Recently in Baseball Category

Major League baseball's free agent-signing season began today, with the Yankees making a monster offer to the Milwaukee Brewers' pitcher C. C. Sabathia. They're apparently also planning big offers to free-agent pitchers Derek Lowe and A.J. Burnett. The Mets are going to be more conservative with their money this off-season, but they're still hoping to be able to find some free-agent help for the bullpen and the outfield.

This year, however, I'll also be watching as another team takes shape: the Presidential Team. How nice -- and how strange -- to be following the rumors about Cabinet posts with the same intensity that I follow the rumors about baseball signings and trades. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Bill Richardson? They both seem like good choices to me, but I think that if Clinton would agree to do it, we'd have the strongest sign yet that it isn't going to be politics as usual in Washington starting January 20. (And I always thought that the triumph of liberal politics in The West Wing was such wishful thinking, particularly the last season with a young minority candidate winning the presidency and then choosing his rival to be Secretary of State.)

And what a change to be looking forward to Inauguration Day! It feels like the beginning of a new millennium. Too bad about the eight-year delay.

Always on the lookout for connections between baseball and politics, I was happy to see Jon Stewart mocking both the Obama and McCain campaigns for pandering to baseball fans. The most fair-weather of these fair-weather fans turns out to be . . . well, Sarah, of course.

Watch and laugh (or weep):



Could you tell that Jon is a Mets fan?

I've just started reading Simon Schama's latest book, The American Future: A History, which arrived today from amazon.co.uk. I got interested in the book when a friend sent me this a link to a review of the book by Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times.

The book seems to offer an argument for American exceptionalism, contending that the "American difference" lies in part in the nation's ability to renew itself in moments of calamity -- such as the present moment. Indeed, Schama begins the book by identifying Barack Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses last January as the moment "when American democracy came back from the dead."

The book was just published in the U.K. by the Bodley Head, but for reasons that I have yet to determine, it will not be published by Ecco in the United States until May 19, 2009 (or so amazon.com informs me). Is Schama planning to revise the book for the American edition based on the results of the presidential election? Was it published earlier in the U.K. to give puzzled Britons a sense of what's going in in this year's wacky race? And why is the Canadian edition slated for release in late December?

If you've been reading my recent posts, you know that I agree with Schama about the promise that Obama represents, and I'm hoping that the book will be helpful to me as I do work on a new revision of my "Bush-League America" manuscript, which I'm trying to "secularize" as they say in the book trade (i.e. make suitable for a "general" reader). The new working title, courtesy of my wife: "Whose Game Is It Anyway?: Baseball and Politics from Bush to Barack." Should the unthinkable happen on November 4, I'll keep the old title but add a new subtitle: "A Baseball Fan's Lament."

Meanwhile, a review in the Economist offers this caveat about Schama's book: "One final note of caution: do not be deceived by the words on the dust jacket. Although the book's publishers are obviously keen to cash in on the presidential election, and despite the fact that Mr Schama leads off with a little hymn of praise to Mr Obama's ability to bring American democracy 'back from the dead,' this book really is not about the contest in November or what might come after it. What it is, however, is a fabulous jumble-sale, full of old treasures and recent acquisitions. Anyone interested in America will find in it something to their fancy."

I'll report my own findings at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, if you want to read it yourself, use the amazon.co.uk link above.

The polls show that the presidential election seems to be breaking in in favor of Chicago's Barack Obama, but this year's Chicago Cubs couldn't catch a break when it mattered. I'm still hoping to see Obama make history on November 4, but tonight I watched the Cubs make the wrong kind of history, extending their World Series drought to a full century by falling 3-1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In a match-up of former Yankees managers, Joe Torre bested Lou Piniella. The Cubs had taken the regular season series from the Dodgers, 5-2, but as we all know, the slate is wiped clean for the playoffs.

(Met fans know: we remember how the team stopped hitting in the 1986 postseason and were forced to eke out a win against the Red Sox through a series of improbable events, and we remember losing to the Dodgers two years later because of a pitching juggernaut named Orel Hershiser. The Dodgers, by the way, are going back to the NLCS for the first time in the 20 years since defeating the Mets in 1988.)

Meanwhile, it isn't looking too good for the White Sox either, who are down 2-0 to Tampa Bay. At least the Milwaukee Brewers salvaged a bit of midwestern pride by beating the Phillies tonight.

So it's time to shift gears once again: here's hoping for a World Series that Hank Steinbrenner will hate, with Joe Torre, Manny Ramirez, and the Dodgers meeting the Red Sox. The team from Boston now finds itself improbably up 2-0 over the Los Angeles Angels, owners of the best record in major League Baseball this year at 100-62. With game three later today in Boston and Josh Beckett on the mound, things are looking pretty good for the Sox.

Meanwhile, the Mets have done the right thing, signing manager Jerry Manuel to a two-year contract. General Manager Omar Minaya released a statement in which he said: "Jerry did a very good job taking over the club midseason, and we believe that he is the right person to manage our team and lead us to the postseason." I agree. Now, Omar, just get Jerry a decent bullpen, a reliable second baseman, and a right-handed bat for the middle of the line-up.

So today was the final game at Shea Stadium as it turned out.

In the end, it came down to the inability of the Mets' bullpen to do its job, as all of us who have been following the team's fortunes since the All-Star break. Perhaps we should have seen it coming when Billy Wagner, the team's lone selection to this year's All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, came in with the NL leading and blew the save. But most of us were too entranced at the time by the team's sudden resuscitation under Jerry Manual.

The athletic sublime wasn't in evidence at Shea Stadium this afternoon. By all accounts, it could be found in Milwaukee, where C. C. Sabathia turned in a pitching performance for the Brewers on three days' rest that was only a shade less brilliant than Santana's for the Mets yesterday.

No need to spend much time rehashing what went wrong for the Mets today. Once again the Florida Marlins ended the Mets season in game 162, though this year it wasn't the starting pitching that was to blame. (I remember the deflation last year when Glavine gave up all those runs in the first inning.) Today, the Mets made a game of it. Oliver Perez was great for five innings but faltered in the sixth. Joe Smith, brilliant all year at getting out the first man he faced when coming in from the bullpen, walked the first man he faced today. Beltran's homer picked the team up by tying the game in the bottom of that inning, but the offense wasn't potent enough to undo the damage from consecutive home runs given by Schoenweis and Ayala in the top of the eighth. Delgado had a chance in the bottom of the inning, with two on and two out, but his fly ball to deep left field wasn't quite deep enough. Ryan Church came up as the tying run with two outs in the bottom of ninth, but his fly ball to deep center wasn't deep enough.

The bullpen failed; the offense failed.

In some ways, it's reminiscent of last year. The Mets were up by 3 1/2 games with seventeen to play; last year it was 7. Last year, John Maine pitched brilliantly in game 161, carrying a no-hitter into the eight, but Glavine couldn't follow suit. This year, Santana pitched brilliantly, but the rest of the pitching staff couldn't follow suit. But last year's free fall was so precipitous that you had to question the team's effort. Not so this year. The effort was there; the results weren't.

It's been both fun and painful to watch this year's Mets battle the adversity that came with so many injuries and a maddengly inconsistent bullpen. Omar Minaya has a new four-year contract, and he should reward Jerry Manual by making him the team's permanent manager. And as soon the World Series is over, he should start the process of completely rebuilding the team's bullpen and figuring out how to strength the offense further.

So now we root for Chicago to make history -- twice. First, we root for the Cubs to end their 100-year-long World Series drought. (And I'll bet my wife, who hails from the Chicago area, is actually glad that a potential Mets-Cubs series has been avoided.) And once that bit of history is made, I'll be looking forward to another bit of history to be made on November 4, when Chicago's favorite son, Barack Obama, is elected president of the United States.

(I'm telling you . . . there's an uncanny connection between U.S. baseball and U. S. politics . . .)

[Photo: AP. Wes Helms ends the Mets' season]

Last night I watched the first debate between Barack Obama and John McCain downstairs in our residence hall's commons. We had a group of about forty Faculty Fellows, RAs, and first-years from our building and others. The students were largely pro-Obama it seemed to me: they laughed at McCain's fumbling of names and groaned when he used his "Miss Congeniality" line a second time. [You can find a transcript of the debate here.]

About a dozen stayed afterward for a discussion of the debate (it was Friday night in New York City, after all), and I was surprised to find that many of them felt that McCain might have "won" because he seemed to get off the better one-liners. Quite a few professed to have had trouble following some of Obama's answers. Some voiced frustration with both candidates' reluctance to answer certain questions directly, and some wished that Obama had adopted McCain's more direct style of attack. One woman, who suspected that McCain's use of the word "naive" was in fact code for a certain kind of racial condescension, wished that Obama had found a subtle way to make McCain's age an issue.

Most of the group was reluctant to name a "winner." So I said that I would go out on a limb and declare that people would end up thinking of Obama as the "winner" of this debate, because he did the thing that he had to do in the first thirty minutes -- like Kennedy in 1960, he had to appear "presidential" and lay to rest fears that he was not qualified for the job. The fact that the debate began with a discussion of the current financial crisis didn't help McCain at all, and even though McCain seemed more comfortable (if a bit testy) during the later sections devoted to foreign affairs, Obama did what he had to do there as well: he showed that he was more than capable of handling the foreign-policy part of the president's job.

What was missing, I suggested, using a phrase that I dislike but that has become part of the current political discourse, was a "game-changer" that would help McCain regain momentum. Something along the lines of Reagan's "There you go again . . . " or Lloyd Bentsen's "Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy" or Al Gore's notorious sighing and eye-rolling. But there was no signal moment that would be remembered. And in that case, the tie goes to Obama. To use a baseball metaphor: infield hit, safe at first.

The initial focus group reactions and polls seem to confirm my suggestion. CNN posted an article entitled "Round 1 in debates goes to Obama, poll says," reporting that "a national poll of people who watched the first presidential debate suggests that Barack Obama came out on top," adding that "there was overwhelming agreement that both Obama and John McCain would be able to handle the job of president if elected." Not good news for McCain, according to the article:

"It can be reasonably concluded, especially after accounting for the slight Democratic bias in the survey, that we witnessed a tie in Mississippi tonight," CNN Senior Political Researcher Alan Silverleib said. "But given the direction of the campaign over the last couple of weeks, a tie translates to a win for Obama."

Time magazine's Joe Klein argued that "there was nothing in this debate that was a knockout blow--nothing that should change the current trajectory of the campaign." And that trajectory favors Obama.

Indeed, one of my faculty colleagues suggested, as our discussion wound down, that Obama supporters should be heartened by a report he heard that afternoon on public radio, which cited an assertion on www.fivethirtyeight.com that if the election were held now, Obama would likely receive 300 electoral votes. By this morning, the site had raised that figure to 317.8.

I did find that heartening, because fivethirtyeight.com is Nate Silver's site, the site that became famous when Silver outdid all the other pollsters in predicting Obama's big win in the North Carolina Democratic primary last spring. I wrote about Silver in my post "Baseball and Politics" last June: he is the statistician who developed the PECOTA system of predicting likely success for baseball players based on a new way of thinking about how to contextualize historical data and players' past performances.

Silver went out on a limb last February and predicted that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays would finish 88-74, improve on last year's record by an astounding 22 wins. Silver based this prediction on a comparison of this year's Tampa Bay team to the 1994 Cleveland Indians. Silver was right, although in fact he underestimated the Rays' performance: the Rays won the AL East, beating out the heaviliy favored Red Sox and Yankees, and with one game left to play their record stands at 96-65! Moreover, Silver predicted that Rays' rookie third baseman Evan Longoria would turn in a "Ryan Zimmerman-caliber performance of 20 to 25 homers accompanied by Gold Glove-quality defense." As of tonight, Longoria has 27 home runs and 85 RBI and seems to be a lock for AL Rookie-of-the-Year honors.

So if Nate Silver is telling me that Barack Obama is looking good right now, I'm more than happy to take his word for it.

Here's a modern definition of the sublime: watching a star athlete come through in the clutch and raise the level of his or her game beyond expectations.

Michael Phelps at the Olympics this summer was an example of the athletic sublime, particularly when he won the 100 meter butterfly at the final touch by .01 seconds.

And today it was the Mets' ace pitcher Johan Santana turning in a performance that Met fans will long remember. With his team facing elimination from the playoffs, Santana told his manager, Jerry Manual, that he would pitch on three days' rest -- one day shorter than his normal period of recuperation -- something he had done only once before in his career. That was during the 2004 AL Playoffs between the Twins and the Yankees: Santana came back three days after winning the first game of the series and threw 87 pitches over five innings, allowing only one run, and leaving with a 5-1 lead -- a lead that his bullpen would relinquish en route to a 6-5 Yankee victory in 11 inings. (A little foretaste of 2008 for Santana.)

What was remarkable about today's performance, however, is that it came three days after Santana had thrown a career-high 125 pitches in a win over the Chicago Cubs. And it was no 5-inning, 87-pitch performance. Santana pitched a complete game shutout, throwing 117 pitches.

Santana's change-up seemed to improve as the game went on. The astounded Mets television announcer Gary Cohen noted that no Met had pitched a complete game on three days rest since David Cone did it in 1990, and no Met had pitched a shutout on three days rest since Dwight Gooden did it in 1987 -- twenty-one years ago. And in neither of those cases was the season on the line. Former Mets pitcher Ron Darling gushed: "And the best change-up he's had all season long. Imagine: on his 34th start, in a game the Mets have to win, he's got his best stuff."

With one out in the ninth, Santana made a mistake, leaving a fastball in the middle of the plate to Josh Willingham , who ripped a double to left center. Scott Schoenweis and Luis Ayala were warming up in the bullpen. But there was no way Santana was giving either of them the ball. He bore down.He struck out Dan Uggla and got Cody Ross to fly out to deep left field. It reminded me of Phelps at that photo finish: not just the talent, but the will to win..

With the Brewers losing later on to the Cubs, the Mets were once again tied for the wild card in the National League. So what if the Phillies won and sewed up a second straight division championship? Tomorrow's game -- the last regular season game at Shea Stadium will mean something (unlike the Yankee's finale at their stadium). And if the Mets win, there will be at least one more game played at Shea.

Oliver Perez will be called on to emulate Santana and pitch on three days' rest.

I'm hoping for a second straight day of the athletic sublime.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that you can use baseball to talk about politics. Check out the post entitled "Manuel: Mets 'suspending' pennant race" on slacktivist. Thanks to Bryan Waterman for bringing it to my attention!

The Mets' bullpen blew another one this afternoon, this time against the Braves in Atlanta. Leading 4-2 going into the bottom of the seventh, the bullpen gave up one run in that frame, and four more in the next. Carlos Delgado hit a two-run homer in the top of the ninth to make the final score look a little better. Scott Schoenweis took the loss. Here's what espn.com had to say:

Down 4-3, Atlanta struck in the eighth against Scott Schoeneweis (2-5) and three Mets relievers. It was the latest collapse for a beleaguered bullpen missing injured closer Billy Wagner. The relievers have a league-high 16 blown saves since the All-Star break, the worst in the NL. Schoeneweis has lost three games since Aug. 26 and the relievers have a woeful 2-8 record since Aug. 11.

The Mets lost ground to both the Phillies, who now lead the division by a game-and-a-half, and the Brewers, who now trail the Mets for the wild card by only a game-and-a-half.

I suppose, though the Yankees would trade places with the Mets, at this moment. They won the final game at Yankee Stadium tonight over the Orioles, 7-3, but they're about to be eliminated from the playoffs by the Red Sox, whose magic number is just 1. I'm sure that at the start of season the Yankees expected the final game at the Stadium to be played in October and to end with another World Series win.

It could still happen at Shea. Or next Sunday could be the last game. We'll see.

On a more hopeful note: msnbc.com is reporting tonight that, with five days before the first presidential debate, Obama is widening his lead in the national polls as a result of McCain's less-than-convincing response so far to the economic crisis:

McCain faces the daunting task of trying to square his long history of advocating corporate and financial deregulation -- the sort of loose controls many blame for the turmoil on Wall Street.

Obama seized on that during a campaign appearance at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida.

"There's only one candidate who's called himself 'fundamentally a deregulator' when deregulation is part of the problem," Obama said.

McCain now says more controls are needed to prevent a repeat of the turmoil that sent the stock market plunging, as he tries to recover from a series of gaffes this week, starting with his Monday assessment that U.S. economic fundamentals were strong.

National polls indicate that McCain's edge in the U.S. presidential race has slipped since the market upheaval. The latest Gallup Poll daily tracking survey also showed Obama ahead, with 50 percent to McCain's 44 percent. Last Sunday, a day before stocks took a dive on Wall Street, McCain and Obama were in a statistical dead heat with McCain's 47 percent against Obama's 45 percent.

Appropriately enough, I've been thinking about the making and breaking of covenants this evening, as I prepare to lecture tomorrow on the Old Testament. I'm always struck, when re-reading Genesis and Exodus, by how much of the books are about property: wives, servants, cattle, sheep, and land. And all that attention to detail! God sure knew what he wanted in an ark, both the big kind (Genesis) and the little kind (Exodus)!

Tomorrow's playlist: Genesis, "Follow You, Follow Me"; Peter Gabriel, "Here Comes the Flood"; and Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band, "Jacob's Ladder."

The Mets got an ugly win tonight, nearly blowing a 7-1 lead and using eight pitchers in the process. The Phillies and the Brewers won their games, so the status quo remains the same.

Meanwhile, there's been a little movement in the presidential race, it seems. CNN's latest poll of polls shows Obama with his first lead over McCain in ten days, 46%-45%. [UPDATE: A CNN "Ticker" post timestamped September 18, 2008 10:50 a.m. says that the lead is 47% to 45% -- two points! They write that their poll of polls "shows a swing of four points in the Illinois senator's favor in just over a week.] And The New York Times is reporting that

Polls taken after the Republican convention suggested that Mr. McCain had enjoyed a surge of support -- particularly among white women after his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate -- but the latest poll indicates "the Palin effect" was, at least so far, a limited burst of interest. The contest appeared to be roughly where it was before the two conventions and before the vice-presidential selections: Mr. Obama had the support of 48 percent of registered voters, compared with 43 percent for Mr. McCain, a difference within the poll's margin of sampling error, and statistically unchanged from the tally in the last New York Times/CBS News poll, in mid-August.

That's heartening news, especially the paper's contention that "that Ms. Palin's selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general." According to the article, McCain's perceived link to George W. Bush remains an albatross around his neck.

Meanwhile, if you haven't seen Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live's season opener (or if you'd just like to enjoy it again), here you go: