The View from Right Field

I Guess I Have Been Missing Baseball More Than I Thought

People have asked how I am doing with no baseball.  I thought I was doing pretty well – until recently.  Recently, I have noticed feeling a little down, now and then.  I thought it was because politics is horrible.  We have a terrible president, but the people running to replace him aren’t much better, if any.  I don’t want the current person to be reelected, but the alternative could easily be just as bad. 

And then there are the riots accompanying the peaceful protests that we have had.  I’m not really sure how tearing down a statue of George Washington does any good.  Sure, he had slaves, but he was also, in the title of James Thomas Flexner’s book, The Indispensable Man.  Without George Washington, there is no United States.  Maybe the people pulling down his statue think that would be good.

What's Better? Something or Nothing? Police Reform In an Age of Polarization.

I’ve been writing a lot about baseball lately, mostly because baseball, even with people like Rob Manfred and Tony Clark unable to negotiate anything, is better than politics today, which says something.  But it’s back to the real world.

A big issue in Washington is police reform.  Your first thought about Washington and police reform might be like mine: Huh?  Police, like schools, seems like the epitome of a state and local issue.   We need police reforms (for one of my ideas, see here), but what’s the federal government got to do with it?  State governments, local governments.  Police reform is their issue.  Congress can’t pass laws telling state and local governments how to run their police forces.  About all the federal government can do (with one exception I will get to below) is cut back on the money it gives to state and local police departments if they do things the federal government doesn’t like.  It’s not much, but it’s something.  So the people in Washington are talking about a police reform bill which would increase or decrease the amount of money Washington gives to state and local police departments.

Five Years Ago Today: My First World Series Win

As people who know me know, it was a BIG deal when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. (There is a reason I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads “11-2-2016 11:47”.)  It was, obviously, the first World Series the Cubs won in my lifetime – and in the lifetimes of almost everybody alive in 2016 (except maybe people in Georgia).

But 2016 it wasn’t my first World Series win.  My first World Series win was in Omaha in June of 2015, when Jennie and I saw the University of Virginia win the College World Series.  It was great.  I blogged about it here.  At the time I thought it might be my only World Series victory.  (I was, after all, a Chicago Cubs fan.)  It wound up not be my only World Series win, but it will always be my first.  #GoHoos!

Here we are in Omaha, with the championship dogpile in the background:

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UPDATE (6/24/20 7:30 am): Added picture. 

“Manfred-Ball” Is (Or May Be) Coming to a Park (or TV Screen) Near You Soon

As part of their continuing effort to screw up baseball, which Commissioner Rob Manfred and player union head Tony Clark are doing a good job at, the owners and players have given up trying to reach an agreement.  After all, they only had three months to talk about one since their “mini agreement” in March, so how could you expect them to agree to anything.  Of course, the fact that Messrs. Manfred and Clark apparently only met in person once during that time may have had something to do with it, though if you really don’t want to agree, because it’s more fun to argue, then not meeting in person is a good idea.  Who knows, if you’re talking in the same room, you might actually reach an agreement by accident.  And it looks like nobody wanted that.  So, Rob Manfred got to decide.

Well, what's "Manfred-Ball" going to look like?  First, there will be 60 games, the fewest since 1878, when they also played 60.  They will not have the “all-in” playoffs the owners wanted.  I think the owners wanted sixteen teams in the playoffs, instead of ten, but the main thing was, I would imagine, that ESPN, et al, wanted to set the bar low enough so they could be sure both the Red Sox and Yankees made it.  (It’s the “Sunday Night Baseball Rule.”)

The @Royals Are Attracting Undrafted Players by Being Nice to Their Minor Leaguers. Not Something the @Cubs Are Doing.

The Kansas City Royals have come up with a unique way to attract quality, undrafted players this year.  A “market inefficiency,” as people like to call it. 

In order to save money, MLB shortened the draft this year from 40 rounds to five and put a limit on how big of a bonus could be paid to undrafted players.¹  Which means there are a lot of good quality undrafted players out there.  Jared Diamond wrote in The Wall Street Journal on how the Royals made themselves attractive to those undrafted players: They didn’t treat their current minor league players like crap, releasing dozens of them to save the $400 a week they would have otherwise had to pay them.²

Two Bad Supreme Court Decisions – From a Process Point of View

It’s been a bad week for people who see the job of the Supreme Court as applying the law, as opposed to coming up with ways to do what Congress should do but hasn’t.

First, it was the LGBT workers decision on Monday in Bostock v. Clayton County.  I think that people shouldn’t be fired from jobs for being gay, lesbian, etc.¹  And I think Congress should pass a law to that effect (as should states).  But Congress hasn’t.  I do not believe that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, when it prohibits discrimination in employment because of an individual’s sex, covers discrimination because of sexual preference, gender identity, etc.  “Sex” did not include those things in 1964, and it shouldn’t be interpreted as including them today.  There is a proper way to do it: Pass a law.

Now Is the Time to Get Ready for the Election in November

Last weekend The Wall Street Journal had an article by Nicholas Persily, “It’s Not Too Late to Save the 2020 Election,” on things we need to do to avoid (minimize-?) problems next November.  Professor Persily listed nine things:

1. Provide more federal funding and support.
2. Ensure that schools remain open as polling places.
3. Keep voters from having to wait in line.
4. Bolster confidence in voting by mail.
5. Encourage election and postal officials to coordinate their efforts as soon as possible.
6. Insist that the big tech companies do their part.
7. Deploy tools to help predict voter turnout.
8. Anticipate problems with disinformation and cybersecurity.
9. Refrain from declaring a winner on election night.

Here are the key things I got from the article, with an Illinois perspective.

“To Be or Not To Be”: The Baseball Version

The question is not when baseball is going to start, but if – and whether I’m going to care whether it does or doesn’t.  I understand the players and the owners both think they are standing on principle.  The players think they agreed to a pro rata payment based on the number of games played, and the owners think they can’t pay the players full pro rata salary if there aren’t fans in the stands.  

Jeff Passan at ESPN.com goes into great detail on the two sides’ positions and the reasons and principles behind them.  And each side has lots of reasons for their positions, reasons that they think are legitimate.  But ultimately, you know what.  I don’t care.

#Cubs Convention Photos of Baseball Greats: Bob Feller

Pictures in this series of posts have been of Cubs players (or other people connected with the Cubs).  Bob Feller is neither, but he was at the Convention several times, promoting his museum in his hometown of Van Meter, Iowa (just off I-80 at exit 113),¹ and you can’t not include a picture of him (even if it isn’t the best picture in the world).

I’m not sure how much most baseball fans know about Bob Feller today, but I am pretty sure it’s not enough.  I’m not going to go into a long story.  Let me just mention a few things:

.@Cubs Convention Photos of #Cubs Greats: Jody Davis

Next up on the list of pictures of Cubs greats from the Conventions is Jody Davis.  Cubs fans from the 1980s, and those of later years who know about the 1980s, still want to cheer, when the name of Jady Davis comes up, “Jo-dee, Jo-dee, Jo-dee”.

I was lucky enough to be there for the first two games of the three-game series between the Cubs and Cardinals, June 10-12, 1983 (that is 37 years ago today!), when Jody hit three home runs (one in each game) and drove in ten runs, and the fans started chanting “Jo-dee, Jo-dee”.  We haven’t stopped since.