We Saw It On TV

Before the lights of February fade from view, one more examination of the great cultural events that took place over these twenty-eight days seems in order. 

 On three of the four Sundays, tens of millions of viewers in North America and throughout the world settled down before their TV screens to become enthralled by the XLIX Super Bowl, the XL Anniversary celebration of NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live, and the LXXXVII  Academy Awards presentation.  The Super Bowl attracted an audience of 114.4 million, the largest TV audience ever; SNL drew 45 million; and the Oscars 36.6 million.  That's a lot of eyeballs.

I'm not very familiar with SNL, and would take the Westminster Kennel Club Show over the Academy Awards every time.  Football, though, seems to be implanted in every red-blooded American boy's heart.  And in the hearts of all red-blooded American old boys, too.  So I watch some college and some pro football, and pay more attention once the play-offs begin.

The better team lost XLIX.  The first half was very exciting, and the leap I executed at half-time over the recumbent form of my totally uninterested dog was fairly so.  I leapt to avoid the cacaphonous Katie Perry and the eye strain of her strobe light accompaniment.  I became distracted, and didn't return to the game until the third quarter was nearly over.  Everyone knows how the 4th quarter ended.

The coaching was, at very least, inept.  Not just the interception that won the game, although that is the enduring story.  The Patriots refused to run, which made Seattle's defense much easier, and Seattle likewise refused to run, which made New England's defense much easier.  Inept coaching x 2 .

 The Pats' No.78 remained fat and formidable all game, however.

Woody Hayes, Ohio State's grand old prowler of the sidelines, speaking of the forward pass, uttered this dictum: "three things can happen when you pass, and two of them are bad."  Passing from the half-yard line on first down with less than a minute left would have been beyond Woodie's comprehension.  As it was beyond the understanding of 114.4 million armchair quarterbacks and coaches looking on.  Granted, the views of many of the 114.4 million might have become a little 

blurry by that time.

The decision that ended the Seahawks' Super Bowl win string at one was probably made by their bright and ambitious Offensive Coordinator, Darryl Bevell, with Head Coach Pete Carroll obviously retaining the right to veto.  Carroll manfully took the rap. Whichever.

Both of them should be required to enter the Charles River Race for Thick Sculls.

The stunning climax of XLIX brought to mind the amazing finish of the best football game I ever saw, the classic match between the defending national collegiate champion Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Iowa Preflight Seahawks.  The game was played in Minneapolis Oct. 3, 1942.

The Gophers had reached their absolute pinnacle the preceding season.  They were crowned national collegiate champions for the second year in a row.  Stellar triple-threat tailback Bruce Smith won    

 Heisman Trophy, the first and only U of M player to be so honored.

The 1940 team set the stage.  It too had been a banner season.  The Gophers were national champs for the third time, the most recent being in 1936. The decade of 1932-1941 saw them dominate the Big 10 by winning five conference titles and tieing for two others. The ’41 national crown was their fourth. It cemented the U of M’s standing at the very top of football’s elite.  No other Minnesota team, college or professional, in any other sport, has ever come close the achieving that level of excellence. The Gophers had become Golden.

Their leader, Coach Bernie Bierman, was a U of M alumnus, who returned to Minnesota after a successful coaching tenure at Tulane. He was a focused, no-nonsense, former U.S. Marine Corps officer in WWI. His brand of football centered on skill, tactics, and endurance.  Endurance, in fact, might have been the hallmark of the Bierman gophers.  Few, if any, opponents could match the strength of the U of M during the 4^th quarter in those glory years. Players went both ways. They played offense and defense. Free substitution and two-platoon football; that is, one team for offense and one for defense, didn’t arrive until 1951.

Euphoria over the championship team and Bruce Smith’s signal honor by the Heisman Comittee, was ended abruptly by Pearl Harbor. Bernie Bierman returned to uniform as a Lt.Col. in the Marines. The Navy had established a pre-flight training program at the University of Iowa and Bierman was given charge of its football team, one of many organized in similar training programs at universities and military bases across the country.  The teams were stocked mainly by college players, both graduates and underclassmen, and by professional football players who met the Navy age and aptitude requirements. Iowa Preflight, nicknamed the Seahawks, boasted, among others, Forrest Evashevski, blocking back for the great Tommy Harmon of Michigan, Jimmy Smith, star halfback at the University of Illinois, Perry Schwartz, who played end for the pro football Brooklyn Dodgers, and Vince Bannonis, center of the Detroit Lions.

The 1942 Gophers opened the season by trouncing the University of Pittsburg 50-7. They were coached by Dr. George Hauser, Bierman’s right hand man, who agreed to take Bierman’s place at the U of M for the duration, as a popular saying went. Hopes were high for the Gophers, who returned two great tackles, Dick Wildung and Paul Mitchell from ’41, plus center Bob Fitch, QB Bill Garnaas, FB Bob Schweiger, and Bill Daley, a left halfback of huge promise, plus enough additional veterans to warrant optimism. The opening win against Pitt boded well.

The matchup was fascinating. Two teams playing exactly the same offense and defense. The Gophers scored first but missed the extra point, leaving them in the lead 6-0. The Seahawks came back with a TD, and made the point-after to go up 7-6. 

Then came a great deal of maneuvering and probing, with each side looking for a vulnerability to exploit. Latter day cynics labeled this style of football “three yards and a cloud of dust.” They were either ignorant or unaware of Bernie Bierman’s won-lost record.

  The Seahawks raised most of the dust, all the while nurturing their one-point lead.  Bill Daley ran wild for the Gophers, but came up short until the closing minutes. With a little more than one minute to go, Daley found a hole in the right side, cut back against the grain, and ran 54 yards to the Seahawk 1/2-yard line. I think he criscrossed the field twice in creating his epic. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was magnificent; the kind of run little kids and big kids dream about. The once in a lifetime run kids and grown-ups look for in playground, park board, jv, and high school games they attend, and the kind that glues their eyes to the TV in hope of seeing one like it, one that will stay with them forever.

On that gray day in October, 1942, the Golden Gophers mounted a typical closing charge. They were on the Iowa Preflight Seahawk’s ½ yard line, trailing 6-7, first down, and less than half a minute to go, thanks to Bill Daley. The ball was snapped.  But not to Daley; it went to the fullback.  He fumbled.  The Seahawks recovered.  Game over.

 I had to wait til I got home to find out that Ernie White of the Cardinals shut out the Yankees on their way to winning the World Series 4 games to 2.  Tough day for a 13-year old sports nut.

  .

Bowl Games

Those who owned the land prospered mightily.  Once their prosperity had been safely deposited and secured, they sought to acknowledge the gods who favored them, their land and their produce, which was known in the repositories of learning by its formal name, Pippin de Terre.
     Great variety flourished within the genre.  Jonathon, Winesap, Gala, Cortland, McIntosh, Haralson, Red and Golden Delicious, were but a few.  Of particular favor to Roger Belgoody, gamekeeper to the lords, was the Granny Smith, named, whimsically, after a roman beauty who subcontracted with the eminent Roger to arrange for the ease and comfort of his snorting, pawing minions.  But the most popular and therefore the most sought after, was, of course, the Wealthy.
     The Great Homage began.  Pestlers of immense skill were assembled.  Sleek Nubians, phlegmatic Nordics, stolid, unsmiling Slavs, and wily, inscrutable Orientals.  Powerful, heavily muscled, with great loins and abdomens overflowing the semi-transparent knickers that enrobed them, mostly.
     At the signal, the pestlers and their sievers set off, propelled by great bursts of pent-up energy.  They pestled and sieved furiously, but nevertheless paused frequently to towel their brows and replenish the eye blacking blocking the rays of the radiant sun.  While they were thusly engaged, the cheering multitudes were accosted by hawkers of great persistence exhorting them to buy highly personal personal products for both men and women, products never mentioned in polite company in past millenia, but deemed suitable for the attending throng.  Equally shrill were those hawkers of endless models of look-alike travoises, so closely resembling each other, in fact, that one was barely distinquishable from the other, even down to the handsome men and women models atop each travois, whose grins were depressingly alike.
     As the shadows lengthened, respite was granted the constestants, but not their adoring admirers.  The hawkers returned with a vengeance, but were overwhelmed by a great cacophony erupting from below.  Banging and clanging neared intolerable decibels.  Unintelligible primal wailing and moaning, pierced by intermittent shrieks in a sort of rhythmic pattern were emitted, as light from a thousand burning pine fagots further blurred the senses.  As the smoke cleared, scores of youthful girls and boys, clad immodestly, writhed against each other in what appeared to be a mating dance;
the girls smiling insinuatingly, and the boys closing in for the kill.
     Thereupon followed more hawking until the end of the pestling competition was reached.  Still more hawking ensued, serving to introduce a  panel of elders, very large in stature and quite elderly who shouted through rams' horns in-depth descriptions of what the audience of admirers had just seen.
     At last, it was over, except for the sloshers, who would slosh on through the night.
     A blind man came upon the scene, accompanied by his guide and companion.  He was conducted to the memorial erected to the epochal event lately concluded.
     "And what is this?," he asked.
     "A fitting tribute to a universally loved and cherished institution," his companion replied.
     "Walt Disney?"
     "No, this is even grander.  It is a magnificent vessel atop a plinth of flawless Grecian granite.  The vessel is of sublime Italian glass.  Rather than perfect porcelain, the liner is of rare and immaculately molded ivory. A band of purest silver, filagreed and encrusted with precious stones encircles the vessel.  Spaces have been designated for the inscription of the letters XLIX, which are little understood, but look nice.  It is a paean to the gods of produce."
     "Has it a name?"
     "It is known as the Super Bowl.  And it is full of applesauce."

What Did They Do To Be So Black and Blue - Revisited

I posted a blog just minutes ago that I may spend a long time regretting.  It contained a line that read,
"Here's what a successful Presidency looks like."  It referred to data distributed by the Democratic National Campaign Committee, comparing aspects of the economy today with the same aspects when President Obama took office in 2009.  All of the elements of the quote are there, but the presentation of them in a sort of graph-like form is definitely not what a successful presentation of a "successful Presidency" looks like.  Mercy.
January, 2009                         Today
       7.949  Dow Jones Index  17.573             
       7.8%   Unemployment       5.8%
       - 5.4% GDP Growth         3.5%
       9.8%   Deficit GDP           2.8%
                   Growth
       37%     Consumer              94.5%



(Miss Karlson was right.
I deserved to flunk typing.)
                  

What Did They Do To Be So Black and Blue

Prior the the Great Transition of November 4, the DNCC issued a midterm report card on the Obama Administration's progress.  It was headed "This is what a successful Presidency looks like."

                         President Obama Took
                         Office January 2009                                                                           Today

                                       7949                                  Dow Jones Index                          17.573
                                       7.8%                                  Unemployment                               5.8%
                                      -5.4%                                  GDP Growth                                  3.5%
                                       9.8%                                  Deficit GDP Growth                      2.8%
                                       37 %                                  Consumer Confidence                   94.5%

   About the same time, Economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, professor of Economics at Princeton, and popular NY Times columnist and author, wrote in an article in Rolling Stones Maga-
zine, "Obama has emerged as one of the most consquential, yes, successful presidents in American history.  His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward, and it's working better than anyone expected.  Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more
effective than you'd think.  Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries.  And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy."
   Mr. Krugman went on to say:  "This isn't what you'd expect to see if a failing president were dragging his party down."
   But, apparently, the Democrats did not believe their own message, and were not persuaded by opinions such as those of Mr. Krugman.  Yet their frenetic last-gasp solicitations of money avowedly
had for their purpose the support of Mr. Obama and all Democrats running for their congressional lives.  What in the wide world of hanging chads was going on?
   In a separate unrelated interview on NPR prior to the elections, Senator McConnell of Kentucky emphasized his opinion that a president is the face of his party.  It's the president that gets the bouquets and the president that gets the brickbats.  That can't be some glorious new emanation from the Fountain of Knowledge.  Not if McConnell has heard of it.  But them as can't legislate, prosnosticate. Or recite the obvious.
   This was certainly the Demos' election to lose, and they made an impressive job of it.  They failed to connect sufficiently with the acknowledged strength of the party; seniors, youngsters, Hispanics, African-Americans, religious minorities.  They should thank their lucky stars that women voting for them actually increased over the 2010 midterms.  Trouble was, a measly 36.3 % of all eligible voters bothered, the measliest turnout since 1942.  The get-out-the-vote claxon failed to alarm, and the Demos were left to feel like Old Ned.

How could anyone in the 99% category vote Republican?  What do Republicans advocate, what does their platform favor?  Was anything of the kind mentioned within the mind-numbing cacophony of stereotyped sight and sound that always ended with an ill at ease robot assuring us that he or she approved this message?  Even though it probably was no clearer to them than it was to their haplessly unwilling audience?  Did they tell the 99%  that they are dedicated to the elimination of Social Security?  Medicare?  Affordable Health Care?  Environmental Protection?

   Did the GOP ever acknowledge in any election or campaign the Party intent to reduce income taxes for corporations and 1% individuals?  To maintain and expand offshore havens in which to hide money in order to avoid taxes?  Adding to a Supreme Court that redefines the English language and rigs presidential elections?  Subverting the concept of equal access to the airwaves by encouraging amorphous unidentified organizations to buy unlimited amounts of advertising for partisan purposes?
Railing against big government but championing the creation and expansion of the unfortunately named Department of Homeland Security, the largest police force in the world?
   Actually, what the Repos said or didn't say was irrelevant.  The succeeded in boring the electorate out of its mind.  The Demos didn't vote.  The election was lost.  President Obama must accept the blame.  Six years of Republican obstruction, obfuscation, and obduracy should have filled his political arsenal.  Instead, his participation was ethereal.  Wraithlike.
   When Mr. Obama arrived on the scene in 2008, he brought with him the reputation of being a stirring orator.  He's kept that reputation pretty well under wraps.
   There was an illuminating, astral, epochal, galvanizing inspiration presented in early autumn when Ken Burns assembled and broadcast film of President Franklin D. Roosevelt guiding the nation through its darkest hours, persuading by the soundness of his policies  and the transporting appeal of his personality.  One hoped that Mr. Obama would see it and be stimulated to go directly to the people with his administration's successes and with renewed promises of hope that remain unfulfilled.
Perhaps wisely, the President abjured.  He certainly evoked no comparisons.
   However, he cannot continue to fade in and out over these last two years in office.  He must lead.  He must go to the mat.  He can obviously appeal and motivate.  He did so in 2008 and 2012.  He must put forth no less effort in 2015 and 2016, even though he will not be a candidate.
   After eight years of Republican refusal to participate in representative government during the Clinton years, followed by the utter disaster of Bush-Cheney, and the current promise of two more years of Republican demurral, bringing the total once again to eight, and three eights make twenty-four, the country simply cannot afford to continue clownish government manipulated by the cynical rich.
  
  

What Did They Do To Be So Black & Blue?

Mid-term Democracy

   If Tuesday's mid-term elections are to be decided on the issues of peace and prosperity, the Republicans haven't a chance.
   On foreign policy, the GOP is unchanging.  It's still war for oil.  Global warming?  A figment of tree-huggers' hallucinations.  Palestine and Israel?  Israel is a good customer.  Follow the money.  What if it's American taxpayers' money?  Money is money.  How about Islamic fanatics? Nothing can be done with people like that. Have you heard about the Arab Spring? It's not in season.  You've heard about revolution?  Yes.  There was a nice one in 1776. What about life for the people ruled by Arab kings, Sheiks, and Emirs. Hey, they've got the tallest building in the world over there. They've got big time tennis and golf tournaments.  You can't say that about a lot of countries. What  about the Pentagon?  It's a nice building.  May need expansion.  What about Chinese balance of payments? China's a good customer. What about export-import imbalances with China?  China's a good supplier.
How about American troops in Germany, Japan, Korea, and hundreds of other outposts around the world?  We're supporting economies in those places.  So what do you say about U.S. fleets in the Mediterranean, the Indian and Pacific Oceans?  Well, there might be another Achille Morro, and you can't always tell about Indonesian plane crashes.  What about the Department of Homeland Security;
you're supposed to favor small government.? Well, there's an awful lot of bad people out there.  Americans?  Well, a lot of them weren't born here. What is your estimate of the total cost of U.S. military expenditures? It's published as part of the President's annual budget.  Does it include the cost of wars in Iraq and Afhganistan?  No, because they may not be over yet.  Who's keeping track?  Well, there's a lot of experts involved.  Bureaucrats?  Aren't you supposed to favor small government?  Well, we're talking a lot of money here.  Or not?  Well, we don't want to tip our mitts to the bad guys.
Ok.  Last item.  How much do we spend on the CIA?  I will answer that directly, and it gives me great pleasure to do so.  Nobody knows.

   Domestically, Republicans want to do away with Social Security, Medicare, and The Affordable Health Care Act.   There are 14 million Americans living in poverty.  Republicans believe they should go to work, but won't raise the national minimum wage.  Women average only 70% of the wages paid to men who perform the same work.  That's fine with Republicans, who countenance U.S business' off-shoring jobs to cheap labor countries, which keeps wages in this country low and flat.  Republicans either don't know or don't care that 73% of the American economy consists of consumer spending, but people can't spend so much when wages are flat, pay rates for equal work are unequal, and millions are poverty-stricken.  The wealth disparity between the top 1% and the other 99% of Americans is shocking and unprecedented.  The U.S. economy can neither thrive nor survive such disparity, but Republicans appear not to notice.  And speaking of disparities, when will Republicans stop their pretense of concern over government spending even as they condone tax code loopholes that permit corporations and wealthy individuals to evade paying their share of American taxes by stashing their money abroad?

 The feminine is now and has been for some time the majority gender in this country.  Women must accelerate their advances in the professions, in business, in education, in government, and in all other areas in which they have been confined or restricted.  The rising stream of feminine power and influence must gather into a mighty torrent.  Freedom is women's birthright.  To nurture is their destiny civilization's good fortune.  Women will make the difference on Tuesday.



 Corporations and and wealthy individuals

What A Relief It Was

   It would be immodest to claim that the corruption of World Series to World Serious originated in my old home town, although we had a particularly vigorous practitioner of this and countless other disfigures of speech.
   DoDo Mead swayed when he walked, as though he were aboard ship, with his ponderous belly serving as the prow, his pants held aloft by pale yellow suspenders that may have had a stripe or some other pattern to them.  His rockford socks were clearly discernible between his shoe tops and pant legs.  He was bald, with close-set eyes peering through  round wire-rim glasses. His voice was remindful of the whine of a saw blade cutting oak.
  If he were still among us, he likely would have lurched into Ivetz's last Wednesday, and, opening his mouth in synchronization with the door, began addressing the six or eight early morning regulars.
  "Them somnabuck Giants, they had that Bumgardener, and could he ever thow!  Never saw the beat of him since old Koofax thew for the Dodgers!  Can't think now if they was still in Brooklyn or if they was out in Los Anglees by that time.  Don't matter.  Damn, he was good!    And that kid for KC, he thew it for a hunnert m.p.h.!  Ain't seen nothin' like him since ol' Satchell Paige come thew here to pitch for Benteen City in '36!  Was any of you's to that game?  Somnabuck, them guys could thow that old apple! What a World Serious!"  If DoDo were still among us to say that, he would have been right.
  Before what used to be called the The Fall Classic began, most of the experts thought that pitching would decide the winner, specifically, relief pitching.  Indeed.  In the finale, Bumgarner of the Giants
was superb in relief.  The KC relievers who followed flame-throwing Yordano Ventura  were only good.    Lights out.  The Giants win the Series, The Giants win the Series, to sort of paraphrase Russ Hodges' 1951 expostulation.
  Fans across the country loved it.  It was the first Serious, excuse me, the first Series, played under the new and changed rules TV has imposed upon Major League Baseball.  Succumbing again, the American League's designated hitter adoption was the first surrender to the moguls' programming conceit, the 2014 tournament introduced Umpire Overrule and Precise Sliding Into Home Plate, with no objection to date.  The vast portion of those who see the games see them on television and are accustomed to multitudinous program interruptions.  Thus the rule changes will provide still more time for, guess what?  Commercial interruptions.  Not yet, to be sure, but soon. That's how TV
makes money and MLB does, too.
  The attention paid to relief pitching in 2014, including the WS, stimulates yet another stroll down Memory Lane.  Relief pitching has been part of baseball forever.  Games cannot be won if  pitching fails, so when that happens, starting pitchers are relieved of their duties for the day, to be replaced by other pitchers, called, in many cases whimsically, relief pitchers.   Because MLB pitching, generally, is in such an absymal state, there may be as many as five, or even six pitchers used by each side during the course of a game.  Other than  Bumgarner and Ventura, both teams prepared to do so in the WS, as they had in playoff rounds as well as the regular season. 
   The practice  of designating pitchers as relief specialists seems to have begun in 1924 with the original Washington Senators, founded and operated by Clark Griffith, Sr.  Griffith and his boy manager, Bucky Harris, selected a burly righthander, Fred Marberry for the assignment.
   Marberry performed serviceably over a 13-year career, despite having to bear the nickname Firpo.  Firpo was Luis Angel Firpo, a bruising heavyweight boxer from Argentina, whose nickname was the Wild Bull of the Pampas.  In his epic match with World Champion Jack Dempsey in 1924, the Wild Bull was knocked down seven times.  That was Marberry's rookie year, and he suffered the indignity of being knocked out of the box a number of times, thereby earning the Firpo sobriquet.
  The story is told of Firpo, traded to Detroit for the final three years of his career, feeling hunger pangs one day while on duty in the Tiger pen.  Firpo managed to sneak back to a concession stand, where he bought himself a hot dog complete with pickles, onions, mustard and ketchup, and started back to the bullpen.  His bullpen mates were near panic. "Come on Firpo," they shouted. "Skip wants you out there right now!"
   The Tigers were playing the Yankees.  "What's the deal?," Firpo asked.  "Two guys in and two on," he was told.  "And Ruth, Gehrig, Muesel and Lazzeri coming up!"  Firpo carefully put his hot dog down, strode manfully through the gate and onto the field, calling loudly over his shoulder, "Don't none of you birds touch that hot dog. I'll be right back!"
   The Yankees, had at least a pair of colorful relievers of their own.  Wilcy Moore had a great season with the 1927 Murderers' Row, winning 19 games and losing 7.  Moore was not an accomplished batsman however.  Babe Ruth, the prankster, bet Moore that he couldn't get three hits all year, and that Ruth would give him $100 apiece for three and another $100 for every hit over that.  Moore wound up with a total of three, and the Babe dutifully paid off.
   In spring training the following year, his teammates asked what he had done with the $300, and the big Texas farm boy replied, "I bought a team of mules.  I named one Babe and the other one Ruth."
   Toward the end of his career, Lefty Gomez, whose World Series record was 6 and 0, got a lot of help from Johnny Murphy, a fine righthanded reliever.  Asked about his prospects for 1941, the Gay Castillian answered that he'd be fine, as long as Murphy's arm held up.  Another time he said he should be listed as a dependent on Murphy's income tax return.
   Until he retired at the end of 2013, Mariano Rivera was a matchless one-inning wonder for the Yankees who spawned the term Closer.  The Closer is the go-to guy who shuts the opposition down in the ninth, sometimes in both the eighth and ninth.  Nobody's been better than Rivera, who's 2013 earnings likely exceeded the combined career earnings of fine earlier Yankee relievers such as Goose Gossage, Sparky Lyle, Fireman Joe Page, and Dave Righetti.  Rivera was worth what he got.  None of the others did.