I only caught about the last three innings of the All-Star game, but I still think it’s a mere shadow of what it used to be. Despite the fact that the game now “means something,” it’s just an ugly, sloppy exhibition game, with almost no continuity and pretty much zero managerial skill. It’s all about the unwritten rules of getting every player some playing time, rather than actually trying to win the game.
Some striking stats:
- No AL pitcher pitched more than 2 innings, and no NL pitcher pitched more than one.
- Only one player — the Mets’ Jose Reyes — got more than three at-bats.
- There were ten players who got only one at-bat.
- In the game’s only legitimately memorable moment, Ichiro Suzuki hit the first inside-the-park home run in All-Star Game history.
- So much for small-ball: Seven of the nine runs scored in the game came from home runs, assuming you count Ichiro’s two-run “shot.”
Another question: Billy Wagner gave up two runs in the top of the 8th to make the score 5-2 for the AL; then J.J. Putz gave up a two-out, two-run shot in the bottom of the ninth to make the score 5-4 AL. To me, that should make Wagner and Putz the respective pitchers of record. Instead, Josh Beckett (who left after the fourth trailing 1-0) with a was credited with the win, and Chris Young (who gave up two in the top of the fifth) got the loss. WTF?
July 10th, 2007
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Sports, MLB/MiLB |
10 comments
I doubt I will ever write those words again, but I think that Rumsfeld is getting a bit of an unfair — or, at least, an unjustified — amount of flack for this. IN essence, Rumsfeld called off a special forces raid that had a reasonable chance of killing a top Al Qaeda leader. I don’t think Rusmfeld should be criticized for this. Special Forces operations are hard. If you go in and kill innocents, you look like assassins in the night and create even more terrorists and terrorist supporters. If you go in too hard and too large, the chances of embarrassing deaths or captures increases almost exponentially. If you are wrong about the identity of the target, you look like uncaring and incompetent assassins in the dark and create even more terrorists and terrorist supporters. Reading the article it seems as if the Pentagon did what they did to Clinton in the 90’s: when asked for a raid, they blew it up into a major mission involving what appears to be a very large number of troops. It is entirely possible that Rumsfeld made a perfectly rational, perfectly correct decision given the circumstances.
We have a military that is largely allergic to counter-insurgency operations of any kind. Their insistence on using sledgehammers to crack walnuts hamstrung Clinton in the 90s and it appears that it provided the same level of obstruction to Rumsfeld, at least in this instance. It is important to remember, however, that a gun, or an armored division, or a special operations raid cannot solve all problems. I have no love for Rumsfeld. Indeed, I have two essays in a book attacking Rumsfeld, one of which argues that he should stand trial for his role in Iraq’s chemical weapons programs and usage in the 80s. But it is important to not get too caught up in the understandable frustration with the terrible job Rumsfeld did combating terrorism and forget that military might, even Special Forces operations, is a blunt force not suitable to every situation.
July 10th, 2007
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Terrorism |
no comments
