The View from Right Field

Helping Each Other, Not Blaming Each Other

For the next few weeks or months (as long as necessary), I am going to pin this post at the top of my blog to remind me of something I tweeted yesterday:

“As we get thru this, we must all remember that mistakes will be made. Things will be done that shouldn’t have been. Things will be left undone that should have been done. But helping each other is more important than blaming each other.”

.@Cubs Convention Photos of #Cubs Greats: Ronnie Woo-Woo

A friend texted today that it must be a slow news day when Ronnie Wickers, aka Ronnie Woo, aka Ronnie Woo-Woo, and in particular his disappearance in 1987, was the top sports story.  I disagree.  Ronnie is a Cubs legend.  Other teams have to make up mascots or cheerleaders.  Ronnie made himself, and he is better than the rest because he is real.

And so, my Cubs Convention photos today are of Ronnie Woo-Woo, from 1997 and 2013.  “Cubs Woo, Cubs Woo”.

The Cubs Stage a Memorial Day Comeback

With no baseball on Memorial Day, I thought I would look at a game from Memorial Day thirty-nine years ago (Memorial Day in 1981 was on May 25, too).  The Cubs were at home against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  The crowd was 18,506 (this was back when the announced attendance in the National League was people in the park, not tickets sold).  My general admission, grandstand ticket was $3.50.  A scorecard cost 30 cents.

The game did not start well.  The Pirates got one in the first, four in the third, and three more in the top of the fourth.  8 to 0 after 3½ innings.  Oh, well.  But the Cubs got four in the bottom of the fourth, to cut the lead in half; one on a sac fly by Scot Thompson, one on a bases-loaded walk, and two on an E6.  (Love those two-out E6s.)

The Bucs got another run, to increase the lead to five, in the top of the seventh.  But once again the Cubs came back with four, this time in the bottom of the eighth; one on a Steve Henderson home run, one on an E4; and two on a pinch-hit double by Bill Buckner.  (Rick Reuschel pinch ran for Billy Buck but didn’t score.)

Ninth inning.  One to tie, two to win.  Well, the Cubs didn’t win it in the ninth, but they did tie, on another Steve Henderson home run.  His second of the day; third of the year.

Nobody scored in the tenth, and the Pirates went down one-two-three in the top of the eleventh.  At this point, any old kind of a run would win it.  Leon Durham led off with his third single of the day.  Steve Henderson tried to sacrifice him to second, but fouled off two pitches.  So Leon stole second, and Henderson singled him to third.  Jerry Morales walked, loading the bases with nobody out.  Scot Thompson came up and smashed one to left field.  The Cubs had won!  After being down 8 to 0, the Cubs had come back to win, 10 to 9, in eleven innings.  It was a Memorial Day baseball game to remember.
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Follow-up: This was pretty much the highlight of the year for the 1981 Cubs.  The Cubs were 15-37 when the strike hit on June 12.  During the strike, the Cubs traded Rick Reuschel to the Yankees, and the Wrigleys sold the Cubs to the Tribune Company.  The former was sad.  The latter was, well, it was what it was.  The Cubs went 23-28 after the strike and finished the season 38-65.  As I said, Memorial Day was the highlight of the year for the 1981 Cubs.

The Donald Trump Default

With all of the difficult issues around today, how long should we shutdown (assuming we should shut down at all), when should we re-open (assuming we should be re-opening), what should we do about China, when is baseball going to start, a lot of people seem to find it great to have Donald Trump around.  Because once he talks or tweets (or whatever else he does), many people know what they believe.  If President Trump says we should do X, then some part of the population will immediately want to do X, while another part of the population will immediately want to not do X.  Obviously, given President Trump’s proclivity to say contradictory things from one day to the next (or even on the same day), this makes it hard for some people, since they have to switch their positions frequently, too.  Either to stay on his side – or on the other side.  But it appears many of them figure that if he can do it, so can they.

First Pibb Zero. Now Diet Rite. This Pandemic Is Getting Personal.

I have tried to be reasonable and understanding about the coronavirus, aka Covid-19, aka “this Pandemic.”  First, they shut down baseball.  Then, our trip to Germany was cancelled.  Next, we couldn’t see our grandson in person.  (FaceTime is great, but playing with the little guy in person is so much better.  You just want to hug him.)  Church services were cancelled.  And not going to our condo in Michigan means we have more time for yard work at home.  I have handled all of these pretty well (though the last one has been making me look forward to rainy days).

But now, it’s just about the last straw.  First it was Pibb Zero.  With Coca Cola deciding to focus on their main brands during the pandemic (because of production and distribution issues, I guess), Pibb Zero has disappeared from the stores.¹ 

China, WHO, and the Next Time

In a conversation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, former New Zealand Prime Minister and former head of the United Nations Development Programme¹ Helen Clark said that, at the multilateral level, the world has not risen to the challenge of Covid-19.  She noted that, in 2014, the UN Security Council declared a public health emergency with respect to Ebola, but this time, the Security Council has done nothing.  As to why, she says it relates to the toxic nature of international politics.

Which is true.  But it seems to me the reason is more specific than that.  While Donald Trump does not believe in multilateral organizations and is, in my opinion, a terrible president in terms of foreign relations,² the biggest reason there has been no coordinated international action on Covid-19 is simple.  It’s China.  It appears China screwed up big time on Covid-19.  The best information is that Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China.  But for some reason China did not get on top of it right away (or at least didn’t do enough).  There are a number of possible reasons (and there needs to be an investigation), but regardless of the reason(s), at this point it looks like China had a chance to stop or contain this virus before it spread.  But it didn’t, and now it’s killing people all over the world.³  And the problem with a coordinated international response, from China’s part of view, is that part of such a response would be an investigation that would make China’s failings more difficult to hide.

The Cubs and May 15

May 15 has been a special day for me and the Cubs over the years.  I wrote about the “Lloyd McClendon game” on May 15, 1989 here.  I don’t need to say any more than I did there, except that I was there with Ross, and it was a great game.  Obviously.  You can see Lloyd’s home run at 3:07 in this video:

Figure Out How We Will Vote in November – Now!

How are we going to vote in November?  No, not who are we going to vote for.  Rather, what is the actual process of voting going to be?  Wisconsin had a disaster of an election in April.  The Democratic governor said he didn’t have authority to change the election date, but he waited until the week before the election to call the Republican-led legislature into special session – twice.   But the legislature and governor couldn’t agree on anything, and the legislature adjourned.  At that point, on the day before the election, the governor tried to delay in-person voting until June.  Republicans appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which said the governor didn’t have the power to delay the election,¹ so voting went ahead on Tuesday.  At that point, things were so messed up there were only five polling places in the entire city of Milwaukee.  Stupid, just stupid.  (See here and here.)

While we can’t know for sure, there is a fair chance that in-person voting could be a problem for at least a significant portion of the population in November.  But even if it turns out that it isn’t, we need plan ahead.  Something we haven’t been doing, so far.

Less "No" and More Honest Hope

Peggy Noonan wrote an excellent article in Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal on what we need in this coronavirus world we are living in.  Every day brings more bad news.  And instead of our leaders knuckling down and doing their jobs, they spend too much of their time complaining about what other politicians are or aren’t doing.  Instead of talking about how we get out of this, they focus on all the reasons we can’t. 

Ms. Noonan concludes her article with these thoughts:

“I want to get back to the national morale.  All these dreadful economic numbers – you can’t let people sink into defeatism.  You can’t let them think there is no hope, or that things in the future are just going to be bad.  They are Americans, they know how to suffer ….  But they’re like the pioneers, they have to be able to believe while they’re on the long trek that there’s some fertile area around the next bend, or the one after that. …

Missing Milton – and the Magic Money Tree

A year ago I wrote about what, at that time, I called “one of the new big things” in economics and politics: Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”).¹  I explained MMT by quoting from The Wall Street Journal:

“Ms. Kelton² argues the government doesn’t need to worry so much about how much it borrows to pay for spending programs.  Unlike a household or business, it can never run out of money.  The government can always print money to pay for debts.  The constraint, according to MMT, isn’t the deficit, but whether the borrowing and spending spurs inflation and disrupts economic activity.”

Feeling Sorry for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – Or Not

You have to feel a little sorry for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – or maybe not.  Lt. Gen. Flynn was Donald Trump’s first National Security Adviser.  In 2017, he was charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with lying to the FBI, and he pled guilty.  Some say he pled guilty so the government would not go after his son in a matter involving the consulting firm Lt. Gen. Flynn owned. 

A couple of weeks ago, documents came out that made it look, to some people, like the FBI was trying to set Lt. Gen. Flynn up for a perjury charge.   As those documents were coming out, Donald Trump tweeted about it, of course.  Once President Trump spoke, i.e., tweeted, the story became all about him, which is what happens any time President Trump gets involved in anything.  Which meant the story was no longer about whether Lt. Gen. Flynn was ill-treated or set-up by the FBI, but about President Trump.  If you like President Trump, you were on Lt. Gen. Flynn’s side.  If you don’t, then you thought Lt. Gen. Flynn was guilty.  Regardless of the actual facts of the story, in either case.

Kent State at 50 – Three Days Late

With Covid-19 being all the news all the time, other things get missed.  The 50th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University on May 4 was one of them, at least for me.

I was a senior at Eastern Illinois University in 1970.  When President Nixon gave his speech on the Cambodian incursion on April 30, 1970, it seemed reasonable to me.  Protestors said he was expanding the war.  I figured that, since the North Vietnamese were already in Cambodia, attacking South Vietnam from bases there, you couldn’t say we were expanding the war into Cambodia.  The war came to Cambodia when the North Vietnamese moved in.

Bad Sprawl. Good Sprawl.

If we are going to cut our carbon emissions, to save the planet, we are told we need more housing density and more mass transit, and we need fewer single-family homes and fewer automobiles.  But then came Covid-19, and the requirement to socially distance.  Which is really hard in crowded cities and on jammed buses and subways.

If you are an essential worker who has to go to work, what better way to do it than in a car – by yourself.¹  Sheltering at home is easier in a single-family house than a one-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment (with a couple of roommates).  If you want to take a walk, to get some exercise, what’s better: a neighborhood of houses built on 35- or 50-foot lots or a neighborhood of apartment buildings with 35 floors?

.@Cubs Convention Photos of Cubs Greats: Andy Pafko

One of the great things about going to the Cubs Conventions with our kids was their having the chance to see and get to know Cubs greats from before they were born.  You have already seen their pictures with: Billy, Glenn, and Fergie.

Well, I had that chance, too: Getting to meet Andy Pafko.  When Andy came to the Conventions, he would be the only guy there who ever played in a World Series for the Cubs.  And, more importantly, he was the nicest man.  A real gentleman.  Our kids got to meet him and get their picture taken with him – and so did I.  Here are pictures from the 1996, 2000, and 2007 Conventions:

Disappearance of Physical Cash Is Great – Or Is It?

In an opinion piece in yesterday’s Financial Times,¹ Gary Cohn, a former director of the National Economic Council under President Trump, said that, with coins and bills being potential carriers of Covid-19, he has stopped using cash, and he supports the idea of the US Federal Reserve creating “digital dollar accounts and wallets for all citizens.”

Mr. Cohn sees all kinds of advantages to such digital wallets, in addition to those that are Covid-19-related.  Tax-avoiding black-market sales of cannabis could be effectively stopped.  Digital wallets would have made it easier for the government to send stimulus payments directly to individuals.  While Mr. Cohn admits there are privacy implications to the government having access to peoples’ digital wallets, he likes “how much quicker and efficient the tax process could be.”

Bailouts, Turnabouts, Fair Play – And a Progressive State Income Tax

In today’s Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn supports Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s argument that Illinois should get a bail out from the federal government because, in Governor Pritzker’s words, “we pay more in federal taxes in Illinois than we get back from the federal government.”  Mr. Zorn acknowledges that federal spending is affected by things like higher poverty rates in other states, but eventually he comes back to the view that other states should bail out Illinois “[b]ecause we’ve been bailing them out for years.”

I wonder, though, why we should be looking at this on the basis of state boundaries.  Perhaps we should look at it on a county basis.  Maybe Cook County should get back from the federal government what it pays in. 

Preparing for the “Next” #Coronavirus – Whatever It Is. But Will We?

I was originally going to post about a book that Andrew Krepinevich wrote in 2009: 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century.  Chapter 3 of the book was entitled “Pandemic.”  While the cause of the pandemic in Mr. Krepinevich’s book was a variation on influenza, instead of a coronavirus, many of the effects were eerily the same:

“The summer movie season has been washed away by the government’s ban on public gatherings.  Meanwhile, baseball … is experiencing a ‘silent season.’  Major league baseball tried for a few days to play televised games in empty stadiums, then cancelled its schedule when several players came down with pandemic influenza ….”¹

“In many parts of the country hospitals are collapsing under the strain, as ever greater numbers of Americans succumb to the virus.”²

“[D]eveloping a vaccine to deal with a novel strain of influenza can take nearly a year.”³

Lots of People Are Working from Home. Why Not Congress?

Business people all over the country are working from home.  With phone calls, email, Zoom meetings, etc., business is being done from Tallahassee to Wenatchee, Austin to Boston.  So why is Congress shut down?  Leaders are passing bills by unanimous consent with just a few members on the floor (and nobody objecting).  What I don’t understand is why Congress can’t work electronically.  The Supreme Court is hearing arguments by phone.  Why can’t Congress do something like that?

Off-site voting may not be allowed under the current rules of the House and Senate, but if that’s so, they need to get together and change the rules – and then go home, if they want to,¹ and start working.  If off-site voting is not be something you want to do forever, then change the rules to allow it for six months, with the old rules coming back into force automatically at the end of the six-month period. 

#Cubs Convention Photos of Cubs Greats: Ferguson Jenkins

Fergie is one of the players that I have the most pictures of.  Here is a picture from the 1994 Convention:

Leaders Taking a Pay Cut Like the People They Lead. That’s Leadership.

I realize I write a lot about New Zealand, but when they get things right, why not.  Here’s another thing the leaders in New Zealand got right.  Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that she and the ministers in her government would take a 20% pay cut for the next six months in recognition of "New Zealanders who are reliant on wage subsidies, taking pay cuts and losing their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic."  Simon Bridges, the leader of the opposition National Party, said he would do the same.

It's not like these pay cuts are going to save lots of money for the government or pay for the extra spending the New Zealand government is doing.  Rather, it is a matter of leaders showing solidarity with the people: people who have lost jobs, have had their hours cut, or are just having a hard time during the pandemic.

It’s empathy.  It’s caring.  It’s not politics as usual.  I wish we could have some of that here.

The Fed Is Acting as Central Banker for the World. Why Isn’t President Trump Complaining?

At the end of March, the Federal Reserve announced it was establishing a temporary lending facility under which foreign central banks could borrow dollars by giving the Fed their Treasury securities.  Such repurchase agreements, or repos, allow borrowers to temporarily exchange Treasury securities for dollars.  By entering into a repo agreement, foreign central bank don‘t have to sell their Treasury securities in unstable markets in order to get dollars they need for transactions. 

This facility is in addition to other programs the Fed has already set up to lend dollars to fourteen other central banks in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, and Australia.