Brutal II

Several years ago a friend from Prague came to visit. He was living in Chicago when we first met and already familiar with the city. So upon his return I decided to take him to some places he hadn't been. One of these was the University of Chicago. I wanted to show him what I considered to be a lovely campus dominated by early twentieth century buildings built in the Neo-Gothic style.

He was appalled. My friend asked why they would build buildings in the twentieth century using a seven hundred year old architectural style?

Frankly I didn't have a good answer for him.

My friend's opinion made sense because Prague is old enough to have the real thing, that is, Gothic buildings built during the Gothic period. Prague has even older extant buildings. And most of the Czech capital's subsequent  buildings were built in architectural styles that were developed in the period in which they were built, including early twentieth century Cubism, an architectural style virtually unknown outside of Prague. The city is a wonderful mish-mash of divergent architectural styles (including this) making it a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the development of Western architecture over the past thousand years, give or take a century or two.

While you'll find examples of revival styles in Prague, those are the exception rather than the rule. 

So I imagine my Prague friend would be rather perplexed by the recent presidential executive order decreeing that all new American Federal buildings be built in a style (Classical, based on the architecture of Ancient Athens and Rome) that is more than one thousand years older than Gothic.

For another point of view, check out this video.

It seems these two could not be more pleased about the executive order. There are a few obvious problems with this piece, namely the participants don't know what they're talking about. 

In fact, they seem to be reveling in their lack of knowledge saying essentially: "I may not know the slightest thing about architecture but I do know what I like." Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but it seems rather odd to me for someone to go public flaunting their ignorance.

First of all, the presenters make references to some of our nation's most important buildings, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress Jefferson Building and the Lincoln Memorial, the best of the best examples of the "traditional" architecture the executive order is promoting. Why can't new buildings look like those? they seem to be saying.

The answer is because these are the centerpiece buildings of Washington D.C. whose architecture frankly takes a back seat to their importance, their particular history, and their status as national icons. As such, the comparison is setting an impossible standard for new architecture.

What this video doesn't show us are the scores of "traditional" style buildings in Washington that don't come close to these iconic buildings both in terms of excellence in design, or their history. It's not much of a stretch to be of the opinion that many of these buildings are undistinguished, uninspired and graceless, they do little to enhance the urban environment in which they inhabit, and are downright ugly, just like the non-traditional buildings these two lambast. "Throwing some columns or arches in front of them" as one of the commenters suggests, isn't going to change that.

The two people in the video decry the lack of "thought and effort" that has gone into the creation of the more contemporary buildings. This could not be farther from reality, as we'll see in a bit, the opposite may be true, that in fact too much thought went into the architecture of these buildings. 

Getting to the gist of the video: one of the commenters singles out the FBI and State Department buildings in Washington D.C. as being "crushingly ugly". Now that's her opinion and whether you agree with it or not, she has every right to express it. But here she expresses her opinion as if it were a fact, then goes on to say: "it's called Brutalism for a reason" implying at least to my ears, that the architecture is intended to by ugly. 

To be clear, Brutalism is an architectural style that came into being in Europe after World War II when the demand for new housing not surprisingly was enormous. The term comes from the French term for raw concrete, "beton brut", coined by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, to describe the materials he employed for his post-war housing developments or, Unité d'Habitation, the first of which was built in Marseille in 1952. 

As a building material, raw concrete has several advantages over masonry, stone and steel cladding. Beyond the obvious economic factors, concrete is plastic that is, it can molded into a nearly infinite array of shapes, allowing for the creation of non-traditional forms. It should be noted that the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, built nearly 2,000 years ago, in my book one of the greatest feats of engineering and most beautiful buildings I've ever experienced, is made entirely of unreinforced concrete.

Followers of Le Corbusier, the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" to describe their own use of unadorned raw concrete in their work, and "Brutalism" as best as I can tell came into the lexicon of official architectural terms through the architectural historian and critic Rayner Banham in his book: The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic, published in 1955.

Brutalism is the direct descendent of the International Style, or Modernism, whose development can be largely traced to the German design school Stattliches Bauhaus, or simply The Bauhaus. The Bauhaus existed in three entities in three separate cities and times, Weimar, Dessau and Berlin between 1919 and 1933.  The school  was a radical departure from the traditional art schools of the era, in part by bringing together artists and artisans of all stripes together under one roof, beginning their studies with a core program which emphasized craftsmanship and hands-on contact with materials placing a premium on experimentation with new forms . 

The Bauhaus embraced the Industrial Revolution, particularly mass production with the goal of harmonizing fine arts with industrial design. The school's guiding principle in regard to design was that "form follows function" meaning that the end result of a creator's work, whether it be a skyscraper or a toaster, should honestly reflect what that object is intended for, without unnecessary distractions. In that vein, the cladding of buildings most associated with the Bauhaus is steel and glass, i.e.: nothing to hide.

However, the concept of form following function when it comes to architecture did not begin at the Bauhaus but right here in Chicago two decades earlier. As radical an architect for his day as the Bauhaus (and later Chicago) architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was for his, Louis Sullivan in an article published in 1896 titled The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, wrote the following:

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open aple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Louis Sullivan was a passionate and uncompromising advocate of creating an architecture that was derived from nature and at the same time, an architecture that was uniquely American. Despite being inspired by architecture of the past, he had no regard for imitating the architectural styles of long lost civilizations. In his book Kindergarten Chats, published in 1901, regarding the common practice of the time of designing banks in the Classical Revival style, Sullivan quipped: 

I am going to insist that the banker wear a toga, sandals and conduct his business in the venerated Latin tongue -- oral and written.

Hmmm, not a bad idea come to think of it, that bank sounds a lot cooler than mine.

Sullivan's buildings and those of his fellow "Chicago School" architects stripped down the design elements of their buildings, thanks in large part to the technical development of the curtain wall, exterior walls that are suspended from the interior skeleton of the structure rather than self-supporting, a system also developed in Chicago. The curtain wall enabled piers to be kept to a minimum while opening up the windows significantly, which inspired the creation of the "Chicago Window" consisting of a large pane of glass flanked by two double hung windows, entirely filling a bay, the space between the columns that form the structure of the building. In addition to providing more light into the building's interior, this alternation of wide windows and narrow piers emphasized the building's internal structure, hence form following function.

The heyday of the Chicago School or Commercial Style as it was also called, was short lived. Sullivan's dream of a uniquely American architecture was supplanted by a resurgence of the Classical revival, a result of the tremendous success of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Ironically, working for the firm headed by Daniel H. Burnham, the chief architect of the Columbian Exposition, Charles B. Atwood, designed what for me is the most significant and beautiful Chicago Style building, the Reliance Building, which has the distinction of being the first skyscraper to have the majority of its surface area to be of plate glass. 

As such, the Reliance Building is the paradigm of what was to come twenty years later in Germany, one could say making it the first truly Modernist building. 

Depending upon your point of view, that could either be a good or a bad thing as Modernist architecture is not universally loved in our day.

That wasn't always the case.

Two posts ago, writing about the misguided idea of building a triumphal arch in Washington D.C., I made the comment that the experience of two World Wars in the twentieth century changed the world order in countless ways, including our built environment. Growing up in the sixties I remember distinctly the attitude most people had toward architecture which was this: the newer the better. 

People it seemed who lived through the World Wars and the Great Depression, couldn't get away fast enough from the past and looked forward to a bright new future which was in part symbolized by bright and shiny, brand spanking new Modernist buildings. When great Chicago School buildings such as Holabird and Roche's Republic Building on State Street, and Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater on Randolph went down in the early sixties, there was barely a peep from the general public, even though the two were deserving of landmark status (had such a thing existed at the time), and were replaced by vastly inferior buildings, in the latter's case a parking lot. 

The few voices of dissent such as those of photographer Richard Nickel, architect John Vinci and historian Tim Samuelson, were like voices crying out in the desert. And when the city bulldozed thousands of acres of homes bisecting long established neighborhoods in order to build massive expressways, most folks just shrugged their shoulders saying: "Oh well, that's progress."

The tide did seem to turn during the demolition of yet another Sullivan masterwork, The Stock Exchange Building in 1972. Richard Nickel was killed as part of the half-demolished building collapsed on him as he was trying to salvage ornament. The tragedy of Nickel's death gained the preservation movement some traction in the community as people started to realize that at the rate we were going, one day none of Chicago's great architectural legacy would be left standing.

At the same time, those bright, shiny Modernist boxes that were so loved a decade before, were starting to show their age. Even worse, masters of the style such as Mies van der Rohe who emigrated to Chicago after the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, started to die off and were replaced by practitioners who shared Mies' dogmatic approach to his art, but didn't have the old master's soul, his attention to detail, and most important, his design chops. 

The result was instead of "less being more" an old axiom adopted by Mies, less just became less. 

The same fate befell the city's brutalist architecture as its original practitioners, the equally dogmatic  Bertrand Goldberg, author of Marina City and the late, great Prentice Hospital, and Harry Weese the architect of the Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist in Chicago and Washington D.C.'s Metro system, passed from the scene leaving the torch for lesser architects to pick up. 

Again like Mies, the dogma remained but not necessarily the ability, or the will to design attractive buildings.

In the hands of lesser architects, their buildings, rather than being groundbreaking and daring, became tedious and dare I say, ugly. In my opinion of course.

Today it seems, at least if you believe the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society, we have come full circle in our taste for architecture, preferring the older, pre World War II styles to the post. 

Fair enough, the pendulum throughout history has been constantly swinging.

Does that mean we should relinquish the choice of how to build in our public buildings and monuments to public taste, which as we just saw changes over time, or worse, to the whims of the current occupant of the White House?

I believe that would be a terrible mistake. 

I'll give you two examples.

In the early eighties it was decided that to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War, a monument was to be built in Washington D.C. Here I'm quoting myself from a previous post:

Maya Lin was then an undergraduate student of architecture at Yale who entered a class assignment into the competition and gained instant notoriety when she was selected the winner. Her design was conceptual and minimal, two highly reflective polished black stone walls bearing the inscribed names of 58,175 American dead. The slabs were dug into the earth, as if a giant wound. Her creation which became known simply as The Wall, was a departure from the heroic designs of Washington's existing assortment of monuments. This was to be a statement about war, not merely a monument to those who participated.

There was immediate criticism of the design, much of it bombast from politicians who objected to the unconventional nature of proposed monument. In the midst of the feeding frenzy, there were some valid concerns. Some veterans felt that the monument only paid tribute to the dead, not to those who returned. Others objected to the fact that an American flag was not a part of the design. The debate about whether or not to build The Wall dragged on for several months.

I have little doubt that if it were left up to the public and the politicians, the Vietnam War Memorial as it exists today, one of our nation's capital's most beloved and visited sites, would never have been built. 

The other example is right here in Chicago. It's the sculpture that sits in Richard J. Daley Center in the heart of Chicago's Loop. It's untitled but ask any local "Where's the Picasso?" and they will know exactly what you mean. When it was officially unveiled in 1967, the five story work of Modern Art, was received with a smattering of applause by the crowd, but mostly silence. 

"What is it?" replied the crowd, some out loud, some to themselves. To many I'm sure, the rusty Cor-Ten steel structure resembled an old, broken down 1952 Plymouth that had been left out in the elements too long.

But the creators of the sculpture assured us that the rusty finish, along with that of the building it stood in front of, would eventually develop a lovely bronze patina. They were true to their word. Here's me again from a few years ago:

Just as most locals never set foot inside the Art Institute, Symphony Center, or other institutions of so called "high culture", I dare say that most Chicagoans deep down consider the Picasso if not beautiful, at least something to be immensely proud of. Just as those esteemed institutions, the Picasso has put this city on the map of respectability. After all, being regarded only as the city of hog butchering, Al Capone rat-a-tat-tat, and corrupt politicians, gets a little old.

Again, had it been up to the public and many of the politicians at the time, the Chicago Picasso would not have been built.

Fortunately, the politician who mattered the most, the mayor of Chicago at the time, Richard J. Daley threw all his considerable weight behind the project. Known more for his malaprops than for his profound utterances, Daley hit the mark at the dedication of the Picasso when he said this:

We dedicate this celebrated work this morning with the belief that what is strange to us today will be familiar tomorrow.

And he was right, the Chicago Picasso is today as much an iconic symbol of this city as is the Lakefront, the Water Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field Clocks and the Edward Kemeys Lions in front of the Art Institute. 

That said, the skepticism about Post WWII architecture is not all misplaced. Its champions and its practitioners alike reveled in being iconoclasts who were intent on changing the world in ways many people either find uncomfortable, or outright reject. 

Have a look at random quotes from the manifestos of some twentieth century artists, architects and planners taken off a blog that advocates traditional architecture:

“Not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health.” - Adolf Loos: Ornament and crime 1908

“Destruction of artistically valueless monuments as well as of all buildings whose artistic value is out of proportion to the value of their material which could be put to other uses.” - Demand #5 of the Work Council for Art: Under the wing of a great architecture 1919

“Smash the shell-lime Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns…to the garbage heap with all that junk!” - Bruno Taut: Down with seriousism! (sic) 1920

“In carrying out this industrialization, the social, technical, economic and also artistic problems will be readily solved.” - Mies van der Rohe: Industrialized Building 1924

“We can no longer derive any benefit from the literary and historical teaching given in schools.” - Le Corbusier: Five points towards a new architecture 1926

“All ‘individuals’ are an obstacle in the path of development, and in fact progress takes place in spite of them.” - Hugo Häring: The house as an organic structure 1932

“ART = net resultant of momentarily (time fix) dominant articulability of ego’s cosmic sense.” - Buckminster Fuller: Universal architecture 1932

“Creative art is unthinkable without a spiritual clash with tradition. In this clash existing form must be smashed in order to find the pure expression of one’s own time.” - Reinhard Gieselmann: Towards a new architecture 1960

“A new condition of human intimacy will exist. The inhabitants live naked. The former patriarchal family system will no longer exist. The community will be complete, free, individual, impersonal. The inhabitant’s main occupation: pleasure.” - Werner Ruhnau: Project for an aerial architecture 1960

“Architecture is not the satisfaction of the needs of the mediocre, is not an environment for the petty happiness of the masses. Architecture is made by those who stand at the highest level of culture and civilization, at peak of their epoch’s development. Architecture is an affair of the élite.” - Hans Hollein: Absolute architecture 1962

To say twentieth century architects were dogmatic is a gross understatement, but that goes for artists and architects from time immemorial. Some of these statements are iconoclastic, some are inscrutable, some are revolutionary, some are bombastic, others are outrageous, while some are pure nonsense, although I do kind of like the one about all of us living free and naked. 

No small amount of arrogance either in all the comments above which may account for the resistance to their work from those who are weary of the cultural elite. 

But in the end, architects like all artists must be judged by their work, not by what they said. The truth, and I believe this to be the truth, not just my opinion, is that there are not good or bad styles of architecture, just good and bad design.

Just as there are beautiful Classical Revival buildings, so too are there beautiful Modernist and Brutalist buildings. The same is true for the bad ones and the majority of the ones smack dab in the middle.

The progress of art and architecture, like a great river, is constantly moving and changing, never composed of the same water. That, as Louis Sullivan (as bombastic as they come), might say, is the law of nature.

Governmental mandates for the arts are like putting a damn on the river, leaving a big pool of stagnant water in its wake. 

On that note, I'll leave the last word for Hizzonor Mayor Daley who was asked about the politics of Pablo Picasso. He answered as only he could:

Leave the art to the artists, and the politics to the politicians.

Well said Mr. Mayor.

Brutal I

In my last post I alluded to the current president's executive order titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, which called for restricting the design of new federal buildings in the nation's capital to "traditional" styles of architecture, putting a special emphasis on the Classical Revival style.

The order, which was inspired by the National Civic Art Society * and presumably written at least in part by its president Justin Shubow,  refers to Classical Revival as promoted by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who:

sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.

The order goes on: 

Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — particularly traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.

It then defines Classical architecture:

“Classical architecture” means the architectural tradition derived from the forms, principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Rafael Carmoega, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. Classical architecture encompasses such styles as Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco.

It goes on to define "Traditional Architecture":

“Traditional architecture” includes classical architecture, as defined herein, and also includes the historic humanistic architecture such as Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America.

You don't need to be an architectural historian to realize this list of acceptable building types encompasses a wide range of architectural styles. 

So what kind of architecture is unacceptable according to the executive order?

In the 1960s, the Federal Government largely replaced traditional designs for new construction with modernist and brutalist ones. (emphasis mine) The Federal architecture that ensued, overseen by the General Services Administration (GSA), was often unpopular with Americans. The new buildings ranged from the undistinguished to designs even GSA now admits many in the public found unappealing. 

Later in the order Deconstructivist architecture is also mentioned. 

In other words, unacceptable architecture according to the executive order, is any architectural style, born and bred after World War I.

In the last paragraph I quoted, the author mentions that these styles of architecture not only don't live up to the lofty intentions of our Founding Fathers, but they are also unpopular with the general public. 

On the homepage of the National Civic Art Society, there is a link to this page publishing the results of a Harris Poll which takes the temperature of the preferences of the American public in regards to architecture, specifically that of federal buildings. 

The poll consisted of seven side-by-side pairs of photographs, each pair consisting of a photo of a federal building built in a "traditional" style and one in a "modern" style. Then the survey asked participants to select in each pair which building they preferred. The comparison photographs were chosen carefully, using similar camera angles and light situations, so as not to skew the results based upon the quality of the photographs rather than the design of the buildings. 

In every case, more respondents picked the "traditional" style building over  the "modern" style by an average margin of about three to one. 

It goes without saying that the one thing each group had in common is that the "traditional " style buildings were all built before World War II and the "modern" style buildings were built after.

The NCAS uses these findings to argue that as the public (at least according to this poll) prefers "traditional" architecture to more contemporary styles, employing the former in the design of government buildings that are paid for by the public through taxpayer dollars is more in keeping with our democratic values than the top-down approach currently used to determine the design of these buildings. 

I suppose on a very superficial level, they have a point.

For what its worth, going through these very limited comparisons myself, I have to say that I personally disagreed with the majority opinion in all but one of the cases. That's not at all to say that I have a general preference of post WWII architecture, I don't. It's just that I found the older buildings chosen for the survey with the exception of one, to be rather uninspiring, while most of the newer buildings, to my eye anyway, could be described at the very least as interesting.

That's my opinion, take it or leave it. I'm not by trade an architectural historian but I do have a passion for the subject and I care a great deal about our built environment which hopefully comes across in this blog. 

Given that, should my opinion on the matter have more weight than the opinion of someone who has little interest in the subject?

Obviously in a democracy, we don't give weight to individual votes based upon the political knowledge of the voter; every individual's vote gets the same weight and that's exactly as it should be. On the other hand, the republic part of a democratic republic means that we vote for individuals to represent us, people who presumably know a thing or two about how government works, and vote on the issues before them based upon that knowledge. Theoretically anyway.

In other words, in a democratic republic, we the people don't get to vote on every issue that comes up before Congress, our State Legislature or our City Council. Rather it is our democratically elected representatives who do that. And that's a good thing because these folks generally (not always) know a thing or two more about these subjects than the average citizen.

In that vein it seems a little preposterous to me to have a referendum on the architectural style of every public building that gets built. And it seems even more preposterous in a democracy to have an edict from the president determining which architectural styles are appropriate and which are not.

Nonetheless, public opinion on the subject as well as the merits of different architectural styles are worthwhile topics for debate. Presidential edicts regarding the same are another story.

I'll discuss all of that in my next post.

And you can find that here.

* The following is the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society:

Founded in 2002, the National Civic Art Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that educates and empowers civic leaders in the promotion of public art and architecture worthy of our great Republic. We do this by advancing the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism, and their allied arts. Through our programs and initiatives we guide government agencies and officials; assist practitioners; and educate students and the general public in the preservation and creation of beautiful, dignified public buildings, monuments, and spaces.

Arc de T-What ???

While I was driving to work with my wife a couple weeks ago, she showed me a picture on her phone of the president holding what appeared to my bad eyes to be two or three white Lego Blocks stuck together. The caption on the picture was "Arc de Trump?". 

On closer inspection, he was holding a teeny tiny model of what appeared to be some kind of arch, complete with an ever so adorable miniature sculpture on top. The caption mentioned that he wanted to build a monumental arch in Washington D.C.

You can see the photo in this New York Times article.

It immediately reminded me of the Stonehenge Scene from the farcical movie "This is Spinal Tap." If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can check it out here. 

Naturally I thought the whole thing was a joke, maybe something ripped from the pages of the satirical tabloid The Onion. 

But of course, it wasn't a joke, it turns out he really wants to build a triumphal arch in Washington.

This one would ostensibly commemorate the 250th anniversary, (or Semiquincentennial if you prefer) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will take place this coming July fourth. It's funny because I remember very well the Bicentennial which took place on July 4, 1976. Mostly I remember the anticipation of the event which lasted about two years. The actual day as I recall, was an awful letdown as one would expect after such a buildup.

The funny thing is that with all the hullabaloo about the 1976 Bicentennial, no one back then apparently thought to build an official monument to the event. In stark contrast, there's barely been a mention of the upcoming Semiquincentennial. One would think that a quarter of a millennium is at least as impressive as a fifth of a millennium. 

Maybe it's too hard to pronounce Semiquincentennial.

But the Semiquincentennial hasn't been lost on this president who plans to throw a big shindig topped off by a major Ultimate Fighting Championship event, perhaps on the White House lawn on the big day. 

That apparently is not a joke either.

Perhaps his big, beautiful ballroom will be ready by then, fingers crossed.

They say that the building of an arch, or anything for that matter in Washington has to go through a gauntlet of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo before being approved to proceed. 

"You have to look at the environmental impact of anything as well as all of these concerns about the aesthetics and the engineering so it usually takes several years to go through a process of designing a new memorial," said Dr Christine Henry, director of the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

According to an article from the BBC:

"New commemorations typically need congressional approval as part of a 24-step plan developed by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which approves designs along with the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). "

Well blah blah blah...

That won't be an obstacle for this president as his M.O. has always been it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Come to think of it, "sorry" is not a part of his vocabulary so he simply won't ask for permission, then leave out the asking for forgiveness part. 

The architectural firm Harrison Design is responsible for the preliminary design of the arch. A partner in the firm, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, posted online a watercolor rendering of the proposed arch and the site it is slated for while commenting: "America needs a triumphal arch!" 

Well, maybe Mr. Charbonneau doesn't get around much anymore, but America already has a number of triumphal arches. New York City alone has two. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, commemorates the veterans of the Civil War. Perhaps more famous, and definitely more restrained is the Washington Arch in Greenwich Village which stands at the foot of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That one was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the centennial of the inauguration of George Washington.

I don't have anything against monumental arches. These two which I'm intimately familiar with, are great works of art, well loved, iconic landmarks in their respective settings. And as all architectural landmarks, they speak volumes about the time in which they were created, not to mention the lives they've lived since.

Over the decades, I've thought a lot about monuments, what they mean, how they function, and how that function changes over the passage of time. I've written about that subject extensively in this blog.

I've also written specifically about the monuments of Washington D.C..

If you type "Monument" in the search field in the upper left corner of this page, many of those posts will come up. 

The current president has famously decreed through executive order that the design of Federal Architecture in the nation's capital should be restricted to "particularly traditional and classical architecture" with classical architecture, i.e.: reflecting that of Ancient Greece and Rome, being the preferred style. 

According to the order, it is those styles that "visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions", just as the Founding Fathers, namely Washington and Jefferson intended. 

But when you think of it, it's a tenuous connection at best. Yes, ancient Athens had its democracy, and ancient Rome had its republic, but both were supplanted, in Athens by foreign conquest, and in Rome, by the foundation of the Empire. But their architecture continued. Think about that for a second.

The buildings we associate most with Athens and Rome and have been emulated in our own buildings, namely the Parthenon in Athens (consider the Lincoln Memorial), and the Pantheon in Rome (consider the Jefferson Memorial), did not function as government buildings themselves but rather as religious temples. 

As such, this "connection" we have with the architecture, great as it is, and our system of government, is superficial. 

The triumphal arch has a far darker provenance. The Arch of Titus in Rome is said to be the paradigm for all such arches. It sits just outside of the Colosseum, another glorious monument with a hideous past. The Arch of Titus was built to celebrate the Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 69 CE, which marked the destruction of that city, and with it, the Second Temple, an event that continues to be mourned in our time on the solemn day of Tisha b'Av by the Jewish people.

We live in a magnificent 1928 apartment building built in the Spanish Baroque Revival style. Every year we participate in an event called "Open House Chicago" , where the public is invited to visit the interiors of buildings that are generally closed to the public. I often help give tours of our building. The highlight of the tour is our swimming pool, adorned by a beautiful tile floor which is original to the building. Scattered among the one-inch tiles of various warm colors are tiles containing ancient symbols such as crosses and medallions representing other traditions. Among those medallions, are swastikas. On every tour I make sure to point these out to our guests, so they don't stumble upon them on their own. I bring up the difficult subject by saying you can tell the floor is original to the 1928 building because you certainly wouldn't find a swastika as a decorative element much after that. 

That's of course because this ancient symbol of good fortune and other virtues that has existed in many different cultures for millennia, was appropriated by the Nazis sometime in the nineteen twenties as a symbol of their own movement, back when they were still a fringe group with little notoriety, at least here in the States.

Today that symbol has only one very powerful, very negative meaning to the majority of the world, and many of the folks visiting our building cannot accept its presence there, even though they seem to understand that the spirit of the symbol was radically altered since our building was built.

I bring that up because the trauma experienced by the entire planet directly caused by the events surrounding the two World Wars not to mention the wars themselves, changed virtually everything about the way we view our world, including our built environment. 

That's why we don't build triumphal arches anymore.

Just like trying to pull off the swastika as a symbol of anything other than hatred and racism, it's truly a hard sell in our day to claim that triumphal arches represent the virtues we hold dear like independence, liberty and democracy. Above all, they represent war. Even at their finest like the two New York examples I gave above, triumphal arches may not glorify war, but they certainly romanticize it. Romanticizing war was not out of the ordinary at the time these arches were created over one hundred years ago, look at the art and the literature from that period, but it certainly is today.

After two World Wars, the Holocaust, the deaths of up to one hundred million people (in both wars), most of them civilians, and the development and the implementation of a weapon that has the potential of wiping out life on our planet, most reasonable people today have no taste for romanticizing war, especially people who lived through it.

At best, wonderful as they may be, these arches speak to another era and as such, are wildly anachronistic in our day, much like the steam locomotive.

But for me, there is an even more salient reason why this idea of the president's is preposterous. 

The approximately one square mile which includes the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, connected by the Memorial Bridge spanning the Potomac River, comes as close to sacred ground as anything in our country.

Our nation does not have an official monument to our greatest tragedy, the Civil War, which claimed more American lives than any other war. We don't need one. That magnificent yet restrained bridge (the work of the estimable New York firm McKim, Mead and White) represents both literally and figuratively, the connection between the indelible symbols of both sides of that conflict, Washington D.C., the capital of the Union, and Virginia whose state capital Richmond, was the capital of the Confederacy. The Lincoln Memorial, our greatest national monument in honor of our greatest president stands on one side of the bridge. Just on the other side of the Potomac (a stone's throw if you're George Washington), standing atop a hill that is now part of Arlington National Cemetery, arguably our nation's most hallowed ground, is the former home of General Robert E. Lee, the overall Commander of the Confederate States Army.

On the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, to the right of the iconic Daniel Chester French sculpture of the slain president, are inscribed the words of his Second Inaugural Address, delivered on the eve of the end of that terrible conflict. In that speech, Abraham Lincoln did not stand on the steps of the Capitol Building and gloat about the imminent glorious victory of the side under his leadership. Instead, he concluded his speech with these words of healing: 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

That bridge connecting the North and the South, is perhaps our greatest unsung monument, an everlasting symbol of that healing, the revival of the "united" part of the United States of America.

Memorial Bridge from the Washington side, looking toward Virginia.

And this current president wants to slap his big, anachronistic pile right in front of it. 

It is perhaps fitting that as a man who prefers building walls to bridges, he wants to mess with our most important bridge.

Two weeks ago, in more than 2,500 events organized around the country, an estimated seven million American participated in "No Kings" marches, protesting what they see as this president's ever increasing autocratic tendencies. 

To the president's sycophantic supporters including his Press Secretary, these protestors, which included several folks from my mother's retirement home in Evanston, Illinois, were "America hating Hamas supporting, communist terrorists." I guess I'll need to be more careful when I'm around those septa, octa, and nonagenarian terrorist neighbors of my mom. 

These "communist terrorists" claim they are simply upholding the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which in no uncertain terms demanded that our destiny be in the hands of we the people, not a king.

The president himself was more reserved in his comments about the protests. He said that he was not a king, nor did he intend to be one. 

Unfortunately, his actions speak louder than his words.

Which I guess shouldn't be surprising for a man who to be generous, is often careless with the truth.

Yet at the event where he revealed his plans to build his arch, he said something that was probably the most honest thing he ever said in his life.

When asked by a reporter who this monumental arch was really for, our president responded simply:

"Me."

Annals of the Game...

A scene from an old WWII movie (can't remember which one), popped into my head the other day. The scene featured two U.S. Army MPs guarding a military base somewhere in Europe during the war. Their job was to screen out enemy spies posing as American servicemen and officers. In order to do that they asked the following question: "Who won the World Series last year?" 

The assumption of course, understood by anyone watching the movie, was that any red-blooded American male would be able to answer that question in a heartbeat. 

I'm guessing that may have been a fairly safe assumption when the movie was made, probably sometime in the fifties or early sixties, the apogee of baseball's popularity, when in any given year of that period, if the answer didn't immediately come to your head, you could simply say "The Yankees", and have at least a seventy percent chance of being right. 

During the actual war however I'm not so sure that would have been a safe assumption as while baseball continued to be played professionally on orders from President Roosevelt, most of the players in the Major Leagues were themselves participating in the war effort*, leaving their teams filled with men who were ineligible to serve in the armed services. Two of the most famous of these were Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds, a fifteen-year-old left-handed pitcher too young to serve, and Pete Gray, a one-armed right fielder who played one season for the St. Louis Browns. 

Would soldiers engaged in the business of fighting a World War in two fronts on opposite sides of the planet have been fixated on the exploits of these children and  "4F" replacement players back home? I'm not so sure.

But you get the point, baseball was the most popular sport in the U.S. once, with its only real competition being prizefighting.

Today it's another story with several sports competing with and often beating baseball, at least where it really matters, in TV ratings. I'd be surprised if one in twenty Americans today could tell you who won the World Series last year. Which is why MLB is loathe to schedule its playoff games to compete with the NFL, even though the professional football season is still only in its first half. 

Sometimes it's unavoidable however, such as this past Monday when the Seattle Mariners faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the decisive game seven of the American League Championship Series, a game I might add, which will be remembered for a long time. More on that later. But suffice it to say, the two Monday Night Football mid-season games that took place that night, considerably outdrew a vastly more significant baseball game. In the United States that is.

Not so in Canada for obvious reasons.

It's too bad because this year especially, Major League Baseball's post season has been tremendously entertaining, featuring some magnificent performances by superstars as well as heretofore unknown players, extremely competitive games and series, wacky plays that no one has ever seen the likes of, and perhaps best of all, the return of some old school baseball.

And we haven't even gotten to the World Series yet! 

This year's roster of twelve teams in the playoffs included several teams known for their long histories of futility. This included my hometown Chicago Cubs who still hold the record for the longest World Series drought, 108 years. Of course, they broke that sorry string back in 2016, beating the team that currently holds the title of longest ongoing string without winning a World Series, the Cleveland Guardians,. Then there are the expansion teams that have never won a World Series, three of the five, the San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers and Seattle Mariners were included in the mix this year. 

Unfortunately, all those strings of futility will have to live at least another year as none of those teams are still playing.

Neither is the losingest team in MLB history, the Philadelphia Phillies, also knocked out of this year's playoffs. 

And I'd be remiss not to mention the Boston Red Sox who despite being tied for third place in all time World Series titles, had an impressive drought of their own, 84 years, which many blame on the "Curse of the Bambino", after their owner sold their star pitcher who wasn't all that bad with the bat, a guy named Babe Ruth, to the Yankees in order to finance a Broadway show.

After that whopper of a deal, the Yankees would go on to become baseball's most successful team in terms of championships, and all Boston would get in return is "No No, Nanette", the off-Broadway version of course. 

But in the end, it all balances out as the Yankees didn't survive the playoffs either this year.

The playoff system in MLB has been in place since 1969. Before then, dating back to the formation of the American League in 1901, the team with the best regular season record in each league would win its league's championship or "pennant" and would face the winner of the other league in the World Series. In 1969, which happened to be the year I started paying attention to baseball standings, the leagues were divided into two divisions consisting of six teams each, and the winner of each league's division would face the other in a best of five series league championship series, which would determine the team that would move on to the World Series.

As expansion teams kept coming on the scene, the leagues divided up again to three divisions in 1994. To achieve even numbers for the playoffs, a "wild card" team, the non-division winner with the best record in each league was added to the mix.   

This is all hooey to the purists of the game who would say what's the point of playing a grueling 162 game season when in the end all you get for winning the most games in your respective league is the chance to compete with lesser teams to possibly move on. Or to put it another way, isn't it more of an accomplishment to be the best team over a long, grueling season, than to be the best team over a one month season, which is essentially what the playoffs are?

The purists have a point. 

On the other hand, back when post-season baseball meant the World Series and nothing else, until expansion began in 1960, there were only eight teams in each of two leagues, a total of sixteen teams, And those sixteen teams only represented ten different cities as four cities had two teams each and New York City had three. So barring a "subway series" which New York saw a number of in the fifties, only fourteen teams representing eight cites would be left out in the cold come post season time.

Today there are thirty MLB teams. If the old system were still in place, fans of twenty eight teams would have little to root for, especially after July when it becomes painfully obvious to many that their team doesn't stand a chance to be the best of the fifteen teams of its league.  With more chances to qualify for the post season, that pain can be delayed in some cases all the way to September.

As a lifelong Chicago baseball fan, I've been there and done that far too often.

With the current system, instead of there being one pennant race in each League come late August and September, now there are several.

MLB has been tweaking the playoff structure since 1994, trying to strike a balance between keeping the competition interesting and making sure the teams that win championships deserve it.

The current system still has three divisions in each league, as well as three wild card teams, resulting in twelve teams making it into the playoffs. To give the best teams an advantage, the two division champions in each league with the best records get to sit out the first round of playoffs, known as the "Wild Card Series", which are now a best-of-three game series.

An example of how the current playoff system dramatically invigorates the season: this year in the American League, the pairings for two of the three divisions, the East and the Central, had yet to be decided until the final game of the season. In the National League, two teams, the Mets and the Reds fought for the last spot in the Wild Card race on the last day of the regular season. Fittingly perhaps, both those teams lost their final game meaning the Reds got the chance to be swept by the Dodgers (the answer to the question of who won the World Series last year) in their Wild Card Series.

That series may have been a bit of a wash but the other three went the full three game distance. The series I paid closest attention to, the Cubs versus the Padres, wasn't settled until the last out of the ninth inning of the decisive third game. Before that moment, any Cubs fan who is old enough certainly had flashbacks of the dreadful 1984 National League Championship Series when the Cubs took the first two games in the best of five series in Chicago, only to lose the series being swept the next three games by the Padres in San Diego. 

So what went through this old White Sox fan's head when with two outs in the top of the ninth, and the tying and go ahead runs on base, Padre's catcher Freddie Fermin hit a fly ball deep to center field? 

Why of course, hoist the "W" flag and cue the Steve Goodman. "Go Cubs Go!" As a Chicago fan, beggars can't be choosers.

In the American League, Detroit beat their division rival Cleveland, and the Yankees snuck by their own bitter rival the Red Sox, while the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays were waiting in the wings.

Before the wild card came around in baseball, these exciting win-or-go-home series pitting division rivals against each other only occurred in the case of season ending in a tie for first place, a bit of a rarity. Today they happen virtually every year.

The two National League teams that got to sit out the Wild Card series were the Phillies and the team with the best record in the majors this year, the Milwaukee Brewers. They ended up playing their division rivals the Cubs in the best of five National League Divisional Series. Meanwhile the Phillies took on the Dodgers.

In the American League, it was the Tigers vs. the Mariners and the Yankees taking on another division rival, the Blue Jays. Those two teams finished the season with identical records, but the Jays got the nod as division champs as they edged out the Yanks in head to head competition this year. 

That series seemed to be the one with real barn burner potential but Toronto handily beat the Yanks in the first two games in Toronto, 10-1 and 13-7. 

Game three in the Bronx seemed like icing on the cake for the Jays when they took an early 6-1 lead in the third and it looked as if the game and series would be over in a Toronto sweep. But in the bottom of the third, the Yanks put up a two spot. In the next inning an error and a walk put two runners on base for Yankee superstar Aaron Judge who represented the tying run. Off an 0-2 Louis Varland inside fastball, with the crowd chanting MVP, MVP, Judge slammed a massive drive that hit high off the left field foul pole. The Yankees scraped together three more runs in the subsequent innings while holding the Jays scoreless for the rest of the game. The momentum had shifted. 

Meanwhile the Brewers were having their way with the Cubs, having taken the first two games of their series up in Milwaukee. The sudden turn of events thanks to Judge's heroics gave me hope that something similar might happen for the Cubs and they'd be able to turn their series around when they returned to the Friendly Confines. Well, it took no Herculean (or Judgeian?) effort for the hometown team, just good solid baseball, no doubt with the support of their loyal fans most of whom reportedly spent the entire two games in Chicago on their feet. The Cubs ended up sending the series back to Milwaukee for a decisive game five.

As for the Yankees well, as they say in baseball, momentum is everything, until it isn't. (Hey someone must have said that some time). They went down quietly at home in Yankee Stadium in game four, sending Toronto on to the American League Championship.

Toronto's next opponent wouldn't be decided until two days later in a series that went the distance and then some. The Wild Card Tigers stole game one of their ALDS from the Division Champion Mariners in Seattle, but the Mariners came back to win the next two games, one at home, the other in Detroit, setting up a do-or-die game four for the Tigers. By the fifth inning of that game, the Tigers were down 3-0. But the Detroit bats came alive in the bottom of that inning with three runs, four more in the sixth, and one in each of the subsequent innings, while their pitchers held Seattle scoreless. Final score 9-3, which sent the series back to Seattle for a decisive game five.

In that game, the Mariners manufactured a run early in the game off a double, a stolen base and a sac fly. In the top of the sixth, former Cub Javy Baez doubled for the Tigers. With the left-handed hitting Kerry Carpenter due up, Seattle manager Don Wilson chose to "go with the averages" and pull his starter George Kirby who was pitching well, in favor of lefty reliever Gabe Spencer. That move backfired as Carpenter put one in the seats to put Detroit ahead 2-1. The other starter, Tiger ace and Cy Young Award candidate Turk Skubal, was pulled in the seventh after pitching a gem, allowing only one run and two hits while striking out thirteen in six innings. The same fate happened to Detroit as their relievers gave up the tying run that inning. 

But then crickets, the pitchers on both teams held their opponents scoreless, but not without drama, for the next seven and one half innings. That streak came to an end in the bottom of the fifteenth when the Mariners manufactured yet another run with a little help from the Tigers, off a single, a hit by pitch, an error allowing the runners to advance, and an intentional walk which loaded the bases for Seattle second baseman Jorge Polanco. On a 3-2 pitch, Polanco singled to right, driving in the game and series winning run.

Expressing the frustration of Tiger Nation after that tough loss, Dan Dickerson, the voice of Tiger radio, blurted out: 

I don't have to do a game recap, ah fuck. Fuck this game recap!

Dickerson thought he was off the air at the time but...

He apologized the next day for the outburst but I'm sure that wasn't necessary, most of the fans listening to the game could relate.

As the late, great Harry Caray used to always say:

Ah, you can't beat fun at the ol' ballpark!

I mentioned above that the Phillies are the team with the most losses in baseball. A couple things about that, first of all, someone has to have more losses than anybody else and the Phillies have been around longer than just about any other MLB team, so they've had more chances to lose. After being a truly awful team for their first one hundred or so years of existence, in recent memory, they've had several good, even some great teams that have been contenders for the big prize, More often than not however, they've come up short. In 1993, they lost the World Series in the most dramatic fashion possible to something that happens all the time in story books and little children's fantasies, but has only happened once in history. They lost on a come-from-behind walk off championship home run. It came off the bat of Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays, the last time the team from up north made it to the Big Dance. 

This year, the Phillies' dreams of a third World Series Championship (they have even fewer of those than the Cubs), came to an end in the most dreadful fashion, they gave up a walk off, series ending run on an error. It wasn't just an error, but a mistake of judgement to be generous, or to be less generous, a boneheaded play.

The Phillies dropped their first two games to the Dodgers in Philadelphia, but won game three in LA. In do-or-die game four at Dodger Stadium, the game was scoreless until the top of the seventh when Philly Max Kepler scored off a Nick Castellanos double. That run was answered in the bottom of the inning when Dodger Mookie Betts walked with the bases loaded. 

Both teams then went down 1-2-3 every inning until the 11th. The Phillies failed to score leaving a man on base in their half of the inning. In the bottom of the 11th, off a couple of singles and a walk, the Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs when Philly reliever Orion Kerkering faced LA outfielder Andy Pages. On an 0-1 pitch, Pages hit a sharp comebacker to Kerkering's left. It was a tough play but Kerkering managed to field the ball. Despite his catcher pointing  for him to throw to first base, the pitcher came home with the ball but threw it wide of the plate.

Run scores, game and series over.

Now if you're familiar with the rules of baseball, the problem with this scenario should be obvious. Had Kerkerling done what his catcher asked him to do, that is throw to first base, assuming he made a clean throw and the first baseman cleanly fielded it before the runner reached the base (which video replay confirms he had plenty of time to do), the Phillies would have been out of the inning as with two outs, a runner safely crossing home plate is not awarded a run if there is a force out on that play at any base, regardless of the timing of the two events. 

Kerkerling was devastated after the play and any reasonable human being has to have tremendous empathy for him as he will likely, at least in Philadelphia, join the ranks of players like Fred Merkel, Fred Snodgrass and of course Bill Buckner to name a few, who went to their graves remembered for an unfortunate mistake in a pivotal game rather than for their otherwise successful careers.

On the other hand, the biggest bonehead play in baseball history took place at Yankee Stadium on October 10, 1926.. It was in the bottom of the ninth of game seven of the World Series with the Yankees trailing the Cardinals, 3-2.  With two outs in the inning, Babe Ruth walked bringing his teammate Bob Meusel up to the plate. On the first pitch to Meusel, Ruth attempted to steal second base.

When asked after the game why he tried to steal second in that situation, Ruth, known as the Sultan of Swat, not the Sultan of Swift said: "because I thought they wouldn't expect me to do it."

He was right, they didn't, but they threw him out anyway.

Well it just so happened that the following year was 1927, and to anyone with any sense of baseball history, the words "1927 Yankees" have a certain magic to them, as that perhaps was the greatest Major League Baseball team to ever take the field, and Babe Ruth was certainly at the center of that magic. 

So all was forgiven.

One can only wish, unlikely as it may be, that the same fate awaits Orion Kerkering.

On to the Championship Series.

Oh wait you say, what ever happened with the Cubs and the Brewers? Well let's just say the Wrigley magic didn't transfer to Milwaukee and the stadium formerly known as Miller Park. As in games one and two, the Cubs bats came up strong early, but not often, and the Brewers won game five, moving on to face the Dodgers.

Unfortunately for the Brewers.

Maybe it was sheer comeuppance for the Brewers' players' truly bush-league move of taunting their just vanquished opponents by posing with a Wrigley Field style  "L"(for loser)  flag in their on field portrait after the game. More likely it was that they were outmatched by a far better team. I like to think it was a little of both, but in any case, the Dodgers trashed the Brewers in the NLCS, sweeping the series in four games.

That's not to say the series wasn't interesting. In the fourth inning of game one, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. Max Muncy hit a deep drive to center field. Brewer center fielder Sal Frelick tracked the ball down and at the wall made a spectacular leap, snagging the ball as it was about to go over the fence, preventing a grand slam. But the ball popped out of his glove and hit the wall. Frelick was somehow able to grab the ball before it touched the ground. He then made a perfect throw to Brewer short stop Joey Ortiz who in turn made a perfect relay throw to catcher William Contreras which beat the runner, Dodger Teoscar Hernández by a whisker. 

That was the second out of the inning.

Then Contraras, who apparently was the only player on the field who understood what really happened on the play, calmly jogged over to third base with the ball and touched the bag, while Will Smith, the lead LA baserunner was standing on second and Freddie Freeman and Muncy who was robbed of the grand slam were on first. 

Three outs.

So what happened?

Well I have to plead ignorance of a certain baseball rule as at the time I didn't realize that a ball hitting the wall is considered the same as a ball hitting the ground. In other words, catching a ball after it hits the wall, something that doesn't happen all that often, is not recorded as an out and has to be played just as if it hit the ground before being fielded. My son, a former umpire, had to teach me this. Regardless, Frelick did the right thing and hit his cutoff man as quickly as possible. 

But the play happened so quickly that even Frelick didn't realize the ball hit the wall, he assumed he had made a put out for the second out of the inning. Unfortunately for them, so did the baserunners who stayed on base, assuming a catch had been made. Hernández, the runner at third, confused as his teammates, hesitated tagging up before heading for home. That unnecessary action of tagging up, especially the hesitation, made the difference between his being safe and out at the plate.

To sum it all up, as a catch had not been made, the runners needed to advance as the bases were loaded and there was no place to put the batter Max Muncy who was not out, and headed for first.

So Contreras stepping on third forced out Will Smith, who by that time should have been standing on third.

Got all that?

I wasn't watching the game live but hear that the review of the play took quite some time as there were so many parts to it. The most amazing thing to me is that the replays proved without question that the the umpires involved, namely the outfield umpire who immediately called no catch on the part of Frelick, and the home plate umpire who called the baserunner out at the plate without a tag (as it was a force play), both nailed their calls on the field.

Believe it or not, that wasn't the craziest baserunning faux pas in Dodger lore. When the team was still in Brooklyn, there was a famous play (in a relatively insignificant game) where three Dodger baserunners all found themselves standing on third base. 

You can read about it here. 

This led to a running joke where a cab driver pulls up to Ebbets Field during a game and asks an usher how the Dodgers are doing. "They have three runners on base!" says the usher. To which the driver responds: "Which base?" 

Baseball humor.

That great heads up fielding play was far and away the highlight of the series for the Brewers, they simply had no answer for the Dodgers' pitching. The Brewers scored only one run in each of the four games and had a team batting average of .118 in the series, which turns out to be the lowest team average ever in a post season series of more than one game. That Dodger pitching staff includes the most dominant player in baseball today, and perhaps when all is said and done, all time, Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani you see, just like a certain Yankee from 100 years ago (whom I've brought up ad nauseam in this post), in addition to being a lights out pitcher, can also hit with the best of them. In game four of the National League Championship Series with the Dodgers up three games to none on the Brewers, the first inning alone was the stuff of legend. In the top of that inning, Ohtani struck out the top of the Milwaukee order. Then, thanks to a new rule made up solely for him, as designated hitter for himself, Ohtani, the leadoff hitter in the Dodger lineup, hit a massive home run to right center field, estimated to have traveled 446 feet.

Of course he wasn't done, He ended up pitching six scoreless innings giving up only two hits. And he hit two more home runs, the second, more than twenty feet longer than the first.

They say it was the single greatest performance in a post season game. 

I'm not going to argue with that. 

But as my friend Steve pointed out, what about Don Larsen's World Series 1956 perfect game against the Dodgers? After all, how can you beat perfection?

Well I suppose it's something that will be argued for as long as people are arguing about baseball. My take is this, a perfect game is a little bit of a freak of nature, in order for one to take place, the stars have to all be aligned just right. Yes perfect games require a tremendous pitching performance, that much is certain. But they also require, unless the pitcher strikes out everybody, the contribution of all the teammates in the field to make clean plays. And yes, perfect games also require a certain amount of luck, especially involving balls that have to be hit to players giving them the chance to make plays on them. One bloop single and there goes the perfect game.

There was no luck in Ohtani's performance that night, it was sheer dominance by one player.

.

And like that Yankee of old who defined the era in which he played, barring catastrophic injury, we may be living now in what one day will be defined as "The Ohtani Era."

Yes baseball fans, he's that good.

That brings us to what was perhaps the most exciting series this year (out of many) played up to this point, the American League Championship Series between the Mariners and the Blue Jays, the two highest seeded teams in the American League, and two teams that came into existence in the same year, 1977. 

It wasn't looking very promising at the start, The Blue Jays, the odds on favorite to win the series, dropped the first two games at home to the Mariners. They'd have to win two games in Seattle in order to bring the series back to Toronto, no small task.

Now the Mariners are the poster child for the opinion that the team with the best record over the regular season deserves to be in the World Series. In the 2001 season the Mariners posted a record of 116-46. No team since, wait for it, the 1906 Chicago Cubs had won as many games in one season. But that year the Mariners lost in the ALCS to the Yankees who won twenty one fewer games in the regular season. I suspect part of the reason why hardly anyone makes much of a case about it, is the fact that that series was played barely one month after the September 11th attacks and understandably hardly anyone cared about baseball that year, and those who did, like me, were rooting for the Yankees.

Had the Mariners won that series, it would have resulted in their first trip to the Fall Classic. They haven't made it since, making them the only team in the Majors who have never made an appearance in a World Series. 

Perhaps this was to be their year.

But The Blue Jays did exactly what they had to do in Seattle, winning games three and four in the Pacific Northwest, making sure that the series, win or lose would finish in Canada.  

Seattle did salvage their homestand by taking game five 6-2, giving them a 3-2 advantage in the series. 

Back at the Rogers Center in downtown Toronto, the Blue Jays took game six by the same score, 6-2, setting up yet again, a decisive game seven (the sweetest words to any sports fan), as I mentioned above, played last Monday night.

George Kirby would start his second decisive game of a series for the Mariners, this time facing Shane Bieber for the Blue Jays. Both teams scored one run in the first. Kirby settled down after that, allowing no runs and two hits in the next three innings while Bieber gave up another run in the second. Then after giving up a double and a walk in the fourth, Bieber was relieved by Louis Varland who got the Jays out of the inning. But the first batter he faced in the fifth, Cal Raleigh hit a solo home run to right, putting the Mariners up 3-1.

Another Mariner starter, Brian Woo came in for Kirby in the bottom of the fifth and he pitched two solid, scoreless innings.

Going into the bottom of the seventh, things were looking pretty good for the Mariners to make their first trip to the Big Dance. On the Baseball Reference win probability chart for that game, they were well into the eighty percent range at that point. Still in the game, Brian Woo walked Addison Berger to lead off the seventh. Then he gave up a single to Isiah Kiner-Falifa. Next up was Andrés Giménez who did something we haven't seen much of in recent years, he sacrifice-bunted to advance the runners to second and third. Next up was George Springer who was still smarting after being hit in the knee by a Brian Woo pitch in gave five. But he wouldn't face Woo in this at bat as the Mariners brought in Edward Bazardo to face him. 

And now a word from our sponsor...

You know folks, if you've been reading my baseball posts over the years, you've seen this quote countless times. There's no shame in that for me as these words more than any describe the game I love so much. So once again, here they are: 

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. -The first paragraph of  "The Green Field of the Mind"  a story by A. Bartlett Giamatti

It all stopped for the Seattle Mariners and their fans when eight outs away from their first World Series, on a 1-0 two seam fastball that Edward Bazardo left over the plate, George Springer parked the ball into the left field stands. To the joy of the 44,770 fans in the ballpark who saw it happen in person, to the all the Blue Jays fans living in the city the team represents, and to the fans of the team all over the country the Blue Jays represent, that was a moment they will never forget. 

The Seattle fans will never forget it either. I know, I've experienced those chill rains quite a number of times in my life as well, and have not forgotten. 

Springer's was a home run for the ages, an instant classic immediately compared to Joe Carter's blast over thirty years ago. And because he did while hurt and considered unlikely to play,, it was also compared to Kirk Gibson's iconic come-from-behind walk off home run for the Dodgers in game one of the 1988 World Series.

So now the World Series is set, the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers will be heavy favorites to win, mostly because this team has plenty of playoff experience. Strangely enough, the Blue Jays finished in last place in their division last year. 

But they've shown great resilience as we've seen in the playoffs as well as in the regular season. Let by their superstar Vladmir Guerrero Jr. they posted an impressive 20 home runs this post season. 

But the Dodgers bats aren't too shabby either and they definitively have the edge when it comes to starting pitching. Their relief pitching is perhaps another story. As my resident baseball expert, my son tells me, if the Blue Jays can get the Dodgers starters to throw a lot of pitches and force them out of the game, perhaps they have a chance. 

We'll see. 

As far as picking a team to root for well, that's a little complicated for me. As a great lover of baseball history, I'd say there is no team with a more interesting history than the Dodgers. And like the city they represent, there's a lot to love about them, they are the team after all who integrated baseball. Unfortunately, also like the city they represent, there's also a lot to not love. It's complicated.

Toronto on the other hand is a city I love unconditionally and as I usually pick teams to root for more for the city they represent, than for the team itself, it would be a no brainer for me to root for the Blue Jays. 

On the other hand, the city of Los Angeles suffered a series of devastating fires this year so as I did in 2001, maybe I'll route for the team out of solidarity for the city and its people. 

On the other hand, the Blue Jays not only represent a city, but an entire country, a proud nation whose status has been relegated by the current president as nothing more than our 51st state. I'd love to see them win just to be able to say to Canada that we Americans proudly stand with and by you.

Anyway, two things are certain, I'm going to root for the series to go the distance and baseball gods willing, then some.

And I'm definitely going to root for the team wearing blue.

It's been a great ride so far.

* Two Major League players were killed in action during World War II, and another died of illness while serving the country. The number of Minor League, semi-pro, college and amateur players who lost their lives in service is well into the hundreds. Needless to say, scores of Japanese players also died in service to their country. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but here is a link to a list with their names. 

EPILOGUE - THE WORLD SERIES

Well I got my wish, seven games and then some. Experience led me to suspect that because the post season up until the World Series this year was so amazing, the championship series would be a bit of a let down. 

On the other hand, I felt the Blue Jays, the underdog in this series, would be tempered by fire with all the struggles in the post season they overcame, like coming back strong in the ALDS after Aaron Judge's momentum-shifting blast in game three of that series, and especially after losing the first two games of of the ALCS at home to Seattle.

By contrast, the reigning champion Dodgers had a relatively easy stroll through the playoffs, with only one of three teams, the Phillies, managing to beat them in one game.

It turned out the Blue Jays' biggest greatest recovery of all happened in game four of the World Series in Los Angeles when they came back strong, taking that game, mere hours after a devastating loss to the Dodgers in the eighteenth inning of game three on a Freddie Freeman walk off home run. 

Then the team from Canada (as my mother calls them) won game five at Dodgers Stadium, meaning they only had to win one of two games back home in Toronto to win their first MLB championship since 1993.

Come to think of it, thriving on adversity as they seemed to do all post season, maybe that one game lead and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was the Blue Jays' downfall.

I did have a bit of clairvoyance Friday while trying to encourage a work colleague, a Dodger fan from LA, who was dejected that her team was on the verge of losing. I told her that Yoshinobo Yamamoto was pitching for her team that night meaning there was a good chance the Dodgers would win (game six). And in a game seven, anything can happen.

Well it turned out I was right on both counts. Yamamoto, who in his previous two starts pitched complete games, (virtually unheard of these days),  pitched another gem Friday night. I was a little surprised when Dodger manager Dave Roberts relieved him in the seventh as throughout much of the Series, the Dodger bullpen struggled. Things looked bad for LA in the bottom of the ninth when up by two runs, reliever Roki Sasaki hit Toronto catcher Alejandro Kirk with a pitch, The next batter Addison Barger hit a deep drive to the wall. There might have been a little divine intervention on that play as the ball hit the base of the wall on a fly and jammed itself between the wall and the ground. Chances of that happening are mighty slim indeed. 

Dodger leftfielder Kike Hernandez, who was not involved in the play, threw his hands up in the air signaling to the umpires to rule the ball dead and declare a ground rule double, which they did. This meant that the baserunner Myles Straw who pinch ran for Kirk, and who would have easily scored on the play, had to return to third base. It was a judgement call on the part of the umpires (as the ball never left the field) which drew scorn from some baseball pundits and fans, but it was the right call. 

This left a situation with the tying runs on second and third with nobody out and the championship winning run at the plate, the situation that Joe Carter faced 22 years ago when he hit his come-from-behind championship winning walk off home run in the same ballpark. 

Would history repeat itself?

In came Dodger starter Tyler Glasnow in relief of Sasaki to probably face the biggest challenge of his career. The first batter he faced was Ernie Clement who swung at the first pitch and popped up harmlessly to first baseman Freddie Freeman. 

One out.

Next up was Andres Gimenez who took the first pitch he saw for a ball. On the second pitch he hit a shallow line drive to left field which looked like it might drop in for a base hit. But Kike Hernandez on a hunch, played Gimenez shallower than is normally called for in that situation. On contact, Hernandez sprinted in at top speed. After the game he recalled losing sight of the ball in the lights but just kept running in until the ball somehow found its way into his glove.

Two outs. 

Shortstop Mookie Betts (as he recalled after the game), then yelled at Hernandez to throw to second as the runner at second, Barger, thinking the ball would drop in for a base hit, found himself in no-man's-land between second and third. By this time Hernandez was practically in the infield and it didn't take much of a throw to second baseman Miguel Rojas to double up the hapless Barger.

Three outs. Game over. It took Glasnow just three pitches to pitch himself out of a jam of massive proportions.

There would be no Joe Carter moment that night.

Which meant the sweetest two words in all of sports, game seven.

If that weren't enough, the matchup of the two starting pitchers for the decisive game of the World Series would be a fan's dream come true. The Dodgers would face future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, who at 41 was not only the oldest pitcher to start a World Series game, but is also the only pitcher who has played in a World Series for four separate teams. 

The Blue Jays would face Shohei Ohtani. 

'Nuff said. 

Ohtani solidified his legend in that eighteen-inning game where he reached base nine times! Yes, five of those at bats he was intentionally walked but for good reason; in his first four at bats, he hit two home runs and two doubles.

As if that were not enough, he was scheduled to pitch Game four seventeen hours after the last out of that marathon game.

Game four was not Ohtani's night on the mound, he was charged with four runs, (two of which scored after he left the game), and six hits in six innings, and was hit for the loss. And at the plate, he was 0-3 with a base on balls.

He is human after all.

Ohtani wasn't sharp pitching game seven either. He gave up a three-run blast off of the bat of Bo Bichette in the bottom of the third and didn't he last that inning.

The Dodgers put up a run in the following inning and another in the sixth, narrowing the Jay's lead to one run.

The score was 4-2  in the seventh when the Jays brought in their rookie starter Trey Yesevage who was brilliant in winning game five.  In game seven he unintentionally-intentionally waked Ohtani, then retired the side on a deep fly ball and a double play.

Still in the game in the eighth, Yesevage gave up a mammoth home run to Dodger third baseman Max Muncy, to bring the game within one run for LA. Jeff Hoffmann relieved Yesevage to get out of the inning. Then in the top of the ninth, Hoffmann came in to finish off the Dodgers.  He got Kike Hernandez to strike out swinging. Next up was the last hitter in the lineup, utility infielder Miguel Rojas, who played in only five of the World Series games for the Dodgers, two times coming in as a pinch hitter. 

Off a 3-2 Hoffmann slider, and a good one at that, Rojas quieted the hometown crowd with a game tying home run that I'm sure that was heard all across Canada, whose favorite team before that moment, was only two outs from the championship. 

In the bottom of the ninth which Jays' fans hoped would never have to be, another Dodger starter working in the role of reliever, Blake Snell, gave up a single and a walk. Snell then was replaced by none other than Yoshinobo Yamamoto, the winner of game six. It didn't start out too well for him this time as he hit the first batter he faced, Alejandro Kirk, who you may remember got beaned in another make or break situation the night before. That loaded the bases, with the championship run ninety feet away at third.

But Rojas came up big again, fielding a ball off the bat of Daulton Varsho then firing home to nail the would be championship run by a whisker. That play was close enough for a challenge that showed Dodger catcher Will Smith had slightly lifted his heel off home plate for a brief second as Isiah Kiner-Fahlefa slid into home. Had that play been reversed, (it wasn't), it would have marked the first World Series to end on the reversal of an umpire's call, a walk off reversal if you will.

The baseball gods would truly have been displeased. 

In the top of the 11th, Dodger catcher Will Smith hit a home run off of Shane Bieber, giving them the lead for the first time in the game. 

Then in the bottom of the inning, Vladimir Guererro doubled deep to left field, and was sacrifice-bunted over to third. Yamamoto who was still in the game waked Addison Berger on four pitches, leaving runners at the corners. If that indeed was an intentional/unintentional walk, it was perhaps the most brilliant strategic move of the entire series as the next batter, Alejandro Kirk, grounded into a broken bat, 6-3 double play.

Game, set, and match. for a second consecutive Dodgers World Series Championship.

And with that, the chill rains of fall have come for the Toronto Blue Jays and their fans, who were two outs away from winning the World Series. That's the closest a team has gotten to the Promised Land without entering. a record no one wants to break. 

Despite that, the team and their fans can hold their heads high, I know, I know, easy enough for me to say.

But the team who finished last in their division last year, took the defending champs the distance and then some. As baseball is really a game of millimeters not inches, had just one or two plays gone slightly different, the result may have been reversed.

Most of the people I know rooted for the Blue Jays, for the most part because of their disdain of the Dodgers. There are lots of reasons for that but mainly it's because their team payroll is higher than the GDP of many countries. With that they say, it's impossible for other teams to compete with them. 

Maybe that's true. The Blue Jays are actually up there too, with I believe the fifth highest payroll in MLB. And last year's runner up were the Yankees, what more need I say?

On the other hand, the Dodgers were the first team to repeat as World Series Champions since the Yankees did it in 1999 and 2000. And the team who did it before them? 

Why the Blue Jays of course, in 1992 and '93. 

And the last time a National League team did it was the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-seventies. In between, lots of teams who were not in the top tier of payroll somehow managed to win the World Series.   

So I don't necessarily see the payroll discrepancy to be much of a problem in the game. 

The most satisfying part of the Dodgers' victory was that of all the big stars on that team who make more money than God, the player who was involved in all three of the pivotal plays that won the World Series for LA was their utility infielder Miguel Rojas. He made the final put out in game six, threw out the potential championship run in ninth inning of game seven, and of course hit the tying home run which broke the hearts of all of Canada.

The other most satisfying part is that in the end, there is absolutely no question that the two best teams in baseball this year played each other in the World Series and that in fact, the best team won.

Baseball is a strange game and that's probably why I love it so much. 

For me, with nothing personally invested in either team, the chill rains of the end of baseball for the year will be quite tolerable. Watching, listening to and reading about this year's post season was like eating a magnificent meal and being completely satisfied, leaving no room for dessert. Or like reading a novel that you can't put down which at the end leaves you moved and inspired but also drained. The best of these experiences don't come along every day, or even every year. Sometimes they are once in a generation or even once in a lifetime experiences. 

Which is why we remember them. 

This year's MLB post season, no matter if your team won or more likely lost, will be one for the ages. 

The baseball gods are indeed pleased.