Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Abbott

Covid-19 is devastating Texas. The state is reporting an average of more than 12,000 new cases a day, and intensive care units are basically full.  Covid tents are once again being erected in hospital parking lots to deal with the surge.

. . . If only there were some kind of vaccine,

In fairness, Texas is certainly not the worst state in terms of vaccination rates, with something like 56% of its eligible residents vaccinated--not great, certainly, but not as bad as some other Deep Red states.  I imagine having liberal bastions like Austin helps.  But the sheer size of Texas's population means that huge numbers of Texans remain unvaccinated, despite the near ubiquitous availability of vaccines.

In the meantime, though, Texas governor Greg Abbott remains steadfast in his refusal to do anything constructive in combatting the virus.  Not only has he refused to implement a statewide mask mandate, he has gone a step further, and forbidden local governments from imposing mask mandates of their own.  At the same time, though, Abbott is begging health care workers from other states to come to Texas to help with the Covid surge.

All I can say is, I hope that--Hippocratic Oath, notwithstanding--these out-of-state health care workers tell Abbott to go fuck himself sideways.  If he's not willing to do anything to mitigate the spread of the virus, why should anyone risk their own health and well-being to bail him out?  If I were a health-care worker, I'd offer to come to Texas if and only if statewide mask mandates are put in place, along with any number of other mitigation measures.  I might also ask for a million dollars a week. Why not?

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In other news, the CEO's of Southwest, American, and Delta Airlines have announced that they will not require their employees to get vaccinated, in contrast to United Airlines, which did impose such a mandate.

Really, Delta? Isn't it bad enough for your corporate image that the plague raging across the country is universally and unrelentingly referred to as the "Delta variant"? You really want to compound that by going on record as being less than fanatical in taking steps to protect your staff and customers?

Waiting

This afternoon, our college's marketing director, who also serves as our public information officer (PIO) sent the management group a message over Microsoft Teams: "So we have fires on both sides of campus right now." Off our eastern perimeter, a smallish fire was burning at a storage space (I swear, California has more storage space per capita than anywhere else on earth) and a larger one had ignited off to our west at the local Chevron refinery.  Not to worry, though: The refinery blaze was apparently a truck fire, not likely to ignite the storage tanks.  As of this writing, the smoke seems to have dissipated, and it looks like the fires might be out.

As of this writing. . . 

That's the thing, though: We're basically in the heart of wildfire season right now.  The Dixie Fire northeast of Sacramento has been burning for about a month and is still only about 20% contained.  It's already become the second largest wildfire in California history, and its effects have been seen and felt as far east as Denver, Salt Lake City. . . and Iowa.. . and even New York.  Interestingly, though, folks in my neck of the woods--not especially close to the fire, but certainly closer than Denver, Salt Lake City, et al.--haven't been particularly affected.  Oh, there've certainly been some hazy days, but for thanks to whatever quirks of the jetstream have been holding sway nearby, we really haven't had much in the way of smoky, oppressive air.  So far, despite constant reminders of a "bad" fire season, we've been relatively unscathed--far less. . . scathed?. . .than we've been in recent years.

I'm thankful for that, of course, but every time I take the slightest bit of comfort, I remember that the other shoe--and there's always another shoe--could drop at any moment.  Past performance is not a predictor of future results.  Lack of fire right now ensures nothing about the absence of fire in a week. . . or a day. . . or an hour.  When all it takes to start an inferno is some careless smoker tossing an insufficiently extinguished cigarette into the wrong patch of overly dry grasses. . . . I sometimes find myself seriously wondering how it's possible that the entire state isn't on fire in perpetuity.

Sure, life is unpredictable.  We all walk around under constant threat from random catastrophes over which we exercise no control--even if most such random catastrophes are relatively unlikely: Terrorist attacks, lightning strikes, getting bonked on the head by a meteorite.  But the world still feels so much more precarious now, as the uncontrollable catastrophes just seem to increase in number, and sometimes it seems like we're all just waiting for the big one to hit.

TRENDS!!!

Back despite lack of popular demand, it's the Thursday Trendwatch!  Let's see what people are looking at on Yahoo! today! 

(Yeah, I know, I tried doing this a few weeks back with Twitter's trending topics, but that was boring: Just a bunch of TV shows that people were talking about.  I'm hoping Yahoo! will provide a more eclectic mix of things to riff on.)

10: Luka Doncic

Why he's trending: NBA fans now Doncic as the 22-year-old wunderkind (or whatver's Slovenian for "wunderkind") of the Dallas Mavericks.  After only a few years in the league, he's blossomed into a perennial MVP candidate, and he's in the news today thanks to his participation in the Olympics as a member of the Slovenian national team. . . that just lost to France. FRANCE!  That's almost as embarrassing as losing to the Knicks!

9: Doris Duke

Why she's trending: After Luka Doncic made his unceremonious exit from the Olympics, the disturbingly tall and long-dead heiress took the silver medal in the women's shot put. . . OK, seriously, though: Doris Duke's killing of a gay man in Newport, Rhode Island. in 1966 was long ruled an accidental homicide.  Recently, though, it's been conclusively established that Duke intentionally murdered her erstwhile friend.  Yet more proof of the deadly effects of tobacco.

8. NFL Tickets

Why they're trending: . . . ? Because, football?

7. Prostate Cancer Treatment

Why it's trending: I can only assume that it has something to do with the demographic profile of users of Yahoo! being middle-aged men with questionable health practices. . . .Considering who's reporting on their current trend list, I can't really take issue with this.

6. Jennifer Aniston

Why she's trending: There seem to be a few things going on with "Morning Show" star and famous haircut, Jennifer Aniston. She apparently has a "TikTok doppelganger" that has gone viral. She announced recently that she has cut people out of her life over their continued propagation of Covid-19 disinformation. But perhaps most importantly, her favorite underwear, the Hanky Panky thong, may soon disappear from the shelves of Nordstrom's.  America mourns with her.

5: The Hoshizaki Ice Machine

Why it's trending: Because when you need ice, you need Hoshizaki!

4. Nina Dobrev

Why she's trending: Because she "shows off toned abs in red bikini."  I mean, I'm all for this kind thing, but I note a clear double-standard.  Nobody ever seems interested when I show off my abs in a red bikini.  And lord knows I show them off often enough!

3. Elizabeth Holmes

Why she's trending: Holmes was an executive with Theranos, a biotech company that claimed revolutionary diagnostic capabilities, like the capacity to diagnose all manner of illnesses from just a single drop of blood.  It was astounding!  It was world-changing! It was bullshit! And now Holmes faces criminal charges for fraud.  When she does go on trial, it has been decided that patients who received "erroneous" test results will be allowed to testify against her.  Too bad for Holmes that Doris Duke isn't around to bump off some of the peskier witnesses.

2. Carli Lloyd

Why she's trending: She, along with teammate Megan Rapinoe, scored two goals in today's Olympic match against Australia to clinch the bronze medal for Team USA.  At least they didn't lose to France!

And the number one trending topic today is.. . . 

1. Tana Mongeau

Why she's trending: She's a YouTuber who apparently needs a belt.

. . .I tell ya, folks.  Trends ain't quite what they used to be.

Coxswain Teasing

Speaking of weird sports: rowing.

I think I’d make a good coxswain. After all, everybody knows that, if there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s screaming at rowers. I’ll often go down to the park in the hopes of finding a kayaker to yell at. And since the extent of the coxswain’s non-yelling-centered physical activity seems to involve sitting down, I think I am in peak physical condition to assume the awesome responsibility of shrieking Team USA to victory!

Let's Talk about Liberos

I know, I know. I promised you a discussion the designated hitter.  But this is important, dammit!

Oddball sports are the lifeblood of the Olympics.  Every four(ish) years, otherwise reasonable people find themselves suddenly espousing passionate opinions about arcane athletic pursuits that nobody watches: Water polo! Taekwondo! Gymnastics!  (Oh, bite me! You know I speak the truth!)

So it is with volleyball.

To be clear: Not women's beach volleyball, which, far from being meaningless, is the epitome of sports and should have its own cable channel devoted to showing it 24-7-365-World Without End, amen!

No, I speak of the more prosaic indoor volleyball, about which I have developed strong opinions over the last 23 minutes! Specifically, about the "libero."

If you've been watching Olympic volleyball (and who hasn't?), you've surely noticed that one player on each team wears a different color shirt than their teammates.

This is not, as one would reasonably assume, a result of a laundry snafu.  Rather, the mismatched player is the "libero," a position invented in 1998 because volleyball wasn't convoluted enough.

Generally, the libero is the team's best defensive player.  Not to be confused with the team's most defensive player.  That would be Sheryl.  You just can't say anything to that girl!

Where was I?  Ah, yes:

The libero plays a very specific role.  They are not allowed to serve.  They are not allowed to spike.  They are mainly assigned to play defense--but the defensive permission does not extend to blocking their opponent's spikes, which they are not allowed to do, but which would seem to be a key defensive function, but what do I know? I'm just the guy who's been watching volleyball for, now, 32 minutes.  Anyway.  

Liberos are allowed to make spectacular dives (which I believe are called "digs") to prevent a spiked ball from hitting the ground (which would be bad).  They are also allowed to be the "second setter"--i.e., the person who volleys the ball after the first setter so that a third person can smack the ball over the net.  The libero, then, plays the role of the middle person in the Human Centipede that is a volleyball team.

Sorry.

Now, I grant you that saving a spiked ball ("digging") is an important skill. From what I've observed, though (46 minutes!), liberos are not very successful at doing this.  This phenomenon becomes more befuddling when you notice that the "spiker" very often smacks the ball right in the libero's direction.  Like, "Here, libero! Dig this!"  Which on the face of it seems like poor strategy if we assume the liberos can do their job.  I mean, if they're ostensibly the best defensive player, wouldn't you want to keep the ball away from them?  You don't see baseball players intentionally hitting the ball in the direction of the gold-glove shortstop, right?

I should really coach volleyball.

I mentioned earlier that the libero wears a different colored jersey.  This is supposedly to make the player easier for the officials to identify, in case they do something useful--uh, I mean, un-libero-like, such as blocking an opponent's shot.

I suspect, though, the opportunity to clothe someone in an alternate color jersey was in fact the main impetus for the position: It was a marketing ploy.  I mean, you have any idea how many volleyball groupies there are?!?

No, seriously, do you?  I'm thinking six?  

However many there are, you don't want them to stop buying Team USA merch! So you have to give them more inventory to choose from!  You only have the standard t-shirt?  Real fans will spend the extra $49.99 for the libero hoodie!

The More Things Change, Part II

 Seven-Inning Double-Headers

As a result of the pandemic, the 2020 baseball season didn't get underway until late July.  Rather than a 162-game slog, the season was a 60-game sprint.  Realizing, though, that some games would still be rained—or, as in fact often happened, quarantined out, Major League Baseball decreed that missed games would, as usual, be made up through double-headers, but that, not as usual, each game of the double-header would be only seven innings.

Now, this obviously shaves some time off games and so could be seen as in keeping with MLB’s attempts to speed up the pace-of-play.  And the rule either benefits or hurts teams in pretty much equal measure: A team that loses a seven-inning game by one run could reasonably complain that they were "cheated" out of a couple of opportunities to mount a comeback, but they are just as likely to find themselves winning a one-run game that could be frittered away by a shaky bullpen.  In the grand scheme of baseball, those things tend to even out over time.

Some things, however, don't even out.  This season, for example, the New York Mets have already had a ridiculous number of games postponed.  Their very first series of the year was postponed when several Washington players tested positive for Covid.  Subsequently, foul weather in the New York region forced several more postponements.  By the end of May, the Mets had already experienced ten postponements, and as I write this, they are playing in their 62nd double-header of the year. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.

Think about what this means: Even if the Mets "only" had those ten postponements, then that would mean they would play twenty seven-inning games (the ten games being made up, plus the ten additional games forming the second half of the double-header).  At the end of the season, then, the Mets would have played 40 fewer innings than they were scheduled to play (assuming no need for extra innings in these games)—or the equivalent of more than four fewer games than in a standard season.  At the same time, teams that play in domed stadiums or in generally delightful climates like San Diego might see no postponements.  So if, say, San Diego faces the Mets in the post-season, the Padres' players will have four-plus games more worth of wear and tear, bumps and bruises, arm strain and exhaustion.  That hardly seems fair.

Seven-inning games raise other questions of fairness: If a pitcher throws seven innings and gives up no hits, should he be credited with a no-hitter? Does a starting pitcher still have to complete five innings to qualify for a win (as he would in a standard game)?

And here’s some REAL chutzpah. Most double-headers are scheduled in the classic “single-admission” format: One ticket gets you into both games. So, even though the game you would normally be seeing is shorter than usual, you’re still getting two games and at least 14 innings of baseball for the price of nine. SOME of these games, though, are scheduled as “split” double-headers with, say, one game starting at 1:00 and the second starting at 7:00. In these cases, fans must buy tickets to each game separately—but each game is only guaranteed to be seven innings. You will not be too shocked to hear that the teams don’t cut the price of each ticket by 22%.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has decreed that double-headers will revert to nine innings next season. Unless the inequities outlined above are addressed, then the seven-inning version does, indeed, need to go.

Up next: Designated hitters.

The More Things Change. . . . (Part One)

With the second half of the season underway, as we barrel into the dog days of August, now seems as good a time as any to share our thoughts on the changes adopted by Major League Baseball over the last couple of years,

Baseball is often romanticized as some never-changing artifact of Americana.  This image, though, has never been accurate.  Baseball gloves have grown from, essentially, the size of standard gloves one might wear on a chilly day to large, webbed contraptions in which even the screamingest of line drives can be easily handled.  Batting helmets have presumably saved many a life--or at least prevented many a concussion--since their introduction in the 1940s.  Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier long after Ty Cobb broke the racist barrier--I kid, I kid: There were ALWAYS racists in baseball.  Still, certain fundamental aspects of the game have never changed: The pitcher's mound (or, more specifically, the rubber thereon) has always sat 60 feet, six inches from home plate.  The distance between bases has never shrunk from 90 feet.  The Yankees have always been despicable.  This bedrock of unshakable tradition has allowed the game to evolve around the edges and so to remain just as exciting--or, to haters, boring--as ever.

The last two years, though, have seen some major changes, mainly adopted in response to the pandemic-forced shortening of the 2020 season.  Apparently, some of these changes are to be discarded after this year, but let's take a moment to review them and consider which worked well and which should rightly be eliminated.

We begin our discussion today with:

The Three-Batter Rule

Many changes recently adopted by the lords of baseball concern efforts to accelerate the "pace of play."  MLB feared that fans were turned off by lengthy games, and so sought ways to speed things up.  There are now rules about how long a pitcher can take between pitches--rules which I've never seen actually enforced--and limitations on the number of times the catcher or manager can visit the pitcher's mound during a game.  Perhaps the most significant rule-change of this type, though, is one requiring any pitcher brought into a game to face at least three batters.

This is a good rule.  It prevents a manager from, say, bringing in a right-handed pitcher to face a right-handed batter, and then replacing that pitcher with a leftie to face a leftie. . . and then replacing that leftie with another rightie. . . .and on and on ad infinitum as the viewing audience slowly dies.  And yes, this sort of thing would frequently happen, while announcers inevitably--and futilely--tried to sell us on the beauty of this time-honored baseball strategy.  So while the three-batter rule has somewhat diminished the market for that most fabled of baseball professionals, the left-handed specialist, it has sped up this one aspect of the game.

I should state at this point that I, myself, am unconvinced that "pace of play" really is a problem.  Certainly, baseball games can often last far longer than any disinterested observer would consider necessary, but why must baseball pander to the disinterested observer?  To those who enjoy baseball, the comparatively languid pace--when measured against, say, basketball or hockey or high-speed mouse-tossing--is a feature, not a bug.  Baseball will never be a high-velocity sport; no need to try to make it into one.

Still and all, though, constant pitching changes, with pitchers accompanied by the  "Final Jeopardy" theme music as they stroll in from the bullpen, with strategy conversations with the manager and infielders, with the (at least) eight warmup pitches--these can get kind of tedious even for the most dedicated baseball enthusiast.  Plus, it is interesting to watch left-handed pitchers who haven't faced a right handed batter since the Clinton administration suddenly, unavoidably, staring down the likes of Mike Trout or Pete Alonso in a high-pressure situation.  

Good rule!  Keep it!

On deck: Seven-inning double-headers