Say It Ain't So...

Major League Baseball's Mount Rushmore.

Pictured top row, left to right: Honus Wagner, Gover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Napolion Lajoie, George Sissler, Walter Johnson.

Bottom row: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Cy Young.

By purely photographic standards, this is not the greatest baseball photograph ever made. That honor in my humble opinion would have to go to Charles Conlon's remarkable picture of Ty Cobb giving all 110 percent of himself sliding into third, sending New York Highlander (Yankee) third baseman Jimmy Austin airborne in his futile attempt to tag out the redoubtable "Georgia Peach", as umpire Silk O'Laughlin gets himself into position in the background to make the call. 

Click here to see the familiar, highly cropped version of the photo. 

But no less remarkable at least as a historical document is this portrait of nine old men at the Major League Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the first such event in Cooperstown, New York on Jun 12, 1939. At the very least, three of those pictured above represent what would have to be considered part of baseball's equivalent of Mount Rushmore. All the rest would be close runners up.

The question of who belongs and who doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame is probably the most frequent topic of debate among baseball people, and even this esteemed group has its detractors, at the very least in the sense of omission.

So who is not in this photo that should be?

First and foremost is a group of perhaps an equal number of players who weren't allowed to play in the major leagues because of the color of their skin. One might consider the following:

• Shortstop John Henry "Pop" Lloyd
• Catcher Louis Santop
• Outfielder Pete Hill
• Pitcher José Méndez
• First Baseman and manager Ben Taylor
• Outfielder Cristóbal Torriente
• Second Baseman Frank Grant
• Infielder/Executive/Historian Sol White
• Pitcher/Manager/Executive Rube Foster

It wouldn't be until 1971 that a player was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame solely based upon his career in what became known collectively as the "Negro Leagues." Fortunately the irony of the original plan to honor these men and one woman of the game in a "separate but equal" room in Cooperstown was not lost on what today would be called the "woke" crowd, who in a much different day and age, were not excoriated for believing that everybody deserves to be treated equally and fairly. 

To date there are 35 Negro League players and two non-player executives enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. There should be more.

Nevertheless, the nine players listed above, all eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame for their contributions to the game of baseball, ended their playing careers at least five years before the event pictured at Cooperstown, which would have made them eligible for the "Class of '39". 

One might argue that it is impossible to compare these players to "Major Leaguers" because they didn't get the chance to complete against them. 

But they did, not in officially sanctioned MLB games, but in countless exhibition games which became discouraged by MLB executives because the teams made up of black players usually won. For their part, most big-league stars understood the undeniable fact that Major League Baseball of their time, did not represent the best ballplayers, but only a fraction of them.

Babe Ruth was one of those players who understood.

Ted Williams was another. In his induction speech at the Hall of Fame in 1966, the "Splendid Splinter" said this:

...I've always been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, to have struck out or hit a tape major home run. And I hope that someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol, the great Negro players that are not here, only because they were not given a chance.

It is said that speech was one of the driving forces behind admitting Negro League players into the Hall. Still, it took five years. On the other hand, we should be thankful for that because given today's animus toward diversity, equity and inclusion, had they waited until our time, it might never have happened.

OK that had to be said, I'm off my soapbox now.

Who else isn't in that photo? Well, the aforementioned Ty Cobb of course, who was part of the group, perhaps the fourth face on baseball's Mount Rushmore along with Cy Young, Honus Wagner and Babe Ruth. Personally, I'd put Walter Johnson up there too but that would make five. I'm OK with that.

Ty Cobb isn't in the photo because he showed up late that day.

Anyone else?

Ok now to the intended topic of this post.

Portrait of Joe Jackson by Charles Conlon, 1913

A lot of folks believe that one of the greatest injustices of the game is the fact that "Shoeless" Joe Jackson wasn't there. He still isn't.  

That may not be for long as Major League Baseball has just reinstated Jackson along with seven of his teammates from the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox team who conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series that year. That means Jackson will be eligible to be voted into the Hall in 2028 by a special group of electors called the "Historical Overview Committee" made up of baseball historians and veteran members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Jackson certainly has to be ranked among the greatest hitters in the game, ending up with a career batting average of .356, placing him in fourth place in that category among MLB and Negro League players. *

No less than Ty Cobb AND Babe Ruth both credited Jackson for inspiring their own approach to hitting. Here's what Cobb allegedly once told Jackson:

Whenever I got the idea I was a good hitter, I'd stop and take a look at you. Then I knew I could stand some improvement.

And here's Babe Ruth on Shoeless Joe:

Babe Ruth and Joe Jackson, 1920

I copied Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter.

Were it not for Jackson's decision to accept money from gamblers and not do everything he could to help win the World Series for his team, its fans and its city, Joe Jackson would have certainly been standing with the likes of the Rushmore crowd in that photograph. 

This is an account of his prowess as the most naturally gifted, if not necessarily the smartest player of his time, written in 1916 by F.C. Lane and introduced by the official historian of Major League Baseball, John Thorn.

Here's a little taste of the piece: 

Joe Jackson had simply native gifts, which, in themselves, have never been equaled. It was as natural for him to hit a baseball as it was for his early forebears to hit a squirrel in the eye at a hundred yards.

Gambling had always been a part of the game, there's no argument that gambling is what made baseball, like horse racing and boxing, a popular spectator sport in the first place. And paying off players to not do their best to win had also been around for a good long time. It was fairly well established that members of the 1918 Chicago Cubs were paid to throw that series against Boston, allegedly inspiring the members of their crosstown rivals to do the same the following year. And that Cubs team was not the first accused to having thrown a World Series by a long shot. 

To paraphrase the Chicago author Studs Terkel, while the 1919 White Sox may not have been the most corrupt team in baseball, they were hands down the most theatrically corrupt. 

And like all good theater, the drama of the 1919 World Series that has been handed down to us over the ages, is a mixture of some facts for plausibility's sake, mixed in with whole lot of fiction to keep it interesting.

Studs Terkel had a small role in the John Sayles film Eight Men Out which was based on the 1963 novel of the same name, written by Elliot Asinov. While the novel and subsequent film were one of many popular accounts of the Black Sox Scandal over the years, for some reason the film and especially the book are unfortunately considered by many (including so called "America's historian" Ken Burns) to be the definitive word on the subject. This despite the fact that the book's author made no claim his was a work of serious historical inquiry, and openly admitted having invented key elements of the story. **

Here is a piece published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) highlighting the myths about the scandal which were promoted in the book and movie.

The most enduring myth promoted in the book is laying the weight of the blame on the whole sordid affair not on the players, but at the feet of their boss, owner and founder of the White Sox, Charles Comiskey. 

I won't go into it here as I wrote an entire post on the subject, except to say that this line from the book referring to the 1919 Sox...

No players of comparable talent on other teams were paid as little.

...which was repeated almost verbatim in Ken Burns's epic PBS docudrama titled Baseball, has absolutely no basis in fact. 

Research involving the unearthing of player-salary cards from the era, has discovered that the 1919 White Sox team had one of the highest team payrolls in baseball and most of their players had higher salaries than comparable players on other teams. 

The argument that the players were justified in their actions in order to recoup what was due them because they were vastly underpaid, is simply not true. 

So why did they do it?

This might give you an idea. Joe Jackson admitted that he was offered $20,000 (more than three times his salary***) for his part in the fix. He then complained bitterly AND publicly under oath that he only got $5,000 from the gangsters. 

Of course it was for the money, the players just wanted more of it, a lot more. 

Those in the know had an inkling something was suspicious before the series even started as the odds for the highly favored White Sox against the Cincinnati Reds went down precipitously shortly before the first game. Some uncharacteristically sloppy play in the field and sub-par pitching, convinced the cognoscenti, including the great Christy Matthewson **** who was covering the game from the press box, that the fix was in. 

Nearly a year would pass before the whole thing blew up. As the Sox were heading toward another possible American League pennant, the case of the eight Sox players was brought before a grand jury in Chicago. In the meantime, one of the gamblers involved, Billy Mahrag spilled the beans to reporters in Philadelphia that games 1, 2 and 8 of the best of nine series had been compromised. 

With the cat out of the bag and feeling the heat, four of the eight players including Jackson, confessed their role in the scheme to the grand jury. The following year, Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, Lefty Williams, Buck Weaver and Joe Jackson found themselves in a courtroom in Chicago as defendants in a criminal case, charged with conspiracy to commit fraud. 

If you're interested and all you know about the trial is based on Eight Men Out, please do yourself a favor and read this.

Despite the confessions of half the defendants (which contrary to the book, were indeed presented to the jury), and other damning evidence against the players, the jury came in with a not-guilty verdict. The evening after the verdict was read, the jurors, twelve men all from Chicago, joined the players in a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

But the celebration was short lived. The next day, the newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball, (a position created as a response to the Black Sox affair,) Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, banned all eight players for life from the game. In his ruling, Landis said:

Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.

Something I just learned is that the Landis ruling didn't extend to Hall of Fame inductions until 1991 when "The Pete Rose Rule" prohibiting players banned from the game from consideration for admission into the hallowed hall was adopted. It turns out that Jackson's name was on the ballot twice, in 1936 and 1940. Obviously, he was not voted in. 

The Landis ruling was intended to be a lifetime ban, but I don't know how much consideration was made about it being a ban for eternity. As all members of the 1919 White Sox are long gone, they continued to be on the ineligible list until this month when the current commissioner Rob Manfred lifted the ban on all deceased players. Claiming that dead players no longer pose a threat to the game (yes he really did say that), this leaves the door open to Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, who seem rightly or wrongly forever joined at the hip in their ignominy, to have the chance to be considered entrance into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

Whew, that was a long way to get to what I intended to be the crux of this post which is, drum roll please...

...should they be let in?

I have to admit that, as my friend Rich with whom I discussed this issue before starting writing this piece will testify, I was on the fence.

I no longer am.

This is the simple answer: it all depends what you want the Hall of Fame to be.

Here are the reasons I keep hearing why Joe Jackson should be inducted into the Hall of Fame:

There are lots of players currently in the Hall of Fame who have done worse things than Joe Jackson.

Look I get it, induction into the Hall of Fame is not the equivalent of the canonization process in the Roman Catholic Church. In the words of Bill Veeck:

Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober. 

The players in the picture at the top of this post, with the possible exceptions of Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson, were flawed men. In addition to "Old Pete" Alexander's problems with the sauce,  Tris Speaker allegedly had Klan ties, Babe Ruth was a rake, and Eddie Collins (also a member of the 1919 White Sox) as general manager of the Red Sox, was instrumental in preventing black players from joining the team. And Ty Cobb, part of the group not in the picture had anger issues*****.

So who cares? One could say all that matters is how a player performed on the field. The thing is, we have stats and record books and infinite other reams of information and their extrapolations to tell us the story of how good a player was on the field. One would expect that an institution like the Hall of Fame would have loftier goals than a mere record book or computer printout. In my mind, an institution such as that should exist to honor and celebrate a player's contributions to the game in addition to the numbers he put up.

Conversely, there should be repercussions to a player's compromising the game. Joe Jackson's numbers were staggering, that much is true. On the other hand, intentionally setting out to lose a game, much worse, the World Series for personal profit, goes against the very spirit of the enterprise an athlete dedicates his or her life to. In my mind, there is no more serious betrayal of the game then that. In other words, cheating to win is very bad, but cheating to lose is worse.

I work in the curatorial department of an art museum, and the enterprise I have devoted much of my life to is the care and protection of the objects in our collection. I could very easily take one of those objects, one that would probably not be missed for a long time, and sell it to make up for the amount I consider to be lacking in my compensation. 

You might say that an athlete intentionally trying to lose is not stealing, but it really is. Because the most important thing a team has to offer, is the trust it provides to its fans. Trust that their players and everyone involved with the team will do everything within their power to play well and honorably, even if it results in a loss. Once that trust is broken, it is very hard to restore. 

Which is exactly what the eight players of the 1919 White Sox did. And the cost to the team was staggering, they would not win another pennant or even come close until 1959. 

But Joe Jackson's stats during the 1919 Series show that he didn't slack up a bit, that he was really playing to win. On top of that, he didn't participate in any of the meetings with the gamblers. 

First of all, the second point doesn't matter. By accepting money from the gamblers, which he certainly did, Jackson made it crystal clear to his fellow players that he was a part of the fix, even more so as the team's undisputed star, which further emboldened his teammates to do what they had to do to throw games. 

Second, Joe Jackson's overall stats from the 1919 World Series don't tell the whole story. If you read the F.C.Lane article I posted above, you know that in addition to being an exceptional hitter, Jackson was also an outstanding outfielder with great speed and a cannon for an arm. In games one and two, he allowed two well hit balls to get by him resulting in triples and eventually runs which proved to be the difference in the games. Now triples hit to left field are fairly uncommon in the big leagues as the left fielder has a much easier throw to third base than either a right or center fielder.  Misplays like these don't make it into the box score, as errors are only recorded when a fielder touches the ball. If a fielder doesn't make it to the ball, no error, and no record of an inept play. These aren't exactly smoking guns, but they were enough to make folks in the know like Christy Mathewson suspicious.

Jackson hit well in the series, but much better in the games that were on the up and up. In the games the Sox were supposed to lose, his hits came usually when there was no one on base, or when the game was already out of hand. When there were runners on base and he had the chance to make a difference in the game, crickets. 

Baseball can't just erase Joe Jackson from the game.

Refusing to bestow a player with the highest honor possible in the game hardly constitutes erasing the player from the game, in fact in this case, just the opposite. Joe Jackson's travails have raised him to folk hero status. Heck there's even a library and museum dedicated to him. I'd venture to say that of the nine men in the picture above, with the exception of Babe Ruth and Cy Young (because of the award named after him), the name Shoeless Joe Jackson is more familiar to the general public than all the rest combined PLUS the Negro League stars thrown in for good measure. I think it's unlikely that were it not for his involvement in Black Sox Scandal and his banishment from the game, he'd be remembered today by anyone other than students of the game.

Besides, no one has expunged his stats from the record book, they're there in all their glory for everyone who cares to see.

Jackson and his teammates were acquitted in a court of law but in a dictatorial move, Judge Landis banned them from the game anyway.

That is irrelevant. Even if you were to ignore the vagaries of the verdict, the burden of proof of guilt in a court of law is significantly higher than it is in the workplace. Back to the example of me hypothetically taking a piece of art from our collection, I could stand trial for theft but if the police fail to come up with the object, there's a good chance I'd be acquitted. However, if there's just enough evidence to convince my bosses that I stole the object, they could fire me in a heartbeat with no repercussions.

In the case of the Chicago 8, there was no question of their guilt. 

It's been over one hundred years, can't we just forgive and forget? Hasn't Joe Jackson been punished enough?

Forgive? Certainly, as they say, to err is human, to forgive, divine.

Forget? Certainly not. That would be saying cheating the game and its fans for personal profit is AOK as long as it was long enough ago and the player put up good enough numbers. 

---

MY VERDICT (for what it's worth)

I think it is right and just that the ban on Joe Jackson and his fellow deceased players has been lifted as no one deserves to be condemned for eternity. Well, I can think of a few people who need no mention, but they weren't ballplayers. 

And I think it's a good thing that Jackson will now be eligible to be on the ballot for possible induction in the Hall of Fame.

But do I think Joe Jackson belongs there?

I know many people with strong opinions on the subject will no doubt think: "say it ain't so Jim" but...

No, he doesn't.

Neither does Pete Rose.

Sorry.

Notes:

*In 2024, Major League Baseball included Negro League stats in its official tally of baseball records. That long awaited move is reflected in this list of the top five lifetime batting averages:

1) Ty Cobb 367

2) Oscar Charleston 365

3) Rogers Hornsby 359

4) Joe Jackson .356

5) Jud Wilson .350


**Elliot Azinov admitted that he invented the story of White Sox pitcher Lefty Williams being threatened by a hitman working for gangster Arthur Rothstein to either lose game eight (that year it was a best of nine series) in the first inning, or suffer dire consequences both for himself and his family. Asinov revealed that he made up the character of hitman Harry F. and his threat to Williams on the advice of his publisher to guard against copywrite infringement.


***In 1919, Joe Jackson's salary was $6000. That sounds like a paltry amount and it was considering he was the star of the team. But as I pointed out in my Charles Comiskey post, Jackson had a multi-year contract at that figure which Comiskey purchased from Cleveland, and he was under no obligation to increase the amount. There were other extenuating circumstances that made Comiskey especially loathe the idea of increasing Jackson's salary which you can read about here.

Nevertheless, in today's dollars, that $6000 would be equal to about $110,000, peanuts of course to what modern day ballplayers make, but not a bad wage, especially considering it's for only for a little over one half a year's work.

**** New York Giants pitcher Christy Matthewson, another candidate for baseball's Mount Rushmore status, was one of the original class of inductees into the hall of Fame in 1936. Sadly, "The Big Six" passed away much too early, in 1925.


*****One of the most agonizingly persistent myths of the game of baseball is the notion that in addition to his well-documented anger management issues, Ty Cobb was a racist-sociopath. That erroneous portrayal of him did not exist until well after his death, when an unscrupulous writer named Al Stump, unsatisfied by the response to his biography of the great ballplayer, decided to write a "tell-all" expose of his exploits with Cobb as he was gathering material for his book. The problem is, the writer made most of it up. You can read about it here. 

Habemus Papam

And he's from Chicago!

We're in good company, Chicago is one of only four places on earth outside of Italy since 1523 that can claim the title "birthplace of a Pope". So we have every right to be stoked, which we are. Perhaps no one is more stoked than our Mayor, Brandon Johnson who proclaimed yesterday, May 8, 2025, the greatest day in Chicago history. Here are some thoughts:

Chicago Chicago

While the rest of the world contemplated the ramifications of the first Pope born in the United States, what impact Pope Leo XIV will have on the largest institution in the world, and what impact THAT will have on the world stage, we here in Chicago were focused on shall we say, more parochial issues. Celebrating my outright giddiness of the moment, shortly after the man formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica and delivered his first words to the world as the new Pope, I made my first appearance in months on social media, asking the question it turned out was on the minds of most of my fellow Chicagoans:

Is he a Cubs or a White Sox fan?

Less than a minute after I hit "Post", someone responded with this: "Well he's from the South Side so..."

A moment later someone else responded: "ABC has just reported that he's a Cubs fan."

Hmmm I thought, a South Side Cubs fan. If that were true, then he's a contrarian like me, in my case, a North Side Sox fan. I commented that quality may serve him well in his new job. 

The silly banter went on in that vein for hours:

"South Side Cubs Fan. In other words, a heretic." wrote one friend.

"It might not bode well for his power of prayer if he's a Sox fan" wrote another.

It was delightful.

Another hot button topic on people's minds, just as silly, but equally understandable given the circumstances of being from the same place as the Pope is this:

Do I know anybody who knows him?

I learned the answer to that question before his papacy was announced, and it didn't even have a Chicago connection. After I received the call from my mother excitedly telling me: "There's white smoke coming out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel!", I went to the front of the office to learn that my two colleagues there had not only heard the news, but were streaming live coverage on their computers. So I camped out behind one of them as I thought this historic event was an experience that should be shared. Boy was I right.

After what seemed an eternity waiting for the big reveal, my colleague told me that her mother knew one of the Cardinals who was considered a leading candidate for Pope. True to form, my response was measured and tactful: "Holy shit you're kidding me!"

The two of us however agreed that being from the United States, Cardinal Prevost didn't stand a chance.  

Then came the announcement. "Holy shit you're kidding me!" was her response.

She then proceeded to show me a picture of the new Pope taken by her mother when the two of them were classmates at Villanova outside of  Philadelphia. They were at a Halloween party and in the picture, a very young Rob Prevost was dressed up as (a very young) Groucho Marx. 

So I guess that means I have no more than two degrees of separation from Pope Leo XIV, in other words, I know somebody who knows somebody who knows the Pope. But wait a second, I've actually met the mother of my workmate so maybe I'm only one degree of separation. OK maybe that's pushing it a bit.

Later that day I learned of an even closer connection. My cousin has connections with a local priest, the chaplain at St. Rita High School in Chicago who is a fellow Augustinian and good friends with the new Pope.

If I dig a little deeper, I might find an even closer connection. In case you care and why wouldn't you, stay tuned.

Then there's this very pressing question:

But where is he really from?

This came up after I told another colleague that I had just found out that Robert Francis Prevost grew up in the suburb of Dolton. "Oh then he's really not from Chicago" she said. My mother had the same reaction. Well, I assured my colleague, Dolton shares a border with Chicago so it's certainly close enough. "Oh so you mean it's not like Joliet?" she said. I didn't bother to tell her that I know people from Joliet who certainly consider themselves part of greater Chicago.

This reminded me of an online list I commented on in this post which dealt with things people don't like about Chicago. One item on the list was "People who live in the suburbs but say they're from Chicago." 

Which made me wonder if all the folks who are bothered by suburbanites claiming themselves to be Chicagoans, will refuse to claim this Pope as one of their own. I'm guessing they'll make an exception in this case, special dispensation if you will. 

Then came the memes. My favorite ones were the comparisons to other unlikely, or "that'll happen when hell freezes over" types of events. My son pointed out this trope that was making the rounds of Chicago media yesterday:

The people who said that Chicago will have a Pope before the (Chicago) Bears will have a 4,000 yard passer, turned out to be right.

Indeed.

Obviously I don't know the man, but I imagine Pope Leo (or Pope Bob as we'll no doubt refer to him here) would get a chuckle out of all this silliness, or at least I hope he would. It turns out that Pope Leo XIV, may be from Chicago, but he is hardly provincial. He may be an American by birth, but he is truly a man of the world. As an example, he speaks five languages fluently and can read two more. 

In his first words as Pope to the tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square to welcome him and to the hundreds of millions viewing on TV or streaming video, he took a moment to break from Italian to send a shout out in Spanish to the city of Chiclayo, Peru where he served as bishop from 2015 until 2023. His connection to Peru goes all the way back to 1985 where he worked as a missionary during a particularly challenging period in that country's history. Like us back home in Chicago, the people of Chiclayo and indeed much of Peru claim him as their own, as well as they should. 

He sent no similar shout out to Chicago nor spoke one word of English from that platform which made some ultra right-wing media folks lose their minds. *

All the more power to him I say. 

The comments on my trivial Facebook post were not all trivial, this one for example:

"It’s a shock. All the prognosticators were in agreement that an American was out of the question because of the current world political climate. Now I see that the world political climate may have been the very reason he was chosen."

There has been much speculation as to why in their infinite wisdom, the College of Cardinals selected an American to be the next Pope. Before the new Pope was elected, one TV priest-commentator stated that the Cardinals would only pick an American if they saw a serious degradation of this country's political system. 

Interesting.

Here's another:

"Simply glad that the American with the largest constituency is no longer our President, furthermore, one who possesses a moral compass."

That one particularly hit home.

Despite the euphoria in this country among people like me who don't believe being called "progressive" is an epithet, we have to be careful about our assumptions, especially trying to make this Pope in our own image. As I pointed out 12 years ago shortly after Pope Francis was elected: don't expect to see the Pope coming out in favor of reproductive rights, gay weddings at St. Peter's, or even many of the less contentious issues like the ordination of women or married priests in the Church anytime soon. Like a massive ship, it's difficult and takes a very long time for an institution with well over one billion members to change course, that is, without sinking the ship.

But like his predecessor, Pope Leo is on record stating unequivocally that he holds nothing sacred in national borders, that he prefers bringing people together rather than keeping them apart and prefers building bridges rather than walls. In my last post I linked to the encyclical written by Pope Francis last February to the US bishops, denouncing in no uncertain terms the notion put forward by the current US Vice President that Catholic teaching supports the mass deportation of refugees and other immigrants being carried out by the current administration.  

If anything, Pope Leo XIV was even more direct in his response than his predecessor as also in February, in an X account under then Cardinal Prevost's name came this tweet: 

“JD Vance is wrong, Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

It should be noted that there is no confirmation that Cardinal Prevost actually wrote those words, but he has to date, not refuted them. 

There is sweet justice in the fact that Vance used the writings of St. Augustine to justify his reasoning. As we have all learned in the last two days, Leo is himself a member of the Augustinian order and was in fact for a while, the leader of that order. It remains to be seen whether Vance will choose to debate the new Pope on the issue which would be like me debating Albert Einstein on the issue of gravity.

One thing is crystal clear: Pope Leo's heart and soul lies in the devotion of service to the poor and disadvantaged of the world, to human dignity and to social justice. In that, he is a man who lives the Gospel both in word and deed, and I have little doubt that he will make not only we the people of Chicago and our brothers and sisters in Chiclayo who call him our own, proud, but people of good will everywhere, be they Christians or not.

And the cherry on top?

It turns out he's a White Sox fan after all, proving once and for all he knows a thing or two about suffering.

Saints be praised.  

* The ultra right-wing pundits would have really lost their minds if they had read this quote from Pope Leo XIV. It's a good thing it's in Spanish:

"Soy peruano. Porque uno no es de donde nace… sino de donde entrega el alma."

"I am Peruvian. Because one isn't from where he is born, but rather from where he delivers his soul."

Ordo Amoris and The Good Samaritan

We lost the Pope early this week, on Easter Monday. He was laid to rest this morning in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, hands down the most beautiful of the major churches in Rome, in my humble opinion.  After what would be his final act as Pontiff, blessing the multitudes gathered in St. Peter's Square to celebrate the most important holiday in Christendom, Pope Francis retired to his residence in the Vatican where he left this world at 7:15AM local time. 

May he rest in peace.

It's interesting that in one of his final meetings with a world leader, Francis met with the Vice President of the United States. The late Pontiff made no bones about his opposition to the current US administration, especially regarding its stance on immigration, refugees, and mass deportation.

One may be tempted to think the VP lectured the ailing Pope on Catholic teaching that he believes justifies mass deportation, just as he lectured Germans that they're being too hard on Nazis or to Volodmyr Zelenski that he wasn't sucking up enough to the current POTUS.. But it doesn't appear the Easter Sunday meeting between the two was anything more than an exchange of pleasantries and the all-important photo-op. 

The rift between the Pope and the VP began with a Fox interview in January where the VP addressed how his administration's policies on deportation and foreign aid, jibe with his Christian faith. He said this: 

You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

He went on to claim that the "far left" inverts that hierarchy.

Then he attached a name to the hierarchy during a social media squabble:

Just google “ordo amoris.” ...the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory (Stewart, a British commentator and former politician) really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?

On a very basic level, the VP is right of course. Ordo amoris, first introduced to the Church by Saint Augustine in the early Sixth Century, makes clear that all forms of love are not equal. Scripture puts love of God and love of one's parents squarely at the forefront, as clearly stated in the Ten Commandments. From there the other kinds of love we share with others naturally follow. 

How absurd would it be if we for example, sent our entire paycheck to charity without leaving enough to feed our own family?

To the best of my knowledge not explicitly mentioned in scripture, love of oneself might also reside at the center of the hierarchy. More than anything, ordo amoris addresses the practical aspects of life in relation to the practice of faith. We are only human after all.

Much like the instructions we hear on every commercial flight when we are told that in the case of the loss of cabin pressure, we should place the oxygen mask over our face before helping others do the same, it is practical and logical to assume we are not in a good position to help others if we don't help ourselves first.

The same goes for love. 

But what about the idea that beyond our family and other loved ones, there is a hierarchy of categories of relationships, each one less worthy of our love and charity than the one proceeding it?

Was that what Jesus had in mind when he commanded his disciples to love one another as he had loved them? Did he have a hierarchy which determined how much he doled out his love and compassion to each of them?

With that logic, one could easily construct an infinite number of categories to separate people in the hierarchy chain. How about fellow members of a particular faith or political party? Or members of the same ethnicity or race? What about fans of the same football team? 

If I were to use that logic, woe be to the Trumplican, Muslim, Indonesian, Green Bay Packer fan who happens to cross my path during a crisis. 

The VP's interesting take on Catholic theology was not lost on Pope Francis who shortly before his final health crisis, wrote an encyclical to the bishops of the United States where he states that the universal dignity of every human being surpasses all other concerns. He wrote:

...Jesus Christ, loving everyone with a universal love, educates us in the permanent recognition of the dignity of every human being, without exception. In fact, when we speak of “infinite and transcendent dignity,” we wish to emphasize that the most decisive value possessed by the human person surpasses and sustains every other juridical consideration that can be made to regulate life in society. Thus, all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa.

You can read the encyclical in its entirety here. 

On the true ordo amoris, Francis writes:

Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.

To current ears, the phrase "Good Samaritan" implies anyone who does a good deed, generally above and beyond the call of duty. But in the time the parable found in the Gospel of Luke was written, the Samaritans were a group of people who shared a common mistrust and emnity with the Jews (the original recipients of the Gospel). From the perspective of a contemporary dyed-in-the-wool believer, the term "good Samaritan" might have the same impact as calling someone a "good athiest", which is precisely why the story is so compelling and revolutionary.

Answering the question "who exactly is my neighbor?" Jesus proposed the story of a man, presumably a Jew, who is robbed and left for dead on the side of a road. Two upstanding members of the Jewish community, a priest and a Levite have neither the time not the inclination to help the man. Next comes a Samaritan who cares for the man's wounds then takes him to an inn where he asks the keeper to care for the man until his return where he will compensate the innkeeper for all his expenses.

Which of the three Jesus then asked, was doing God's will? Not even willing to let the word Samaritan cross his lips, the questioner responded: "He who showed mercy on him."

"Now go and do likewise" was Jesus' reply.

Our neighbor in other words, is all of humanity.

In his encyclical, Francis places the migrant fleeing terror, oppression, and all other sorts of indignities at home at the center of Scripture. He leads off his letter describing the Jews' Exodus from Egyptian slavery and the Holy Family's escape into Egypt, fleeing a jealous and "ungodly" king. (Could there be someone currently in our midst that the Pope had in mind?).

In the late Pope's words, The Holy Family:

are the model, the example and the consolation of emigrants and pilgrims of every age and country, of all refugees of every condition who, beset by persecution or necessity, are forced to leave their homeland, beloved family and dear friends for foreign lands.

The late Holy Father did not discount the practical concerns of society facing an influx of immigrants:

one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival.

And yet:

the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.

Much has been made about the differences between Pope Francis and his immediate predecessors. But those differences were as much if not more about style rather than substance.

Conservative pundits in the US and perhaps elsewhere, couldn't hide their giddiness at this Pope's passing. To them he was an unapologetic progressive, even a heretic who was bent on destroying the Church and its traditions. Liberals on the other hand lamented that Francis did not do enough to reform the Church, changing all the things about it they didn't like. I guess the fact that the bitterly divided Church still remains intact, at this writing anyway, means that Pope Francis did a pretty good job. 

Shortly after he became Pope, in 2013, I wrote this piece about how the dean of American blowhard ultra-conservative talking heads, the late Rush Limbaugh, was particularly unhappy with Francis, particularly with his views on capitalism. I pointed out in the piece that while Limbaugh couldn't say enough good things about Francis' two predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II, he either didn't know or ignored that those two were also very critical of systems that place the making of money ahead of basic human dignity. In fact their views on the subject were hardly different at all from Francis's.

Naturally right now there is a spirited debate about who will be chosen to carry on as Pope. Conservatives have made a list of candidates they feel will best represent their interests and liberals have done the same. But the story of the Good Samaritan is so central to the faith that whoever ends up wearing the "shoes of the fisherman" in a few weeks' time, will be loathe to go against it, J.D. Vance's opinion notwithstanding.

I closed that post with this thought:

We may claim the Almighty for ourselves but God is neither liberal nor conservative, Democrat nor Republican. He is neither a Communist nor a Capitalist. His message doesn't belong exclusively to the Right nor to the Left, to the Jew or the Gentile, or to you or me. It belongs to all of us.

Somehow we're just all going to have to accept that.

Easter, 2025

 I haven't set foot in a church for a number of years. It's complicated. 

Back in 2016, not long after I stopped going to church, for perhaps the first time in my life, I really absorbed the true meaning of Easter, hands down the most important holiday in Christianity.

It turned out that in all my years as a practicing Christian, specifically of the Roman Catholic faith, Easter, never truly lived up to all the expectations. Coming after the season of Lent, with its solemnity,  meditation, devotion and sacrifice, all in buildup to the great day, when that day, the great victory of light over darkness, of life over death finally came, it always turned out to be a little underwhelming. I always expected, as many Christians do, to be filled with the Holy Spirit in a rapture of joy and happiness. However. my typical response to Easter for the first fifty plus years of my life was basically the refrain to an old Peggy Lee song, "Is That all There Is?" 

But as I realized after one painful Easter season, you can't have Easter without first having Good Friday. 

And what a horrible Good Friday my family and I experienced that year.

That weekend I recalled the following words written by the Prophet Isaiah, read in church every Good Friday, which took on a new relevance for me when read outside of church:

See, my servant shall prosper,
he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him—
so marred was his look beyond human semblance
and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man—
so shall he startle many nations,
because of him kings shall stand speechless;
for those who have not been told shall see,
those who have not heard shall ponder it. 

Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
like a shoot from the parched earth;
there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,
nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem. 

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each following his own way;
but the LORD laid upon him
the guilt of us all. 

Though he was harshly treated, he submitted
and opened not his mouth;
like a lamb led to the slaughter
or a sheep before the shearers,
he was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
and who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
and smitten for the sin of his people,
a grave was assigned him among the wicked
and a burial place with evildoers,
though he had done no wrong
nor spoken any falsehood.
But the LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity. 

If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,
and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
because he surrendered himself to death
and was counted among the wicked;
and he shall take away the sins of many,
and win pardon for their offenses.

Then the next day, Holy Saturday, the day where for many years I spent hours in church during the Easter Vigil, I found myself in of all places, a Patti Smith concert, where in between songs, in honor of the day, the legendary artist (who revealed her spiritual, but non-church-going self), read these words from the Gospel of Matthew:

Now late on the sabbath day, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was as lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the watchers did quake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus, who hath been crucified. He is not here; for he is risen, even as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples, He is risen from the dead; and lo, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word. And behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. Then saith Jesus unto them, Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me. 

The eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

This proved once and for all the words of Christ when he said:"Wherever two or more gather in my name, I am with you."

Even when I was a church going Christian, I always was far more interested in the teaching and philosophy of the religion, than in all the nuts and bolts. In other words I was never too concerned whether Jesus really did perform all those miracles including rising from the dead. 

To me what really mattered was the meaning behind all that stuff, what non-believers would regard as mumbo jumbo. And the true meaning of the mumbo jumbo above can all be distilled into one word: love.

Or as John the Evangelist wrote in his Gospel:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

And what that mumbo jumbo means is that if we are to follow Jesus, we must to the best of our ability, do as he did, love one another.

That's all.

The rest of Scripture as a contemporary of Jesus, Hillel the Great once said, is commentary.

Happy Easter!

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

This was my first experience of a talking computer:

 

As explained at the beginning of the video, in 1961 programmers at IBM created the program that generated for the first time, a close (at least for the time) approximation of the human voice as well as a musical accompaniment to the nineteenth century song Daisy Bell written by Harry Dacre. I vividly remember seeing this on TV, and it could not have been long after the program was created, although I may have been a little too young, 2 years old in 1961, for it to have made an impression on me at the time. 

But Daisy was a song that my father sang to me while I was riding on his shoulders walking through Humboldt Park on the West side of Chicago (an act I repeated for my own son in the same place), so it may not have been very long after that. For the record, my father sang the song better than the computer. Not so sure about my version.

There had been many depictions of artificial intelligence in science fiction for decades before 1961, so I'm guessing this first attempt to reproduce the human voice with a computer (which in this case doesn't even come close to AI), must have seemed rather crude at the time. 

One of my earliest and fondest memories of fictional intelligent creatures created by human beings, was the character of Robot from the science fiction (perhaps science farce would be a better term) prime time TV show Lost in Space. Along with his superhuman strength and computational acumen, the character, which for the TV show was controlled by an actor inside a robot costume, also was given human characteristics such as emotions and even empathy. 

Here is our Robot, encountering another not so nice robot, in a scene from an early episode of the series:

Perhaps a more enduring, and definitively more threatening example of artificial intelligence in popular culture from the same time is the character of HAL (short for Heuristically Programmed Algorhythmic Computer), in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 film, 2001, A Space Odyssey. Based on a 1950's short story by Arthur C. Clarke (who helped Kubrick write the screenplay and reworked his story into a novel to coincide with the film), HAL does not have the anthropomorphic physical features of Robot, but instead is visually depicted by a lens on a control panel which flashes in time with the robot's voice. 

HAL is employed to control the spacecraft's journey to Jupiter as well as to interact with the crew on a personal level, including playing chess with them.

At first, Hal was a reliable member of the crew but eventually the machine begins to malfunction, and the astronauts decide it is imperative to the mission to disengage HAL. The machine has other ideas however and given his superior intelligence, putting him down proves to be quite the challenge. NOW here's the spoiler alert: when astronaut Dave finally succeeds in taking down HAL, the machine slowly devolves, and his final parting words are can you guess? The lyrics to Daisy. 

Quite a brilliant move by the screenwriters which I'm afraid is lost on most younger viewers of the movie who wouldn't get the reference.

Popular culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century was rife with depictions of the future, fifty years or so hence. Well today, it's fifty or so years hence and it's interesting to see what they got right and what they didn't. Alas, flying cars which seem to appear in practically every version of our future, at least those set on earth, are still a thing of the future. That's probably a good thing. In fact, most of the predictions they got wrong had to do with transportation. That's not hard to understand, as I pointed out in this post, in my grandmother's lifetime she lived to see both the invention of the airplane, AND the lunar landings. In 1970 there was no reason to believe that the next fifty years or so would see similar quantum leaps in technology.

However, since the last Apollo mission to the moon in 1972, we have not returned. While we have sent a number of unmanned missions to the planets, including landing on Mars and Venus, no human being has left the earth's orbit since December 7, 1972, although plans are in the works to change that. But if you had told anyone back then that people wouldn't even be considering trips to the moon and beyond for fifty years, they would have laughed in your face. 

The same goes with earthbound means of travel. Again, considering my grandmother's lifetime, when she was a child, if you didn't want to walk, the streetcar was the best way to get about town. The automobile was around but only a reality for the wealthy few who were also a bit on the adventurous side. Horse drawn buggies were still around but they were the exclusive domain of the wealthy who were on the less adventurous side. If you wanted to travel long distance, trains were the best option for both the rich and the poor, and for really long trips, ocean liners.

By the time my grandmother turned sixty, the automobile had become commonplace, and indeed an integral part of most Americans' lives. The heyday of train and ocean travel came and went during those sixty years, both having been overtaken by the airplane and the automobile in the case of trains. By the time my grandmother turned seventy-five, thanks to the Concorde and supersonic airline travel, you could fly from New York to London in about three and one half hours, although for the record, my grandmother never took advantage of that marvel of technology.

Well it so happened that just a little later in the decade, a perfect storm of events and attitude shifts took place that changed people's minds about bigger, faster, and more comfortable means of transportation. 

One of these was the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 which greatly reduced the nation's supply of crude oil, thusly ending forever the idea of "cheap gas". It wouldn't be long before the boat like, high performing, gas guzzlers with V8 engines that we of a certain era grew up with, would be replaced by smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. I'm not even certain that a new car's MPG rating was even considered before this time, but it certainly was afterward. 

Another result of the "Gas Crisis" was the federal government's imposition of a 55 MPH maximum speed limit on all the nation's roads and highways. One of the not-necessarily intended benefits of the nationwide speed limit was the reduction of traffic injuries and fatalities, which helped put the concern for safely at the forefront of the design of new cars. 

Perhaps the most profound attitude shift of the seventies was the environmental movement which was given a great boost by nothing less than the moon missions, especially by the photographs of earth taken from outer space which showed our home as a beautiful gem in the midst of vast emptiness. Perhaps for the first time, the general public realized that although our natural resources were abundant, they are not infinite. The visits to the moon and later to Mars and Venus drove home the point that there's no remotely close, hospitable place that we can escape to if we fail to take care of our own planet home.

And speaking of the moon missions, while they were great accomplishments in their own right, it became abundantly clear that as far as space exploration is concerned, you get way more bang for the buck by sending robots into space than people. You don't have to feed them, create a cozy livable environment for them, or keep them entertained. Plus, you don't have to bring them back to earth and as everyone knows, a one-way ticket costs less than round trip. Most important, you don't have to take the unbearable risk of losing crew members, as we in the States painfully experienced with Apollo 1 and the Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin of a future with bigger, faster and more comfortable means of transportation took place on the 25th of July, 2000 in Paris when a Concorde crashed just after takeoff killing everyone on board as well as four people on the ground. The result was the permanent grounding of the entire fleet of supersonic passenger jets.

Ironically, today, it typically takes us longer to get where we're going, but we're getting there safer, cheaper and with less harm to the environment, than we did fifty years ago.

While the Sci-Fi books and films of the mid-twentieth century got the means of transportation part wrong, they hit the jackpot with computers and artificial intelligence, which has made everything from fuel efficient, safe automobiles, to interplanetary space travel, to helping cure once deadly diseases to everything in between, possible.

And yes, we worry justifiably about its implications as well. 

So why do I bring all this up? 

Because about one month ago, I downloaded after considerable thought, the AI app Chat GPT. I've reached my limit with this post, so I'll have to save my report on the experience for the next post.

I'll just give you another spoiler alert, Chat GPT has left me overwhelmed, flabbergasted, blown away gob smacked and worried in an existential way, all at the same time. But is it life-changing?

Could be.

Oh and one other thing, this post has been written entirely by Chat GPT.

Seriously.

Now take me to your leader. 

Opening Day, Yea

Pretty much the one and only tradition on this blog is my annual shoutout to the greatest game never invented* on its most important day of the year, Opening Day.

Pinning down actual Opening Day this year is a little difficult because at this writing, March 27, 2025, Major League Baseball's official Opening Day, one of Chicago's two MLB teams, the one that plays on the North Side of town, is already 0-2, having played a series last week with the World Series Champion LA Dodgers in Japan. So it's a little hard to say the traditional Opening Day aphorism: "all hope springs eternal" to the Cubbies who are already winless, two games under .500.

And saying it to the other Chicago team, the one that plays on the South Side, my favorite team, carries with it not a little touch of irony as last year, The Chicago White Sox posted almost the worst win/loss record in the era of the 162 game Major League season, second by a hair only to the woebegone 1962 New York Mets. 1962 incidentally was the Mets' first year of existence. The White Sox who played their first MLB game in 1901 can't use inexperience as an excuse.

As the Sox have not done much to improve their team in the off-season, (on paper in fact the team is a little weaker than it was at the start of last season),the best thing we Sox fans can say today, at least before the 3pm CDT first pitch this afternoon is: "well at least we're two games ahead of the Cubs. 

Yea team.

To give you an idea of how pathetic last year's season was, in the MLB they say: "Every team wins at least sixty games and loses at least sixty games in a season, it's what they do in the remaining forty-two games that matters." 

Turns out as far as the winning part, the 2024 ChiSox came up nineteen games short of that milestone of futility. 

An ancient sport's adage we Chicagoans all learn while still in our diapers is this: "wait 'till next year."

Well next year is here and hmmmm, we'll see. Can't do any worse than last year can we? 

Never say never.

There are other reasons to be less than enthusiastic about opening day. One is that my son's baseball career as a player is all but over as last year he graduated from college, and from his school's baseball team. He didn't get to play much college ball but he did make the team all four years, and being a member forged several life-long friendships, many great experiences, as well as a deep sense of belonging. I have to say since graduation, he's lost much of the twinkle in his eye. 

Another depressing thing I just found out is that more of the iconic Wrigley Field experience is about to disappear as several of the classic Chicago hundred-year-old three flat residential buildings just beyond the right field bleachers are about to be torn down and replaced by a standard 2020's issue apartment building. As demolition has just begun, Cub fans at their games this season will have the sight of the beautiful buildings' destruction to look forward to, which may actually be less depressing than watching their team.

For their sake I hope I'm wrong. 

It's all fitting because baseball, as the late A. Bartlett Giamatti pointed out in his wonderful essay "The Green Fields of the Mind: "...breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." 

And how.

Just not today.

Happy Opening Day.

Play ball!

* Much to the contrary of its popular creation myth, the game of baseball evolved over several decades from already existing games rather than being invented as say, basketball was.

Los Angeles

The typical two-week news cycle has predictably shifted and today, hard to believe, almost two months after they started, hardly anyone is talking about the fires that devastated a large portion of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities.  

But of course, the suffering goes on. 

Frankly there's precious little I can add of merit to this tragedy other than saying my heart goes out to everyone who calls the City of Angeles home, whether they currently live there or not.

Stay strong my friends. 

Jim