Sabean's F-Word

Brian Sabean has had quite the offseason, and the fun has followed him -- and the Giants -- all the way to Arizona for Spring Training. (SPRING TRAINING 2004 / Sabean not one to shy away from tough questions) And it doesn't look like the merriment will stop anytime soon. Forget about the Marlins loss, Steroidathon, and Nenn's arm. Most of the chatter is around Michael Tucker.

Yes, the oh so versatile Michael Tucker -- and several other players, such as Brett Tomko, Neifi Perez, Dustin Hermanson -- are your San Francisco Giants' answer for the 2004 World Series. As Sabean says, you need payroll and bench flexibility. Tucker, Tomko, Hermanson, Hammonds, Feliz, heck, most of the Giants aside from Bonds and Nenn's severed arm give Sabean something on the cheap for what Alou needs on the field. So much so, in fact, that it leads me to wonder -- what the heck would they have done with Vladimir Guerrero? Great talent, good bat, good arm, good glove, a risk taking fan pleaser with tremendous upside in a down market -- and a bad back.

Oh. The bad back thing. Bad backs suck; you can't stretch with a bad back. And if Vlad can't stretch, how can he be flexible? And if he can't be flexible, he sure won't fit in with this flexibility thing that Sabean digs. And if there's one thing Sabean doenn't need, it's someone who isn't a team player. Sabean figures it would've been the easy way out, going after a big bat to protect Bonds. Besides, if Tucker breaks out with an .800 OBP and a Web Gem here and there, aren't the Giants getting their money's worth? And if Tomko does his innings-eating thing, and Hermanson does his setup thing, and Hammonds gets to pinch hit once in a while, Neifi fields sharp grounder reminiscent of Dave Concepcion Light, and a few other guys who flexibly fit into the lineup eke out a play here and there, then I say the fans will proclaim -- "Guerrero who?" And through this all, we'll have cool Giants bobbleheads.

Aren't you looking forward to Scrappy Neifi Perez, his jiggling nodding head saying, "Yes, buy me for 2.99" at Carls Jr.? Can you get any more excited for Pedro Feliz, the Giant who may break out with a 20 home run season? Or how about one last huzzah for JT Snow, who is surely as cute (and cheaper) than Vladimir? Any takers?

And Tucker. Yessir, the Giants' answer for 2004. It's not fair that we hope for so much. He'll look awesome in that Carls Jr. box, head bopping about. He'll look more awesome in that Giants' jersey, walking up to the plate, maybe nodding to the crowd, looking forward to a great season. Shoot, if he drives in a guy every once in a while and covers the outfield, it's icing on the cake. And lastly. Sabean will be most dapper of all...if Guerrero goes lame on Opening Day.

C'mon. Face it. The sole realistic way for Tucker to have a good year is if Guerrero gets injured. Otherwise, this lightweight-not-so-young-and-not-terribly-affordable-outfielder will be dreaming about 46-RBI seasons of yesteryear. The only flexibility Tucker provides is due to Alou twisting his lineups this way and that for every game, desperate to find something that sticks. When your manager is wondering if any of his pitchers can hit lefties better than his starting right fielder, then "flexibility" really spells out some other f-word. And even Sabean knows it doesn't spell "G-u-e-r-r-e-r-o."

Bush’s Outlook Task List

1. Look into this crap about them gays marrying
2. See above; where am I at?
3. You mean it’s not illegal already?
4. Get them to write me some speech about this judicial activism thingy they whispered in my ear
5. Get Usama
6. We haven’t yet? Dammit. Who was supposed to do that? Find out
7. Go after all them folk behind proliferationizing WMD
8. Meet with Musharaff, my good friend and ally
9. Speak out against Islamic extremism
10. Tie 9 into my ‘not so fast pardner’ speech re: Iraqi elections
11. Wait – Pakistan? Nukes? Crossing borders?
12. Look into these rumors about Pakistan, dictatorships, Islam, extremism, and nukes
13. Ask my good buddy Musharaff about that one
14. Do something about the economy
15. Screw that; find another good spending program that benefits the rustbelt, the carbelt, and Florida. I need votes.

SLIPPERY SLOPES SLANTING STRAIGHT TO HELL

AFA - American Family Association - Promoting Traditional Family Values

Click on the above site. Rome is burning. Lions are eating the Christians, men are sleeping with one another, and female poets are writing erotic love songs about one anothers' privates. We must act now.

Or something like that.

If you think about it, we've all been going to hell for the past few thousand years, at least since some Samarian discovered a way to publish kinky cuneiform. Funny, though, that we're still here. Like (gasp) I think John Edwards (double gasp) said a few days ago in response to gay marriage, if we act based on public opinion, we'd have a country chockablock with slaves, quiet women in long cotton skirts, segregated social & business & educational & entertainment & etc structures, Fox-televised lynchings, and your general yahoo-ishness.

But we knew better, right?

Folks say it's a slippery slope. Legalize (or ban) this, and you get an avalanche, eroding our (name it -- religious, gun, abortion, free-speech, economic, etc.) rights. NARAL uses it to defend abortion, the NRA & Co. use it to defend the right to bear arms, the ACLU uses it to defend parts of the constitution they want to selectively defend.

Back to topic -- not that we shouldn't question the ACLU's selective view of who deserves their civil liberties -- what are the yahoos screaming about when it comes to gay marriage?

"We must protect the sanctity of marriage"
"Marriage is between a man and a woman"
"God this, Bible that, Jesus this, Scripture that"

What's the argument founded in? If the degree of sanctity between married folk is a judge of our society, we're long gone. This isn't just a recent trend of marriage-for-hire, popstar marry-a-thons, and broken vows. Marriage has long been an institution of breaking hearts and wives' noses. If marriage is about sanctity and purity, it'd be a lot harder to get married. Maybe that's too simple an argument.

Now for the man and woman thing. Where does it say that? The rules are etched in society's Book of Hammurabi? (Book of Hammurabi - Index) What "they" say is it's a social norm. And yes, that social norm emerged from Western society and Western religion, in this case Christianity. We all know the Catholics hate gays (but tolerate pedarasts, hiding them in ever-darker caves with access to ever-more prey), but so do other brands of Churchery.

Okay -- it's not that they "hate". They hate the sin, love the sinner. Fine. But no Federal or State Constitution I know of shows concern for sinners, nor should they.

Let’s spin this around. Ask Bush, or the AFA, about The Church’s role (and by “The Church”, I mean “Non-kook Christian, excluding the Moonies, the Unitarians, the Mormons, and so on, except oh wait, the Mormons don’t like The Gays do they? Hrm, a dilemma brewing here…. Put an asterisk next to them.”) in government, and I’m sure you’ll get some half-answer about how a healthy society depends on a vital faith system, the two are intertwined, and they’ll attack the question by claiming the Turks are at the Gates, ready to storm in and crush Christiandom.

So what about them “Turks”? What social mores – legislated and stamped into the lawbooks – does Islamic society embrace? The subservience of women? Sharia – Islamic law that dictates crimes and their corresponding punishments? (Online Index of Islamic Law) Is it cool for a Mullah to decide right and wrong, alive and dead? No?

“Well, there’s a big difference between observing God’s laws and installing an Islamic dictatorship.”

Well, okay, perhaps. But it is a slippery slope, right? Yes? No? If one is a shade of another, then it’s that same argument – where do we stop? What else can The State decide is wrong? Working overseas? Traveling to Cuba? Hiring whomever I want? Smoking on my front porch? Eating a fat burger? Sending my kid to a school of my choosing?

Wait a minute…

Where do we rationally stop building a wall around free speech, immigration, trade, property rights, abortion, gun rights, privacy? Let’s avoid the question by agreeing not to START on any of those walls. Otherwise, whether we’re Good or Evil, Right or Left, we’ll get the worst that we all deserve.

COMMENTS FROM THE MOB

"I don't see trade as being the same thing as sending jobs overseas".

Good comment. Oh well. In trade, someone exchanges goods and services (or cash) with someone else. If I offshore, those are either internal “dollars” or external “dollars” transferred for those services. When companies “send work overseas”, all they’re doing is employing someone else somewhere else to do a job. Restricting that – whatever it’s labeled as – is a core piece of restricting trade. If I don’t want HP to employee Chinese, it’s likely that I similarly don’t want the Chinese to make my furniture, PCs, PDA, software, kids clothes, etc. If I believe that, my argument will be the same – that is, doing anything that promotes the employment of Chinese means an American has lost a job.

Let's carry that one a little further. That argument evidently means that the Americans working for Toyota, and therefore stealing jobs from the Japanese, play a role in trade, much as I did by working in London (an American employed by an American firm, consulting for a British company, thereby squeezing out a British citizen), and so on.

Maybe it’s all a matter of faith. If I have faith in the open market, then I believe one thing. If I have faith in "intelligently focused" regulations, I believe the other. (Note: If you believe in intelligently focused regulations, perhaps you also believe in central planning. If so, check out Soviet economic performance under their 5-year plans.... [10/29/02 - My Time with Soviet Economics])

So choose your faith. I doubt anyone will convince everyone that one is absolutely right; both are complex and will be argued over forever (until either the Communist hordes take over or George Bush the Third blows us all up).

BARTMAN'S BLOWN UP BALL

What would you do if you were average Joe (albeit a dorky looking one), in the wrong place at the wrong time, out-bucknering Buckner...from the stands? Steve Bartman, this is your life!

Well, they're blowing up his ball -- one Alou might have caught. (ESPN.com - MLB - Dead ball walking: Closure for fans?) It's amazing how the might of one goober in the stands can keep the Cubs out of the World Series. Here's Bartman's accomplishments:

--Under his tutelage, his little league team posted an OPS of .811, compared to a league average of .772. Heavy hitters in a lightweight league.
--"#1SB!" -- the Bartman himself -- has been the high score on the Ms Pacman arcade game at the Evanston Shakeys for 9 years running.

But that's all forgotten. His list continues:

--E10 on that fly ball (as a Cub)
--8 RBI (as a Marlin)
--2 losses (as a Cub), including some unfortunate time spent teaching Kerry Wood the forkball prior to Wood's blow up in Game 7
--It's even rumored that, in the aftermath of "the drop" he loaned his bat to Aaron Boone for Game 7 against the Yankees

This guy is amazing, perhaps one of the most influential he-men in baseball since Burt Hooten. So don't we all wonder -- what has he been up to? I mean, besides advising Dusty on which washed-up weak-hitting "veterans with presense" to but in place of "ballplayers with talent"?

Just like the guy himself, the answer is amazing -- he's hiding from the world. Sure, perhaps he's actually the guy behind the guy responsible for Janet's Boob; perhaps he trained Adam Vinatieri on how to come through in the clutch and is now working with John Edwards; maybe he's behind the new iPod design. But my notion?

He's hiding, terrified and pissed off at the publicity. His day likely consists of getting ready for roto-league baseball, and downloading LL Cool J from Kazaa. And I think the world is with me when I say, "Dude -- embrace this thing! Sh!t happens, but sh!t like this? It's a gift!"

Believe me, Bartman didn't put the Marlins in the Series. He did, however, land smack dab in the middle of Americana for want of watching the game. He probably would even admit that, while sitting along the left field line at Cubs-in-Playoffs Game, he should watch more of the game, groove out to Run DMC's "Walk This Way" less. But bygones are bygones. He's an Immortal, a walking legend. Use it, boy!

Bartman -- When they blow up your ball today, you should be pushing that button. Imagine the feeling! We can't all make oodles of money AND exorcise our past at the same time. Sure, I could go back to West Point and flip off the Superintendant, but that's on my dime, and all it would get me is stranded in frikkin' New York. I could go back to a high school reunion and say to Erin Schreck, "Damn you were hot and I was a dunce", but all that would get me is stranded in frikkin' Iowa next to a gal laughing at my bald head. You see -- you (Bartman) were handed this steaming pile from on high, and have done nothing with it, other than hope it goes away.

Hope it goes away? Have you followed baseball? You're a Cubs fan -- a fan of a team that gripes about dropped fly balls from the early 1900s. A team that is cursed by a goat. A team that has legions of drunk, unemployed cattleyard workers moan at every pitch and, increasingly, at every one of Dusty's inspired moves. Unless you're out of the limelight because you're really working on dumping some serious date-rape pills into the national water supply, you are already imbedded in Baseball -- and American -- history. Cub fans may sometimes forget to wear their expandable-waist sweatpants to games, but they don't forget people like you.

Remember, Buckner (Bill Buckner History), was a Cub for a while. You are a Cub for life.

THE MORALITY OF FREE TRADE

Amen. Of course, posting Wall Street Journal articles is like preaching to a room half filled by your choir, the other half by the deaf. One half is already listening, the other never will.

Anywho, it's hard to imagine anyone rational can support this anti-trade rhetoric. Again, and I love that this is being brought up more and more, the progressives hate Bush & Co. for (among many things) their unilateral foreign policy. Arrogant. How dare the US not engage France, Germany, Russia, China, and other fair nations with fair policies?

Well then, what's this beef about the progressive's notion for shoving our labor, environmental and tax laws down other nations' throats as a precondition to trade? Countries -- and more important, their people -- don't have the right to prosper from enterprise? They must first earn it by smothering economic growth in the cradle?

Remember how the US economy developed. We were farmers. We developed small mills, small factories. Yes, the South had slavery, but it was backwards and repressed -- not progressed -- the Southern economy. Taking increased advantage of rivers and rails, trade prospered. Trade and production prospered, with urbanization chasing its heels. Poor folk having a crazy notion of better wages in the big city MOVED to the big city. So did boatloads of immigrants. Some people had it bad, but they nonetheless found jobs, shelter, food -- and it all worked out. In that process, there were painful labor, industrial, and social reforms, and we found ourselves better for them.

And here we are.

I don't quite remember my point. But it's close to this -- if "lesser nations" are so behind us economically, they need a chance to catch up. Not everyone has the luxury of worrying about whether their electrician should get paid time and a half for moving that monitor from trade booth 13 to trade booth 43. Not everyone has the luxury of performing 7 year environmental impact assessments before building another transforming station in Los Banos. Not everyone has the luxury of having 20% of its labor costs go to state disability payments.

Let these societies LEARN what building and supporting a society entails; let them learn how to build a stronger society and educate their people; let them figure out what Byzantine tax, labor, and environmental codes they want to drop down from on high. Most important, give them a chance to grow; give their people a chance to have their first job indoors, out from a burning sun and baked soil. These very same people will then dream of bigger, better things -- their next job, their first home, maybe even their first college class. That's a moral imperative far larger than some suck-up platitude about "preserving the fairness of trade".

Besides, we'd save a few bucks on the cheaper shoes and chips.

WSJ.com - Is Free Trade Immoral?

The Onion | America's Finest News Source�

Suck: Daily

ATTENTION: THUGS WITH MACHETES SHOULDN'T CONTROL EMPLOYMENT

Common-sense reminders that, instead of policies attacking "Benedict Arnold CEOs", we should promote policies that remove obstacles for:

1) people to want go into business
2) these people to want to hire other people
3) these hired people to want to stay hired by whatever company that wants to hire them

This may be too pie-in-the-sky, but it should be simple. There are too many obstacles -- tariffs, taxes, regulations, and other inefficiencies built into the structure -- out there that make "should we hire?" a much harder decision than it should be. Now, I'm not talking about "Too bad we can't hire children", "Too bad we can't cram them into a 9th floor sweatshop for 16-hour work days", or "Too bad slavery's abolished" (eDebate Archives: Re: The economics of slave society). I'm talking about corporate taxes, payroll taxes, social security taxes, and all the sundry state/local/block-by-block fees and foolishness a company, its employees, and its customers are hit with every day.

"Well, it's worse in other countries -- and they still have universal health care." What, that's supposed to be convincing? Go to any country and ask Mr. Manonthestreet about their politicians, and the answers will range from "I like [party x] but the rest are crooks" to "You mean the thugs that hacked through my village with machetes?"

You're telling me you want thugs with machetes controlling health care? No? What about employment trends?

WSJ.com - Business World - The Politics of Hiring

Damn, I get a letter in the Wall Street Journal, and all the fellows pop out of the woodwork. Whooda thunk that Santa Cruz grew anything other than lice problems, public debt and pot?

It was in response to the funderful freedom lovers brought to you by the Democratic party, and their tirades against Benedict Arnold Corporations. But directly, it was spurred by a simple, heartfelt response from one of my favorite cost-cutting millionairesses herself -- HPQ's Carly Fiorina: WSJ.com - Be Creative, Not Protectionist

Now, people say "We don't want to wall off America; we just want to use some common sense when it comes to exporting jobs...." But they may as well keep reading off their laundry list. Why is it progressives want us to be internationalists when it comes to foreign politics, war, missions of kindness, Sharpton junkets to Haiti, what have you -- but isolationists when it comes to trade? Hell, they just march into lockstep with the conservative neanderthals they despise. One group wants gays to get back into their closets, the other group wants Indians, Mexicans, Brazilians, and your billion Chinese to get back where they belong -- poor, oppressed, and begging the UN for bucks. Much easier to manage that than it is to manage a complex global economy, huh?

Anywho, the letter:

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Evidently, "progressives" want to freeze the U.S., take a picture of it, and lovingly place it above their mantles. I, too, have pictures above the mantle, of poor German immigrants stepping off packed boats, then pictures of their farms and communities. There are old photos of my great-grandfather's World War I outfit, of first-generation immigrants smiling in front of a one-room schoolhouse, of first harvests and first graduations from college.

Then the pictures increasingly show variety. Families that lived and died on the farm now have pictures of doctors, professors, teachers and lawyers. My grandmother, a farmer's wife from a farming family, has pictures of her grandson graduating from West Point, her daughter working in Africa, her son coaching basketball, a grandson studying in Russia. And this is just one family whose story is repeated throughout America.

Which vision is better, a static America, saving our jobs, freezing economic development while opposing the blossoming of free, open societies or a vibrant world fraught with risk but flowering with change?

Brian Schnack
Santa Cruz, Calif.

Updated February 20, 2004
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