The stupidest agency

The CIA is incompetent, stupid or simply a fifth column organization within the government.

How can the Agency completely fark this up?

In a letter made public Nov. 13, prosecutors in the [Zacharias] Moussaoui case admitted to [Judge Leonie] Brinkema that the CIA had wrongly assured her that no videotapes or audiotapes existed of interrogations of certain high-profile terrorism detainees. In fact, two such videotapes and one audio tape existed.

Brinkema is very liberal and anti-prosecutor. She made numerous favorable rulings for the Moussaoui defense that the Fourth Circuit overturned. In a recent case involving post-trial hearings for "Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim cleric from Virginia sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for soliciting treason," Brinkema ripped the government's evidence handling and said she does not trust assurances from the CIA. This may result in al-Timimi obtaining a new trial.

Ugh.

Pick an ace?

The Yanks essentially announced yesterday that they're seeking Johan Santana. The Twins made the astute move in 2000 to take the unprotected raw A-ball pitcher off the Astros in the Rule V draft, stuck him on the Twinkies' roster for a year, then began grooming him. In 2002, he whiffed 212 in 157 innings between AAA (13.87 K/9 ratio) and the Twins (11.38 K/9). The next year, he started their playoff series against the Yanks. In 2004, he won the Cy Young Award by putting out a Pedrovian performance (20-6, 6.16 H/9, 10.46 K/9 and nearly 5:1 K:BB ratio) and his 2005 and 2006 (CYA #2) seasons were both top-end. He's started five playoff games and allowed two runs or fewer four times.

He is an ace. But there are cracks in his armor -- his H/9 ratio this season was 7.5 -- nearly 25% more hits per nine innings than in his first CYA year. He gave up 33(!) homers. And his ERA was up 20% over last year.

Unless the Yanks get him in the next offseason, he shouldn't be a Yankee.

Seriously.

I agree with this guy, the price is too high. With a premium on young pitching, and the Yanks lacking position players in their farm system, coughing up Phil Hughes, Melky Cabrera and Jose Tabata is just stupid. As Buster Olney has noted, the Yanks would then have to pay for Santana's high-priced extension and another $10-12M for a free agent centerfielder (like Aaron Rowland) in the next two years before Austin Jackson is ready. And every dollar the Yanks pay a free agent is really $1.40 due to luxury tax -- that $10M per year for Rowland becomes a $14M hit to the Yanks; a $20M contract to Santana is a $28M hit. That's ludicrous.

Hughes is a potential franchise starter. He is only 21, and his numbers at that age are FAR better than Santana's even though Hughes pitched with an iffy leg for all but his first two starts in his rookie season. He's been on every Yankee fan's radar since the Yanks drafted him and dominated consistently (see Trenton 2006: 10-3, 2.09 ERA, 5.59 H/9, 10.7 K/9) in the farm system. In other words: the doubters need to smarten up. Talk all you want about Clay Buchholz and his 3-4 MLB quality pitches, and how Hughes' curve was inconsistent (partly because of the tweaked hamstring), Hughes can be a top of the rotation starter on a perennial contender. And the Yanks would give that away?

I hope not.

The other rumor also makes no sense: Cabrera, Tabata, Alan Horne and Chien-Ming Wang. Why would the Yanks trade a career 46-18 starter who is under contract for another three years for a starter who has fewer wins over the past two seasons (Wang 38, Santana 34)? If Wang isn't a #1 playoff starter, who cares? He can get better (see Pettitte, 1996 World Series). After all, in the playoffs from 1999-2001, Andy Pettitte was 6-3 and the '01 ALCS MVP (with two very solid starts in the '00 Series but two no-decisions); Roger Clemens was 6-4 (and 0-2 in the '00 ALDS against the A's); and El Duque went 7-2 and the '99 ALCS MVP. Only one of those three is a sure-fire Hall of Famer and a dominant ace, and he's the one with the worst record of that bunch. The Yanks are 5-1 in the ALDS when losing game 1, and that loss comes with the Lake Erie midge factor.

So keep Wang, keep Hughes, even keep Kennedy. If the Yanks want to cough up a young arm, trade Humberto Sanchez and Kevin Whelan, whom they got from the Tigers in the Sheffield trade. Don't give up the stars in waiting (Wang, Joba, Phil, Kennedy) who could turn into the Bronx's own version of Glavine-Smoltz-Avery (see 1991-93 Braves), with hopefully better overall results.

And if the Yanks feel they need an ace-like alternative -- make a deal for Danny Haren of the A's. Oakland is about to tear it up and start over because the A's need better hitters and want to get cheap pitchers. Sanchez, Horne, Tabata and a minor league infielder could do the trick without touching the Joba-Phil-Ian triumvirate. Haren was 15-9, 3.07, 222.7 IP, 55/192 K/BB last year, he's under contract for less than $20M through 2010 and successfully transitioned from the NL to the AL. The Yanks need good pitching -- lefties are irrelevant (see 2004 RedSawx). A rotation built around Joba-Phil-Ian-Wang-Haren -- that has staying power.

Religion of Peace

And the West is worried about offending THEIR sensibilities.

KHARTOUM, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A British teacher detained in Sudan after her class called a teddy bear Mohammad was on Wednesday charged with insulting religion, state media said.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, was also charged with inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs.

"Khartoum north prosecution unit has completed its investigation and has charged the Briton Gillian (Gibbons) under Article 125 of the criminal code," the Sudanese news agency SUNA said, quoting a senior Justice Ministry official.

The matter would go before a court on Thursday and Gibbons was expected to appear. Lawyers say Gibbons, who is from Liverpool, could face 40 lashes, a fine, or six months in jail if convicted. In London, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office
said: "This has not been officially confirmed but we are urgently investigating."

Earlier on Wednesday, three British embassy officials and a teaching colleague from the Unity High School where Gibbons worked were allowed to visit her for more than 90 minutes.

"I can confirm that we have met Ms. Gibbons and she said she is being treated well," said British consul Russell Phillips. "We remain in close contact with the Sudanese authorities on this case," he said, declining to give further details.

Sports geeks go nuts

A rare bonk from the great Verducci -- he tried to determine the most likely teams to go from sub-.500 in '07 to the playoffs in '08. But four of his six (Reds, A's, Twins, Royals, Rangers, Giants -- in that order) candidates are in the AL! That's a bit loopy: (1) the AL East will still be Yanks and RedSawx slugging it out to such a degree that one will win the division and the other will be favored to win the wild card slot; (2) Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago should all be good or better next year, and slugging it out in the AL Central should cripple the hopes of a wild card wannabe (in 13 years, only one wild card winner came from the AL Central); (3) the Angels are better than the 92 win '07 team, therefore the A's or Rangers would have to beat out the Yanks or RedSawx for the wild card. Verducci did a statistical analysis of the teams he thinks might enter the fray. The real most-likely-to-sneak-in who stank last year are the Reds and Cards.

A remembrance

Here are remarks on Robert Jordan by World Fantasy Award winner and top fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay as the MC of the World Fantasy Award ceremonies this year:

. . . two months ago James Rigney Jr, better known as Robert Jordan, died well before his time. It seems apt that this gathering of writers and editors and readers devoted to fantasy, and celebrating it, pause briefly, to acknowledge that.

John Clute, no lesser figure, said of Jordan's magnum opus, "when complete, the sequence will almost certainly constitute one of the major epic narratives of modern fantasy". It was never complete. He died at 58.

There has always been a tension between writers who aspire to high art, enduring work, and those who pursue popular success, defining themselves as entertainers. The literati disdain the commercial while envying their bank accounts, and the bestsellers often regard the artistic as elitist and unreadable and the twain don't do a lot of beer-drinking together.

A few years ago Stephen King - an award nominee this afternoon - spoke at the National Book Awards where he was being acknowledged for his life's work, and he lambasted a glittering crowd for not adequately honoring popular fiction. He said, "I have no patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark�"

That same day, Shirley Hazzard, who had just won the National Book Award, disagreed, saying she had too little time left to live and read, that she would focus on Shakespeare and Conrad. She said, "I want to say in response to Stephen King, I don't think giving us a reading list of those who are most read at this moment is much of a satisfaction."

Both writers are people I respect and I will cravenly say here that I think both are right. Because, and this is the point, these are decisions that we all make for ourselves. We all assess what we value, how we want to spend our leisure time, or even if we want to call reading 'leisure time' - as opposed to necessary oxygen - and there is no formula, no rule.

This brings me back to Jim Rigney, Robert Jordan. On the Locus website I noted, in preparing these remarks, that he was never in his life nominated for a World Fantasy Award, for a Nebula, for a Hugo. Those encompass judge awards, peer awards and fan balloting.

I will not stand here and argue - nor am I in a position to assess - whether this is appropriate or not. What I can say, what I'd like you to consider, is that a mature, increasingly important genre has a need - a defining need - for literary work and for the entertaining bestsellers.

And - further - that the popular successes are central to any genre's emergence at the centre of a culture. From 1990 forward, Robert Jordan produced bestsellers. Jokes were made about forests destroyed for the print runs. He brought innumerable readers to fantasy; for better or worse he consolidated the template of the multi-multi-volume series. He became the New York Times bestseller list face of fantasy. Whatever one thinks of that, every person in this room can rattle off, as easily as I can, the writers who followed and even those who preceded Jordan, who gained a significant boost from the success of his work - and from his personal generosity in offering support to their books. George Martin has said as much in print. I can affirm that response myself: his generosity as a reader towards work very different from his own. And is there anyone here who'd want to deny that J.K. Rowling built upon his entrenching of the ongoing saga in shaping - and selling - her own?

We need to be large enough as a genre to acknowledge this without condescension. To note that editors and writers and publishers in this field flourish today because of Jordan's impact, that readers of fantasy find their favored genre centered in the culture now, and that the very recent, untimely passing of a profoundly important figure is worth remembering at the outset of a celebration.

At Jewish weddings a glass is always shattered to affirm that one remembers loss amid joy. Whether you raise a glass in your mind's eye, or break one in remembrance, I invite you to take a moment to remember Robert Jordan.

Thanks

Our thanks on our most cherished holiday to the "rough men" who permit us to sleep peaceably in our beds.

This photo is from Michael Yon, a reader financed journalist in Iraq.

Jets fans . . . not a normal breed

Fans of the New York Jets are a strange group. The normal fandom split when I was a kid went along these lines: Yankees and Giants; Mets and Jets. The reason is simple, the Jets played at the swampy dump named after William Shea; the Giants played at Yankee Stadium until Giants Stadium was built; the Mets and Jets were the new NY teams from the early 60s; the Yanks and Giants were the venerable long-time NY teams, and were the flagship franchises of their sport from the 1920s to the mid-60s.

That split is less pronounced now. The Jets moved into Giants Stadium in the '80s. And as the Mets took the mantle of the city's top baseball team in the mid-to-late 80s (which the Yanks would reverse in the mid-90s), the Giants clearly seized the football spotlight by winning the Super Bowl in the 1986 season, ripping off a 12-4 season in '89, and winning another title in '90. Even as the Giants have fluctuated from mediocre to NFC champs to second-tier playoff contender; the Jets have had wild swings between success and failure, thus demoralizing the fan base a bit. The rivalry between Jets and Giants fans is nowhere near as vituperous as Yankee-Met disdain -- The Monk cheered on the Jets in the '82 playoffs when they lost the AFC title game on a muddy Orange Bowl field that Miami had deliberately not covered during a wet preceding week, specifically to stop the Jets' Freeman McNeil; and I did the same in '98 when the Jets dominated the first half of the AFC title game in Denver, only to be drilled in the second half of a 23-10 loss.

But Jet fans are a different breed -- more akin to the rough English football (soccer) fans of Chelsea than the somewhat more reserved Giants fans (Arsenal or Liverpool), or the pseudo-collegiate enthusiasm of Denver and KC fans. And they have at least one strange ritual during halftime of Jets games, which does not happen during Giants games (same stadium, different ticketholders). Read the NYT article linked to this post for more.

One hint: think catcalls heard often during Mardi Gras.

No, I wouldn't take my kid to a Jets game either.

Dissecting a calumny -- debunking the Reagan-was-racist fallacy

Deroy Murdock dismantles the Paul Krugman/Bob Herbert efforts to portray Ronald Reagan as a racist. The whole piece is worth reading, but here are some highlights.

Krugman and Herbert’s liberal limousine glides right past numerous inconvenient truths about Reagan’s record on race:

As the future president was growing up, “The Reagans were so poor that he played in the street with black children and thought little of it,” Nicholas Wapshott remembered in the November 14 New York Sun.

In his memoir, An American Life, Reagan wrote: “My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals…There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance.”

In 1931, Reagan was on Eureka College’s football team. One night, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls, an Elmhurst, Illinois hotelier refused lodging to two of Reagan’s black teammates. Reagan invited them to stay at his parents’ home, where Mr. and Mrs. Reagan welcomed them. Reagan “and one of the players, William Franklin Burghardt, remained friends and correspondents until Mr. Burghardt died in 1981,” Cannon wrote Sunday.

As an adult, Reagan had a long history of bias-free fair-mindedness. As Cannon added:

As a sports announcer in Iowa in the 1930s, Mr. Reagan opposed the segregation of Major League Baseball. As an actor in Hollywood, he quit a Los Angeles country club because it did not admit Jews. In 1978, when preparing to run for president, Mr. Reagan opposed a California ballot initiative that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the state’s public schools.

Ronald Reagan Jr. recalls the day at a California barbecue when his father dived into a pool to save a black child from drowning.

As president, Reagan named Samuel Pierce, a black man, as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While Pierce was outside Reagan’s inner circle, he was in Reagan’s Cabinet. In 1982, Reagan promoted Roscoe Robinson to become the Army’s first black four-star general. Reagan also helped place Clarence Thomas on his path to the United States Supreme Court by naming him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Simply stated, critics claim Pres. Reagan pursued racist ends because his policies ran contrary to the liberal, government-run, socialistic agenda that the Left advocates.

Ultimately, there is an agenda at work in this situation -- that of dishonest liberals like Krugman and Herbert:

“Why is this slur being floated now?” wonders Hoover Institution scholar Martin Anderson, Reagan’s long-time aide, chief White House domestic-policy adviser, and co-editor of several books documenting Reagan’s insightful, hand-written, speeches, and correspondence on public affairs. “I don’t know — maybe the 20th anniversary of Reagan’s departure from office, which is looming ahead, will show that his legacy is far more important than we knew. And that will be intolerable to a lot of people.”

Especially with the White House at stake, Leftist hacks like Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert will keep trying to smear Ronald Reagan as a racist. The obvious implication is that those of us who love America’s 40th president also are either racists or self-hating blacks.

Like Jeter, I love NY too . . . from afar

The link probably won't work because it's to a subscriber only editorial in the WSJ, but the synopsis is this:

New York State is prosecuting Derek Jeter as a tax cheat.

Seriously.

Like most sports figures in New York, Jeter doesn't have his primary residence in the state. And for good reason: state income taxes max out at 6.8%, city income taxes in NYC put the burden at 10.5% combined for city and state. Put that on top of the 39.1, 38.6 and 35% rates Jeter had in 2001-03 respectively from the Federal government, and nearly half of every dollar he makes over about 150K (probably about a game or two, with his salary) would go to a government . . . if he maintained his domicile in NYC.

He didn't. Because he's not a fool.

Like numerous other sports stars, Jeter makes his home in Florida; many more make their permanent homes in Texas. The reason, other than mild winters, is simple to discern -- NO STATE INCOME TAX. Oh yeah, the property and sales taxes are lower too.

Think about the burden: Wongdoer and I had a favorite teacher in high school who lived in New Jersey. He paid state and local taxes in Bergen County or wherever but also paid state and city taxes to New York. He received some credit from New Jersey for what he paid to New York, but nonetheless, each dollar he made was taxed six times -- state, city, state, city, federal, social security.

It's worse for Jeter and high income earners who work at any time in New York but don't live there, as the WSJ shows:

New York tax laws also take a notoriously wide view of "residency." Literally tens of thousands of people only work in-state Tuesday to Thursday each week to avoid spending the requisite 184 days per year that would subject their full income to the state tax regime. And Albany's taxmen try to catch them with things like travel records, credit-card usage and phone logs.

New York doesn't claim that Mr. Jeter has avoided taxes on the salary he's earned in-state -- i.e., his 10-year, $189 million Yankee contract. New York's complaint is in pursuit of the additional millions a megastar like Mr. Jeter makes from endorsement deals and the like, as well as from his investments.

According to court filings, state auditors don't dispute that his primary residence was in Florida before 2001 or after 2003, or even that he spent most of the year down south over the target period. Rather, they're employing the more subjective "domicilery test." They point to Mr. Jeter's Manhattan apartment, his "numerous public statements professing his love for New York," and allege he has "immersed himself in the New York community." Gosh.

There's something depraved about the government chasing Jeter in this manner. Between this type of nonsense, and the various jock taxes that Jeter and most athletes have to pay in the various states where they play road games, the administrative hoops that athletes must jump through border on the preposterous. But it is the nature of the taxman to chase down every last dollar he can.

What a shock -- AL MVP

A-Rod won the MVP. There's a shock: 54 HR, 156 RBI, 143 runs and he's a righty banging the ball around the Stadium like it's a little league park. I am stunned.

Not really.

But he didn't win unanimously. Another shock.

Or not.

Each AL city gets two voters who pick their top 10 MVP candidates on the ballot. Only the two Detroit-area voters did not pick A-Rod #1 -- a small sop to Tigers' outfielder Magglio Ordonez.

Men Like Smart Women

According to Maureen Dowd, smart women need to dumb themselves down to not scare potential mates away at first sight. She noted a speed-dating study done at Columbia University:

“We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.”

He continued: “By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point ... It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.

“When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.”

That does sound familiar. But perhaps because we've all heard it repeated - many times - interestingly one of the chief protagonists of this view is none other than Maureen Dowd herself.

Christine Whelan, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, studying Census Bureau data found something completely different. In a sharp riposte two days after Dowd she skewers the "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" theory:

...As part of the Current Population Survey, the Census Bureau looked at this issue in its March interviews of 50,000 U.S. households: Among 35- to 39-year-old women, some 88 percent with advanced degrees have married, versus 81 percent of women without college degrees.

Despite these changes, the conventional wisdom remains that men are less interested in educated or successful women - and the media fuel this concern by publicizing small studies that support out-of-date gender norms.

A recent speed-dating study from Columbia University garnered national attention for its finding that men prefer beautiful, smart women, but are less interested in women that they believe to be smarter than themselves. (Cue the old saw, "Men don't make passes/ At girls who wear glasses.")

Missing from all the attention was a key caveat: This research was conducted on 400 graduate students. In other words, its significance pales in comparison to the marriage data collected on the 50,000 Americans covered in the Current Population Survey - data that tell very much the opposite story.
...
Equally bad: All this media focus on the odds of marriage for college-educated women detracts from some real issues facing our families: America is rapidly becoming a nation of marriage "haves" and "have-nots."

The "haves" are college graduates, who are marrying at higher rates and divorcing at lower rates than the rest of the population. The "have-nots" are those with a high-school degree or less, who are more likely to cohabitate than marry, more likely to have children outside of wedlock - and stand a higher risk of divorce if they do take their vows.

It's high time we stopped making accomplished women worry for no reason - and focused our attention on educating the next generation about the value of a college degree, the importance of marriage and the possibilities for both men and women of a healthy combination of career and family life.

More from Whelan here.

The vision of beer swigging men leering wolfishly at provocatively dressed women may have its basis in reality and easily provides Maureen Dowd and her ilk with material to argue that Men who are Pigs tend to vote Republican. The truth though seems to be inconveniently very different.

Do well educated men really want to marry a 'bimbo'? They may want to date one, been seen with one, and sleep with one but the marriage value of vapid eye candy, particularly in rearing smart children and having meaningful conversation, (gasp!) is dubious. That men value physical attractiveness more than women is not in dispute but the contention that men avoid smart women as spouses certainly is.

It doesn't hurt to be hot but it's best to be smart and hot.

Wongdoer is married to an attractive woman with a degree more advanced than his and with whom he has three really cute children. Monk calls it "punching above his weight".

144 Years Ago Today

It's not a milestone year but it doesn't hurt to read again Lincoln's remarks at Gettysburg:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Bush turning Clintonian

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute has noticed that the Bush Administration's foreign policy under Secretary of State Rice is eerily familiar . . . because it resembles the aspirationally misguided foreign policy that Clinton pursued, most notably during the Albright years.

The Monk has noted time and time and time and time again that foreign policy under Secretary Rice has become the type of feckless, immoral, realist-school approach that characterized the Bush I and Nixon Administrations, not a forceful and principled approach that could actually wind up with the US setting the agenda, not the rogue states or terrorist groups that the US is trying to pacify or civilize. But Secretary Rice is an acolyte of Brent Scowcroft, himself a devotee of James A. Baker III -- both of whom would willingly throw Israel to the dogs whilst attempting to engage regimes and groups whose interests are in destroying what America stands for, not working with America to make the world a nicer place. It's an immoral and stupid approach, and a far cry from what Pres. Bush seemed to stand for when he assumed the Presidency nearly seven years ago.

A-Rod, Rivera and The RedSawx wise approach?

In the past few years, the RedSawx have used their large budget more effectively than the Yanks have utilized the best revenue stream in baseball. The results make this obvious; one reason is that the RedSawx are more willing to reload from within than to continue paying their players. It's a difference between the Yankee family and RedSawx family -- the Yanks like to keep theirs intact far more, but the RedSawx are wiser about when to cut ties. Thus, the Sawx let the best pitcher in the AL during his tenure (1998-2004) leave as a free agent because they feared Pedro Martinez was about to breakdown . . . which he has. Thus, they let Johnny Damon go to the Yanks for more money because they didn't want to pay for the downside of his career, which they estimated would begin shortly whilst the Yanks banked on a longer delay.

By contrast, the Yanks gave Mussina two more years in the 2006 offseason and he's now an albatross; the Yanks gave Giambi far too many years during the 2001 offseason, and are stuck with him for one more year. The Giambi situation was a classic good move getting offset by a corresponding choice that turned out badly -- Giambi replaced Tino, who the Yanks rightly believed was heading to the end of his good years.

This year, the Yanks and RedSux have encountered questions of what to do with key free agents: the Sawx are balking at giving Mike Lowell four years guaranteed even though he's a top-class individual, built for the dump the team plays in, and one of the better fielders at his position because they don't want to pay for his lack of productivity in 2010-11. The Yanks took another route on two free agents: A-Rod is a tremendous talent and has a Jordanesque work ethic, so a 10-year bet on him is not necessarily bad; Posada is younger than a typical 36-year old catcher because he is a convert to the position, which has probably saved him 2 years behind the plate and he can be transitioned to first base or DH in 2010, so a four-year deal for him is fine (especially because he's a .380+ OBP guy and switch-hitter with pop). Remember, Jorge's production last year put him so far beyond what any catcher had achieved at age 36, it's remarkable. Consider: Berra at 36 had these stats 119 G, 22 HR, 61 RBI, .271 BA, .330 OBP; Bench = retired at 35 after four seasons of decline; Carter at 34-36 had fewer RBI in three seasons than Jorge in '07.

Rivera is different -- he's a few months older than Wongdoer and I (his birthday is 11-29-69) and would be 41 throughout the fourth season he wants the Yanks to guarantee. He's the greatest closer in baseball history, but if he's throwing 88-91, he sucks (see April 2005, April 2007). By the time he's 41, that won't be aberrant early season velocity, but will probably be his typical ability. Indeed, he's had some minor physical problems that have limited the Yanks' use of him in 2002 and 2006, so his durability may decrease too. Should the Yanks then pay $15,000,000 for a glorified Joe Borowski? The question answers itself.

HA!

Mark Krikorian rips Hillary Clinton's various incoherent positions on New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's proposed (now withdrawn) plan to grant drivers' licenses to illegal aliens.

Personally, I like this shot from the Obama campaign:

When it takes two weeks and six different positions to answer one question on immigration, it's easier to understand why the Clinton campaign would rather plant their questions than answer them.

Want Justice? Pay for a judge's election

The Monk recently mentioned some of the problems with partisan judicial elections. Today, former Justice O'Connor has an op-ed in the WSJ discussing the perils of partisan judicial elections and specifically noting the ugly campaigns run in Pennsylvania.

Cheer cheer for an absolute rip job!

In 1991, The Monk was horrified and furious that the Sugar Bowl gave a bid to 9-2 Notre Dame over higher-ranked Penn State. After Penn State stomped the Irish 35-13 and rose to #7 in the polls, dropping Notre Dame to 18th, the Sugar Bowl committee did exactly what rumors had said it would -- gave the bid to UND over a more deserving team.

Since then, any tribulation Notre Dame faces is good: getting whacked 41-9 by Oregon State = good; getting stomped 41-14 by LSU = nice; losing nine straight bowl games, including seven by two touchdowns or more = lovely. And bombing this season to a 1-9 mark despite tremendous recruiting classes for two years running and ND's inherent recruiting advantage (read: NBC) = it's pretty . . . it's sooooooooooooo pretty (apologies to Wesley Snipes from White Men Can't Jump).

And there is a reason for Notre Dame's failure: Charlie Weis is a terrible coach. So says Stewart Mandel in a long, analytical, and sharp column ripping the coach who has done nothing with much talent this year. Click the title of this post for more.

Buffett duplicity on the death tax?

Grover Norquist (who is hardly nonpartisan) has a very interesting piece nonetheless on the estate tax whose repeal billionaire Warren Buffett very publicly decries. It makes for great theater when a billionaire supports something that would apparently hit him hard financially.

To fully understand the depth of Buffett’s cynicism and self-interest, let’s take a look at how one might avoid paying the death tax. If you’re a wealthy person and want to steer clear of this tax, you have three options: Set up complicated trust arrangements, which mostly serve to enrich lawyers and merely delay and shift a tax that must eventually be paid; arrange for your estate to make tax-deductible contributions to charitable organizations; or plow your wealth into life insurance before you die. By law, when your heirs are paid the life-insurance disbursement, it’s tax-free.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how certain industries could make a tidy profit off these death-tax escape hatches. In fact, some of the most ardent opponents of permanent death-tax repeal are (surprise, surprise) estate lawyers (who set up the trusts), charities (who fear their spigots of money turning off), and the life-insurance lobby (which does all it can to preserve its tax loopholes).

Buffett has major investments in companies that sell life insurance. The death tax has helped make him rich while it has made other families poor. What’s sad and ironic is that it takes families with the resources of the Buffetts (and the Hiltons and the Kardashians) to set up the trusts and life-insurance schemes that are necessary to avoid paying the death tax.

Ouch.

Additionally the death tax causes significant disruption because to pay it a going concern, e.g., a family business, may have to sell itself simply to pay the tax.

Buffett railed against the "dynastic accumulation of wealth" in his Senate testimony today. If he's really that worried about it then advocate a tax that kicks in above $100 million which should exempt all but the ultra wealthy.

The most compelling argument against the death tax that no one has ever rebut to my satisfaction is:

"Why should the death of a loved one ever be a taxable event?"

Academia's indoctrination -- a neverending story

From Stuart Taylor on National Journal -- just read it.

Guantanamo worse than Auschwitz

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) recently reportedly said to a visiting Dutch delegation that:

"Europe is not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay."

The prison at Guantanamo isn't even remotely comparable to Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps. But Lantos, known for his pungent comments, has a point. Would it surprise if there were not inconsiderable swaths of Europe that are more outraged about Gitmo than they are or would have been about Auschwitz.

Does he need Mo money?

The Monk is one of the biggest Mariano Rivera fans, period. Wongdoer knows all too well how I've defended Mo throughout the years from his foolhardy critics (ones who actually claim to know baseball, not just Wongdoer himself). But if Mo turns down the Yanks' outlandishly high $45M/3 proposal, then he should just fly his happy arse to LA, join Torre there for less money and not say a word about the Yanks ever again. Seriously. The Yanks made that offer Sunday and it topped their already-outrageous $40M/3 offer. If Mo goes, they can easily turn over the 9th inning to Joba without worrying about babying the kid's arm like they'd have to if he were a starter.

Pervez-ive criticism and Pakistan's future

From the "at least he's our SOB" file, Mark Steyn seems to liken Pervez Musharraf to Auguste Pinochet. And there is some good reason -- although Benazir Bhutto is Western-educated and can play the US media like a violin, her two stints as Pakistan's leader were characterized by deep corruption and misrule, which led to her getting tossed aside each time. Steyn refers to her thus: "the charming and glamorous Benazir Bhutto, who plays note-perfect in the salons of the west but degenerates into just another third-rate ward-heeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes once she's back greasing the wheel in Pakistan itself."

Democracy for its own sake is not an admirable goal; it's value-neutral. Electing Hamas (Gaza), the Islamic Brotherhood (Algeria), the Nazis (Germany 1933), or the Communists (Czechoslovakia 1947) does not mean democracy "worked" in the proper conceptual sense that it increased freedom, security and good government; instead, in a diseased polity or with corrupt parties, democracy can seve as the means to the end of entrenching a totalitarian movement.

Thus, the corrupt Bhutto-istas may be easy targets for the growing Islamic movement in Pakistan to set up a figurehead and obtain an entry into mainstream politics that brings a virulent Islamofascist political system to Pakistan.

At this point, Musharraf is the least worst option for Pakistan -- the Pinochet of the kush. His time to step aside will come, but it probably is not now.

Waterboarding as torture? Not so much

Let's be clear, The Monk is pro-waterboarding if the technique gets a jihadi to spill his guts and reveal operational details that will (or at least may) save lives. Obviously, per Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it does. Obviously, per the KSM interrogation, it works quickly, effectively and can save lives. Indeed, according to the New Yorker (in a piece highly critical of CIA's tactics), KSM cracked in seconds.

There's no question it's nasty. The interrogators have nightmares about the methods. But if American lives depend upon it, coercive interrogation must be used. "Coercive interrogation" is not a euphemism for torture -- waterboarding inflicts tremendous fear and anxiety, but the captive is monitored to ensure no or minimal bodily injury occurs. Defining torture to include coercive interrogation forces the United States to combat enemies trained to defy our general interrogation methods with the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

And no, it should not be standard practice. Coercive interrogation is for those who know something (and experienced interrogators can determine who is hiding information), are resisting interrogation, and who won't otherwise break.

Complaints that the captives are kept from establishing a schedule, deprived of light and exercise, kept in isolation, etc., are foolish. The US treats Aldrich Ames in a similar manner, and he's a United States citizen who is entitled to full protection of the Constitution. As The Monk has noted, the Al-Qaedans are entitled to no Geneva Convention protections -- they can be killed as spies under international law without so much as a by-your-leave. So yes, The Monk is pro-waterboarding, and not bashful about it either.

China home to 18 million surplus men

Simply an outstanding headline. This is what happens when you mess with demographics.

BEIJING, Nov 13 (Reuters) - China has 18 million more men of marriageable age than women, the result of sex-selective abortions in a country that has traditionally placed more value on boys, state media reported on Tuesday. China has about 119 boys born for every 100 girls, but that figure rises to about 122 in rural areas, Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Weiqing, director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying. Ultrasound checks to determine the sex of babies are illegal in China but many expectant parents pay for the service, a habit Zhang said the government would continue to crack down on. China has also warned that the gender imbalance -- the surplus of men is forecast to swell to 30 million by 2020 -- could raise the risks of anti-social and violent behaviour among men who cannot find wives, contributing to instability.

Instability. More, faster please.

November 11, 2007

Happy Veterans' Day to all vets.

And thank you.

Justice O'Connor's wand

Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor made more than her fair share of rulings based on little more than wishful thinking and fairy dust, but the article I've linked to contains a report on some interesting ideas that Her Honor has about reforms within the justice system throughout the United States.

The most important is reforming judicial selection processes in the various states. In Texas, judicial elections are contested and partisan -- in other words, the judiciary is voted upon by voters who select a Democrat or Republican for each post. Last year, every contested election in Dallas County went to a Democrat. That's simply stupid -- Dallas actually cleaned out a couple of poor judges, but lost a number of good ones who were replaced by far less competent people. The reason they lost -- Texas allows straight-ticket voting and Democrats won 20,000 more straight-ticket votes than Republicans in Dallas County last year. Most of the elections were won by less than that margin. Furthermore, Dallas had been such a Republican controlled county that moderates and former Democrats elected to the bench switched parties to retain their judgeships. Ironically, one judge who would have lost her seat on the bench announced her resignation earlier in 2006 (she would have been drubbed) and ended up with an appointment from Pres. Bush to a Fifth Circuit seat, for which she will probably win Senate approval.

The whole arrangement is ludicrous. Justice O'Connor successfully fought for non-partisan judicial selection in her home state of Arizona more than 30 years ago and won. Too bad so many other states, including The Monk's own, have failed to follow suit.

Hillary Clinton is a wimp

In the wake of Sen. Clinton's complaints at being attacked in last week's Democratic Presidential candidate debate (more like just being challenged on her b.s.), Peggy Noonan compares Clinton to Margaret Thatcher and other women who were the first heads of their nation's governments.

Clinton loses.

An excerpt:

Margaret Thatcher would no more have identified herself as a woman, or claimed special pleading that she was a mere frail girl, or asked you to sympathize with her because of her sex, than she would have called up the Kremlin and asked how quickly she could surrender.

She represented a movement. She was its head. She was great figure, a person in history, and she was a woman. She was in it for serious reasons, not to advance the claims of a gender but to reclaim for England its economic freedom, and return its political culture to common sense. Her rise wasn't symbolic but actual.

* * *
The point is the big ones, the real ones, the Thatchers and Indira Gandhis and Golda Meirs and Angela Merkels, never play the boo-hoo game. They are what they are, but they don't use what they are. They don't hold up their sex as a feint: Why, he's not criticizing me, he's criticizing all women! Let us rise and fight the sexist cur.

When Hillary Clinton suggested that debate criticism of her came under the heading of men bullying a defenseless lass, an interesting thing happened. First Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL and an Edwards supporter, hit her hard. "When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Sen. Clinton embraces her elevation into the 'boys club.' " But when "legitimate questions" are asked, "she is quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules."

For Michelman, a far left liberal who has made a career of being an activist based on her sex, to hit Clinton like that is great. It deflates Clinton's self-pitying rubbish about being picked on and illuminates just how weak she is.

And to think, this woman may actually become president. She'd make Jimmy Carter look strong.

Where is the real leverage?

As the baseball offseason dealing begins in earnest (now widely known as the Hot Stove League), the question arises, in relation to the two most sought-after corner infielders, who has the leverage?

If a Hall-of-Fame free agent heads onto the market and no one meets his price, does he break the bank?

If a low budget team asks too high a price for its top pitcher and hitter, does it get paid?

Right now, Scott Boras is flummoxed because the Yankees rightly stuck to their principles and said that if A-Rod opted out of his contract, the Yanks would not re-sign him because the Yanks would lose $21M they would have received to pay him from the Rangers. Boras wonders why the Yanks would seek to re-sign Posada and Rivera and not A-Rod.

Perhaps because they finished out their contracts before pursuing free agency? Nah, that explanation makes too much sense.

The Yanks have previously rejected players' attempts to obtain extra money despite having a contract in place. In the 1996-97 offseason, Cecil Fielder sought big money from the Yanks, and chose to demand a trade or renegotiation of his contract (which players traded in the middle of multiyear deals could do at that time -- the Yanks obtained Fielder in a midseason deal with the Tigers in '96); the Yanks demured and Big Daddy became a free agent. In May, he came walking back to the Yanks hat in hand with no fat payday from any other team and got a prorated one-year deal.

Thus, the Yanks' response to A-Rod should not be too surprising. The next question is: can A-Rod get $32M/year from the Angels if they're the only team willing to top his current average annual salary level of $25.2M/year? Considering that no player has signed for $20M/year average since the A-Rod/Manny signings in the 2000-01 offseason, the answer should be no.

As for the Marlins -- they act like big fish because they have two players that teams seem to want, Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera. Willis was great in 2005 (22-10, 2nd in Cy Young race) and was another Jeff Weaver last year (10-15, supra 5.00 ERA, 29 HR despite pitching in the most pitcher-friendly division in baseball thanks to a minimum of 108 games in Florida, Shea, Atlanta and Washington). Cabrera is the Manny Ramirez of thirdbasemen -- fat, not much of a fielder, but a deadly hitter. The Marlins should be highly motivated to get rid of both because they're arbitration eligible, Cabrera's likely salary will be $12M or more, Willis will get far more than he deserves, and the team is notoriously tight with money.

In other words, the Marlins should not expect to get a king's ransom in prospects for either player like they did for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell in 2005-06. But both of those players were under contract for multiple years, unlike Cabrera.

Never underestimate the aggregate level of stupid among baseball executives. After all, these people paid Mike Hampton 120M/8 (Rockies); broken-down rag-armed Darren Dreifort 55M/5 (Dodgers); J.D. Drew 70M/5 (RedSawx); 88 mph max fastball man Barry Zito 128M/8 (Giants); and 25.5M/3 for Kris Benson (Mess). But to overpay for A-Rod or over trade for Cabrera/Willis considering the stakes involved . . . that would just be dumb.

The Bear awakens

Michael Weiss reports on a debate regarding whether Russia is becoming an enemy of the United States once again.

The Monk says yes.

From the report, there's some evidence that "again" is not the right word -- the lingering Soviet apparatus and mindset was never eradicated in the Russian governing class or polity. Here's Weiss' description of the arguments by J. Michael Waller:

His brief rested on the strong evidence that Soviet tendencies, rather than simply reviving, never really died off. If Russia had erased or buried its Communist past the better to emerge more confident as a market democracy, then how to explain that the Foreign Intelligence Services offices, the FSB State Security Services offices, and the state prosecutor's offices all bear the sword and shield insignia of Felix Dzerzhinsky's Bolshevik Cheka? Waller spoke of the arrant "KGB-ization" of the state, and indeed, the most prominent form of "dissent" within the country occurs among the various factions of the siloviki--the new military and espionage class of which Putin is primus inter pares. Waller made the often-overlooked point that Russia never had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the corpse-strewn nightmare of Stalinism. To the contrary, the Kremlin has released new "ideological guidelines" for teaching social studies and history to schoolchildren.

Textbooks being studied by future Russian generations thus inform that Stalin was the "most successful leader of the U.S.S.R.," resurrect his personality cult on behalf of Putin, and resort to a level of hostile rhetoric against the United States not heard since the grumbling days of Brezhnev.

The other side of the debate stressed that viewing Russia-US relations through the prism of a friend-foe dichotomy would lead to antipathy between the countries. In other words, act friendly and the Russians will do the same. Those are famous last words for the unrealistic set.

The character of San Francisco

I think this tells you all you need to know about San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 7 (Reuters) - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a rising star among Democrats who made headlines during his first term by briefly allowing gay marriage, appears to have easily won re-election in Tuesday's vote.

In the famously gay-friendly Californian city, Newsom, 40, shot up in popularity soon after first taking office in 2004 when he defied a statewide law that defined marriage as a union between and a man and a woman.

The handsome mayor with slicked back hair cut a dashing figure but suffered a series of personal setbacks during his first term. He and his glamorous wife divorced not long after they posed together in Harper's Bazaar, which called the pair "the New Kennedys".

Early this year Newsom admitted having an affair with his appointments secretary who was the wife of his campaign manager. He also said he would seek counseling for alcohol abuse.

Liberal San Francisco took the turmoil in stride and Newsom remained so popular that no major opponent ran against him. The reelection campaign generated little local interest even with longshots such as a sex club owner and a nudist seeking the
position.

Then again Bill Clinton was perhaps the most popular President in a generation. What does that say about us?

When a Court gets one right

Kudos to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the state's intermediate appellate court, for upholding the six murder convictions of John Allen Muhammed -- one of the two Beltway Snipers. The full opinion (all 150+ pages) is available at the link in the title of this post. But the beginning and conclusion of the opinion says all that is necessary:

For 22 days in October of 2002, Montgomery County, Maryland, was gripped by a paroxysm of fear, a fear as paralyzing as that which froze the London district of Whitechapel in 1888. In Whitechapel, however, the terror came only at night. In Montgomery County, it struck at any hour of the night or day. In Whitechapel, all of the victims were prostitutes. In Montgomery County, every man, woman, and child was a likely target. The body count in Whitechapel was five; in Montgomery County the death toll reached six. The name of the Whitechapel terrorist has never been discovered. In Montgomery County, their names are John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

All six of the appellant's convictions for first-degree murder are hereby affirmed. Jack the Ripper has never yet been brought to justice . The Beltway snipers have been.

Programming note

The Monk had an extremely busy October, therefore blogging was light. We'll see how November shapes up; early indications are not nearly as bad as October, but not a light workload at the job that actually pays for Monkette and Monkling's house and possessions (I occasionally live there too, depending upon my work volume).

Paul W. Tibbets Jr. 1915-2007

Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets Jr, the commander and pilot of the B-29 bomber named Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, died yesterday at the age of 92.

Tibbets was no simple airplane jockey, he was an experienced heavy bomber pilot and ran the program that trained crews to support and fly planes for the express purpose of delivering atomic bombs: [from the NY Times obituary]

On Aug. 17, 1942, he led a dozen B-17 Flying Fortresses on the first daylight raid by an American squadron on German-occupied Europe, bombing railroad marshaling yards in the French city of Rouen. He flew Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gibraltar in November 1942 en route to the launching of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, and participated in the first bombing missions of that campaign.

After returning to the United States to test the newly developed B-29, the first intercontinental bomber, he was told in September 1944 of the most closely held secret of the war: scientists were working to harness the power of atomic energy to create a bomb of such destruction that it could end the war.

He was ordered to find the best pilots, navigators, bombardiers and supporting crewmen and mold them into a unit that would deliver that bomb from a B-29.

Tibbets' distinguished himself in the decades since Hiroshima and Nagasaki by never second-guessing or apologizing for what United States did and he executed in ending the Second World War. It was appropriate as the decision to use the bomb was a sound one despite the revisionist historians who declaim otherwise.

“I was anxious to do it,” he told an interviewer for the documentary “The Men Who Brought the Dawn,” marking the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. “I wanted to do everything that I could to subdue Japan...“I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took,” he said, referring to both American and Japanese casualties from an invasion of Japan. “It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die.”

Rest in peace, General.

A Politically Incorrect Theory of Growth

Noted economist Robert Samuelson reviews a new book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, by Gregory Clark who suggests that culture predisposes some societies to rapid growth and others to poverty or meager growth.

Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money) can't overcome this bedrock resistance.

Before 1800, says Clark, most societies were stagnant. With some exceptions, people lived no better than their ancestors in the Stone Age. Economic growth was virtually nonexistent. Then England broke the pattern, as textile, iron and food production increased dramatically.
...
What distinguished England, he says, was the widespread emergence of middle-class values of "patience, hard work, ingenuity, innovativeness, education" that favored economic growth. After examining birth and death records, he concludes that in England -- unlike many other societies -- the most successful men had more surviving children than the less fortunate. Slowly, the attributes of success that children learned from parents became part of the common culture.
...
Societies dominated by tribal, religious, ideological or political values that disparage the qualities needed for broad-based growth will not get growth.

Interesting thesis - I would suggest that the gradual (and sometimes sudden) lowering of informational barriers will blur the culture "wall". One thing IS for sure - President Faust won't be discussing this at Harvard.

The Yanks' offseason

Tomorrow started yesterday for the Yanks as they announced the next manager -- Joe Girardi. The Monk's been out of town for the past couple of days in trial, but I'd heard the Girardi rumors all weekend and I'm more than fine with that. Girardi should bring a combination of Showalter's attention to detail with some of Torre's personality -- a good merger of the contrasting styles. In addition, Girardi will add some intensity to a relatively laissez-faire clubhouse.

The questions plaguing the Yanks this offseason are: (1) who will be the thirdbaseman; (2) who will be in the rotation; (3) who will catch; (4) who will close; (5) will Girardi protect the young arms on the pitching staff? One good thing about Girardi, he was Andy Pettitte's personal catcher in the last two years Girardi was with the Yanks, after Posada had essentially taken over the position.

Girardi gets a lot of blame for burning out Anibal Sanchez and Josh Johnson during his year managing the Marlins in 2006. The Johnson allegation is flat wrong: Johnson threw about the same number of innings in 2006 as he had in 2005 (including minors). Sanchez legitimately wore out -- from 136 IP in 2005 to 200 in 2006 was too large of a jump and he had season-ending surgery in 2007. How much of this is attributable to Girardi remains somewhat doubtful because other young pitchers have had big workload increases without problems (Chien-Ming Wang); but many do have trouble if the increase is 35 IP or more.

The Yanks' conundrum is their forthcoming reliance on the kiddie corps. Most notably, Joba the Hutt. He threw 112 IP total this year; a starter's load is 175-190 and he looked a bit worn out in the ALDS. Hughes threw 146 in 2005, and a gradual progression would have been 165 this year and 185 next year. Another bit of coddling that may be necessary. Ian Kennedy is not as problematic -- he pitched 165 innings total this year.

Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver has various ideas for what the Yanks should do. Many are simply stupid. The Yanks should have nothing to do with Barry Bonds -- why get a selfish me-first, money-is-everything player who does not get along with his teammates right after his successor to the bestplayerinbaseball opted out of an extremely lucrative contract? The Yanks have an option on Bobby Abreu and they'll either exercise it or extend him, and they should.

Similarly asinine is Silver's suggestion to cut ties with Mariano and have Farnsworth or Edwar Ramirez (who, Silver noted, "struck out 15.4 batters per nine innings (!) between three professional levels this year") close. This is pure stat-head nonsense. Farnsworth is a billion-dollar arm in a 10-cent head. Ramirez has two pitches -- his circle change, which has solid movement and is a decent pitch; and a straight 90 mph fastball without plus control. There's a reason the kid got pounded for 24 H and 6 HR in 21 IP in the majors -- he lacks major league ability. If the Yanks wanted to replace Mo, they'd do it with Joba. They don't -- that's why Mo and his agent were invited to Tampa to discuss what parameters Mo wants in a new contract. Mo wants to stay, that's why he and his agent WENT to Tampa for the meeting.

The Monk's recommendations are simpler:

(1) Work with Pettitte to ensure he returns.
(2) Work with Mooooooose to ensure his level of sucking diminishes.
(3) Work on Shelley Duncan's infield defense so he can either take the 1B job or play the position frequently. The kid has 30 HR righty power. Andy Phillips can be the backup.
(4) Sign Mike Lowell, who's no sure thing to stay with the Redhos. If not, trade for a thirdbaseman. Eric Chavez should be available and the Yanks have minor league pitching to trade (not Kennedy, Hughes, Joba -- they're untouchable).
(5) Re-up Abreu -- he's a positive influence on Melky, who is the CF of the future.
(6) Re-sign Posada and Molina. This is obvious.
(7) Get another set-up man for the 'pen. Coco Cordero could be available and may be willing to apprentice under the master for awhile.

The Yanks have no need to replace A-Rod. The team scored 968 runs in 2007, the most in the Torre era. Result? First-round playoff loss. The team scored 807 runs in 2001, the fewest of the Torre era. Result? Lost game 7 of the World Series with one bad inning. In other words, the offense cannot carry the team to a title.

The Yanks need to concentrate on pitching and ensuring that the team has enough offense to win. With Posada, Jeter, Abreu, Cano, Damon, Duncan, Cabrera and Matsui, the team has decent firepower. With a healthy Giambi, the Yanks still have a top-end offense. Get the pitching right and mold the newbies and the Yanks can contend next year and definitely when they open up the new Yankee Stadium in '09.

An interesting winter

is the only solace for suffering Yankee fans who need to endure the talk of dynasty in Boston.

Alex Rodriguez' well-timed (we ARE Yankee fans here) announcement leaves a large crater at third base and without a doubt creates a significant power deficit in the Yankee lineup. His 0-lifetime record in the postseason with RISP notwithstanding there isn't another third baseman in the game capable of 50 HR and 150 RBI. Losing A-Rod means the luxury of a Doug Mientkiewicz (assuming he comes back) is suddenly more expensive.

Girardi is the right choice and while a shame to lose Mattingly - to quote Tessio, it's not personal it's business.

The 20+ million saved by not signing Alex Rodriguez needs to be deployed wisely.

1. A very aggressive effort should be made to sign Mike Lowell. He's capable defensively, has pop, has performed in a tough town and at 33 should still have a few good years left. It would also take a piece away from a very successful Boston team. There are not a lot of good 3Bs in free agency this year so this has to be the priority. If he gets away a choice may be to try Robby Cano at 3B - used to be a third baseman. Easier to get a utility 2B. [Great free agent site: mlb4u.com]

2. Trade for a #1 or near #1 starter from the AL. Such as Johan Santana or AJ Burnett. If a legitimate #1 cannot be had, wait. With Wang, Pettitte, Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy+ can afford to be patient. No more Pavanos please or over the hill marquees like Maddux. One would consider Roger or Schilling (though Schilling has ruled out the Yanks)

3. Try to improve team speed where possible. Any team with Giambi, Posada and Matsui could use help.

This assumes that Posada, Mo and Pettitte return.

Honoring John McCain

Forty years ago today, Navy pilot John McCain was shot down over Hanoi. He spent five and half years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton refusing to offer the North Vietnamese a propaganda triumph by accepting early release because his father was Commander-in-Chief of US forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC).

Few pilots volunteered for assignments to the Tonkin Gulf as carrier pilots. Most flew their missions with grim determination — counting the days until they could ro
tate back to their homes and families. They accepted the risks as their duty, and suffered in silence. John McCain had been to Vietnam before on the USS Forrestal, barely surviving the disastrous fire that nearly caused the loss of the ship. He then volunteered to be assigned to another squadron, a squadron on its way to Vietnam.

While I am not sure that John McCain would be my notice for President, as a free American we should remember his sacrifice.

Irony and the NY Times

Do the editors read what their columnists write at the NY Times?

Seriously. Here's an excerpt of a NYT profile of John Podhoretz reprinted on OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web Today feature (Best of the Web comment in bold):

To some within the neoconservative movement, [the appointment of Podhoretz fils] is the best of all possible choices. It is a model of what Adam Bellow (son of the Nobel-winning novelist Saul) called the "new nepotism," combining the "privileges of birth with the iron rule of merit."

But to others the decision reeks of the "old nepotism," in which the only credential that matters is the identity of your father--in Mr. Bellow's cosmology, less like the Roosevelts than like Tori Spelling getting an acting job because her father was Aaron Spelling. . . .

Ultimately, what may be the biggest challenge facing Commentary has nothing to do with the genealogy or scholarship of its editor, but the threat of a dwindling readership, now about 34,000. Once a source of ideas and personnel for the Reagan and current Bush administrations, Commentary, said [writer Jacob] Heilbrunn and a number of conservatives, has become less of a must-read in recent years.

Some have argued that the New York Times has become less of a must-read in recent years, since Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. succeeded Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Sr. as publisher in 1992. Did Pinch comply with the iron rule of merit, or is he the Tori Spelling of newspapers?

Laid out after the lay off

The Sawx crushed the Rawx last night, therefore Colorado has no chance to win the World Series, this thing is over, and the Sawx are going to cruise to another title.

Or not.

The Monk researched it and discovered the answer before Fox and ESPN publicized it: yesterday's 13-1 rout was the largest margin of victory in Game 1 of a World Series and the most runs scored by a victor in Game 1. And the Roxintheirheads took a beating just like the '96 Yanks and '06 Tigers, each of whom had rested with long layoffs while their World Series opponent fought its way through a seven-game League Championship Series. Not much shock there -- John Kruk noted that the Rox timing was so bad their foot-taps as part of their batting motion to time pitches was too slow for what Beckett was firing at them.

Before last night there had been only three teams that had won game 1 of the World Series by 10 or more runs: the '59 Chisox (11-0), '82 Brewers (10-0) and '96 Braves (12-1). The Braves and Chisox held the old margin of victory record of 11. The Brewers and Braves won those games on the road. But each team has something else in common: THEY ALL LOST THE WORLD SERIES: Dodgers 4-2 over Chisox, Cards 4-3 over Brewers, Yankees 4-2 over Braves. The Braves had the added ignominy of becoming the first (and to date only) team to win games 1 and 2 on the road and lose in 6.

So the RedSawx fans and Boston media should not jump to happy conclusions just yet. After all, as daunting as the RedSawx's 43-6 demolition of the Indians and Rox in the past four games, the '96 Braves ran off five wins against the Cards and Yanks by a combined 48-2! Yipes. Instead, RedSux fans can take heed from the folly of Atlanta Journal Constitution writer Mark Bradley who dared compare the Braves with the Big Red Machine and the '27 Yankees after the soon-to-be losers took a 2-0 lead on the Yanks in '96. Five days later, he had to stock up on barbecue sauce for the heaping plate of crow he had for dinner, and the next day's lunch, and dinner, and lunch, and dinner . . .

Then again, my warning comes with a but . . . don't rejoice, but I know good and well that the Rox season will end on Sunday or Monday with the RedSax dancing on the mound at Coors Field.

Yuk.

Go Rox

As much as you, me, the media or anyone else wants to view Rox-Sox as a potential reenactment of the 2003 Marlins-Yanks series, it just doesn't wash. The Sportfish had big-time power pitchers who could carry a 7+ inning load (Penny, Beckett) without problems; the Rox starters rarely go beyond 6, and with the RedSax preternatural patience at the plate, that may be a challenge. The Rox have better relief pitching than the Sportfishies did and a better overall lineup. But the Series will come down to executing good pitches against patient hitters and getting the small things done. The Monk sees the RedSax clinching in Colorado and more of this kind of stomach-turning talk for the next few months.

I hope I'm wrong.

Meanwhile, there's a lot to like about the Rox, from their youthful energy to their great defense to their top-end pitching ability to their honest manager. The link in the title of this post is to a column discussing why baseball is a pleasant distraction for Clint Hurdle because one of his favorite people in the world has a lot of difficult days.

Tired of the Torre saga

It's official: The Monk is tired of the Torre saga.

I'm tired of hearing Torre whinge about how he wasn't wanted.

I'm tired of hearing the national and local media dump on the Yankees for not re-signing him.

I'm tired of hearing the eulogies (bordering on hagiographies) for Torre's performance as manager.

I'm tired of hearing the moronic parallels (the White Sox re-signed Guillen for three years, the Cards re-signed LaRussa for two, the D-Rays re-signed Maddon) -- these are the Yankees, the premier franchise in North American sports and they have different and higher standards than stiffs like the ChiSax and Drays.

The whole situation is ridiculous. Torre should have been sacked the day after the RedSawx 10-3 win over the Yanks in game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. He managed the team to the worst choke in sports playoff history. He made strategic (in)decisions that cost the team games 5 and 6. He led the team that suffered the worst humiliation in baseball history -- and the Yanks for all their success have had a large number of playoff humiliations (1926 WS [Ruth caught stealing to lose game 7], 1960 WS [lose series, outscored Pirates 55-27], 1963 WS [swept by Koufax-led Dodgers, scored 4 runs], 1976 WS [swept by Big Red Machine], 1980 ALCS [best team to lose in LCS until 1993 Braves], 1981 WS [choking 2-0 lead with three-straight one-run losses], 1995 ALDS [up 2-0, lose series], 2002 ALDS [whupped by upstart Angels]).

Torre should have been sacked after he lost the team last year and the Yanks were demolished by the Tigers. That didn't happen either, primarily because Cashman stuck up for Joe.

The Monk likes British notions of accountability -- the head of the department that screws up gets canned or, more frequently, resigns and takes the responsibility for the failure. The RedSax were actually the better team in '04 (seriously: Schilling, Pedro, Lowe v. Mussina, Leiber, Brown = no contest), but the Yanks had whacked them three times, had them down twice more and failed. It was not like the '07 ALCS -- the Sawx didn't just turn it on and wax the Yanks like they crushed the Indians this year. Instead, Moooooose pitched well in game 5, Leiber pitched well in game 6 (he was burned on a bizarre homer by Bellhorn), game 5 came down to a couple of bounces here and there.

The fallout for Torre = a three-year 19.2M contract that paid him like a prima donna NBA coach.

As Torre makes the rounds discussing his alleged mistreatment (Costas Now on HBO, which will re-air all week; Letterman next Monday), remember this from Jon Heyman's SI.com column:

. . . for the record, it should be known now that [the Yanks'] recent offer was actually better than the one discussed in spring, months before the team bowed out in the first round for a third straight postseason.

Back then, SI.com has learned, the Yankees and Torre were talking about a one-year $4.5 million extension with Steve Swindal the son-in-law who signed Torre to his lucrative $6.4 million-a-year deal, and Torre was receptive to the offer. But that extension fell apart after Swindal was arrested for a DWI on Valentine's Day and Swindal's marriage to George Steinbrenner's daughter, Jennifer, subsequently disintegrated.

In other words, Torre's engaging in a bunch of spin and the media is buying it because its storyline is pre-ordained -- the big bad Steinbrenner crew wanted Torre out and insulted him to reach its goal.

A key issue in the '08 election

The biggest boost the GOP could give its Presidential candidate is to make the 2008 election largely about the Supreme Court. Justice Stevens is in his late 80s, Ginsburg is in her 70s and ill, and the country needs more Scalia/Roberts/Alito/Thomas quality jurists, not Breyer or Kennedy. The phrase "all politics are local" is an all-too-accurate truism, but the GOP can employ that concept by having its candidate talk about how reasonable local laws that comply with the Constitution should not be tossed aside by some liberal judge in Washington who looks to the proclamations of the EU, random African potentates and the UN, or whose view of the Constitution is an evolving one based upon changing conditions in society.

Yesterday marked two anniversaries: First, the 20th anniversary of the vote in the Senate denying consent to the appointment of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. A defeat for prudent juridical values that ultimately resulted in Anthony Kennedy's appointment -- a terrible outcome because the nation's largest legal issues are now hostage to one man's whims since Kennedy became the swing vote on the Court.

Second, the 16th anniversary of Clarence Thomas' swearing-in as the 106th Justice of the Supreme Court. After completely bonking on his first appointment (Souter), George Bush the elder made a great appointment with Justice Thomas. Yesterday, the Justice was in Dallas for a Heritage Foundation/National Center for Policy Analysis/Federalist Society lunch to discuss his memoir and his approach to the Court and to life. A fine event that displayed Justice Thomas' humor, insight, erudition, and overall good nature.

In the WSJ yesterday, Gary McDowell discussed the fallout from the Bork defeat and what it portends for the future.

The Oslo follies

Phillip Terzian traces the fall of the Nobel Peace Prize from a prize for benevolent people of influence to a political statement boosting the transnational progressive mindset. Here's a sample:

For many years, it functioned as a kind of gold watch for elder statesmen: the American Elihu Root (1912), Aristide Briand (1926) of France, Britain's stalwart League of Nations advocate Lord Robert Cecil (1937), the Canadian Lester Pearson (1957) . . . the prize customarily went to benevolent politicians--Woodrow Wilson (1919), Gustav Stresemann (1926), Cordell Hull (1945)--to well-intentioned people--Jane Addams (1931), Ralph Bunche (1950), Albert Schweitzer (1952)--and to humanitarian organizations--International Committee of the Red Cross (1944 and 1963), U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (1954 and 1981), Doctors Without Borders (1999).

* * *
In the past few decades, however, the Nobel Peace Prize has developed a certain political edge . . . In some instances the committee has aimed its arrow at a proper target--Andrei Sakharov (1975), Lech Walesa (1983), the Dalai Lama (1989), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991)--but such lucky shots have grown increasingly rare.

In 1985, for example, the prize was awarded to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a coalition of American and Soviet "peace activists" highly critical of the Reagan administration but notably silent on the use, in the Soviet Union, of psychiatric hospitals to silence political dissidents. The 1987 award to Costa Rica's president Oscar Arias Sánchez was an evident endorsement of the now-forgotten Arias Plan to thwart U.S. efforts against Communist insurgencies in Central America. The 1992 prize to Guatemala's Rigoberta Menchú was not only recognition for "ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples"--in the delightful language of the committee--but reward for a reliable critic of the United States and author of a (as was later discovered) fictitious autobiography.

* * *

Undoubtedly, the most egregious example was the award of the prize, in 1990, to Mikhail Gorbachev "for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community." It may be difficult to comprehend what, exactly, the committee was saying here, but the fact that 1990 was the first year in which it felt obliged to furnish a citation suggests that, even in Oslo, the exclusion of Ronald Reagan required an explanation.

. . . [W]hat is the promotion of peace, anyway? Is it the pronouncement of words and the striking of attitudes, or the action that guarantees freedom against tyranny? Secretary of State Marshall was awarded the prize for his eponymous plan which assisted the postwar European recovery. But a stronger case could be made for another Nobel Peace Prize for General Marshall as the "organizer of victory" against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

from the weekend:

The Good:

Representative Bobby Jindal won the race to be Governor of Louisiana replacing the terrible Kathleen Blanco. Jindal is one of the brightest stars in the GOP and an effective governorship may just see him head the GOP ticket sometime in the next decade.

Alabama whupped Tennessee 41-17 to set up a huge game for the Tide against #3 ranked LSU this week.

The Bad:

Poland's Law & Justice Party headed by the Kaczynski brothers who are Eurosceptics, conservative and staunch allies of Washington lost to a centre-right party which has already promised to cozy back up to Brussels and pull troops from Iraq by the end of the year. The only good news there is President Kaczynski is in office until 2010 and has some veto power.

Mohammed El-Baradei proclaims that Iran is 3-8 years away from a nuclear weapon and therefore the West has plenty of opportunity to negotiate.

The Ugly:

Boston comes back from a 3-1 deficit vanquishing the Cleveland Indians to advance to the World Series showing the resilience and fight that is now a fading memory in the Bronx.

World Series first thought

Let's remember two things as we await the World Series:

(1) Since the advent of the three-tier playoff system in 1995, the team with more time off has won nine of 11 World Series (once the two teams had the same number of days off). The two exceptions: the Mess in 2000 lost to the Yanks; the Tigers in '06 lost to the Cards.

(2) The Rockies whupped the RedSawx at Fenway in June, including smacking Beckett around for six runs.

Now for the reality check -- a cautionary tale.

In 1999, the Yanks had a three-game series after the All-Star break with the Braves at the Stadium. The Braves whacked Clemens in game one behind a solid start from Glavine; knocked around El Duque in game two after the Yanks got to Maddux, and then came back to win with four in the 9th off Rivera; and the Yanks only beat random stiff Odalis Perez in the finale. A small measure of revenge for what the Yanks did to the Braves in '98.

The homer by Andruw Jones off Rivera was the last one Mo allowed that year; and the loss was Mo's last blown save of the season.

In the World Series, Duque mesmerized the Braves (7 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 10 K); Clemens handcuffed them in game 4; the Yanks popped three bombs off Glavine in game 3 and swept the Braves (103 wins) in four games by a 21-9 aggregate. Rivera (1-0, 2 SV and continuing his postseason scoreless streak) was the World Series MVP. Andruw Jones went 1-13. The Braves were 74-44 against righties that season (best in the majors), the Yanks' right-handed starters combined for this line: 3-0, 21.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 18 K. And one of the two runs came thanks to a bad call (the one Clemens allowed).

In other words, past performance is no indication of future results.

Sorry Rox fans.

The new Red Sawx dynasty?

Here's a Yankee fan's nightmare -- the possible dawning of a Red Sawx dynasty.

Look, there's no such thing as a dynasty if a team cannot win consecutive titles, or even consecutive pennants. So right now, there is no RedSux dynasty. But in 2008, after the Beanheads' second WS title in four years as they begin to set up for a third, you'll hear plenty about it. And possibly again in 2009 . . . And if that happens, the birthdate of that dynasty will be October 17, 2004 -- the night the Yanks blew a chance to go to another World Series in a span of six pitches; the RedSax forced the Yanks into TheGreatestChokeJobEver and the balance of power in baseball began to swing. Do you doubt it?

Neither the Yanks nor Sax were great in '05; the Redstiffs were crushed by injuries last year. But the Sawx made key moves that paid off big (Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lowell) despite the ding-dong pickups like Drew and Crisp. And the Sawx have more MLB-ready young positional talent (RoY to be Pedroia, 2008 RoY candidate Ellsbury) than the Yanks (who have some outfielders and lots of pitchers, but notsomuch on the infield), with nearly as much pitching (Lester, Buchholz).

Do you wonder why Steinbrenner(s) didn't push too hard for Torre's return? The Tampa faction of the Yankees' front office knows full well that the Redsacs are 14-3 in elimination games since 1999 (6-0 v. Cleveland, 5-2 v. Yanks, 3-0 v. A's, 0-1 v. Chisux) and also know that the Yanks have folded like origami paper since 2002 -- getting eliminated from the playoffs at their first opportunity in '02, '03, '04 and '06, and barely putting up a fight in '07. Whatever else Francona is, he's definitely in charge of his club's psyche.

And it's no coincidence that the Yanks' leadership vacuum has opened at the same time the RedSax post has been overfilled -- in 2001, the Yanks parted ways with Tino Martinez and Paul O'Neill retired and they replaced those presences with Giambi; in 2003, David Ortiz became a Redsawk and changed the clubhouse for good.

So remember, if you hear about the Redsax' second WS in four years and a potential dynasty in the making -- it started on October 17, 2004; it flourished the next day when Torre had his worst managerial game ever; it re-emerged when the Sawx did what the Yanks failed to do -- show fortitude and skill against the Indians; and it could culminate in WS titles both next week, and next year.

Ugh.

End of an era

Joe Torre's decision to turn down a one-year $5M contract with big incentives ends the Torre Era, but the Yankee dynasty he helped temper and guide has been dead for at least four years. Indeed, here's the list I wrote before the 2004 ALCS of the best and worst of the Torre years:

Top Playoff Wins by Series:

1. The 1999 WS Sweep over Atlanta -- one NY Times prognosticator got this right by picking the Yanks in four (either Jack Curry or Buster Olney) when everyone thought this would be a close series between the two best teams in baseball. This series was outstanding. Whacking the Braves for the second time in four years and this one was not close. This series determined who was the team of the decade on the field, not on the side of a 1995-vintage ring. Plus The Monk and Wongdoer went to game 4 and saw Clemens shut down the little Braves from the bleachers.

2. The 1998 WS Sweep over San Diego -- culmination of the season for the Best Team Ever. Tom Verducci had a great article in SI after the series discussing why the '98 Yankees were right up there with the '39 and '27 Yanks among the best teams assembled; better yet, Verducci dismissed the '75/'76 Reds completely out of hand and with good reason -- no pitching. (Like you'd pick Rawley Eastwick over Rivera? Get real).

3. The 1996 WS win over the Braves -- the one that started the 1996-2000 dynasty. I was so shocked and happy I didn't know what to do with myself. I also loved this because some git from the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote after Games 1 and 2 that the Yanks didn't belong on the same playing field as the Braves and the Braves were a dynasty in the making along the lines of the '27 and '36-'39 Yanks. HAH.

4. The 2003 ALCS win over the RedSawx -- what a series and what a game 7. Games 3-7 are all classics. And the result meant that the earth continues to revolve around the sun.

5. The 2001 ALCS win over the Mariners -- spanking the 116-win Mariners who had pretensions of being better than the '98 Yanks was great, especially because the Ms looked so feeble throughout that series and the Stadium was electric. Baseball was the ultimate escape that season for New Yorkers and NYC ex-pats like me after the 9-11-01 attacks.

___

Top moments:

1. Aaron Boone's dinger.
2. Jim Leyritz's homer to tie game 4 of the '96 WS after the Yanks trailed 6-0; they won and won the next two games.
3. Tino Martinez's grand slam in the '98 WS -- I love it when the Stadium explodes for those upper deck jobs.
4. Tino's homer in game 4, 2001 WS to tie the Dbacks.
5. Brosius' homer in game 5, 2001 WS to tie the Dbacks.
6. Derek Jeter, THE FLIP.
7. Curtis' homer in game 3, '99 WS to put the Yanks up 3-0.
8. Charlie Hayes catching Mark Lemke's series-ending pop-up, game 6, 1996 WS.
9. Brosius' three-run bomb to beat Trevor Hoffman in game 3, 1998 WS.
10. Justice's homer in game 6, '00 ALCS to put the Ms away.
__

And for the Yankee-haters, the worst moments:

1. Luis Gonzalez's ducksnort single.
2. Aaron Boone whiffs against Braden Looper with bases loaded, one out, game 4 WS. That's why he's Aaron "f---ing" Boone to us, too.
3. Sandy Alomar's bomb in game 4, 1997 ALDS.
4. David Wells' helplessness as the Yankee defense fails on a popup in game 4, 2002 ALDS -- Soriano can't field and he honked that whole series.
5. Fred McGriff's gong-of-doom homer off the foul pole in game 1, 1996 WS. I still get ill when I see and hear the replay

Since that time there are multiple additions to the WORST moments, none to the best: (1) the WorstChokeJobEver in the '04 ALCS -- this occupies the top four spots; (2) the butterfingers Yanks bonking game 2 of the '05 ALDS with horrid fielding; (3) the complete beatdowns from the Tigers in games 3 and 4 of the '06 ALDS; (4) the Jeter DP parade in the '07 ALDS.

The Monk was shocked that Torre retained his job after WorstChokeJobEver, and I pointed out his failures time and again, including this correct analysis after the '04 World Series:

Fourth, compare the relative success of the managers in the playoffs who managed every game like the last game of the season and those who didn't: Francona led his team back from 0-3 down to the AL title and won the WS; Garner led a shoddy and depleted Houston team to within a game of the WS exceeding all expectations; Torre's Stanks fell short; LaRussa's mountain men were clobbered and he never could stop the bleeding. Why do Torre and LaRussa manage during the season like every game is a must-win and then baby their players even a slight bit in the postseason? Baffling.

Torre's continued failures in the playoffs (everyone, including me, got so caught up in the midge issue after the ALDS this year, we failed to note that Torre should have yanked Chamberlain after he gave up the four-pitch walk to Sizemore in the bottom of the 8th; the old Torre would have done just that [see 1998 WS game 1; 1999 ALCS, game 4, 5; 2000 WS, game 4; 1996 ALDS game 4, ALCS game 4, WS game 4]). Mike Lupica (see link) calls this a team with a glass jaw -- and it has been since 2002. Thus, Torre may be a constant, but the variables from 2001 to 2002 were losing O'Neill and Tino, replacing them with Giambi and (essentially) Matsui, losing Pettitte after 2003, and draining the character out of the locker room.

So here's to Joe: he presided over the most recent Yankee dynasty, but he's not the man for the next one. The Yanks made the right decision -- offer a reunion with restrictions or divorce with dignity. Joe took the latter.