for whom the cow bell tolls. . .

I grew up a Dodgers fan, and I still am, first and foremost, a Dodgers fan, but, having lived all of my adult life in New York City, I have seen many more games at Shea Stadium than at my beloved Chavez Ravine. I only came to this realization on Sunday as I took in one last game from Section 21, Row C, Seat 14—my summer Sunday home for the last decade. Here are a few random moments from my day.

spring break

Looking around the blogosphere, it seems that I can’t add much to the day’s discussions of McCain’s "ignorance," Bush’s delusions, or the sheer idiocy of the establishment media that hasn’t already been said. So, in honor of the equinox, let’s all just kick back and enjoy the first day of March Madness and look forward to opening day of the baseball season (but ten days away).

And, as if I needed to add:

Go Bruins!

Go Dodgers!

pitchers and catchers report!

Who could think of a better Valentine’s Day present?!

And, speaking of pitchers reporting, this one doesn’t quite understand that testifying before Congress isn’t the same as arguing with an umpire, or pitching broken bat chunks in a World Series.

Other moments tested Mr. [Roger] Clemens, too, particularly when he was asked about whether he attempted to coach a witness — his former nanny — before she spoke earlier this week to lawyers for the panel, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The hearing ended with the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, pounding the gavel sharply to keep Mr. Clemens from interrupting him, but with the committee drawing no immediate conclusions as to who was being truthful.

That paragraph doesn’t quite capture just how inappropriate Roger the Rocket’s comportment actually was. Clemens repeatedly interrupted the proceedings, talking over House members, as well as other witnesses. You would think Roger’s lawyers might have coached him a bit, no?

Maybe he didn’t expect to have to defend himself that all much. Clemens apparently got a pretty warm reception from committee members, visiting their offices, shaking hands, signing autographs, and posing for pictures with representatives and staffers in the days leading up to this public hearing.

Mr. Shays and Mr. Issa were among the 25 committee members who met with Clemens individually over the past week. Mark E. Souder, Republican of Indiana, one of the few who refused Mr. Clemens’s request to meet with him, deviated from other Republicans, stating that the depositions were “fairly devastating” against Clemens.

Reps. Chris Shays (R-CT) and Darrell Issa (R-CA)—along with Dan Burton (R-IA)—basically made total asses of themselves, behaving about as badly as Clemens. All three gestured wildly, pointing at Clemens’s accuser and former trainer, Brian McNamee, while calling him a “drug dealer.”

It got so bad that House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) actually apologized to McNamee for the behavior of his colleagues. He should have apologized for just how cheaply a member of the United States House of Representatives can be bought. Really, why waste tens of thousands on K Street lobbyists, lavish junkets, and big campaign contributions, when you can just have The Rocket visit and scribble his name on a couple of ten dollar baseballs?

Of course, at the end of the day, Rep. Waxman should probably apologize for wasting our time.

Actually, he kind of did:

“The only reason we had this hearing was because Roger Clemens insisted on it,” Mr. Waxman said in a news conference afterward.

But, Waxman should have apologized for wasting America’s time with this whole investigation. Seriously, Henry, you’re a smart guy—you have your staff looking into what seems like hundreds of Bush Administration misdoings—but with a President jumping up and down and demanding that Congress retroactively indemnify him for previous lawbreaking, and your colleagues across the rotunda debating about whether to enforce rules against torture (Note: Senator McAsshole flip-flopped on this one), don’t you think that professional athletes using HGH—before it was even illegal to do so, I should add—don’t you think, Henry, that this is kind of small beer?

George Mitchell, the former Senator from the Great State of Maine, and the author of the report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, said that there is plenty of blame to go around—players, trainers, agents, owners, and MLB officials all the way up to and including Commissioner Bud Selig all played a role in helping “juice” the game. When issuing the report, Mitchell essentially said, “The past is the past; let’s not look to place blame—let’s move on.”

So, let’s, shall we?

It’s February 14th, 2008, and spring training has begun. Let the juiced Mr. Clemens go play with his equally juiced wife. Let Brian McNamee peddle his used syringes and bloody gauze on e-Bay. And let us PLAY BALL!

________________________
PS Here’s what Rep. Rush Holt (D-NY) was doing while Shays, Issa, and Burton were having a hissy-fit over the Rocket’s oft-needled buttocks:

(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

I have a nickname for the new yankee stadium

Given the large number of Yankees from the last championship now accused in the Mitchell report of using performance-enhancing substances, I christen the new Yankee Stadium (due to open in 2009):

The House that Juice Built

(Thank you, I'll be here all week.)

Barry, meet Scooter

. . . and I don’t mean Rizzuto.

Ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s record-holder for career and single-season homeruns, was indicted Thursday on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to federal prosecutors investigating steroid use by professional athletes linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

Within hours of the indictment’s unsealing, President George W. Bush—who had earlier this summer congratulated Bonds on surpassing Hank Aaron as baseball’s all-time homerun king—rushed to jump on the Barry-be-bad bandwagon.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The president is very disappointed to hear this. As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."

Bush, who often likes to brag about having run the Texas Rangers (even though he was only a 5% owner), neglected to mention that during the time of his involvement with the Rangers, steroid use was understood to be rampant in baseball—a dirty little secret kept on the down-low by owners and players, alike, because all concerned liked what the juiced numbers were doing for the game’s bottom line.

But that’s not the height of the hypocrisy in the Bonds case—not anymore.

The President rushed to condemn Bonds for allegations that bare a remarkable resemblance to the charges on which Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was convicted earlier this year (for the record, that would be four counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice). Libby’s conviction carried mandatory jail time—as would the charges against Bonds, should they be proven at trial. But Lewis I. Libby never went to prison—George Bush pardoned Scooter soon after his conviction. Can Barry Lamar Bonds expect equal leniency from the man who was in this case, as he was in Libby’s, at least peripherally involved?


A sidebar, Your Honor

Bush’s involvement with Major League Baseball isn’t the only thread that ties the President to the BALCO investigation and the Bonds indictment. On the same day that the charges were revealed, Bush named the man who will prosecute Barry Bonds should the case go to trial.

A bit of background: The BALCO investigation was begun back in 2003 by then US Attorney Kevin Ryan—a George W. Bush appointee. But Ryan stepped down early this year, forced out, as were several other US attorneys, by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because of a perceived lack of loyalty to the Bush Administration.

The turnover at the Northern California prosecutor’s office disrupted the ongoing BALCO investigation, likely causing a delay in the handing up of indictments. For the last eight months, the Bonds case was handled by interim US Attorney Scott Schools, a veteran DoJ lawyer.

With the confirmation and swearing in of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush set about filling the vacancies created by the previous AG’s White House-directed purge. Joseph Russoniello, who served as US Attorney for ten years in the same district under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, has been nominated by his former boss’s son to take over the office now tasked with prosecuting Bonds.

And, one more thing, if this case doesn’t seem muddied enough by the behavior of the President and his appointees, defense attorney Mike Rains, representing Bonds in this matter, is accusing the feds of “unethical misconduct,” stating:

Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other.

I’m not ready to grant him that Bonds is simply being persecuted here, but as for his other observation, yeah, it—like this entire tangled web—has to get you thinking. . . .


UPDATE:

Questions about the timing of the Bonds indictment and its relationship to recent DoJ turmoil are asked in Saturday’s New York Times:

Why now? A defense lawyer for Barry Bonds and two outside legal experts raised questions yesterday about the timing of the perjury indictment against Bonds, saying they did not understand why it came this week and not months or even years ago.

But the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco declined to answer questions about the case against Bonds. . . .

The 10-page indictment issued by a grand jury Thursday consisted mostly of quotations from Bonds’s 2003 grand jury testimony, in which he repeatedly denied taking steroids or human growth hormone.

A government official involved with the case said the Department of Justice in Washington did not sign off on the decision to indict Bonds, which is not unusual. The official, who talked on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was officially sworn in Nov. 9, only learned of the indictment after Scott Schools, the acting United States attorney in the Northern District of California, called the office an hour before the indictment was announced.

The lead defense lawyer for Bonds, Michael L. Rains, said the indictment did not appear to contain much new information. “Nothing has changed in four years,” Rains said. . . .

Two former federal prosecutors, Tony West and Walt Brown, speculated that Schools might have wanted to issue the indictment before he was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

Less than four hours after the indictment was announced Thursday, the White House nominated Joseph Russoniello to replace Schools, a career prosecutor who has served as interim head of the office since Kevin Ryan was fired in January.

The White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the timing of the announcement was “completely coincidental.” . . .

West, a defense attorney in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor there, said, “It’s a logical way to think about it, that you don’t have to get another U.S. attorney up to speed on it.” West said he was otherwise perplexed why Bonds would have been indicted Thursday on evidence the government seemed to have collected months ago.

Assistant United States attorneys in the office pushed to indict Bonds in the summer of 2006, but Ryan wanted to get testimony from Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer.

Anderson was jailed for contempt for refusing to testify for the last year, and he has been steadfast in his refusal to appear before the grand jury — another reason the government may have decided not to wait any longer, West said.

Anderson was released from jail shortly after the indictment against Bonds was announced. . . .

Brown, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and now a defense lawyer in San Francisco, also said the coming change in United States attorneys might have been a factor. “You can’t help but notice the timing,” he said.

But Brown said the prosecutors might have also waited to charge Bonds until after the baseball season to avoid complaints that they had interfered with Bonds’s pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run record.

So, either the indictment was rushed because the White House was about to replace the lead attorney (who was himself a replacement after the USA-gate purge), or the indictment was delayed so as not to interfere with the baseball season and Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s record—is that what counts as jurisprudence and due process these days?


(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

hark! wrong park!

The headline on Thursday’s Grub Street post was a little misleading: “Hark! New Shake Shack to Open at Shea Stadium.” The short post does correct the misdirection—the new Shake Shack will be part of Citi Field (or, as we are all already calling it, Shitty Field), the new Mets park set to open in April of 2009, but it doesn’t quite get at the heart of the Mets’ concession problems.

I have long been a critic of the food at Shea. Even with the slight upgrade this year (switching park-wide to Nathan’s hotdogs, and instituting smarter line management at some stands), Shea still has some of the worst ballpark food in the major leagues. It’s not so much any one item (though the barely warm hotdogs, assorted disgusting fried items, and chemical-flavored and extremely soft Carvel soft serve are all pretty foul), but rather the complete lack of a sense of place that has always bugged me.

You go to Wrigley in Chicago, and you get a top-flight Chicago-style hotdog with all the appropriate toppings (one of the best hotdogs I ever had was in the bleachers at Wrigley, but maybe the atmosphere had a little to do with that review). You go to the “phone booth” in San Francisco, and you can get a stinking rose—a hot chicken sandwich, heavy on the garlic. You go to Milwaukee, and you not only can get five different kinds of sausage, you get to see the sausages race during the seventh inning stretch!

Come to Shea, and at most stands, you can get a Pepsi, a Budweiser or Bud Light, a hotdog, and an assortment of generic options not uncommon to school cafeterias. Now, like I said, the Nathan’s dogs are a step up, and somewhere in the park there is rumored to be a place to get Jamaican beef patties, but otherwise, there is no real sense of being in New York.

The thing that has always really bugged me is the lack of traditional toppings for the hotdogs. In fact, there is a complete lack of toppings, aside from ketchup and mustard (and thank our stars that they actually went back to real mustard after a couple of years of Dijonaise. . . I still shiver thinking about it), of any kind! In LA, you can get relish and raw onions, in Milwaukee, there’s two kinds of hot sauce, at Wrigley, as I said, there’s the emerald relish and the sport peppers and the half-dozen other ingredients that you need for a classic Chicago dog.

But in New York, where you can’t imagine a hot dog without either warm sauerkraut or taxi onions, imagine them is all you can do once you walk through the Shea Stadium turnstiles. Except in the fancy luxury suites, you ain’t gonna find those kinds of things when you “show up at Shea.”

The concessions at Shea Stadium should celebrate New York food. They should have always been seeking out the great purveyors of hotdogs, pastrami, beef patties, and egg rolls—or maybe pork buns—and maybe even pizza (for some reason, I don’t like the idea of pizza at a ballpark—it just seems out of place). They should have offered up Brooklyn Lager, or some such local brew, and maybe a Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry or Cel-Ray soda. But, instead, they have, as long as anyone can remember, contracted out their food to one of those national catering companies. It used to be Harry M. Stevens, then they were bought by Aramark. These are the same people that do the food in freshman dining halls and corporate cafeterias. There is nothing distinctly regional about what they bring to the table. . . or your lap, as the case may be.

I also should note that speed and service have never been hallmarks of Shea’s concessions. Again, it’s a little better this year, but you will still miss an inning or two if you try to get some fries during the first half of a well-attended game.

So, all of this is not to say that I don’t welcome a future that will include a Shack Burger or a Vienna hotdog, and maybe even a concreation, inside the confines of Shitty Field—I am a big fan of the Shack (even if it has slipped a little this summer. . . and the new fries suck)—but a Shack Burger is, at its core, an LA-style burger. Vienna hotdogs are from Chicago (though, along with the classic windy city toppings, Shake Shack does offer very good sauerkraut or onion relish). The Shack’s frozen custard apparently draws its inspiration from St. Louis.

So, the food might be better, but it won’t be New York.

In the end, I don’t go to a baseball stadium to eat (well, not just to eat), but the ballpark experience should be a total experience. New York’s team with New York’s food.

Plus, I should add, if you think the lines at the Madison Square Park Shake Shack are maddening, let me tell you, if the Flushing Shack is staffed with Aramark employees, instead of Danny Meyer’s well-paid, well-treated Union Square Hospitality Group workers, then you might see America’s first incidences of burger rage. I can easily imagine never getting a Shack Burger at “Shea” because I won’t even wait for more than 20 minutes at the original Shack—and in that case, I’m not missing a live baseball game while I’m waiting.

In the final analysis, I have discovered that if I eat minimally during a Mets game, I can take a short walk after the game to Flushing’s main drag and enjoy some of the best Chinese and Malaysian food this city has to offer. No lines. No inflated ballpark prices.

I hope that this part of my Shea experience survives the Stadium “upgrade.”

Play ball!

finally, someone that will benefit from global warming. . .

The makers of aluminum bats.

Baseball bats going extinct. At a baseball bat factory tucked into the lush tree country in northwestern Pennsylvania, the operators have drawn up a “three-to-five-year emergency plan” if the white ash tree, which has been used for decades to make the bat of choice, is compromised by the effects of global warming.

There is also some emerald beetle that may or may not like it hot, but the article makes it pretty clear that if the beetle doesn’t finish them off, ash forests—along with the other tree of choice for baseball bats, maple—will move much further north or disappear because of the warming climate. And, even before the trees disappear, the longer growing season of a warmer climate will produce a softer wood that will not be suitable for major league duty.