Eric The Blue

Brush with (Hall of) Fame

Today, at the Lifetime Fitness on 98th Street, I did a double take when Tony Oliva mounted the stationary bike next to the one I was pedaling.  As I was thinking of what to say to him, the fellow sitting on his other side started chatting him up, so I fell into mute Scandinavian adoration of my boyhood hero.  He's now 75, still knock-kneed, and willing to kibbitz with fellow exercisers at his down market health club.  I think he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Tony-O was the American League's Rookie of the Year in 1964.  His numbers that season were more like those of a league MVP than mere Rookie of the Year: he led the league in batting average,  hits,  doubles, extra-base hits, runs scored.  The next year he was second, to teammate Zoilo Versalles, in the MVP balloting.  He won the batting championship that season, too.  He'd win a third batting crown in 1971, when he hit .337 while also leading the league with a .546 slugging percentage.  His lifetime average of .304, over fifteen seasons, is in the stratosphere when you consider that his career spanned years dominated by pitching.  In 1966, Oliva's third season, his .307 mark was second to Frank Robinson's .316.  Two years later Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in batting with an average of .301; Oliva was third that year, at .289.  Robinson's lifetime batting average was .294. Yastrzemski's was .285.

A couple years ago, on a day the Twins unveiled a statue of him outside Target Field, Tony-O was the subject of this column by Patrick Reusse.  It sheds some light on my brush with fame in a Bloomington health club where you sometimes see guys putting away their gym clothes in a bag meant for a bowling ball. 

Joyce's Dubliners: "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"

There was a golden past, when giants trod the earth, and current times represent a precipitous, lamentable decline.  That's the idea of "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." If it's more memorable in Joyce's telling than grandma's, that may be an instance of damning with faint praise. 

Here are a few of the characters, together with their physical descriptions.  Old Jack "had an old man's face, very bony and hairy."  Mat O'Connor is "a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many blotches and pimples."  Mr Henchy's entrance is accompanied by more than one reference to his "snuffling" nose.  Mr Crofton "was a very fat man, whose blue serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping figure."  Father Keon's "face, shining with raindrops, had the appearance of damp yellow cheese save where two rosy spots indicated the cheekbones."

There is in Joyce a tendency to sneer, and it's in his least successful fictions that one's attention is singularly drawn to his expressions of contempt. 

 

Why I think Oswald acted alone

Whew!  For a few days there Boxers versus Briefs was being eclipsed by Conspiracy versus Oswald Acted Alone.  I am myself an Oswald acted alone devotee.  It's in line with an absurdist view of things that I find--not congenial, I guess, but persuasive, resonant, plangent, True.  That a disturbed loner could kill the president without any help from the Commies or the Mob or Lyndon Johnson doesn't strain my credulity.  To me, it seems like something that could happen, like Ted Cruz being president.

I shouldn't suggest that all the conspiracy theories are equally crazy.  If LBJ was in on it, we would have heard from Robert Caro by now.  The outlandish theories that have been advanced tend to strengthen the hand of us bland capitulators to the findings of the Warren Commission.  Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory that fingers the Mob has a certain plausibility, mainly because of the strip club guy's murder of Oswald.  But if you can accept one crazy guy acting alone, for reasons sufficient to him, why not two? 

And don't tell me that Oswald was not enough of a marksman to have done it.  I once hit two doubles in the same high-school baseball game.  Every dog has its day.

Going nuclear

 Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee, declared the other day that Senate Democrats' exercise of "the nuclear option" to stop him and his fellow profligate filibusterers from forestalling up-or-down votes on Obama's judicial appointments was "another partisan political maneuver to permit the Democratic majority to do whatever it wants to do; in this case it's to advance the president's regulatory agenda and the only cure for it I know is an election." 

Yes, it's shocking that Obama, having won an election, should occasionally exhibit a tendency toward advancing his agenda.  The cure for a Democratic president and Senate is a jillion fillibusters and then another election.  Only elections won by Republicans, it seems, confer the right to pursue an agenda. 

Hendrik Hertzberg points out the obvious: the real "nuclear option" is the routine application of a nonconstitutional rule to keep the president from exercising his prerogative to appoint qualified jurists who share his general outlook.  Filibuster reform is arms control.

In re giving money to panhandlers

In the course of pursuing my daily routine I'm frequently accosted by panhandlers. My usual reaction is to put my head down and walk past, fast.  Too busy making a living!  That is the message I'm trying to convey but the truth is that I'm embarrassed--that they're asking me for help, that I don't know what's best to do.  Sometimes, at the end of the freeway ramp, I miss the light and I have to sit in my idling car within a few feet of one till it turns green.  Excruciating when the normal defense is rendered useless for forty seconds.

I think I'm going to start giving them a buck or two.  I can't see why not.  The normal sort of considerations that you hear don't seem very persuasive.  Their need for help is regarded as proof of their unworthiness to receive it: a perfect circle of catch-22 illogic.  It's not that they're unlucky, we are told, but that they lack intelligence and "pluck."  This is too simple a conception of unlucky.  Suppose it's true, they're stupid.  Why are the people who advance this argument too stupid to comprehend that it's bad luck to be stupid?

If my wife says that I can't afford it, I plan to point out that my daily proposed cash outlay for alms is a fraction of my outlay for overpriced coffee drinks.  If once a week I drink instant coffee brought from home, I'll probably be ahead, and I'll feel better.

There are variations on the unworthiness theme.  Disapproval over what they will do with my hard earned money, for instance.  "They're only going to buy liquor."  How do you know?  Anyway, I don't care.  It's one of the things I buy myself.  "I'll bet he's not really a Vietnam vet."  Again, so what?  It's  just the panhandler's equivalent of padding your resume.  You going to prove that you're a no-nonsense man of the world by not giving him a dollar? 

It's possible some of these fellows aren't even desperate.  They go to the freeway ramp like I go to the office, and the people who help them are just rewarding this unproductive form of labor.  But a lot of people who "go to the office" are just doing the same thing as the panhandlers--thinking of ways to get money.  Begging on the freeway ramp can't be worse than pooling and "securitizing" thousands of mortgage loans, then selling them to investors who know better than to give money to panhandlers. 

 

Fall golf

On Sunday, it was about fifty degrees, so after lunch I drove over to Hiawatha Golf Course.  When I asked the only person in the deserted clubhouse how much it would cost to play golf, he seemed to pause, as if there was no official price, before saying, "Fifteen dollars to walk."  I took my first swing of the season and hit it far and left.  A golf course is a good place to be reminded of the relative speeds of sound and light: when I'd given up on following the flight, I heard the sound of the ball hitting a tree.  Didn't have that problem on my second shot, which hit a tree about twenty yards in front of me.  Lucky to make six on an easy par 5.  The second hole is another easy par 5.  After a drive and a pretty solid 3-iron, I was in the fairway about 65 yards from the green.  I then flew the green with my pitching wedge, scuffed a chip shot out of a steep downhill lie, chipped again to about three feet, missed the putt: seven.

Walking to the third tee, I laughed to myself while remembering a friend's line once when asked, over beers, "How'd you manage to make an 8 on that easy hole?" 

"Missed my putt for a seven," he said.

On the third, a short par 3, I hit a 9-iron to the fringe, chipped, missed another putt.  On the fourth, I drove out of bounds.  On the fifth, I may have driven it out of bounds again. It's  also  possible that I just couldn't find my ball in the leaves that had blown up against the fence.  There is water along the right side of the sixth hole--splash.  This was costing me quite a bit more than fifteen dollars.  After taking eleven strokes to play the seventh and eighth holes, I was sixteen over par: averaging double bogeys. After the sixth, I had done some arithmetic and set myself the goal of staying below 100.  It was not looking good.

Still, I was having a good time, walking fast, never having to wait, hardly ever even seeing anyone else.  On the ninth, I hit a good drive, then a pitching wedge to the center of the green, took two putts: a par.  The tenth is an easy par five and I missed a short par putt.  On the eleventh I made my last double bogey of the day.  On the twelfth, I got up and down from a greenside bunker for a par.  On the next five holes I made bogeys and, at the last, another two-putt par.  Ninety-seven.  Did it!

I remember reading somewhere that the first time Tom Watson ever broke par, his dad made him replay the round, telling what club he had hit and what the result had been for every shot.  That Watson was able to do this, the article suggested, showed that he possessed the powers of concentration needed to be a great one.  This strikes me as somewhat ridiculous.  I've forgotten a few out of my 97 but am pretty sure it's mainly because 97 is a lot more than 70.  I could remember 70 good ones.  You can satisfy yourself of the truth of my position by asking yourself how impressed you'd be if a guy remembered what club he'd used to make a hole-in-one.

When I got in my car, the clock said 3:10, and I wondered how long it had taken to play.  It occurred to me that my ticket might be time-stamped.  Yep.  At 12:32. 

Veterans Day

Of the government holidays--New Years, MLK, Presidents', Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas--at least two have a military or martial theme.  Holidays have a way of being more picturesque than the events they commemorate, so here is an unpicturesque war poem to mark this Veterans' Day.  It's by the British poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action at age 25 about a week before the end of World War I.  The last line, from one of Horace's odes, means: It is sweet and honorable to die for your country. 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The Switch and the pleasures of hating

I remember observing, recently and approvingly, that, with the possible exception of one character, no one in the immense sprawl of Middlemarch qualifies as a villain.  I get a lot of pleasure from that book but the pleasure of hating isn't one of them.

Not so with Elmore Leonard.  I've just finished The Switch, which features one of the great a-holes in recent American fiction.  If you've read it you will probably know that I'm not talking about either of the two ex-cons, somewhat likable practitioners of grand theft auto who now are trying their hand at kidnapping and extortion.    And I'm certainly not talking about their dim-witted, right-wing accomplice: he's too pathetic to hate.

I'm talking, of course, about Frank Dawson, the target of the extortion plot.  Let's tally up some of the reasons for hating him.

1.  In college, he majored in Business, and was a member of the Young Republicans.  It doesn't help that he was on the golf team, either.

2.  Is he a worse husband or father?  There is much to be said on both sides, but I'd say he's a worse husband, since he regards his wife's kidnapping as an opportunity to be done with her.  His son he only neglects.

3.  He's stupid.  He thinks that since he's rich he isn't, but he is.

4.  The facts underlying his marriage are damning.  His wife is hot, sure, but for him the more important trait is her pliability.  In other words, she's perfect because most really attractive women have options and therefore can't be dominated. 

5.  For purposes of demographic checklists, he's a Catholic.

6.  His real religion is the Deep Run Country Club.  It's the center of his social life.  He's also the club golf champion.

7.  He has his car--a white Lincoln Continental, Mark V--washed daily. 

8.  His wealth can be explained by the interactions of several factors: his privileged background; the importance he places upon financial success; a willingness to round corners, cheat, break the law; the marshalling of America's professional services industry--law, accounting--to make up for his defects in the intelligence compartment.

9.  He uses others to place himself at a distance from the riskier aspects of his business enterprises.  The profitability is connected with illegality but his front men are more exposed than he. 

10.  He's a bit of a fop. 

11.  When drinking, which is most of the time, he's even messier and meaner.

Read the book and add to the list.  At the library, it may be in the Mystery section, but I'd shelve it with the "contemporary classics."  Leonard is among other things a great American satirist, and the chief pleasure to be derived from satire is the highly satisfying sensation that accompanies someone despicable getting what they deserve.

More Elmore Leonard: LaBrava

A few droppings from Elmore Leonard's LaBrava, which I finished over the weekend.

He's a master of the dialogue technique that, in plays, is called stichomythia.  For example:

LaBrava said, "All the money you got, why don't you buy a new car?"

Maurice said, "You know what you're talking about?  This car's a classic, collector's model."

"Then you oughta get a tune."

Maurice said, "What do you mean, all the money I got?" 

"You told me you were a millionaire one time."

"Used to be," Maurice said.  "I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and  boats and the rest I wasted."

This is the kind of thing he's famous for and that comes through in the film versions (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, which is based on Rum Punch) of his novels.  His descriptive powers deserve more attention.  A desolate urban landscape:

They got out and Cundo led the way through an open gate in the fence, in close darkness through rubble--just like buildings he had seen in Cuba in the revolution--through overgrown bushes and weeds choking the walk that had once led through a garden along the side of the hotel.  There were rusted beer cans and maybe rats.  As they reached the open ground behind the hotel, Cundo watched the headlights on the MacArthur Causeway off to the left, not far, the cars coming out of darkness from the distant Miami skyline.  The old man was missing it.  His head was bent back to look up at all those dark windows--hotel this big and not one light showing.  He should go inside and see the destruction, like it was in a war.

A room inside the Miami Beach Police Department's Detective Bureau:

The squad room inside was like all the squad rooms he had ever seen in older police buildings: different types of desks and tables bunched in rows to conserve space, a few men at desks who might have been athletes at one time, solidly built, or had the look of career noncoms in civilian clothes.  No one wore a shoulder holster anymore; they packed Smiths on their hipbones, short-barreled mags with big grips.  In a corner of the room was a holding cell--and this was different from all the others he had ever seen--made of wrought-iron bars, the kind of ornamental grillwork you might find on a Spanish patio.

The details, tossed off so unassumingly--the headlights on the freeway and the contrast with the abandoned hotel, the ornamental grillwork on the holding cell, like something on a Spanish patio, only it's a jail cell in the cop station--are better even than the dialogue. 

 

Of light rail and Obamacare

Several years ago, we had a big argument in this town about a proposed light rail line that would connect the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis by way of our airport.  It wasn't free, so of course Republicans were against it, and they cried, in one voice--the one that's half plaint and half I-am-Sir-Oracle-and-when-I-ope-my-lips-let-no-dog-bark--"It's a boondoggle, no one will ride it!"  Some consultants had abuse heaped upon them for offering up estimates of ridership levels that were "wildly optimistic," "pie-in-the-sky," "irresponsible." It got built anyway and it turned out that the consultants were wrong.  Ridership levels soared beyond what they had predicted.  The Republicans had to find new reasons to be opposed.  And they did.

I offer up this instructive tale as a kind of gloss to the debate now raging about the Affordable Care Act.  It seems to go almost unnoticed that the Republicans are exhibiting their familiar dexterity in argument.  When "Obamacare" was being debated in the Congress, they said that if adopted it would be the greatest legislative disaster--"the worst bill"--in the history of the country.  It got enacted anyway, and now they are in a state of high dudgeon over an under-performing website that prevents people from signing up to participate in The Worst Thing Ever.

It's hard to know what they want.  Fifty million Americans have no health insurance.  Many millions more have high-deductible, low-service policies that impose a lifetime limit on coverage at the same time they make preventive care unaffordable.  A pre-existing condition?  Forget about it.  The real debacle is the as-is health care system in this country.  It shows in the basic health statistics--fiftieth in infant mortality, fifty-first in life expectancy (both according to the CIA's World Factbook).  You'd think that maybe the party that loves to lecture us all on the sanctity of life would think this is a problem.  But, no, they are against reform in a comprehensive, generalized sort of way.    It's as if the prospect of people getting decent health insurance really pisses them off. 

What is with that?  Does their social life consist of attending these benefits you always see publicized on community bulletin boards--the ones to help pay the medical expenses of So-and-So whose kid's been stricken with something scary and unpronounceable?