Ogre, son of Ogre

It's all because of the designated hitter, or lack thereof.  A funny thing happened last week when Chien Ming Wang found himself with a bat in his hands.  Wang of course is the ace pitcher of the New York Yankees.

I wish he wasn't their ace, because he's a sinkerball pitcher, he pitches to contact, and he doesn't strike anyone out.  That became problematic in last year's playoffs when he got shelled (not once, but twice) and he was more to blame than anyone else for the Yankees' early exit from the playoffs.

But Wang is clearly the best they have, because their young fireballers (Hughes, Kennedy) can't get anyone out, much less win a game, and spent most of this season either in the minors or on the disabled list, where they couldn't do any more damage to their own team.

But again I digress.  Since we now have interleague play, the Yankees found themselves playing against a team from the NL, and worse yet, a ROAD game.  That meant playing by National League rules, which does not recognize the designated hitter, which meant Wang had to bat.

Wang grounded into a force out, and was occupying first base when another batter got an extra-base hit.  So not only does Wang get to bat, he gets to run, too!  They decided to have Wang try to score, which he did handily, even though he had to hobble in from third base to score.

The reason he had to hobble was he stepped on third base wrong, and hurt his foot.  Wang is going to be on the disabled list for three months, and likely for the rest of the year.  He might be back in time for the playoffs, but are the Yankees going to make the playoffs without him?  Not unless they can find some starting pitching.

Enter Hank Steinbrenner.  The ogre who runs the New York Yankees, son of George Steinbrenner, the ogre who USED to run the Yankees.  Hank exploded, saying it was all the fault of the National League which is still stuck in the 19th century because it won't adopt the designated hitter rule.  It's all their fault that his ace pitcher is probably out for the season.

I have to wonder about that.  Wang is a baseball player.  An athlete.  Athletes have to run sometimes, and they're supposed to beable to run around the bases without killing themselves.  It was bad luck, but that's all.  Even Joe Girardi said it's part of the game (for which he will incur Steinbrenner's wrath.)  For thirty years, George made it hard to root for the Yankees, and now the chip off the old block is doing the same.

And speaking of injuries, note to Tiger Woods:  You're over 30 now.  Injuries don't heal as quickly any more.  When your doctor says you need rest, you should rest.

Of course, Tiger ignored his doctor's instructions, and played in the U.S. Open anyway, winning one of the most exciting tournaments ever on the 91st hole.  But it turns out his knee is even more messed up than before, and he also has a stress fracture in his left leg, will need more surgery, and he is done for the year.

The next major is in March, at Augusta, so maybe Tiger will rest up for that one.

Who said golf was boring?

Today the improbable U.S Open came to its inevitable end.  Of all people, Rocco Mediate was challenging to win a major championship.  Safely in the clubhouse with a one-stroke lead, he watched as Lee Westwood and Tiger Woods both had putts of about 12 feet to force a playoff. 

Westwood is a good player who never quite lived up to his promise.  When he was younger, they said he was England's answer to Tiger Woods.  Maybe in the Ryder Cups, but he's had an up and down career, never winning a major championship.  Predictably, he missed his putt, and had to settle for third place.  Also predictably, Tiger was Tiger, and his putt found the edge of the cup and fell in.

It's impossible not to like Rocco Mediate.  Guys named "Rocco" usually break other guys' legs for a living; it's rare for a Rocco to end up on the PGA tour.  But this guy doesn't look like a Rocco.  He doesn't even look like a golfer.  He's short and pudgy, and looks like he could have been cast to play the Penguin in one of the Batman movies.

He's 45 years old now, hasn't won a tournament in six years, and only won five times in his entire career.  He had to qualify just to get into the U.S. Open, playing against kids half his age who were outdriving him by fifty yards.  He's a jumpy little guy with such a herky-jerky swing that I still can't see how he manages to get all the parts of his body moving in the same direction when hits the ball.  But he loves the game and the crowds, and doesn't mind that he has to hit six-irons when Tiger is hitting a wedge.

Yet here he was, this Cindarella story forcing Tiger to an 18-hole playoff the next day.  After 10 holes, Tiger was up by three strokes, and it appeared the clock had struck midnight.  But then Rocco birdied 13 and 14, and then made a long putt to birdie 15.  Meanwhile, Tiger had started spraying the ball all over the course, and had dropped a shot.

Rocco took a one-stroke lead into the 18th hole, and had a long putt to win the Open.  I was rooting for him.  For Rocco, this would be the capstone of his career, his one and only major championship.  For Tiger, it would be just one more major in addition to his 13 other majors.

Rocco had a long birdie putt to win the U.S. Open.  He missed.  Tiger made birdie, and after 90 holes of golf, it was still a tie.  As an announcer said, Tiger Woods against a guy who looked like he should be cleaning Tiger Woods' swimming pool.  On the first sudden death hole, Rocco made a mistake, and it was over.  Yes, Tiger deserved to win.  He played on one leg, when he should have been recuperating from knee surgery.  That's just one more measure of greatness.

But Rocco is at the age where he is running out of chances to win a major, and I doubt we will hear from him again.  I can only hope that somehwere out there is a parallel universe in which Tiger's putt lipped out on the 72nd hole, and a portly little crowd favorite is now the U.S. Open champion.

Oil at $139/barrel

Last week Iranian President Ahmadinejad said Israel would disappear.  It's not the first time he's said Israel would be wiped off the map.  But this time, the Israeli Transport Minister responded, saying Ahmadinejad would disappear before Israel did.

If Israel (or the United States) attacks Iran, $139 oil will seem like a bargain.  Overnight we could see $200 or ever $300/barrel oil.  That's what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is for.  In case our leaders are stupid enough to start a war in the middle east (I mean ANOTHER war, besides the one we already have.)

I'm not sure what the price of gasoline would be.  Maybe $10, or more likely $15/gallon, if you could find it.  The gas lines of the 70's are nothing compared to the shortages we would see if the Strait of Hormuz closed.  For that matter, I think it is only a matter of time before we see gasoline rationing.  Maybe not this year or next year, but it is coming.

If cooler heads prevail, and the current crisis is averted until we can get George F. Bush out of the White House, the price of oil should drop back toward $100.  So I wouldn't be buying oil at this point; there's too much of a war premium built into the price.  In any event, I think natural gas is a much better play.  On a BTU basis, oil should sell for 6 times the price of NG.  Currrently NG trades for $12-13, and should be over $20 based on the price of oil.

What happened

Blog updates may be even more sporadic than usual for a while, as my computer has reached the advanced age of four, and now appears to be in its death throes.  It has suffered in recent months, no doubt due to the demands I have placed on it, and when I installed Easy Media Creator 10, that was the last straw.  It is crashing and losing its internet connection far too often, so I have ordered one of those new quad-core beasts, and it should be here in a week or so.  In the meanwhile, I am spending most of my time burning DVDs to get everything off the hard drive.

I would much rather spend my time reading Scott McClellan's new book, What Happened.  He was Bush's press secretary, and a White House insider, who just told us that all those horrible lies told by all of those horrible liberals about the Bush administration...well, they were all true.

When something like this happened in the past, the standard response from the White House was to go into attack mode, deny everything, and call the miscreant a liberal, which is even worse than being a miscreant.  The problem is that no way can the Bushies say McClellan is a liberal.  He was one of their own, going all the way back to Texas.  And they can't dispute the facts, so instead they're just hoping the story will die well before the elections.  Here's what David Galland of Casey Research had to say, along with a link to a video of Ari Fleischer.

 

Egg-Sucking Polecats

I am not a big fan of broadcast news, other than as a rare source of entertainment.

But I thought it would be informative to tune into the Bush administration’s quick counter-attack on Scott McClellan’s new book in which he basically accuses the president and his men of being, to use a colorful Southern term, a bunch of “egg-sucking polecats.”

Now I’d have to find more time in the day than presently available to do the full research required to better understand the law around such things, but if the Monica Lewinsky affair – which, as far as I could tell was an act between two consenting adults – was cause for impeachment, then what might be proscribed for deliberately starting a war on false pretenses?

Now, before those conservatives among you start jumping up and down, please understand, I am only reporting what is now being told by one of the president’s closest confidants of many years.

Might McClellan also be a polecat, just looking to sell a lot of books? No doubt. But the charges he levels are not without substantiation from other quarters. As such, one could take his revelations as being confirmatory.

But back to the broadcast news. Perhaps stung by McClellan's accusation that the media had been too soft in the run-up to the war, the CBS Evening News’ Katie Couric actually did a fairly tough interview with Ari Fleischer, McClellan’s former boss.

Thanks to YouTube, you can view her interview and I would highly recommend you do, as it is a masterful lesson in political spin. You can see the specific talking points unfurling (that somehow McClellan’s words were taken over by some liberal editor and that Scottie could have never really meant those)… and you will love the part when Mr. Fleischer says something to the effect of “I don’t want to pre-judge Scott, but will wait to hear his defense.”

I had to finger my ear on that one, just to assure that a buildup of wax wasn't somehow skewing sound.

We are talking here about a deception (to use McClellan’s term) that has cost tens of thousands of lives, ruined our military, cost on the order of $2.5 trillion, destroyed America’s prestige around the world and spawned a whole new global reordering of alliances… and… and… but it is McClellan who needs to defend himself?

Call me old fashioned, but I think it is time to call a polecat a polecat. And President Bush and his cronies are, at least in my book, polecats. Here’s the video.

Video: Eye To Eye: Ari Fleischer (CBS News)

 

Last and least, if anyone out there wants to find out what a liberal is (as opposed to what the right-wingers say) here is a web site with a test you can take.  At the end it gives you a result based on your left/right and libertarian/authoritarian scores.

Mine were left/right -2.50 and libertarian/authoritarian -3.95.  Basically that means I believe in freedom, but I don't have my head up my butt.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/