Eric The Blue

Mea culpa, Max Kepler

Since I was back in April, May, and June, and for whole seasons before that, one of the biggest Max Kepler anti-fans, I want to go on record saying that the team's turn-around over the past 70 games or so hasn't been due only to the hitting provided by guys barely old enough to drink who, back in the spring and early summer, were either injured or tearing the cover off the ball in Triple-A—I mean Julien, Kirilloff, Wallner, and, especially, Lewis. Today, with two games left in the regular season, Kepler is batting .259 with an OPS of .811. That may not sound like anything to crow about, but you can estimate where he was in late July from the fact that in August and September he has batted slightly over .300 with an OPS a tick north of .900. He's always been a good outfielder, and for two months now he's also been an all-star level hitter.

The Twins, who were 45-46 at the all-star break, stand at 86-74. Lots of guys have played well, including Wallner who I saw play last summer for the Twins Double-A team in Wichita, and Julien who was at Wichita too even though I don't remember him, but Kepler's play has been for me the biggest surprise of all. I withdraw for now my carping complaints, Max.

I'll post another retraction if evidence turns up of Trump being a scholar and a statesman. I see that he said, under oath in a deposition, that he could not possibly overvalue one of his properties as the Saudis would always be happy to pay him as much as he asked for anything he owned. It's his successor, of course, who is guilty of corruption and influence peddling. Every accusation is a confession. 

National Review takes a swing at Taylor Swift

I showed my daughters the above from National Review, just to turn them against a "leading conservative magazine and website covering news, politics, current events, and culture with detailed analysis and commentary." Doing my best to give them the guidance they need. I didn't read the article, and so cannot tell you whether the detailed analysis included a reconciliation of Ms. Swift's "averageness" with the seemingly contrary verdict rendered by the vaunted and inerrant free market. Have to save my three remaining free articles for something more entertainingly dumb, like probably the next three articles they post.

I've learned a lot about Taylor Swift in the last weeks. Yes, there's a fair amount of overchewed bubblegum, "sparks flying" applied to the advent of a new romance, etc., but Claire directed my attention to the following, from "Mean":

And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion
But nobody's listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things. . . .

I have no idea who she thinks needed to hear this, but I think it's National Review.

Lauren and Kristi; Harmon and Tony

Lauren Boebert: any classier and she'd qualify for a trial membership in the demographic group sometimes designated "white trash." With some, it's heritage; for her, it's aspirational. The pregnant lady sitting behind her was upset by the vaping but, from the looks of things, Boebert's date probably wished even more fervently that both her hands were free. 

True confession: I was so taken by the video of Boebert enjoying herself at the performance of Beetlejuice that I only just now learned that the governor of South Dakota has been boinking Trump pal Corey Lewandowski for I guess a number of years. Family values dictate that they should introduce their respective marooned spouses to each other. Everybody has a hungry heart.

If anyone's saying that either Noem or Lewandowski deserves better, I demur: they're perfect together.

Now for something completely different, the online equivalent of a shower after I've made you contemplate gross stuff:

 

Watching Tony and Harmon run around the bases after a homer reminds me of what Bud Grant is said to have told players about how they should comport themselves after scoring a touchdown—"like it's not the first one you ever scored, and you're sure it's not your last, either."

General reader forges ahead in Nicomachean Ethics

 

Still reading Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics. I've noticed, or tell myself I've noticed, this rhetorical tic he has of tapping the drowsy reader on the shoulder with such locutions as:

And if we look more deeply into the nature of things, we find . . . .

What follows is generally of interest, though not always in the way that Aristotle may have imagined. For instance:

The subject of pain we will make clearer later. Life in itself, however, is good and pleasant. It seems to be so from the fact that all men desire it, and especially the good and happy; for to them, life is most desirable, as theirs is the happiest life.

Not sure he's seeing deeply here—yes, happy people, in particular, are inclined to think life is good: thank you for that, O Great Philosopher. I don't think I've reached the section where he disposes of the presumably dissenting opinion of the miserable. But I've made it as far as this, in Book X:

The truth perhaps may be stated thus: Pleasures are desirable, but not if they are immoral in their origin; just as wealth is pleasant, but not as a reward for turning traitor to one's country, or as health is, but not at the cost of eating any food, however disagreeable.

I conclude he's not one of those who'd ask to substitute a side salad for the french fries. Here he is, sail full of wind, back in Book VIII:

[F]riendships are most permanent when the two persons get the same thing, such as pleasure, from one another; and not only the same thing, but from the same source, as happens between two wits, though not between a lover and his beloved. For these do not find pleasure in the same things; the pleasure of one is in beholding the object of his love, and of the other in being courted by his lover.* Then when beauty passes away, the friendship sometimes passes away too; for the lover then finds no pleasure in the sight of his beloved, and the beloved is no more courted by his lover. On the other hand, lovers often remain friends, if their characters are similar, and familiarity has taught them to love each other's character. But those who give and receive not pleasure but profit are both less true and less constant friends. Friendships based on utility are dissolved as soon as the advantage comes to an end, for in them there is no love of the person, but only a love of profit.

This is ostensibly a work on ethics, but the strongest passages describe what is, not what ought to be, and the conclusion is Marxian: the deeper you see, the more the field is filled by economics. There is more to upset the earnest classicists at Prager U and Florida's New College, for the editor's footnote in the edition I'm reading (indicated by the asterisk above) refers to the following admonition: "The reader must remember that in the time of Plato and Aristotle, the only love that was considered dignified in Athens and worth taking seriously was that between two men, not between man and woman." 

Growing up Baseball

My older daughter cusses a lot—"Even more than I do," tattles little sister—but, on the plus side of the ledger, I've raised a girl who, assigned to write a brief school essay on "a place in Minneapolis that's important to you," produced the above ode to Target Field.  

💗💗💗

Molly O'Neill, sister of baseball's Paul, the all-star rightfielder for the Reds and Yankees back when big leaguers were about my age, once wrote an essay that included:

"We grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In a neighborhood where most children grew up Lutheran or Methodist, we grew up Baseball."

Meandering

1. When I turned on the Twins game last night, they were already ahead 9 to 1. I kept watching, and the Guardians soon brought in a position player to pitch. This is now a common strategy in one-sided games as it allows the team getting beat up to get through the last innings without using up pitchers who might be needed tomorrow, or the day after that, in a game that can be won. The Twins ended up scoring 20 runs last night. 

Baseball has enacted some recent reforms, almost all of which, imho, have made the game better. How about one more?—a 10-run rule after, say, 6 innings. If the trailing team has given up, and is no longer doing its best to get the other guys out, why should the game continue? It begins to be a little farcical. The team ahead by a lot should keep trying, right? So they get hits, home runs, that they can't even feel too good about. Run around the bases, get back in the dugout, don't show anyone up. Come to think of it, not a bad idea no matter the score, especially if the alternative involves gesturing toward God in heaven as you cross home plate. What, is the pitcher an atheist?

I also don't understand the evident stoic mindset of the non-pitcher who's "pitching." You'd think he'd want to have some fun, see what he could do, try out his curve and his knuckler, but no, they all just keep lobbing it in there until, eventually, blessedly, three outs are recorded. These guys are all great ballplayers with live arms. If they'd zip it in there, make it at least look like they were doing their best to retire hitters, the farce would be harder to detect.

But, in any event, the 10-run rule: a solution for a problem. Would there be unforeseen consequences? You're down 8 in the sixth inning, and you don't want to wear out your bullpen, so you instruct your guys to give up two runs so that the game will end. Now a farce reduction act has resulted in a bigger farce. What if, after the sixth inning, you just allowed a trailing team to surrender, like when the cornerman for a boxer who's getting pummeled requests that the fight be stopped? When you call on your second-string catcher to "pitch," you're really surrendering, so why insist that the surrender be artificial and unsightly?

2. On the topic of stuff I don't understand, what's with the obsession with Biden's age and alleged "decline"?  My only theory is that the explanation relates to this journalistic rule about "playing it down the middle," which requires, apparently, that if one side has in fact committed felonies, you better find that the other side has at least committed some petty misdemeanors and then play them up as something to be balanced against the felonies. Thus, "whether it's 80-year-old Joe Biden free-associating goofily, or 78-year-old Donald Trump subverting democracy by seeking to remain in power despite having lost the election, both sides have a problem with their geriatrics." 

It's actually worse than that, since Trump, in his prime, managed to run casinos into the ground. 

3. I've been reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which may account for this current tendency to discern moral problems in baseball games. His subject is how to live a good life and be happy, topics that might interest anyone, but I'm not sure that a happy good life will include a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, which for long stretches is a colossal bore. Aristotle is a wooden writer, assuming it's not the translator's fault, as well as a relentless taxonomist. How much of this sort of thing must be endured?

(1) Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some are so without qualification, and (b) others are so with reference to particular classes either of animals or men; while (2) others are not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become so by reason of injuries to the system, and (b) others by reason of acquired habits, and (c) others by reason of originally bad natures. This being so, it is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discover similar states of character to those recognized with regard to the former . . . .

Answer: Lots, if for some reason you persevere to the end. Also, this idea that the solution to every problem involves discovering the golden mean between extremes deserves whatever satire has been directed at it over the past 23 centuries. How devoted to your children should you be? Well, somewhat devoted, but not too devoted. I'm not making things up, he says that, only in a gray dull way. 

I might be with him on money, however. Many philosophers have recommended poverty, on the ground that wealth, or possessions of any kind, distract from the contemplative life. Aristotle held—I don't have to tell you, but, not too much, not too little, same as everything else. Interestingly, I just read somewhere that the philosopher Spinoza had a little problem with his sister after their father died. She wanted the entire estate. He countersued, and it was only after the court entered judgment in his favor that he gave her everything and went back to his books and lenses. I wonder whether he knew that she knew that he didn't care about money, also that she was eager to exploit this circumstance to her advantage, and that his course of going to court before assigning everything over to her was Spinoza's version of a golden mean. 

4. Today's the first day of school. Older daughter was supposed to read The Catcher in the Rye over the summer. I think once in June, twice in July, and three times in August I asked how that was going. Vague replies. Last night I looked over her shoulder as she sat at her desk reading a screen: Sparks Notes to The Catcher in the Rye.

How diligent should a student be? Not so diligent as to read the book, but diligent enough to consult Sparks Notes.

Simple explanations preferred to those with lots of moving parts

 

According to William of Occam, the mystery dissipates if one postulates that someone is smoking weed.