Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane

Tex

It takes a lot in this state for people to agree to call you by the nickname "Tex". In fact, only three come immediately to mind: Nolan Ryan earned the nickname after his legendary stint (the most legendary player in an organization that has been woefully sort on legends), a giant statue of a cowboy that greets State Fairgoers named Big Tex, and then there is Mark Teixeria.

In my lifetime as a Rangers fan, there have been a few trios of players to come through that were linked together. In the late 80's, it was the Three Amigos consisting of Julio Franco, Ruben Sierra and Rafael Palmerio. In the mid 90's it was Palmerio as the godfather to the next round of Latin born players, Juan Gonzales and Pudge Rodriguez (who was the only player I've ever seen who, upon his first game in the majors you just new he was going to be special. He came in as a pinch hitter and hit a double, then went behind the plate where the other team decided to test his arm, only to find that the ball arrived nearly 10 feet before the runner).

In this decade, it's been the three young men pictured above: Hank Blalock, Mark Teixeria and Mike Young. These were the guys that were going to lead the team to their next division win. Today the team parted ways with Mark Teixeria for a young first baseman, a prospect infielder and two prospect pitchers. Although it might have been a necessary evil, it's a shame (if only because I've only just now figured out how to spell his last name).

I saw Tex's first game with the big club and then, two days later, was sitting on the first base side when he hit his first homerun as a major leaguer (a rope over the right field fence). It is strange that, of those three guys two have been to the All-Star game and two have taken home the MVP award, but neither of those to were Mark Teixeria despite the fact that, if you asked just about anyone, he is regarded as the best player on the team.

He was one of those rare guys who's name you knew the minute he got drafted. There's always excitement about young prospects when they get drafted, but in my time following the Rangers I've never seen someone so universally regarded as a can't miss. I may be wrong (I'd have to look it up) but if he spent more than 2 years in the minor league system, I'd be surprised.

The necessity to trade him this year, despite having a year on his contract left, might have been a bit manufactured because of the Scott Boras factor ("You aren't gonna keep him anyway, so you might as well trade him now and get something for him"), but the fact that the Rangers laid an egg in April exacerbated the situation. For the first time, the front office seems legitimately committed to a Royals/Tigers like youth movement.

The trade deadline isn't until 3 PM tomorrow and the Rangers firesale will continue (Lofton got traded this weekend, and it's expected that Eric Gagne and Sammy Sosa will be gone within the next 24 hours), but 2007 will be remembered as the year that Mark Teixeria was traded away. I'm hopeful for the future, but I'm not gonna lie: This one stings.

Deaths...

It's been a notable death day, with Ingmar Bergman, Bill Walsh and Tom Snyder all passing on today.

I honestly don't have much to say about Walsh or Bergman... I was a little too young to get in on the West Coast Offense worship (although I certainly appreciate that it changed the game) and I've never really watched many Bergman films.

I did, however, watch a bit of Tom Snyder and, despite his idiosyncrasies, actually grew to like him.

Best Week Ever put together some clips of interviews he did with rock stars. The one with the Sex Pistols is worth watching, so I'll embed them here, but it's entertaining to head over there and watch some of the others.

Three Theories of Voter Behavior

From here on out, when people ask me what the difference between the three Democratic frontrunners is, I'll tell them this, from Ezra Klein, as he breaks voters down into three groups: policy-oriented, projection or persuasion.

Edwards has gained a lot of rather unexpected support from policy-oriented types -- voters who are surveying the range of candidates and seeing whose white papers conform most closely with their preferences. Want the most radical health care plan you can find? Edwards is your guy.

Hillary, by contrast, seems to trigger a lot of projection. I can't tell you how many of her supporters have tried to convince me that she's really much more liberal than she comes off, but has been forced into displaying a centrist, hawkish streak because of the demands of running as a woman in a traditionally masculine sphere. Her supporters seem to spend a lot of time convincing themselves that she's really very progressive, and appearances to the contrary are misleading.

And lastly, Obama's actually been a fairly persuasive candidate. His policies are close enough to progressive ideals that his supporters don't need to invent new ones for him, but they're just cautious enough to open him up to attack for the left. The result has been a lot of Obama folks arguing earnestly for the superiority of policies -- like a near-universal, but not actually compulsory, health care plan -- that I don't think, a few months ago, they would have considered the optimal approach.

Bud Selig: Dreading Every Minute of It

Christine Brennan wrote a really fascinating article in yesterday's USA Today that sort of seemed to fly under the radar (especially considering how topical Barry Bonds' homerun chase is and how inside she seemed to get with Bud Selig). The column is the product of a couple of months worth of conversations that she had with the commish which she was allowed to "write about what we discussed, although he asked not to be specifically quoted."

From the outset, Selig has been troubled by Bonds' march to the record and torn about the role that he has played in that quest. On Selig's watch, Major League Baseball began testing for performance-enhancing drugs in 2004, 32 years after steroid testing began at the Olympic Games. Selig blames the powerful players union for blocking his initiatives to get testing into baseball sooner, but he also realizes that the lack of testing in baseball, whoever is to blame, will be part of his legacy, and that frustrates him greatly.

He often asks himself what he could and should have done to prevent Bonds and others who are believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs from continuing to play in the major leagues. Yet he is proud of baseball's testing now, calling it the most stringent in U.S. sports, even though U.S. Anti-Doping Agency testing of U.S. Olympic-caliber athletes, for instance, is far more rigorous, comprehensive and state-of-the-art.

First of all: It's laughable that ANYONE thinks that Baseball's current testing policy is the most stringent in organized sports. However, after listening to Brennan on Todd Wright's overnight show on Sporting News Radio today, she (at least) believes that Selig honestly believes that.

That the Comissioner of Baseball is stating publicly that the testing protocol in place is not only sufficient but superlative is a reason for dismay but factor in that he truly believes that it's the best in place... well... it's hard to believe the league survived the strike years.

A couple of other notable items from the article:

--Selig hoped that he wouldn't have to make a decision on Barry Bonds starting a couple of years ago, hoping instead that a grand jury indictment would make the decision for him.

--Selig, the owner of the Milwakee Braves during the Hank Aaron record years, idolized Aaron and (as the article makes pretty clear, doesn't like that this record is being broken.

--He will attend the games in San Francisco, but he will simply sit in a suite, watch the game and then leave. He will not, however, be photographed on the field or with Bonds. This is because of an extreme concern over how history will judge him and his tenure over this era in baseball (the Kennesaw Mountain Landis effect).

SRWU Radio

Quick little note on an addition to the site.

On the right side, below the Last.fm list of my favorite albums is my radio station. Take a listen to what I listen to most (and for those of you who aren't using Last.fm... what are you waiting for? While you are there, add me as a friend. My screen name is dylan_biles).

The Darjeeling Limited

Here is the trailer for the new Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited, in theaters in September. I'm excited.

Happy Birthday to Me, Too...

Ty's belated birthday notice for her blog reminded me that I sorta forgot about MY third blogoversary, also.

On July 8th, this blog turned three. Certainly hasn't been the most productive year, but it's still been around and this blog still provides me a great outlet to talk about the things that are important to me.

No big hullabaloo here... just wanted to mark the date. By the way, in the coming days I'll be writing about my two most recent concerts in the Twelve Concerts in Twelve Months plan: Bob Dylan and Ted Leo.

Fixing the game

I've been following with great interest the Tim Donaghy scandal. It's one of those stories that seems like it comes out of a movie only, in the movie, it is too implausible a plot line to believe.

For those unfamiliar with the story, here is where it broke. Essentially, Tim Donaghy, a veteran referee in the NBA, was discovered by the FBI to have been fixing games (mostly by affecting the point spread) because he, a degenerate gambler and all around scumbag (seriously, some of the stories that have come out would have made Tony Soprano cringe), was hooked up with the mob.

Though many of the details have yet to be disclosed, it appears that he got himself into a bad place with a bookie who was "connected" and, over the course of a year, found himself in cahoots. But the worst part of his bad luck streak came when the FBI, investigating the mob, accidentally came across his name. He wasn't the target of investigation but merely became one by association.

Of course, this is terrible news for the NBA. First of all, Basketball is the most subjective of all sports to call. What makes a foul a foul? It has been a commonly held belief by many basketball fans (in fact, I was told by one of them once that personal feelings towards a player/coach will often affect how he makes a call) that superstar players are given more freedom than your everyday scrub.

So, in a sport where conspiracy theories are abundant and referees are blamed, the gasoline that this adds to those fires could make it next to impossible to put out.

And now there's the possibilty that Donaghy may not have been the only one:

The New York Daily News reported Sunday that federal authorities believe Donaghy will cooperate with investigators and possibly name other officials or players involved in the scandal. Stern has already come out publicly and said that Donaghy was the one and only referee under suspicion of affecting the outcome of games he officiated, but if the opposite is true and even more referees are involved, Stern's credibility will take another enormous hit. The Daily News said Donaghy has hired former federal prosecutor John Lauro, who specializes in representing whistleblowers, as his defense attorney.

At a time when Barry Bonds is accused is constantly in the news for his record-breaking and, most likely, performance enhanced career and Michael Vick is indicted for his involvement in dog fighting, this is the most serious scandal of all. Baseball fans will either love Bonds or hate Bonds, Football fans can separate Vick from the game, but Baseball fans will still watch baseball and Football fans will still watch football.

This scandal, however,has the potential to ruin the game of Russell, Chamberlain, Byrd, Magic and Jordan. A game constantly under suspicion could simply become a game that is completely unwatchable.

Bullshit...

It almost isn't worth writing about, except to say that I can't understand why TPM felt like they needed to write about it in the first place.

But there are two points that I would make: First, if you are in a pissing match with Ann Althouse and she is making you look like an hysterical reactionary, then you are probably on the wrong side of the issue. Secondly, In this day and age, I'm actually comforted by the fact that a candidate isn't afraid to throw around the occasional curse word.

8 Things Meme, Part I

So, both Chuck and Trix tagged me with this meme to, essentially, tell you eight things about me. That's not a whole lot of rules, so I decided to restrict myself to 8 things which I think are important about me and that directly correlate to things that are happening to me today, and not just garden variety fluff.

1. Chuck mentioned one of his first cars, and I'd like to mention mine. I've had five cars now but the one I liked best was the hand-me-down '77 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It looked a lot like this:

Only, it was that awesome 1970's orange/bronze/gold/brown color. It was my Grandma's car that my Dad drove for a while, and once I turned 17 he gave it to me. The interior was vinyl, it only had AM radio, the passenger side seatbelt wouldn't always come out unless you tugged on it just right, you could start the car without the key and, from time to time, the horn would honk when you made a left hand turn. I've got a a Jeep Wrangler that I bought because it was the only car I've ever had fun driving. I still like it, but there are plenty of things I don't like about it anymore (mostly the gas mileage... I bought the Jeep just before gas prices skyrocketed) but, as much of a junker as the Olds Cutlass was, I never didn't enjoy driving it.

2. I'm really not that much of a drinker. I don't even like drinking all that much. I prefer my drinking binges to be rare but spontaneous. To me, it increases the fun of drinking when it's something you only do on occasion. This mindset is unbelievable to many of my current friends and unforgivable to others.

3. Despite almost a decade of doing it, I really don't enjoy waiting tables. Maybe it's something that I've grown to dislike more in recent months, but I certainly can't recall a time when I was happy to be waiting tables. Satisfied? Maybe... but not happy. I'm currently looking for an office job of some type. I'm not particularly picky about the job, and I'm not looking for a ton of money. $28-32K would be awesome and I could totally live on that while I finish school. At this time in my life, a 9-5 job where I sit at a desk all day doing something mindless/meaningless on a computer while listening to music sounds pretty fantastic.

4. I used to read a lot of books but I really don't anymore. I consistently have 2 books or more going at one time (currently A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby and Thirteen Days by RFK). This was brought to my mind when a couple of family friends invited me to be their friends on Goodreads.com (use my email address, dylanbiles@gmail.com, if you want to be my friend). But, if you were to judge my all time favorite book simply by the number of times I've read it, then my all time favorite book would have to be The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. There was a time, starting in high school, when I must have read that book twice a year. Now I'd say it's more like once every two years.

Ok, unfortunately my class is starting, so I've got to stop this down at the halfway mark. Part II later.