Sam's Notes

Heroes and Villains

Glavine knocked out of Game 5; Sammy Stewart gets six years; A-Rod to Cubs?

Here, there and everywhere

So while the RMA report is being passed around town like a dirty magazine in brown paper bag, while Mike Barber is putting cops on horseback, while Elizabeth Edwards is listening as much as she's talking and while Skip Alston is demanding a boycott of the N&R, here I am, sitting in a hot tub with my wife:

Publius will handle the RMA report. I do not have a copy; but I've been told I am not without resources.

I wasn't totally disconnected from the real world, either. Before heading to Hot Springs, we made a detour through Asheville. It's one of my favorite places to visit, though I'm not sure I could live there. We checked out the setting of one of my favorite books, Look Homeward Angel. The Thomas Wolfe Memorial is open again after being closed for quite some time while damages resulting from a fire were fixed. It looks great; I could swear it used to be white, though.

While eating breakfast this morning, I came across two interesting baseball articles in the Asheville Citizen-Times not including the Tigers' sweep. The first was on former Orioles pitcher Sammy Stewart. I disticntly remember Stewart's major league debut when he set a major league record by striking out six batters in a row. Now he's an inmate in the Buncombe County jail:

"Since 1988, he has been charged 46 times with more than 60 offenses. According to Department of Corrections records, he has been sent to prison six times for a total of 25 months.

Now, just days away from his 52nd birthday and nearly two decades after the cheering stopped, Stewart is facing a prison sentence of up to 10 years on a felony drug charge. He’s being held before the trial because he couldn’t raise the $70,000 bail.

Stewart is on the trial calendar this week in Buncombe County Superior Court, when the district attorney’s office will attempt to convict him as a habitual felon.

“I’m a crack addict, a drug addict,” Stewart said. “I want one more chance. I’m hoping I get 18 months in rehab or three years, and I’ll do that. But don’t give me seven years. Don’t just throw me away.”
With an arrest record that dates back nearly 30 years and runs 17 pages from a court printout, he is asking for another chance while admitting he’s uncertain if he can lick the addiction to drugs that he blames for ruining his life".

The second was Steve Lyons' insenstive remarks to his partner Lou Piniella, which resulted in his ouster from the FOX booth. I saw this coming: While watching an earlier ALCS game, I heard Piniella mention that Jim Leyland came to the Tigers because he knew the franchise had a commitment to winning. That's an important factor for any managerial candidate, he added.

"Then why'd you take the Tampa Bay job?" Lyons asked.

Dead air. Never good.

Full circle

Speaking of Scott Johnson, this Powerline post (actually Paul Mirengoff's) reminds us the ALCS is 1972 redux:

The Tigers now face Oakland, victors in three straight over the Twins (sorry, guys). This is a rematch of the 1972 AL Championship series. That year, an over-the-hill Tiger club, inspired by Billy Martin, won the old AL East with a record of 86-70. They benefited from a little remembered quirk -- in a strike-shortened season, the Boston Red Sox, with a record of 85-70, were not allowed to play the extra game (whom would they have played?) they needed to catch the Tigers.

In the Championship series, the Tigers extended the powerful A's to five games (the max in those days). The A's won the decider 2-1. As I recall, Reggie Jackson scored the tying run by stealing home. He injured himself in the process and missed the entire World Series. The A's nonetheless upset Cincinnati to win the first of their three straight championships.

Funny, I was talking about this with Guarino and Floyd Stuart about this during lunch at Freedom Net. That series, along with the NLCS pitting the Reds against the Pirates (another exciting series, with my idol Johnny Bench emerging as a hero) are my first baseball memories.

I'd totally forgotten that Billy Martin was the manager of that '72 Tigers club, which was still basically the '68 title team, only four years older and without Denny McClain.

What I remember most is when Lerrin LaGrow hit Bert Campaneris with a pitch and Campy rared back and threw his bat at LaGrow, who ducked out of the way. As you can imagine,   bench-clearing brawl broke out. Pretty interesting stuff for a kid watching his first ballgames.

Carolina Freedom Net

Yes, I not only attended Carolina Freedom Net, but was a participant on the first panel. Indeed, the focus of that first panel was supposed to be on the merits of blogging about local vs. national issues, and my fellow panel members pretty much focused on on national issues. Since I generally assume that most people are smarter than I am, I spoke only when asked. When the subject of local blogging popped up during the second panel, I mentioned that the group of excellent local bloggers here, espcially those who cover government affairs, are letting the individual citizen know what's going on with our elected officials. This is espcially important as Greensboro transforms itself from a corporate economy
economy to an entrepreneurial economy. More and more, individuals are finding themselves going before government bodies asking for approval of their various business ventures. It certainly gives them an upper hand to know the tendencies and viewpoints of their elected officials on a more detailed basis.

Personally, I found Scott Johnson's keynote speech fascinating. To be honest, I did not know the full story of how the Rathergate memo story broke, so a moment-by-moment account was particularly interesting. And we're literally talking moment-by-moment, because the whole thing
literally blew up in half a day. Johnson said when he made the post, he knew practically nothing about Times New Roman fonts; by noon he had "an assembly of analysis that would have been unimagineable years before."

The weird thing is, you always think of the things you want to say after an event like this. Floyd Stuart and I went and had a couple of beers later and talked about the conference. To begin with, I would have liked to ask Josh Manchester, author of The Adventures of Chester, his views on the war in Iraq. We spoke briefly before getting separated, something that happens in groups of people.

I also realized that much of the discussion centered on how the mainstream media was becoming more like the new media. Credibility was a major theme; as the Rathergate story broke, Johnson constantly worried he was blowing the credibility he'd worked so hard to build; Mary Katherine Ham said that when she makes a particularly angry post, she always takes the time to breathe and read it over carefully.

So with this in mind, I wondered how the new media was becoming more like the mainstream media. Practically every newspaper has a blog now. And lucky me, I'm getting paid to blog. But along with financial compensation comes expectations. My "publisher" so far hasn't micro-managed; but I know he's reading. So while I enjoy what I'm doing, some of the same old anxieties I suffered as a print reporter are emerging. Is my news judgement sound? Is the 'competition' beating me? What if, God forbid, I get something wrong?

Questions to ponder for the next blog conference. Unfortunately, I won't make Converge South. I'll be here, soaking in a hot tub.

Sorry, now

Somehow I see this as a mirror image of Greensboro's Truth and Reconciliation process. Here in Greensboro, former radicals think people should be in jail; up in New York, they think people should get out of jail.

Judith Clark, who participated in a 1981 armored car robbery that killed a Brink's guard and two police officers, says she understands "more deeply than ever the incalculable loss suffered by the nine children who had been deprived of their fathers as a result of their crime."

In other words, she's sorry. But not sorry enough to serve out her sentence:

On Sept. 21, a federal judge overturned Ms. Clark’s conviction, in a decision that held that she effectively had no legal counsel at her trial in 1983, when she chose to represent herself and then boycotted some of the proceedings....She would almost certainly face three charges of second-degree murder, as she did before. But her supporters say that a new trial, or a plea deal, could yield a better outcome. Even if she is convicted again, a new judge could choose to make her sentences of 25 years to life concurrent rather than consecutive.

It's unfortunate that "self-styled freedom fights" like Ms. Clark, as well as CWP members here in Greensboro, had the misguided notion that revolutionary tactics would never have violent consequences. Unfortunately, such consequences last a lifetime.

Sportswriter with a social conscience

Yet another interesting piece in this morning's NYT sports page, this one (unposted) by Selena Roberts. But trust me, it's not interesting in the way the article on Jim Leyland was interesting.

Roberts bemoans the emergence of football at Rutgers:

It's industrial athletics. All around the country, the quaint notion of a student athlete has been stored in a hope chest amid a fool's gold of big-time football. ...

The cost is to Rutgers's intellectual capital. How can the university square its football excess with a fiscal demand for academic austerity? Just what kind of student is wooed by the siren song of a supersize football program?

This is a sucker's game. The sport is a money pit and, often, a magnet for corruption. As seen throughout college football, booster influence creates conflicts and opens the way for chicanery. As it traverses this slippery slope, Rutgers seems oblivious to cautionary tales.

So the football expands. Let the fencers fall on the sword with the rest of Rutgers.

Who's writing this, a sportswriter or a sociology professor? What difference does Rutgers' intellectual capital, or lack thereof, mean to Roberts? It sure doesn't mean a lot to me on Saturday afternoons. 

Roberts is also mixing her messages. The "fencers falling on their swords" is a reference to Rutgers' elimination of crew, fencing and swimming due to budget constraints. It's fair enough to question the growth of the football program compared to the university's overall financial status. But any discussion of sports getting cut isn't complete with mentioning Title IX, which I believe has played a small role in helping crew and fencing disappear. Funny that didn't come up.

If Roberts is so concerned about fencers, perhaps she should take over the Times fencing beat.  Then she'll really learn some lessons about sports and money.

Still smoking

Interesting NYT article on Tigers manager Jim Leyland, about to return to the postseason after a nine-year absence.

As you can imagine, I had no sympathy for Leyland's Pirates when they lost to the Reds in the 1990 NLCS. But to tell the truth, I was rooting for the Pirates in '91 and '92 against the Braves because I got sick of all the Braves fans suddenly emerging from the woodwork.

But Leyland's '97 World Series title with the Marlins seemed contrived. Even with all the talent the team purchased, the Marlins still couldn't take the division title from the Braves. I'm not convinced the Marlins were the better team in the NLCS against the Braves, who were victimized by Eric Gregg's generous strike zone. Nor am I convinced they were better than the Indians, who blew a ninth inning lead in Game 7 before losing the series in extra innings.

One thing I've always enjoyed, though, are the TV shots of Leyland lighting up a Marlboro Red in the dugout during games. Is he still smoking after all these years? Hell yea:

"Leyland usually shows up early in the clubhouse and walks around continually. In his office, he smokes Marlboro cigarettes and fidgets with ashtrays when his pack is empty. Although food is plentiful, Leyland often pushes away a half-eaten plate. He appears slender and fit, albeit with a deeply lined face and dark circles under his eyes.

"'I’m a hyper-type person,” Leyland said. 'The fact that I smoke — one of my bad habits — has probably kept my weight down.'”

I hope to catch a glimpse of Leyland firing one up in the dugout, just for old time's sake. But I'm sure the networks will discourage such a candid shot.