Greatest Song Evah 9/15/23

Last Of The Famous International Playboys

It’s not easy to appreciate Morrissey these days. He is one of those people for whom one needs to fully separate the artist from the art to fully enjoy. Back in his glory days he could charitably be called a self-loathing misanthrope. Over the years he’s dialed back on the loathing and now constantly makes racist statements. Ugh. Which adds a layer of irony to this week’s selection, as it focuses on glorification of terrible people, specifically the notorious Kray brothers. That comparison only goes so far, however, as for all his sins, Morrissey isn’t a sociopathic gangster.

It would be dishonest to not acknowledge his grotesquery. With that out of the way, this song kicks. The combined bass and guitar lines put it right in gear, and I really like the way that the melody continuously moves in different directions without losing touch of the center. I have also always loved those closing lines, the “I never wanted to kill I’m not naturally evil” portion.

This one came out very early in Morrissey’s solo career, well before his unpleasantness dominated his persona. I won’t defend him as a person, but the quality of his work at his peak still speaks for itself. Eventually his discography would descend into a lot of self-parody; just look at some of the song titles in his later work.

He Has Returned!

This season has gone nowhere, but it’s still worth watching Mets games for 2 reasons. First, watching baseball is better than not watching baseball. Second, the crew always puts together an entertaining broadcast. As an example they always interview former players who return to the stadium. Just the other night, sideline reporter Steve Gelbs briefly spoke with, wait for it, Ron Hodges!

The interview itself was standard stuff. Hodges was a little too “back in my day” for my tastes, but it was fun to see him for a couple of reasons. First, it gave Gary Cohen an excuse to bring up the famous ball on the wall play. This was arguably the most emblematic moment of the 1973 Mets unlikely worst to first run towards the NL East title. (Next week is the 50th anniversary of that play, which is the likely reason that Hodges was invited back at this specific time.) Second, it inspired Gary to ask a fun little trivia question. Hodges played portions of 12 seasons with the Mets. Only 4 men played more. Who were they? Answers at the end of today’s post.

Time To Recalibrate?

The results from last night’s games haven’t been added to the Baseball Reference database yet, but with 2 1/2 weeks left in the season there are only 26 pitchers who have tallied the necessary 162 innings to qualify for the ERA title. Obviously there will be several others crossing the barrier before the season ends, but that is still a stunningly low number. It’s long past time for the sport’s record keepers to take the dramatic change in pitcher usage into account and adjust the number of innings needed to qualify.

I understand that many consider the one inning per scheduled game formula that Abner Doubleday and George Santos formulated years ago to be sacrosanct. And I admire a workhorse just as much as the next guy. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that we’re never going back to the era of pitchers carrying a Wilbur Wood workload.

Scabbery?

Drew Barrymore must be feeling relieved right now, as Bill Maher’s announcement that Real Time will soon return has taken at least a little heat away from her. After all, Barrymore has always demonstrated a likable public persona, whereas The Sultan Of Smug… hasn’t. It’s a lot easier and more satisfying to pile on Bill Maher.

Talk shows are tricky during guild strikes. It’s conceivable to put one together without writers, but it’s a fine line to thread. What’s considered writing, and what’s considered speaking off the cuff? On the other hand, this is Bill Maher we’re talking about. Screw that guy. Barrymore might be naive, but Maher is a scab. And there’s never a bad time to revisit Norm MacDonald’s famous quote about Maher.

Reports are that the sides are planning on returning to the bargaining table next week. There’s no guarantee that talks will lead to a settlement, but we’ll see. It would be amazing if this leads to a deal Maher could have avoided the massive criticism he’s receiving had he simply shown a little patience.

Mitt

So much of the degeneration of the GOP into what it’s become today can be seen through the prism of the last dozen years or so of Mitt Romney’s political career. He earned his party’s Presidential nomination in 2012, but doing so required that he essentially disavow his signature achievement as Massachusetts Governor. A large part of the structure of the Affordable Care Act was inspired by what Romney had put in place in Massachusetts, but he couldn’t run on that. Instead he had to twist himself into a pretzel while explaining how it was good for his state but not good for the country as a whole. It never made sense. Why run away from something that you have done to improve the lives of your constituents? If Obamacare is political poison, why not explain to the voters how it differs from the Massachusetts plan, and how a hypothetical President Romney would improve it rather than blow everything up and start over from scratch?

By the time he ran for Senator in Utah the party he thought he knew had vanished. The crazies have taken over, and he found himself one of the lone voices willing to call out Trump. I strongly disagree with him on most issues, but I respect the fact that he places loyalty to country over loyalty to party. That’s why it’s unfortunate that he has chosen not to run for a second term. Chances are very strong that his replacement will come from the MAGA wing of the GOP, which is the last the last thing either the country or the party needs.

Finally, this note demonstrates the depths to which things have sunk. There has been a lot of pushback over the fact that he voted in favor of impeachment both times. He has received enough threats that he has been spending $5,000 PER DAY on private security to protect his family. There’s something seriously wrong when a party’s own voting base are that dangerous. Most Senators are quite wealthy, but I don’t believe any of Romney’s colleagues have the capability of forking over that much for security. We’re living in dangerous times indeed.

More Athletes Behaving Horribly

The fallout following Julio Urias’s arrest is largely complete. The Dodgers have emptied out his locker and covered up any murals in Dodger Stadium which contain a depiction of him. He’s technically still part of the team, but being that it’s extremely unlikely that MLB will clear him to play this postseason and that he will be a free agent this offseason, the Dodgers have moved on and have washed their hands of him.

Which moves the focus over to the Houston Rockets and Kevin Porter Jr. He was arrested last week for allegedly domestic violence assault against his girlfriend, former WNBA player Kysre Gondrezick. The reports regarding the specifics are horrific; prosecutors claim that she suffered a vertebrae fracture.

I won’t make the leap to say that the team and the league should have seen this coming, but red flags have always surrounded Porter. In his sole season in college, USC briefly suspended him for bad behavior, and his initial NBA team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, gave up on him after only one season following confrontations with team officials. That wasn’t enough to teach him a lesson, the Rockets had also suspended him after a locker room outburst and the NBA itself fined him heavily after violating COVID related league rules. And now this.

Somehow, the Rockets are sending out feelers to see if there’s any trade interest. A club can conceivably justify a trade by saying that they can use this to get salary cap relief, but good luck trying to sell that to your fanbase. If there is any accuracy to the reports that have been leaked, then this is one of the, if not the most, horrible examples of domestic violence we have seen in the American sports scene. What kind of man would strike someone so viciously to cause that much damage? Once again, all we know at this moment are allegations, but if there is truth to the reports then Porter has no business ever suiting up for an NBA game again. His fate is in the hands of the criminal justice system, not with Adam Silver.

Estimates

There’s that old famous quote from Joseph Stalin about one death being a tragedy, and a million deaths are a statistic. I think about that whenever a natural disaster occurs and officials release a preliminary estimate of potential deaths, which are frequently astronomical. In one sense it’s understandable, in the immediate aftermath it’s often not possible to verify everyone’s whereabouts, so there are a large number of people counted as missing and presumed dead. The problem is that as the majority of those that were missing are found to be safe, the final numbers of deaths seem insignificant. Sure, X number of people died, but we thought it was going to be much worse.

We saw an example of this after the Maui wildfire. The immediate fear was that thousands of people might have perished. The current official death toll stands at 115. Beyond the fact that so many of the survivors have lost everything, the initial estimates make the actual number of fatalities almost seem like a relief. That feels obscene to think like that. The same thing is happening as officials continue to assess the tragic flooding in Libya. As I write this the official number is 5100, but the fear is that it could be as high as 20,000. As more survivors are found that number will come down, but if it turns out to be “only” 8000 or so, that doesn’t minimize the tragedy in any way.

That’s something we should all keep in mind whenever such tragedies occur. No matter what the final numbers are, we are looking at unimaginable losses of life. We mustn’t give in to complacency, reassuring ourselves that the loss of life isn’t that bad. One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a million individual tragedies.

Finally Friday

Trivia answer: Ed Kranepool, David Wright, Bud Harrelson, and John Franco. The question was who played more seasons than Hodges did. Matching his 12 seasons as a Met were some of the bigger names - Seaver, Koosman, Grote, Reyes, along with Craig Swan.

May you all enjoy watching a production of Beetlejuice without having to sit next to a braying jackass with a vape pen. See you all on Monday.