Dr. Metablog

Overmanaging, 2020.

The 2020 World Series is over, and I'm in a royal snit.

It's Game 6, the Dodgers are ahead 3-2, and Tampa Bay has a chance to win and make the series go to seven, which is what I'm rooting for (I don't have a dog in the hunt, because I disapprove of both teams: the Dodgers, are the despised simulacrum of the organization that abandoned Brooklyn 50+ years ago and Tampa Bay is from Florida, the Nowhere State -- plus it's an American League team, but that doesn't matter this year because for some phoney-baloney covid-related reason both leagues are using the DH. Tampa Bay is ahead 1-0 on a first-inning home run by Randy Arozarena, who has a great short powerful swing and is either the second coming of Henry Aaron and the centerpiece of the best trade in history (the worst for St. Louis) or the most spectacular flash-in-the-pan in major league history. It's the fifth inning, and Blake Snell has been pitching a masterpiece. Nine strikeouts and not a ball hit solidly. He's throwing 95 to the corners and his sinking curve is keeping the Dodger hitters completely off balance. He's looking almost like Koufax, for goodness sake. So what does Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay's manager do?  He takes out Snell and brings in Nick Anderson and two batters later, it's 2-1 Dodgers and the game is over and the Series is over. Removing Snell is the worst decision in baseball history, perhaps in sports history, perhaps the worst of any human decision since the emergence of homo sapiens.

Why was Snell relieved? Because of some bullshit trumpery statistics about pitchers being less effective going through the lineup the third time. Not applicable in this case; Snell had lost nothing off his fastball, he was still hitting his spots, and he was still demoralizing the Dodgers, who looked like dejected losers. Until -- that is, they were invigorated by the prospect of not having to hit against Snell any longer.

Is there a word "overmanaging?"  There ought to be. Both teams were over-managed. Too many pitching changes, too many absurd fielding shifts -- even putting four men in the outfield--, too many pinch hitters. Baseball used to be a players' game, and the job of the manager was to put his nine best players on the field and let them do their jobs, perhaps calling for a sacrifice or a steal or an intentional pass, or replacing a tired pitcher with some ex-starter or never-was from the bullpen. But now, baseball has turned into a manager's game, like (gasp) football. And when it backfires, as it did last night, what a disaster! What does Kevin Cash deserve, besides firing. If I were a Tampa Bay fan, I'd be outraged. I'd want revenge or his scalp, perhaps both.

I'm a baseball fan, and I'm outraged, livid, angry. I wanted to see what Blake Snell could do with the Dodger hitters, third time through. More reliance on his slider, more on the slow stuff? Could he keep getting them to swing and miss at his fastball at the top of the zone, or just above the zone? 

I'm a fan;  baseball should try to please me and the 90% of the spectators in America who knew that Cash was making a major blunder to pull Snell. I didn't watch the end of the game. Left the room. Boycotted.

Baseball is not as exciting as it was in the days of my youth. The players themselves are bigger, faster, stronger, and better trained, so it's not their fault. But because the hitters are so powerful, there are too many home runs. Home runs are only exciting when a batter catches all of it and blasts one 440 feet into the upper deck or 40 rows back into the lower.  There's nothing more boring than a muscular guy swinging under it and popping one up 340 feet onto the short porch. A travesty home run. The fences should be moved back 20 feet and raised to a mandatory 10 or 12 feet. A triple is much more exciting to watch than a Texas League homer. When was the last inside-the-park homer with a relayed throw to the plate, just a hair too late? 

And let's put the statisticians in their place. Tampa Bay is the only team in the league with a professional statistician on the bench -- one who never advanced past T-ball. Is he responsible for the manager's monumental gaffe?  And for goodness sake, let's get rid of the DH. When the pitcher is in the batting order, there's strategy in the game. It becomes a test of intelligence, not just a home run hitting contest. I want to admire a well-executed sacrifice bunt. 

My father had been a catcher in his younger days and had the busted fingers to prove it.  When he was dying, I went to visit him in the hospital. He was watching the Dodgers on the TV.  The next day, when I returned, he wasn't watching. I said, "Dad, there's a Yankee game on the TV; you could watch it."  He said, "Yankees. American League. DH rule. Not baseball."  He died soon after. 

I'm scared that baseball, greatest of all games, has become "not baseball."

Where I Live, 2020

For the last eleven years, I've lived in a downtown Boulder condominium. I much enjoy living here -- it's age appropriate. The rooms are all on one floor; there's an elevator; underground parking for the new Subaru; no snow shoveling; hardly any upkeep. It's quiet inside and out -- but right around the corner, just a block away, is the semi-famous Boulder Mall, with all the urban stuff that one could want. A music venue. Restaurants, shops, a bank, a drugstore, a barbershop, and just a half mile to the west, the very resourceful Boulder Public Library. In season, a farmer's market. Tourists and natives peacefully strolling. A good place for a guy my age to "hang."

There is, however, a small fly in the ointment. This past January, Ms. Reynolds, my consort and odalisque (we don't use the W word, or the H word either) bought a condo down the corridor from mine. As a result, both of us traverse the short distance (75 feet) between hers and mine multiple times a day before ending up in my place for dinner, perhaps a movie, and sleep. The difficulty is that there's a quirk in this building's heating system. The corridor is always frigid; for some reason that no one seems to understand, the air-conditioning, need it or not, is always turned up to 11. The temperature stands at 58F, summer and winter. The people who manage the building say that nothing can be done about the arctic blasts. Hard to believe, but apparently true.

We call our passage from one apartment to the other, "braving the polar vortex." The corridor itself is "the tundra." 

In an effort to remedy this situation, I have written the following letter to the authorities. 

"Dear Managers of the Building:

Inasmuch as it has proven impossible to raise the temperature of the corridor higher than 58F, I propose that we attack this flaw with a new and, I dare to suggest, more imaginative strategy. If we can't raise the temperature, let us lower it. With a little effort we can get it down to a consistent 48F. We could then make some money by using the corridor as a sort of root cellar. I envision a series of individual wooden boxes, say, perhaps 6' by 4', where residents at modest cost could store their beets, carrots, onions, and potatoes (bought in bulk at the Farmer's Market). It might even be possible to rent some of the boxes to outsiders and bring a little extra income into the building. What a marvelous (and ecologically sound) solution to our problem!!

Wait. On further thought, I have an even better idea. Let's lower the temperature another couple of degrees, to 37F, the ideal for storing dry-aged beef. The corridor could then be re-configured as a meat locker. I doubt it woulds cost more than $100 to install a series of hooks in the ceiling, from which residents (and outside renters) could hang their sides of beef. Everyone knows that dry-aged beef is premium eating. I think this could be a real money-maker for the property.

I don't see any possible objection to either of these ideas, but I'd want the board to decide which one seems most promising and most lucrative.

And by the way, I noticed the other day that a pair of arctic foxes seem to have taken up residence in the corridor. We'd probably have to do something about them before we hang the beef, or there could be complications.

Also, I might be mistaken but I think a saw an ermine skittering right near the elevator." 

George Raft. Why?

TCM, the indispensable channel, has been delivering us a raft of old George Raft movies. They Drive by Night (1940) of course, but also such unmemorable noirs as Johnny Angel (1945), Race Street (1948), and I'll Get You (1952) as well as a couple of others so unsubstantial that, although viewed during the past month, they've already evaporated from my tired old brain.

This last while, whenever a George Raft picture began, we'd set a challenge: will Mr. Raft's face show an expression? Any expression! Will he smile, smirk, pout? Will he be angry, contemptuous, happy, lustful, disappointed? Anything at all, any human emotion? After painstaking study, I can now report that although we've examined every single frame, slowly and carefully, not once in any of these films has George Raft exhibited the slightest discernible human feeling. Moreover, on even more diligent examination, I can now affirm that he has delivered every single one of his memorized lines without the least variation in speed, volume, pitch, or intensity. Every sentence, no matter its significance, exits his mouth with the exact same cadence. It's all low affect, all the time. 

It's a puzzlement. What was George Raft's appeal? Certainly not his skill as a thespian. Nor his negative charisma. He's not handsome, and because of his oddly short legs, he walks funny (and he walks at exactly the same speed when crossing the nightclub floor to question a "canary" or when prowling a dark alley, gat in hand. 

Even more astonishing -- in a couple of these movies he's cast as a romantic lead who gets the girl in the last scene -- a girl who is younger, prettier, taller, and a much better actor. There's nothing more embarrassing or impossible-to-take-seriously than a George Raft kiss and fade. The End.

George Raft with Ella Raines.  

The "Yips"

The yips have been big news this week because Jose Altuve, Houston's golden-glove second baseman has made three throwing errors in two games. Glaring, costly errors. He's bounced balls to first base and to second base -- throws of twenty or forty feet which he has made successfully thousands of times in his outstanding career.

The "yips" is sports jargon for the sudden, inexplicable inability to make an ordinary or routine play. It's commonly used by golfers when they start missing short putts --but baseball has its famous yippers -- Steve Saxe, Chuck Knoblauch (both of them second baseman who have the shortest, easiest throws)  and now, possibly Altuve. Sometimes a good pitcher will lose his control and start to miss badly; the retired pitcher at the microphone will say, "he's lost his release point," which is a yippish diagnosis without using the word. Athletes think that the problem is psychological but it's possible that the condition is merely neurological - a "focal dystonia" or muscle spasm in the wrist. Basketball yips? Yes, sometimes a good foul shooter will miss four or five in a row. 

I suspect that the yips may not be a sports-only syndrome.

Once, a decade or two ago, I was driving across the country on a four-lane and needed to brake. For some reason, my feet (I was driving a standard transmission so both feet and the clutch pedal were involved) couldn't remember which was the brake pedal. I flailed with both feet and was utterly panicked for about five long seconds. Then I came to my senses, put the correct foot on the correct pedal, and continued on in normal fashion. Life continued. But if I had crashed the car and killed myself, which was certainly a possibility, investigators would have thought that I had fallen asleep at the switch. They'd have been wrong; it was just the yips -- a failure to perform a task that should have been entirely routine.

I wonder how many road disasters are caused by undiagnosed yippishness.

Do actors get the yips? Do musicians? Dentists?  Airline pilots? Surgeons ("You know, I've done that back surgery hundreds of times but three out of the last four, I've sliced entirely through the guy's spinal cord").

Montaigne, Kinship with

There is no author with whom I feel greater kinship than with Michel de Montaigne and there's none with whom I've passed more hours and days, except for Shakespeare. For many years, Montaigne's Essais has been my bedside companion, first in the old Everyman Library edition as translated by John Florio, a book which I early discovered among my father's small collection, and latterly in the 1958 version by Donald Frame. Of the two writers, Shakespeare is the greater, but he is unknowable and certainly not a comrade. "Negative capability" -- and all that. Shakespeare, the human being, lies hidden behind a profusion of characters and borrowed stories. Sometimes I think I can catch a glimpse of the man himself in recurring images or in a repeated motif, but how can I be sure? It's all guesswork and supposition. Shakespeare is an auctor absconditus. He can be admired, even revered, but he's too mysterious ever to be a pal. Montaigne, on the other hand, is insistently present. He talks directly to me, guy to guy, teaches me, argues with me. Even though there's a universe of differences between me and this astonishingly erudite sixteenth-century French Catholic skeptic, I feel that we are good friends.

Why the kinship? Montaigne is so various, so mutable, so inconsistent, that he's difficult to define, but nevertheless exhibits traits with which I l am in deep sympathy. Of all the important thinkers, he's the least systematic -- which is a benefit, at least for me. I can't make heads or tails of his near-contemporaries Spinoza or Descartes because both are too orderly and logical for my unsubtle head. But Montaigne works differently -- he advances an idea, modifies it, retracts it, illustrates it with a dozen anecdotes, and then announces that he can't come to a definitive conclusion -- which is the way my mind works, although obviously at a much lower order. And then Montaigne's brain is a hodgepodge, a gallimaufry of formidable learning strewn in heaps, like the last scene of Citizen Kane. So is mine, although it's a cramped attic compared to Montaigne's warehouse. And of course, Montaigne writes almost exclusively about himself, as I do in these fragmentary blague entries.

Moreover, we both seem to be at least in part writing for the same purpose. I compose these essaylets for what I conceive of, pretentiously, as dynastic reasons. Because I I so much wish that I had some artifacts or writing of my grandparents or great-grandparents, who left nothing behind, no scrap remaining, I want my descendants to have something of mine. Montaigne agrees: "What a satisfaction it would be to me to hear someone tell me of the habits, the face, the expression, the favorite remarks, and the fortunes of my ancestors. How attentive I would be. Truly it would spring from a bad nature to be scornful of even the portraits of our friends and predecessors, the form of their clothes and their armor." [Montaigne came from a family with a strong military tradition, unlike mine, which is epitomized by grandfather's desertion from the Russian army.] "I keep their handwriting, their seal, the breviary and a peculiar sword that they used, and I have not banished from my study some long sticks that my father ordinarily carried in his hand." I have no "sticks," but as I sit here pecking at the word processor, I see out of the corner of my eye my father's library ladder, used for retrieving just the right law book.

Montaigne is not done with the topic. He continues by exploring an idea about which I also have ruminated. For whom do I devote these hours, if not for myself?  He is eloquent upon the subject.

"If no one reads me, have I wasted my time, entertaining myself for so many idle hours with such useful and agreeable thoughts. In modeling this figure upon myself, I have had to fashion and compose myself so often to bring myself out, that the model itself has to some extent grown firm and taken shape. Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book that my book has made me -- a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life....  Have I wasted my time by taking stock of myself so continually, so carefully. For those who go over themselves only in their minds and occasionally in speech do not penetrate to essentials in their examination as does a man who makes that his study, his work, and his trade, who binds himself to keep an enduring account, with all his faults, with all his strengths."

I wish I could say that I'm as honest as Montaigne; I'm not. I recognize that the "me" that appears here is to some degree different from the me that is me. Although I do not lie about myself, I conceal some of my most flagrant deficiencies. Nor do I blow my own small trumpet. As a result, the portrait that has emerged is solider and also less troubled than the true-to-life person. Don't say I didn't give you notice, unwary descendants. 

Natural Disasters, Fear of

It's unlikely that I will be killed by a tsunami. I just don't get to the seashore very often -- the last time was five years ago -- and I happen to reside most of the year at an altitude of 5300 feet. It would have to be one heck of a tsunami that would find me here -- 1200 miles inland. An ordinary rainfall-caused flood is a more likely cause of death. We have a big one every decade or so. But still, I live on the second floor of a concrete and steel-I beam building and even a thousand-year event wouldn't touch me. I might be in danger if I happened to be hiking in one of our many narrow canyons, where you see signs that say "in case of sudden flood, climb to safety." But I'm not much worried about a narrow canyon situation because I like to stay home and in bed when it starts to rain or even when there's a threat of rain. For the same reason, I'm not afeard of dying in an avalanche. I don't ski and I don't climb mountains, especially in the winter. In fact, I tend to stay at home, sipping hot cider, on cold days because I'm afraid of slipping on the ice and busting an arm or a leg or a hip. A volcano, then? Not likely. There are no active volcanoes nearby and those hotspots under the geysers in Yellowstone aren't scheduled to explode for a few hundred thousand years. I just can't see myself racing ahead of a pyroclastic flow. A forest fire? Always a danger because they've become more frequent with global warming. Nevertheless, I don't think a forest fire is likely to kill me because even though I live less than a mile from the mountains, there's enough buffer between my home and the forest that it's pretty impossible for a fire to cross into my zone. (A house fire is even more unlikely, especially because of the up-to-date built-in sprinkler system and the cinderblock-enclosed staircase). I suppose I could be killed by a lightning strike but I'm not likely to be outside dancing during a sudden storm. A hurricane -- well, we don't have any here and although I spend a significant amount of time in New Orleans, I limit my visits to the late winter or early spring, so I'm not in residence during  the bad season. A tornado is a remote possibility. Once again, I'd have to go far to find one, because they don't seem to come into my city. I once identified a funnel cloud out to the east, but it didn't touch ground. A blizzard? Well, I've certainly experienced blizzards and once I was caught in one, but frankly, unless I should happen to drive the Subaru into snowbank and freeze to death, or go out for a long walk in the open space in the midst of a storm, I'm not likely to perish. Then there are earthquakes, which would be a real possibility if I lived in California or along a fault, but not here in the stable Rockies. So on the whole, I don't think I'm going to die in some natural disaster. 

Wait, what about a meteorite falling from the sky and bopping me on the head?

Actually, that sounds like a good way to go. No long period of fear and anxiety waiting to drown or burn or be buried, just instant death while strolling in the park on a sunny afternoon. A perfect ending.

Which reminds me of the death of Aeschylus, who, according to the story, while walking on a beach, was killed when an eagle picked up a turtle, and trying to break its shell, dropped it on him, thinking that his bald head was a large rock.

Death by falling turtle -- ridiculous. Death by meteorite -- glamorous and romantic. A story for latter generations to savor.

Oh, oh. I just thought of another natural disaster. Sinkholes. I don't want to be swallowed by a sinkhole. Not at all glamorous. Memorable, yes. Glamorous, no.   

"My Week": the Secret Diary of D*n*ld Tr*mp

Dear Diary: why is everybody always picking on me? It's been a really bad month, even before someone deliberately gave me the virus. Sometimes I want to cry, it's been so tough, but Daddy Fred would hate me for that. The press, the TV people, some of those losers at Fox (not Hannity). Even my own niece, Mary, who claims that I cheated her out of millions of dollars. What an ugly bitch she is!  And then someone leaked that I called American soldiers losers and suckers for dying -- I never said that, and if I did, it was private. They claimed that I wouldn't visit that frog cemetery because it would mess up my hair -- well, I paid $70,000 for my hair and they want me to go to some foreign cemetery for some war that nobody's ever heard of -- in the rain. Fuck, not me. That's for dummies. Then I went to Tulsa for a celebration of me me me and nobody showed up. Parscale was responsible for that mess;  I got rid of him. Someone will try to get him to rat on me, but he won't. I've got him by the pecker because of all the money he's embezzled. And then some disloyal son of a bitch leaked that I said that the virus was good because I could get away without shaking hands with donors, Of course I don't want to touch them, they're disgusting losers, full of germs. But I got to take their money, I don't want to spend mine. I'm already into Putin for millions. My pussy advisors tell me I have to pretend to be friendly, when I'd rather relax at Mar-a-Lago and eat cheeseburgers and spend time with Hope. Then, a couple of days ago the nasty, failing New York Times has a big story about my income taxes. Fake. Fake. Fake. I pay plenty, of course a lot less than loser teachers and nurses who don't know how the system works. Then Woodward, who I thought would give me good press, says that they're all ganging up on me behind my back. Cowards and losers. Woodward says that wacko Mattis, the turncoat, said that I had the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader. How can that be -- my uncle taught at MIT? Plus I had great SAT scores. Dummy Kelly thinks I'm an idiot and unhinged. That blimp Omigault says that I'm a racist, a misogynist, and a bigot. Wacky nut job Gary Cohn says I'm as dumb as shit and corrupt McMaster called me a dope. Publicity-seeker Bannon says that I'm like an 11-year old child. Lightweight grandstander Tillerson called me a moron. What's with all the name-calling? Good thing Jeffrey Epstein pulled his own plug, if he really did, he had me worried for a while. Then all these dumb women! All out to get me!  Katie Johnson and Summer Zervos and Jean Carroll and twenty others. They all wanted it bad and then they changed the rules and now they're out to cash in. Sad! Low IQ slut Stormy still trying to make me look bad. And Rudy lobbying me every day to pardon Manafort and Roger Stone and his other friends. Sometimes I just want to go to Russia and move in with Putin. God I love that guy. I wish Roy Cohn was still alive. So much smarter than disgraced idiot Michael.

Why is everybody always picking on me? 

My Life in Objects XVIII-- The Menhirs

This standing stone might look like an ordinary piece of granite, but it has a rich history. If you look very closely, you can almost see the two deep holes that have been drilled into it. Though it's now merely a garden ornament, decorating a perennial border, it was once a working fence post. Hinges would have been hammered into the holes.

We found this post up on the hill, deep in the second-growth forest, very close to the remains of what was either a well or a cesspool and beneath the giant senescent maple that must date from pre-Colonial times.

There's also a second megalith, also drilled but not visible in this picture, that now guards a parallel perennial border. Long ago, the two posts flanked an old farm road but the wooden gate that once stood between them had already rotted and disappeared fifty years ago when I first happened upon the posts.

The area where the post stood is surrounded by numerous substantial stone walls that once delineated the boundaries of various fields. Tom Roberts, who farmed the property from 1926 to 1967, told me that he grew apples and potatoes on the hill. There's no need for a gate for potatoes, so the posts must date from a previous era when the land was used to pasture sheep.

We decided to honor the posts by placing them in a more prominent position, so one day we loaded them into the bucket of the Deere tractor and brought them down. We dug a hole about a third the length of the post, chained it to the bucket, and lowered it into place. NGP is getting to be mighty skillful at maneuvering the tractor. The posts are handsome in their new situations. Robins like them too, as places to perch.

Bleak House Once Again

I just completed another long stroll through Bleak House. It's either my fifth or sixth time through -- or almost once a decade since 1958. During this reading, which will no doubt be my last, I felt that I was imprisoned by the novel, hogtied; that I couldn't do anything or read anything else until I made it to the end of entire 900 pages. Dickens took over my life, and not for the first time. It was a struggle, perhaps made worse because my eyes are not as good as they once were and because the print in my Oxford Classics edition seems to be growing tinier and grayer.

It was a willing surrender and I was a willing captive. How can I not be dazzled and impressed by the profusion of Dickens' imagination and by his genius at keeping a dozen plot-balls in the air. 

Nevertheless, I don't ever remember being quite so angry and impatient at Mr. Dickens.  "Let 'em wait." Well, I waited for five days, which as fast as i can trot nowadays. 

The good parts of Bleak House are as good as anything in the language. The death of Jo the crossing sweeper ("And dying thus around us every day") remains the single greatest paragraph in the long history of the English novel. "Dead, your Majesty." The encounter of Sir Leicester and Rouncewell was much better than I remembered it. Mr. Chadband, the oleaginous preacher, was, this time, remarkably pertinent. Mr. Bucket is a triumph. Lady Dedlock's long repressed love for Captain Hawley was more poignant.

But I've lost my admiration for some other parts of the novel. I could hardly bear Esther Summerson's goody-goodiness; and, this time, I have to say that Esther's relationship with her dear darling Ada seemed suspect. Far too sentimentalized. Ada herself, still in mourning seven years after the death of her misguided weak husband -- unbearable.  The Jellyby and Pardiggle satires seemed misguided, excessive.  I was not amused by Mrs. Snagsby's jealousy or by the relentless pillorying of poor Mr. Guppy. Harold Skimpole's infantile nattering has lost its charm.

There's never been a novelist with more heart or less intellect than Dickens. He is the best of novelists, the worst of novelists.