Wait Till Last Year--Baseball Blog

First of all I want to thank faithful reader Terry for your quick and thoughtful review of "Yo, Tyrania." Just as you appreciated my book on several levels, so did I appreciate your review. It was quite well-written itself, and you really seemed to grok (another arcane reference) what I was trying to accomplish. Almost scarily so--I never mentioned the nod to "The King and I," which you perceived, along with the debt to "Animal Farm" That was my original model, as each of the Tyranians was meant to reflect an aspect of society, like Orwell's characters. A major Foo-DUM to you! And if you ever want to e-mail chat, press the link on my "Yo,Tyrania" website.

As for the Academy Awards, they were dull, dull dull. Bad songs, wasted jokes, boring winners. So, moving on to the fun about to engulf us--the new baseball season.

I've been doing my prepping for Rotisserie season, intending to enter three different leagues with different rules. So I've done my homework and now sense the strengths and weaknesses of the teams. My blog title reference is of course to the cry of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, who classically had to "Wait till next year" until they finally triumphed in 1955. In my case it recalls last year, when my fave team the Yankees recaptured the title after nearly a decade of frustration. So with the monkey off that back--and Arod's as well--I can relax and always revisit their 2009 World Series win (alive on my DVR) while they stumble to a third-place finish in their division this year.

My pessimism is based on their advancing age. Neither Posada nor Jeter nor Pettitte should expect to perform nearly as well as they did in 2009 (Rivera may still do so, but he is supernatural). Plus the Yanks were quite lucky in the injury department, and that's not likely to recur this year. Their competitors, the Red Sox and Rays, are still formidable and a small shift in injury luck, especially among the strong starting staffs of each team, ought to make the difference. The Sox have the best staff but their offense took a hit with the departure of Bay. The Rays have a great corps of young hitters--Crawford, Longoria, Zobrist, Bartlett, Sean Rodriguez, and if he wakes up, B.J. Upton. The most important player in the division is their closer, Rafael Soriano. Relief is where they fell off last year. I predict a second place finish and a Wild Card for the Jays, with Boston pitching prevailing. The Orioles have some good home-grown talent but no pitching beyond Brian Matusz, and Toronto is simply overmatched.

In the AL Central, the race seems to be between the White Sox and the Twins, though the Twins took a big hit with closer Joe Nathan going down. They have the best offense but need to avoid their typical early-season swoon. Chicago could advance if Jack Peavy can solve the American League. The Tigers will be competitive, though it will be a while before Austin Jackson outperforms Curtis Granderson. The Indians are still rebuilding and Kansas City is Kansas City, though their mound corps is impressive.

The AL West should probably offer an alternative to the Angels this year, whose loss of Figgins and Lackey will likely prove fatal as their opposition strengthens. The Rangers' line-up is awesome, but can Rich Harden and Scotty Feldman really last through the summer? Look for super phenom Neftali Perez to become vital to their cause. The Mariners are certainly in the mix, with the starting one-two punch of King Felix and Cliff Lee, but I think the latter may be a disappointment, and they are short of power. Oakland is something of a mystery team, with some good anonymous young hurlers (Gio Gonzalez anyone?), but doesn't have enough to really compete. My pick is Texas, though they won't advance very far beyond early October.

The Phils are still the class of the National League, though I anticipate a show-down this year between them and the Cardinals. Post-season the Phils majorly improved themselves, replacing Lee with Halladay and Pedro Feliz with Placido Polanco. They won't get the same year from Raul Ibanez but they won't need it. Only a relief corps in flux could stop them from another title, though the Braves are on the move with a smartly rebuilt squad and some great pitching. If Tim Hudson rteturns to form, and Tommy Hanson retains his, it will be a terrific race. The Marlins can't be discounted but don't have the depth of either Philadelphia or Atlanta. The Mets are not likely to be as laughably hospital-prone as last season, but they don't have a strong staff behind Johan Santana and still have two major hitters--Reyes and Beltran--limping to the starting gate. And of Washington, well, Strasbourg or not, I defer to the old cliche--First in war, First in peace, Last in the National League.

It's hard to bet against St. Louis,with that Pujols/Holiday combo, in the otherwise competitive NL Central, though they are very dependent on starters Carpenter and Wainwright, and should one stumble, they could fall to a resurgent Cubs team or a Reds squad with much improved pitching. The Brewers have that wonderful offense but even worse hurling than last year. It's Gallardo and then pretty much Turd Time. Neither Pittsburgh nor Houston can field a squad to overtake the Cardinals, though the Pirates do seem to be able to produce some young studs like Andrew McCutcheon and Garrett Jones.

Although many pundits are discounting the Dodgers for a three-peat in the division, I think they will be in the horse race. They still have a sound offense, and if Furcal can set the table, they have Kemp, Ethier and Manny to drive in the runs. If Kershaw and Billingsley can last the full season they have as good a chance as any other in this very close division. The consensus choice for the title is fast-closing Colorado, and their pitching staff, with Jimenez and De La Rosa, may be enough. But can Tulowitsky repeat his sensational 2009, and when will Todd Helton collapse? Stay tuned. The Giants have that great starting staff but little line-up support for their one great hitter Pablo Sandoval. But my actual choice for the title is Arizona, whose young offense, led by Justin Upton and Chris Young, may gel offensively, and whose mound corps may be sufficient--especially if Brandon Webb can return to full strength.

So my NL picks are the Phils, Cardinals, Diamondbacks and the Dodgers as Wild Card to join the Al leaders Boston, Minnesota, Texas and Tampa Bay. And I project a World Sereis of Boston vs. Philadelphia, with the Phils recapturing the top trophy.

Hate, Incorporated

My political blog this month was going to be entitled "America the Unfixable." Its premise was that our economy, infrastructure, and exploding budgetary deficits could not possibly be corrected with the political system we have now. Congress is beset by self-interest and burdensome procedural rules, and the anti-tax philosophy has so suffused its members that not a one would ever dare suggesting a raise in taxes to actually start paying for the services our population demands. And then there's the execrable Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to control the purse strings of election campaigns.

Okay, I still believe all this to be sadly true, but the recent--and nearly miraculous--passage of the Health Care Reform Act put a slight dent in my thoroughgoing cynicism. Just a dent, though. It was nice to see that progressive legislation can actually be passed, even if takes a couple of generations and the frantic, usually vain efforts of a series of Democratic presidents. The actual provisions of the Health Care bill are not very exciting, though, and only incrementally helpful. It will take further courageous legislation to move us toward, if not single-payer system like Medicare, at least a public option that will really work to whittle down health-insurance costs.

What has amazed--and depressed--me about the entire saga of this bill is the vigorous, dedicated rage with which its rather benign provisions have been attacked. We all know about the propoganda war which the Republicans nearly won, in which loud, ginormous lies were screeched throughout the media and the corporately staged Tea Party rallies so that they nearly became de facto truths. Death Panels! Government takeover of Health! Abortion promotion! Hitler! Stalin! Socialism! Radicalism! These slogans were a lot easier for people to grasp than "Ending preexisting conditions" and "recision" and the poorly named "public options." So the negative gained traction while the positive stood on its own quiet merits. Certainly a recipe for defeat.

What historians will say from a distance, though, is that the fight was never about health care at all, but about the President, and the fact that a black man (well, sort of a black man) was elected, and worse, proved himself brighter by a parsec than all his Republican adversaries. The Republican strategy has always been to defeat the primary facet of Obama's agenda and cut off his political future at the knees. The way to do that was to appeal to the strongest emotions, the linchpin of Republican strategy since the Nixon years. Those emotions, of course, are fear and hate.

For some reason I am reminded of the classic fight in Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" between the evil Madame DeFarge and the loyal nursemaid Miss Pross. In their climactic one-on-one, Miss Pross managed to get the best of the vengeful knitter because, as Dickens' wrote, she represented the tenacity of love, which was so much greater than that of hate. Well, okay, but as Oscar Wilde had Miss Prism say forty years later, "That is what Fiction means!"

Because, unfortunately, hatred and fear have played much more of a dominant role in human affairs than love and charity. I don't need to retrace the historical record. How many wars have been fought over love and benignity? So when trying to incite action, the Republicans, through their Tea Party surrogates, knew how to rouse that anger. So we had the horrendous demonstrations in Washington prior to the final vote in which Democrats had to endure racist and homophobic epithets from mindless idiots, and even from a congressman (the mindless idiot from Texas who yelled "Baby Killer" at Bart Stupak).

Well, surprise, it didn't work, at least not in the short run. But there are Republican beneficiaries, and I don't mean those whose paralyzed children can now get health care or whose prescription drug "doughnut holes" are being filled. I mean specifically the media madmen such as Glenn Beck and most especially Rush Limbaugh, the purveyors of ignorance and hatred, whose ratings will only go up because of the emotions they stir.

Rush Limbaugh was apoplectic, as usual, after the Health Bill passage, declaiming against the "pro" voters as "bastards" who need to be destroyed. I would much prefer he follow his own threat and move to Costa Rica, but that's not where he is going to earn his 35 million dollars a year. Thirty-five million dollars a year to foment hatred! I know that Keith Olbermann uses hyperbole when he calls a character like Limbaugh "the worst person in the world," but in this case, Limbaugh might be just that.

The Republicans are both afraid of Limbaugh and in thrall to him because he does so much of their dirty work. Now I'm not so naive to think that Democrats have not resorted to their own demagoguery, particularly on the issue of the Republican's threat to Social Security. But the fibs the Democrats have told are trivial in comparison to the Big Lies which are vomited endlessly by Boehner and Cantor and Beck and Palin and Limbaugh. And the Democrats do not ever lower themselves to the utilization of Hatred as policy.

The heinous tactics of the Republicans in the political pursuit of White House recapture will eventually prove once again that they only know how to look backward, not forward (or ever in a mirror), and they will be left in the dustbin of history.

Song of Myself

Hey Terry--I've written a novel.

(I am presuming no other readers, since only you have the patience to check up on my increasingly rare entries).

But perhaps you, with your myriad blogs and Internet connections can spread the word. But first buy the book! It is called "Yo, Tyrania" and is available on-line at Amazon and Barnes & Nobel.
I even have a website: www.outskirtspress.com/tyrania. There you can read more about the book, and about me, and even hear my mellifluous voice read an excerpt.

There. Done. Whew. I hate trying to sell myself. But I haven't had a literary agent in a decade so it's my responsibility. And my publisher--well that's another story.

Full disclosure, "Yo, Tyrania" is self-published. I know, the reputation of self-publishing, or more dismissively "vanity press," is checkered at best. However, there are reasons I pursued this approach. It has nothing to do with the quality of the work. If you've been reading this blog at all (an obvious supposition since here you are), you know that I am a capable writer with an ample vocabulary, a broad knowledge of world facts and affairs, and the knack of assuming the proper ironic tone. All of these assets are apparent in the book.

But "Yo, Tyrania" is an unusual book to categorize. It is a mash-up of several genres, including young adult novel, fairy tale and political satire. It comes closest in approach to such classics as "Gulliver's Travels" or "Animal Farm" of "Cat's Cradle," all of which use narrative detachment and distancing of setting to score comic and satiric points about domestic culture. Of course it is not of their class, but these were my inspirations.

Its hybrid nature has made it a difficult sale to literary agents and publishers who need a more staightforward genre to market. Who is the audience? The major characters are a 30-year-old black teacher (the audience surrogate,) and a 12-year-old Queen of a backward foreign principality who's an idealist and a spoiled brat at the same time. So who would be the audience for this novel? Teenagers? Their parents? African Americans? No, I intend to reach a universal audience that can appreciate all aspects of the story, from coming-of-age to a lampooning of democratic traditions.

But of all my work I've loved this one the most, and it has been in development for over ten years, so it was time to reveal it to the world. The Internet has provided the means, through the fairly successful unit called Outskirts Press. But this route requires that I perform most of the marketing, an arena in which I am neither comfortable or familiar. So I am staggering through the world of search engines and bloggers and links, as well as the old-style book reviewers, who will help to generate some knowledge, if not interest in my work.

So far I have sold, to my knowledge, seven copies. Though it pleases me to actually see a completed novel on my desk with my name and picture (and I must say, an attractive cover), I'm less amused to discover that my novel is ranked 1,200,000 or so (literally) on Amazon's sales chart. Which reminds me, obliquely, of the line actor Edmund Gwenn used in his final breaths, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Or in my case, "Writing is easy. Selling is hard."