Author Archives: tom

Baseball, Competition, and Loss of Perspective

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It’s almost hard to know where to start on this but let me start with the incident that got me writing: Milton Bradley. Yesterday he got in a shouting match with the first base umpire, Mike Winters. Both First Base Coach Bobby Meecham and Manager Bud Black needed to restrain him as he appeared to be charging the umpire, which is absolutely never allowed. Milton claims that he and Mike exchanged escalating words that ended with the umpire calling him an “(expletive) piece of (expletive).” During Bud’s restraint Milton twisted his knee; we now know that he tore the anterior cruciate ligament and will be out for the rest of the season. This is a serious injury and would put him out for several months if the season were to continue. Milton, and a few of his fellow Padres, claim that he was provoked by the umpire and was justified in his reaction.

This is just unbelieveable. If Mike Winters did indeed use that language, I don’t condone it; but Milton Bradley has a long history of failing to control his temper and should know that he has far exceeded all the goodwill he is ever going to get. Had he held his temper in check he’d still be playing and the Padres would still have his bat. Now this has become a huge distraction at a time when the Padres are far from a lock for the playoffs. And yet nobody on the Padres seems to be saying that Milton screwed this up. He has played for Montreal, Cleveland, Oakland, Los Angeles and now San Diego. None of his former teams want him back. He has a great bat and could do wonderful things, but he will ultimately be a victim of his inability or unwillingness to control his temper. As a Padres fan I can only hope this was his last game as a Padre.

No baseball rant would be complete without talking about Barry Bonds. As it stands now he has 762 home runs and wants to return to baseball next year to reach 3000 hits (he’s at 2935 now). His team, the San Francisco Giants have announced that they do not intend to sign him next year. I wrote an entry on August 7th comparing his home runs to Hand Aaron and Babe Ruth. The table was essentially unreadable but it tried to show that he couldn’t have the home pattern without the help of steroids. Now that he has the record many of us are rooting for Alex Rodriguez to break Barry’s record. At the risk of doing the same damn thing, I’m going to attempt a table showing Alex’s progress againts Barry:

Barry Bonds Alex Rodriguez
1986: 16 1994: 0
1987: 25 1995: 5
1988: 24 1996: 36
1989: 19 1997: 23
1990: 33 1998: 42
1991: 25 1999: 42
1992: 34 2000: 41
1993: 46 2001: 52
1994: 37 2002: 57
1995: 33 2003: 47
1996: 42 2004: 36
1997: 40 2005: 48
1998: 37 2006: 35
1999: 34 2007: 52
2000: 49  
2001: 73  
2002: 46  
2003: 45  
2004: 45  
2005: 5  
2006: 26  
2007: 28  
Total: 762 Total: 516

According to this, A-Rod needs to average 31 home runs per season for the next 8 seasons to beat Barry. There are way too many variables, but I know that I will rejoice if Barry’s record is eclipsed.

I can’t help but think back to a panel discussion on ethics I heard several years ago. The panelists were role playing about a high school student who was considering cheating on a test because he felt he was disadvantaged and could cheat to make up for his disadvantage. One of the panelists indicated that if he wanted something so bad that he felt justified in cheating, he simply wanted it too much. I conclude this rant by saying that Milton Bradley wants to treated well too much and Barry Bonds wants to be the home run leader too much.

Thoughts on the Sexual Abuse Crisis in San Diego

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On September 14, 2007 the Catholic Diocese of San Diego and Bishop Robert Brom agreed to pay $198.1 million to more than 150 survivors of sexual abuse from priests. This is (hopefully) the final chapter of a long and painful story. Unfortunately it’s a story that does not reflect well on either Bishop Brom or the Diocese.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone does not know that many dioceses are struggling with this. The biggest struggle they and the courts face is how to compensate the victims. We can’t turn back time and frankly the only way anyone is compensated is financially. That said, it’s probably reasonable to see how other dioceses have compensated their victims. In 2003 the Archdiocese of Boston paid out $85 million to cover 552 lawsuits (that averages slightly over $150,000 per person). The settlements have been increasing: last July the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to settle 508 cases (or just under $1.3 million per person).

Last February the San Diego Diocese was facing the first of the trials and Bishop Brom decided to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the hopes that a fund would be dedicated to settle the cases. It was a good try but it backfired. Everyone I know who knows the bishop says that he does not like being told what to do. I don’t know how this happened but apparently it never occurred to Bishop Brom that he would be answerable to the bankruptcy judge. Things began to spin out of control when the Diocese was accused of hiding assets. Accounts had been set up in many places for many reasons and it never occurred to anyone that they would be subject to judicial scrutiny. The accountant appointed by the bankruptcy judge called this “byzantine;” I would call it disorganized. The upshot was that the judge threatened to pull the diocese out of bankruptcy and begin the trials. It was probably the push the diocese needed to come to a settlement.

The Diocese agreed to a settlement that averages $1.375 million per person. In March the diocese offered a settlement of $95 million (a little over $600,000 per person) and insisted that this was the most they could afford without adversely hampering the church’s mission. Now they have agreed to pay out nearly double that; we’ll see what happens.

On September 7th Bishop Brom released this letter. It is, hopefully, the end of a long and painful journey.

Six Years Out, and Could It Be Worse?

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I hardly need to say this, but six years ago today we were all riveted to our TV’s not believing what we were seeing. Our president, elected in what can only be called a disputed election, was just back from a month long vacation in his 8th month in office. Many of us worried that he would not be up for the job, healing and leading a country that had entered a whole new world. Even the most cynical among us could not guess how badly this new president would manage. A few thoughts on this:

  • Despite offers of support from Iran after 9/11 (see the CNN report from September 14, 2001) President Bush grouped them with North Korea and Iraq in the axis of evil. Interestingly, Afghanistan (who was hiding Osama Bin Laden) was not included in the axis.
  • It didn’t take long after the attacks to realized that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks. In a briefing at the Pentagon on September 17, 2001 President Bush declared we will get bin Laden “dead or alive.” He’s still alive and apparently coloring his hair.
  • The terrorists who planned 9/11 were given refuge in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We consider both of these countries allies even though it’s become clear that they are unable or unwilling to hand them over.
  • President Bush has repeatedly claimed that the terrorists hate us because “we love freedom.” But since 9/11 we have held people in Guantanamo Bay without charging them or allowing them access to counsel. Even though the President insists that we are at war, he refuses to give them the status (and protections) of criminal suspects or POW’s. Instead the administration has invented a term, “enemy combatants,” that allows them no rights or protections. Additionally, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was arrested on American soil and held without his Constitutional protections for 3 1/2 years. We were told that he was being held because he was trying to set off a “dirty bomb” but that was nowhere in the indictment. He was tried and convicted on a charge of attending a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. Perhaps this carelessness with our Constitutional freedoms will, in the end, “let the terrorists win.”
  • Even though it was clear that neither Sadam Huessin or Iraq had anything to do with the attacks of 9/11 we have been at war with them for 4 1/2 years. Even though President Bush had a clear exit strategy for Vietnam, he has none for this war.
  • Last winter with the newly seated Democratic majority in Congress it became clear that there was diminishing support for continuing the war. President Bush ordered a surge, or increase in the troop levels with the promise that they would show clear and obvious results. Out of this a series of 18 benchmarks were developed to evaluate this success. You can see from my post of July 13th that by then President Bush said 8 of the 18 benchmarks had been achieved. On September 7th the GAO announced that only three have been met, 4 have been partially met, and 11 have not been met. As I write this it’s hard to find anything that gives us reason to believe we can ever achieve our objectives in Iraq.

Simply put, six years ago the world rallied around us in our grief, shock, and determination to ensure this will never happen again. Today it’s hard to imagine a scenario that could have gone worse. We have alienated our allies, embolden our enemies, trashed our freedoms, and made the world more unsafe. President Bush, it’s time to admit that few of your policies are sound and start listening to those who elected you.

Mother Teresa: Ten Years Later and All the More Human

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It was ten years ago today, September 5, 1997, that we learned of the death of Mother Teresa. We all know the bare bones of her biography: she was born in 1910 in Albania, became a nun in 1931, and started her own order the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1948. She and her community were committed to working with the “poorest of the poor” and her success at this led her to win the Nobel Prize in 1979.

What we are finding now, though, is that her interior life was much more complex than her exterior life. In a book that was published yesterday, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light and excerpted in Time magazine we’ve learned that much of her life was a desert experience where she could not find God.

One of the first things I learned in reading the Time article is the thing that causes me the most concern: Much of this book is taken from correspondence between Mother Teresa and her superiors or confessors. She had asked that these correspondence be destroyed after her death but they weren’t. A large part of me is uncomfortable with the fact that she never intended us to be reading this; correspondence between penitent and confessor is not protected by the seal of confession but still it should not be released for anyone to read. Particularly when the confessor suggests or recommends that the penitent write out their troubles (as was the case in 1955), it seems to me that these writings should be protected. While I read the article and plan to read the book I still feel a little strange reading what she never intended me to see.

That said, I also find myself refreshed by what I’ve read so far. In reading about the lives of the saints (even though she has not yet been proclaimed a saint) I find it easy to believe that they were “more than human.” She certainly did a ministry that I could never do and appeared to do it with a grace and humor I could never muster: there is the story of her giving a bath to someone with horrible sores all over his body. A priest who witnessed this said: “You know, I wouldn’t do this for a million dollars.” Mother Teresa smiled and said: “Neither would I.” I say this as a way of saying that many of us thought she found this easy. I always thought that she had some communication line with God that allowed her to do this ministry with a confidence and self assuredness that the rest of us could only hope for.

Now we find that for most of her life with the Missionaries of Charity she didn’t experience this at all. Instead she experienced a dryness and emptiness that at times called her to wonder if God even existed. It called on her to reach deep inside of herself and pull out the courage, wisdom, and perseverance that it took to wake up every morning and greet the poorest of the poor and look for the face of Jesus.

It called for faith. It called for her to ignore the evidence and other voices and keep on doing what she was doing. This has been a good reminder that what makes a person a saint is not only what they do but also what they overcome. It’s also a good reminder that we are all called to overcome what tries to stop us from doing what we know to be right.

The Vatican has not yet determined that she is a saint, but the more I read about this, the more I’m convinced that God has.

Katrina Revisted

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The news today is a reminder that two years ago Hurricane Katrine struck the Gulf Coast. The months after the hurricane I wrote a timeline that shows how this was a multiple system failure of government at every level.

The New Orleans Times Picayune has always been the best source of information and they did incredible work during and immediately after Katrina. The front page today discusses some of the ways people helped and the gratitude the city feels toward the rest of the nation.

He Clearly Suffers From an Irony Deficiency

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On August 7th Matt Murphy caught Barry Bond’s 756th home run and has become an instant celebrity. The obvious question here is what the 22 year old will do with the ball. It seems obvious that the ball (tainted though it may be) belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. So what do you do if you have something that belongs in the Hall but could fetch $500,000 if sold? Matt’s answer is this: “Ideally, what I would love to happen would be for someone [ie, not me] to buy the ball and donate it to the Hall of Fame. It’s a piece of history and belongs in the Hall.” I guess the idea of donating it himself isn’t an option.

Who Says Democracy is Not Responsive?

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I try in this blog to give information that goes beyond the headlines, and as best I can I list people who are running for President in 2008. If you get most of your information from the mainstream media you might think there are only 3 Democrats (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama) and 4 Republicans (Rudy Guliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson) running but there are actually more. A few months ago I spent the afternoon with Google looking for other candidates and came up with several, none of whom I’d heard of. A few days ago I got an email from Jason Bootie, son of John Bootie, one of the independent candidates. I’m not sure how he found this blog but he wrote to thank me for including his father in my list. Now who says people aren’t grateful anymore.

Of course, the only problem is that I looked closer at Mr. Bootie’s web page and found that he and I disagree on nearly every issue. I’m a little surprised that Jason didn’t read my page and ask me to remove the link to his father. I’m hoping after the election I can publish how many votes each candidate received.

By the way, if there is someone running for President that I’ve missed, please let me know.

Thoughts on Barry Bonds, Home Runs, and Steroids

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This past weekend Barry Bonds tied the home run record of Hank Aaron at 755. It appears that he will break Hank’s record; this is tarnished by the assumption that Barry used steroids from about 2000 until MLB started testing for steroids in 2005. I posted something on this on March 9, 2006.

It is interesting to look at the home runs over the careers of both players. One of the things that many of us notice is that Barry’s production of home runs increased at a time when they tend to slow down for other players. Here are the numbers:

Babe Ruth (age) Year HR’s Hank Aaron (age) Year HR’s Barry Bonds (age) Year HRs
19 1914 0 19 1954 13 23 1986 16
20 1915 4 20 1955 27 24 1987 25
21 1916 3 21 1956 26 25 1988 24
22 1917 2 22 1957 44 26 1989 19
23 1918 11 23 1958 30 27 1990 33
24 1919 29 24 1959 39 28 1991 25
25 1920 54 25 1960 40 29 1992 34
26 1921 59 26 1961 34 30 1993 46
27 1922 35 27 1962 45 31 1994 37
28 1923 41 28 1963 44 32 1995 33
29 1924 46 29 1964 24 33 1996 42
30 1925 25 30 1965 32 34 1997 40
31 1926 47 31 1966 44 35 1998 37
32 1927 60 32 1967 39 36 1999 34
33 1928 54 33 1968 29 37 2000 49
34 1929 46 34 1969 44 38 2001 73
35 1930 49 35 1970 38 39 2002 46
36 1931 46 36 1971 47 40 2003 45
37 1932 41 37 1972 34 41 2004 45
38 1933 34 38 1973 40 42 2005 5
39 1934 22 39 1974 20 43 2006 26
40 1935 6 40 1975 12 44 2007 21
41 1976 10
Totals: 715 755 755

Ruth’s most productive year was 1927 (age 32); Aaron’s was 1971 (age 36); Bond’s was 2001 (age 37). That seems to argue that Barry isn’t that unusual but on closer observation I’ve noticed a few things. In the years when we assume he was juiced (2000-2004) he hit 258 home runs. In the five years before (1995-1999) he hit 186 home runs. It’s hard to imagine that his body was strongest in his early late 30s and early 40s. Most hitters start off slowly either because they aren’t yet playing every day or because they are still learning the craft of hitting. Barry did very well for the first 10 years, hitting 292 home runs (Ruth hit 238 in his first 10 years and Aaron hit 342). For whatever reason he decided that wasn’t enough.

Since Babe Ruth, home run statistics have become the “gold standard” of baseball and power was king. Since this statistic has become tainted, perhaps other records will gain more popularity. There are records that would not be helped by steroids (and even hurt by them). I’m thinking of Cal Ripkin’s 2,632 consecutive game streak or Joe DiMaggio’s 56 consecutive games with a hit. There is also Cy Young’s 511 games won as a pitcher. This is just a guess but I’m hoping that endurance will unseat power. It would, in a sense, be the ultimate penalty for Barry: he abuses his body and the game to reach a record that garners less respect because of the way he went about it.

Back Home From Vacation

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We got back from New York yesterday afternoon and are getting back into the home routine. I downloaded lots of pictures and will post them soon. New York City was kind of a nostalgia trip for me: when I was a Paulist novice in 1990 I lived an hour west and went into the city fairly regularly. I also spent the summer of 1991 living there while I worked at the Paulist Press. Nostalgia trips are always dangerous because the place inevitably can’t live up to the selective memories, but with that caveat I have to say it was a fun trip.

The one thing we wouldn’t do again is the Empire State Building. The line to get to the 86th floor didn’t look too bad when we got in. We found out very quickly that the employ Disneyland’s “hide the line” trick. Once you purchase your (nonrefundable) ticket there are a series of lines and guards before you get into the elevator to the 80th floor. There you have your picture taken (available for purchase of course) and are told you can rent headphones. Finally after that series of lines you take an elevator up the final 6 stories to the observation desk. All told we were in line for nearly an hour.

We also had some “classic New York” experiences. When we visited Strawberry Fields in Central Park there were two guys on benches nearby. They spent the better part of our 15 minutes there yelling at each other to shut up. They both wanted the same thing but neither would let the other have the last word. During our stay we took the famous New York subway several times. One of those times was using the 1 train uptown in morning rush hour. It seemed that we were waiting on the platform for longer than usual and when the train arrived it was already crowded. Like everyone else we crowded out way in and I was wedged between so many people I couldn’t even reach a pole to grab onto. Fortunately we were only on for a few stops.

The weather in New York was what you would expect in late July and early August: HHH: hazy, hot, and humid. It was in the low 90s for most of our stay and we were grateful for New York’s legendary good drinking water. Fortunately we both prefer hot weather to cold and it didn’t stop us from doing what we had planned.

All told, it was a good trip and I hope to do it again soon.