OVERVIEW: MINNESOTA TWINS

In case you were wondering, yes this blog has been hijacked by some guy who thought about filling the void of a spring and summer without baseball, by posting stories about baseball. I'll be back posting the drivel that that normally appears in this space, when and if baseball ever returns. In the meantime, here's a story written several years ago for another site, about the franchise that currently plays up in the great state of Minnesota:

The Minnesota Twins franchise, one of the eight charter member teams of the American League, began its life in the Major Leagues as the Washington Senators. In 1909, the great baseball writer Charles Dreyden coined the phrase that would follow the team through its time in the nation's capital and by extension, the expansion team (today's Texas Rangers) that replaced it:

Washington: first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.

The original Senators were so famous for their losing ways, they even made a Broadway musical about them. Damn Yankees is a modern day Faust story about a Senators fan who sells his soul in exchange for a chance to help his beloved team win the pennant against the eponymous Bronx Bombers.

But it wasn't all gloom and doom for the Senators; unlike the St. Louis Browns, (today's Baltimore Orioles) who were truly an atrocious team for practically all fifty years of their existence in The Gateway City. In that same period of time the Senators boasted three American League pennants and one World Series title, all during the twenties and early thirties, competing directly against those Damned Yankees who themselves were fielding some of the most storied teams in the history of the game.

In 1907, the best player the organization has ever put on the field joined the team. He was a 6'1" pitcher from Humboldt, KS by way of Fullerton, CA, with an easy looking side-arm delivery which belied the incredible speed of his fastball, the likes of which no one had seen before, and few have since. His name was Walter Johnson. Baseball writer and statistician Bill James among others, rates Johnson, with some reservations, as the greatest pitcher in the history of the game.

Through thick and thin, Johnson, aka ”The Big Train,” spent his entire playing career, all 21 years of it, with the Senators. He pitched just shy of 6,000 innings, finishing his career with an astonishing 2.17 ERA and a winning percentage of .599 which given that he played half of his career pitching for losing teams, is saying something. In 1914, Johnson accounted for 40 percent of the victories for his team, 36.

Another name indelibly linked to the organization is Griffith. Clark Griffith, a former major league pitcher and player/manager with the Reds and the Highlanders (Yankees), was hired as manager of the Senators in 1912, buying a percentage of the team in the process. That year, Griffith took a team that never had anything close to a winning record, to a second place finish and a 91-61 record, virtually inverting their previous year’s record. It would take twelve more years of ups and downs, but the Senators finally won their first pennant in 1924, as well as their only World Series title when they beat John McGraw’s New York Giants in seven games. The Big Train, who lost his first two starts in that Series, won game seven coming in as a reliever, pitching four scoreless innings despite giving up that triple shown in the video below to Giant second baseman Frankie Frisch in the top of the ninth. The President and First Lady Grace Coolidge, herself a huge baseball fan, were at the game:



By that time Griffith owned controlling interest of the team, and he would remain in charge for the rest of his life.

Upon Clark Griffith’s death in 1955, ownership transferred to his nephew (and adopted son), Calvin Griffith. Like his adopted father, the young Griffith, also a former ballplayer, was a baseball man through and through, known for his remarkable scouting talent. Unfortunately the younger Griffith was less skilled at PR; he was a king of the malaprop, and a life-long sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease. After the glory days of Walter Johnson and the team’s success in the twenties and thirties, the team languished, seldom making it out of the second division of the American League. Attendance in the fifties at Griffith Stadium was also abysmal and as several major league teams opted to leave their cities in search of greener pastures, Washingtonians feared the same fate would befall their Senators. Not to fear Calvin told them. In 1958 Griffin wrote:

I have lived in Washington, D.C. for about 35 years. I attended school here and established many roots here. The city has been good to my family and me. This is my home. I intend that it shall remain my home for the rest of my life. As long as I have any say in the matter, and I expect that I shall for a long, long time, the Washington Senators will stay here, too. Next year. The year after. Forever.

Two years later, he moved the team to Minnesota.

As a cash-strapped organization for most of its existence, the Senators/Twins organization did have a strong farm system which was starting to produce promising talent in the their waning years in Washington. Harmon Killibrew came to the attention of Clark Griffith in 1954 on a tip from then Idaho senator, Herman Welker. The 17 year old slugger was hitting .847 in semi-pro ball in his home state, and the Senators scooped up the youngster, beating out other interested parties by signing him as a Bonus Baby. Other excellent young players developed in the Senator’s farm system who made the trip to Minneapolis were pitchers Camilo Pasqual, Jim Kaat, shortstop Zoilo Versalles, and outfielder Bob Allison.

Like the St. Louis Browns before them who moved to Baltimore, the change of scenery did good for the former Senators, now the Minnesota Twins. With a nucleus of solid players, in their 1962 sophomore season in Minnesota, the Twins won 92 games, their best record since 1933. It was that year the organization signed yet another young prospect who would become a star, a right fielder from Cuba by the name of Tony Oliva. Oliva would join the the big club in 1964. The following year, the Twins came out on top of a tight three way pennant race, winning their first pennant in Minnesota, the organization’s first since 1933. In a classic World Series, it took a brilliant game seven shutout performance by LA Dodger great Sandy Koufax to defeat the Twins.

Although the Twins would remain competitive for a number of years, they failed to win another pennant under the ownership of Calvin Griffith. Despite some brilliant moves including the discovery and signing of a young Rod Carew, Griffith found it difficult to compete in the new age of baseball free agency.

Cut out of the same cloth as his adopted father as well as other long-gone baseball owners such as Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack, Griffith was the last major league baseball owner who depended entirely on the game for his income. Likewise, his methods of running the team were based more on the 1920s model. For example, he refused to spend money that he didn't have. Perhaps in his opinion his greatest accomplishment, something he always took pains to point out, was the fact that his Twins never owed anybody a cent. His tight-fisted running of the team, (“He throws around nickels like they were man hole covers” was one of the cleaner descriptions of him), was blasted by fans who longed for a winner and couldn't understand why the their team could not compete against teams with owners with deeper pockets such as the Yankees.

Griffith’s mouth certainly didn't help matters. In 1978 before a gathering of the Lions Club of Waseca, MN, Griffith was quoted as saying this about the team’s move to Minnesota:

It was when I found out you only had 15,000 black people here. Black people don't go to ball games, but they’ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it'll scare you to death. It's unbelievable. We came here because you've got good, hardworking white people here.

For his part, Griffith claimed he made those remarks while trying to get a chuckle out of the crowd after a few drinks. He'd spend the rest of his life apologizing for them, but it didn’t matter, from that point on in the eyes of Minnesotans, Griffith was not only a cheapskate, but a racist too, a combination that didn’t fly in progressive Minneapolis.

Other than the inane remark, the exact contents of which are questionable, there isn’t much evidence that Calvin Griffith was an honest to goodness bigot. He was simply an out of touch man who refused to change along with the changing world around him. In 1976 when his pitcher Bill Campbell became a free agent, Griffith offered him what he considered a generous $8,000 raise to his $30,000 contract.

Campbell turned Griffith down, choosing to accept a $1,000,000 contract form the Red Sox instead.

The Griffith family sold the Twins in 1984 to Carl Pohlad, a wealthy local banker for $32 million.

Turns out, Pohlad got the team for a song.

In 1987 and again in 1991, the Twins went to the World Series, this time winning the championship both times. The seven game ’91 Series against the Atlanta Braves is considered by many to be one of the greatest Fall Classics of all time. Star players from those teams included pitcher Frank Viola, first baseman Kent Hrbek, and center fielder (and Chicago native) Kirby Puckett, all of whom were products of Calvin Griffith’s eye for talent, and his beloved farm system.

The Twins haven’t been to the Big Dance since.

The Art of Fiction is Dead...

October 15, Dodger Stadium- Consider Ernest Thayer's poem Casey at the Bat. Imagine at the end of the tale where “the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow”, the protagonist had made contact with the ball instead and sent it flying out of the park, winning the game much to the delight of the bedraggled fans of the Mudville Nine. Would we still be reading the story well over one hundred years after its creation?

I seriously doubt it. It probably would have been tossed into the trash along with the copies of the San Francisco Daily Examiner where it was first published in 1888. Great hope springing eternal only to be smashed to pieces in the end by bitter disappointment is the typical lot of the baseball fan, and if the story had a happy ending, no one would have taken it seriously.

That's why if what took place on that night of October 15, 1988 in Chavez Ravine had been a work of fiction, it would have been dismissed as drivel, a predictable tale of feel good nonsense, the stuff of dime store novels or second rate children's literature.

But the story is true, that much I can testify having seen it unfold before my eyes that Saturday night nearly thirty two years ago.

The Oakland A's were far and away the best team in baseball that year. They won 104 games, and steamrolled through the American League Championship Series against the Red Sox. They were a complete team, featuring good defense, the big bats of Dave Henderson, Don Baylor, Mark McGwire and Jose Conseco, excellent starting pitchers Dave Stewart, and Bob Welsh, an untouchable 45 save closer, Dennis Eckersley, and were led by one of the best minds in baseball, Tony LaRussa.

The Dodgers by contrast were overachievers that year. A team built around pitching and speed, they scored 160 fewer runs then the A's in 1988. The highlight of their season was the overall performance of Cy Young Award winning starter Orel Hershiser (23-8, 2.26 ERA) who at one point in the season, pitched 59 consecutive scoreless innings. Their one offensive threat was Kirk Gibson whose impressive batting stats were enhanced by the fact that most of his hits seemed to come in the clutch. His performance that year earned him the National League MVP award.

Unfortunately, the aging Gibson was hurt. In seventh and deciding game of the National League Championship Series, where Hershiser shut out the Mets, Gibson who was already suffering from a pulled hamstring, sprained ligaments in his knee. His status was doubtful for the World Series. He wasn't even introduced to the home town crowd before Game One of the Series, Most folks felt they should just give the trophy to the A's.

It didn't seem any better after Jose Conseco hit a grand slam off LA starter Tim Belcher in the second inning of Game One. The Dodgers did manage to score three runs off Dave Stewart and their pitching kept the powerful A's at bay into the ninth.

But the Dodgers could only look forward to facing the most dominant closer of the year in the bottom of the ninth. In addition to his 45 saves, Dennis Eckersley had a phenomenal 70/11 strikeout to walk ration in 72 innings pitched. Meanwhile, Kirk Gibson sat in the Dodger clubhouse watching the game on TV. He listened as play by play man Vin Scully said: “Kirk Gibson, spearhead of the Dodger offense, will not see any action tonight for sure.” As if on cue, Gibson got up and started hitting baseballs off a tee. He told the batboy to go and tell his manager, Tommy Lasorda that he'd be ready in case he needed him.

Out on the field, Eckersley did what he always did that year, got batters out. There would be no point in bringing Gibson into the game unless there was a chance to win it, he'd only be good for one at bat and in his condition, he might not even survive that. Gibson sent the message to Lasorda that he would only come up to bat if somebody got on base, and now with two outs, that looked very unlikely. The Dodgers' last hopes rested with outfielder Mike Davis who Lasrorda put in to pinch hit for shortstop Alfredo Griffin. At bat, Davis started playing mind games with Eckersley; after every pitch he'd step out of the batter's box and take a few practice swings. Given the pitcher's impeccable control, this seemed pointless, but it began to pay off. Davis' antics threw the reliever's timing off and Eckersley got behind in the count. Before you knew it, Davis was on first base, the beneficiary of only the 12th Eckersley walk of the season. The crowd began to rumble. Lasorda pulled Dave Anderson from the on deck circle without someone to replace him. There was an awkward moment with no one ready to bat for the Dodgers. “You've gotta have a batter Tommy” said the home plate umpire. There was no batter visible because Kurt Gibson was in the tunnel limping from the clubhouse to the dugout. When he finally emerged and hobbled to home plate, the home town crowd went wild.

Despite the heroics, Gibson looked terrible. He quickly fell behind the count 0-2; Eck knew Gibson's condition and figured he'd just blow fastballs by the ailing slugger who'd never be able to catch up to them. He was right.

Now 0-2 is a pitcher's count and Eck thought he'd waste a pitch, placing the ball just outside the strike zone hoping that Gibson might chase a pitch that he couldn't possibly hit in his condition. Gibson did bite, he hit a squibber down the first base line. He hobbled toward first as fast as his ailing legs could carry him. Fortunately the ball eventually rolled foul. With new life, Gibson took the next pitch which was exactly in the same place. The ump called ball one. After that, Gibson managed to work the count to 3-2. Like Mike Davis before him, Gibson called time and stepped out of the batter's box. When he took his place back in the box,, He put all his weight on the front leg, the opposite of what every batter is taught. He was looking for the backdoor slider which cuts into the plate from the outside on a left handed hitter. Eck's 3-2 pitch was just what Gibson expected, a slider in at the knees.




It was the perfect pitch, for Gibson. He had no legs but plenty of upper body left which he put to good use. His swing was all hips and arms, actually one arm as his trailing left hand let go of the bat midway through the swing. It was the ugliest swing imaginable but it got the job done. The ball cleared the right field fence and on TV, Vin Scully let the crowd reaction do the talking as Gibson gingerly circled the bases while pumping his fists. When Gibson finally touched home after what seemed an eternity, the first words out of the Hall of Fame Broadcaster's mouth were: “In a year that has been so improbable the impossible has happened.”

It would be Kurt Gibson's last at bat that World Series. What makes our story even more improbable is that without him, the Dodgers went on to beat the A's four games to one.

Writing a generation earlier about the same team but in a different city and an entirely different outcome for them, the baseball writer Red Smith wrote this:

The art of fiction is dead, reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressively fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

In other words, you just can't make this stuff up. But our story doesn't have an entirely happy ending. You see, I was rooting for the A's.

There Used to Be Two Ballparks Here

Aerial photograph of Shibe Park, bottom and Baker Bowl, upper right,
Philadelphia, September, 1929.
Photograph by George D. McDowell

I love this photograph. It shows not one, but two Major League ballparks at the time concurrently in use in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Swampoodle. For some reason I don't think they call it that any more. Anyway, it may be surprising, but this isn't the only such photograph,

Yankee Stadium was built in the Bronx, just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds, home of the Giants and later the Mets. Those two parks co-existed less than a half mile apart as the crow flies, until Shea Stadium was built in 1964, replacing the venerable old Manhattan ballpark.

In St. Louis, on the corner of Grand and Dodier which has seen baseball played continuously for longer than any spot on the planet, stood the ancestral home of the St. Louis Cardinals known as Sportsman's Park. That original park became run-down and in 1893, the team built a new facility Robinson Park,  a few blocks away. Then in 1902, the Milwaukee Brewers, one of the charter members of the then fledgling American League, moved to St. Louis and took over the Cardinal's original name, the Browns, and their former ballpark. The two St. Louis teams played in ballparks a couple blocks away from each other for twenty years until the Cardinals moved back to Sportsman's Park which was re-built in 1909 as a permanent steel and concrete structure as was the new trend at the time. 

That trend began in Philadelphia.

Shibe Park, also built in 1909, would become the home of the American League Philadelphia Athletics. It  usually gets credit for being the first Major League ballpark to have been built of steel, brick and concrete. But actually its neighbor five blocks to the east, National League Park, later more famously known as Baker Bowl, the one time home of the Phillies, is the true holder of that distinction.

Baker Bowl was built in 1895 on the same spot as its predecessor which was destroyed by fire. That was the ultimate fate of most ballparks to date as their wooden grandstands would ignite at the slightest provocation, often resulting in catastrophe. An 1894 fire that began during a game at the South End Grounds in Boston, probably originating from a carelessly discarded cigar, not only destroyed what was perhaps the most ornate ballpark ever built, but twelve acres of the residential neighborhood surrounding it!

Baker Bowl not only has the distinction of being the first "fireproof" ballpark to take advantage of new construction techniques and materials, it also was the first to feature a cantilevered upper deck grandstand.

Despite its technical innovations, Baker Bowl was one of the most idiosyncratic ballparks in the big leagues. The playing field was never level, due to a railway tunnel which ran underneath. The acute rectangular site the park was built upon resulted in odd dimensions. The foul lines ran nearly parallel to the stands resulting in enormous foul territories. That boon to pitchers was mitigated by the tight right field which measured only 280 feet from home plate. To prevent ridiculously cheap home runs, a sixty foot high wall was constructed to keep balls that would be easy outs in other venues, from landing on Broad Street. That wall which measured thirty feet higher than the beloved Green Monster of Boston's Fenway Park, provided the park's most memorable feature, a giant advertisement for Lifebuoy Soap. The copy on one of the iterations of the sign read: "Safe from B.O., The Phillies use it!" That provided the running joke for the decades of the sign's existence, uttered by the notoriously hostile Philadelphia fans: "The Phillies may use Lifebuoy but they still stink!"
   

Baker Bowl, I'm guessing in the early twenties. This photograph illustrates the seamless relationship between the ballpark and its surrounding urban environment, a common feature of ballparks of the day. The building in deep center field was actually part of the ballpark and served as the clubhouse for both teams. Note the figure in the foreground with the megaphone, the ballpark's PA announcer.

                 

Innovations of Baker Bowl notwithstanding, Shibe Park rightfully deserves the distinction of being called the paradigm of the classic Major League ballpark, all of them built within a little over a decade. Of those, only two exist today, Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field. You can tell from the photographs that Shibe Park wasn't just a set of stands quickly thrown up to seat paying fans surrounding a ball field, it was a serious work of architecture. I love the aerial photograph because it shows how the ballparks of a century ago were built to fit into their urban surroundings. Perhaps there is no better example as these two ballparks take advantage of every inch of their sites as determined by the pattern of the city streets. 

Shibe Park blended in with its surroundings so well that for its first decade or so, from a streetwise view walking up Lehigh Avenue, the street running up and down in the photograph, one would have been hard pressed to know exactly the function of the building. Architectural critic Paul Goldberger calls Shibe Park:

...the first true palace of baseball...the most fully realized architectural statement baseball would make in the first decade of the twentieth century. 

In his book Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, Goldberger continues:

...more than any ballpark before it, (Shibe Park is) a statement about the role of the ballpark as a civic building, as a public gathering place, and as a civic institution worthy to take its place beside museums, courthouses and concert halls. 

Shibe Park shortly around the time of its opening in 1909. For its first few years,
its most distinctive feature, the cupola was visible from the playing field.
That would change after the grandstands were substantially expanded in the twenties..

From the inside, like its smaller neighbor five blocks to the east, the most distinctive feature of Shibe Park, not yet built when the aerial photograph was made, was its right field wall. However it wasn't the distance of 324' down the right field line that necessitated the construction of a massive wall, it was the neighbors. Just as Wrigley Field, from their homes, Shibe Park's neighbors on 20th Street had a perfect view of the ballpark. Originally this was only a slight irritation to the ball club, especially after the neighbors constructed grandstands on their roofs, (sound familiar?) and charged folks half the price as the ballpark to see a game. But in the twenties the Athletics were perennial challengers with the  mighty Yankees for the American League pennant. In fact shortly after the aerial  photograph was made, Shibe Park hosted the World Series where the Athletics beat the Cubs in five games. The ballpark was selling out anyway so what difference did it make that the neighbors were reaping benefits? That all began to change in the following years as the A's began slipping in the standings. More significantly, the Great Depression meant fewer people were coming out to the ballpark. To make matters worse, the "rooftop owners" were actively soliciting fans in line to buy tickets at the box office, attracting them with their half price seats.That was the last straw and in the winter between the '34 and '35 seasons, the owners of the team, the Shibe family along with the most famous name in Athletics history, Cornelius McGillicuddy. better known as Connie Mack, constructed a thirty foot wall to block the view of the neighbors.

It would become known as the "Spite Wall" and its construction all but destroyed the team's relationship with the community, which never healed. Making matters worse, Connie Mack who also managed the team, (he was the last person to manage a team from the dugout wearing street clothes), shortsightedly traded or sold off all his star players.

Meanwhile Baker Bowl which had never been properly maintained, was slipping year after year into decrepitude. Borrowing a page from the Cardinals who began sharing Sporstman's Park with the Browns in the twenties, the Phillies abandoned their old home in 1938 in favor of renting the ballpark owned by their cross-town, or more accurately, down-the-street rivals the A's.

With a few exceptions, as Connie Mack grew older and less with it, the Athletics languished in the second division of the American League until 1954 when they pulled up stakes and headed west to Kansas City. They did a lot  more languishing there until finally finding success in Oakland in the seventies. 

Ironically, the year the Athletics moved to KC and Mack was effectively pushed out of the business, Shibe Park was renamed Connie Mack Stadium. Old man McGillicuddy continued to hold court in his opulent office in the cupola of the ballpark at the corner of Lehigh and 21st that now bore his name, until he passed away in 1956, aged 94. The Phillies would continue to play at Connie Mack Stadium which itself was showing its age, until they played the final game there on October 1,1970. Like so many of their fellow MLB teams, the Phillies abandoned their beautiful, classic ballpark for a nondescript, doughnut-shaped multi-purpose stadium which itself would become obsolete in not all that many years.

That monstrosity known as Veterans Stadium was replaced by a new ballpark, Citizen's Bank Park that was, as was the trend at the time, built to resemble the look and feel of you guessed it, the classic ballparks of 100 years before.

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The Iron Horse

Portrait of Lou Gehrig by Charles Conlon

On this day in baseball history:

May 2, 1939, Briggs Stadium, Detroit- The beginning of the end came a few days earlier after a routine ground ball. The first baseman struggled to get to the ball, then flipped it over to the pitcher Johnny Murphy covering first base. “Good play big guy”, Murphy said to his teammate. It occurred to Lou Gehrig that he was being patted on the back for making a play he used to be able to make in his sleep, but now was an effort. Gehrig had been declining for a few years, perhaps that case of lumbago he suffered back in 1934 was an early sign but no one knows for sure. His collapsing at spring training earlier that year was certainly an indication of what was to come.

But up until that day in Detroit when he told his manager Joe McCarthy that he was taking himself out of the lineup, Gehrig had played an astounding 2,130 consecutive games, earning him the nickname, The Iron Horse. In his prime, getting beaned by a pitch and rendered unconscious for five minutes didn't keep him out of the next game. Neither did that excruciating case of lumbago, nor the several fractures he sustained during his career, confirmed by the numbers of X-rays taken when the doctors were trying to find out what was wrong with him.

Everybody knows the rest of the story. The doctors at the Mayo Clinic discovered that Gehrig had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease of the central nervous system that would take his life two years later.

Lou Gehrig Day
Yankee Stadium
July 4, 1939

July 4, Yankee Stadium- Gehrig would not play another game after that day in Detroit but would remain on the bench for the rest of the season serving as the team captain. Independence Day would be “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” in New York. The ceremony took place between the games of a double header. Babe Ruth came back to his old digs to pay tribute to his friend. Mayor LaGuardia gave a speech, as did the Postmaster General. Gehrig gave his famous “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech and there was not a dry eye in the house.

Perhaps the most touching moment however came when Joe McCarthy holding back the tears, spoke directly to his stricken player and said:

...it was a sad day in the life of everyone who knew you when you came into my hotel room in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God man you were never that.

On September 1st of that year, Hitler invaded Poland; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany and the world would never again be the same. Even though the War was still a couple years away for most Americans, winning the World Series that year by sweeping the Reds, must have seemed quite empty indeed to Yankee fans.

Ancient Wisdom

I might have mentioned that I've been studying Spanish for the past year, trying once and for all correct my lifelong shame of not being able to speak a language other than English fluently. Some may argue that I can't even do that but that's beside the point. 

One of my methods for learning the language is getting my hands on anything I can read that is at my reading level, around mid to upper intermediate. (Speaking is another story). Last week I googled "short stories in Spanish" and came across a site that contained classic short stories of the ages, the lion's share of which were a selection of Aesop's Fables. One of these ancient tales whose payoff is moral of the story, struck me as being relevant in our day.

The story was the "Goose that Laid the Golden Egg", except in the Spanish version, the ill fated bird was a gallina, a hen. In case you don't know the story, one day a farmer walks into his hen house (I'm telling the Spanish version of the story), and discovers that one of his hens has laid an egg of gold. Thinking this to be an anomaly, much to his surprise, the next day he returned to find another golden egg,  the third day, the same and on and on for a few more days. "Hmmm..." the farmer thinks, "I could go on and on collecting eggs every day and eventually I'll become rich, or I could just kill the hen now, retrieve all the gold inside of her, and be fabulously rich now!"

So that's what he did. And he found nothing inside the hen other than your basic run of the mill chicken guts.

That's the story in its entirety, you probably don't need the moral spelled out for you.

Naturally the story reminded me of Donald Trump.

You probably don't need to have that spelled out for you either. The fact is, Donald Trump is not all that hard to figure out. His kind has been portrayed in children's stories to great literature, theater, opera, film, you name it from time immemorial. After all what would be melodrama be without diabolical, self serving, one dimensional, greedy bastards?

I'm not talking about classic villains like the Grinch or Scrooge, both of whom turn out to be somewhat complex characters who get redeemed in the end. Donald Trump is not the least bit complicated. It's funny how people accuse him of dishonesty and yes it's true he does lie a lot, but nobody, not even his supporters take his lies seriously. They are so numerous, so obvious and blatant that it seems as if even he is in on the joke.

For example, last week in one of his press "briefings" he contemplated the effectiveness of ingesting toxic bleach and disinfectant to kill the COVID-19 virus. Naturally he was pilloried by all but his most devout sycophants, and even some of them raised their eyebrows. The next day when questioned about it, he said he was being "sarcastic." He then refused to take responsibility for the several people who had to be hospitalized for following his suggestion, not thinking he was being sarcastic at all.

Actually Donald Trump is not the least bit dishonest, at least about is himself and the fact that he is an unrepentant schmuck.

With him there is no subtlety, it doesn't take much time observing him to know he's up to no good. He's more of a cartoon villain like Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Dooright series, the guy who's always tying the fair maiden to the railroad tracks. There is no remorse from or redemption for him. Nor is there for Old Man Potter from the film It's a Wonderful Life. His character is not quite believable because he does not have one shred of decency in him, well at least not as portrayed in the movie.

Then there's Baron Scarpia, the chief of Police in Rome in search of the escaped political prisoner Angeloti in Puccini's opera Tosca. In the first act, Angeloti seeks refuge and the help of his friend and sympathiser Mario Cavaradosi. When the two meet and Angeloti brings up Scapia's name, Cavaradossi responds:

Scarpia? Bigotto satiro che affinacolle devote pratiche la foialibertina e strumentoal lascivo talentofa il confessore e il boia!La vita mi costasse, vi salverò!  

Scarpia? That licentious bigot who exploits the use of religion as refinements for his libertine lust, and makes both the confessor and the hangman the servant of his wantonness! I'll save you, even should it cost my life! 

Now THAT'S melodrama. And not a bad description of Trump either.

There is nothing Shakespearian about Trump.

Consider the following, which US president said these words:

One of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life. 

In the last quarter century, we have made remarkable progress toward that goal, opening the doors to millions of our fellow countrymen who were seeking equal opportunities in education, jobs and voting. 

Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care.
Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.

The same president accomplished the following:

• Signed the first S.A.L.T. talks with the former Soviet Union, dramatically reducing the number of nuclear weapons
• Dramatically increased salaries for federal employees
• Implemented integration of public schools
• Instituted “Wage and Price Controls” in an effort to slow down the rate of inflation (about as anti-Free Market a policy as there is)
• Created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
• Created the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Passed the Clean Air and Water Act 
• Expanded funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities
• Appointed three Supreme Court Justices, all of whom voted in favor of Roe v. Wade, which was decided during his term.

That president was Richard Nixon.

Now there was a complex man. According to writer Nolan Dalla who describes Nixon as "perhaps the last great liberal president since FDR":

...behind his utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution...and the crimes which eventually became known as the Watergate scandal, (Nixon) was a highly-accomplished man of tremendous intellect and great potential.

Nixon and his fall were truly Shakespeareian.

Here's a Slate post about another severely flawed president, Bill Clinton.

The author, Jacob Weisberg contends that Clinton's character can't exactly be found in the pages of Shakespeare:

He has Falstaff’s appetites for food and fornication (without his humor or ironic wisdom). He has Prince Hal’s political ambition and disloyalty to his old friends (without his heroism or rhetorical eloquence). But Shakespeare isn’t right for Bill Clinton, who even in collapse lacks the grandeur of the Bard’s tragic heroes and the absurdity of his comic ones.

According to Weisberg, Clinton meets his match in the work of Phillip Roth:

Alexander Portnoy, after he outgrows his autoerotic obsession, works for the liberal John Lindsay administration in New York City and does his best to demonstrate his concern for the poor and the oppressed. Meanwhile, however, he is shacked up with a girlfriend he calls the Monkey, who fulfills his sexual fantasies but leaves him living in fear of tabloid scandal. Like Clinton, Portnoy is highly intelligent, mother-obsessed, and pretty much out of control. Another similarity: Portnoy flees to Israel when faced with crisis. Drawbacks: Portnoy is more of a neurotic and less of a liar.

Nixon and Clinton were flawed men who left mixed legacies, but even in their failures, they were still figures of great substance, men worthy of lofty, if not altogether flattering literary comparisons.

Trump on the other hand will leave no mixed legacy, that much I know. Storytellers going all the way back to Aesop's time and probably before have warned us about people like him.

His enduring legacy is that he will forever be remembered as the president who killed the chicken who laid the golden egg, nothing more, nothing less.

Dr. Ezike

Who is this Dr. Ezike we keep hearing over the radio and TV every day, standing alongside Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker and having the unenviable task of telling the good people of this state how many people have contracted the COVID-19 virus and how many we have lost in the past day?

Here's a brief bio that I came across on the web in of all places, the website of the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority:

Ngozi Ezike is acting director of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). Dr. Ezike is a board-certified internist and pediatrician who comes to IDPH from the Cook County Department of Public Health (CCDPH), where she served for more than 15 years. She also was medical director at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Prior to joining CCDPH, Dr. Ezike served as Austin Health Center medical director where she actively engaged with the community on a variety of health initiatives. She also has delivered inpatient care at Stroger Hospital and primary and preventive care in community and school-based clinics. 

Dr. Ezike is a national policy advisor on juvenile correctional health topics. She received a medical degree from University of California at San Diego and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard University. Dr. Ezike also holds a management certificate from Harvard Business School and is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Rush University.

Impressive credentials indeed, clearly this is a person who should be listened to, and is exactly where we need her to be as the voice of authority and reason to the people of this state, offering in a very comforting voice, at least in my opinion, hope for the future, and above all, the facts.

And she does this in English and Spanish.  

Beyond this I know absolutely nothing about Dr. Ezike, there's no Wikipedia entry on her, at least not yet, nor any easily tracked profile about her from any of the local news outlets. This to me is a bit surprising as in our media saturated society, practically anyone who gets their 15 minutes of fame for any stupid reason gets their insignificant story and their mug plastered all over the web.

Yet Dr. Ezike has gotten at least five minutes of statewide coverage every day since the governor declared his shelter-in-place order to this state over one month ago. I'm not going to do the math, but she's gotten way more than her allotted 15 minutes.

My guess is that she's perfectly fine with that, simply doing what she she sees as her role as a public service with no other agenda, keeping us informed in as clear, calm, and compassionate manner as anyone on God's green earth could possibly do.

Nothing more, and nothing less. 

A grateful state thanks you so much Dr. Ezike.

And Yet, Some Things Never Change

In my last post I commented on how the world changing in unimaginable ways since I last put fingers to the keyboard in this blog last month, made much of what I wrote utter nonsense. And yet...

I didn't get quite everything wrong in the last two posts of February, 2020.

For example in this post, I wrote about the importance of the African American vote. Lo and behold, Joe Biden who was all but left for dead when I wrote the post, won the South Carolina primary by a landslide against Bernie Sanders, largely thanks to the African American voters who turned out for him. In the same fashion, he won every other primary held in southern states as well as Michigan and Illinois. I also wrote that if African Americans turn out for the Democratic presidential candidate in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania anywhere close to the way they did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, the Democrat will win the election.

Therefore the turnout in the African American community in the primaries must be positive news for the Democrats, except apparently Bernie Sanders supporters.

I wrote last month that many supporters of Bernie Sanders don't seem to be interested in voting for the Democratic candidate, if it is not Bernie Sanders. I said that does not bode well for the Democrats in November. Nearly a month later, with their candidate squarely against the ropes, little seems to have changed. I'm reading more Biden bashing from Bernie supporters than from Trump supporters.

The irony is that when Sanders was winning states and delegates early on in the Democratic primaries, both Sanders and his supporters demanded that the winner of the nomination be the candidate who ended up with the most primary votes, not the candidate hand picked by the Democratic National Committee. Now that Biden has a plurality of the vote, clearly a bona fide mandate, steadfast Bernieites are claiming there is still a conspiracy among Democrats which resulted in all the other serious candidates suspending their campaigns and throwing their support to Biden. But they fail to mention that even Sanders' most reliable base, young people, have all but abandoned him at the polls, even without the one candidate in the race who had a chance to siphon votes away from Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, who has not as yet offered an endorsement.

It's anybody's guess if the possible resurgence of the African American vote will offset the number of Bernie supporters taking their toys and going home by sitting out the election, but chances are they will because many Sanders' supporters did just that four years ago.

I'm adamant about this because the most important issue of our day by a long shot, the Coronavirus pandemic, has only emphasized the gross incompetence of the current president. Once again, given a golden opportunity to step up to the plate and prove his meddle as a leader, Donald Trump has struck out with two outs and the bases loaded.

Let me say at the outset, Trump is NOT responsible for the pandemic. That much is obvious. Less obvious is that he is not responsible for the current collapse of the stock market, although it would only seem fair that since he took so much credit for the good economy he inherited from his predecessor, he should take the blame for its downward swing under his watch. Don't hold your breath for that one folks.

But no, the pandemic is responsible for the current fall of the stock market, not Donald Trump.

That said, I do believe he hasn't helped at all either, and has probably exacerbated both.

First of all, two years ago his administration disbanded the National Security Council's entire global health security unit, the office set up by his predecessor after the Ebola outbreak. Had it been in place, it would have been an essential resource to coordinate government efforts in recognizing the problem early, and taking adequate measure to insure necessary items such as test kits medical masks and other personal protection equipment essential to keep the people on the front lines, health workers safe, would be readily available at a moment's notice. Well its turns out that we are behind the eight ball at the moment, as there is a critical shortage of all those items. Of course hindsight is always twenty-twenty and I'm sure there were valid arguments at the time to close or re-arrange duties in an office that may have become top-heavy. But when asked about the disbanding of the office at a press conference, Trump said that was a nasty question, and that he didn't even know the office had been disbanded. Naturally videos emerged from a couple years ago showing Trump announcing the closing of the office.

Much more serious is that evidence points to the fact that Trump understood the severity of the pandemic as early as January, yet he publicly denied that Coronavirus was any more serious than yearly strains of influenza, until two months later. One could argue that the president didn't want to cause panic among the American people. On the other hand as has become obvious, by not acting sooner, by not influencing the public to avoid large public gatherings from the outset, the virus has indeed gained a foothold in this country that it wouldn't have had we acted sooner.

Here is a timeline of Trump's public comments since the time the severity of virus became known to him:




Granted this is a biased video benefiting from the magic of selective editing. But these are all public comments, he said little or nothing else to claim that COVID-19 was more than just a walk in the park until very recently. You can also find clips of Fox News celebrities mirroring Trump's comments, calling the virus a hoax designed to undermine the president, until Trump finally admitted on March 11 that yes folks, we have a problem here. Not until Trump's address to the nation from the Oval Office that day did his official propaganda wing at Fox change their tune.

This Friday I witnessed two events that clearly demonstrate the difference between real leadership, and the clown show the administration in Washington has always been. At Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's announcement  that his state was to enforce a stay-at-home policy, one of the speakers at that press conference was the chief epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, Dr. Emily Landon, As the Governor and the Mayor of Chicago stood at a respectable distance and listened attentively. Dr. Landon gave a blunt, impassioned, and brilliant address about what we could be in for if we don't act now. She relayed an anecdote from the 1918 influenza pandemic which killed millions around the world. It turns out that while the city of St. Louis enacted a stay-in-place order to stem the spread of the deadly virus, the city of Philadelphia hosted a large parade to send off soldiers headed off to WWI. One week later, Philadelphia hospitals were overrun and thousands died, far more than in St. Louis.

As we are seeing today in New Orleans who allowed their celebration of Mardi Gras to take place a couple weeks ago, that city is now seeing a greater increase of new cases of COVID-19 than other cities around the country.

On the same afternoon as Governor Pritzker's draconian announcement that he was forced to choose between "people's lives and their livelihoods". the president of the United States held a similar conference at the White House. At the dais, going against all pleas for social distancing, was a slew of people huddled together as if they were in a rugby scrum. The president, still trying to paint a pretty picture of a pandemic, touted his enthusiasm about an anti-malaria drug that might have positive results against the "Chinese virus" as he referred to it. He was challenged by an NBC reporter who asked if his over-optimism about the drug was doing a disservice to the American people who deserve to know facts, not just the president's hunches. (my words not his). "I'm a smart guy, I feel good about it" was the president's response. After a back and forth between the reporter and the president, the reporter asked, "with nearly 200 dead and 14,000 sick, what do you say to the American people watching you right now who are scared?" The president's response was: "I'd say that you are a terrible reporter. I think it's a nasty question and a very bad signal that you're putting out to the American people." He accused the reporter of "sensationalism" and then went on a brief tirade about the news organizations of NBC and COMCAST.

Now to be fair, watching the unedited version of the exchange instead of just the soundbites that made their way across all platforms, the reporter was goading the president on for several minutes before the outburst. That said, annoying as the reporter may have been to him, there is no room for childish outbursts from the supposed leader of the free world in response to a pandemic. To add insult to injury, one of the reporters asked if Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was standing behind Trump at the press conference would comment on the drug. Politely, trying to speak the truth yet not wanting to directly contradict the president, Dr. Fauci said that while not discounting the possibility that this vaccine may prove helpful, any evidence to that effect was purely anecdotal, that testing was still underway, and that a "cure" as the president claims is still several months if not a year away. Incidentally since that day, Dr. Fauci has not been heard from at one of Trump's daily press briefings.

Today, two days later, the president still doesn't get it, or simply doesn't care. Despite unanimous consensus from scientists and health care professionals all over the world who assure us that the pandemic will get much worse before it gets better, and that the only way to reduce the amount of carnage, is for all of us to avoid social contact and stay home for two or three months at the very least, today the president told his nation that he expects that everyone will be back at work in two weeks.

Meanwhile his premature announcement about the anti-malaria drug, chloroquine , has caused a massive run on the medication, causing shortages and an astronomical increase in price, leaving people who take it for other illnesses, such as lupus, left without a medication they depend upon. Others have died taking the drug (which has serious side effects) without a doctor's supervision, assuming it would cure them of COVID-19.

For three years, Donald Trump's malfeasance, gross negligence and incompetence have done a great deal of harm to our country, to its credibility its democratic institutions, and perhaps most significantly, to its unity. Up until two months ago, most reasonable Americans could breathe a sigh of relief that at the very least he was not at the helm during a real crisis. Well he his now and people are dying because of his initial inaction, his indifference to the severity of the situation, and his insistence on lying to cover up the true nature of the pandemic.

The sad thing is that during times of crisis, the people turn to a president to provide leadership, comfort, and above all, the truth. During such times, a president's approval rating usually goes through the roof. Not so with Donald Trump. A good sixty percent of Americans believe he is not to be believed or trusted. The good news is those sixty percent at least, will not be taking anything this president says seriously, and despite his rants about how "the cure can't be worse than the disease", will work to protect themselves and the rest of us. The ones who do take him seriously well all I can say to them is, good luck to you, just don't go anywhere close to me or my loved ones.

God willing Trump will not be president come next January, but since we're stuck with him at least until then, the least he can do is provide some useful information to the people of this country to help get us through this crisis.

Short of that, maybe he could just shut the fuck up and let the adults in the room do the talking.