The Things They Carried

My wife has a new role in the educational system. After more than a decade in the classroom as first a Teaching Assistant and then a middle-school Special Education teacher, she got hired this summer as an Educational Diagnostician. Basically, the diagnostician's role is to test kids who are referred for evaluation for eligibility for a number of different kinds of services, prepare reports based on the test results, and sit on the evaluation panel that makes a determination about the student's eligibility. 

We're about a month in to her new role, and I'd say it's going well. In fact, I got a text from her on Friday which read: "I. Love. My. Job." Instead of working in one school, she supports a cluster of three (one elementary, one middle, and one high school), all of which are within five minutes of our house. Her biggest concerns at the moment seem to be feeling weird that she has free time to get coffee, or leave for lunch, or go to the bathroom whenever she feels like it. Not wherever, like Dave. It makes me happy to see her happy.

There was a moment last week that, while a little bit related to her new role, completely and tangentially took me back nearly 45 years in a flash of memory and stuck with me as an example of how our wildly complex and lunatic brains process information and retain ephemera. 

She was reviewing one of the testing kits that she uses as part of the evaluation process. The battery in question is called the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA). It's a fairly standard instrument that's been in use for a long time. As she flipped through the pages, I had a flashback.

When I was 9 or 10, I was tested by the school in Alabama where I lived to see if I was eligible for the district's gifted and talented program. (I know what you're thinking, and I agree: wasn't it obvious, and why did they even bother with a test?) I don't remember very much about the test, save for one thing, and that memory is as vivid as if it were yesterday. The question in, um, question offered a logic question in the guise of a spatial relations question. I was presented with a square that represented a pasture, and told by the woman doing the testing that my ball was lost in the pasture. The task was to use my pencil to trace the path I would take to most efficiently and effectively find the ball.

Friends, I tell you verily that my pencil tip roamed all over that fucking pasture, to, fro, up, down, diagonally in no particular pattern with no particular rhyme or reason. The lady testing me did an excellent job of disguising her amusement at the little whackadoodle sitting in front of her. My answer looked something like this:

I have no idea whether I found my fucking ball. I remember nothing else about that test, which I passed with flying colors, according to my mother, who I recounted my recollection to over the weekend. But I remember walking out of the test berating myself internally for how badly I fucked up that answer. I knew immediately that my path was batshit dumb. I knew it while I was tracing it, as a matter of fact. And I know that I knew it because my dumb brain won't let me forget it.

For damn near five decades I've remembered that one question from that one battery I took and aced. The memory comes back on a regular basis, and it came flying back when I saw the testing kit my wife was working with. 

Ain't memory a bitch? And ain't it fascinating how we hold on to things that matter not a whit while we forget things of vastly greater import. Maybe it means I'm a creative thinker. Maybe it's a sign that my genius can't be constrained by the normies' notions of efficiency and order. Or maybe there's another explanation.

The lesson, as always, is that I'm an idiot. Turns out I've been on for a long time. At least my wife is happy.

MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 5

Let's write about baseball again, he said. It'll be fun, he said. Pennant race, he said. He's a jerk.

This Time in Red Sox

72-71
10 GB AL East (we should probably stop worrying about the AL East), 4 GB the last AL Wild Card

Chris Flexen is the very definition of a journeyman. The 30 year-old righthander has started 109 games over seven seasons (including three as a Met). He won 14 games for the Mariners in 2021, nearly half of his career total of 29. He sports a career ERA of 5.04. And this season, he's broken records as a member of the Chicago White Sox rotation. 

Going into today's game in Boston, the White Sox had lost 20 consecutive games when Flexen started. He's 2-14 with a 5.26 ERA and a 1.52 WHIP. There's an argument that he's been the worst pitcher in baseball this season. I think you know where this is going.

After winning the first two games of the series against Chicago, the Red Sox took a 1-0 lead into the sixth inning, where they promptly gave up two unearned runs. Wilyer Abreu tied the game in the bottom of the frame on a homer, and it stayed 2-2 until the top of the 9th. When the White Sox scored five times, two of those runs scoring on an - altogether now - error. 7-2 bad guys, while the good guys have fallen into sixth place in the American League, even as the gap to the final playoff spot has remained stubbornly constant.

Nineteen games to play, against the Orioles (3), Yankees (4), Rays (6), Twins (3), and Jays (3). Nine at home, ten on the road. Not that much ball left, and the target's annoyingly out of reach. Whitney rooted for the Sox in 2004 when it became apparent things weren't going the Mets' way. I'm not that far from breaking out my blue and orange stuff.

Right Now in Mets

78-65
7 GB NL East, Tied for Last NL Wild Card

Not so fast, my friend. 

What the last 24 hours in Mets Township have taught us is that anything can happen in baseball in a single game or a short series. 19 games is a season's equivalent of a short series. The Sox have 9 games against sub-.500 teams and 3 against a Wild Card foe. As Kate Bush sang to Peter Gabriel in 1986, Don't Give Up.

Meanwhile, the Mets' own n-n-n-nineteen games come against the Jays (3), Phils (7)(!), Nats (3), Braves (3), and Brewers (3). 7 home, 12 away. 10 games against division-leading teams assured of playoff spots, maybe runs. It's a stretch that leads off with a telling week in Toronto and Philadelphia. Yipes.

But let's take a quick second to pat the Metsies on the back. Putting together 9 victories in a row during a key turn in the season has proven absolutely vital. The Braves, our nemesis this year as in history, have won series after series, annoyingly so. But they dropped 3 of 4 to the surging Phillies, and that gave the Mets a chance to pull even in this sprint.

Francisco Lindor, please keep up this torrid pace. Need ya down the stretch. Pete, keep on clubbing it. Mark Vientos, stay the course. And to the pitching staff... please continue firing away. Build on the very good we saw lately.

Yesterday's smothering by the scrubby Reds and their so-so arms was frustrating, but I guess those games are just going to happen. Winnable losses are still something we are looking to dodge.

But let's face it -- the road to the postseason is fraught with potholes and landmines, darting squirrels and deer, slowing gravel and halting road signs. The Phillies themselves represent a scowling statey with flares checking for inebriated drivers. So let's not get too drunk on a great nine games. 

So much work left to do. But we are where we wanted to be when we began this sprint. LFGM.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Humans are a curious lot. Kind and cruel, generous and selfish, adventurous and timid, welcoming and intolerant, yin and yang. Complex creatures. Or, less charitably, contradictions with feet. We are wonderfully adaptive yet often averse to change unless it benefits us directly, in society and even in our diversions. 

Get me a fat guy with a chain, he said

The start of football season provides a small reminder that some practices die hard and persist for no good reason. The technology exists to measure the length of golf shots to the inch, to separate race finishers by thousandths of a second, to call balls and strikes consistently, to determine whether an attacker’s shoulder was behind a defender when a pass was struck for offside in soccer. Yet for a couple of its elemental components, football still relies on a field official eyeballing ball placement and two fat guys carrying a ten-yard length of chain attached to two poles. 

Seems less than ideal and a mite archaic, witness Afghan villagers who say, “Chain? Poles? Dibs on that.” It's not as if football is stuck in the 1950s. We’ve had replay for years and slo-mo, hi-def looks at whether a receiver got his feet in bounds and if a ball carrier’s knee touched the ground before he fumbled. The NFL has computer tablets with in-game pics and printouts on the sidelines and in-helmet communication on the field. Third-down and long-yardage tendencies are available with a few clicks. Sensors and miniature mobile devices, wearable technology, track speed and performance and bodily functions. Training and recovery practices are well beyond cold and hot tubs. The league has finally come around to concussion concerns, albeit slowly and reluctantly. But two of the game’s fundamental features – Where should the ball be placed? Did the offense advance ten yards? – are decided pretty much identically to how it was done seventy years ago. 

It’s a little like doctors embracing the medical innovation and equipment of recent years yet still falling back on rectal thermometers [NOTE: That's the example you chose?] and bloodletting. Granted, coaches may challenge the spot of the ball, just as they can fumbles and receptions and incompletions. It shouldn’t come to that. 

For something as basic as ball placement, there should be as little ambiguity as possible. The field official should have an earpiece with a direct line of communication to Command Central, with all its TV monitors and angles and replays. When he spots the ball after a play, the person at HQ gives a thumbs-up if he got it right, or if he didn’t: “Not there. Move it back a foot.” Ninety percent of the time those calls aren’t critical, since most plays conclude well short of or well past the ten-yard threshold. But on third- and fourth-down plays, and inches short or inches converted, exactitude is of some importance. When HQ determines where the ball should be spotted on first down, it also knows precisely where ten yards downfield is. It isn’t left to a guy trying to get the spot right among tangled bodies and high emotions, and then a couple guys schlepping the chain across the field trying to measure accurately. 

Yes, a bit of drama is lost when fans don’t get to see the chain stretched out on the Jumbotron or on the flatscreen at home signifying that a team did or didn’t make a first down. Do you want a moment of theater, or do you want to get it right? The potential criticism that giving ball spots and contested third- and fourth-down conversions to “the booth” or HQ will further disrupt game flow doesn’t exactly hold water. Football is already chopped up like an elementary school music recital – usually six or seven seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of huddles and substitutions, never mind the TV commercial breaks, replay reviews, injury interruptions and Tom Brady hawking diet supplements and self-improvement programs. 

The NFL gets into the weeds all the time with peripheral stuff. Spare us tweaked kickoff formations and altered overtime rules for postseason and mind-numbing explanations about “When is a catch a catch?” and “Did he complete a football play?” Address the basics and let the players take care of the rest. That and maybe Jerry Jones in a dunking booth during Super Bowl Week – something both optimists and grumps could get behind.

Things That Suck

Croix Bethune is a star in the making. The rookie attacking midfielder for the NWSL's Washington Spirit tied the single season league record for assists last month, dropping her 10th dime in a 4-1 Spirit win over the Kansas City Current. We gave her a shoutout at the time. She also won a gold medal as an alternate on the U.S. Women's team that took the title in Paris. She was flying.

Life can be cruel sometimes. 

On August 28, Bethune joined fellow DMV-area athletes Torri Huske, Casey Kreuger, and Hal Hershfelt to throw out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. Yesterday, it was reported that Bethune tore the meniscus in one of her knees and will miss the remainder of the NWSL season. She'll end her rookie campaign with five goals to go with the aforementioned assists. 

Just one more bit of evidence that baseball is stupid.

MLC @ GTB Vol. 1, Episode 4

Yes, GTBers, it's more Mets and Red Sox drivel. Hoping you are enjoying this throwback venture, and if not, well, I guess I'd suggest that you get off your collective keister and add some content of your own. Other than a solitary Teej joint in June, only OBX Dave has buffeted the (mostly) rob and (way less) Whitney show this summer. 

Game 2 of the GTB Derby
Red Sox at Mets
7:10pm, Tuesday, September 3

With our Sox correspondent RR taking in some of New Zealand's finest smooth music (ever) tonight, that leaves me to watch the Met-iocrity and paint something of a picture for him upon his return from the Trap. We'll drop a few Crowded House references in here for fans.

Met lefty David "Sgt." Peterson on the hill tonight. Last season he spent six months in a leaky boat (Not even Crowded House! Their brother act Split Enz! Wow!), but this year he's plugged the holes and is sporting a 2.83 ERA.

Oh, and it's his birthday tonight. O/U on mentions of that unimportant fact in the broadcast: 16.5.

Peterson is on tonight: 3 K's in the first. (Ed Note: 8 K's through 4, and he ended up with 11 through six frames.)  But Sox hurler Kutter Crawford matched him -- if not in strikeouts, sheer dominance. He surrendered just one hit and 2 walks over six strong innings while fanning 8.

Thing is... that one hit was a 2-run job by Francisco Lindor. Crushing it, my man.

So, I think I failed to get through to the GTBitterati how good a reference this was in the last post:

His name sounds like Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera had a baby.

See, for the uninformed, Roger "Shamuel Longhorn" Clemens named his sons Koby, Kory, Kacy, and Kody to reference his lofty K total. It's cool, no, really. And Mariano Rivera was the maestro with his cut fastball, referred to as the "cutter." You know what they say about jokes you have to explain. Sigh.

Anywho, Kutter Crawford kept the Mets hitters utterly locked out beyond that one mistake. Kid has some sick off-speed weapons in his arsenal. 

Peterson leaves after 6, up 2-1.  His only allowed run came on a flare, a gork, a dying quail, to quote Crash Davis. Not bad.

José Buttó comes on in relief. I'm not thrilled. This guy's work makes me mangle his name in a horrible way utilizing a certain Long Island Lolita Lothario and the f-word. Be cool, Whit. Deep breaths. And then he mows the Sox down 1-2-3.

Keith Hernandez sees a toddler smiling adorably for a sideline camera and takes the time to point out that there's chocolate on her face and that her mother should clean her face. Yeah. You tell her, Keith.

Crawford leaves after 6, down 2-1. Mark Vientos promptly hits something so strong into the left field seats in the bottom of the 7th. That's our 3B, baby.

Then the same Mets pitcher walks the first two batsmen in the Red Sox 8th. Buttofucko! He's quickly yanked for Reed Garrett, but after an infield single, there are bases loaded with nobody out. A sac fly later, Rob's speedster Masataka Yoshida comes up with a chance to break our backs. Don't dream it's over, boys. (You knew it was coming at some point.)

4-6-3. Phewwwwwwww. Feels like we've seen that go the other way too many times, but as we know, history never repeats. 

Need some insurance here, Metsies, I say aloud to a television. Up 3-2, bottom 8. As if to say "I got you," the Mets bats come alive. 38-year-old Sox reliever Chris Martin is in trouble immediately, firing nothing at the speed of sound (gauche to mix bands, but that's his name). McNeil singles!

"You know, if I thought Alvarez could bunt, I'd say it'd be a perfect spot to let him do something successful offensively."

      -- Gary Cohen backhanding our catcher, who's free-falling in a slump

And then Alvarez, in defiance of that slap, hits one the opposite way. 2 runners aboard. Then Flushing's conquering hero Lindor doubles off the wall. Keep it up, lad.

Darude's "Sandstorm" is playing at Citi Field. Um, that's a Gamecocks song! Ask Mark or Greg! Oh well. It's out. And it's fun.

A sac fly and a strikeout later, Polar Pete crushes one to left to make it 7-2. Hoo boy.

The Sox go down in order in the 9th as the Met with the worst haircut (Ryne Stanek) closes it out. Mets win. Happy Birthday, David Peterson.

I'm hoping rob isn't giving up the ship yet. But I need one more W tomorrow night.

MLC @ GTB, Vol. 1, Episode 3

A little bit of a delayed release schedule from the MLC editorial team, what with the holiday weekend, and everything. We'll try to do better next week.

This Week(ish) in Red Sox

70-67

9 GB AL East, 4.5 GB Last AL Wild Card

When we last gathered here to talk baseball, I posited that the Sox' upcoming homestand offered a chance to breathe after a pair of tough road series. Then the Sox proceeded to lose seven of 10 to dent their postseason chances none too slightly. 

As we type this, the Sox are locked into a Monday night battle with the Metropolitans. In the past 10 minutes, we've seen New York centerfielder Brandon Nimmo let a hard-hit ball by Ceddanne Rafaela get under him for a triple, which turned into a run-scoring single by Jarren Duran, which in turn became a top-notch TOOTBLAN. After the end of the half-inning, Duran misplayed a Nimmo flyball into a double that gave the Mets a 2-1 lead. Right as Mets' color man Keith Hernandez was talking about the putrid nature of the Sox' defense. Sigh.

Let's talk TOOTBLAN a bit, because it's more fun than the Sox right now. It's an acronym for Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop, originally coined by Cubs blogger Tony Jewell in 2008. Jewell actually turned it into a statistical measure, defined as "... any non-force out a player makes on the bases, including outs made while attempting to take an extra base, outs on would-be sacrifice flies, pickoffs, double-offs, fielder’s choice outs with an open base, batter and runner interference and getting hit by a batted ball." Whit and I concur that it's one of the better framings out there, fun to say and as silly as the play that causes one to invoke it.

Connor Wong just dropped a foul pop to keep a Jeff McNeil at-bat alive. I assume it'll become a homer. That's the team's 100th error of the season. Maybe I'll workshop a TOOTBLAN-like acronym to capture the absurdity of this team's defense. 

Actual photo of Tyler O'Neill with his glove

It'll be useful for describing what Tyler O'Neill just did, chasing a ball into the corner and then batting it about like a golden retriever puppy learning how to fetch and allowing the keg-shaped D.J. Stewart to score from first. How does Mangled And Muffed Like A Dude With Pan Hands? MAMLADWPH? I'll keep working on it.

The game's settled into a comfortable rhythm, a couple of doubles here and there, bunch of strikeouts, no real threats for either team on a windy evening in Queens. Baseball that matters, at least a little, at this time of year is nice.

Citi Field folks just put up an Amazin' Mets, Amazin' Dunkin advertisement behind the plate. Against the Red Sox? Them's fighting words. 

Sox got runners at 2nd and 3rd with two out in the top of the eighth and Danny Young struggling to find his command. Rafael Devers came to the plate and...dribbled one to second to end the inning. Went down meekly in the ninth to lose, 4-1.

With 25 games to play, the Sox are both going to need to get moving and have one or both of the Twins and Royals to scuffle. The latter have been trying to oblige, losing six of seven while the Sox have slumped. Meanwhile, the Tigers have won eight of 10 to climb within one of Boston, and Seattle are only a half-game further back. It's getting late early for the good guys.

This Mini-Week in Mets

74-64

7.5 GB NL East, 0.5 GB Last NL Wild Card

TOOTBLAN.  MAMLADWPH. WTFMFWTFAYT? These and other disparaging acronyms are, at varying times, more than apropos for the New York Mets. The thing is, right now... dare I say it... we're seeing a fair bit less of the dunder-headed gaffes that have plagued the Mets through their failed seasons.

What we're seeing instead is timely hitting, solid pitching, just enough defense not to be mocked like the Sox (Brandon Nimmo's whoops-a-daisy and DJ Stewart's wik-wik-wonk last night excepted), and the ability to capitalize on the mistakes of opponents. As was live-blogged above.

Us History: After the games of June 2, the Mets were dangling at 24-35 and once again sporting a look that warranted an Office Space caption of "What would ya say... you do here?" It weren't pretty. After the games of last night, precisely three months later, the Mets sit at 74-64. That's a 50-29 clip. To which I tip my cap. 

(Them History: The Sox were at 30-30 on June 2 and they're now 70-68... nothing disastrous, just midgrade.)

That said, all that matters, mathwise, is that the Metros are still on the outside looking in for that last Wild Card slot. By the skinniest of margins but still -- not in. 24 games left. Three solid teams ahead of them, each following every mini-slide with a bigger mini-streak. Gaining ground has been challenging. 

The Mets' David Peterson on the hill at Citi tonight. Solid lately. The Sox send Kutter Crawford out there. His name sounds like Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera had a baby. Let's hope he doesn't channel either of them tonight. LFGM.

Small Victories

Reporters are rarely sympathetic figures, owing to all those bothersome questions, fake news conspiracy projects and sketchy table manners. On occasion, however, their fellow citizens treat them charitably, if not equitably. That those calls sometimes are made posthumously isn’t ideal, but free buffet vouchers probably aren’t in the cards. 

Jeff German

You may have seen the news item recently that a former Las Vegas politician and administrator was convicted of murdering a local investigative reporter in Sept. 2022. Longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal snoop Jeff German was stabbed to death outside his home after he wrote stories detailing the shady and shoddy conduct of Robert Telles, who oversaw a county administrative office at the time. We wrote about the murder in this space when it occurred because it was both alarming and peculiar. Reporters getting iced for doing their jobs is an outrage and an act more associated with authoritarian or criminal settings. 

German covered corruption and organized crime and scandal in Vegas for more than three decades. But it was a disgraced low-level bureaucrat who killed him, a jury ruled, which may be even more jarring. It’s like handling rattlesnakes your entire life and being taken out by a mosquito bite. Prosecutors produced surveillance video and DNA and physical evidence that put Telles near German’s home the morning of the murder, including parts of a disguise that were found cut up later at Telles’s home. 

Telles, for his part, maintained his innocence and wove a tale that a shadowy group that included former colleagues and a local real estate company hired a hit man and then framed him because he planned to make unpopular changes within his office. Telles’s attorney stopped short of peddling that theory and argued instead that there was insufficient evidence to convict. The jury disagreed, and Telles, 47, was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 20 years. 

Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook in a statement called the verdict “a measure of justice” for German and for all murdered journalists, which it is. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said that the verdict sends the message that “any attempts to silence the media or to silence or intimidate a journalist will not be tolerated,” which sounds good but is less enforceable. 

The truth is that reporters and journalists are no more protected or exempt from violence or bad actors than anyone else. This is as it should be, though the Framers thought enough of a free press to highlight it in Constitutional Amendment Uno. German was the only journalist killed in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, though at least 67 journalists were killed worldwide that year, most in war zones and while reporting on crime, corruption and authoritarian regimes. Reporters don’t ask for special treatment, only basic courtesy and an acknowledgement that their jobs are at times difficult and necessary. An occasional open bar would be nice, as well.