"Cracking the Show", by Thomas Boswell

Thomas Boswell is quite simply the best baseball writer of his era. By "his era", I mean the period in which his seven books weere published, which is 1982-1996.

His books are collections of the columns he wrote for "The Washington Post" and various magazines. Since he didn't retire untl 2021, it remains a mystery, at least to me, why he's put out no books since 1996.

"Cracking the Show" covers the time period of 1989-1993. I enjoyed reliving the great World Series of that time period. The 1989 earthquake series, swept by the A's, was followed by the 1990 series, in which the A's were swept by the Reds. Boswell explains how the Reds simply overwhelmed the A's with their fundamentally sound baseball: "Once the game began, everyone saw how the Reds' speed and base stealing, their hit-and-runs and bunts, their pursuit of the extra base, and their mighty bullpen both unnerved and unmanned the A's". Boswell mocks the haughty A's: "Unfortunately, even in defeat, the dominant tone of the A's was that of the disbelieving, excuse-seeking blowhard." Boswell makes an apt comparison of the 1988-1990 A's to the 1969-1971 Orioles, in that both of these were dominant teams which went to the World Series three years in a row as favorites, but only won one of them.

Boswell gives much-deserved criticism of the 1991 series, in which the Twins won because of their home-field advantage. (The Metrodome was a monstrosity, and thank goodness Target Field has since replaced it.) Boswell says: "So this is what America's pastoral summer game has become--a sport played in a large, loud tin drum." With four extra-innning games, this series was "the closest, most drama-filled, but surely not best-played or best-managed Classic of all time".

And then we had the Toronto Blue Jays reigning supreme in 1992 and 1993. Boswell says that "if a team ever won with presence, with an aura of utter confidence, it was these '93 Jays...Maybe nothing beats a sense of entitlement."

The most significant off-the-field story durng the five-year period which this book covers was the lifetime ban Pete Rose received for betting on baseball. Boswell starts the book with a collection of seven columns he wrote about this sad episode.

Boswell echoes the mixed freelings most of us feel about Rose. In a column entitled "Arrested Adolescent", Boswell writes: "For thirty years, America has cheered Rose for remaining a child. He was selfish but charming. Vain but joyous. Shallow but shrewd. Crude but funny. Greedy for all the candy but generous once he got it. Prone to the vices but honest about it. Oblivious to society's conventions but also mythically large. Given no gift, save his obsession for baseball, he made himself a hero." Boswell's conclusion: "Rose deserves our empathy, though maybe not too much sympathy."

The Rose saga can be seen as a three-act drama. While Boswell agrees with the first act (the lifetime ban), he has harsh criticism for the final two acts. The second act was the prosecution of Rose for income tax evasion, for which he received a five-month prison sentence. Boswell points out that this prosecution was "for neglecting to report about three percent of his income. How does that compare to the national average?" I can answer this question. The IRS tells us that only about 87% of income is reported. This thirteen percent of unreported income is four times the perentage that Rose failed to report. The usual approach in this type of situation woud be to allow the taxpayer to pay the back taxes, plus interest and penalties, with no criminal consequences. But because Rose was prominent, he was treated overly harshly, just as Hunter Biden is being treated today.

The fact that both presidential candidates are calling for removing the income tax on tips illustrates the general antipathy we have towards taxing cash income. Certainly many Americans have earned money they failed to report to the IRS. Why Rose was so severly persecuted by the government remains a mysstery to me.

But the greatest injustice Rose suffered came in the third act, with the vote ruling him ineligble for the Hall of Fame. By a 12-0 vote, the Hall of Fame board voted to "exclude players on the permanently ineligible list from the ballot". The only living person on this list was Pete Rose.

Boswell's feeling about this is summed up by the title of his 2/5/91 column: "White-Collar Lynching". The sensible approach would have been to keep Rose on the ballot and allow the baseball writers to decide whether he should be enshrined or not. This is what the board has done with the steroid cheaters, who damaged the game far more than Rose ever did by his betting. The writers have responded admirably by keeping out players like Bonds and McGwire who otherwise would have made it easily.

Bill James expresses a different view of the Rose saga in his book on the Hall of Fame, "The Politics of Glory". James argues that anybody on the permanent ineligible list should not be eligible for the Hall of Fame, but he strenuously disagrees with the decision putting Rose on the ineligible list. He says that investigator John Dowd "leapt to the conclusion that Rose was guilty, and twisted and bent the facts to support that conclusion." He says that Rose "waa banned from baseball on the basis of rumor, hearsay, slander, gossip, and irrelevant information." He concludes that "If Pete Rose ever sues baseball seeking to nullify the agreement he made with Giamatti, under which he agreed to accept a lifetime ban, he absolutely will win."

James is no lawyer, and he has an exaggerated sense of the extent to which the legal system can intervene to solve disputes between private entities. There is no government action involved here, so constitutional due process protections do not apply.

George Will writes about the Rose saga in his book "Bunts", a collection of his baseball columns from 1974 through 1998. Will sees Rose's gambling problem as part of a pattern of norms-ignoring recklessness which characterized Rose's whole life. Will points to the collision at home plate in the 1970 All-Star game, in which Rose barreled into catcher Ray Fosse, ruining Fosse's career. He says that this "was within the rules. It also was unnecessary, disproportionate and slightly crazy". Will writes that "Rose's slide broke rules no less real for being unwritten. In time, he would shred written rules, of baseball and society".

Will discusses Rose's "slide into gambling, debts, drugs, incessant adultery and the company of muscle-bound dimwits...His retinue included drug dealers and other hangers-on, who greased his slide into criminality. By 1987 he was losing $30,000 a week to bookies."

Will says that the Dowd Report made the facts of Rose's betting "entirely clear". The evidence included "the testimony of eight eyewitnesses, Rose's handwriting on betting slips, and telephone records showing that during a ninety-day period, thirty minutes before every game--home or away, night or day--Rose placed calls to people who placed bets."

So how did Bill James get this so wrong? My own theory is that he just didn't give the Rose issue much serious attention. His chapter on Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson is only five pages long. By contrast, a chapter discussing whether Don Drysdale is a Hall of Famer runs to 34 pages.

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.