The Weak In Rock

Can’t say it better than this…

Dock Ellis’s No-No
by Chuck Brodsky

It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say
His girlfriend read the paper
She said, “Dock, this can’t be right…
It says here that you’re pitching
In San Diego tonight”

“Got to get you to the airport”
And so off Dock Ellis flew
His legs were a little bit wobbly
And the rest of him was too
Took a taxi to the ballpark
An hour before the game
Gave some half-assed explanation
Found the locker with his name

Time came to go on out there
Down the corridor
The walls were a little bit wavy
There were ripples in the floor
He went out to the bullpen
To do a bunch of stretches
Loosen up a little
Throw his warm-up pitches

All rose for the national anthem
People took off their hats
Fireworks were exploding
The cokes were already going flat
Dock was back there in the dugout
So many things to watch
Some players spit tobacco juice
Others grabbed their crotch

The umpire hollered, “Play Ball!”
And so it came to be
Dock’s Pirates batted first
And when they went down 1-2-3
Dock’s catcher put his mask on
And he handed Dock the ball
It was 327 feet
To the right & left field walls

The Pirates took the field then
And Dock stood on the rubber
He bounced a couple of pitches
And then he bounced a couple others
You might say about that day
He looked a little wild
The lead-off batter trembled
Nobody knew why Dock Ellis smiled

You walk 8 and you hit a guy
The things that people shout…
Especially your manager
But he didn’t take Dock out
Dock found himself a rythym
And a crazy little spin
Amazing things would happen
When Dock Ellis zeroed in

Sometimes he saw the catcher
Sometimes he did not
Sometimes he held a beach balll
Other times it was a dot
Dock was tossing comets
That were leaving trails of glitter
At the 7th inning stretch
He still had a no-hitter

So he turned to Cash, his buddy
Said, “I got a no-no going”
Speaking the unspeakable
He went back out there throwing
Bottom of the ninth
& He stood high upon the mound
3 more outs to go
He’d have his name in Cooperstown

First up was Cannizzaro
Who flied out to Alou
Kelly grounded out for Dean
The shortstop yelled, “That’s two”
It must’ve been a mad house
The fans upon their feet
The littler ones among them
Standing on their seats

Next up would’ve been Herbel
But Spezio pinch-hit
He took a 3rd strike looking
And officially, that was it
It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say

Technorati Tags: Dock Ellis

And no, I’m not talking about Santa.

Everyone has heard the cliche, those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it. Mostly that old saw is nonsense. History
doesn’t repeat. Study it in even a cursory manner and you’ll see that
clearly. People, however, generally do make the same stupid mistakes
over and over again regardless of what historical period they live in.

Thus we have this
story from today of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich who has been
arrested for blatantly shaking people down over various things,
including the appointment of President-Elect Barrack Obama’s successor
in the US Senate.

The historical lesson that I’m hoping the Democratic Party learns from
is that of the Republican Party of the Reconstruction period following
the US Civil War. Republicans held sway over practically the entire
US government for 9 years following the end of the Civil War. They
did so primarily because theirs was the party of victory in that war -
the party of loyalty to the Union. When a Republican ran against a
Democrat for an office all the Republican needed to do to discredit
his opponent was call the man a traitor, and it worked. It stopped
working in 1874 for a number of reasons. One of the big ones, and the
one that put the GOP at a significant political disadvantage for
decades afterward was rampant corruption.

One of the greatest military leaders in US History, Ulysses Grant,
became President in 1869 and has gone down in history as one of the
worst, if not the worst, chief executives this country has ever had.
That evaluation is mostly based on the hot and cold running corruption
in his Administration that he was never able to get control over. The
Grant Administration sold influence like no other in our history. It
is also based on the horrid mismanagement of the first economic
depression in US history. These two events led to the Democrats
(remember, these folks were literally traitors to the Union and
defeated combatants in a recent civil war) retaking Congress in 1874.

Part of the problem for President Grant was his unwillingness to
denounce the members of his Administration or party who were caught
with their hands in the cookie jar. By refusing to come out against
people who had clearly broken the law and the public trust he lost the
confidence of the public and was viewed as a political puppet by the
news media and portrayed as such often by his political opponents.
One of the weaknesses of the current Democratic Party is their history
of being lead like puppies by lobbyists and political donors. In 1994
the GOP knocked the Democrats out of their majority in the House by
successfully branding the Dems as crooks and liars. One of the
weaknesses of the GOP in the last two Congressional elections was
their own recent tendency to let the donors and the lobbyists call the
shots.

If Barrack Obama, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership,
hope to maintain control over the government beyond the next
Congressional mid-term elections they will need to make sure that
Blagojevich and anyone else who conducts their affairs in a less than
scrupulous manner in the Party is not only rooted out but also
ridiculed and vilified. Otherwise the American people will most
likely choose another “change” in 2010.

Technorati Tags: Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, Barrack Obama, US Senate, Democratic Party, US Civil War, Republicans, GOP, Ulysses Grant

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)
An unstable pharmacist humiliates you over your hemorrhoid medication.
Angelina Jolie comes on to you at a holiday party, but your cavalier
remark about the pigs-in-a-blanket sends her off in a huff. Your blues
tune about eating Raisin Bran becomes a major hit for an indie polka
band. Taking a class in medieval tampon storage pays big dividends in
future endeavors.

Makes about as much sense as most “real” horoscopes.

Hat’s off to 23/6 for the chuckle.

The Onion nails it again with a farewell article from George W. Bush.

This was my favorite bit:

“Everywhere I look brings back memories. The Blue Room is
where Laura and I put up our first White House Christmas tree. Down
the hall, in the East Room, is where I concocted my favorite signing
statement to circumvent the anti-torture guidelines of the Detainee
Treatment Act of 2005, and=97ooh!=97right across the way is where Cheney
and I decided to use the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and the
nation’s subsequent fear of another attack as an excuse to carry out
our long-standing plan to invade Iraq. I should really get a picture
before I leave.”

Like I said, I’d be laughing more if it weren’t completely true.

My friends and I have been ripping on Plaxico Burress for a few days
over his “accident”, or as one blog put it his Plaxident - the
definition of which is doing something incredibly stupid that costs
you $35 million.

Anyway, this
clip from the Daily Show has Jon Stewart just utterly destroying
the guy, plus adding a pretty funny original segment of his own. Now
I just want to know where I can pick up a copy of Plaxico’s song.
It’s pretty darned catchy.

This isn’t a very popular sentiment right now, but it’s one that I
have no doubt is the correct one - the US auto industry does not
deserve to be bailed out.

GM says today that without $4 billion in immediate loans from the
government it will be forced into bankruptcy. While I understand all
too well that the auto industry is a big web and that bankruptcy of GM
will lead to a lot of economic pain for many, many associated
businesses and communities, it is beyond ludicrous to claim that this
has happened for any reason other than one very simple one - GM makes
lousy cars.

Two things have propped GM up in the past 20 years:

1) a very successful European division that makes pretty good cars

2) their ability to successfully milk the SUV and massive truck trend
in the US for all it was worth

GM deserves credit for making reasonably good choices in engineering
and design of the cars they’ve sold in the European market. They
deserve to rot for throwing all their eggs into a basket no sane
person could logically support with their over-reliance on massive
SUV’s and trucks in the US market. Today one of their statements
about their planned restructuring to stave off failure is that they
plan to shutter their HUMMER division. Well duh. They should have
slammed the doors on that division when gas prices started to rise
above $2.50 per gallon. A halfwit could have guessed that HUMMER’s
would fall out of fashion once driving one got outrageously expensive,
and while gas prices have fallen considerably in the past month or
two, that’s largely due to reduced demand as a result of the economic
downturn and not any resurrection of the supply of oil in the world.

GM should also be told to lie in the bed they’ve made themselves
because propping them up effectively penalizes Ford for managing their
house in much better order. Folks this IS capitalism in action.
Capitalism is a boom/bust system. Right now we’re in the bust cycle.
Pain is something you simply have to deal with once you buy into the
system as a whole. Some businesses are going to fail. Some will
succeed. Frankly, it’s a bit immoral of our government to say that if
you’re a big enough fish we’ll rescue you. Will there be bailout
packages for all the small businesses that are inevitably going to
fail over the next few months because their business plans were
fatally flawed?

Like pretty much everyone else I know I was horrified by the story of
the Walmart temp worker who was literally trampled to death by
over-eager shoppers on Black Friday. The reaction I heard from a lot
of folks was something along the lines of “what a horrible way to
die.” Well, yes. Being trampled is probably not at the top of many
of our lists of ways we’d like to check out. More horrible though was
the reason people were stampeding in the first place - the so-called
Black Friday sale at Walmart. Ugh. If I do have to be trampled to
death there are a few ways in which I could accept this:

1) The building is on fire.

2) A wild animal has gotten loose from its cage at the zoo.

3) I’m stupid enough to participate in the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

In each of the above cases I would still be roadkill, but at least my
family and friends would know that there was a good damned reason for
the folks who smooshed me to death to be running in a chaotic and
uncontrolled fashion towards me in the first place.

Getting killed because people are trying to spend money they do not
need to spend on overpriced garbage that has been temporarily
discounted doesn’t qualify as an acceptable reason to trample another
human being to death.

For several years I’ve made a personal commitment not to enter any
retail establishment on Black Friday. It’s unnecessary. That much
I’ve known for a while. Now I know it is also dangerous, so I’m even
more committed to avoiding this utterly absurd ritual of consumerism.

What strikes me is that, as a whole, our nation seems to have not
noticed that we are in a major economic downturn that was *ding*
primarily caused by thoughtless consumerism and abuse of credit. Yes,
we all spend too much from time to time, and honestly in a healthy
economy there is very little wrong with that, but this situation we’re
in today is the direct result of people buying things they well and
truly could not afford - complicated by the banking sector’s
willingness to extend credit to people who it could never reasonably
expect to repay these debts.

In such a time it seems to me that the best reaction would have been
to think very seriously about our spending this holiday season. I can
recall lean times when I was young where members of my family gave
very few gifts for the holidays. The funny thing is, those were the
years that I recall the gifts meaning the most. They were few in
number but well thought out and meaningful. What it seems like most
of my fellow Americans are doing this year is trying to use up their
balances on their credit cards before they have to default on them or
their limits are reduced. Thus the literal mad rush to bargains that
cost one man his life.

Susan Brooks Thistlewaite tackled this same subject in a column in the
Washington Post today. Give it a read
here. She’s right on the money. Oh, and definitely read “The
Grinch Who Stole Christmas” to your kids.