Perhaps I should stay out of my water closet because random thoughts often occur to me there. As the lawyers would say, in the instant case these thoughts include such diverse characters as George Steinbrenner and the Roman Catholic Pope who visited here recently. These are not monumentally important thoughts, but they will not go away until I deal with them. Let’s start with George Steinbrenner. For the last twenty or twenty-five years, George Steinbrenner has owned the New York Yankees baseball club. He acquired the funds to buy the Yankees from the family ship-building business in Cleveland. For all but the last two years, Steinbrenner has been a 500-horsepower boor. He abuses people and often fires them. One of his managers, Billy Martin, was fired and rehired at least four times.
Steinbrenner has two sons who until recently indicated no interest in the affairs of the New York Yankees. One son was involved in the Steinbrenner racing stables while the other said he had no interest in sports and pursued a career in business. Two years ago age and an undisclosed ailment afflicted George Steinbrenner and he has basically turned over the Yankee organization to his son, named Hank. In this case, the acorn did not fall far from the tree. Hank Steinbrenner is on his way to becoming a full-fledged boor, rivaling his father.
There are competent baseball people running the affairs of the Yankees. One of them is the General Manager, another is the Field Manager, and a third one is the Pitching Coach. From his lofty position as President of the Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner wishes to ignore the advice of competent baseball people and proceed with his intuition or gut feeling about a player. Press reports say that there is a relief pitcher named Joba Chamberlain who can throw the ball at a hundred miles an hour. Relief pitchers who can throw the ball in excess of 95 miles an hour exist, but they pitch only one or at most two innings on most days in the major league baseball games. But President Hank has concluded that Chamberlain, the relief pitcher, should be turned into a starting pitcher, presumably with the thought that he can throw his fast ball at 100 miles an hour throughout the nine-inning game. No person who knows anything about baseball will believe that a pitcher can throw in excess of 95 miles an hour for more than one or two innings per game. But Hank Steinbrenner has decreed that Chamberlain should be a starting pitcher. He has met resistance from his General Manager, his Field Manager, and the Pitching Coach. If Hank Steinbrenner is cut from the same mold as his father George, the solution will be to fire all of them. But at the moment things are at a standoff in the Yankee organization and we will have to wait to see whether Mr. Chamberlain does become a 100-mile-an-hour starting pitcher. My belief, for whatever it is worth, is that if he becomes a starting pitcher and throws his baseball at nearly 100 miles an hour, his arm will burn out and he will soon be unemployed by the New York Yankees. But that is the way it goes when you have a headstrong boor running a baseball club.
Now let us turn to a random thought having to do with the recent visit of the Roman Catholic Pope to this country. Upon his arrival in Washington, the Pope went to the rose garden of the White House where he was to be welcomed by the current president, George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush read his little speech, which emphasized his support for the “sanctity of life.” The phrase “sanctity of life” is a code word for opposing abortion. I suspect that the Pope agreed with the welcoming remarks so far.
But then an oxymoronic thought has to intrude. While George Bush was Governor of the great state of Texas, he presided over the execution of dozens or hundreds of prisoners. According to the testimony of the inestimable Alberto Gonzales, who was his personal attorney in Texas, he conferred with Bush for five to ten minutes before the execution orders were signed. If the Pope were paying attention at this point, he would have realized that executions violate his principles on the sanctity of life. Simply put, the Pope does not support the death sentence.
One case stands out in particular. For perhaps ten years, there was a woman named Karla Faye Tucker who was confined in the unit reserved for condemned prisoners in the Texas “correctional” system. While there, she became a Christian and preached to the other prisoners about salvation. It is clear that Miss Tucker provided comfort to those who were condemned until the executioner plied his trade. This penitentiary at Huntsville is called a correctional institution. I suspect that execution provides the “ultimate correction” to their conduct.
If there ever was a case that demanded compassion, it was the case of Karla Faye Tucker. But when Alberto Gonzales presented the case to Bush after her appeals had run out, Bush signed the order for her to be killed, which was done. While she was a Protestant, I am quite certain that the Pope would not have applauded her execution.
Beyond his record in Texas, there is a war going on in Iraq, where more than 4,000 of our soldiers have been slain. This is to say nothing about the perhaps 200,000 to 600,000 Iraqis who have lost their lives and four million who have been displaced. “Sanctity of life” does not appear to be an issue in Iraq as far as Bush is concerned.
The Pope has made it clear that he opposes armed conflict in nearly every case. Specifically, this Pope has condemned the war in Iraq. Yet, he was a guest and the matters of executing prisoners in Texas and the war in Iraq never arose to any public discussion. The Pope may have discussed these matters with Bush in private but there is no record of him having done so. Nevertheless the pope was our guest and he needed to be treated with decency. When Bush brought up the sanctity of life in his welcome, it was pandering of the first sort. But as an outside observer, I suppose it must be stated, “What the hell can you expect from George Bush?” At least he did not try to justify the invasion of Iraq to the Pope. Perhaps we should be grateful for such small favors.
There is a random thought that has troubled my brain for many years. It has to do with why the United States is not on the metric system. When I traveled abroad for so many years, people would refer to one town being so many kilometers from another town. When they would go to the grocery store, they would buy items having to do with grams and kilograms. We declared our independence from Great Britain in 1776 but we still use their ancient method of measurements. We still measure distances in miles rather than in meters, and our rulers have inches and feet and yards. To the rest of the world, this is incomprehensible.
Fareed Zacharia, the prominent editor and author, told us this past week that only the United States, Burma, and Liberia still avoid the use of the metric system. Can’t we do a little bit better than to find ourselves in the company of Burma and Liberia?
It does not take a Rhodes Scholar to understand the metric system. Quite to the contrary, it makes complete sense. What is difficult to comprehend is our system of measuring distances in inches, yards, and miles and our buying items that are weighed in pounds. Even the Brits have now begun to use the metric system, but we are almost alone in our desire to cling to the system that was given to us by King George III of Great Britain. And we still measure temperature using the Fahrenheit scale rather than the Centigrade scale. How backward can we be?
It is my belief that if a politician suggested support of the metric system, the American electorate would declare him to be a communist. The facts in this matter are that the metric system is a clearly superior system and that we declared our independence from Great Britain in 1776. I think it is high time that we caught up with other nations such as France, Italy, Japan, China, and the Congo Republic. And if anyone wishes to call me a communist for suggesting this change, that is quite all right, because during the Joe McCarthy era in the late 1940s, when I was the president of the local telephone union in St. Louis, there were “patriots” who suggested that I wore a red scarf when I went to bed at night.
Turning now to a random thought about baseball, it should be noted that in former years catchers were often given the nickname of “Gabby.” For example, there was Gabby Street, who once caught a baseball thrown off the top of the Washington Monument. But he failed on his first 14 tries. Gabby Street went on to manage the St. Louis Cardinals and won a world series in 1931 with that club. Later he was paired with Harry Caray in the announcing booth.
Another well-known character was Gabby Hartnett who caught for nearly 20 years with the Chicago Cubs and became their manager later on. In baseball terms, Gabby Hartnett was known as a “hard out.” In other words, it was very difficult to retire him.
The reason that catchers were sometimes called “Gabby” is that in previous years it was often up to the catcher to set the tone of the game. The catcher would urge his infielders to greater efforts and he would cajole the umpires to get a favorable ball and strike count. In many cases, managers would say, “Let’s have a little chatter out there,” meaning that the catcher should encourage his pitcher as well as his infielders.
Now there is one other aspect to this matter of gabbiness. When a young hitter appeared a bit apprehensive, the catcher would often find time to whisper in the batter’s ears that “This pitcher is a mean son of a bitch, and he might throw at your head.” Often intimidation of this sort would work, when you would find the batter backing up a little in the batter’s box. I suppose that in former years teams won by better fielding, better hitting and, in some cases, better intimidation.
It might be noted that I played a little bit of baseball in the semi-pro ranks and in the United States Army. But I never achieved proficiency in gabbiness. But I enjoyed playing baseball and it still fascinates me to this day. Listening to play-by-play games on the radio keeps me awake at night as I say to myself that I will listen to only one more inning. That is a fallacy because I wind up listening to the whole game. But baseball has changed and I doubt that there is much need for gabbiness. And if a catcher whispered to the batter that the pitcher was mean and might throw at his head, he might not be understood because of the influx of Latin and even Korean and Chinese players. But catching in a baseball game is an exercise in strategy as well as in athletic ability. My regret is that I did not have very much athletic ability. But the game still entrances me.
My final random thought in this particular essay has to do with an incident described earlier in Ezra’s Essays. But the thought continues to return to me and it seemed worth mentioning.
As many of you will remember, I was involved in dealing with foreign telephone companies around the world during the latter stages of my career with the Bell system. There was an occasion when I met with the Algerian telephone authorities in Algiers. All things considered, being received by an Arab country is not an occasion for small chitchat as would be the case when meeting with the English or the Irish.
In this case, when my partner and I sat down to talk to the Algerians, who numbered about five or six people, we noticed that they seemed to be waiting for an important person to enter the room. Shortly, a gentleman entered the room and was introduced around and from all appearances seemed either to be a high-ranking official from the Foreign Ministrey or to be the Foreign Minister himself.
Our meeting in Algiers took place a few days after the Iranians released our captives, who had been held in Teheran for 444 days. During their captivity, Jimmy Carter, our President, had sent a military force into Iran in the hope of rescuing the prisoners but the military force was turned back due to engine trouble and poor intelligence. As it finally turned out, the American prisoners were released through the good efforts of the Algerian diplomats. Emphasis was placed upon the thought that the Algerians and the Iranians were Muslims and the Algerians, in a mark of compassion, had secured the release of the American prisoners.
When the meeting started, the important visitor said that he could only remain a few minutes and I took that occasion to thank him on behalf of the American people for what the Algerians had done to release our prisoners. Without hesitation, this high-ranking Algerian official said to me, “It was our duty.” Other Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia had apparently been unsuccessful in getting the release of the American prisoners. But one way or another, the Algerians turned the trick. The Algerians did not dismiss my efforts to thank them. They replied simply, “It was our duty.” For nearly 30 years those four words have rattled around in my brain and it seemed appropriate to close this essay with that thought in mind.
These are my random thoughts for today, which were in many cases produced as I shaved and took care of other duties in what the English call the water closet. If my sieve-like brain produces some more random thoughts, I will try to record them before they go down the drain.
E. E. CARR
April 22, 2008
Essay 309
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Kevin’s commentary: This is a follow-up essay to the other recent random thoughts piece. I guess this was just a very haphazard time for ol’ Pop — too much to think about.
With regard to Bush, he clearly thinks that the right to life stops the moment that a child comes into the world. I never really understood that either, but that’s his position. He even put mentally handicapped people to death, which is a special kind of despicable.