The View from Right Field

Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump. And I Thought 2016 Was the Presidential Election from He**

It would appear that Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee for president this year.  The only thing as amazing as that is that Donald Trump was the Republicans nominee in 2016.  And, in response to anybody who says somebody with Senator Sanders’s views can’t be elected, consider that somebody with President Trump’s views (whatever they are) was elected.

While I think Senator Sanders’s views on, among other things, Cuba are just “drinking the Kool-Aid,” it is difficult to effectively complain about them when President Trump says so many great things about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, not the mention “loving” Kim Jong-Un.  Senator Sanders is wrong, but then so is President Trump.

Among the Reasons You Can’t Trust China's Reports on Coronavirus

While on our trip to Egypt, I saw an article in The Egyptian Gazette last Thursday on the coronavirus efforts in Wuhan, China.  The article reported that inspectors were going door-to-door in Wuhan, trying to identify every infected person.  Wang Zhonglin, the new Communist Party secretary in Wuhan, was quoted as saying, “If a single new case [of coronavirus] is found (after Wednesday), the district leaders will be held responsible.”  Which means, of course, that no new cases will be reported because the district leaders know what will happen to them if one is.

It reminds me of this story:

Seeing Where the Cubs Played 131 Years Ago - Update

Following up on my post earlier today,¹ here is a picture of me at the Sphinx - in my “official” Chicago White Stockings tee shirt.

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UPDATE (2/20/20 9:00 pm): Now that we are home I have been able to correct the date of my original post, so I modified this reference.
FURTHER UPDATE (2/23/20 2:00 pm): i cropped the picture a little.

Seeing Where the Cubs Played 131 Years Ago

A break from the break.  You might argue it was the ultimate barnstorming trip.  In the offseason of 1888-89, Al Spalding, President and part-owner of the Chicago Cubs (then called the Chicago White Stockings), took the White Stockings and a team of National League All-Stars on an around-the-world tour, to promote baseball and his sporting goods company.  While the two teams stopped literally all over the world¹, the most famous stop was in Egypt, where the two teams played a baseball game in front of the Pyramids and by the Sphinx.

The stop in Cairo resulted in the most iconic photo of the entire trip:

Break

Off for a couple of weeks.  See you when I get back.

Congratulations, Chiefs Fans. But 50 Still Isn’t 108.

With the Kansas City Chiefs having won their first Super Bowl in 50 years, some people in Chicago are saying, “Big deal.  Fifty isn’t even half of 108.”  Which is true.  But what is interesting is that some of the people making those comments aren’t even fifty themselves.  Which should, in theory, mean that there was no difference for those people between the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl after 50 years and the Cubs winning the World Series after 108.  Or, for that matter, for fans in their mid- 30s, there should be no difference between the Cubs in 2016 and the Pirates, who haven’t won a World Series since 1979, or the Orioles, who haven’t won since 1983.  Except there is.

Because even though there were probably only a couple of Cubs fans in 2016 who were alive in 1908, being a Cubs fan meant that it felt like it had been 108 years.  That is what the media always talked about and what we always read about every time the Cubs made the postseason and it didn’t work out (or when they didn’t even make the postseason).  It was always there.