious all month. C.C. Sabathia can match up with anyone, but was not up to the task in last week’s 10-2 loss to the Devil Rays that would have all but clinched the division. After Sabathia, there is not one Yankee starting pitcher I would trust on the mound. Pettite has been hit hard since he came back from injury, Burnett has been hit hard all year, and Hughes pitches just good enough to lose in big games. The relievers have shown some improvement as of late, but the great Mariano Riveria has been blowing games and looks pretty shaky in the games he does manage to save. It is disappointing to see his age seriously showing. Joba Chamberlain should have the closer this year, but he has regressed and probably will never live up to his promise. Pitching wins in the playoffs and this year’s Yankees pitching staff reminds me a lot of the teams that made early exits in the ’05,’06, and ’07 playoffs.

  The only advantage I can see for the Yankees is their experience in winning the championship last year. It is possible that they can get through the Twins or the Rangers because they have the confidence to succeed in the playoffs, but this 2010 Twins team seems a lot more mentally tough than the 2009 team that kept botching simple fielding plays and getting runners thrown out on the bases. Because of their awesome starting pitching, I expect the Phillies to win the world championship this year. They have 3 top starters and have been playing lights out since they got their better hitters back from injury. They also have the championship experience advantage, winning the World Series 2 years ago and losing to the Yankees in the series last year. I am very happy they made the postseason instead of the filthy Red Sox, but Yankee fans can only consider a successful season one that ends with the world championship.

  The football Giants are a team that decidedly does not have their head on straight. After beating an awful Carolina team at home and losing to a very good Colts team on the road, the Giants were at home against a fair Tennessee Titans team last Sunday and the game was on our local TV, a rare break from the steady diet of Vikings, Packers, Bears, and Chief games I normally get. Unfortunately, the Giants were sloppy and undisciplined and lost a game they had every opportunity to win. Fumbles, interceptions, and missed field goals in scoring territory complemented the 11 penalties (including stupid personal fouls) made the Giants look like one of the worse teams in the league and got me wondering if the Colts were really that good or if the Giants were really that bad.

  I helped to straighten some heads this week, myself. Our local newspaper had not been delivered for a week straight and we had to call every night to get it delivered. On Sunday it wasn’t delivered again and I didn’t call until I got back from church at 10:10. Of course, you had to call before 10 for the delivery before the circulation department closes for the day, so no paper. On Monday when it wasn’t delivered yet again, I called the circulation department to ask for the paper and offered to cancel my subscription until they could figure out a way to deliver the paper since it would be no more expensive and a lot less aggravating to just get one from the store on my way home from work if it wasn’t going to be waiting for me. I also mentioned that the circulation department was probably as sick of me calling as I was. I got no argument on that point, but my subscription was credited for my trouble and the paper has arrived every day since. I had brought my sons laptop to a computer repair shop to be fixed last Friday (he dropped it and it won’t boot up) and was told I’d get a call on Saturday to come pick it up. I did not get a call on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday so I called to say that I’d just like to pick it up and if they hadn’t worked on it, that was OK. I called again today and the owner who told me it would be done on Saturday said he thought it was done. Thought. I said it either was or wasn’t done and could he stop thinking and start telling. He compromised on it being almost done and offered to cut my bill a bit for my trouble. I’ll pass on the offer and consider it a parting gift.

  I am heading straight to the end of my exercise resolutions. Last year I crawled to the finish line after almost stopping for a month, but this year I’m sprinting to the finish.

Pushups 7545 (out of 8000)
Stationary Bike 520 (out of 525 miles)
Blogs 78 (out of 104)

Rocketing Into September

  Heading into September, the Yankees still have the best record in baseball by a game over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I’m not sure how they’ve done it. The pitching has been spotty. Pettite is hurt and Burnett and Chamberlain have been awful. Hughes and Sabathia have held their own but Hughes hasn’t gone past 6 innings in a couple of months. The offense has been riding Mark Teixeira all summer and are scoring bunches of runs despite not having A-Rod and Jeter having his worst year. Last year, the team got through the playoffs by having pitching that was just good enough and an offense that could bludgeon opponents. I don’t think the pitching is as good as last year and was upset to see the Rangers get Cliff Lee and the Phillies get Roy Oswalt, but the Yankees only get Kerry Wood to help the pitching. Wood has been productive so far so it is probably a good thing that I’m not the Yankee general manager instead of Cashman. The rookie Ivan Nova has been excellent and probably would have had to be traded for a big name pitcher, but pitching rookies in the postseason is a risky proposition. If Pettite and A-Rod can come back strong and Hughes picks it up a notch, there probably isn’t a team that can beat the Yankees in a short series, but those are some big unknowns.

  Ex-Yankee Roger Clemens was indicted for lying to Congress when he denied (under oath) taking steroids and human growth hormones. Good for him. I remember how disgusted I was when the Yankees picked him up in 1999 and not just because he was an ex Red Sox player.

  In 1986 he was the starting pitcher in the famous World Series Game where the Mets made an amazing comeback by getting 5 straight hits with 2 outs to score 3 runs in the 11th inning of Game 6 to tie the World Series. Clemens had a lead in that game and begged out with a blister on his finger. After the team lost, he claimed he wanted to stay in the game, but the manager didn’t agree.

  In 1990, Clemens was pitching in the American League Championship Series against the Oakland A’s and a real champion, Dave Stewart. Clemens’ team was behind in the series 3-0 and he managed to get thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes in the very first inning. When he got to the Yankees, Clemens was a good pitcher in games you didn't need to win. He'd pitch in the playoffs when the Yankees had a series lead and the pressure was off. He did pitch great in Game 7 if the 2001 World Series and even left with a lead, but that is the only time I can remember him pitching big in a big game.

  In 2003, Clemens started Game 7 of the American League Championship Series for the Yankees against the hated Red Sox. He left the game with the Yankees losing and the fans were cheering him in case it was his last game as a Yankee and Clemens waved his cap to the fans in a big farewell gesture even though his team was losing thanks to his efforts. The Yankees managed to win that game in a miracle comeback and in Game 4 of the World Series, Clemens left the game against the Marlins with his team losing and again the fans cheered him and again he stopped and waved his cap to the fans. The only difference was that this game was in Miami, not New York. Clemens didn’t care if his team was winning or losing as long as he got his cheers. Disgusting and he didn’t even retire, but just went to Houston so he could be close to his family. When he wore out his welcome in Houston, he came back to the Yankees in 2007. I guess being close to his family wasn’t that important after all.

  Everyone always marveled at how Clemens could keep throwing so hard into his 40’s. He claimed it was because of his workout regimen that was patterned after his idol, Nolan Ryan. But after his retirement his personal trainer, Brian McNamee, claimed he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH. His former teammate, Andy Pettite says that Clemens admitted to him that he used HGH. Clemens even admitted that his wife took HGH while denying his own use. Of course, she probably had a reason to try to hang on to her youth since Roger had been having a long term affair with country singer Mindy McCready that began when Clemens was 28 and a father of 2 and McCready was 15. Yes, she was 15!

  I’ve always felt that a man who cheats on his wife will cheat on anyone and Clemens is no different. I see no reason to think that he wouldn’t take steroids and HGH to keep his fastball, while letting everyone think he was a workout warrior. He had a lot of talent, but took the easy way out his whole career. I wish he had never been a Yankee. They won before he showed up, won after he left, and won while he was there but except for 1 game in his Yankee career, when he was needed him, he disappeared. I hope he appears in a jail cell soon.

Remembrances of Steinbrenner

  George Steinbrenner passed away at the age of 80 yesterday. He bought the Yankees when I was 13 and was a central figure in my teenage years. There will be a lot of talk about how George was a visionary and that is true. He wasn’t the first owner to buy players (the Yankees bought Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals for $100,000 in 1936, and the Boston Red Sox paid $100,000 for Jimmy Foxx a few years before that), but he was one of the first owners to ransom a city for stadium improvements when he threatened to move the team to New Jersey in 1973 and he was the first baseball owner to put the majority of his team’s games on cable when he agreed to sell 12 years of Yankee games to the Madison Square Garden network for $500 million over 12 years. Even though that was an unheard of amount at the time, by the end of the contract it turned out that Madison Square Garden had made a great deal because everyone wants to watch the Yankees and companies would pay top dollar to advertise on the games. After the contract expired, Steinbrenner was able to start his own cable network (another first) and keep all the profits.

  I wasn’t as upset by Steinbrenner’s passing as I was when the great Yankee player and manager Billy Martin died in a 1989 car accident. Maybe it was because I was younger or maybe it was because Billy’s death was unexpected. I think it was because when George would fire and rehire Billy in the 70’s and 80’s the crowd of Yankee fans I hung with in New Jersey identified with Billy as the former Yankee player, World Series MVP, hard living, hard drinking, fight at the drop of a hat winner we all wish we could be. We all saw Steinbrenner as the silver spoon rich shipbuilder son of a rich shipbuilder jock-sniffing wannabe athlete. (None of us had dad’s who were shipbuilders or even rich).

  It’s easy to think Steinbrenner was a much beloved figure during his whole ownership reign from listening to all the tributes this week, but he was referred to by his employees of the 70’s and 80’s as ‘The Fat Man’, ‘Manager George’, ‘Georgie Porgie’, among others. In 1982, Steinbrenner let Reggie Jackson sign with the Angels and decided to remake the Yankees into a ‘speed team’. He bragged about plan, but the team was awful and on a Sunday afternoon game against the Angels, Jackson hit a long home run in blowout game and 40,000 people chanted “Steinbrenner Sucks!” for the rest of the game. The chant was again heard in the early nineties when the Yankees were the worst team in baseball and fans wore paper bags on their head. And of course there was Billy Martin’s famous reference to his felony conviction for illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon, “The two of them deserve each other. One’s a born liar (Reggie Jackson), the other’s convicted.” Billy was drunk at the time, but he lost his job just like the famous secretary who brought Steinbrenner a tuna fish sandwich instead of roast beef.

  Steinbrenner bought the Yankees near the end of a 12 year drought of World Series appearances, but the arrow was already pointing up and many of the key components of the great teams of the late 70’s were already in place. Steinbrenner benefitted by the onset of baseball free agency because he now could just get players by paying them directly instead of giving money and good young players in trade to other teams for the same players. This meant that it only cost money for Reggie Jackson, Goose Gossage, and Catfish Hunter and the team didn’t have to trade top prospects like Ron Guidry for them. Since no other team was willing to spend for free agents, George had the field to himself and could get any player he wanted.

  Rooting for a championship contender every year is great and Steinbrenner deserves a lot of the credit for pushing the team over the top, but the constant hiring and firing of managers and the strategy of trading top prospects in favor of accumulating all-star caliber players to be backups started to backfire in the early 80’s. The top-line free agent players could get almost the same money the Yankees would pay from teams like Gene Autry’s Angels and Ted Turner’s Braves and would use the Yankees high bids to sign with other clubs for almost the same money and the security of not being lambasted by the New York media, embarrassed publicly by the owner, or just losing their playing time because the owner could decide to buy a different all-star player. After the embarrassment of losing the 1981 World Series to the Dodgers after winning the first 2 games, (George broke his hand after what he said was a fight with some Dodger fans on an elevator and he never forgave his expensive free agent Dave Winfield for going 1 for 22 in the series), George ended up overpaying for mediocre talent and having to trade top prospects for real star players. The teams of the middle 80’s had an awesome offense led by Rickey Henderson, Don Mattingly, and Dave Winfield, but never even won a division, always being undone by well-paid but underperforming players like Ed Whitson, Ken Phelps, Pascual Perez, and Steve Kemp who were superstars only in their paychecks. What few prospects came up through the farm system were traded for either has-beens or someone who just had the best year of their career before resuming their mediocre ways. Steinbrenner was thought of as a laughing stock by Yankee fans and most of the baseball writers I read and there were many calls for him to sell the team.

  In the late 80’s the team became undone by Mattingly’s back injury, Henderson wanting a new contract and forcing a trade, aging pitching, and no prospects in the farm system. The Yankees were a last place team into the early nineties. Steinbrenner was on the US Olympic Committee and when he was caught paying a known gambler for information that may have proved Dave Winfield threw the 1981 World Series, he accepted a voluntary lifetime ban from baseball rather a suspension which may have gotten him thrown off the Olympic Committee. I think Winfield was paid for his poor performance and George got a raw deal, but so soon after the Pete Rose scandal, baseball decided to sweep the affair under the run and punish Steinbrenner for consorting with gamblers. With no expectation of winning and without the pressure from the owner, the Yankees rebuilt their farm system, made some smart trades to get players like Paul O’Neill, and were ready to contend when Steinbrenner’s ban was lifted. The 90’s Steinbrenner was much smarter than the 80’s version. He stopped ranting and railing against the players and managers and let his front office use the Yankee money to get the missing pieces of the puzzle instead of getting every available player who ever made an All-Star team. The result of this was the dynasty of the late 90’s. After the aging of that group, Steinbrenner went back to his old ways of overpaying for the biggest names available (Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Bobby Abreu) and while making the playoffs every year, the team did not have the cohesion needed to win a championship.

  Steinbrenner was mostly concerned over his last years of owning the team with getting the new Yankee Stadium built. He tried to get it put in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but even threatening to move to New Jersey could not get him such prime real estate. He arranged to build the stadium across the street from the old one and turned the team over to his sons in 2007. I thought had a stroke based on how suddenly he disappeared from the public eye, or maybe I just didn’t notice a larger than life figure turn old and frail until he was. In any event, I give Steinbrenner a lot of credit for bringing championships to New York, and I’m glad he lived long enough to see the Yankees win a World Championship in the stadium he built. Rest in Peace, George.

Halftime

  The year was half over on Wednesday and the baseball season is halfway over for the Yankees. The Yankees record is 50 wins and 31 losses so they are on a pace for 100 wins. Just like yesterday’s 7-6 win over Toronto where the starting pitching was suspect, 3 Yankees got thrown out at the plate, Rivera blew a save in the 9th , the Yankees got just enough help from the Blue Jays inherent laziness (allowing an inside park home run on a ball the center fielder missed and no one backed up on and a double play on a botched bunt that the batter didn’t run hard on) to win the game. The pitchers wins and losses look impressive enough with Pettitte, Hughes, and Sabathia all having 10 wins, but Hughes has been awful the last month, Pettitte is 38 and starting to show some wear, and Burnett has been pathetic for 2 months. In the bullpen, no one has been reliable. Chamberlain and only Marte and Rivera have been reliable.

  The hitting has been carrying the team by scoring the second most runs in the league to make up for giving up more than runs than all but 2 teams. Cano is an all-star, Rodriguez and Teixeira are heating up, but Jeter and Posada have cooled off after hot starts. Curtis Granderson, the new center fielder has been good in the field but doesn’t get on base enough to be able to hit at the top of the order.

  Despite all the problems, the Yankees are still in first place by 2 games over the Red Sox and the Devil Rays. I think they have enough to beat out the Rays to at least get in the playoffs, but it bothers me a lot that the Red Sox have almost their entire starting lineup on the injured list, yet have overcome a poor start to be within 2 games of first place. If they can get all their players healthy, they could blow the race wide open.

  Ultimately, the goal of the regular season is to get into the playoff with the pitching staff healthy and in a groove. The Yankees understand this better than any team so hopefully they will be able to get the staffs’ problems worked out in the next 2 months for the stretch run.

  On my personal halftime, the first half of 2010 has been successful. The new job is going great and my chess rating is at an all time high (I suffered a defeat to the barefoot chess player last Thursday, but that was July 1st, the second half of the year. I’ve been playing very poorly in our blitz tournaments the last few weeks, but like the Yankees, have done just enough to win. I’m looking forward to the results when I start to play well again.

Taking a Fifth

  The baseball season is one fifth done and the Yankees have a record of 22 wins and 12 losses, even after losing 3 out of 4 games to the Tigers this week. They have the second best record in baseball and normally would be good enough to lead the division, except the team with the best record, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at 24-10 is in the same division. A record of 96-66 is normally good enough to get in the playoffs. I measure the progress of the season by how many more wins than losses a team has. If the Yankees can get to +30, then I know they just have to win half their games to get in the post season.

  Despite the gaudy record, I see some dark clouds in the Yankees’ future. The front line talent is good and there are promising young players on the roster (Cervalli, Gardner, Hughes, Chamberlain), but there are quite a few players who have no business on a playoff team. Yesterday against the Tigers, Alex Rodriguez was the DH and backup infielder Roberto Pena played at third base. He is an OK fielder, but the Tigers kept walking the hitter in front of him and he could not deliver a hit in the 2-0 loss. A better backup infielder is needed. Javier Vasquez pitched again yesterday and lost again. I suppose it was a moral victory because he pitched well, but exceeding low expectations is what this guy does best. David Robertson has been awful in relief, but since he has lost his job to Boone Logan, I expect him to be in the minor leagues any day now.

  The lack of talent in the outfield is most troubling. Gardner is young and is playing like an all-star, but Swisher, Winn, and Thames are run of the mill veterans and Golsen has never done anything at this level. None of these guys are going to make me forget a player like Johnny Damon who was a proven winner. Hopefully, when summer arrives, the Yankees can pick off some talent from some losing teams players to fill in their holes. It’s either that or pray that all the high priced talent stays healthy and deliver so the has-beens and never-weres aren’t needed come playoff time.

Repeating the past’s mistakes

  This past week the Minnesota Twins opened their new ballpark, Target Field. It is being hailed as an old-time baseball park with a return to outdoor baseball and much better than the old domed stadium which had been described as a drab affront to baseball, with the artificial grass causing the ball to hop 20 feet over a fielder’s head, a gigantic plastic ‘baggie’ serving as the right field fence and the roof that the fielders would lose fly balls in. It seems that everyone has forgotten why the Twin Cities wanted a domed stadium in the first place. I remember when I was a kid the Twins played the Yankees in Bloomington’s Metropolitan Park. It looked like a nice stadium, unless it snowed in April or September in Minnesota. Then the Minnesota Twins would make the nightly news as a joke of a team trying to play in a snow covered stadium, with snow covered seats, and snow covered parking lots. The TV announcers would wonder why anyone in their right mind would have major league baseball in Minnesota during these months. And this was before ESPN and all the cable channels. The ridicule would be exponential in today’s media. As a more practical matter, the Minnesota Twins are a regional team that draws fans from the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Northern Minnesota who will drive as many as 6 hours to see the closest major league baseball team, the Twins. A big rationale for the domed stadium was that the team was losing attendance because families who planned in advance for their one weekend of major league baseball of the year would never return after driving 6 hours only to see the game rained out. An unintended benefit of the quirks of the domed stadium was that the home team figured out how to play in the stadium during the long season, while visiting teams had trouble figuring out how to see the fly balls and play the unpredictable bounces off the artificial grass and baggie fence. When the Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991, they did not lose a single home game in either Series. The dome was hailed as a major home field advantage with the loudest fans because the dome trapped in the noise. The stadium did not become drab until the Twins started losing, but most empty stadiums are drab. I’m eagerly waiting for the next big snowstorm in Minnesota during baseball season to see if the fans clamor for the return of what they used to call “Dome, Sweet, Dome”.

  The Yankees are off to a great start, but I am afraid they have also made the mistake of forgetting the past. The Yankees have always bought many of their best players, but some are unsuited to handle the pressure of playing in New York. Javier Vasquez was a promising young pitcher with the Montreal Expos when the Yankees bought him for the 2004 season. He had a so-so season, was awful in the playoffs, and left for Arizona after the season. After some mediocre years with the White Sox, Vasquez had a big year with a mediocre Braves team and now the Yankees have signed him up for this season. His first 2 starts have been awful. I’d have hoped that the Yankees had learned 6 years ago that this guy cannot perform in pressure situations. If the Yankees are lucky, they will ship him off to some other team before he can help ruin another playoff season.

Silly Season!

  On Saturday I helped at the Valley High School Chessathon in Des Moines. It was organized by 3 time Iowa Girls champion Dhrooti Vyas with the proceeds going to help the Haiti earthquake victims. It was a fun day. I gave an endgame lecture that was well received, played some chess against beginners, managed to get in an offhand game with Kushan Tyagi (a draw), and played in a tandem simultaneous exhibition where Kushan and former Iowa champion Dan Vasto would alternate moves (I was the only non-beginner to lose). At the Chessathon, I was told one of the silliest things I ever heard. On Sunday, I watched the Yankees’ opening game of the season against the hated Red Sox. Sadly, the yanks lost a big lead to the Sox. At work the next day, a coworker talked to me about the game and made me make even more room on my personal ‘silly things I’ve heard list’.

  On Saturday, one of the chess parents I was acquainted with from my time as Iowa Scholastic Chess Director was asking me about national regulations concerning youth team tournaments. A 6th grade player I know missed school on the sign up date for the middle school chess club and since all 30 spots on the club were filled for the year, was not allowed to participate in the club activities. The young player was not deterred by his exclusion from the club and went to tournaments during the year. The national middle school team chess tournament is this weekend in Minneapolis and the player has signed up and noted that he would be playing for his middle school. In the national team scholastic tournaments, schools can bring as many players as they want, with the top 4 scores per school comprising the team score. The middle school coach is working to have this player removed from his school roster for the national tournament even though it won’t cost his team anything by allowing him to be included. And this was a player that had participated in the coach’s elementary school teams for many years and has attended his non-scholastic tournaments. I’ve seen this coach separate 4 girls at a tournament he was running into a separate section (even though it was not advertised as such) and then only give out 3 ribbons for prizes even though there were more prize ribbons than players. After all, what’s a youth chess tournament without somebody feeling excluded by being the only girl without a ribbon. This coach does a great job selling kids and their parents on to chess, but his silly adherence to a vision of the ‘proper’ way to do things does an equally great job of turning these same kids off to chess as they get older. I had a similar problem with this coach at an elementary team tournament in 2008 concerning another young player. The coach didn’t want the players score to count for the school. I pointed out that since the player attended that school, his score would count towards the school’s score. The player’s score ended up helping the team win the K-6 championship and the coach didn’t seem too displeased while accepting the championship trophy. I ended up telling the parent who asked me the question that while National Scholastic rules may cover this situation, there was probably not any National Infant rules to prevent the 70+ year old chess coach from acting like a big baby.

  At work on Monday, my coworker told me ‘Yankees Suck. All they do is lose!’ How silly. While his comment is technically true so far this season, the season is only 1 game old. I tried to tell my friend that as a Yankee fan, the games don’t count until October. A Royals fan may really need to win the first game of the year because that will be the only time they are over .500 all season. My co-worker has a win-now soccer mentality, and just doesn’t understand a sport where the Yankees can lose 9 games in a row to their hated rivals and still win the championship (like last year). I got my revenge when the Red Sox gave away last night’s game and this morning I asked my friend if he heard who won the game last night because I didn’t hear about it. He wouldn’t admit that the Red Sox lost so I got to say, ‘Well, I guess the winners WON and the LOSERS LOST’. It was a silly thing to say, but it felt very good. I’m glad I didn’t work with this guy in 2004 or 2008, but it would have been nice to work with him last year.