The Mets beat up on Milwaukee last night, arresting their collapse at least temporarily. Alas, there was no happy recap afterwards, as Bob Murphy, play-by-play voice of the Mets from their premiere in 1962 until last year, died yesterday at the age of 79.
Murphy was never the legendary figure that Ernie Harwell, Mel Allen, Vin Scully, and Jack Buck were. But his longevity was no accident. Regardless of his broadcast partner--the hyperanalytical Tim McCarver and the occasionally off-the-wall Ralph Kiner among them--and whether the Mets played laudably or laughably, Murphy was always the solid anchor, the calm presence linking the listener to the game. He also provided a singular continuity in an onrushing world. Players changed, managers changed, uniforms changed, owners changed, but Bob Murphy was there through it all, since the beginning. For Mets fans of a certain age--meaning virtually anyone who has followed the team for more than a year or two--it is difficult to think of the Mets without hearing his voice.
Update: WFAN in New York, which carries the Mets' radio broadcasts, offers a montage of Murphy's most significant calls. (Real Player required).
As someone with a deep interest in the history of the Constitution's drafting and ratification, I've always been puzzled by the lack of respect, or indeed attention, popular history has given to James Madison. The recent hubbub about the possibility of putting Ronald Reagan on the ten-dollar bill, or the dime, brought the point home again: Jefferson has his nickel (and the two-dollar bill), Hamilton has the ten-spot, Ben Franklin is on the hundred, and Washington is ubiquitous on the dollar bill and the quarter. But Madison is nowhere to be found (okay, he was on the five-thousand dollar bill, but you don't see those in your wallet every day). Was it because his presidency saw the British torch the White House? Was it because he (like John Adams, another frequently overlooked founder) was short?
Anyway, a commentary on Morning Edition today put it in perspective. James Madison, you see, was George Harrison, "overshadowed by stronger personalities, yet ... essential to the mix.... The famous tract we call The Federalist No. 10 was the 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' of the eighteenth century." Yes. It all makes sense now.
Ben Franklin, in case you're wondering, was Ringo.
(Cross-posted at Martinis, Persistence, and a Smile).
Shows what a prognosticator I am. No sooner do I predict that the Mets will stand pat than they make not one but two deals giving up prospects for starting pitchers. After seeming to be out of the running, the Mets wound up with Kris Benson after all, giving up Ty Wigginton and two solid Double A prospects, pitcher Matt Peterson and catcher Justin Huber (Huber actually went to Kansas City for infielder Jose Bautista, who then was sent on to Pittsburgh in the Benson deal). And from Tampa Bay the Mets acquired Victor Zambrano, giving up their top pitching prospect, Scott Kazmir, in the process.
There's no question that Benson and Zambrano represent signficant upgrades over Jae Seo and whatever fifth starter the Mets might happen to field in a given week. And while Wigginton was a solid presence and regular contributor in the lineup, he was a defensive liability and, with rookie David Wright taking over at third, had become a man without a position. So giving him up was not a huge loss.
But here's the thing: the Mets are not going to win this year. When the trades were made this afternoon, they were 49-52 (that's not including tonight's 3-1 loss to the division-leading Braves). To finish 86-76, they'd have to go 37-24 over the rest of the schedule. That's a .607 pace over the course of 61 games. Is there any reason to think that the Mets are capable of playing at that sustained level of excellence for two months? I think not. Zambrano and Benson are decent starters, but they're not exactly Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling (and even if they were, the Mets have other holes, as I listed last night). And even if the Mets got to 86 wins, that wouldn't be enough to win the division unless the Braves played less than .500 baseball, and neither the Phillies nor the Marlins got hot.
Zambrano and Benson might be around for awhile, of course (Benson is a free agent at the end of the year, but the Mets apparently are confident of signing him). But neither is likely to develop, at this point in his career, into a true ace, the kind needed to replace Al Leiter and Tom Glavine over the next couple of years. Kazmir, at least, might have been that: after a rough start in St. Lucie this year, he's had a 1.73 e.r.a. in four starts at Double A Binghamton.
So here's the bottom line: the Mets marginally improved at a time when marginal improvement won't really mean anything. And while they added a couple of decent pieces for the future, they gave up a sizable chunk of their minor-league talent. Not much of a step forward.
(Cross-posted at Off Wing Opinion).
The best speech of Kerry's career, at the time he needed it most. It was too long, and the "reporting for duty" opening was forced, but otherwise it hit the right notes.
Noah's current favorite word is also his favorite place to be: outside. Thank goodness for Indiana's mild summer.
The Mets' 10-1 win in Montreal this afternoon put a temporary end to their recent struggles. It was an impressive outing all around, as Mike Cameron hit two home runs, Richard Hidalgo added another, Eric Valent hit for the cycle, and newcomer David Wright drove in a run with two singles. Al Leiter, meanwhile, allowed one run in six innings for his seventh win; he leads the league with a 2.18 e.r.a.
It would be easy to assume that today's romp will snap the Mets out of their recent doldrums, just as it would have been easy Monday night to assume that the disastrous 19-10 loss that evening signaled a total implosion. Both assumptions would be mistakes. Things aren't as bad as they appeared Monday, but neither are they as good as they seemed today. The Mets still lack even vaguely reliable fourth and fifth starters--they gave up on the Scott Erickson experiment after only two starts. They're nicked up--Jose Reyes is out with an ankle injury, leaving Ty Wigginton (already a defensive liability at third base) to play second, Mike Piazza isn't at full strength, and Cliff Floyd's constant pain has him contemplating retirement in a couple of years. The bullpen, except for closer Braden Looper, is inconsistent at best. And the infield defense is porous--witness shortstop Kaz Matsui's league-leading 22nd error today.
At the beginning of the year, owner Fred Wilpon said that he hoped the team would be playing "meaningful games" late into the year. For one exciting stretch in late June and early July--a time in which the Mets swept the Yankees in a four-game series and twice played the Phillies for a share of first place (losing both), that seemed a possibility. The recent slump, though, has left the Mets three games below .500, in fourth place, and six behind the surging Braves. While it's not impossible to come back from a deficit like that, it's extremely unlikely.
So, with the trading deadline 48 hours away, are the Mets buyers or sellers? Neither, I suspect. The Mets did spend much of July in pursuit of the Pirates' Kris Benson, but the Pirates were unwilling to take Ty Wigginton, and the Mets were unwilling to give up David Wright. A solid fourth starter would make the Mets a better team, no doubt. But the addition of a single player of Benson's caliber is not going to transform this bunch into a juggernaut. There are simply too many holes.
On the other hand, after two thoroughly dismal years, and with the team still hovering around .500, the Mets can ill afford to give up on this bunch by trading veterans for prospects. Al Leiter, Mike Piazza, Richard Hidalgo, and others would bring good prospects in return. But making that move would mean another two years of misery as the prospects matured. In New York, with the Yankees across town, that won't do. It's not an ideal approach, by any means. But it's reality.
So this team seems likely to end the year in much the same way it has played the past couple of months, finishing at or near .500. Barring a Braves collapse and a 1973-like jumble at the end of season (when the Mets won the division with an 82-79 record), that won't be enough for a postseason berth. But it would sure be a heck of a lot better than we've endured the past two years.
(Cross-posted at Off Wing Opinion).
While watching the convention last night, I couldn't help but wonder how it was received by uncommitted voters (if, indeed, any were watching). Committed Democrats, without question, lapped up the evening's speeches. For party-line Republicans, by contrast, the night presented a roster of familiar demons: Jimmy Carter! Al Gore! BOTH Clintons! Their response, like that of the Democrats, was predictable: Republican commentators heaped familiar scorn on Carter, so much so that there was little left for Gore and Hillary Clinton. For Clinton, there was grudging admiration of his political skill--the kind of admiration I once felt, through clenched teeth, for Ronald Reagan. But, in any event, among these two groups, no minds were changed.
But then there's that middle group, the folks whose votes will actually decide the election. How did they respond? If Andrew Sullivan's reaction is at all typical, it was a good night indeed for the Democrats and for John Kerry.
Best wishes to all of my former students who are taking the bar this week, either here in Indiana or elsewhere. And special best wishes to those who attended my evidence bar review lecture back in June. Remember what I said at the end of the lecture: I hope I never see you again.
I've spent much of the evening watching the Democratic Convention, in large part so I could get another look at Bill Clinton in his natural setting. It hardly needs saying that Clinton is a flawed man, and those flaws infected his presidency. And he is not always a powerful speaker--his keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention was dreadful, and a couple of his State of the Union addresses were rambling bores. But on this night, I had a feeling he would not disappoint.
And he did not. In a night with several rousing speeches (including a surprisingly pointed one by President Carter), President Clinton was the star of the show. He was articulate. He was charming. He was charismatic. He was funny. He was powerful. And, most importantly, he made a multi-tiered case for choosing John Kerry over George Bush. He had the line of the evening: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values." He showed himself, once again, to be one of the most natural politicians of the past half-century. I have no doubt that, if he were eligible to run this year, and chose to do so, he would win in a landslide.
My posting should pick up a bit this week, as I've agreed to guest-post at two other blog's: Eric McErlain's Off Wing Opinion and Lawren Mills' Martinis, Persistence, and a Smile. Eric writes what I have previously described as, "quite simply, the best sports blog I've seen," so it is a genuine honor to be asked to contribute as Eric takes a much-needed blogging break. I'm equally honored that Lawren would ask me to contribute as she takes the bar and then departs for a well-earned vacation.
I'll be cross-posting here. Eric's blog is devoted to sports, and Lawren's generally to pop culture (and both are polticial conservatives), so I probably won't have much to say about politics this week, the Democratic Convention notwithstanding. But I've been avoiding politics recently, anyway--it's the only way I can keep the bile down in my throat.
Lance Armstrong's remarkable run to a sixth consecutive Tour de France victory has been nothing short of awe-inspiring. That's an overused word, perhaps, but for this it seems apt: when I read yesterday that Armstrong had won the nineteenth stage, a 60 km time trial, by over a minute, I felt what can only be described as a sense of giddy awe. Superlatives aren't sufficient to describe what Armstrong accomplished between last Saturday and yesterday: competing against the world's best cyclists, often on treacherous mountain courses, Armstrong won five of seven stages to go from more than five minutes off the leader's pace to more than six minutes in front of his closest rivals. That a human being can accomplish what Armstrong did is remarkable. That a human being can accomplish what Armstrong has in the eight years after being diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer is, well, awe-inspiring.
The day of Armstrong's triumph seems an appropriate time to recall one of my favorite early posts on Cooped Up, taking issue with a sportswriter who had the temerity, as Armstrong approached his fourth consecutive Tour de France win, to suggest that Armstrong was not an athlete.
And, as inspiring as I find Armstrong's win, there are others, including some of my acquaintance, to whom it means so much more.
When I moved to Indianapolis (eight years ago next week), I had been to Indiana three times: once for a job interview, and twice for quick house-hunting trips. But even then, even with that limited exposure, I knew what residents of the Hoosier State are called. And it's not Indianans.
For the past several decades, conservative Christianity has been strongly associated with efforts at government-imposed morality and intrusions into personal privacy. But conservative Christianity need not be so, as Josh Claybourn eloquently explains.
Roughly 55 weeks ago, former ambassador Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he explained his conclusion, following a trip to Niger in March 2002 evidence suggesting Iraq was trying to buy large quantities of uranium from Niger was unreliable. In response, the administration and its supporters quickly swung into action to discredit Wilson. As part of that effort, on July 14, 2003, Robert Novak published a column in which he casually mentioned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. That column caused some consternation, as disclosing the identity of covert agents is a violation of criminal law. Questions about the identity of Novak's sources for the revelation of Plame's identity eventually percolated into the mainstream media, and even later to the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the matter.
Last weeks Senate Intelligence Committee report sharply called into question Wilson's conclusions and credibility, something that bloggers on both sides of the aisle have noted. Some are now treating the report as if it justifies revealing Plame's CIA status. I disagree, on two grounds. First, the nepotism angle--the idea that Wilson was inherently incredible because he was only sent to Niger on the recommendation of his wife--has never made any sense. Whatever issues may have arisen regarding Joe Wilson in the last year, Wilson was not an implausible candidate for the job at the time, having served honorably in the embassy in Iraq during the leadup to the first Gulf War (earning the first President Bush's public praise in the process), and having also served in central Africa. And it's not like the trip to Niger was some highly desirable boondoggle, a plum to be fought over.
That's one. More important is this: even if Wilson was an incompetent, partisan hack when it came to Niger (and there's plenty of evidence that he was), that doesn't justify exposing a CIA operative. This is almost certainly true as a matter of criminal law: the Intelligence Identities Protection Act criminalizes the intentional disclosure of a covert agent's identity. The purpose of the disclosure is irrelevant; as Josh Marshall writes, "[t]here's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent' exception" to the statute. Even beyond that, the outing of Valerie Plame sends a dangerous message to CIA operatives: don't do anything that might hurt us politically, or we'll blow your cover. Given the clear need for covert operations in this dangerous world, isn't it self-evident that such a message complicates the intelligence community's already--difficult and dangerous work?