Aaron Judge: Yankee Superstar

  

                                         

As I write, the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies are tied at one game apiece in this years World Series, but for me the season came to an end when the Astros swept the New York Yankees to win the  American League championship. As long as I can remember, I have been a Yankee fan.

 In 1946, at the age of seven, I became a baseball fan while listening on the radio as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Red Sox in a World Series marked by a pivotal run scored by hustling Cardinal Enos Slaughter.  I think baseball is the only game where plays like that remain etched in your mind over a lifetime.

Next year, living in New York  City’s borough of Queens, I became a fan of the Yankees with their great Italian triumvirate of DiMaggio, Berra, Rizzuto. Most of the games then were played during the day, and I recall sitting under the grape arbor behind my grandparents’ home next door listening to the broadcasts. My parents and my grandparents were not particularly interested in baseball, but the kids in the neighborhood and at school were rabid fans. We constantly played all kinds of ball games on the sidewalks, in the streets, and in back lots. We formed imaginary teams and even kept stats.

In 1947 the Yankees won the World Series against the hated Brooklyn Dodgers. I vividly recall, after walking home from school one day, turning on the radio to hear Yankee pitcher Bill Bevens give up a double to Cookie Lavagetto (another Italian) and lose the game as well as a no-hitter in the ninth inning. Nevertheless,  I was hooked. The Yankees were in my blood. They didn’t win the pennant in 1948 but in 1949, they began an incredible streak of five straight World Series victories under legendary manager Casey Stengel.

Now, in my eighties, I still think that baseball is the best of all spectator sports. I am not alone. If you look at today’s lineups, you will see that the World Series is a true world series. Still, I find it difficult to either watch the games on TV or listen on the radio. It’s not just the incessant commercials between innings, but also between practically every pitch: “this walk to the mound is brought to you by xyz,” or “this pitch is brought to you by abc.” More than the commercials, I find that at my age I cannot bear the tension, especially in the play-offs which have become more exciting than the World Series. Nerd that I am, I prefer to study the stats after the games are over. 

Speaking of stats, this year the Yankees’ Aaron Judge had one of the greatest years in Yankee and in baseball history. It was not only that he tied Babe Ruth’s 1927 154 game record for home runs, and beat Roger Maris’s 1961 total of 61 over 162 games, but also his other stats were phenomenal. His 62 home runs, and 131 runs batted in (rbis) led the league by wide margins. His batting average of .311 was second in the league in a year when only a handful of players hit over .300. If you add his 111 walks (many intentional) to his 177 hits, you get an incredible on-base percentage of .425.  

I don’t mean to take anything away from Ruth or Maris but Judge’s performance in 2022 exceeded theirs in 1927 and 1961. In a year when batting averages were down and pitching dominated, Judge’s numbers were way above the baseball average. Just compare his numbers with Shohei Ohtani, the LA Angels star, who is his competition for Most Valuable Player this year.

Ruth and Maris had great numbers, but they never faced the kind of pitching that Judge faced this year. In times past, it was a rare pitcher who could throw over 95 mph, much less 100 mph. If they could, they would lack control. Today, every team seems to be loaded with pitchers who consistently throw over 95 mph with control. In one playoff game, the Yankees’ Luis Severino averaged 97 mph. Moreover, a friend of mine mentioned that the ball was not as lively this year as it was just two years ago. A statistical research firm claimed that if the 2020 balls had been used this year, Judge would have hit over 80 home runs. 

It is true that he stumbled in the playoffs against an outstanding Houston pitching staff, but that should not detract from one of the greatest performances in baseball history.

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Armageddon: the Big, Big Issue

  

                                

Recently, at a political fundraiser, President Biden warned that the war in Ukraine has brought us closer to nuclear Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban Missile crisis of over 60 years ago. Younger readers may not know that shortly after the Communist revolution in Cuba, the then Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba during the administration of President Kennedy. Although young and inexperienced, Kennedy was vigorous and surrounded by capable advisors. Fortunately, both sides stepped back and a nuclear Armageddon was avoided.

Now, President Biden claims that Armageddon again threatens because of the war in Ukraine. We have reached this situation under his watch. He has been President for almost two years and can no longer blame ex-President Trump. Neither can he blame the Republican party since they control neither House of Congress. He does blame President Putin of Russia, but Biden is leader of the free world. Any war represents a failure of diplomacy. Even without a nuclear exchange, the death and destruction on both sides in Ukraine is a colossal diplomatic failure on the part of the Biden administration.

No matter what you think about Donald Trump, we did have four years of peace during his term. It is true that we had the pandemic but we had peace. It is a disgrace that he did not get the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Abraham accords in the Middle East. Although the claims of Democrats that Trump colluded with Russia have now been proven to be a hoax, what President Trump actually did seemed to do the job. During his administration there was no Russian invasion of Ukraine.

You may remember that during the previous Obama/ Biden administration, Russia invaded and took over part of Ukraine with virtually no opposition. During that administration Vice-President Biden had been put in charge of Ukrainian affairs.  Among other things he threatened to withhold all aid to Ukraine unless the government dismissed an official investigating corruption. At the same time, his son, Hunter Biden, got a very lucrative sinecure with a Ukrainian energy firm.

Now fast-forward to today’s Biden administration. I still believe that the Biden administration must bear much of the blame for the war in Ukraine. About this time last year President Biden publicly announced that he saw no reason why Ukraine should not be considered for membership in NATO. These words were a provocation to Russia. We were threatening to place NATO forces and weapons smack up against the Russian border. Moreover, the entrance of Ukraine into NATO would have committed US forces to the defense of that country.

Just months after President Biden’s announcement, President Putin responded with a massive invasion of Ukraine, something that he had declined to do during the four years of the Trump administration. If you think that peace was maintained during the Trump era by collusion with Russia, then let’s have more collusion. 

Since the inception of the bloody conflict that now even threatens a catastrophic nuclear exchange, what has the Biden administration done? Has the President emerged as a passionate voice for peace? Has he called for negotiations to end the conflict? No, he has taken sides and step by step has participated in the escalation of the conflict to the point where he now raises the specter of Armageddon. 

During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were on the brink of nuclear war when Russian nuclear missiles were placed in Cuba 90 miles away from our border. Now, we are shipping potent missiles to Ukraine right on the Russian border. Back then, a young President Kennedy negotiated a settlement to bring us back from the brink. Now that our aged President has raised the specter of Armageddon, it is time for him to also step back from the brink, and stop escalating the conflict. 

The conflict in Ukraine is the big, big issue facing us today. It is such more serious than climate change, crime, inflation, the border, or abortion. A recent alarming news item indicated that we have just sent almost 5000 American soldiers to the Ukrainian border. What's next?

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Columbus Day 2022

 

As Columbus Day morphs into Indigenous Peoples Day in parts of the USA, it is ironic that many of the people calling for the removal of statues of Columbus, or for his elimination from our school history books are people that now call themselves Hispanics.*

 

Who do these people think were on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria back in 1492? Other than Columbus, they were all from what is now called Spain. Columbus, the leader of the expedition, came from Genoa which is now part of Italy. The Spanish crew, especially the Pinzon brothers who captained the Nina and the Pinta, disliked and distrusted Columbus despite his obvious seamanship and great experience on the high seas. 

 

Once they landed on an island off what Columbus  thought was Asia, he had an extremely difficult time controlling the cruelty and rapacity of his crew in their dealing with the natives they found there. 

 

 

The indigenous islanders themselves were not much better. Modern feminists might be surprised to discover that native men freely shared their women with the new arrivals. After all, what was a woman for, except work, sex, and childbearing? Indeed, indigenous people from other islands often took women captive to breed them so they could feed on their infants.

 

Anyway, in subsequent voyages thousands of Hispanics, the ancestors of today’s protestors, came to the New World and increased the level of cruelty and brutality. It is true that Columbus, participated in this ill-treatment, especially after he found that the settlers he had left behind on his first voyage had all died in suspicious circumstances. Eventually, Columbus lost control over the situation and on one trip was even arrested by the Spanish governor and sent back to Spain in chains.

 

Despite the efforts of Queen Isabella who insisted that the natives of the islands were her subjects, and therefore could not be slaves, the practice of slavery and colonial brutality grew worse. The story was told long ago  by Bartolomeo del las Casas, an early settler who became a priest, gave up his own slaves, and worked for the rest of his life to protect the natives from the ravages of the colonizers. 

 

The efforts of Las Casas were mirrored a couple of centuries later when Junipero Serra, another Franciscan friar, built a mission system in California in the eighteenth century to protect the  natives from the brutality and rapacity of Hispanic colonizers. Only after the Mexican government shut down the missions in the nineteenth century were the natives thrown to the wolves. For his efforts, the Catholic church has canonized Fr. Serra, but protestors now vandalize and tear down commemorative memorials. 

 

The ancestors of these Hispanic colonizers can still be seen today as they brandish AK 47s, and brutally herd thousands of immigrants from Central American through Mexico to the American border. 

 

Although I am dismayed by the hypocrisy of modern Hispanic protestors, I do not want to single Hispanics out as particularly evil. Slavery has been practiced all over the world by all kinds of people. Before African slaves could be sent to the New World, they had to be captured and chained by black tribal leaders and Moslem slave traders. Only then could European slave traders transport them to the Americas. Even indigenous American Indian tribes owned black slaves. 

 

Where did this evil come from? In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers wrote that all men were created equal, but they did not believe that all men wound up equal. They meant that all humans had the same nature. We are all human despite our gender, or the color of our skin. 

 

In the eighteenth century there was a great debate among intellectuals about human nature. A few novel thinkers rejected the time-honored idea that all humans are imperfect; that we could be capable of great things but that there was a flaw in our nature that could lead us to do wrong or evil. Christian theologians called it original sin and believed we had all inherited it from our first parents.

 

The new thinking of the so-called Enlightenment rejected the notion of original sin and claimed that we are all created perfect or good. The evil in the world could then be traced somehow to corrupt social norms or traditions. The cure for evils like slavery would then lie not in perfecting human weakness, but in reforming society and ridding it of its various ills. 

 

Along with this new theory came a new myth, the myth of the “Noble Savage,” that believed that the indigenous peoples of the New World lived in a state of nature where all was happiness, peace, and serenity. Only when Europeans brought their civilization to America with all its social ills, including religion, was the paradise of the noble savage corrupted and destroyed in the same way that the serpent corrupted Adam and Eve in the biblical story.

 

The myth of the noble savage was not based on any real historical evidence. The proponents of the idea despised and ridiculed the primitive peasants of their own countries but praised the primitive indigenous people of the New World whom they had never seen.

 

Nevertheless, the myth of the noble savage has become pervasive in our own time. So, instead of a human being, capable of good and evil like the rest of us, Columbus has become an evil agent of white supremacy, the man who destroyed the pristine paradise of the New World.

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*Note: I do not understand why I, a descendant of immigrants from Italy, am considered "white" and inherently a "white supremacist," while the descendants of immigrants from Spain are not considered "white" and therefore free of any taint of white supremacy. 

The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change

Climate Change activists date the current warming trend to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It seems obvious to me that their alarmism about Climate has more to do with an animus against the Industrial Revolution and its effects than concern for the environment. Capitalism and free enterprise are associated with the Industrial Revolution. A recent study showed that today 50% of college students consider themselves be Socialists. The percentage of their professors must be even higher. 

Over fifty years ago when I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of a basic course in Western Civilization, I thought then and still believe today that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in the history of the world. If you do an image search for Industrial Revolution, you will see countless images of smoke-belching factories of 150 years ago, but you will not see an image of the ubiquitous latest mobile phone pictured above. Before the Industrial Revolution life was indeed "nasty, brutish, and short."

Try to imagine a world today without the following:

Electricity

Clean water delivered by pipeline to your home

Modern sewers and waste removal systems

Automobiles

Home heating without firewood

Computers

Televisions

Air Conditioning in homes and cars

Trains, Planes, and Buses

Indoor Plumbing—before the IR there was no such thing.

Elevators

Washing Machines for clothes and dishes

Hospitals with their incredible technology

Cell Phones—most important of all!

It is hard to believe but our ancestors before the Industrial Revolution had none of these essential elements of modern life. Actually, many parts of the world today still live in the pre-industrial age without many of the items listed above. 

Industrial Revolution is the term given to the transformation of manufacturing from homes and shops to factories employing hundreds or even thousands. The transformation began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and eventually spread all over the world. However, before there could be an industrial revolution, there had to be three other revolutionary developments. 

First, there was a Demographic Revolution involving a substantial increase in population. This increase happened not so much because of a rise in the birth rate but because of a decline in the death or mortality rate due to a dramatic drop in infant mortality, a drop caused by advances in diet and sanitation. For example, in Italy in 1860, 232 of every 1000 infants died in the first two years of life but 60 years later only 127 of 1000 infants died during the same period. 

An Agricultural Revolution accompanied the Demographic Revolution. Human ingenuity devised new methods of farming, land management, and animal husbandry to feed the growing population. While doomsayers like the British clergyman Thomas Malthus were predicting mass starvation, they could not predict that the profit motive and human resourcefulness would provide for the needs of an ever increasing population. 

A Transportation Revolution also accompanied the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the great age of canal and railroad building. At the same time, steam power replaced wind power as a safer and more reliable source of energy. The revolution in means of transportation allowed mass migrations of people from rural areas to the urban centers of manufacturing and commerce. It also allowed goods and services to be delivered faster and at less cost. Lower costs meant that not only rich people could afford them.

From the beginning the tremendous social, economic, and political changes caused by these revolutions had both good and bad consequences. Rural areas lost population and industrial cities became overcrowded. Writers and social commentators were quick to point out the terrible working conditions in the factories, and the deplorable living conditions in the slums surrounding the factories. 

Moreover, critics objected, as they do today, to the incredible disparities in wealth and income between the factory owners and financiers (capitalists) who profited and the workers who toiled. The misery of the urban poor could not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in countries that did not industrialize, like Ireland or southern Italy, the poor were even worse off and literally starved to death either from actual food shortages or malnutrition. Why else would millions from Ireland and Italy leave their beautiful countries to live in the overcrowded cities of the New World?

I suspect that the Industrial Revolution still has a bad name today. Capitalist is a term of opprobrium and even capitalists shun to describe themselves as such. Even union members whose pensions are invested throughout the American industrial sector do not realize that they are capitalists. Of course, Progressives are outspoken in decrying the terrible effects of corporate greed and inequality.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of CEOs, politicians, Rock stars, TV personalities, or professional athletes. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for. You may call it Capitalism but I prefer to call it a free-enterprise system. Whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest level that has ever been seen in the world. 

Students today are asked to evaluate the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. All three systems were responses to the Industrial Revolution. You can judge for yourself which of the three systems did the best job of providing the necessities of life listed at the beginning of this essay. Why are people still fleeing today from Socialist "paradises" like Cuba, Nicuagua, and Venezuela? 

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