This one's from too many sources to mention, but seen most recently on Tim Blair's site:

1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Well, the nearest book is a book of baseball stats, but the closest other thing at hand is, of course, The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, the revised first edition in paperback (I'm so predictable, but that's how my desk in the basement is set up), the chapter on the 1880s. The sentence:

With the coming of professionalism - and professional umpires - this [respect for umpires] quickly went out the window.

There's been a lot of piling on UMass grad student Rene Gonzalez over his breathtakingly asinine op-ed essentially spitting on Pat Tillman's grave (even drawing co-blogger Kiner's Korner out of his long hibernation). Ricky West has the goods on Gonzalez' other public fulmintions, including (predictably enough) anti-Semitism and racial slurs aimed at African-American Republicans, and one of his commenters notes that Gonzalez is also a signer of one of those appallingly discriminatory "divest from Israel" petitions.

Gonzalez' attitudes are despicable, of course, although he's as much to be pitied for his ignorance as hated; the guy is obviously so isolated and so lacking in social skills that he had no clue how offensive the vast majority of sentient adults would find his remarks. Hopefully, UMass has the sense not to have this idiot teaching anything to undergrads; he has, or should have, killed any chance he ever had of teaching anywhere, since nobody wants to court lawsuits by hiring an instructor so completely lacking in basic sensitivity.

Tim Blair notes a related consequence:

Rene is now a graduate student. He's active in politics, he's interested in all the big issues, he's maybe thinking about a political career, and he's just written something he'll deeply regret . . . Rene will get what's coming to him. Picture him a couple of decades from now, struggling to explain his youthful extremism to party officials or journalists or voters.

As you will recall, this is the same reason why I support keeping flag-burning legal: anything that allows guys like this to imprint the scarlet letter of anti-Americanism on themselves before they get into politics is A Good Thing.

(On a related note . . . when I worked on Jim Rappaport's 1990 Senate campaign against John Kerry back in my College Republican days, there were rumors among the low-level volunteers that somebody had video of Kerry from the early 70s burning a flag. Knowing what I know now, it's obvious that Kerry was never as far gone as all that - but if he had been, it would have been political death for him even in Massachusetts).

A reader, surveying worst-case scenarios, writes to ask:

Do you know what the best record for a team in April was, without then making the postseason? I am asking as a Red Sox fan, and looking at possibly finishing April at .727

Well, I don't have a definite answer, but I've got a pretty good guess. The 1987 Brewers went 18-3 in April, including the famous 13-0 getaway highlighted by Juan Nieves' no-hitter (they were 18-2 when Paul Molitor pulled his hamstring and missed a month), and stood at 20-3 on the morning of May 3, the day they started their 12-game losing streak. The Brew Crew finished third, albeit only 7 games back.

Buster Olney is back with another ode to "productive outs," yet again taking a simple notion - that there can be a benefit at times to sacrificing an out to improve your chances of scoring one run - and blowing it out of proportion as if it's the main reason for certain teams' successes and failures. Bizarrely, Olney's Exhibit A this time in support of his "Smallball vs. Moneyball" rant (ESPN's title, not mine) is a Yankees-Red Sox game last week in which the Red Sox won 2-0, with the only runs scoring on this sequence in the Boston fourth:

-Top of the 4th inning -M Bellhorn walked. -D Ortiz struck out looking. -M Ramirez homered to left, M Bellhorn scored. -K Millar lined out to shortstop. -J Varitek flied out to center.

Yup, the game turned on a walk (by Mark Bellhorn, the main target of Olney's scorn) and a home run, with the only intervening out being the least productive kind, with David Ortiz' strikeout being rendered moot by Manny's home run. Productive outs, indeed. See here for more on Olney's misguided attempt to pass off his pet theory as if it were a meaningful form of statistical analysis, notably the fact that his theory completely ignores the fact that teams that move a lot of baserunners are better than teams that don't because teams that have a lot of baserunners in the first place are better than teams that don't.

UPDATE: Well, this one certainly brought out the long knives. Check out Derek Zumsteg, David Pinto, and the Primates on Olney's folly. By the way, I also enjoyed how Olney quoted Paul O'Neill saying, in essence, how the Yankees were better when they had Paul O'Neill.

One more thought on the Pat Tillman story: the Arizona Cardinals, Tillman's former team, have announced plans to name a plaza outside their new stadium in his honor, which is a nice gesture. Some have gone further, suggesting that the whole place be named after him. Of course, the Cardinals are a for-profit business, and the rights to name a stadium is one of their major assets, so it's unsurprising that this idea will go nowhere.

But here's an idea that makes a lot more sense: rename the team. And not in honor only of Tillman, who after all went out of his way to avoid an excess of publicity about his decision. Call them the Arizona Rangers, in honor of Tillman's unit in the Army and their sacrifices over many generations, most famously in scaling the cliffs at Normandy on D-Day but in many other deadly engagements.

This makes sense, of course, in part because the Cards could use a name change anyway; their current name is too tied both to the Midwestern (Chicago/St. Louis) roots they left behind and to one of the most abysmal franchise histories in all of sport. Why not give the franchise an honorable excuse for a fresh start?

I've long thought the September 11 Commission was, at best, pointless, since there had already been numerous official and unofficial inquiries into September 11, leading to overhauls of airport security, the Homeland Security Department, the Patriot Act, the war in Afghanistan and the new preemption posture leading to the war in Iraq, etc. Much of the really important stuff was public record anyway. The relevant question 2 1/2 years later is how those efforts are working, and not why policies that are no longer in place failed.

Anyway, for months and months now we've been hearing about the necessity of having the president testify, and the usual suspects have been up in arms about how it's beyond the pale for Bush and Cheney to testify together rather than have the president testify alone. (Never mind that Bush is, at the end of all this, the primary person with responsibility for national security to whom the commission must report anyway). So, how important was the president's testimony? Two Democrats on the panel didn't even bother to stay for the whole thing due to minor speaking engagements. And how appalling was it that Bush was permitted to testify with his #2 man at his side? Well, Henry Hanks reminds us of a fact the critics have consistently omitted: that Bill Clinton was allowed to show up to testify before the commission with his lawyer/damage control expert Bruce Lindsey and his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, in tow.

So much for that storyline.

At first glance, the Reuters report noted by The Command Post about how many North Koreans died in last week's train explosion because they ran back into their houses to save portraits of Kim Jong-il and his father - portraits the oppressed North Korean people are required to maintain in their homes - sounds like an urban legend spread by opponents of the regime to demonstrate its inhumanity and the level of regimented terror ordinary North Koreans live in on a daily basis, to the extent that they would run into a burning building rather than face what their government would do to them if for even the most understandable of reasons they didn't have their portraits of the Dear Leader.

But what's far creepier is the fact that these reports were actually coming from the North Korean regime itself. Why on earth would the regime publicize this? The only answer, of course - other than the regime's complete and total isolation from and indifference to the opinions of anyone outside the police state's borders - must be the intimidating effect the story would have on an already terrified North Korean population, by emphasizing the fact that the regime is actually proud of the fact that it values a picture of Kim more than it values the lives of its subjects.

As with The Crank, there is little I can add, or say more eloquently, about Pat Tillman that has not been said already. Suffice it to say, he was an extraordinarily example in a world that grows increasingly concerned with celebrity status. I'm glad our country still produces people like him, and I hope his family finds comfort in the tremendous example he provides for us.

There are, of course, a few critics of even Tillman. Here's one as an example. But this clearly is a ridiculous attack from an immature person trying to create a stir and name for himself. For a worthy dismal of this attack, read here. Moreover, the UMass President deserves credit for his strong criticism of the column.

For a more amusing attack, note this:

Simeon Rice, a former Arizona Cardinals teammate now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, scoffed when Tillman enlisted in May 2002.

"He really wasn't that good, not really . . . Maybe it's the Rambo movies, maybe it's Sylvester Stallone, Rocky," he told a radio interviewer.

Can you say, "No more endorsement deals for me!", Mr. Rice?

Obsidian Wings, which has one of the best mascots of any blog, brings what sounds like bad news from Cyprus.

Things are looking up for the Detroit pitching staff. This is all relative; although they won't be mistaken for Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz in their primes, the early returns on three of Detroit's young starters show a few signs for cautious optimism:

Pitcher	IP	ERA	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
Mike Maroth	32.2	3.58	10.19	0.83	1.65	5.51
Nate Robertson	22.2	2.78	5.96	0.79	6.35	11.91
Jeremy Bonderman	21.2	6.65	8.72	2.08	4.57	9.55

Maroth's numbers are particularly encouraging, and show a guy who's maturing into a dependable starter with great control, although with his low strikeout rate he'll always get hit. Robertson's numbers are your basic Nolan Ryan stat line - don't expect that to keep up, and don't expect him to finish with a 2.78 ERA if he keeps walking 6 men per 9 innings. But the exceptionally high strikeout rate is a very good sign.

Bonderman is still a long way off, but his high K rate is also a sign that he's starting to fool some people, which he did precious little of last season.

Now, this is a bit much: the Alex Rodriguez quarter. (Link via the Primer Lounge)

I've post-dated this post to April 29 so it will stay at the top of the page until then (updated as necessary), humbly asking you to donate to the Spirit of America, a charitable group supporting the efforts of U.S. troops to spread good will in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It's a worthy goal, and one that gives us private citizens a chance to do a little something to help out in the war for hearts and minds. See here and here for more details. I'm in with one of three coalitions of blogs competing in a drive to raise money for Spirit of America by April 29. For rewards, Michele is offering to dedicate posts and music to people who donate, and Dean Esmay is offering supporters of his coalition a post on a topic of their choice. Bah. I can do better: I promise that if you donate to Spirit of America, the Cubs and the Red Sox will win the World Series in your lifetime, or your money back. [disclaimer: refund may only be claimed after conclusion of lifetime] So there.

Give Victory a Chance! Please Donate Here. Thank you.

We already knew that the critical charge supporting the legal basis (if you take such things as UN resolutions seriously) of the war in Iraq has been confirmed by David Kay: Saddam Hussein's regime failed to comply with numerous UN resolutions that formed the basis of the 1991 cease-fire between the U.S.-led coalition and Iraq, specifically including his use of force and fraud to deceive UN inspectors about the status of his WMD programs.

But the question remains: what, really, had those programs accomplished, and why did our intelligence project a more advanced program than we have found evidence of?

Kenneth Timmerman at the conservative publication Insight Magazine has been parsing the evidence coming out of Iraq and now claims that we have, in fact, found many of the pieces of the WMD puzzle, but in ways that lack the sex appeal needed to dislodge the now-settled media narrative that the Bush Administration was just making this stuff up out of thin air for the past six years. Among the items Timmerman notes:

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Wizbang wonders why MSNBC's coverage of the Kerry medals-throwing story was so coordinated across several hosts and programs to give only Kerry's side of the story, and applies Occam's Razor to conclude that the logical explanation is that MSNBC went in the tank to get the exclusive interview with Kerry on Hardball. Hey, don't argue with me; go and read the whole thing and draw your own conclusions.

(Maybe the change in management is showing up onscreen)

The Mad Hibernian called my attention to this drivel from the AP Wire:

Some historians and professional groups are complaining about not being consulted before President Bush nominated a historian to head the National Archives who is best known for a book that concluded Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy.

* * *

Weinstein's work has stirred controversy, including his 1978 book, "Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case." It concluded that Hiss was a Soviet agent when he worked for the State Department in the 1940s.

Hiss was indicted on two counts of perjury after being pursued by then-Rep. Richard Nixon of California as a spy. One jury deadlocked but a second convicted Hiss in 1950 on both counts, and he served almost four years of a five-year sentence. He maintained his innocence until his death in 1996.

Besides putting Nixon on a career path that led to the presidency, the Hiss case led eventually to the infamous McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s.

Two things are striking here. First, the article tries to balance the charges against Hiss by stating that Hiss "maintained his innocence until his death in 1996," without mentioning that the Soviet archives later proved that Hiss was, in fact, a Soviet spy. Second, it's not at all clear that the Hiss story even has anything to do with the controversy, which appears to be more of a procedural fight.

Grr.

We've all gotten the infamous Nigerian "419" scam emails, and most of us just laugh at them (this one, I'll admit, is pretty amusing). But I got to see a different side of one today, when I got an email from a guy claiming to be a (fictional) son of a Nigerian politician who died last year. What particularly rankled is that this particular politician was the father of one of my close friends from law school (we lived in the same 6-room basement my first year). Some nitwit out there is trying to make money off this man's good name in the wake of his death. Which is, even aside from the fraud involved, a pretty rotten thing to do.

Victory! Please donate here - last day of the drive.

If you're wondering why New York Giants fans are so excited about Eli Manning, well, let me offer some perspective here. Consider my somewhat-typical experience. I'm a Mets/Giants/Knicks fan, and I'm 32 years old. Manning gives me, potentially (if he lives up to billing), the opportunity to see my favorite team develop an offensive superstar. Now, if you're a Red Sox fan or a Lakers fan or, even, a Detroit Lions or Montreal Expos fan, that may not sound like anything terribly novel. But consider the top homegrown offensive stars of my three favorite teams over the past 30 years or so, at least based on their performance in NY:

1. Patrick Ewing
2. Darryl Strawberry
3. Phil Simms (yes, Simms contributed more than Strawberry, but except for a brief moment around 1984, he was never a carry-the-team kind of QB)
4. Edgardo Alfonzo
5. Rodney Hampton
6. Mark Jackson (yes, #2 all-time in assists, but Jackson's a slow guy who can't shoot and only once scored as many as 15 points per game)
7. Joe Morris
8. Todd Hundley (we're scraping here; Hundley spent more than half his Mets career as an offensive millstone, although he did set a home run record for catchers)
9. Ray Williams
10. Amani Toomer
11. Mark Bavaro (an icon, but only briefly a light-up-the-scoreboard player)
12. Tiki Barber
13. Michael Ray Richardson
14. Lee Mazzilli
15. John Starks (I count Starks and Mason as homegrown players, since the Knicks developed them as regulars)

That's a top-of-the head list (feel free to quibble - this one's a natural argument-starter), and after Ewing, it's pretty weak; plenty of individual franchises could do better. And neither of the corresponding lists will knock your socks off, either - the top guys who were brought along in NY but bloomed elsewhere (Rod Strickland, Ed McCaffrey, Lenny Dykstra, Kevin Mitchell, Gregg Jefferies), and the top guys who arrived from elsewhere (a list that starts to fall off after Mike Piazza, Bernard King and Bob McAdoo - meaning no disrespect to Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez - and on which the top Giants are creaky old guys like Ottis Anderson and Fran Terkenton).

Looking at the list above, it's no surprise that the Mets have never had an MVP or a batting champ, the Knicks haven't had an MVP or scoring champ in the past 35 years, and I couldn't find the last time the Giants had a league leader in passing, rushing or receiving yards. My New York, at least, is a defensive town. That's why people went crazy for Stephon Marbury, who seems no more likely to bring home playoff glory than King or McAdoo, and why Mets fans are so hopeful about Jose Reyes if he can ever put together a healthy season.

Via Instapundit, the amazing true story of John Kerry snapping under the pressure of the right-wing Torquemadas at Good Morning America. If you're gonna gripe about the media, either (1) do it in private (recall Christy Mathewson's line that a ballplayer should always have an alibi and always keep it to himself) or (2) fight back on camera while you still have the audience (as George H.W. Bush did with Dan Rather). Don't whine with the cameras rolling after the live interview is over. Captain Ed has a great comment:

Hey ... what happened to "Bring It Ooooonnnnn!" Has he changed his campaign motto to "Maaaaake Iiiittt Stoooooopppppp!!!!"?

In a similar pile-on-Kerry vein, we have lots more where that came from:

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American Digest brings us an example, from Iraq, of "The Darwin Awards in Real Time." Priceless. On a similar note, Laurence from Amish Tech Support has an amusing tale of some Palestinian hoodlums who tried to rob a fully armed suicide bomber, an escapade that, shall we say, did not end well for anyone involved.

Just a reminder (see above) - besides asking for donations for Spirit of America, the Victory Coalition is also auctioning off a variety of valuable prizes and services to raise money. See Wizbang and A Small Victory for details. Unlike me, they'll be updating throughout the day, so keep checking.

From the latest Rassmussen poll, from Oregon: "[r]egardless of who they will vote for, 49% of Oregon voters think Bush will be re-elected while 32% think Kerry will win." This is terrible news for Kerry if that gap holds in the major battlegrounds; a perception that the election is going to the incumbent can be deadly for a challenger.

Rasmussen also reports, in advance of the 2005 election, that New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey trails Bret Schundler [who McGreevey defeated in 2001] 46% to 39%. What's the over-under on when we see a John Fund column on this? I say maybe an item in today's Political Diary and a column as soon as he gets done with the Toomey/Specter race.

Sgt. Mom over at Stryker's place has a nice essay on the joys of homemade clothing.

Ricky West's buddy the Failed M.C. is looking for Atlanta Falcons blogs. There is indeed a great dearth of football blogging out there (either that or I don't know where to look); even Football Outsiders seems a bit thin on its list of football blogs, especially team-specific ones.

Kevin Drum, quoting a columnist and adding his own question:

When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race.

The subject, of course, is Jack Kelley vs. Jayson Blair, and Pitts' point is precisely on target. Don't the folks who loudly insisted that affirmative action was to blame for Jayson Blair's transgressions owe us an explantion for their relative silence about the far worse journalistic fabrications of Jack Kelley?

This recycled canard makes no more sense than it did at the time of the Blair scandal, so why answer it afresh? Instead, I'll repeat what I wrote (partly in response to Drum) at the time:

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I have little to add about the death of Pat Tillman that hasn't been better said elsewhere, although a quote from General George S. Patton I'd seen used elsewhere lately seemed a fitting tribute: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

It is worthwhile, at such a time, to remember that Tillman is not the first professional athlete to put his athletic career aside and put his life on the line for his country. The sacrifices of the World War II generation, like Ted Williams, is also a tale that's been better told elsewhere, including the contributions of Williams, Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize, Warren Spahn, Yogi Berra, Ralph Houk, Phil Rizzuto, Cecil Travis, Mickey Vernon, Dom DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Johnny Pesky, Dick Wakefield, Joe Gordon, Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller, Alvin Dark, Sam Chapman, Buddy Lewis, Hank Sauer, Sid Gordon, Virgil Trucks, Hank Bauer, Barney McCosky, Ferris Fain, Eddie Robinson, Jackie Robinson, Wally Judnich, Enos Slaughter, Pete Reiser, Elbie Fletcher, Terry Moore, Al Rosen, Ralph Kiner, Pee Wee Reese, and others.

But baseball's sacrifices in the First World War need remembering, too, including:

*"Harvard Eddie" Grant, formerly an everyday third baseman for the Phillies and Reds, killed in action October 5, 1918 in the Argonne Forest.

*German-born Robert Gustave "Bun" Troy, who made a brief appearance with the Tigers in 1912, killed in action October 7, 1918 in Petit Maujouym, in France.

*Christy Mathewson, who suffered severe health problems from which he never recovered - possibly contributing to his death in 1925 at age 45 from tuberculosis - after inhaling poison gas in a training accident. (Ty Cobb also served in the same unit).

*Grover Cleveland Alexander, who as I explained here, would probably have made it to 400 wins or close to it if he hadn't lost a year at his peak to World War I, and who suffered lasting trauma from seeing combat with an artillery outfit.

*Sam Rice, who as I explained here, missed a year following his first big season after being drafted into the Army in World War I; Rice also got a late start in the majors because he’d joined the Navy at age 23 after his parents, wife and two children were killed by a tornado (Rice saw combat in the Navy, landing at Vera Cruz in 1914). Without those interruptions, Rice could easily have had 3500-3700 hits in the major leagues.

*Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville also missed a year to the Great War, as did several others I've overlooked here.

Perhaps not quite on the same level as a guy like Tillman, who volunteered for some of the Army's most hazardous duty, but in the long run those are just details. Heroes all.

There are baseball heroes, and then there are just plain heroes. And then there are guys who were both. More on that subject later. For now, it seems an appropriate moment to tell a story I've been meaning to get to for some time: the day I met Ted Williams.

Now, for a variety of reasons, I've been fortunate to meet a number of famous ballplayers and political figures, and even managed to get my picture taken with some of them. But there's nothing quite like meeting the Splendid Splinter in person.

This was back in the fall of 1992, my senior year of college, and I was an officer in the College Republicans at Holy Cross. We were in Boston for a Bush/Quayle '92 event, filled with the sort of enthusiasm that no one over the age of 21 could possibly have had for the Bush/Quayle ticket, in Massachusetts, in the fall of that year. The Mets had a better year in 1992.

I was with Shawn Regan, a friend and the head of the CR group at the time, and one of us (Regan, I think) had thought to bring a camera. Early on, I believe, we managed to snag a picture with Bill Weld, then the governor of the state (politicians, wisely, are pretty generous with having their pictures taken with young volunteers, even if we weren't really all that useful to the campaign). But Williams was the evening's big attraction; he was speaking to a fairly modest-sized conference room full of people (us included), raising money and enthusiasm for the first President Bush's re-election. This being 1992, of course, the politics of military service were about the opposite of what they are today, and Williams' brief talk focused heavily on George H.W. Bush's distinguished service as a World War II fighter pilot in the Pacific, an experience Williams himself famously shared, and on the contrasting service record (or, rather, the absence thereof) of Bill Clinton. Teddy Ballgame, to put it mildly, did not think much of Clinton.

Williams was then still in great health and vigor - as he would remain until his stroke two years later - and that night he was in full John Wayne mode, wearing a bolo tie and pressing on through his speech with more force than eloquence. Of course, it was tribute enough to hear a speech from a man who so visibly did not enjoy giving them.

The chronology escapes me now, but I believe it was before Williams' speech that we ran into him (almost literally) as he was coming out of the men's room, with a fairly small group around him. Regan, who had a bit more presence of mind than I did at this juncture, managed to get out, "Mr. Williams, do you mind if we get a picture with you?" So, each of us got to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the great hitter himself. As we posed for the photo, Williams said something along the lines of "two fine fellows," to which I believe I responded something like "urk". I mean, how can you not be in awe of Ted Williams? And I still have a copy of the picture to this day (not the original photo, which was in my office at the World Trade Center, but a copy of my parents' copy; it'll do).

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Mets are fielding an even worse lineup today, with Guitierrez and Zeile in the infield and a AAA outfield of Karim Garcia, Jeff Duncan and Eric "Prince" Valent.

The results thus far have been predictable - drop what you're doing and go check out what's in progress at Wrigley.

UPDATE: Jinx worked; Matt Clement lasted one more inning with the no-hitter before surrendering a homer into the foliage in dead center by Garcia and, for good measure, a single by Valent (Mike Piazza gets an assist for an 8-pitch at bat before Garcia came up). But Clement's still in with 12 whiffs and a 3-run lead with one out in the top of the 8th.

Turns out that Americans aren't the only ones who are woefully ignorant about history. From a recent survey of more than 2,000 people in Britain:

*11% think Hitler was a fictional character; 9% think the same of Winston Churchill. Score one here for American use of our historical figures on money and commemorations of their birth for holidays; I doubt that 10% of Americans would think Washington or Lincoln was a fictional character. The rest of the results are also appalling, although the last group suggests that some of the respondents were either (i) high or (ii) pulling the survey takers' legs. Also, the 32% who believe the Cold War never happened may include a number of people who thought the same thing while it was still in progress.

The rest of the list:

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Your New York Mets starting lineup today against Kerry Wood:

Kaz Matsui, SS
Todd Zeile, 3B
Mike Piazza, 1B
Shane Spencer, LF
Karim Garcia, RF
Mike Cameron, CF
Vance Wilson, C
Joe McEwing, 2B
Tyler Yates, P

You just aren't going to win much with that; is it any surprise they got shut out? And while we're at it, why have Zeile hit second and Cameron sixth? At least Cameron can run if he manages to get on base; Zeile was slow 15 years ago. Actually, despite a few lapses in the field, Cameron has basically been exactly what he was cracked up to be, batting .236/.418/.348 after hitting .253/.431/.344 last season and .239/.442/.340 in 2002.

So after Thursday's post I am informed, in at least one case with a fairly typical lack of civility, that there is a distinction between those posters at Daily Kos who could be considered co-bloggers and those who make "diary" entries posted to a different part of the site . . . I'll admit that in my time of reading the site I never really noticed the difference, and I don't think it makes much of one, in the sense that the site really has more in common with the Democratic Underground or FreeRepublic.com than with a mainstream blog in having no filter whatsoever to keep the worst examples of hate-filled extremism from filling up the site (at least Charles Johnson, for all the guff he gets, doesn't let the nuts out of the comment section). [UPDATE: Gerry Dales assures me that Free Republic does, in fact, have filters to keep the place from going to the nuts. My bad - not a site I read regularly either, and perhaps I'm making the mistake of buying into the bad reputation of the site in some quarters. Lesson: don't make generalizations about sites unless you're a regular reader.].

I went back today just to look over the "diary" area, and like clockwork there was this beaut, reprinted in its entirety:

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Like most bloggers, I get emails from time to time asking me to check out new blogs. Generally, like most bloggers, I'm more interested in someone sending me an interesting post they've written rather than a general "look at my blog" or "let's trade links." But I also remember when, not so long ago, this was a small blog in internet nowhere, so I hate to just blow people off.

My two cents, by the way, on getting linked? Here's a few tips:

1. Write regularly. Regular content is huge in getting noticed.
2. Write during the business day. Hard to do if you're employed, but let's face it - that's when a lot of blog reading happens, and if you're writing regularly, people will come back to see what's new.
3. Pitch the post, not the blog. See above - this is standard advice.
4. Know your audience - don't pitch everything to everyone. Every time I send an email about a post, I think hard about who might be interested in it.
5. Link the post. There's no better way to get a blogger's attention than to write about something they've written, preferably in a thoughtful way, whether you agree or not. It won't work with Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan or other really huge bloggers (den Beste is an exception to this), but for most of us, we check to see what's written about us.
6. Comments. Regular and thoughtful comments on a site will lead the blogger and other readers to click through and see how you write on your own.
7. Donate to Spirit of America and drop a line to me, Michele, and/or Kevin!

Anyway, presented without further introduction, here's a list of blogs who have dropped me a line the past few months, mostly baseball blogs and also some message boards, if you're looking for new content to read; some of these are no doubt good sites and some are not, but I haven't had time myself to tell the difference:

The Bug (Mudville Magazine Blog)
The Galvin Opinion (Holy Cross Grad!)
Mets Forever
Beer and Whiskey League American League Blog
News to Me
BostonSportsNation.com
TheSportsCritics.com
Detroit Sports Blog
Top’s Seattle Mariner Forum
Oakland A's Fans Baseball Discussion Forum

Enjoy!

Michael Fishman, a new contributor over at Dan Lewis' new site, demands to know why Jose Lima is starting for the Dodgers and Wilson Alvarez isn't.

Following up on yesterday's review of Tony Gwynn and Tim Raines . . . there are a variety of statistical metrics out there to measure a player's career value. Let's mix and match, with a hearty helping from the Baseball Prospectus, sticking to the same comparison group of Gwynn, Raines, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Paul Molitor, Pete Rose, and Ichiro.

PLAYER	WS	OPS+	XO/600PA	RC/27	EqA	EqR	WARP3	TrAvg	TrSlg	TrOBP
Gwynn	398	132	23	6.76	.306	1658	119.2	.352	.496	.405
Raines	390	123	17	5.92	.307	1703	127.3	.308	.475	.401
Carew	384	131	23	6.25	.301	1651	115.6	.339	.465	.405
Boggs	394	130	15	7.03	.309	1685	138.2	.336	.467	.425
Molitor	414	122	17	6.07	.297	1881	123.9	.315	.482	.379
Rose	547	118	15	5.64	.288	2242	153.6	.310	.448	.386
Suzuki	84	121	14	6.19	.294	332	26.2	.342	.460	.390

Holy acronyms, Batman! See below for explanation. You will notice a few things:

*Again, these players look pretty similar, at least as hitters, once you adjust for context.

*If you're wondering, Raines earns 51 fielding Win Shares to Gwynn's 45, which helps even the score a bit despite Gwynn's offensive advantage.

*The BP stats - which love Wade Boggs - prefer Raines to Gwynn with the bat despite Gwynn's higher batting average. That "XO" category tells a big part of the story - Raines made very few unnecessary outs (he rarely hit into DPs and was the greatest percentage base thief of all time, almost 85% in nearly 1000 attempts), while Gwynn and Rod Carew made the most such outs of anyone in this group.

*Gwynn's high batting average gives him the best translated slugging percentage in the group, although Molitor had the most power.

*Ichiro, even just on three seasons of his prime, barely keeps pace with the rest of the group. He's an outstanding player, but he's not Gwynn or Raines or the others.

*Yes, Tony Gwynn was a great player. But if you can find a dime's difference between Gwynn and Raines, you are stretching. Raines should be every bit as much the no-questions-asked Hall of Famer as Gwynn.

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According to this April 1 report, the Bentley College Republicans came up with just a brilliant contest, one that you should try at your school, if you're a student (or at a weblog near you, for that matter):

The contest offers a $100 to the first Bentley student who can "unequivocally define John Kerry's position" on certain issues. The issues listed are NAFTA, Gay Marriage, Iraq, Taxation and Education, specifically the No Child Left Behind Act. To win the contest a student must "point out a vote by John Kerry in the Senate which is not contradicted by any public statements or previous vote made by the candidates." [sic] The contest ended on Monday, March 29 with approximately fourteen entries, described more as commentaries than entries, and no winners.

Warning: this post contains racially insensitive language

It wasn't so long ago, only a few months, that Daily Kos (supposedly the second-most-linked and -read blog, although that combines its rankings with Political State Report) was presenting itself as a part of the political mainstream, a legitimate indicator of a movement within the Democratic Party. These days, the donkey can't run fast enough away from the wacko hatemongers at Kos.

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Yeah, you knew that already - if "sucks" is strong enough a word for the senseless death, imprisonment, torture, oppression and impoverishment of millions worldwide, not to mention an arms race, numerous wars and coups, etc. We had a grim reminder today of those horrors in the thousands incinerated in North Korea by a train collision, an event that was almost certainly caused by the endemic and frequently fatal incompetence of communist regimes.

Thankfully, we're down to just two hard-core Communist states (North Korea and Cuba), although nominally Communist China is still a tyranny and some shifty ex-Communists can still be found in power throughout the former Warsaw Pact. No thanks to John Kerry (seen here shaking hands with Sandanista dictator Daniel Ortega), who from his return from Vietnam all the way through the end of the Cold War never really got on board with the notion that it was a worthwhile endeavor to rid the world of this malignancy. Today's edition of OpinionJournal's Political Diary (worth every penny of the $3.95/month cost) gives some examples from Kerry's tour with the anti-war movement in the early seventies, the efforts that shot him to the political prominence on which his entire subsequent career has been founded:

Mr. Kerry may have to explain yet more dubious remarks from [1971] at West Virginia's Bethany College in which he declared: "Our democracy is a farce; it is not the best in the world." College newspaper accounts report Mr. Kerry also told students that "there is a disbelief in the American Dream, people are questioning if it is really a dream or if the dream still exists."

Mr. Kerry went on to tell his Bethany College audience that communism did not represent a threat to the United States. "The soldier went to Vietnam to defend the country from aggressive communism in the tradition of World War II," Mr. Kerry said. "But the soldier learned he was not fighting communism. Communism was not a threat to our country and the war was not moral."

NRO also has words with a Vietnam-era critic of Kerry's blithe use of false charges against American soldiers; it's a good read, and an important one. Kerry's conduct in the early 70s wasn't just irresponsible or impulsive youth; it was about the conscious use of sensational slanders to advance his own career at the expense of the national interest, and about patterns of thought and behavior about national security issues that have plagued his entire public career.

The Man Without Qualities does some September 11 myth-busting. Among the myths:

3. The September 11 hijackers used box cutters as weapons. Instead, the Commission said it was more likely the hijackers used "Leatherman" utility knives that have several tools and a long, sharp blade that locks into position - which at least two of the hijackers probably purchased and FAA guidelines permitted on board. Box cutters were banned.

For those who have complained - rightly - of Hollywood's post-September 11 squeamishness about making movies about terrorism where the bad guys are (duh!) Muslim and/or Arab fanatics, there is hope: Steven Spielberg, who's likely to be pretty damn unsympathetic to lunatic Jew-hating Palestinian terrorists, is making a movie about the terror attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Around the blawgosphere and elsewhere . . .

*Eugene Volokh notes that the metamorphosis of amici curiae from friends of the court to friends of the parties can be traced to the early- to mid-19th century and the rise of written as opposed to oral advocacy.

*If you haven't noticed yet, the indefatigable Howard Bashman has moved to a new address at http://legalaffairs.org/howappealing/; like Kevin Drum, he's now the opening act for the online home of a magazine, in this case Legal Affairs. Speaking of which, Legal Affairs has a good writeup on New York's Martin Act, with some useful historical detail as well as some anonymous potshots at New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

*California gets tough on unfounded lawsuits, as a California Supreme Court opinion (authored by DC Circuit nominee Janice Rogers Brown) concludes that a lawyer can be sued for malicious prosecution for continuing to pursue a lawsuit that appeared to have arguable merit when filed but was later discovered to be frivolous:

"Continuing an action one discovers to be baseless harms the defendant and burdens the court system just as much as initiating an action known to be baseless from the outset," Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote. "As the court of appeal in this case observed, 'It makes little sense to hold attorneys accountable for their knowledge when they file a lawsuit, but not for their knowledge the next day.'"

Ironically enough, the case involved (stay with me here) a lawyer suing his former client's lawyer for malicious prosection in bringing an action on behalf of the former client against her former lawyer. For his actions in yet another lawsuit.

If you're like me, you regularly read Lileks' Bleats but don't often remember to check up on his other writings, such as at the Backfence (unfortunately, the Star-Tribune requires registration). If so, you're missing some great stuff. This one cracked me up:

Perhaps you've noticed that the Brawny towel guy has been retired, due to his anachronistic '70s style mustache. The facial hair no longer said "alluring fantasy object to the bored housewife"; it said, "creepy guy in rusty van playing Foghat too loud, wagging his tongue." There's a new giant spokesman grinning at Mrs. American Pulp Purchaser, and the Brawny roll now says:

MASSIVELY IMPROVED.

I do believe this is the first time that any product has claimed to be MASSIVELY IMPROVED. It suggests improvements on such a scale that it's difficult to quantify. I can only imagine the meeting that led to this boast: "Gentleman, Project Brawny has resulted in breakthroughs in absorption technology the likes of which we could not possibly have anticipated. In light of these developments, I propose that we scrap plans to announce that Brawny has a 'great new look, same great soaker-upper strength' in favor of stronger language that reflects the nature of our discovery.

Geoff Young at Ducksnorts has some well-deserved fun at the expense of Baseball Prospectus' comment that Ichiro Suzuki "is the player people think Tony Gwynn was." Now, it's true enough that Gwynn's high batting averages led many casual observers to overrate him over the years. But BP's disdain for Gwynn goes overboard, and shows a real lack of appreciation for the man's talents, as well as for the broader point: the value of batting average.

Which presents two questions. The first is about batting average itself. As I noted three years ago in my tribute to Ichiro, the hallowed place of batting average in the minds of sportswriters can be traced to the fact that, back when the game began in the 1870s and early 1880s, the ability to "hit 'em where they ain't" really was the game's one and only really critical offensive skill.

Guess what? For all the uses of power, speed and patience, it's still the most important skill. Don't believe me? Simple math tells the story. Let's look at the league totals for 2003:

League	Hits	Extra Bases	BB	SB
NL	23126	13763	8666	1294
NL	49.4%	29.4%	18.5%	2.8%
AL	20931	12553	7223	1279
AL	49.9%	29.9%	17.2%	3.0%

Yes, I know this is a crude calculation, but it makes the point (in fact, Hits still outweight Extra Bases if you add the number of home runs to the latter and subtract it from the former, even in our homer-happy era). While there are exceptions (like the extreme case of Barry Bonds), the ability to get hits is still the most valuable single skill in the offensive toolkit.

(The other major objection to batting average, set out at some length in the Orioles team comment of this year's Prospectus, is that the ability to hit singles, doubles and triples is a more volatile and less dependable skill from year to year. That's a valid objection, but it's a far cry from showing that it's not a statistically significantly measurable individual skill).

Anyway, the other question raised is about Tony Gwynn himself - how good was he? I've been looking at Gwynn in the context of comparing him to Tim Raines, for purposes of explaining Raines' Hall of Fame candidacy, and I'll admit that I was surprised myself to see how well Gwynn stacks up. Rather than a systematic analysis, let's just show how a variety of different career offensive measures stack up both Gwynn and Raines against four other similar recent players of undeniable Hall of Fame credentials - Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Paul Molitor, and Pete Rose. I'll throw Ichiro's numbers through 2003 in the mix just to fill things out.

Let's look at the raw numbers first:

PLAYER	PA	TOB	TB	R	RBI	SB	Avg	Slg	OBP
Gwynn	10232	3955	4259	1383	1138	319	.338	.459	.388
Raines	10359	3977	3771	1571	980	808	.294	.425	.385
Carew	10550	4096	3998	1424	1015	353	.328	.429	.393
Boggs	10740	4445	4064	1513	1014	24	.328	.443	.415
Molitor	12160	4460	4854	1782	1307	504	.306	.448	.369
Rose	15861	5929	5752	2165	1314	198	.303	.409	.375
Suzuki	2191	815	887	349	182	121	.328	.440	.374

(TOB=Times on Base)

At first glance, aside from the massive size of Rose's career and Boggs' superior OBP and lack of steals, what's remarkable is how similar these guys look. Continued tomorrow - some more sophisticated measurements.

I'll break in here quickly from my lunch to remind you to donate to the Spirit of America, a charitable group supporting the efforts of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to spread good will with the people who live there. See here for more on the group's current need for donations, and here for a first-hand testimonial from LT Smash. I've joined up with the coalition of blogs headed by Kevin from Wizbang and Michele from A Small Victory in soliciting donations daily between today and next Thursday for this worthy cause (Michele has more on the friendly competition with two other blog coalitions to see who can raise the most money).

Please Donate Here.

Thank you.

I have to say, at this point there just isn't anybody in the Mets' bullpen I would trust. Tonight's game was yet another fiasco . . . I suppose Weathers has been reliable at times in the past, but he's probably the best they've got, and that's not saying much (Looper can be dominating when he's on, but he's basically just a cheaper, wilder Benitez). I know spending money on the bullpen is justifiably a low priority for a rebuilding team, but that doesn't make it more fun to watch, and it does make me appreciate Bobby Valentine, who whatever his other faults always managed to put together a pen that could hold leads.

Presented for your consideration:

*Matt Welch and Kevin Drum try to make something of the idea that President Bush struck some sort of secret deal with the Saudis to drive down oil prices before the elections (which, as James Joyner notes, is pretty much what John Kerry was critizing the Bush Administration for not doing only a few weeks ago).

*QandO and Captain Ed think the story doesn't add up to much when you put it in perspective and consider the source.

What intrigued me about this whole story, though, is that only a month ago, in a widely-discussed piece, Ed Lasky was arguing precisely the opposite: that the Saudis were deliberately using high oil prices to squeeze the economy to try to get Bush out of office.

The truth? Hard to say. Although I've long since concluded that Occam's Razor, especially when applied along criteria we in the West would understand, does not apply to the motivations of the Saudi regime, given the byzantine internal politics of the Saudi royal family.

Lileks has been on a ferocious roll lately. Tuesday's Bleat looks at Claudia Rossett's NRO piece drawing up a roadmap of the ties between the UN's oil-for-food boondoggle for the benefit of the long-suffering Iraqi people Saddam Hussein and some secretive financial institutions that have been linked to Al Qaeda. Rossett's piece is far from definitive, but it's cautious and apparently well-sourced, and raises some real issues about whether Saddam's dealings with shady Al Qaeda-linked financiers and his evident opportunity to funnel them money undetected was just coincidence. Among other things, Lileks notes the problem this could later present for the Democrats and their standard-bearer:

[W]hat does this do for John Kerry’s credibility? He stated on Sunday that Saddam had no connections to Al-Qaeda, an assertion that has now taken on the mantle of Absolute Fact.

Monday, Lileks gave a well-deserved Fisking to Andrew Sullivan's call for a regressive, growth-strangling gas tax. Read the whole thing.

Friday, Lileks offered up the best effort I've read yet to articulate the opposition to the gay marriage movement (indicative of his openness to honest debate on the one issue but not the other, Sullivan links to the gas tax Bleat but ignores this one). After noting that he doesn't have a religious issue with homosexual relations or with same-sex marriage, Lileks tears into the argument of an anthropologist in support of same-sex marriage, in terms that are worth reprinting here in full:

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Michael King looks at a shameful banner ad run by the Kerry campaign demonizing Halliburton while its employees are in the firing line over in Iraq. (In fact, if you know your history - the British East India Company, anyone? - the Kerry people even have the past wrong). It's still amazing that the guy can simultaneously run on a platform of (1) demonizing companies that send American jobs to foreign countries and (2) threatening to take big contracts away from an American company and give them to foreigners.

King also notes that Doonesbury is about to have a character, former football star B.D., lose a leg in Iraq (I'm not clear what he's doing there, but then if I read Doonesbury twice a year it's a lot). I agree with King that while this could be a good storyline in less aggressively partisan hands - and probably good for the aging, decades-past-its-prime comic strip - Trudeau's record doesn't suggest a guy who's capable of that kind of balance.

Somebody explain to me why anyone still listens to Michael Moore? (Link via Instapundit).

Stryker has some updates on supposedly non-existent WMD.

Cleaning out old emails, a reader had sent me this WaPo article forever ago - it's got some interesting lore on baseball bats.

Ed Moltzen has some fun excerpting quotes from various big bloggers on the Left (from way back in early 2004!) who held their breath until they turned blue demanding that President Bush release every last scrap of paper anyone had anywhere bearing on his National Guard service. None of these bloggers, it seems, have had anything at all to say about John Kerry holding off on full disclosure of his military records.

Now, this seems to be a ridiculous controversy, and Mickey Kaus may be wise to suspect a trap:

[M]aybe it's a trap. Kerry's intentionally turning the military records fight into a bigger story than it had to be because he knows that when the full records are (inevitably) released reporters will discover not scandal but official encomiums to his character and leadership!

(Emphasis in original). Tonight on CNN, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Kerry adviser Michael Meehan issues a carefully worded statement in response:

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A reader writes to ask, "Omar Vizquel is about to get his 2000th hit. How many players who have achieved such a milestone have been worse offensively?" I think we have an answer, at least on the question of who was the worst.

Vizquel - who stands at 1998 hits entering tonight's action - has been, on balance, a pretty mediocre hitter, albeit a good one in his best seasons and more than productive enough to go with his slick glove at short. His career averages are .273 batting, .356 slugging and .340 OBP.

According to Aaron Haspel's invaluable search engine, thirty players have (like Vizquel) notched 2,000 hits without either a career OBP of .350 or a career slugging % of .400. Aaron's search engine hasn't been updated with stats beyond 2001, but the only other recent entrant to the 2,000 hit club who approaches this level of futility is Marquis Grissom, who last season became the 24th player to clear 2,000 hits with an OBP of .330 or less.

The leading contenders for worst of the bunch are the five players with career OBPs below .310 and career slugging percentages below .400 - Tommy Corcoran, Frank White, Larry Bowa, Bill Mazeroski, and Garry Templeton. Each has his own merits - Bowa has the lowest slugging percentage of the group at .320, White struck out twice as much as the others and had the lowest batting average (.255) plus playing in a DH league, and Mazeroski was the only one who didn't steal bases. But it's nearly impossible to argue with Corcoran; the former Dodgers and Reds shortstop had the lowest OBP of the group (.289) and a poor slugging percentage (.335), while being an everyday player through the 1890s, the highest-scoring offensive era in baseball history. In 1895, for example - not a particularly atypical year for Corcoran - he batted .265 with a .299 OBP while the National League as a whole batted .296 with a .354 OBP, and the average team scored 6.58 runs/game. After the offensive bonanza of the 1890s turned to the low-scoring 1900s, Corcoran was even worse relative to the league, a .240 hitter with no power who regularly drew less than 20 walks a year. Given that he played regularly for many years, mostly on winning teams, Corcoran must have been contributing something with his glove; he sure wasn't helping with the bat.

Two years ago, I wrote:

Whatever you think about the merits of a gay man in baseball coming out publicly, I can't possibly imagine a worse situation than 'outing' the star of a contending team in midseason against his will.

Obviously, this was a failure of imagination on my part, given the murder-for-hire story swirling around Mike Danton of the NHL's St. Louis Blues . . . if the stories around Danton are true - and they may well not be - there can't be anybody to be happy at this being the first public 'outing' of an active gay athlete in major team sports. See here for an example of a press release trying feverishly to spin this story as one about "homophobia" to get a sense of how unpleasant this whole thing is, or look at how hard some of the news stories are straining to avoid explaining the "relationship" Danton is purported to have had with his 'roommate.'

Anyway, I won't be following this bizarre saga, but Eric McErlain's all over it.

The Bush campaign passes another milestone with a mass email last Thursday - Tax Day, of course - picturing John Kerry side-by-side with Ted Kennedy, with the caption "If You Need A Good Reason To Support President Bush, Here It Is":

Both Ted Kennedy and John Kerry Voted Against President Bush's Tax Relief in 2001 and 2003. Both Ted Kennedy and John Kerry Voted For Bill Clinton's 1993 Tax Increase -- the Largest Tax Increase in History.

(Emphasis in original). It's a fair enough ad, of course - those are hardly votes Kerry could try to run away from.

Meanwhile, the Bush campaign overhauls its "official blog". It looks pretty good - "official blog" is still something of an oxymoron, but the campaign looks to have figured out what a campaign blog can do in terms of churning out daily raw materials for unaffiliated bloggers to run with. I can understand why there are no comments - the campaign doesn't want to be held responsible for what's said there - although a trackback feature or Technorati links or some such would be a nice nod to the interactivity of the blogosphere in a way that doesn't require the campaign to have even implicitly endorsed the content of the blogs sending links.

Mark Cuban has some revealing if unduly cynical thoughts about the stock market, from someone who was on the inside in the 1990s. (Yet again, Cuban writes with the touching naivete of a guy who thinks you can speak freely about the stock market in this country without getting sued at the drop of a hat). While I can't agree with Cuban's wholesale cynicism about the market, it's amazing how often investors, like sports fans and sports teams, forget that something that is a good buy at one price can be a terrible investment at a different price. His story about a company called Gandalf is a great example of the phenomenon.

With last night's strangulation by Tyler Yates on the way to his first major league win, the Expos have scored 20 runs in 12 games, an average of just 1.67 runs per game and nearly a run below the worst mark in major league history, the 1908 Cardinals, who averaged 2.41 runs/game in a league where the average team scored 3.33 R/G.

The Expos shouldn't be quite that bad, particularly if Nick Johnson ever returns, but the offense does look grisly. However, asking the good people of Montreal and San Juan to sit through the 1899 Cleveland Spiders - Part Deux! is too much. With the departures of Vladimir Guerrero and Javier Vazquez, this team no longer even pretends to be a competitive franchise any longer. And why Frank Robinson, baseball legend and successful manager and executive, has bothered to stick around when he no longer has Guerrero to mentor is just beyond me.

Put them out of their misery. Now.

Stuart Buck shares an unfinished tale of what may have been additional September 11 hijackers who got away without even being identified. There's gotta be more to this story. Right?

I meant to link to this one back when I was looking at Fred McGriff - Rich Lederer stands up for McGriff as a Hall of Fame candidate.

This weekend's series with the Pirates was one of those where-do-you-even start deals - just everything went wrong. The lowlight was Friday night's bullpen implosion that turned a 2-0 lead in the eighth inning into a 7-2 deficit, a hole that was just a bit too deep for the comeback that followed. And we still have yet to see the Mets' entire lineup on the field at once. Ugh.

From yesterday's Meet the Press:

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To date, thirty Halliburton workers have been killed in Iraq. Question of the day for Democrats who have bashed the company: are these Americans we are proud of? (I only caught the tail end, but CNN was running an interview with some Halliburton workers last night that seemed to be putting a human face on the company' workers in Iraq that doesn't look like a Thomas Nast cartoon).

On a related note, the papers have been buzzing about an Italian (read: "fraudulent" coalition member) security guard, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who was executed by his captors in Iraq; Quattrocchi reportedly tried to pull off his hood to look his captors in the eye and shouted, "I’m going to show you how an Italian dies." Noteworthy observation: in extremis, facing death and with nothing left to him but his pride, Quattrocchi fell back on something that mattered to him - his nationality. Not, "Europe" and not the "legitimacy" of international organizations. It is worthwhile, before sending men to fight and die - even sending private citizens into war zones - to remember for what they will do so.

In a move that will be of interest only to the most hard-core devotees of the encylopedic trivia of baseball history, the Mad Hibernian has informed me that The Pitcher Formerly Known Only As Fast has been identified.

I noted this in the comments the other day to the Mad Hibernian's post on Dontrelle Willis' slugging exploits: there's actually an active pitcher who's tied for the all-time record for career slugging percentage among players with more than one major league at bat: Esteban Yan, who has a homer, a single and a sacrifice hit in his three major league plate appearances. Equally interesting: he's only seen five pitches in those three plate appearances, and he's never batted in the minor leagues (I noted Yan homering on the first pitch he saw as a professional ballplayer as a sign of the apocalypse back in June 2000).

Yan's career slugging % of 2.500 ties him with pitcher Frank O'Connor, who posted a similar batting line for the 1893 Phillies. Two others have a slugging average of 2.000 - Ed Irvin, one of the sandlot subs from the famous Tigers strike game in 1912, who tripled in two of his three at bats, and Red Sox pitcher Hal Deviney, who singled and tripled in his only at bats in 1920.

Made some more changes to the blogroll, including a few I should explain. First of all, I've given a prominent place to Gerry Dales' Electoral College projections site, which looks at the most recent state-by-state polls. I found this site through James Taranto's Best of the Web, which linked to Dales on Thursday; it's precisely what I've been looking for for the past few months in keeping tabs on the only polls that matter. I'm still stunned by the polls Dales cites showing Bush leading in Democrat-leaning New Jersey; then again, besides the September 11 effect in NY & NJ, there may be a backlash growing in the state against Democrat governor Jim McGreevey, or at least an end to the long backlash against the state's GOP governors (who rode to power on the backlash against Jim Florio . . . ).

Second, I've taken Wonkette off my blogroll; I still check the site daily and will still link to specific items; there's some good stuff there. But I can't really recommend it to readers. Wonkette's obsession with pushing her point of view on gay issues into just everything makes Andrew Sullivan's content seem varied by contrast. She's still great with one-liners, but the Atrios impersonation on that one issue is starting to wear thin.

Third, I've also taken down the link to the ever-controversial Little Green Footballs. There's been persistent controversy over whether LGF, which was (ironically) something of a center-left-leaning site until September 11, has crossed the line into an anti-Islamic/anti-Arab hate site. Joe Katzman has some good thoughts starting here (link via Meryl Yourish); a lot of the issue revolves around whether Charles Johnson can be held responsible for the bile that pours from some of his enormous stable of regular commenters.

Of course, nearly every site that features comments has more extreme stuff in the comments than the blogger; it's the nature of the medium. I was going to weigh in, but it would be unfair of me to rip Johnson and ignorant of me to defend him, since frankly I don't read the site that much myself. LGF is still a great news-aggregating (and sometimes news-gathering) resource, and I have no problem linking to specific posts; but I can't really be bothered at this point to be responsible for endorsing a site when I'm not that up to speed on its contents (which isn't to say I'm totally on top of every site on my blogroll, but I'm not aware of any of the others generating so much angst).

This brings me to a broader point. I've de-linked Kos because I couldn't in good conscience be associated with his deplorable endorsement of murdering American contractors in Iraq, and I've stopped regularly reading Atrios because he makes my blood boil (see here for an example). But I'd have no problem linking to either if I ran across some reason to do so on a particular point. My general philosophy with the likes of Kos and Atrios is that if they come up with something worthwhile, I'll hear about it from Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall and Paul Krugman soon enough.

There are only two sites I would really have a problem linking to. One is Hesiod, who's just out of his mind; the other is the Agonist, who got nailed for plaigarism. Anybody else, I may not want to blogroll them, but they're part of the conversation.

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The Royals cruised to an early division lead last season by whomping on their division rivals; despite some great hitting early on, looks like we won't see that repeated, as KC has a 4-5 record (all against division rivals) and a 5.83 team ERA. Wednesday's game against the White Sox captured this perfectly, as the Royals rallied from a 6-0 deficit to get to 6-5, only to see Shawn Camp and Scott Sullivan give back two runs in the bottom of the seventh; then, after a stirring 4-run ninth inning rally involving back-to-back homers by Carlos Beltran and Mike Sweeney off Billy Koch (who doesn't look right now like a great bet to hold the closer job for the ChiSox), Curtis Leskanic blew the save and lost the game 10-9. Add in yesterday's 6-5 loss in 10 innings to Chicago, and you've got some real lost opportunities in the early jockeying for position in the AL Central.

TNR's Ryan Lizza has a good profile of Ted Kerry guru Bob Shrum in The Atlantic. My thoughts:

*Shrum quit the Carter campaign in 1976, telling Carter, "I am not sure what you truly believe in, other than yourself." How far he's come from that to working for Kerry.

*Lizza asks, "Why is it that almost every major candidate for the Democratic nomination since 1972 has wanted Bob Shrum to work for them?" The answer is obvious, and it's something Lizza notes elsewhere: it's because Shrum helped so many of them (Kerry included) win statewide office. They just don't get that the presidency is different.

*Why am I not surprised that a guy who's advised Kerry and Gore had a brief involvement with the New Coke fiasco, the world's worst example of mania for reinvention?

*Lizza's parade of nearly identical quotes from Shrum candidates over the years promising to be "a fighter" against "powerful forces" is hilarious. Does Shrum think he's Cus D'Amato?

*"With much of the country passionately aligned against President Bush, the consummate Shrum villain if ever there was one, the sociological and political landscape may at last be hospitable to the consultant's steadfast world view." Self-delusion, thy name is Lizza. Sorry, but Kerry can't win unless he can get the people who don't hate Bush to vote for him.

No, it's not the Onion. I swear I'm not making this up. The Reuters headline:

McDonald's Launches Anti-Obesity Campaign

and this, from the story:

McDonald's U.S. Marketing Director Alex Conti said the company was launching a new Web site to go along with its "Go Active" adult Happy Meals, which include a salad, bottled water and a pedometer to encourage walking.

The Web site, filled with pictures of celebrity athletes including basketball star Yao Ming, allows users to create fitness plans and track workouts.

Yao will presumably lecture us on the important obesity-avoiding benefits of being 7'2".

I really shouldn't be getting emails from the manufacturer about things like this. But buy a few toys for the kids, and the tempters return . . .

Michele is raising money to help the Marines in Iraq set up a TV station to win hearts and minds. Head on over and lend a hand - especially all you libertarians who want to show that even core government functions like foreign policy can be supported by private donations.

What on earth has got into Henry Blanco? The Twins looked to be in a tight spot indeed when, opening the season after dealing A.J. Pierzynski to the Giants, they lost Joe Mauer and Matt LeCroy to injuries, leaving the weak-hitting Blanco as the Twinkies' everyday catcher. This is a guy who's never slugged .400 or batted higher than .236 in five major league seasons; his career high OBP was .320, and that came in Coors Field.

So what does he go and do? Through 7 games including tonight's explosion, Blanco has cracked 3 doubles and 3 homers and drawn 5 walks for a Ruthian .364/.909/.500 line. My first instinct is to point out that, even in such a small sample size, patience pays off; Blanco's been seeing almost an extra pitch per at bat compared to the past two years; the result is both a higher walk rate and the power that comes from seeing good pitches. The more obvious answer, other than the fact that anybody can have 4 good games (Blanco opened the season 0 for his first three starts), may be some of the same thing that helped Orlando Husdon's spike in seeing pitches: the Tigers. Blanco's faced nobody but Detroit and Cleveland.

Sometimes, a hot streak is just a soft spot in the schedule.

Soxblog has some thoughts on the applicability (or not) of the Bill James/Moneyball approach outside of the baseball world (which rather completes the circle, since Michael Lewis' book worked in large part because he brought lessons from Wall Street to bear on baseball). I agree with his diagnosis that baseball is much more easily subject to objective analysis because the number of variables that have changed over time is pretty minor compared to other fields. Mike and the Mad Dog also interviewed Lewis today (audio link here; hat tip to Dr. Manhattan, who emailed the link with the comment that it shows "an example of parties speaking different languages even though the conversation is in English").

Somehow, I let the 14th of April pass without noting that this marks one year since I moved this site over from Blogspot and went live with the new Movable Type blog (albeit at a domain I'd owned since 2000). Here's my daily average traffic in that period according to HostMatters:

Month	Visits
Apr 2003	115
May 2003	192
Jun 2003	243
Jul 2003	321
Aug 2003	283
Sep 2003	329
Oct 2003	403
Nov 2003	394
Dec 2003	410
Jan 2004	544
Feb 2004	726
Mar 2004	735
Apr 2004	755

Thanks to everyone who's dropped by, linked or otherwise supported the site, particularly early supporter David Pinto, the straw that stirs the baseball blogosphere.

I can't say this often enough: in asking what could have been done pre-September 11, you have to divide the question in two parts: offense (taking the fight to the terrorists) and defense (ratcheting up homeland defense and law enforcement).

On offense, in hindsight, Clinton was a (can we use the phrase?) miserable failure. There are, I think, fair-minded arguments on both sides about whether and what Clinton could or should have done based on what was known at the time, but we now recognize with the benefits of hindsight that he should have done more to pressure and/or topple terror-sponsoring states, finish off the camps in Afghanistan, etc. Bush failed, again in hindsight, by failing to change Clinton's policies in this regard. But with just 8 months in office, no public mandate for war, no consensus on the issue among our allies, and his hands full just trying to get all his foreign policy people through the Senate (the people who want UN approval for everything didn't mind dragging their feet on Bush's UN ambassador), a quick change in policy would have been turning a battleship in a bathtub.

On defense, again, hindsight proves that there were systemic and bipartisan failings in providing for airport security, FBI/CIA cooperation, processing of intelligence, wiretap authority, etc. It seems clear that some of these could have cracked the case if we'd been organized as we are today. None of those systemic failures can be pinned on Bush (again, how many top DOJ jobs were left vacant for weeks or months?), and it's debatable how many can be pinned on Clinton, either. The problems were systemic.

What that leaves is the idea that, even with the faulty apparatus for gathering domestic inteligence and even with the meager infrastructure that existed for screening airline passengers pre-September 11, there was some information that went up the chain to the White House that should have led to the conclusion that something needed to be done ASAP that wasn't already being done. The FBI certainly seems to have been busy reassuring the President that they were all over this issue like PB on J.

What's left? That's where we get this August 6 briefing (although you can't evaluate it if you haven't seen what's in every briefing). As noted below, though, I just don't see what information was in that memo, taken in context and not just in hindsight, that says "stop what we're doing now, call the airports and look for Arab men fitting, you know, a certain profile." The bin Laden threat was indeed well-known - most of us knew September 11 was bin Laden as soon as the planes hit the towers. But the Democrats just haven't made the case that the red warning light of impending airline hijackings, specifically, should have gone off in a way that should have pointed to a practical solution.

With a dominant performance last night against Montreal, Brad Penny is off to one blazing start this season:

IP	ERA	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
15	1.80	3.6	1.2	1.2	9.6

Small sample size, of course; anybody can have two good starts. But not just anybody puts up an eye-popping 16-2 K/BB ratio even in that small a sample.