Annals of the Game...

A scene from an old WWII movie (can't remember which one), popped into my head the other day. The scene featured two U.S. Army MPs guarding an military base somewhere in Europe during the war. Their job was to screen out enemy spies posing as American servicemen and officers. In order to do that they asked the following question: "Who won the World Series last year?" 

The assumption of course, understood by anyone watching the movie, was that any red-blooded American male would be able to answer that question in a heartbeat. 

I'm guessing that may have been a fairly safe assumption when the movie was made, probably sometime in the fifties or early sixties, the apogee of baseball's popularity, when in any given year of that period, if the answer didn't immediately come to your head, you could simply say "The Yankees", and have at least a seventy percent chance of being right. 

During the actual war however I'm not so sure that would have been a safe assumption as while baseball continued to be played professionally on orders from President Roosevelt, most of the players in the Major Leagues were themselves participating in the war effort*, leaving their teams filled with men who were ineligible to serve in the armed services. Two of the most famous of these were Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds, a 16-year-old left-handed pitcher too young to serve, and Pete Gray, a one-armed right fielder who played one season for the St. Louis Browns. 

Would soldiers engaged in the business of fighting a World War in two fronts on opposite sides of the planet have been fixated on the exploits of these "4F" replacement players back home? I'm not so sure.

But you get the point, baseball was the most popular sport in the U.S. once, with its only real competition being prizefighting.

Today it's another story with several sports competing with and often beating baseball, at least where it really matters, in TV ratings. I'd be surprised if one in twenty Americans today could tell you who won the World Series last year. Which is why MLB is loathe to schedule its playoff games to compete with the NFL, even though the professional football season is still only in its first half. 

Sometimes it's unavoidable however, such as this past Monday when the Seattle Mariners faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the decisive game seven of the American League Championship Series, a game I might add, which will be remembered for a long time. More on that later. But suffice it to say, the two Monday Night Football mid-season games that took place that night, considerably outdrew a vastly more significant baseball game. In the United States that is.

Not so in Canada for obvious reasons.

It's too bad because this year especially, Major League Baseball's post season has been tremendously entertaining, featuring some magnificent performances by superstars as well as heretofore unknown players, extremely competitive games and series, wacky plays that no one has ever seen the likes of, and perhaps best of all, the return of some old school baseball.

And we haven't even gotten to the World Series yet! 

This year's roster of twelve teams in the playoffs included several teams known for their long histories of futility. This included my hometown Chicago Cubs who still hold the record for the longest World Series drought, 108 years. Of course, they broke that sorry string back in 2016, beating the team that currently holds the title of longest ongoing string without winning a World Series, the Cleveland Guardians,. Then there are the expansion teams that have never won a World Series, three of the five, the San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers and Seattle Mariners were included in the mix this year. 

Unfortunately, all those strings of futility will have to live at least another year as none of those teams are still playing.

Neither is the losingest team in MLB history, the Philadelphia Phillies, also knocked out of this year's playoffs. 

And I'd be remiss not to mention the Boston Red Sox who despite being tied for third place in all time World Series titles, had an impressive drought of their own, 84 years, which many blame on the "Curse of the Bambino", after their owner sold their star pitcher who wasn't all that bad with the bat, a guy named Babe Ruth, to the Yankees in order to finance a Broadway show.

After that whopper of a deal, the Yankees would go on to become baseball's most successful team in terms of championships, and all Boston would get in return is "No No, Nanette", the off-Broadway version of course. 

But in the end, it all balances out as the Yankees didn't survive the playoffs either this year.

The playoff system in MLB has been in place since 1969. Before then, dating back to the formation of the American League in 1901, the team with the best regular season record in each league would win its league's championship or "pennant" and would face the winner of the other league in the World Series. In 1969, which happened to be the year I started paying attention to baseball standings, the leagues were divided into two divisions consisting of six teams each, and the winner of each league's division would face the other in a best of five series league championship series, which would determine the team that would move on to the World Series.

As expansion teams kept coming on the scene, the leagues divided up again to three divisions in 1994. To achieve even numbers for the playoffs, a "wild card" team, the non-division winner with the best record in each league was added to the mix.   

This is all hooey to the purists of the game who would say what's the point of playing a grueling 162 game season when in the end all you get for winning the most games in your respective league is the chance to compete with lesser teams to possibly move on. Or to put it another way, isn't it more of an accomplishment to be the best team over a long, grueling season, than to be the best team over a one month season, which is essentially what the playoffs are?

The purists have a point. 

On the other hand, back when post-season baseball meant the World Series and nothing else, until expansion began in 1960, there were only eight teams in each of two leagues, a total of sixteen teams, And those sixteen teams only represented ten different cities as four cities had two teams each and New York City had three. So barring a "subway series" which New York saw a number of in the fifties, only fourteen teams representing eight cites would be left out in the cold come post season time.

Today there are thirty MLB teams. If the old system were still in place, fans of twenty eight teams would have little to root for, especially after July when it becomes painfully obvious to many that their team doesn't stand a chance to be the best of the fifteen teams of its league.  With more chances to qualify for the post season, that pain can be delayed in some cases all the way to September.

As a lifelong Chicago baseball fan, I've been there and done that far too often.

With the current system, instead of there being one pennant race in each League come late August and September, now there are several.

MLB has been tweaking the playoff structure since 1994, trying to strike a balance between keeping the competition interesting and making sure the teams that win championships deserve it.

The current system still has three divisions in each league, as well as three wild card teams, resulting in twelve teams making it into the playoffs. To give the best teams an advantage, the two division champions in each league with the best records get to sit out the first round of playoffs, known as the "Wild Card Series", which are now a best-of-three game series.

An example of how the current playoff system dramatically invigorates the season: this year in the American League, the pairings for two of the three divisions, the East and the Central, had yet to be decided until the final game of the season. In the National League, two teams, the Mets and the Reds fought for the last spot in the Wild Card race on the last day of the regular season. Fittingly perhaps, both those teams lost their final game meaning the Reds got the chance to be swept by the Dodgers (the answer to the question of who won the World Series last year) in their Wild Card Series.

That series may have been a bit of a wash but the other three went the full three game distance. The series I paid closest attention to, the Cubs versus the Padres, wasn't settled until the last out of the ninth inning of the decisive third game. Before that moment, any Cubs fan who is old enough certainly had flashbacks of the dreadful 1984 National League Championship Series when the Cubs took the first two games in the best of five series in Chicago, only to lose the series being swept the next three games by the Padres in San Diego. 

So what went through this old White Sox fan's head when with two outs in the top of the ninth, and the tying and go ahead runs on base, Padre's catcher Freddie Fermin hit a fly ball deep to center field? 

Why of course, hoist the "W" flag and cue the Steve Goodman. "Go Cubs Go!" As a Chicago fan, beggars can't be choosers.

In the American League, Detroit beat their division rival Cleveland, and the Yankees snuck by their own bitter rival the Red Sox, while the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays were waiting in the wings.

Before the wild card came around in baseball, these exciting win-or-go-home series pitting division rivals against each other only occurred in the case of season ending in a tie for first place, a bit of a rarity. Today they happen virtually every year.

The two National League teams that got to sit out the Wild Card series were the Phillies and the team with the best record in the majors this year, the Milwaukee Brewers. They ended up playing their division rivals the Cubs in the best of five National League Divisional Series. Meanwhile the Phillies took on the Dodgers.

In the American League, it was the Tigers vs. the Mariners and the Yankees taking on another division rival, the Blue Jays. Those two teams finished the season with identical records, but the Jays got the nod as division champs as they edged out the Yanks in head to head competition this year. 

That series seemed to be the one with real barn burner potential but Toronto handily beat the Yanks in the first two games in Toronto, 10-1 and 13-7. 

Game three in the Bronx seemed like icing on the cake for the Jays when they took an early 6-1 lead in the third and it looked as if the game and series would be over in a Toronto sweep. But in the bottom of the third, the Yanks put up a two spot. In the next inning an error and a walk put two runners on base for Yankee superstar Aaron Judge who represented the tying run. Off an 0-2 Louis Varland inside fastball, with the crowd chanting MVP, MVP, Judge slammed a massive drive that hit high off the left field foul pole. The Yankees scraped together three more runs in the subsequent innings while holding the Jays scoreless for the rest of the game. The momentum had shifted. 

Meanwhile the Brewers were having their way with the Cubs, having taken the first two games of their series up in Milwaukee. The sudden turn of events thanks to Judge's heroics gave me hope that something similar might happen for the Cubs and they'd be able to turn their series around when they returned to the Friendly Confines. Well, it took no Herculean (or Judgeian?) effort for the hometown team, just good solid baseball, no doubt with the support of their loyal fans most of whom reportedly spent the entire two games in Chicago on their feet. The Cubs ended up sending the series back to Milwaukee for a decisive game five.

As for the Yankees well, as they say in baseball, momentum is everything, until it isn't. (Hey someone must have said that some time). They went down quietly at home in Yankee Stadium in game four, sending Toronto on to the American League Championship.

Toronto's next opponent wouldn't be decided until two days later in a series that went the distance and then some. The Wild Card Tigers stole game one of their ALDS from the Division Champion Mariners in Seattle, but the Mariners came back to win the next two games, one at home, the other in Detroit, setting up a do-or-die game four for the Tigers. By the fifth inning of that game, the Tigers were down 3-0. But the Detroit bats came alive in the bottom of that inning with three runs, four more in the sixth, and one in each of the subsequent innings, while their pitchers held Seattle scoreless. Final score 9-3, which sent the series back to Seattle for a decisive game five.

In that game, the Mariners manufactured a run early in the game off a double, a stolen base and a sac fly. In the top of the sixth, former Cub Javy Baez doubled for the Tigers. With the left-handed hitting Kerry Carpenter due up, Seattle manager Don Wilson chose to "go with the averages" and pull his starter George Kirby who was pitching well, in favor of lefty reliever Gabe Spencer. That move backfired as Carpenter put one in the seats to put Detroit ahead 2-1. The other starter, Tiger ace and Cy Young Award candidate Turk Skubal, was pulled in the seventh after pitching a gem, allowing only one run and two hits while striking out thirteen in six innings. The same fate happened to Detroit as their relievers gave up the tying run that inning. 

But then crickets, the pitchers on both teams held their opponents scoreless, but not without drama, for the next seven and one half innings. That streak came to an end in the bottom of the fifteenth when the Mariners manufactured yet another run with a little help from the Tigers, off a single, a hit by pitch, an error allowing the runners to advance, and an intentional walk which loaded the bases for Seattle second baseman Jorge Polanco. On a 3-2 pitch, Polanco singled to right, driving in the game and series winning run.

Expressing the frustration of Tiger Nation after that tough loss, Dan Dickerson, the voice of Tiger radio, blurted out: 

I don't have to do a game recap, ah fuck. Fuck this game recap!

Dickerson thought he was off the air at the time but...

He apologized the next day for the outburst but I'm sure that wasn't necessary, most of the fans listening to the game could relate.

As the late, great Harry Caray used to always say:

Ah, you can't beat fun at the ol' ballpark!

I mentioned above that the Phillies are the team with the most losses in baseball. A couple things about that, first of all, someone has to have more losses than anybody else and the Phillies have been around longer than just about any other MLB team, so they've had more chances to lose. After being a truly awful team for their first one hundred or so years of existence, in recent memory, they've had several good, even some great teams that have been contenders for the big prize, More often than not however, they've come up short. In 1993, they lost the World Series in the most dramatic fashion possible to something that happens all the time in story books and little children's fantasies, but has only happened once in history. They lost on a come-from-behind walk off championship home run. It came off the bat of Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays, the last time the team from up north made it to the Big Dance. 

This year, the Phillies' dreams of a third World Series Championship (they have even fewer of those than the Cubs), came to an end in the most dreadful fashion, they gave up a walk off, series ending run on an error. It wasn't just an error, but a mistake of judgement to be generous, or to be less generous, a boneheaded play.

The Phillies dropped their first two games to the Dodgers in Philadelphia, but won game three in LA. In do-or-die game four at Dodger Stadium, the game was scoreless until the top of the seventh when Philly Max Kepler scored off a Nick Castellanos double. That run was answered in the bottom of the inning when Dodger Mookie Betts walked with the bases loaded. 

Both teams then went down 1-2-3 every inning until the 11th. The Phillies failed to score leaving a man on base in their half of the inning. In the bottom of the 11th, off a couple of singles and a walk, the Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs when Philly reliever Orion Kerkering faced LA outfielder Andy Pages. On an 0-1 pitch, Pages hit a sharp comebacker to Kerkering's left. It was a tough play but Kerkering managed to field the ball. Despite his catcher pointing  for him to throw to first base, the pitcher came home with the ball but threw it wide of the plate.

Run scores, game and series over.

Now if you're familiar with the rules of baseball, the problem with this scenario should be obvious. Had Kerkerling done what his catcher asked him to do, that is throw to first base, assuming he made a clean throw and the first baseman cleanly fielded it before the runner reached the base (which video replay confirms he had plenty of time to do), the Phillies would have been out of the inning as with two outs, a runner safely crossing home plate is not awarded a run if there is a force out on that play at any base, regardless of the timing of the two events. 

Kerkerling was devastated after the play and any reasonable human being has to have tremendous empathy for him as he will likely, at least in Philadelphia, join the ranks of players like Fred Merkel, Fred Snodgrass and of course Bill Buckner to name a few, who went to their graves remembered for an unfortunate mistake in a pivotal game rather than for their otherwise successful careers.

On the other hand, the biggest bonehead play in baseball history took place at Yankee Stadium on October 10, 1926.. It was in the bottom of the ninth of game seven of the World Series with the Yankees trailing the Cardinals, 3-2.  With two outs in the inning, Babe Ruth walked bringing his teammate Bob Meusel up to the plate. On the first pitch to Meusel, Ruth attempted to steal second base.

When asked after the game why he tried to steal second in that situation, Ruth, known as the Sultan of Swat, not the Sultan of Swift said: "because I thought they wouldn't expect me to do it."

He was right, they didn't, but they threw him out anyway.

Well it just so happened that the following year was 1927, and to anyone with any sense of baseball history, the words "1927 Yankees" have a certain magic to them, as that perhaps was the greatest Major League Baseball team to ever take the field, and Babe Ruth was certainly at the center of that magic. 

So all was forgiven.

One can only wish, unlikely as it may be, that the same fate awaits Orion Kerkering.

On to the Championship Series.

Oh wait you say, what ever happened with the Cubs and the Brewers? Well let's just say the Wrigley magic didn't transfer to Milwaukee and the stadium formerly known as Miller Park. As in games one and two, the Cubs bats came up strong early, but not often, and the Brewers won game five, moving on to face the Dodgers.

Unfortunately for the Brewers.

Maybe it was sheer comeuppance for the Brewers' players' truly bush-league move of taunting their just vanquished opponents by posing with a Wrigley Field style  "L"(for loser)  flag in their on field portrait after the game. More likely it was that they were outmatched by a far better team. I like to think it was a little of both, but in any case, the Dodgers trashed the Brewers in the NLCS, sweeping the series in four games.

That's not to say the series wasn't interesting. In the fourth inning of game one, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. Max Muncy hit a deep drive to center field. Brewer center fielder Sal Frelick tracked the ball down and at the wall made a spectacular leap, snagging the ball as it was about to go over the fence, preventing a grand slam. But the ball popped out of his glove and hit the wall. Frelick was somehow able to grab the ball before it touched the ground. He then made a perfect throw to Brewer short stop Joey Ortiz who in turn made a perfect relay throw to catcher William Contreras which beat the runner, Dodger Teoscar Hernández by a whisker. 

That was the second out of the inning.

Then Contraras, who apparently was the only player on the field who understood what really happened on the play, calmly jogged over to third base with the ball and touched the bag, while Will Smith, the lead LA baserunner was standing on second and Freddie Freeman and Muncy who was robbed of the grand slam were on first. 

Three outs.

So what happened?

Well I have to plead ignorance of a certain baseball rule as at the time I didn't realize that a ball hitting the wall is considered the same as a ball hitting the ground. In other words, catching a ball after it hits the wall, something that doesn't happen all that often, is not recorded as an out and has to be played just as if it hit the ground before being fielded. My son, a former umpire, had to teach me this. Regardless, Frelick did the right thing and hit his cutoff man as quickly as possible. 

But the play happened so quickly that even Frelick didn't realize the ball hit the wall, he assumed he had made a put out for the second out of the inning. Unfortunately for them, so did the baserunners who stayed on base, assuming a catch had been made. Hernández, the runner at third, confused as his teammates, hesitated tagging up before heading for home. That unnecessary action of tagging up, especially the hesitation, made the difference between his being safe and out at the plate.

To sum it all up, as a catch had not been made, the runners needed to advance as the bases were loaded and there was no place to put the batter Max Muncy who was not out, and headed for first.

So Contreras stepping on third forced out Will Smith, who by that time should have been standing on third.

Got all that?

I wasn't watching the game live but hear that the review of the play took quite some time as there were so many parts to it. The most amazing thing to me is that the replays proved without question that the the umpires involved, namely the outfield umpire who immediately called no catch on the part of Frelick, and the home plate umpire who called the baserunner out at the plate without a tag (as it was a force play), both nailed their calls on the field.

Believe it or not, that wasn't the craziest baserunning faux pas in Dodger lore. When the team was still in Brooklyn, there was a famous play (in a relatively insignificant game) where three Dodger baserunners all found themselves standing on third base. 

You can read about it here. 

This led to a running joke where a cab driver pulls up to Ebbets Field during a game and asks an usher how the Dodgers are doing. "They have three runners on base!" says the usher. To which the driver responds: "Which base?" 

Baseball humor.

That great heads up fielding play was far and away the highlight of the series for the Brewers, they simply had no answer for the Dodgers' pitching. The Brewers scored only one run in each of the four games and had a team batting average of .118 in the series, which turns out to be the lowest team average ever in a post season series of more than one game. That Dodger pitching staff includes the most dominant player in baseball today, and perhaps when all is said and done, all time, Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani you see, just like a certain Yankee from 100 years ago (whom I've brought up ad nauseam in this post), in addition to being a lights out pitcher, can also hit with the best of them. In game four of the National League Championship Series with the Dodgers up three games to none on the Brewers, the first inning alone was the stuff of legend. In the top of that inning, Ohtani struck out the top of the Milwaukee order. Then, thanks to a new rule made up solely for him, as designated hitter for himself, Ohtani, the leadoff hitter in the Dodger lineup, hit a massive home run to right center field, estimated to have traveled 446 feet.

Of course he wasn't done, He ended up pitching six scoreless innings giving up only two hits. And he hit two more home runs, the second, more than twenty feet longer than the first.

They say it was the single greatest performance in a post season game. 

I'm not going to argue with that. 

But as my friend Steve pointed out, what about Don Larsen's World Series 1956 perfect game against the Dodgers? After all, how can you beat perfection?

Well I suppose it's something that will be argued for as long as people are arguing about baseball. My take is this, a perfect game is a little bit of a freak of nature, in order for one to take place, the stars have to all be aligned just right. Yes perfect games require a tremendous pitching performance, that much is certain. But they also require, unless the pitcher strikes out everybody, the contribution of all the teammates in the field to make clean plays. And yes, perfect games also require a certain amount of luck, especially involving balls that have to be hit to players giving them the chance to make plays on them. One bloop single and there goes the perfect game.

There was no luck in Ohtani's performance that night, it was sheer dominance by one player.

.

And like that Yankee of old who defined the era in which he played, barring catastrophic injury, we may be living now in what one day will be defined as "The Ohtani Era."

Yes baseball fans, he's that good.

That brings us to what was perhaps the most exciting series this year (out of many) played up to this point, the American League Championship Series between the Mariners and the Blue Jays, the two highest seeded teams in the American League, and two teams that came into existence in the same year, 1977. 

It wasn't looking very promising at the start, The Blue Jays, the odds on favorite to win the series, dropped the first two games at home to the Mariners. They'd have to win two games in Seattle in order to bring the series back to Toronto, no small task.

Now the Mariners are the poster child for the opinion that the team with the best record over the regular season deserves to be in the World Series. In the 2001 season the Mariners posted a record of 116-46. No team since, wait for it, the 1906 Chicago Cubs had won as many games in one season. But that year the Mariners lost in the ALCS to the Yankees who won twenty one fewer games in the regular season. I suspect part of the reason why hardly anyone makes much of a case about it, is the fact that that series was played barely one month after the September 11th attacks and understandably hardly anyone cared about baseball that year, and those who did, like me, were rooting for the Yankees.

Had the Mariners won that series, it would have resulted in their first trip to the Fall Classic. They haven't made it since, making them the only team in the Majors who have never made an appearance in a World Series. 

Perhaps this was to be their year.

But The Blue Jays did exactly what they had to do in Seattle, winning games three and four in the Pacific Northwest, making sure that the series, win or lose would finish in Canada.  

Seattle did salvage their homestand by taking game five 6-2, giving them a 3-2 advantage in the series. 

Back at the Rogers Center in downtown Toronto, the Blue Jays took game six by the same score, 6-2, setting up yet again, a decisive game seven (the sweetest words to any sports fan), as I mentioned above, played last Monday night.

George Kirby would start his second decisive game of a series for the Mariners, this time facing Shane Bieber for the Blue Jays. Both teams scored one run in the first. Kirby settled down after that, allowing no runs and two hits in the next three innings while Bieber gave up another run in the second. Then after giving up a double and a walk in the fourth, Bieber was relieved by Louis Varland who got the Jays out of the inning. But the first batter he faced in the fifth, Cal Raleigh hit a solo home run to right, putting the Mariners up 3-1.

Another Mariner starter, Brian Woo came in for Kirby in the bottom of the fifth and he pitched two solid, scoreless innings.

Going into the bottom of the seventh, things were looking pretty good for the Mariners to make their first trip to the Big Dance. On the Baseball Reference win probability chart for that game, they were well into the eighty percent range at that point. Still in the game, Brian Woo walked Addison Berger to lead off the seventh. Then he gave up a single to Isiah Kiner-Falifa. Next up was Andrés Giménez who did something we haven't seen much of in recent years, he sacrifice-bunted to advance the runners to second and third. Next up was George Springer who was still smarting after being hit in the knee by a Brian Woo pitch in gave five. But he wouldn't face Woo in this at bat as the Mariners brought in Edward Bazardo to face him. 

And now a word from our sponsor...

You know folks, if you've been reading my baseball posts over the years, you've seen this quote countless times. There's no shame in that for me as these words more than any describe the game I love so much. So once again, here they are: 

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. -The first paragraph of  "The Green Field of the Mind"  a story by A. Bartlett Giamatti

It all stopped for the Seattle Mariners and their fans when eight outs away from their first World Series, on a 1-0 two seam fastball that Edward Bazardo left over the plate, George Springer parked the ball into the left field stands. To the joy of the 44,770 fans in the ballpark who saw it happen in person, to the all the Blue Jays fans living in the city the team represents, and to the fans of the team all over the country the Blue Jays represent, that was a moment they will never forget. 

The Seattle fans will never forget it either. I know, I've experienced those chill rains quite a number of times in my life as well, and have not forgotten. 

Springer's was a home run for the ages, an instant classic immediately compared to Joe Carter's blast over thirty years ago. And because he did while hurt and considered unlikely to play,, it was also compared to Kirk Gibson's iconic come-from-behind walk off home run for the Dodgers in game one of the 1988 World Series.

So now the World Series is set, the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers will be heavy favorites to win, mostly because this team has plenty of playoff experience. Strangely enough, the Blue Jays finished in last place in their division last year. 

But they've shown great resilience as we've seen in the playoffs as well as in the regular season. Let by their superstar Vladmir Guerrero Jr. they posted an impressive 20 home runs this post season. 

But the Dodgers bats aren't too shabby either and they definitively have the edge when it comes to starting pitching. Their relief pitching is perhaps another story. As my resident baseball expert, my son tells me, if the Blue Jays can get the Dodgers starters to throw a lot of pitches and force them out of the game, perhaps they have a chance. 

We'll see. 

As far as picking a team to root for well, that's a little complicated for me. As a great lover of baseball history, I'd say there is no team with a more interesting history than the Dodgers. And like the city they represent, there's a lot to love about them, they are the team after all who integrated baseball. Unfortunately, also like the city they represent, there's also a lot to not love. It's complicated.

Toronto on the other hand is a city I love unconditionally and as I usually pick teams to root for more for the city they represent, than for the team itself, it would be a no brainer for me to root for the Blue Jays. 

On the other hand, the city of Los Angeles suffered a series of devastating fires this year so as I did in 2001, maybe I'll route for the team out of solidarity for the city and its people. 

On the other hand, the Blue Jays not only represent a city, but an entire country, a proud nation whose status has been relegated by the current president as nothing more than our 51st state. I'd love to see them win just to be able to say to Canada that we Americans proudly stand with and by you.

Anyway, two things are certain, I'm going to root for the series to go the distance and baseball gods willing, then some.

And I'm definitely going to root for the team wearing blue.

It's been a great ride so far.

* Two Major League players were killed in action during World War II, and another died of illness while serving the country. The number of Minor League, semi-pro, college and amateur players who lost their lives in service is well into the hundreds. Needless to say, scores of Japanese players also died in service to their country. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but here is a link to a list with their names. 

Them

Several years ago after too many experiences of feeling like I was banging my head against the wall, I gave up having discussions about politics with my MAGA supporting friends. The straw that broke the camel's back was the realization that to a person, my friends insisted they knew more about me than I knew about me, at least as far as the source of my opinions on the 45th, now the 47th president. 

Despite pointing out that those opinions were based upon decades of following the man's career (back to when he was a liberal Democrat), and actually listening to what he had to say, no, they insisted, I was under the influence of a cabal of left wing America hating, propaganda spewing, Socialist/Communist  influencers, whose agenda was to destroy this country and everything it stood for. This included the main stream media, the Democratic Party, the Deep State, the intellectual elite, ANTIFA,  BLM, and a whole alphabet soup of other groups, both real and imagined, all bent on taking this country away from hard working, God fearing, white Americans who according to my friends, built this country and are its true heirs. 

And all this Lefty hate was bankrolled by the Svengoolie-like multi-billionaire financier George Soros whom they insisted, financially rewarded anyone who took sides against this president. 

"Then where's my money?" I asked, both facetiously and not. 

I'm still asking.

I was reminded of that this week after hearing coverage of Charlie Kirk's memorial service last Sunday, which attracted tens of thousands of mourners to the NFL Stadium in greater Phoenix. What struck me the most was that in several interviews of mourners attending the event, to a person the interviewees spoke about "what THEY did to Charlie Kirk."

But from everything we know at the moment, is wasn't THEY who did anything to Charlie Kirk, it was HE, a twenty two year old man from Utah. 

This was confirmed by the Governor of that state, Spencer Cox, who in a remarkable statement announcing the capture of Kirk's alleged assassin, called for unity in this terribly divided country, admonishing people on both the right and the left to tone down the hateful rhetoric and recalling the title of an initiative the governor created a few years ago, "Disagree Better." 

Prior to his words of healing, the governor stated that before anyone knew who the culprit was, he hoped against hope  that the murderer would be someone who came from out of state or even from out of the country. "Unfortunately..." the governor confirmed, "he is one of us."

In fact, the man who allegedly murdered Charlie Kirk, came from a staunchly religious, conservative, MAGA supporting family. And yes they also had guns and taught him well how to use them. 

Then you could hear the thoughts circulating in the MAGAminds, that this young man was a lost soul who had to have been indoctrinated by the evil Lefty cabal with their typical mind tricks, coercion tactics plus a hefty check from Soros thrown in, just like they did to me, sans the check.

Well I don't know, but the suspect did leave behind a trail of evidence that could point to a possible motive that suggests he very well may have come to the decision to do the evil deed all on his own. 

It turns out the person the suspect is having a relationship with, belongs to perhaps the most maligned and marginalized group of people in our society today. She is a transgender woman. In a series of texts the two shared that came into the hands of the police, the suspect confessed to killing Kirk. 

"Why?" asked his partner. "I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out." was his response. 

I know that I'm reading a whole lot into this and I'm certainly no psychologist, but if these texts are indeed real and their words sincere, the murder was most likely not based upon a commitment to any political ideology. This guy actually had skin in the game, for him it was personal. 

Kirk was a very outspoken opponent of LGBTQ+ rights, especially for trans people, at times even advocating using violence against them. Not wanting to be accused of cherry picking inflammatory passages taken out of context, I invite you to check Kirk's comments out for yourself, as his legacy is laid out for all to see on the Internet.

Well it turns out I also have skin in this game as someone close to me is transgender. Kirk's words on the subject, without the context I just mentioned, would have been infuriating and reprehensible to me. Within the context, they're also very hurtful and yes, personal.

With that in mind I can say with reasonable certainty that the guy who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk:

• Did not shoot him because of anything Rachel Maddow said.
• Did not shoot him because of anything Jimmy Kimmel said.
• Did not shoot him because of anything Adam Schiff said.
• Did not shoot him because of anything ANTIFA (do they even still exist?) did or said.
• Did not shoot him because of anything George Soros did or said.

He shot Charlie Kirk because of what Charlie Kirk said.

Does this justify his alleged action?

OF COURSE NOT!!!

But it is very likely that was his motive and unfortunately, thousands of people in this country are murdered every year for far less. 

Such as children who had the misfortune of showing up to school on the same day as a mass murderer.

So to answer your inevitable question, no I'm not a murderer and the thought of "having the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk" as his alleged killer wrote to his partner in a note left under her computer keyboard, would have probably never occurred to me and if by chance it had, I would have rejected it in a heartbeat.

Because beyond my staunch belief in my heart of hearts that such a murder is morally and ethically wrong and completely unjustifiable, my rational mind would say to me that taking out Charlie Kirk might silence one man, but it would open the door for hundreds more just like him. As we'll see in a minute, if the killer actually had had enough of Charlie Kirk's hatred, his action only exacerbated it tenfold.  At least. And in the process, he personally set the course of trans rights backward at least fifty, if not one hundred years, far more than Charlie Kirk alone could have done.

Being old enough to remember a good number of acts of political violence and terrorism in my day, starting with the one that took place in Dallas shortly before my fifth birthday in 1963, I can tell you that these acts,  if they are done in the name of bringing about some kind of political or social change, are inevitably self-defeating.

The anger over Charlie Kirk's assassination was entirely predictable, and not unreasonable, especially for people who had skin in the game like his wife, the rest of his family and his personal friends. In her eulogy to her slain husband last Sunday, Erika Kirk made a comment that had to seem remarkable to people who like the current president, know absolutely nothing about Christianity. She said that she forgives the man who killed her husband. 

Unfortunately, the words in her poignant eulogy were not the last of the service that day as they rightfully should have been. The honor of closing the service for some reason went to someone with absolutely no skin in the game, the president, who in his typical fashion, gave a rambling stream of consciousness screed which featured several thousand mourners walking out in the middle of it. During his hour long tribute mostly to himself, he made the point of refuting Erika Kirk's words by telling the world that he doesn't agree with her, that he in fact hates his opponents.

As it stands now, that would include more than half of the people in this country. 

Sadly, those were not the most spiteful, hateful words uttered that day. That "honor" would have to go to White House deputy chief of staff for policy, the man many consider to be the real brains behind this administration, Steven Miller. In the midst of friends and loved ones who gave sincere remembrances of the deceased, Miller like the president, took the opportunity to weaponize the tragedy by saying this: 

Our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion.

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army they have arisen in all of us.

We stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing.

These are the people currently leading our country.

And with that, need I say more?

Last Week

And what a week it was. I had this post written out in my head about an event that took place in my city early last week until another event, the assassination of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk happened on Wednesday.  Now you get two posts for the price of one.

I learned a couple of things this week. Much as I hate to admit this, I had never heard of Charlie Kirk until his tragic murder at a college campus in Utah. Now the whole world knows who he was. Even before he was pronounced dead, I was getting notifications on my cellphone from the German publications Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter Allgemeine about the shooting.

The other thing I learned this week was the expression "cold take." In case you're old and illiterate on all things regarding contemporary culture as I am, a cold take is the opposite of a "hot take", which came into being allegedly on sports talk radio in the nineties. A hot take is a statement, opinion or prediction that is edgy, outrageous or simply uninformed. A good example of a hot take would be a sports commentator confidently predicting that this year's Chicago Bears are headed for the Super Bowl.

Go Bears.

From that, the expression cold take naturally followed. A cold take by contrast is a statement so obvious that it needn't even be mentioned. A good example of a cold take is the phrase "all lives matter" in response a few years ago to the call to action, "Black lives matter."

I learned the term cold take this week from my son, who was referring the repeated comments on the media, social and otherwise, that said political assassination is wrong under any circumstance. I guess a good, albeit cruder synonym for a cold take would be "Duh".

Charlie Kirk was a father, a husband, a son, and a friend to many. Above all he was a human being whose life, like all of them, matters. His murder was a travesty, a tragedy, a moral outrage, and a clarion call to all of us that the division in this country and the rhetoric that has torn and continues to tear this country apart is a matter of the gravest concern to all of us. In other words, duh.

There is no other side to this story, so don't expect me to follow that last paragraph with a but.

The Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, as conservative as they come, during a press conference to announce the capture of Kirk's alleged killer, made an impassioned statement, imploring people on both sides of the fence, blue and red, Republican, Democrat and everything in between, to tone down the rhetoric and start to come back together as a nation. In his comments, Cox asked rhetorically: 

Is this the end of a dark chapter of our history, or the beginning?

It was a statement that drew praise across the aisle, from both Republicans and Democrats. 

Not surprising however, Cox's remarks had their detractors. 

Steve Bannon for one, said this:

We don’t need a governor to step up and give us basically a political pep talk and a rally and ‘let’s just all come together.’

Cox even got a call from the president who didn't seem to pleased either. "You know..." Cox reported the president as saying, "the type of person who would do something like that to Charlie Kirk would love to do that to us."

I wonder if he had anyone in mind.

It seems despite his solid right wing credentials, Governor Cox is not popular with the MAGA crowd. 

I suspect much of the MAGAnimosity toward him comes from the fact that Cox has not always rubber stamped the MAGAgenda. In 2022, Cox vetoed a bill representing an issue near and dear to the hearts of MAGA, that would ban transgender athletes from participating in high school sports in Utah. For that outrage, Charlie Kirk declared that Cox "should be expelled from the Republican Party." 

There is absolutely no relation to my remarks above stating unequivocally that Kirk's murder is an abomination with the fact that I find many of his actions and much of what he stood for to be reprehensible. In addition to his stance on gender issues which went far beyond trans athletes:

Kirk was a staunch opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, singling out Martin Luther King Junior as an "awful person" whose "fixation" on race has had a devastating impact on American society. He called George Floyd whose unjustified homicide at the hands of a Minneapolis cop led to a period of serious civil unrest during the COVID pandemic, a "scumbag" totally unworthy of the attention. He was bitterly opposed to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's appointment to the Supreme Court, calling her unqualified and a "diversity hire". And speaking of DEI, last year he made this comment:  “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Kirk was a defender of "Replacement Theory" which claims that Jews are responsible for replacing white Americans with foreign, non-white immigrants. Using the same ol' same ol' I've heard all my life, the kind of trash that folks like the virulent anti-semite  Charles Lindburgh spewed back in the thirties and forties, Kirk accused the Jews of: controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”

Kirk was a religious fanatic who whole heartedly supported freedom of religion as long as that religion was Christian Fundamentalism. In comments about Zohran Mandami, a New York State assemblyman who happens to be Muslim,  who won the Democratic Primary in the upcoming race for mayor of New York City, Kirk recently said this: “America’s largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall,” 

Kirk was a ferocious gun advocate who went on record saying that the tens of thousands of gun deaths this country experiences every year is a price worth paying in exchange for the right to own guns. I wonder if wherever he is now, he still believes that. 

Just sayin'.

One thing that people on both the right and at least some people on the left agree upon was that Charlie Kirk was a staunch supporter of freedom of speech. He was wearing a tee shirt printed with the word "Freedom" when he died. Much of his work was visiting college campuses and encouraging students no matter their political views, to go up on stage with him and engage in discourse, encouraging a so called free exchange of ideas. 

But that is dubious. 

Kirk's "debates" with students of diverse opinions were to legitimate debate, what the spectacle of Professional Wrestling is to the real sport of wrestling.

More often than not, Kirk's debate opponents were 18 and 19 year old college freshman and sophomores with a strong sense of conviction but little or no debate experience. Kirk on the other hand was an accomplished debater who used intimidation followed by humiliation as his weapons of choice to score points against his victims, er... opponents. It was no contest, sort of like a high school basketball player challenging me and my 66 year old body, bad hips and all, to a game of one on one. It helped him out considerably that these "debates" were held in public with a very friendly (to Kirk) crowd who hooted and hollered every time their guy scored a point.

Then Kirk would post the best "gotcha moments" complete with the crowd reaction, to his Tic Toc account which went viral among his legions of followers, mostly "let's stick it to the Libs" young men. whose reaction that "boy these liberal people sure are stupid", was a fete accompli. 

You can find these confrontations on YouTube. It was a different story when Kirk encountered a higher level of competition such as when he took on graduate and doctoral students at Cambridge University. Then Kirk, our high school ballplayer to continue the metaphor, was faced with playing one on one against an NBA all star.

The result was predictable. 

As was Kirk's response to Spencer Cox's veto of the trans-sports bill. 

Governor Cox explained his high treason to the faithful by saying he was trying “to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.” three values that seem to hold little water for the MAGA crowd. Not surprisingly, the veto was overturned. 

But Cox it seemed got the last laugh Friday when he evoked the memory of the man who would have him ousted by saying this:

I desperately call on every American – Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative, MAGA, all of us – to please, please, please follow what Charlie taught me:“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much."

As I mentioned at the top of this post, this wasn't the only big story of last week. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Iceman Cometh to Chicago. You can read the announcement on their website here.

Dubbed with the cute militaryspeak tagline "Operation Midway Blitz", the deployment of Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) agents to Chicago, is an effort to: 

target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.

The post's headline declares that the operation is "in Honor of Katie Abraham to Target Criminal Illegal Aliens Terrorizing Americans in Sanctuary Illinois."

Then you learn that Katie Abraham was a 20 year old college student who was killed in a traffic accident while visiting the University of Illinois Champagne/Urbana campus. She was riding in a car with four other young women, when their car while stopped at a red light, was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed. In addition to Katie, another woman died in the crash and the other three occupants of their vehicle were severely injured. 

The driver who caused the accident fled the scene and was apprehended three days later while on a bus en-route  to Mexico. The man, a Guatemalan national, was in this country without legal status, using an alias and forged Mexican documents. He is currently in custody in Urbana awaiting multiple charges. 

Within the tragic story of Katie Abraham is a link to a video, presumably produced by DHS, featuring her grieving parents who make an impassioned plea for going after criminal aliens and defending the current administration's efforts to so. In the video, Katie's parents respond to questions that are superimposed over their image. One of these questions is " “When you hear people say illegal aliens aren’t given due process, what’s your reaction?” 

The father responds that his daughter didn't receive due process when she died, implying that perhaps her killer shouldn't either. Although Joe Abraham never says it, the very nature of that question implies that denying due process should be extended to all persons without legal status, not just criminals. 

I completely understand Katie Abraham's parents' anger and outrage over what happened to their daughter. If that had happened to one of my children, I'd want to rip the heart out of the perpetrator and stick it in his face until it stops beating. I'm serious. I think any parent, or for that matter, anyone who loves somebody can relate. 

That's precisely why we don't allow people to serve on juries in judgement of people who have wronged their loved ones. 

In that vein, we should take heart in Katie's parents' words, but not take them seriously.

The idea that the man who killed Katie and her friend (I'm guessing the friend's parents wouldn't allow the DHS to use their daughter's tragedy to promote their agenda), doesn't deserve due process, is a non-starter. Our constitution guarantees due process for all, including killers and yes, even presidents who wage an insurrection to overthrow the government.

As is the case of all civilized societies.  

"Equal Justice Under Law" aren't just words inscribed in the pediment of the U.S. Supreme Building. they are the guiding principles of our legal system. Which is why the allegorical representation of Justice found in courtrooms all over the country, is a blindfolded woman holding a scale and a sword. The blindfold represents impartiality and the lack of bias and prejudice, while the scale represents that judgement is based upon the weight of evidence from both sides of the legal argument. In other words, within the legal framework, there are two sides to every story.

Unfortunately in our country at the moment, not everyone sees it this way. Unlike Governor Spencer Cox's pleas for unity, the current president continued to up the rhetoric by using his "friend" Charlie Kirk's murder as yet another opportunity to portray all who oppose him as enemies of the people. Of all the acts of violence directed at politicians and political influencers that have taken place in the past decade or so on members of both the Left and the Right, the president cherry picked only the attacks on the Right, just as the DHS under the auspices of this president, cherrypicked the tragedy of Katie Abraham to promote their agenda. 

After nearly one week of Operation Midway Blitz and the deployment of ICE agents in Chicago, allegedly in honor of Katie Abraham, so far one man has died. I guess his life didn't matter. Nor apparently did the lives of the Capitol Police officers who died as a result of the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, whose convicted and imprisoned perpetrators were pardoned by the president in one of his first official acts after being sworn back into office this January.

In other news, it seems the president has gotten over the death of his "good friend" Charlie Kirk. On the White House Lawn yesterday, he was asked how he's holding up after the tragedy. "Oh just fine.." he replied then continued by mentioning how excited he was that the construction of his new ballroom extension to the White House was under way. As a natural born builder I'm hearing of another big building project he's promising, replacing all the allegorical representations of Justice in courtrooms around the country with statues of himself. 

They'll be big, hideous, full standing gold plated statues, tiny hands and all, without the blindfold and the scale, but still holding the sword. And on the ten foot pedestal where each statue stands will be inscribed these words in all caps: 

"I AM THE LAW".

Charlie Kirk would be proud.

What's In a Name?

Shortly after the current resident of the White House was sworn in for his second term, he signed a slew of executive orders with his Sharpie that were even for him, bizarre. The one that stood out for me was changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The two questions that immediately came to mind were "Why?" and "Can he really do that?"

Like so many of his official acts in both his first term and now well into his second term, I'm reminded of the revolutionary leader in Woody Allen's comedy Bananas, who upon becoming president, proclaims a bunch of nonsense laws like changing the national language of his fictional Latin American country to Swedish, making everyone change their underwear every hour and then wear it on the outside so they can check, and making everyone who is under eighteen years of age, officially eighteen years of age. 

"Why does he do this?" is the question on everyone's mind. "Because he can" is the answer. I suppose in the case of the U.S. president, if he believes he can change the course of a hurricane with his Sharpie as he attempted during his first administration, it would be a cinch to change the name of an international body of water with one swipe of that magic pen.

Not that it will make one bit of difference in people's lives, my guess is the vast majority of people will still call the Gulf of Mexico what they always called it, just like people in Chicago still call the Willis Tower, Sears Tower, Macy's on State Street, Marshall Fields, and the ballpark at 35th and Shields, Comiskey Park, as indeed they should.

That said, it hardly matters what he decides to the rename that body of water. Heck, he could have just as well renamed it "Melania's Panties". Come to think of it, what an incredibly lost opportunity for him as renaming the Gulf of Mexico, "Melania's Panties" would have proven a tremendous loyalty test for his slew of sycophants. It's not hard to imagine Cabinet members like J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth tripping over each other in order to be the first to utter those words to "honor of our great first lady, and her inspiring undergarments."

And can't you just hear Ted "Cancún" Cruz before heading for the first plane out of Dodge, warning the citizens of Galveston about the hurricane headed their way, which is currently above Melania's Panties?

Lindsey Graham I'm not so sure of, it would probably depend on which way the wind is blowing that day.

But there is one name change he's suggesting that came to light this week that goes beyond pure silliness. He wants to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the War Department. 

Why? This is what he said:

It just sounded bad to me, 'On behalf of the Department of Defense?' Defense? I don't want to be defense only. We want defense but we want offense, too, if that's OK. As the Department of War, we won everything, and I think we're going to have to go back to that.

I'm sorry but these are not the words of the leader of the free world and the most powerful man on the planet, which is what every U.S. president dating back to at least Woodrow Wilson has been. No, these are the words of a five-year-old playing with toy soldiers in his bedroom while talking to his imaginary friend.

Which makes perfect sense I guess as this president, by cozying up to brutal dictators and shunning our allies, makes it clear he has no interest in being a part of the free world, let alone lead it. And it becomes quite obvious that he has relinquished the title of most powerful man on the planet, when you see him stand next to Vladimir Putin, the obvious alpha male of the two.

And I compare him here to a five-year-old because even a moderately aware ten-year-old could tell you what an asinine idea changing the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War is. 

When George Washington established the War Department in 1789, wars were fought by soldiers, mostly in hand-to-hand combat using muskets. Back then of course, war was still a very serious thing, but the stakes would rise exponentially in the next century with technological advances such as the machine-gun, long-range artillery, and high explosives, which made the killing of vast numbers of people, including civilians, by a relatively small number of combatants, an important strategy in waging war. 

In the twentieth century with the invention of weaponized transport such as the tank, the airplane and later the missile, the stakes went up exponentially again. 

Then came the atomic bomb. In Hiroshima, one American plane with a crew of 12 and the press of a button, destroyed the city, immediately vaporized 70,000 people, and directly resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more in the subsequent months. Three days later the act was repeated over Nagasaki where nearly the same number of innocent lives were lost.

The world would never be the same.

Yes, we "won" the war that needed to be won, but at what cost? That fact was not lost upon the leaders of our government at the time who realized that with the exception of some politicians and weapons manufacturers, there are no winners in war, only losers. So, in 1947, in order to send a clear message to the world that the United States with the indescribably lethal power it had at its disposal, would not hesitate to defend itself, but most importantly on the other hand, would not be interested in waging war with anyone if it could be avoided. Well at least that was the idea. 

And with that the Department of Defense was born.  

Then other countries developed the Bomb and all bets were off. Today there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on the planet (with the possible exception of cockroaches) many times over, so the idea of using even one of these weapons of mass destruction is all but unthinkable. 

But the threat is still there.

Meanwhile, this president talks about winning and losing wars as if they were football games, or more his speed, professional wrestling matches. He really tipped his hand to his profound ignorance in a discussion with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier this year. In a meeting at the White House which happened to coincide with the anniversary of D Day, the German Chancellor reminded the U.S. President of that momentous day 81 years ago, "when Americans..." (he didn't mention their allies) "once ended a war in Europe." As Merz continued, the U.S. President interrupted him by foolishly saying: "That was not a pleasant day for you (the German people)...". Then with an infantile giggle he repeated that Kwatsch (as Merz would call it), just in case anyone in the room might have missed it.  In response, the German Chancellor schooled the President of the United States for all the world to see, by giving him a brief history lesson, reminding him that the end of World War II meant "the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship."

As horrifyingly bad and embarrassing to the American people as that exchange was, it got even worse. You can check it out here, if you can stomach it.

One might scratch her head wondering why this president who seems, at the moment at least, to show little interest in this country waging war outside of its borders, would be fixated on emphasizing warlike offense over defense.

There's a simple answer to that. It's because he's fixated on waging war on his own people, sending the military as we've seen in the past couple months to Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and very likely coming soon to my Sweet Home Chicago. If you happen to live in a city with a Democratic mayor who happens to be black, you might be next. 

I won't go into it because our governor, J.B. Pritzker, in describing the sad situation we are now in, gave the most scathing attack of this president that I've heard to date, a much more devastating spoken takedown of Donald Trump than those of even the most virulent POTUS detractors on MSBC or late-night TV.

Here is a link to that remarkable speech Pritzker made while standing at Wolf Point in Chicago earlier this week. I implore you to watch it if you haven't already.

This is what a real leader looks like.

If like me you don't approve of what this president is doing, you might take comfort in that there will be an election in 2028 and the current president according to the U.S. Constitution will not be allowed to run again. 

This is naïve.

When he legitimately lost the 2020 election, he did everything in his power to challenge that election, which was his right. When that didn't work out, he waged an insurrection at the most sacred symbol of our democracy, the Capitol Building, among other insidious acts, in an attempt to illegally and violently overturn that election. It didn't work because there were still people in his administration who refused to go along with his spitting in the face of the Constitution and the American system of government. Those so called "adults in the room", folks like Mike Pence, General Mark Milley and others, were the kind of people who would never dream of letting the words "Melania's Panties" cross their lips.

Sadly, those people are gone and today the sycophants rule the roost, including at least five members of the Supreme Court, who are more than happy to follow the whims of this man, come hell or high water coming from Melania's Panties.

Anyone who thinks this president will give up power because of the will of the people or because the law says he has to, is delusional.

In his speech the other day, Governor Pritzker quoted Martin Luther King who said: 

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Perhaps we can take solace in those words. That arc being long however, there's a good chance I may not live to see it.

I just want my country back.

 

Alles in Ordnung

Another lifetime ago it seems, I was on the mother of all art courier trips, bringing a major photography exhibit from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (its first ever photography exhibition), to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. The trip involved a truck drive through the Russian/Finnish border, an adventure in itself, an overnight stay in Helsinki, an overnight ferry across the North Sea to Lubeck, Germany, then back on the truck for the final leg of the journey to Hamburg. 

That trip was just slightly less eventful than the first leg of the adventure when I originally brought the show to St. Petersburg from Chicago. I could write a book on that one. One of the greatest pleasures of the first trip was meeting Hessu, the Finnish truckdriver with whom I spent in addition to the time it took to drive from the Finnish capital to the magnificent city on the Neva, eight hours at the aforementioned border in the middle of the night in the middle of a Finnish winter, waiting in a several mile long line of other trucks trying to get into Russia. 

We had lots of time together Hessu and I, obviously, and we became fast friends. I can't describe my joy when later that year, waiting for my ride while standing in the courtyard of what was once the Winter Palace of the Russian Tzars (until the Bolsheviks stormed it on October 26,1917), and learned that it would be none other than Hessu, driving my cargo and me from Russia to Germany, 

Hessu's job took him far and wide. Like every Finn who expects to spend time outside of his country, he spoke a number of languages, although I don't recall him being able to speak Russian. There, what seems to have become the lingua-franca of much of the world, English had to suffice, which was really helpful for poor, pitiful, mono-lingual me. 

Truly an international man, much of our conversations centered around his adventures hauling freight throughout the continent. He wasn't shy talking about the characteristics of people from the various countries he spent so much of his life in, including his own, where it seemed he spent the least of his time.

In our day and age, we tend to shun ethnic stereotypes. I'm not talking about cartoonish depictions of say the drunken Irishman, the penny-pinching Scot, or the Italian with mob ties, although those things do indeed exist. But the reality is, stereotypes don't come out of thin air, and people tend to in one degree or other reflect the values, customs and traditions of their cultural identity and the place they come from. 

Why wouldn't they? 

Perhaps because of their connection with the events surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust, one group that no one seems to have problems stereotyping are the Germans.

Germans, the cartoonish stereotype goes, drink copious amounts of beer, the men wear lederhosen, the women dirndls and everyone socks with sandals, they are humorless, strictly efficient, punctual to the second, and above all, have an almost religious devotion to rules. The latter of these traits many believe, is a contributing factor to the rise and acceptance of Nazism and the Holocaust in the 30s and 40s. I don't necessarily buy that but it's a subject for another post.

Hessu's take on the Germans was their almost super-human efficiency. He pointed out the German expression that he felt defined the German people more than any other: "alles in ordnung." Literally it means "everything in order" but it is used in several contexts including asking someone if they're OK as in: "is everything in order?"

Well as they say, in a case of life imitating art, when we reached our destination in Hamburg and unloaded the nineteen crates containing the exhibition, we asked the person responsible for packing at the museum if we could help him place the crates in storage. He politely declined saying that he had a detailed plan on where the crates would go and it would take too much time for us to hang around to implement it. He then showed us his plan which was an intricate to-scale drawing, created by the hand of someone who was obviously a grand master champion of Tetris, with each crate tightly interwoven into its own place, leaving no room for error. Which meant that if one of the crates had been measured wrong, even by an inch, the whole plan would have to be scrapped. Unfortunately, the crate sizes provided to him were not complied by another German, so.... We didn't stick around to check how it all turned out, but hopefully for the best. 

I have another little anecdote of an experience in Germany. My wife and I were visiting friends in Frankfurt. From there we were headed to Prague and our friends helped us find the trains that would get us there. In this particular itinerary, there was to be one stop where we would need to switch trains. I asked how much layover time there would be between trains, assuming it would be about an hour or so. It was four minutes. "Isn't that cutting it a little tight?" I asked my friend, "...what if our first train runs late?". "Don't worry" was his response.

Well, it turned out our first train was indeed running late, by about a minute and a half, which is why the efficiency of the trains is a constant source of frustration for most Germans. I was sweating bullets fearing that we wouldn't have enough time to de-board our train, then find the track of our next train to make the connection. 

Turns out we had plenty of time.

As I mentioned in several previous posts, I've been studying German for the past year or so. I've discovered over the years a very useful resource for language learning is YouTube videos. In several of the German videos I've been watching are references to stereotypes about Germans and how in fact, a lot of them are founded in reality. According to them, and these videos are made by Germans mind you, most German people are indeed obsessed with punctuality, tidiness, order and rules. So just deal with it OK?

But I stumbled across another video, this one in English and made by an ex-pat Brit living in Germany named Benjamin Antoine. That could be the reason that his YouTube channel is called "Brit in Germany". The aim of his channel as you can imagine is to describe the cultural differences between Germany and especially the UK, but also other cultures, that expats living in Germany might experience. 

The title to this particular video is Freedom Isn't the Point Here and in it, he points out that there is a much deeper meaning to all the perceived rigidity found amongst the Germans. 

Here is a link to the video.

I won't go into details because I highly recommend you watch the video, but the point of his thesis can be summed up in the following "money quote": 

Germany isn't structured around individual freedom, it's structured around shared responsibility.

In other words, all the rules, regulations, personal habits and the rest, do not exist out of some irrational compulsion, but out of a sincere desire, to make society work for everyone. 

Here's more from the video's notes:

There is a core difference to how German society is structure as opposed to American or British society. It all comes down to the individual vs. the collective. In Britain and the US, the self comes first. In Germany, the structure and the system come first. 

Now of course I am generalising here but American values and to a lesser extent British values prize autonomy. German values prize reliability. And neither is right or wrong. But they produce very different lives.

As an example, Antoine points out in the video something I was already well aware of, that the Germans are diligent about recycling. Unlike Americans at least here in Chicago where if we do bother to recycle, we just throw all our recyclable material into one bin where someone in a recycling center allegedly sorts it all, the general public in Germany is expected to sort out their own recyclable material by type and if plastic, by color, then thoroughly clean it before depositing it into the appropriate container. I'm not sure if there is a law that regulates this, but one can rest assured that if you mess up, a neighbor will be more than happy to point out the error of your ways.

Contrast that to a family outdoor family gathering held in the backyard of my cousin's house a few years ago. When it came time to clean up after the meal, I asked her where she deposited her recyclable material. Her response which I'll never forget was: "I am very proud to say that in this household, we do NOT recycle." It was almost as if I had asked her where her altar for animal sacrifices was. 

Another unfortunately typical American attitude was highlighted by the uproar during the COVID pandemic, where tens of millions of Americans were aghast by the requirement for everyone to wear masks in public, Claiming it was a violation of their rights, people expressed the idea that it was their God given right to get sick if they so chose to do so. Of course what they failed to take into account was the real reason to wear masks, avoiding spreading the infection to others. That plea largely fell upon deaf ears, at least among the anti-maskers. Small wonder that the COVID mortality rate in the U.S. was higher than any other nation in the world. 

Another more mundane German obsession is punctuality. When you think about it in the terms brought up in Antoine's video, being punctual is really more about showing consideration to others, than a rigid mandate, although it's that too. The same with laws against making excessive noise after 10PM and on Sundays, and a whole slew of other regulations designed to make life a little more livable for the Gesellschaft, society.

In my studies of the German language, I've noticed that German can be very specific when it comes to describing things. For example, German can have many words to describe something where English might only have one. But these German words are not interchangeable, they each have their own slight variation or nuance that English simply does not bother with.

But there is an example in reverse, where German has one word that describes something English recognizes as two entirely different concepts. 

That word is rücksichtlos, and it can be translated into English as either ruthless or reckless. 

Here's a brief English definition of ruthless:

having or showing no pity or compassion for others.

And here's one for reckless:

without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.

To a native English speaker, one could be ruthless but not reckless, as self-gratification is the essential quality of ruthlessness.

Likewise, a person could be reckless but not ruthless, as self-gratification is not essential to reckless behavior, in fact more often than not, it's just the opposite.

It's when you get to the literal meaning of rücksichtlos, that you begin to see the connection between the two and with that, start to gain an insight into the German mind.

Rücksichtlos literally means without regard. German, at least here, does not distinguish between regard of oneself or regard of others, just like all the things in Antoine's video, what matters most is the regard itself.

In that vein I differ a little from Antoine's assessment of Germans not valuing individual rights. As I see it, Germans do value individual rights, as long as they don't interfere with the rights of others. 

In one of my last posts, I mentioned creating flash cards to help learn words. Instead of writing down the English translations of the words I'm trying to learn, I often substitute pictures. As rücksichtlos describes two English words, I had to make two cards. The picture I chose to represent ruthless was easy, you more than likely know it. It's the picture of four of the most ruthless people I can imagine, Jeffery Epstein, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, the current president of the United States and his current wife.

It was harder to come up with a picture to represent reckless, so I just googled the word "reckless" and looked for accompanying images. The first image to come up  (which I used), was a picture of a chimpanzee driving a car.

I think the Germans are on to something. *

*My apologies to chimpanzees for that crude comparison.

Guilty Pleasures

One of the joys of learning a foreign language is discovering how languages express ideas differently, or sometimes not at all. Because of its penchant for smashing two or more words together to make one large word, the language I'm currently studying, German, is filled with very useful words that express ideas we're all familiar with. In English, those ideas need to be expressed in several words instead of just one.

Here's a random sampling of three useful German words I pulled off the internet:

• Treppenwitz, in English, a "staircase joke", is a witty comeback that you come up with too late, such as when you're on the staircase heading for the door. With me, these brilliant comebackers usually come to me the next day. 
• Schnapsidee, literally in English "Liquor idea", is a crazy idea that one would only come up with while drunk.
• Backpfiefengesicht, or "a face in need of a slap", no explanation necessary.   

We've all been there and unfortunately the English language is woefully inadequate coming up with a word to describe these all too familiar occurrences.

Yet for all its expressive qualities, German doesn't seem to have an equivalent to this very useful English expression: "guilty pleasure". 

It comes close, "Heimliches Vergnugen" means "secret pleasure" while "Laster" means more or less a bad habit. But these two expressions skirt the idea of a guilty pleasure which is not necessarily as serious as a bad habit, like smoking cigarettes, but has more of an edge than a secret pleasure, which implies something harmless such as liking the movie Zoolander. (oops, guess that secret's out.)  

"Guilty pleasure" could cover both, and everything in between, proving once and for all that German is all about the details, while English is more about generalities. 

As is that last sentence, come to think of it.

So what do Germans say when they want to convey the general idea of a guilty pleasure? Like many English expressions used in contemporary idiomatic German, they just say "guilty pleasure".

But German does have a word for a particular kind of guilty pleasure. It's such a great word that the English language has flat out stolen it.

That word is schadenfreude. Schade translates to damage in English and freude, to joy. Together as one word they mean taking joy in someone else's misfortune. Schadenfreude is not one of the nobler features of human nature, although I think even the most equitable among us experience it from time to time, especially when the victim is someone in a position of power. 

Can you guess where I'm going with this?

Last week there was an incident that one could call the mother of all schadenfreude. It even briefly eclipsed a vastly more significant schadenfreude incident that has been dominating Americans' attention spans for far longer than the typical news cycle.

Yes, even the Epstein Files saga was put on the back burner, albeit briefly, to make way for the Kiss-Cam at the Coldplay concert scandal.

In case you've been living under the proverbial rock. an embracing couple was caught unawares on camera at a rock concert, their image broadcast to the 70,000 or so attendees on the stadium's Jumbotron monitor. The idea of the "Kiss-Cam", generally used during breaks at sporting events, is to have couples kiss each other when they discover they're on camera. I've witnessed several of these during the last twenty years or so, and they are typically fun little diversions with the on camera "talent" good naturedly playing along with the gag. 

But not this couple.  Once they discovered their image was broadcast throughout the stadium, the woman covered her eyes and turned her back to the camera while the man ducked out of sight. Naturally the fans in the stands had a blast with it. To make matters worse, the front man of the band, Chris Martin made the very unimaginative comment that the couple was either having an affair, or that they were very shy.

This being the era of cellphone videos and social media, the incident went viral. It quickly made its way to the realm of mass media, which used every resource available to reveal the identity of the "shy" couple.

It took them about a New York minute. The man turned out to be the CEO of an NYC based tech company and the woman, that company's director of personnel. They were married, but unfortunately not to each other. It seems the whole country, including me, got a chuckle out of the story. 

I think the appeal of stories like this is they make us feel better about ourselves. We're happy in the fact that we may have screwed up big time in our lives but never that big. Sometimes it's one of those "there but by the grace of God go I moments", where we are just thankful it wasn't us who got caught figuratively with our pants down. Something like that happened to our big boss recently who got caught up in an embarrassing (but not scandalous) incident involving a little bad judgement mixed up with a lot of bad timing. While I did get a chuckle out of the incident, the bottom line is I truly felt sorry for him and his humiliation. Yes indeed, that could have been me. That's where the guilt in guilty pleasure comes in.

But not so much in the case of the shy couple. For starters, cheating on my spouse is not exactly on my radar, not to mention being so brazen about it. This incident goes way beyond bad judgement and timing, No, I can honestly say that this would not happen to me. Something else yes, but not this.

It turned out the man and the woman both resigned their positions at the company because of the incident. I can only imagine things were even worse for them at home. They both got their comeuppance and quite honestly, they deserve it. Do I feel sorry for them? Well, not really but sort of. 

The guilt came for me big time when I thought of their spouses and the humiliation that this couple put them through. Then there are their children.  One can only imagine what's going through their heads and how this will affect their lives. 

So this something of a feel-good moment as we look down on a former corporate CEO and one of his chief executives, has a dark side. We shouldn't necessarily be ashamed of ourselves for our little amusing diversion, but it's time to let it go for everybody's sake.

Not so the other big shadenfreude episode which has taken on a life of its own. The other day, the President of the United States used another interesting English expression to describe a group of people he got angry with. He called them "the worst scum on Earth." In a related matter, he went on to describe his falling out with his former BFF, Jeffrey Epstein, the man who in most people's books, unquestionably qualifies for that moniker. The president said that Epstein crossed a line from which there was no turning back. And what was that line Mr. President, the sex trafficking of children? No, actually it was the fact that Epstein had the gall to "steal" employees from the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It doesn't get much lower than that in his mind, I guess.

There of course is no evidence that has been publicly revealed anyway, that implicates this president with any of the multitude of crimes committed by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. There's only lots of clear, hard evidence that the three had close ties. Which would make one think that given all the obvious connections between the three, the president would come clean and reveal exactly what their relationship was, if that is, the relationship was on the up and up. And then he would take great pains to point out how utterly disgusting and criminal the whole Epstein/Maxwell enterprise was. Instead, he does what he always has done, deny, deny, deny, then distract by throwing unfounded accusations around like he threw rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. Hard as it is to believe, he may not be guilty of anything in this matter, yet he's sure acting guilty. And that's good enough for me.

Truth be told, I'm getting a kick out of seeing this jackass squirm. I have no doubt that he will squirm like a rat out of this jam like he always does. But I sure am enjoying the squirming while it lasts. 

The best thing about this whole sordid episode is that it is schadenfreude at its finest, all of the pleasure without any of the guilt.