Gregg Doyel Update #2

For an update on my ongoing conversation with CBS Sportsline columnist Gregg Doyel, see here.

On the eve of Goose Gossage going into the Hall of Fame ...

Wow! It's been 25 years since the "Pine Tar Game."

There Are Too Many Flowers!

I’m reminded of a song from the good folks in Monty Python:

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

I’ve been meaning to complete this post for awhile and then when I read this piece by Hillary Clinton that discusses the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services taking action that could be seen as equating birth control with abortion, I felt compelled to get this post done a.s.a.p.:

There’s a car in my town that has a whole bunch of pro-life bumper stickers on it. I can only remember one of the car’s bumper stickers verbatim, but I can say with confidence that they largely consist of statements of pro-choice sentiment. The one bumper sticker that I do remember says, “Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers.” Since seeing this bumper sticker, particularly given its context, I’ve been bothered by its implications.

While I tend to define myself as “a big lefty” on a lot of issues, when it comes to abortion I’d say I’m a moderate who leans toward the pro-life side. That’s a position I’ve held for a number of years now after giving it a considerable amount of thought and changing positions on it several times. (I’m sure I’d be reticent not to mention that I’m sure my Catholic upbringing has influenced that position as well.) I’d be happy to explain why I hold the position that I do, but I don’t want to get bogged down in that right at this moment. Suffice for now to say that I think that both sides are right. I believe that this is, as pro-life folks say, an issue of how human life is defined. Yet, I also believe that this is, as pro-choice folks say, an issue of gender equity. I think more might be able to be done toward at least making this not so polarizing of an issue if both sides would stop digging their feet in the “I’m right; you’re not” dirt (which Clinton can be said to be guilty of doing to at least some degree in the piece that I read) and accept that the other side has a point as well. More both/and and less either/or seems like it could help in this situation. Indeed, my own position is not based on what I presume to know, but on what I suggest that I don’t know.

Given that take on issues of abortion, I tend to think a lot of abortion-related bumper stickers tend to be annoying anyway, since so many of them assert truth claims that I don’t think can really be asserted as truth claims … and I think many of the pro-life ones are some of most severe perpetrators of this kind of intellectual dishonesty. But even if I let that go momentarily as a necessary evil that tends to come with the kind of sound byte representation that goes into making bumper stickers anyway, I remain particularly upset with this car’s choice to juxtapose the other pro-life bumper stickers with the one that caught my eye. The context of this bumper sticker implies that saying “There’s too many children” is necessarily a call for acceptance of abortion. Yet, as someone who leans pro-life, I’ll attest that that statement does not have to mean that and that there may be nothing wrong with it as a statement. Indeed, I think the opposite sentiment (that there can never be too many children) is downright irresponsible. I believe that the soaring population of the human species is a large contributor to many of the most significant problems that we have today, most importantly as it is a major reason why we are overusing earth’s resources and hurting the planet (along with our ability to maintain our civilizations on this planet). So, I firmly believe that we should be limiting the number of children that we have so that we can keep from overrunning the planet. There are plenty of ways to do that without abortion (and, obviously, without more horrific things like mass killings), whether it be birth control, limited sexual activity, or other practices, depending on one’s views on each of those possibilities. The bottom line is that there absolutely can be too many children and I don’t want to jeopardize this world because people equate that sentiment with things that it doesn’t necessarily have to mean.

And, so, given all of that, especially as someone who has suffered from allergies, I am more than willing to declare that there are too many flowers.

After All, He Would Know ...

I've never been much of a fan of President George W. Bush. The nice way to put my sense of him is that his idea of how America should work radically diverges from mine. Another way to put it would be to say that I don't trust that he's really ever had the best interests of either the United States or the world as the basis for his administration, policies, etc. However, occasionally, he throws me a curve and I find myself a little bit drawn to something he says or does. While reading CNN.com today, this happened. CNN's Jack Cafferty reports that at a closed Republican fundraiser in Houston, Dubya said of the nation's economy, "Wall Street got drunk – it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is: how long will it sober up." Sure, it's not a good, full explanation of what happened, nor do I think it's an effective expression of how to remedy it. I mean, it essentially implies do nothing but let the free market fix itself over time--i.e. as long as it takes to sober up--which I don't think is necessarily the answer. Still, I think Cafferty's sarcastic comment that "The depth of the intellect at the very top of our nation's government is staggering, isn't it?" is kind of callous. I personally thought Bush's comment was a funny analogy that, at least from one perspective (again, a free market apologist perspective with which I don't necessarily agree), does capture a way of seeing what's happened.

Besides, wouldn't being hungover be one thing that Bush is highly qualified to talk about?

The Best Ballplayer Few People Talk About?

Last night, Garret Anderson of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim went 4-4, with a home run and 5 RBIs in helping to lead the Angels to an 11-3 win over the Boston Red Sox in what was a definite possibility for an American League Championship Series matchup. The Angels' win, combined with the Chicago Cubs' loss, momentarily catapulted the Angels into the best record in baseball. The game also reflected the ability to hit for someone who might be one of the most under-recognized players of his generation.

Now in his fifteenth season (all with the Angels), Anderson's numbers don't stick out as particularly extravagant. Going into play today, he's hit 266 home runs, driven in 1257 RBIs, and scored 995 runs. He's doesn't walk much ... only 387 walks over those fifteen seasons. He's also not particularly a base stealer, with 77 over his career, though he did steal 13 in one season and 10 in another. He is, however, a .296 career hitter and he has 2295 hits in his career. Injuries have limited him a bit over the past few seasons, driving down some of those numbers. Still, if he can continue to produce for several more seasons, he might be worthy of Hall of Fame consideration. He could push 3,000 hits and 1600 RBIs, both of which would put him into rare company. He certainly, though, has been and likely will be overshadowed by others his age. At 36, he is the same age as Manny Ramirez, Chipper Jones, and Carlos Delgado. A quick glance at statistics says that the first two of that list are clearly ahead of Anderson on the Hall of Fame list. Delgado is an intersting comparison--significantly more home runs and RBIs than Anderson, but significantly less hits and a significantly lower batting average. Anderson has also won a World Series (2002) and is on a team that perenially competes for and often makes the postseason. He probably reached the height of his popularity when he won the Home Run Derby in 2003, but that never turned into long-time superstar status. If we take the position of my previous argument about it being a Hall of Fame, Anderson wouldn't even be on the radar.

So, in the end, he might go the way of the likes of Dave Parker, Harold Baines, and so many others ... including, potentially, Fred McGriff (depending on what voters do) ... as really good players with very nice careers, but not quite enough for to be called a Hall of Famer. Still, I think he ought to be considered in the conversation ...

Then again, he was on my fantasy team during his years of greatest success (2000-2003), so I may be biased ...

Gin and (Cherry) Juice

Last Thursday, while in Traverse City, Michigan to attend the National Cherry Festival, I got to hear the Gin Blossoms in concert. Of course, it makes me feel old when a band that hit it big while I was in college is now classic rock headlining a festival. Still, it was a great show and it kicked off our vacation there on the most perfect note. They sounded great and my wife and I had an awesome time singing along to the many Gin Blossoms songs that we know. As lead singer Robin Wilson said at one point, "This is one of the most beautiful places we've played."

I'd have to agree with Robin. In 1998, I taught a summer course in Traverse City while I was working on my Master's degree at Michigan State. I'd spend the first few days of the week there, teach on Monday and Wednesday nights, and then drive back down to East Lansing for the remainder of the week and the weekend. For six weeks, it was wonderful.

I went back for the first time in nine years last year, as my wife and I spent one day in town toward the beginning of the National Cherry Festival. This year, we went back for the final two and half days, along with Monica's friend Sherry and her two daughers. From picking our own cherries and strawberries to driving out to the light house at the end of the peninsula to drinking cherry ginger ale at the Cherry Republic to swimming in the Grand Traverse Bay to eating ice cream at Moomers and pizza at Pangeas ... the list goes on and on ... culminating with watching fireworks over the bay with Pink Floyd music (from a tribute band called "Think Floyd"), it was an excellent time. The Cherry Festival is fun and worth a trip, but you don't have to go then to have fun in Traverse City. For me, it's one of the best places I know ... especially when a band from the town in which I met my wife (Tempe, Arizona) is playing the kind of music in which we share an interest. Ahhh ... it's moments like this that reaffirm how much I love my life.

A New Reason to Watch the Final Four

While so much sports news recently has centered on whether a certain supposedly retired Packer is coming or going, I was happy to see this story about another kind of Packer who is finally going. Billy Packer is leaving CBS men’s college basketball coverage, to be replaced by Clark Kellogg. For my taste anyway, this is a complete 180 degree turn for my sentiments about watching the lead team on CBS’s men’s college basketball coverage. I’ll go from having to endure a color analyst who annoys the hell out of me to listening happily to an analyst whom I enjoy.

Thank you, Billy, for packing it in.

Gregg Doyel Update

After I posted my entry about Gregg Doyel a few weeks ago, I sent him a message asking him to read the post. He did and he responded in his July 3 edition of Hate Mail, which can be found here. I've responded in turn and, among other things, let him know that my capacity for flagellation (and flatulation, for that matter) is quite high.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies …

I don’t really want to turn this blog into a series of cat memorials … I mean, I’m actually allergic to cats … but in what has been a summer of rather profound loss, particularly for my wife, the death of another cat has impacted our lives. Lucy, one of the many cats of Monica’s best friend and maid of honor from our wedding, Sherry, died on Sunday when she was hit by a car in front of Sherry’s house. I certainly new Lucy much better than Mocha, though Monica new Lucy much better than I did and, since finding out about my allergy to cats a few years ago, I hadn’t pet Lucy. Still, she had been Sherry’s cat for a long time, dating back to when I first met Monica in the late 1990s. We knew Lucy was getting old and might not have a lot of time left, but wished for her to have passed away in her sleep or in the garden or the yard or the bushes. Certainly, just about anything would have been better than being hit by a car in front of her house … just like Mocha almost a month ago to the day. I know I won’t feel the depth of missing Lucy that Monica, Sherry, or Sherry’s twin daughters will, since I didn’t know Lucy as well, but I certainly am thinking of her and, as I do, I picture Lucy on that boat on the river, cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over her head. I look for the cat with the sun in her eyes, but she’s gone …

A Lesson in the Confluence of Politics, Religion, and Sport

Appearing on the Mike and Mike morning show on ESPN radio, Bonnie Bernstein recently made some comments that have been taken as inappropriate by some—enough so that she even issued an apology, stating that she had learned a lesson by the reactions to the comment. As Bernstein explained it in her apology, “Lesson learned: Religion and politics have no place on public airwaves at a sports network. That's definitely a credo I will live by from this point forward.” While some have defended this as a good example of making a mistake, learning a lesson, apologizing, and moving on, this was entirely the wrong lesson to learn. I won’t go into too much detail about how horribly wrong of a lesson to learn this is; writing for AOL’s “fanhouse,” Michael David Smith does a good job of explaining why that lesson is so wrong. On that point, I agree with Smith adamantly. As I see it, if we stop talking about politics and religion and how they connect with sports, we may as well just give up any hope of democracy. Go see numerous posts on The Agon for some excellent discussions of some of the ramifications of not talking about how religion and politics intersect with sports.

Still, I disagree with Smith’s ultimate assessment as well. As Smith put it, “what's wrong is that Bernstein took such a serious matter as Palestinian suicide bombers and applied it so flippantly. And what's even worse is that she suggested that all Palestinians are taught that being a suicide bomber is something to aspire to, which is patently false. For that, she did not apologize. She should.” As I read what Bernstein was saying, I think there is the attempt to be sensitive to these issues; I really don’t read this as flippant at all, particularly as Bernstein said things like “I'm not making the comparison or the analogy.” To some degree, her attempts at this in the initial comments end up falling into a similar trap as her apology. She says, for instance, “I'm prefacing this by saying this is in no way an analogy to sports because I know we live in a hypersensitive society,” which suggests the reason to be cautious is not to make sure that the analogy is contextualized appropriately, but simply to make sure “sensitive” people don’t get offended by it. This just says not to say anything that might be controversial so as not to lose audiences (and, thus, customers, since this is a capitalist structure we’re talking about). To follow Smith’s advice, though, I think, would damn the comment to a problem that would be similar to that of proceeding with the idea that politics or religion and sport do not mix. It seems like Bernstein was making a connection that contained some potential insight. Much of the study of history, literature, sociology, and other fields in the humanities and social sciences ask us to see and articulate connections among various phenomena. Bernstein seemed to be doing just that in a way that had potential to point out the degrees to which individuals are raised in environments in which so many of the messages that they receive tell them something that they come to believe those messages—even if those messages convey something that’s not in their best interests or something that might not be a very good thing to believe. Thus, we need to recognize the role of these kinds of repeated messages when we look at why things are the way they are, whether it’s a lack of focus on education in lieu of false senses of the promise of sports or it’s a willingness to become a suicide bomber for religious convictions. Frankly, recognizing those kinds of connections seems to be a fundamental part of the study of things like culture, communication, and the structures of societies. To suggest that people not articulate these kinds of connections when they make them seems to stifle what can be productive discourse.

Rather, I would suggest that the lesson to be learned is to be more effective in articulating these points. Be more nuanced in the statements that one makes, articulating them in a way that more fully recognizes the complexities, as well as both the advantages and limitations, of one’s analogies. And when you add disclaimers, do so in a way that illustrates recognition of nuance, complexity and limitation. Otherwise, we have what so much of discourse today seems to be: a war between arguments that one shouldn’t have to be sensitive and arguments that one shouldn’t articulate connections that are potentially controversial because they might alienate people. Neither of these seems to be particularly useful for democratic dialogue. I tend to think that when people (usually from a conservative perspective, but not always) scream about “political correctness,” it’s a lazy excuse for not wanting to have to think about things and do the work to articulate oneself more effectively. They don’t want to have to deal with nuance. A case in point is that I’ve literally heard Rush Limbaugh explicitly suggest on his radio show that nuance is bad. Yet, if these folks have a legitimate point, it’s that the responses to them are usually overwhelmingly lacking. Responses tend to be reactionary, calling for people to be fired, to be censored, or to be in some other way made to feel like they should come to the same conclusion and take the same approach as Bernstein—i.e., just not talk about certain things anymore. When people feel like they just have to “shut up,” then I’d think democracy is definitely not being served. I think Don Imus is a good example. When, for instance, he made his comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, he lost his job when the media organizations for which he worked felt pressure to do something. Yet, this galvanized a whole group of people to yell about political correctness, it provided little forum to engage Imus’s comments publicly toward greater insight that might serve democracy, and it just allowed MSNBC and CBS Radio to steer away from any significant social issues this might bring up and, basically, stick their capitalist feet in the way of productive dialogue. A better course might have been to force Imus to devote an hour of his show to co-hosting with someone who is more sensitive to issues of race; the entire hour would be devoted to productive discourse about issues of race.

I suppose, though, that that course of action might not be seen as “good television” or “good radio.” Productive discourse doesn’t provide the drama of combatants holding to their black and white positions and duking it out like boxers to see who wins. To borrow a phrase from ABC’s Wide World of Sports and the late Jim McKay, nuance tends to lack “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” Drama and nuance tend to work as opposites and since so much of our media culture works on drama, nuance tends to be what goes by the wayside. And, so, we get dramatic declarations like Bernstein’s that politics or religion and sports don’t mix.

As Smith’s article reported, the National Arab American Journalists Association, which was among those who publicly criticized Bernstein’s remarks, responded to Bernstein’s apology. In their response, they “called Bernstein's statement ‘a genuine apology that expressed ESPN's and Dr. Bernstein's embrace of diversity and fairness’ and added Bernstein to its Honor List.” Oh, great. How, according to this response, does one embrace diversity and fairness and attain honor? By declaring oneself closed to looking at the politics of practices in places like sport. Hmmm … that sounds like the opposite of working toward diversity and fairness to me.