Ditching work, Part 2

And the other shoe fell.
Turns out Governor Sanford was not just playing hooky, he was off visiting a "dear friend" i.e. girlfriend in Argentina. He and his wife are sort of separated, although it is hard to tell from their public statements where things stand. We seem to have another of those ironic situations where the Governor has moved out of the Governor's mansion. He may not be back until his successor unveils the official portrait.
Running for President is out of the question. The question I have is: did he think he could break it off with the mistress, reconcile with the wife and then run for President of the United States and nobody would notice? I do not know whether that is arrogance of the highest degree or sheer cluelessness. Either way, those "Sanford for President" buttons are now officially collector's items.

Ditching Work

I admit it: I have occasionally slipped out of the office to go play golf or maybe just hang out with the kids. When I do that however, I still have my cell phone with me and I usually check for messages a couple of times. The really important thing is however: I am not the governor of an entire state (or any part of one for that matter).
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford apparently took a five day "break" from his duties to go to South America this week. He did not tell anyone where he was going. His wife and family apparently did not know where he was, nor did his staff or security detail. Poof, the Governor was gone.
Most states have provisions for the temporary transfer of power when the governor is out of the state. Usually the Lieutenant Governor can exercise power and run the show, but what if nobody really knows the governor is gone? In South Carolina the trip became a story when people started to realize that they had not seen the Governor in a few days. His staff initially said he was hiking here in the U.S., but that has turned out to be untrue. His wife said she did not know where he was.
Stories started to emerge that he likes to "get away" at the end of the legislative session. Fair enough, but it is not too much to ask that the Governor let his staff and security detail know where he is going. Just disappearing is a little strange at best, erratic at worst.
Governor Sanford has been talked up as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. Before he runs, somebody better explain that the President doesn't get to just ditch work for a few days at a time. He cannot go off to clear his head and leave the Vice President in charge. He cannot hop on a commercial flight to South America to hang out for a few days.
Public service is admirable and I am certain it is trying at times. Having reporters follow you around 24/7 has got to be stressful. Still, it is no secret when you run for office that this is the way it is. You don't get to ditch work for a few days.
Next time I take off to play golf however, I might leave the cell phone behind.

Dave v. Sarah

I have always found David Letterman to be quite funny. His original 12:30 show was new, inventive and incredibly funny. He has been a little more tame since moving to 11:30, but generally still a pretty funny guy.
Unfortunately his spat with Sarah Palin over inappropriate jokes at her daughter's expense reveals a certain arrogance, but it is not just Dave. Many entertainers seem to be of a mind that they just elected a President and now, having saved the country from George W. Bush and the Republicans, they can do and say no wrong. In their minds, their values and tastes have prevailed and the rest of us just need to get used to it.
I believe that is what led David Letterman and his writers to think that sexual jokes about a 14 year old, or even an 18 year old, were funny and appropriate. It was not so much the content of the joke that they approved of, but the idea that because Sarah Palin is a strong conservative, anything about her is fair game. Before you disagree with me, take a step back and ask yourself what would be happening if a talk show host made any joke, sexual or otherwise, about either of the Obama daughters or suggested that the First Lady looked "slutty"? How many hours do you think it would take before that person was fired?
This is all about what Sarah Palin stands for and the arrogance of those public figures who supported Obama (even as they pretended to be "objective").
Now for Sarah Palin. As a parent she should be outraged at her teenage daughter being the object of crude jokes on national television. As a woman she should be offended by the commentary on her appearance. That said, she should not overplay it.
Remember the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown debate? While then Vice President Quayle was making a valid point about lifestyle choices and the de-emphasizing of the importance of fatherhood in some circles, it got lost in the fact that he was having the debate with a fictional character.
David Letterman is at least a real person. That said, he is an entertainer and a comedian. He tells jokes for a living and interviews movie stars. Nothing wrong with that, but when you are a political figure trying to build credibility for a possible presidential campaign, a drawn out debate with Letterman, while keeping the Governor in the news, does little to convince everyone that she can handle North Korea and Iran. Those two countries are lead by individuals who are a lot wackier than David Letterman (although not as funny).
Sarah Palin's supporters also do her no favors by perpetuating this controversy. It seems to be a way for a few folks to get themselves interviewed on the Today show and/or Fox News, but what it is doing is elongating a debate between a would be presidential candidate and a comic.
Sarah Palin needs to be talking, in depth, about the runaway growth of government in this Administration, about how extending a hand to these regimes has only emboldened them to continue their mischief and what she thinks ought to be done about it. That is how you get people to see you as a potential President, not by scoring points against Letterman.

Inexact Science

Major League Baseball held its draft yesterday. The baseball draft is the least watched of all of the major sports. Fans do not paint there faces and go the arenas to watch the draft on television (that is probably a good thing) and the draftees do not appear on stage wearing $5000 suits in colors never before imagined.
The main difference is it will still be two to three years before most of the players drafted are playing in the majors. Assuming they sign in the next few weeks, they will likely go to a rookie league level team or possibly Class A ball, then begin working their way up. One, maybe two, of the high draftees may make a major league cameo in September, but that is rare.
The baseball draft is the most inexact science of all sports' drafts. In football, many of the players have already played on big stages against big time competition. Although basketball has had a flirtation with taking high school kids, seven feet tall is still seven feet tall no matter your age. In other words, football and basketball can reasonably project performance in the league. There are some busts and some late round surprises who have success, but for the most part success can be forecast on draft day.
Not so with baseball. Baseball drafts many more players. The N.B.A. draft is now two rounds. The N.F.L. draft is eight. The baseball draft is many more rounds. A bigger pool of players turns professional in a given year.
When they turn pro, there are big changes. For the position players they go from hitting with aluminum bats, to wood bats. Suddenly those 420 foot bombs on the high school or college field are long fly balls. Hitters struggle with the transition, and confidence gets shaken as a player goes from hitting .600 in high school ball to hitting .240 in the minors.
For the pitchers, suddenly they are facing the equivalent of their high school or college opponents clean up hitter every at bat. Some pitchers, especially at the high school level, find they can rely on one overpowering pitch to get through a lineup. Once they turn pro they have to start learning how to hit spots and out think the batters, something they have not had to do before. College pitchers have often spent years pitching away from contact (to avoid those rockets off of aluminum bats) and have to learn not to be afraid of contact.
Then there is the lifestyle change. Often the players are now far away from home with a group of new teammates. They are not the big man on campus that they were in high school or college. Unlike the N.F.L. or N.B.A., they are not flying first class and staying in five star hotels. It is long bus rides and motels. If they played for a big time college program, or even some high school and/or travel programs, the travel and accommodations of pro ball can be a step (or several) down.
With all of these factors working against success, the money payed high draftees is approaching the early salaries of N.B.A. and N.F.L. draftees. Teams are taking great risks. They are being asked to invest $5-10 million or even more in a player who may never see a big league stadium except when he buys a ticket. It is the most inexact science of all sports.

300

There are some numbers in baseball that are truly amazing. 300 wins by a pitcher is one of them. Randy Johnson hit that magic number this week.

I started out with the idea that I wanted to write about aging players hanging around into their mid-forties chasing milestones. Randy Johnson is 44 years old and certainly not the pitcher he was a decade ago.

As I thought about it, I realized I could not diminish the achievement and Johnson is not just hanging on. To win 300 games a pitcher would have to average 20 wins a year for 15 years. In this day and age of middle relievers and six inning quality starts, there are fewer 20 game winners, so realistically you are looking at averaging 15 wins over 20 years. That may be even more amazing.

Randy Johnson won his fifth game of the season to get to 300 the other night. The league leaders in the National league have seven wins and pitch for better teams. Johnson leads his team in wins. He is hardly hanging around. Johnson's season so far projects to 12-14 wins and in this day and age that is a solid number. Maybe not the Cy Young award numbers of years gone by, but good enough to be a number three starter for most teams and a one or two for others.

Also, he has not reinvented himself. He is not hanging around throwing slow curves and change ups. Yes, he is not the power pitcher that he once was, with a fastball touching 100 miles per hour, but he is still a power pitcher.

Injuries slowed Johnson in the middle of his career or we would have been talking about this milestone two years ago. After major back surgery he racked up 5 Cy Young awards and a World Series MVP. He pitched in relief in the 7th game of a World Series after being the starting pitcher in game six. That is unheard of in the modern era. Starting pitchers normally are not seen or heard from until five days after their last start. You certainly don't find them in the bullpen getting ready to go another two or three the next day.

He is not a warm and fuzzy personality and sometimes that diminishes the appreciation for an achievement, but he has never thrown sawed off bats at anyone and there are no allegations of performance enhancing drugs. He has simply been the most dominant left handed pitcher of the past 20 years.

Having reached 300, I hope he will consider retirement over another year of multi-million dollar salaries. I do not want to watch Randy Johnson doing mop up work for the A's or the Orioles in two years. Right now however, he is a legitimate a quality starter as anyone else and he has achieved a milestone that, when you think about it, is mind boggling.

Bankruptcy

"Bankruptcy" is in the news a lot these days. GM and Chrysler have filed. The process allows a company or an individual to either restructure their debt or liquidate what they own and pay off as much of the debt as possible. Apparently the administration does not consider liquidation to be a viable means to resolve the car companies' problems. Perhaps they should reconsider.
The real problem is admitting mistakes and correcting them, something everyone is trying to avoid. The car companies and the government have made huge promises to the unions and they are not able to fulfill them. They pay literally millions, if not billions, to people who no longer work, no longer produce. They pay billions more to people who are working, but they cannot sell enough product to meet those obligations. Now it has become unsustainable.
The UAW will tell you, rather loudly, that they have made significant concessions and maybe they have. The problem is, unless you can find a way to sell the cars, it will not be enough.
Still, the focus seems to be on how we preserve the auto industry "as is" rather than how it should look in the future. This is the difference between government intervention to prop up a structure and allowing the market to set the direction.
Why does there have to be a "big three" automakers? Because there always has been? What happened to "change"? Maybe the market would create a "medium size six". We don't know. What we do know is that the Administration is tying itself up in knots to preserve the big three and more importantly to them, protect the U.A.W.'s perogatives.
After the bankruptcy however, we still have the problem of selling cars. Can the companies make cars people want to buy? We hear noises about fuel efficiency standards and other bells and whistles the Administration now wants to put on new cars. Some even suggest taxing certain types of "non preferred" i.e. S.U.V.s cars more, to force us to buy the more fuel efficient models. We have the makings of an unholy alliance between the auto makers and the government to force us to buy certain cars in the interest of saving the big three.
If you are a fan of centralized economic planning then this is all something to get excited about. If you believe that would should be allowed free choice in the products we buy and the cars we drive, be very nervous.
The companies may have filed for bankruptcy and may "restructure" but it is the policy of preserving the status quo at all costs that is bankrupt.