The 2024 MLB Division Round

The Division round began last Saturday with all eight teams playing. The Mets continued their late-inning heroics. They had been blanked for seven inings by the Phillies superstar, Zach Wheeler, who allowed only one hit in the seven innings, and had enticed an incredible total of 30 swings and misses in his 111 pitches. The Mets' pitchers were almost as good, allowing only a leadoff homer to Kyle Schwarber. Then the Mets exploded for five runs in the 8th against the Phillies' relievers, and ended up with a 6-2 victory.

In the other games, the Padres lost to the Dodgers, the Royals lost to the Yankees, in a topsy-turvy game which saw the most lead changes (five) ever in a post-season game, and the Guardians shut out the Tigers.

Sunday saw the NL teams playing, wih the AL teams resting. The Padres evened their series by smashing the Dodgers 10-2, hitting six homers, two by Tatis.

The real drama on Sunday was again with the Mets-Phillies game, a game which Kyle Schwarber called "one of the greatest games I've ever played in". The Mets were up 3-0 in the 6th inning, but the Phillies tied it up on back-to-back homers from Harper and Castellanos, lending credence to the modern theory that a starter should not be allowed to go through a lineup a third time. The Mets responded with a go-ahead homer in the top of the 7th to make it 4-3. The Phillies went ahead with three runs in the 8th, but then the Mets tied it at 6 in the top of the 9th, setting it up for a walk-off hit by Nick Castellanos in the bottom of the 9th. Wow, what a game!

On Monday the Royals beat the Yankees and the Tigers beat the Guardians, leaving all three series tied at 1-1.

The four series played themselves out with the Yankees and Mets prevailing in four games, and the Dodgers and Guardians winning in five.

Why Hillary Lost (and Saddled Us with Trump)

An article in the October 7th issue of "The New Yorker" describes how Hillary Clinton, when she ran for president in 2016, didn't visit a single union hall in Michigan or Wisconsin. To make matters worse, she dismissed all Trump supporters as "a basket of deplorables", further alienating all the workers who supported Trump, while Trump held rallies all across the Rust Belt, promising to bring back factory jobs.

The incident which defined the atrociousness of her campaign for me was after a town hall meeting, when a voter came up to her and complained about the draconian Clinton crime bill. Instead of responding intelligently, she gave one of her stupid little laughs, and said she'd never thought about this. Huh?? You mean to tell me that you spent two years planning to run for president, and couldn't find a few hours out of all that time to study the draconian effects of the crime bill, which provided for 100 times the penalties for the crack-based cocaine favored by blacks, compared to the powdered cocaine favored by middle class whites. This is gross poitical malpractice!

Hillary was simply unable to connect with voters. When I pointed out this shortcoming at the time, I was condemned as a misogynist. Eight yeers later, I am still waiting for an apology from my nemesis and her man-hating allies. All I got was a bunch of nonsense about how women aren't allowed to show passion. Pure baloney!

The 2024 MLB Wild Card Round

The Wild Card round is now history, and the Division Series starts later today. A recap is in order.

The week started out on a really odd note on Monday. Two games of the Braves-Mets season-ending series had been postponed due to Hurricane Helene. Consequently, the Braves and Mets had to play a makeup doubleheader on Monday. The makeup games would not have been necessary if both teams had been out of the running for playoff spots. But, amazingly, the teams were tied for the second and third NL wild card spots. This set up the odd situation in which whoever won the first game was in, but the other team could still get in by winning the second game. If one team won both games, then the Arizona Diamondbacks would claim the third wild card spot in the NL.

The first game of the doubleheader was one of the greatest games in recent memory. The Mets trailed 3-0 going into the 8th inning, but came alive in the 8th to score six runs. Not to be denied, the Braves rallied back in the bottom of the 8th to go back ahead 7-6, aided by the failure of the Mets pitcher to cover first on a ground ball. But in the 9th, Francisco Lindor hit a two-run homer to win it for the never-say-die Mets. Lindor had also been a key part of the 8th-inning rally with a hit to keep the rally going, and then a daring dash home to score the go-ahead run from third on a shallow sac fy to centerfield.

The Braves came back to win the second game of the doubleheader, leaving the Diamondbacks out of the playoffs, and resulting in the strange sight of simultaneous celebrations in each clubhouse for making the playoffs!

So now the question was whether the Braves and Mets would be too worn out to do any good in the Wild Card series, as both had to travel and be ready to play the next day. The question of whether extra rest benefits the resting team is an open question. On the surface it seems it should be a benefit, as the resting team can line up its pitching for maximum advantage, while their opponent is playing hard-fought playoff games. However, last year the number one and two seeds in each league did not benefit from getting to rest during the wild card round. Only the Astros won their division series, while the other three teams all lost, the Orioles falling three games to none to the Rangers, the Phillies falling 3-1 to the Braves, and the Dodgers getting swept by the Diamondbacks.

The Mets came through with a two games to one win over the Brewers, taking to heart the Tim Walz saying that "we can sleep when we're dead". The third and deciding game featured another late-inning comeback by the amazing Mets. Trailing 2-0 going into the ninth, Lindor led off with a walk (a huge blunder by the Brewers pitcher, given the two-run lead), followed by a hit and a 3-run home run from Pete Alonso. The TV announcer had pointed out that this could be the last at bat as a Met for Alonso, who will be a free agent after the season. But Pete was not ready for his season to end, and he came through with an opposite-field blast. The Mets added an insurance run, and won 4-2.

As for the Braves, they had to travel overnight to San Diego to meet the Padres. I was rooting heaviily for the Padres, who have become my favorite team, for a number of reasons. Their owner has committed to putting a winning team on the field by spending hewvily on free agents. But after a disappointing 2023 season, payroll was drastically cut for this season; and yet, the Padres made the playoffs, after missing out in 2023. This is reminiscent of the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who had a record 116-win season after getting rid of their three superstars--Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez. The oxymoronic phrase "addition by subtraction" was coined to describe this phenomenon.

The San Diego climate is another big plus for me. It has a mild, year-round Mediterraneran climate, ideal for bseball. And it has had only four rainouts in the last twenty years!

A third plus is that it has become, after the loss of the Chargers, a baseball-only town. And the fans have responded, supporting the team with the fourth-highest average per-game attendance in 2024. The three higher teams (Phillies, Yankees and Dodgers) all won their divisions, so the Padres had the highest attendance of all non-division winners.

As for the Braves, I have been lukewarm about them ever since their blase fans refused to fill the seats during the first round of the playoffs during the 1990s.

The Padres responded by sweeping the Braves, two games to none. In the AL, The Tigers and Royals prevailed in sweeps over the Astros and Orioles, respectively. My working theory explaining these results is that a team's performance late in the season is more significant than its overall season record. The three best teams in September were the Tigers (17-8), Mets (16-8), and Padres (16-8), all three of which won their Wild Card series.

"All in the Family". by Fred Trump

This is a timely book, having come out just this year. I found out about it from seeing the author interviewed on TV, and I was able to obtain a copy through an inter-library loan.

Comparisons with his sister Mary's 2020 book, "Too Much and not Enough", are inevitable. I read Fred's book right after reading Mary's (first) book. While Fred presents an interesting narrative account of his life as a member of the Trump extended family (he is the son of Freddy, Fred Trump Sr.'s oldest son, who died of alcoholism at age 42), Mary's book is an unrelentingly dark portrait of a dysfunctional family. There is no story arc to Mary's book, just bleakness on page after page; it was a challenge just getting through it. (And from what I hear, her two more recent books are more of the same.) By contrast, Fred presents a very readable and personal account of his interactions with family members over the years.

As a retired lawyer, what I found most interesting about the two books was the account of Fred and Mary's legal battle over their grandfather's will. After Fred Trump, Sr. died in 1999, Fred and Maary discoverd that they would not be sharing in their deceased father's one-fifth share of the estate, as would have been the case under Fred Sr.'s original will. The will had been changed to give Fred and Mary "only" the same $200,000 that the other grandchildren were to receive.

Fred and Mary challenged the will on the basis that it was obtained through fraud and undue influence. Donald had been in serious financial trouble during the '90s, and had pressured his father to change the will to give Donald complete control over the whole estate, in an effort to shield these assets from his creditors and his ex-wife, Ivana. In the process, Fred and Mary were cut out. Fred Sr. had serious dementia during the '90s, raising the issue of whether he was competent to make out a will at the time his revised will was executed.

A bitter fight ensued, causing a serious rift in the family which lasted for several years. Eventually the case was settled. Fred had a severely disabled son, born at about the same time as his grandfather died, and he was anxious to put the whole family squabble behind him so he could focus on taking care of his wife and kids. Mary, on the other hand, wanted to fight to the bitter end, bus she eventually gave in to the pressure to settle.

The details of the settlement are confidential, but my best guess based on the info available is the following. Studies have put Fred Sr.'s total wealth at the time of his death at a billion dollars. Now, how much of this was included in the estate itslef cannot be determined. There were many corporations. trusts. and LLC's invovled, so how much was in Fred Sr.'s name is unclear. But, roughly speaking, each of Fred Sr.s five children stood to receive abouit $200 million dollars, either through the will or though stock ownershiop that had been already been transferred to them. My best guess is that Fred and Mary probably received about two million dollars each under the settlement, a far cry from the $100 million that each would have received as one-half of their father's share of the inheritance, but still more than the $200,000 under the will. But of course much of that $2M would have gone for attorney's fees.

In the last several chapters of "All in the Family", Fred describes his attempts to repair his broken relationships with his aunts and uncles and cousins following the court fight. He was fairly successful, and was even invited to Donald's inauguration in 2017, and had good seats there. Mary, by contrast, has been content to remain estranged from her extended family.

In his last chapter, Fred writes of his decision to retire from his sucessful career in real estate, and focus on advocating for the rights of the disbled. A conversation with his Uncle Donald stuck with him; Donald said, talking about Fred's disbled son, "He doesn't recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida." It is this troubling quote that has been the biggst topic of discussion when Fred has been interviewed by journalists on his book tour. Although Fred doesn't mention this in his book, on his book tour he has criticized Donald for never having even met his disabled nephew.

The Harris-Trump Debate

In Tuesday night's presidential debate, Kamala Harris established her dominance from the moment she walked onto the stage. While Trump was slowly, almost aimlessly, meandering onto the stage, Harris stode purposefully across the stage and extended her hand to Trump, whom she had never met face-to-face. Trump seemed taken aback and reluctantly, almost sheepishly, shook her hand. This dominance prevailed throughout the debate. Indeed, had we watched the debate with the sound off, it would have been obvious that Harris won. She was expressive and looked at Trump frequently, while Trump refused to look at her, instead looking straight ahead with a scowling, strained expression on his face. His face looked like a prision mug shot.

With the sound on, we saw Harris articulately and eloquently destroying her opponent. She exposed him as an old, decrepit, uninformed fool, while she came across as presidential. Her stated pre-debate strategy was to get under his skin, and she accomplished this brilliantly. He took the bait every time, looking more and more ignorant and out of touch with reality as the debate went on. Harris came across as thoughtful and serious, while Trump appeared increasingly deranged.

I had maintained that Harris's courtroom experience was more signifcant than Trump's prior experience with presidential debates. There was a school of thought that downplayed the significance of Harris's courtroom experience, but my viewpoint proved to be the correct one. In a courtroom you are trying to communicate and tailor the facts so as to convince a judge or jury of the rightness of your position. In the debate you are doing the same thing, except that the "jury" consists of the millions who make up the voting public.

A fact-check of Trump's many misstatements reveals a total of 33 lies. It would be pointless to cover all of these, but I will highlight a few of Trump's lies and outrageous claims which stood out for me.

Abortion. Trmp repeatedly said that "everybody" wanted Roe overturned. This is laughably false. The fact is that most Americans, including most legal scholars, are in favor of some sort of middle road betwween an abortion ban and no restrictions, which is the Roe approach.

Trump claimed to be in favor of leaving the issue of abortion up to the states, and yet he refused to say that he would veto a national abortion ban.

Trump repeated the false claim that Democrats are in favor of full-term abortions, which are illegal in every state. Further, he gave this as the reason for voting against the Florida abortion referendum, which would revoke the six-week ban. Trump claims that he thinks six weeks is not enough, yet he refuses to support revoking this horrible Florida law, which prohibits abortion before many women even know they are pregnant..

Immigration. Trump repeated the debunked claim that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. When the moderator corrected him, he interrupted him and said he saw it on TV.

Trump claimed that Democrats favored illegal immigration because the illegals will vote Democratic.

Trump repeatedly claimed that the crime rates in other countries are going down, because those countries are sending their criminals to the U.S. This is an absurd claim that Trump has been making ever since he came down the golden escalator in 2015 and announced his candidacy.

Trump repeated the lie that Harris was "the border czar".

But the big lie at the heart of Trump's xenophobic anti-immigrant rants is that immigration is ruining this country. Quite the opposite is true; immigrants add economic strength to our country with their hard work and entrepreneurial spirit, and they commit crimes at half the rate of citizens. And they are absolutely necessasry to saving the social security system, as we need more young workers to finance benefits for our aging population.

Crime. Trump said that “crime in this country is through the roof.” This is false, as FBI stats show that both violent crime and property crime rates have gone down under Biden.

Harris's prior run. Trump stated, as he often has on the campaign trail, that Harris was the first person to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. This is false. A check reveals that all of these candidates dropped out before Harris: Richard Ojeda, Eric Swalwell, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Seth Moulton, Kirsten Gillebrand, Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Beto O'Rourke, Mark Sanford, Wayne Messam, Joe Sestak, and Steve Bullock.

Inflation. Trump repeated the falsehood that inflation was the highest ever under Biden. The facts are that inflation was considerably higher during the Carter years of 1979 and 1980 than it ever was under Biden.

Implicit in all of the inflation talk is that the Biden administration is responsible for inflation. The factually correct answer to this is that inflation is a world-wide phenomenon, and the U.S. actually has had less inflation than other developed countries, which is to say that Biden has been doing a good job in combatting inflation. But the Democrats never mention this, apparently feeling that this explanation will not resonate with the ignorant U.S. voters.

Obamacare. Trump now claims that he wants to improve Obamacare, not end it. What this means is not clear. The moderator got Trump to admit that he still, after nine years, does not have a plan to replace Obamacare. Trump lamely claimed that he had the "concepts" of a plan.

Israel. Trump falsely claimed that "Harris hates Isael", and said Israel would cease to exist in two years under a Harris presidency. A similar lie was the accusation that Harris is a Marxist.

Crowd sizes. Trump's latest lie about Harris's crowd sizes is that she is busing people in and paying them to attend her rallies. Previous lies are that she has crowds only because of the entertainers, and that she is using AI to create false pictures of her crowds.

Tariffs. Trump repeated his long-time lie that tariffs are paid by the exporting countries. This is totally false; the facts are that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, and ultimately by the U.S. consumers. Harris is correct in saying that Trump's proposed tariff increases would be equivalent to a national sales tax on U.S. consumers, a "tax" which analysts say would cost the average family about $4,000 a year.

The Ukraine war. Trump refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win the war. He repeated his absurd claim that he would end the war within 24 hours. When pressed for details, he said he would talk one-on-one with Putin, and then with Zelensky.

The 2020 election. Trump repeated his frequent claim that the last election was stolen. When the moderator brought up that Trump had seemed to admit he lost with his recent statement that he "lost by a whisker", Trump claimed he was being "sarcastic", even though there was no hint of sarcasm in his prior statement.

Trump's inheritance. When Harris referred to Trump's $400 million inheritance, he claimed his actual inheritance was only a "fraction" of this. As documented by investigative reporters, Trump did in fact receive over this amount, much of which was in the form of gifts from his father disguised as "loans". His six bankruptcies are stark evidence of Trump's total incompetence as an entrepreneur.

The 1/6 insurrection. Trump refused to admit he had done anything wrong on January 6th, and instead insisted that Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Hill security, and that she had turned down an offer of 10,000 National Guard trooops. Both of these are complete lies.

Harris had many highlight moments during the debate. Here are a few of them.

She said that Trump was "fired by 81,000,000 voters, and he's obviously having a hard time processing that."

Harris said that both she and her running mate were gun owners. I think this went a long way toward debunking the notion that Democrats are anti-gun. The idea here is that you can be in favor of sensible gun safety legislation, without being against the second amendment.

The NRA fanatics who insist otherwise should consider the free speech provision in the first amendment. Even though that amendment says the government shall make no laws infringing on free speech, there are in fact hundreds of laws limiting free speech.

One of Harris's best lines was that there are 800,000 Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania who have reason to be concerned about Trump's attitude of letting Putin do whatever he wants in Eastern Europe. This was effective in several respects. First, it dramatized the real world danger of letting Putin run wild in Eastern Europe. Second, it brought the issue home to the state the debate was happening in. And third, that state just happens to be what most analysts say is the most important state for each candidate to win in November.

But the best reaction from Harris was totally nonverbal. This was when she was seen laughing hilariously at Trump's nonsensical claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets. Her reaction was perfect, and no words were needed.

Conclusion: Trump was so thoroughly trounced that now, like Roberto Duran in 1980, he is crying "no mas".

BHS football season is underway

Friday marked the first home game for the Pirates. Their opponent was Ayersville, a school I'd never heard of. Turns out Ayersville is a small school located in the Defiance area. I imagine there is an interesting back story about how Ayersville came to appear on the Bluffton schedule as a non-conference opponent, but I don't know what it is. Enrollment at Ayersville is only 346, but Bluffton's is only 353, so quite similar numbers of students to draw from.

The Pirates are coming off of an awesome year in 2023, when they went 12-2, the only losses coming to nearby rival Columbus Grove. They started out the season 9-0, shutting out seven of their first nine oppenents, before losing to Grove 14-7. In the post-season playoffs, they defeated their first three opponents by a combined score of 135-6, before again falling to Grove 17-10, in a game I was able to watch on the big screen at the local bowling alley.

The weather Friday was rainy, cloudy, and blustery, putting my plans to attend the game in doubt. But it cleared up somewhat by the 7:00 P.M. game time, and the weather waqs almost ideal for football. A few random drops of rain were felt, but no real drizzle. And the sun even peaked through for awhile toward the end of the first half. In the first half Bluffton scored every time it had the ball (I think), and the halftime score was 49-0. I left and went home, finding out later that the final was 63-7, with the second string (presumably) playing the second half.

So the season is off to a great start. The Pirates have defeated their first three oponents by a combined score of 155-10, beating each opponent by a greater margin than last year. The future looks bright!

The Killers (1946; dir: Robert Siodmak)

I run across a new film noir almost daily on Facebook. Someone in the film noir group will write a post about a particular film noir, and then seomeone else in the comments will post a link to the film. Consequently, I watch a new film noir quite often these days. I love watching these shows. The black-and-white, the light and shoadows, the urban scenes, the femme fatales, they all make for a delightful viewing experience.

Yesterday I watched "The Killers", starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. An ex-boxer gets murdered execution-style, and an insurance investigator sets out to find the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. He continues to follow the trail and attempt to unravel the mystery behind the execution. As he talks with each witness, there is a flashback showing what the witness is describing. (Similar to the excellent TV series, "Cold Case", which is occasionally on TNT at night.)

What sets this movie apart from other film noirs is the very clever surprise ending. There is quite a nice twist at the end.