Dishing it...

Another Explosive Scandal of Grave National Importance

                                                                 

The sheriff of Richland County, South Carolina, Leon Lott, has staged SWAT-style drug raids on the residences of two of the eight suspects already arrested in connection with the Michael Phelps bong debacle. A dozen deputies under his command descended on these unrepentant evildoers with weapons drawn, and for their trouble, netted what the Associated Press reports as "small amounts of marijuana" and five computers. I don't know about you, but I feel much safer now!

                                                                                                                                                          
The Richland County Sheriff's Department website, which features a very nice picture of Sheriff Lott, thoughtfully provides links to these cases:

                                          57    unsolved homicides  
                                          14    "most wanted" sex offenders

                                            3    missing persons

Maybe it's just me, but I think the department's resources would be better directed towards closing out a few murders and rapes before the Michael Phelps tempest in a tea"pot." Smoking cannabis may be a crime, but expending taxpayer dollars to make an example of a few dorm rats who were harmlessly enjoying themselves, doing nothing the sheriff probably hasn't done himself - and if he hasn't, maybe he should! - is fiscally irresponsible and transparently self-serving. Sheriff Lott, who got his name in the news last year by purchasing an M113A1 armored personnel carrier, a $300,000 dollar riot abatement vehicle more suited for combat than crowd control that he got at a huge discount using a government surplus program - it's basically a tank with a turret that shoots fifty-caliber torpedoes the size of cannonballs - must have belatedly decided the photo of Phelps kissing the hookah made him look like a little star-struck sissy for not hauling the swimming champ off to the hoosegow straightaway. And by god, no speedo-sporting, world record-setting eight-time Olympic gold medalist and his weed-blowing frat-boy buddies were going to get away with that! After all, the sheriff has a godly, manly image to protect and preserve: why, just marvel at the long, impressive list of organizations that endorse him or benefit from his herculean good works. This spotlight-seeking tropism, more than any other motive, is what propels his petty vendetta against Phelps.

Otherwise, he'd be concentrating on getting this guy or this one, instead of this one.

With close to sixty unsolved homicides, fourteen at-large sex offenders, and three missing persons in the Richland County open files, it would behoove the sheriff to focus on what truly matters - and something tells me it isn't Michael Phelps and some pals getting goofy over beer pong and a bong. When an officer of the law selectively, and for no apparent purpose other than to generate headlines or exact revenge for some infantile insult to his masculinity and rectitude, enforces misdemeanor statutes as if they were the Ten Commandments, he is not doing his office, his constituents, or his own family any favors. Locating and apprehending a few actually dangerous murderers or child molesters, on the other hand, might.

Smoke and Mirrors

The numbers don't lie: a study conducted by the New York Civil Liberties Union points out that arrests for marijuana possession and use (does anyone ever say "marijuana abuse"?) are spiraling in the five boroughs, mostly among men. Black and Latino men. These disturbing figures mirror the national FBI data. A glaring disparity also exists between arrest rates for men and women/ blacks and whites/ low level offenders and white collar users. The study categorically condemns New York City's disastrous drug policies as "an expensive waste of time." From the report, summarized in a New York Times article: Between 1998 and 2007, the police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense, more than eight times the number of arrests on those same charges between 1988 and 1997, when 45,300 people were picked up for having a small amount of pot. Nearly everyone involved in this wave of arrests is male: 90 percent were men, although national studies show that men and women use pot in roughly equal rates. And 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, according to the study. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, twice their share of the city’s population. Whites, who are about 35 percent of the population, were only 15 percent of those charged - even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely than blacks or Latinos to use pot.

These ratios represent something far more insidious than the violation for which the offenders were arrested. Marijuana is one of the largest cash crops in this country, and to doggedly pursue its eradication or punish the industry supporting its horticulture and commerce is mindless, hallucinatory behavior. Decriminalization, taxation, and education, strategies largely untested in our incoherent efforts to “win" the war on drugs (whatever that means) are infinitely more effective tools for decreasing its use than prosecution and stigmatization, but our justice system is so attached to the mantra that all drugs are intrinsically evil (except the FDA-approved ones you get at the pharmacy that really will kill you) that a tectonic upheaval in attitude, policy, and enforcement will be necessary before anything changes.
                                                                                                                                                                               The United States is now  the proud proprietor of the most  massive and Orwellian incarceration industry in the world. It is one of our many national disgraces: throwing men and women in prison for relatively minor infractions like parole violations and leaving them there for decades until the prisons bulge beyond capacity and dangerous felons are expelled to make room for the newcomers. We build and maintain facilities for skyrocketing numbers of low-risk offenders, a shocking demographic that includes senior citizens, parents, teenagers, and otherwise productive, law-abiding people who should be reintegrated into the work force and society without any phony, mandatory, useless, cost-eating rehabilitation. Instead, they languish without hope in a legal catacomb of false ideology, bad social science, and endlessly replicated failure. 

I have a good friend in Florida named Richard Paey, creator of the 'toons reprinted in this post, who was victimized by an egregiously overburdened justice system and an  overzealous prosecutor seeking to make a name for himself, for taking prescription painkillers authorized by his doctor. Richard suffers from multiple sclerosis, partial paralysis, and relentless, unremitting pain stemming from a car accident and maltreatment afterwards by a bad doctor who did surgery on his back that rendered him disabled and in constant agony. He has been in a wheelchair for more than ten years now, and was in one when he was arrested, tried, and imprisoned. When he moved to Florida from New Jersey he began getting his prescriptions filled at a pharmacy that was already under surveillance by the DEA, so he was swept up in a sting that resulted in his being tried for drug distribution; because of the quantity of pills he was getting 

and ingesting, the court made him out to be a dealer rather than a user. For this perfidy, he was sentenced to a mind-boggling twenty-five-years-to-life under Florida mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. The supreme irony is, once he was in prison, he was outfitted with a morphine pump. Our wonderful justice system at work! While he was governor, Jeb Bush never lifted a finger to help spring Richard (perhaps because of his own skewed perspective on drugs, which has been horribly warped by his daughter’s sad history of addiction and arrest); but thankfully,  one of Charlie Crist’s first acts upon being sworn in was  to grant Richard a full pardon and send him home where  he belongs. His amazing and steadfastly supportive wife Linda and their three children suffered immeasurably during the time he was on trial and in prison. Prescription drug abuse - actual abuse - is a much more serious problem in this country than marijuana use, but we must target bona fide criminals and predatory profiteers, not patients legitimately seeking pain relief or the doctors who treat them.

You can google “Richard Paey” to view his portfolio of brilliant, stinging 'toons and get a much more  comprehensive overview of his case than I’ve given  you here. He is a living testament to how screwed up,  counter-productive, and downright evil our “war on drugs” is, has been, and will continue to be until we open our eyes and fix mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, the Rockefeller laws, three strikes, and all the other instruments of depradation and depravity our justice system employs to target mostly men who don’t deserve to be cast in prison alongside the violent reprobates. Richard is one of the lucky ones, but there are hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions, in basically the same boat who aren't nearly so fortunate. If Sheriff Leon Lott has his way, Michael Phelps will soon be among them.

We need to make a noise that can't be drowned out about the failures and needlessly tragic consequences of our resource-sapping, self-defeating war on drugs, and we must not allow the media or public servants like Leon Lott to marginalize brave, intelligent leaders in the field of drug policy reform by labeling them "lefties," "potheads," "wackos," "druggies," "followers of satan," etc. It's too bad that rather than being honest and courageous enough to stand up for his right to play the bong-o once he was exposed as a burner, Michael Phelps took the easy way out and told everyone how sorry he was for his transgression. Unfortunately, his mealy-mouthed apologies and insincere assurances ("It won't happen again"? Who is he kidding???) indicate that his legitimate fear of losing a lucrative livelihood has already superseded his opportunity to upgrade the national discourse about marijuana. His opportunity, but not ours.

The war on drugs in this country has been hijacked by moral hypocrisy and faulty analysis for far too long. It's time for the paradigm to change. Ordinary citizens must take the lead in shining a light on the scourge our failed war on drugs has become so actual solutions to the vast and complex problem of addiction can emerge. Until the discussion is injected with some note of reality and perspicacity, that will never happen.       

                        
                                                              
                                                                  'Toons by Richard Paey     

Blog vs. Blog

                                 

About a year ago, I began subscribing to an online newletter generated by Colonel Harry Riley, U.S. Army, Retired. Our initial interaction began after I contacted him in March of 2008 regarding an e mail circulating around the internet to which his name had been attached, which I suspected was a hoax. It turned out not to be, and in the course of establishing its authenticity I began a correspondence with him. The Colonel was just setting up his new cyberbase, Colonel Riley's Corner, so when he asked if I'd like to subscribe, I said sure. By then, through our burgeoning exchange of e mails, Harry and I were conducting fairly civil discourses about the upcoming elections, certain articles of legislation that had been or were about to be taken up by congress, and other current events. I decided to subscribe to his newsletter for the same reason I watch Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity: I like to monitor what people with differing viewpoints have to say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, the adage goes, so I occasionally listen to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, and their ilk with clenched teeth in order to stay informed about what they're spewing and doing. I subscribed to Harry's blog with great optimism that my unbridled passion for peace and prosperity (coupled with my persuasive way with a word) would eventually budge his unyielding, hard-line stance against his "enemies" and cause him to relent in his narrowminded pursuit of the evil he thinks Islam and its disciples (including, according to him, our president-elect) represent. 

How wrong I was.

After only ten months of reading his increasingly frantic and unhinged diatribes against everything that isn't white, male, and American-born, my stomach churned even more than usual when this post landed in my inbox today. I don't really feel like being civil to him anymore, but I also don't think my response to him, posted below his letter, is technically rude. Harsh, probably; brutally frank, indubitably; but actually quite restrained, considering.

Salaam, shalom, and happy 2009, everybody!

From:	"Col. Riley's Corner" <hmriley@cox.net>
Subject:	Enough of Radical Islam - Talk is Cheap, Action Required
Date:	January 11, 2009 10:54:51 AM EST
To:	umpireplb@aol.com

Mr. Shapiro says it the way I see responsing to terrorism......Israel can start the message  by dropping leaflets on Gaza advising the population they have 48 hours to abandon  Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities.  At the end of the 48 hours, Gaza City  and perhaps one or two other major cities will be flattened, demolished, destroyed, and  any person that remains will be killed.  Terrorist must feel the bite of "enough". Enough of Radical Islam  http://www.creators.com/opinion/ben-shapiro/enough-of-radical-islam.html    Ben Shapiro  Wednesday, December 03, 2008    Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isn't at war with    terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western    civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim    communities all over the world. Militant Islam isn't a tiny minority    of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that    runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.    Enough with the psychoanalysis. They don't hate us because of Israel.    They don't hate us because of Kashmir. They don't hate us because we    have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein.    They don't hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we    are infidels, and because we don't plan on surrendering or providing    them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.    Enough with the niceties. We don't lose our souls when we treat our    enemies as enemies. We don't undermine our principles when we post    more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to    kill bad guys, or when we torture terrorists for information. And we    don't redeem ourselves when we close Guantanamo Bay or try terrorists    in civilian courts or censor anti-Islam comics. When it comes to war,    extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the    pursuit of justice is no virtue.    Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat    of force, either economic or military, won't help. Appealing to the    United Nations, run by thugs and dictators ranging from Putin to    Chavez to Ahmadinejad, is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil    countries don't suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals -- they    are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.    Enough with the faux allies. We don't gain anything by pretending    that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are true allies. They aren't. At best,    they are playing both sides of the table. We ought to be drilling now    in order to break OPEC. Building windmills isn't going to cut it. We    should also be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with    Pakistan -- unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India    should be given full leeway to do what it needs to do. Russia and    China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating    them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.    Enough with the myths. Not everyone on earth is crying out for    freedom. There are plenty of people who are happy in their misery,    believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct    religious system. Those people direct their anger outward, targeting    unbelievers. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect    indoctrinated populations to rise to the liberal democratic    challenge. The election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is more a rule    than an exception in the Islamic world.    Enough with the lies. Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of    peace. If it is, prove it through action. Stop telling us that    President-elect Barack Obama will fix our broken relationship with    the Muslim world. They hate Obama just as much as they hated    President George W. Bush, although they think Obama is more of a    patsy than Bush was. Stop telling us that we shouldn't worry about    the Islamic infiltration of our economy. If the Saudis own a large    chunk of our banking institutions and control the oil market, they    can certainly leverage their influence in dangerous ways.    Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed    in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket    attacks in Israel, the Bali bombings, the synagogue bombing in    Tunisia, the LAX shootings, the Kenyan hotel bombing, the Casablanca    attacks, the Turkey synagogue attacks, the Madrid bombings, the    London bombings, and the repeated attacks in India culminating in the    Mumbai massacres -- among literally thousands of others -- its about    time that the West got the point: we're in a war. Our enemies are    determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs,    Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not    quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their Guantanamo    cells, or because we offer to ban The Satanic Verses (as India did).    They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them    so, and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.    So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy    ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time    for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasn't merely come -- its been    overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers blood cries out    from the ground     Col. Rileys Corner Subscriber Information: To unsubscribe Click here. To subscribe Click here.

Here is my reply:

Harry, you have outdone yourself, no mean feat. You have bottomed out. Once you were emblematic of mere bigotry and ignorance, but you have now graduated to full-fledged, breathless advocacy of the murder and slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians. That makes you no better than the terrorists who slammed the planes into the World Trade Center towers, or any other bomb-wielding radical fundamentalist. How you can, with a straight face, condemn the 9/11 attacks and then in the same breath, turn around and propose doing EXACTLY the same thing to people whose overriding interests lie NOT in taking over the world but in merely surviving, is beyond me. The twisted, superficial scope of your grasp on reality is both sad and stunning.

    

I have, during the last ten months, veered precipitously from admiring certain aspects of your activism to pitying you for your blind, intractable adherence to the arrogance of your positions on just about everything. Now, at the start of this remarkable new year, your own words lead me to the inescapable conclusion that you are a rage- and hate-filled hypocrite of the very worst kind, and that you are way, way, worse than any of the "radical muslim fundamentalists" you so blithely advocate murdering. 

You say: Mr. Shapiro says it the way I see responsing (sic) to terrorism... Israel can start the message by dropping leaflets on Gaza advising the population they have 48 hours to abandon Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities.  At the end of the 48 hours, Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities will be flattened, demolished, destroyed, and any person that remains will be killed.  Terrorist (sic) must feel the bite of "enough".

Without even mentioning the poor spelling, inept syntax, and atrociously inconsistent parallel structuring of your prose - all that in just four sentences! - I feel compelled to point out to you that Gaza is a city behind walls, a prison from which there is no escape. There is no way to "abandon" it, Harry. And most of its citizens are not "terrorists." They are ordinary people with families, children, and dwindling hopes for the future trapped in a maze of political and religious quarrels, who for decades have been systematically starved, abused, terrorized, cut off from the basic amenities of nutritious food, medicine, and water. And you, a citizen of a foreign country viewing these complex troubles from your far-off, lofty perch, are advocating murdering these people, who can't run away from the Israeli attacks on them anymore than they can from the cute little leaflets that drop from the sky like manna from heaven, giving them ample warning - all of about fifteen seconds - that they are about to be marked for slaughter. And what's an extra major city or two, while you're at it? Hey, throw in a third, maybe even a fourth! We are democracy in action! Freedom on the march! What's a few hundred thousand more dead and maimed muslims or arabs, radical islamists, whatever the hell they are. It doesn't matter to you in the least, does it, Harry? To you, sitting comfortably at your computer with the TV on and a cold beer within easy reach, those people are as inconsequential and deserving of misery and death as cockroaches. So what if a few innocents get killed along with the "terrorists"? Who cares? They're only muslims, arabs, towelheads, subhumans, collateral damage, the price they pay for us to so patriotically shove "freedom" down their unwilling, ungrateful throats.  

Don't you get it, Harry? This is exactly the way the men who flew the planes into the towers thought about us. 

That makes you exactly like them. And because you are, in fact, exactly like them while insisting you are the opposite, that actually makes you worse than they are. 

    

The Israelis have been running Gaza as a grim detention center for forty years, Harry. Forty years of Gazans being treated as no better than animals by people they regard as interlopers who, after thousands of years, "reclaimed," meaning took away, their territory without regard for the rights of those already living there, and systematically over the course of decades have deprived them of almost everything that makes a person human. Children in Gaza are growing up sick, stunted by malnutrition and poor medical care, scarred by fear and deprivation, lacking even a basic education. And now the Israelis are slaughtering women and babies there under the guise, the sacred aegis, of destroying military installations and weapons caches. This is what marauding, conquering nations have done for thousands of years, Harry, asserting they do so because they are in the "right," trumpeting that their cause is "just." For America and Americans like you and Ben Shapiro, who ought to know better but for some reason DON'T - and you never seem to learn, either - to march in unyielding lockstep with Israel and everything Israel does, claiming that murder committed in the name of "self-defense" is righteous and justified - does any of that have the doleful ring of familiarity, Harry? You mindlessly regurgitate the most shallow, hateful party line about Israel and the Palestinians, with absolutely no insight into what is happening over there or how to resolve it without blowing up the entire freakin' world. That is your solution to the conflict: drop leaflets, then commit mass murder. And throw in an extra major city or two full of innocent people to slaughter! Yeah, that's the ticket! That will definitely keep Americans safe and restore our beleaguered republic's lost glory.

     

What possible good do you think dropping leaflets will do? Exactly where do you expect the Gazans to go? THEY CAN'T GO ANYWHERE, HARRY. THEY LIVE INSIDE A WALL, like caged animals, deprived of every element of humanity and humanness by the Israelis, who aren't even letting in journalists to report on the atrocities being committed and who are murdering Red Crescent relief workers sent there only to provide aid to the injured.  And you, dedicated little wind-up patriot that you are, not only support this indefensible mass murder, you act as though you wish you were there making the blood run yourself. Only that's all it is, an act. A flimsy, unconvincing little ball-swinging, puffed-up chest-thumping, phony, weakling act. Neither you nor Ben Shapiro, the author of the article you reprinted, have the moral courage to actually do what you advocate, just enough to encourage others to do your obscene, bloody work for you. That's totally disgusting, Harry, and you ought to be ashamed. But you obviously have no shame and no sense of decency. In your enclosed, circumscribed universe, the way to prove you're a man and a soldier is to cheerlead for the slaughter of innocent people. Wow. And you have the temerity, not to mention the bad taste, to call yourself a "christian" and send out rosy christmas missives wishing us all peace on earth. 

     

Even a radical Islamic fundamentalist - whatever made-up, dumbed-down, fabricated thing that is - couldn't be that hypocritical.

    

I have no idea why, except that I'm stubborn, I even waste my time trying to help you see yourself as you actually are, Harry, as opposed to the heroic, avenging super-patriot you see reflected in the mirror of your warped mind. In fact, you are a psychopath with identifiably sociopathic tendencies who enjoys the idea of murder and torture because it excites you in ways nothing else does anymore. So you go around capitalizing on the honorable things you once represented and setting yourself up as a model of modern propriety and christian virtue, but devaluing everything you touch because you yourself are tainted with the poison of extremism and inhumanity. You have a profound lack of empathy for your fellow human beings, which is a red flag for attachment disorder, and an impenetrable mental opacity obscuring your ability to successfully analyze the simplest of social or political interactions. Your talk is indeed, cheap, Harry, because you cheapen the causes you support every time you open your mouth or put finger to keyboard. The tragic, ironic, and truly disturbing thing is, you believe it is you yourself who are fighting the forces of evil with "good." You see yourself as the loyal, trustworthy soldier representative of all that is good and right, willing to step up and do what needs to be done to "save America." Perhaps you once were a good soldier, Colonel Riley, but no longer. In reality, the opposite is true, and your inability to recognize this is the creepiest thing of all. You have devolved into the very thing you seek to destroy. 

     

You have become your own monster.

     

Salaam,

Perry

Mike Brennan and 9/11 by the numbers

Michael Brennan of Ladder 4, Division 3, Battalion 9, was twenty-seven years old when he perished helping to save the lives of the people trapped in the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. 

This tribute to him is on permanent display at the firehouse on Eighth Avenue and West 48th Street where he donned his gear for the last time and went racing down to the World Trade Center in service to his city and his country. Mike was one of several firefighters and public servants in his immediate family. I knew him for only a brief time when he worked in my building in Manhattan, but I think of him often with gratitude for the time he spent here among us, and with profound sorrow for his loss.

                           Total number killed in attacks (official figure as of 9/5/02):           2,819
                    Number of firefighters and paramedics killed:                                  343
                    Number of NYPD officers:                                                              23
                    Number of Port Authority police officers:                                         37
                    Number of employees who died in Tower One:                             1,402
                    Number of employees who died in Tower Two:                               614
                    Number of nations whose citizens were killed in attacks:                   115

Depending on which source you use, there are anywhere from 192 to more than 200 "recognized" countries in the world, so at least half this planet's nations lost citizens on that fateful day. Muslims, Christians, and Jews died together in those buildings. Perhaps someday people of all religions, faiths, nationalities, and belief systems, whatever they may be, will not have to perish en masse for some misguided cause, but will stand together in peace, prosperity, and happiness. That is my dream, born of a nightmare.

Trial of the Century! 1951 New York Baseball Giants Judged 'Not Guilty' - No Asterisk Added to Accomplishment

On a gray and rainy Friday, May 9, teacher Gary Mintz hosted an SRO crowd of several hundred students, teachers, and other supporting players including Wall Street Journal senior special writer Joshua Prager and Daily News columnist Vic Ziegel, at a mock trial staged by the Future Lawyers Club of The Seneca School, also known as P.S. 88, in the Ridgewood section of Queens.

Gary belongs to the New York Giants Nostalgia Society, as do I. We are a loosely  organized but dedicated group that meets informally two or three times a year, our members bound to one other by a fierce and forlorn love of the long-departed baseball Giants. At our most recent gathering on April 10th, Gary told me about a trial he was staging with the help of his students and colleagues at P.S. 88 in which the Brooklyn Dodgers were petitioning the court to have the New York Giants' 1951 National League pennant rescinded and their championship season repudiated as a result of the disclosure, fifty years after the fact, of a cheating scandal involving sign-stealing from opposing teams at the Polo Grounds, aided and abetted by the use of a telescope and buzzer system. The trial was Gary's concept born of the investigative skills of Josh Prager, who learned of the sign-stealing scheme eight years ago and wrote about it in a groundbreaking article for the Journal, then turned it into a full-fledged blockbuster non-fiction baseball classic, The Echoing Green, whose paperback edition has just been published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House. I was immediately intrigued and asked Gary if I could monitor the trial for this blog. To my surprise and delight, he invited me not only to attend but to serve as one of three judges who would issue a decision concerning this weighty matter after hearing evidence and testimony delivered by respondents from both camps. 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers v. New York Giants: for a baseball aficionada such as I, it was certain to be a hearing made in heaven! It would also be a chance for the formerly voiceless to be given back their voices, for those whose hearts and souls were forever lifted or crushed by the late-season reversal of both teams' fortunes to finally have their say. This was an offer I could not refuse.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am as passionate a devotee of the defunct New York Baseball Giants as there is on this planet. My hero is Christy Mathewson, a Giant for most of his career and the greatest pitcher ever to hurl a baseball, in my estimation. At 373 lifetime wins, "Matty" still shares the National League record for career victories with Grover Cleveland Alexander almost a hundred years after he established it. He pitched three shutouts in the 1905 World Series, and won thirty or more games four times in his career. In 1908 he won thirty-seven games - if not for the infamous Merkle game, it would have been thirty-eight - while sporting an unreal ERA of 1.43, a mind-boggling convergence of statistics showcasing his durability and savvy on the mound. In short, I may be a bit biased in favor of the Giants, but Gary's invitation propelled me into total impartiality mode, the one I employ in my alter ego of umpire during spring training games for the New York Mets and for which the accuracy and fairness of my calls are all that matters, not the fact that I happen to love them and want them to win. I suppose I could have recused myself from sitting in judgment over the other team I adore, but I wasn't about to let a matter of the heart preclude me from participating in something so extraordinary. I promised Gary (and myself) that I would set aside my feelings and make my decision based on the evidence, not my emotions.

The trial began with masterful opening statements delivered with appropriate verve and conviction by Hailey Faltin, Natalie Murawski, and Kamila Pawelec, followed by stirring, credible testimony offered by starring and supporting players from both sides. They're all right there in Prager's Echoing Green, the tales told at last by members of the Giants and Dodgers who unburdened themselves to him of their onerous secret after more than fifty years of silence and subterfuge, but his stories were infused with new vitality and meaning by the adorable, amazing kids portraying the various characters involved in or affected by the sign-stealing scandal. The attorneys for both sides more than capably represented their clients, cross-examining witnesses with focus and finesse: they were  Angelica Hernandez, Paola Maliza, Adna Zejnilovic, and Gabriel Alvarez for the Dodgers, pictured at left (Gabriel is standing at the microphone with his back to the camera,) and Krystal Molina, Shannon Shea, Julio Almonte, and Victoria Osuchowski on behalf of the Giants. And what witnesses took the stand! Delorian Mateas as Ralph Branca, who rightfully felt he was unfairly tagged as the scapegoat who took the fall for Brooklyn in the third and final playoff game when he gave up the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to Bobby Thomson that catapulted the Giants into the World Series and sent the Dodgers home. It never would have happened if the Giants had been on the square all season, Branca contended; there never would have been a playoff series, because Brooklyn would have won the pennant during the regular season. There was Mazen Abu Ghazaleh as Leo Durocher, king of the whatever-it-takes-to-win school of managing and architect of the sign-stealing scheme that sucked in the entire Giants roster regardless of whether individual players were willing co-conspirators or unwitting participants. Kamila Pawelec, doing double duty as both moderator and Jackie Robinson, protested that the Dodgers' plummet from first place in the last weeks of the season was less attributable to their own defensive and offensive shortcomings than to the Giants' duplicitous, cheating ways. Russ Hodges, in the person of Richard Torrenegra, was deposed. His famous call ("The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left field stands... the Giants win the pennant, and they're going crazy! They're going crazy! WHOOO OOOO!") forever immortalized that moment, but Hodges averred that the Giants caught fire when Thomson was moved from centerfield mid-season, replacing the injured and ill-fated Hank Thompson at third base and paving the way for his replacement in center, young Willie Mays, to etch his own name in the history books. There sat Jakub Kenig as the proud and remorseful Abraham Chadwick, faithful Dodgers fan and coincidentally to his great sorrow, the electrician called upon to rig the buzzer system at the Polo Grounds that alerted Giants hitters to the different types of upcoming pitches. Chadwick's conflicted participation in the scheme was rendered all the more poignant for his having been diagnosed with a virulent stomach cancer that denied him the chance to ever see his beloved Bums win the pennant he felt they deserved that year. And Ryan Smith enchantingly channeled author Joshua Prager who, when questioned about his motives for writing The Echoing Green, thereby unsealing a secret so closely guarded it had evaded detection for half a century, rebutted the hilarious assertion that he wrote it just to make money and convincingly made his case for wanting only to shed light on a mystery that had remained unsolved for five decades until his perseverance and purity of interest in it compelled formerly reticent participants to loosen their tongues and confess their deepest, darkest thoughts to him. The list of witnesses was long and strong, but under the experienced and efficient stewardship of my fellow judges the testimony proceeded apace, with the gallery as well as the witnesses and judges totally absorbed by the drama unfolding before our eyes.

When all the witnesses had been heard and concluding statements made, we trio of judges retired to our chambers, donated temporarily through the generosity of the more usual occupants of the Seneca School's teachers' lounge, and a lively discussion ensued during which each of us offered our interpretation of the different threads and themes tying the testimony together into a cohesive, coherent narrative that guided us to our decision. The facts are these: the Giants' pitching and defense improved markedly during the last month of the 1951 season, while the Dodgers' pitching went south under the admitted mismanagement of manager Charlie Dressen. The Giants' late season surge cannot be attributed solely to the fact that hitters may have known what pitch was coming, as their September road record illustrates the same disparity between summer mediocrity and autumn greatness as their home won/loss record does. We took as many factors into account as were presented by both sides during the trial, and concluded that the Giants won their pennant if not blamelessly, at least undeniably and irrefutably. Therefore, it was our opinion that the Giants should not be stripped of their title and the Dodgers awarded same, but that the record books be maintained to reflect what had stood for half a century, with no qualification or asterisk inserted after the fact to sully the Giants' championship. Judgment in favor of the New York Baseball Giants, with a big shout out to the Brooklyn Dodgers and all participants, especially Gary Mintz, whose script and execution of it were labors of true love; to the kids of P.S. 88, wonderful, enterprising, and inquisitive youngsters all; to their fabulous, committed teachers, who have the most important job in the world; and to author Joshua Prager, pictured here with his father, whose tenacious investigatory skills and luminous writing provided the template for Gary's uniquely memorable tribute to two teams and a time that are no more. This was one trial that truly had no losers, only winners, and turned out to be a great day in American jurisprudence for all.

Keep this in mind: a verdict of "Not Guilty" is not the same as "Innocent." There are eminently reasonable doubts concerning the Giants' innocence; we sought only to reach a fair and lawful verdict concerning their guilt in the matter. Was the 1951 National League pennant stolen? You decide. That is the beauty of baseball and the magic of Gary Mintz's imaginative and inspiring teaching tool, Dodgers v. Giants: The Miracle or The Mirage at Coogan's Bluff.

Happy Mothers' Day

My mother, christened Jaqueline Perry Waite, was a remarkable woman, and is the reason I umpire. She was a small town girl from southern Illinois who went to Columbia School of Journalism when she was sixteen, became a Copa girl, and married my father, the scion of a New York shipping family and an Air Force pilot during the Korean conflict. Mom represented American women in the Navy during World War II in her persona as "Winnie the Wave," and was a soap opera actress during the heyday of radio serials. She could have done anything with her life, but she chose to raise my twin sister Warren, our older brother Rocky, and me, rather than pursue a career in show business. Our father's untimely and unsolved disappearance in September of 1959, when Warren and I were six years old, left her the matriarch of our busy household on the upper east side of Manhattan, and she raised us with all the cultural and educational advantages New York could offer. She took us to the ballet to see Nuryev, Barishnikov, and Jacques D'Amboise, to Lincoln Center to see Leonard Bernstein conduct the Philharmonic, to hear Ethel Merman on Broadway, and to Coney Island to ride the B&B Carousell (sic.) She was a carousel freak! She sent us to dancing classes every Thursday at the Colony Club, to Sunday School at the Brick Presbyterian Church, and made sure we were grounded in the arts by hiring private teachers to give us piano lessons twice a week, which I didn't appreciate at the time but provided me with an invaluable musical foundation for my later career as a singer/songwriter. She threw fabulous parties at our apartment and hosted formal dinners that were as likely to be attended by Tyrone Power and Larry Blyden, an actor who got frequent top billing on shows such as The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90, as by the goombahs who hung out at the Cafe 72 down the block from us. For our sixteenth birthday, Jack hired a local rock band and surprised Warren and me with a huge gathering of our friends and classmates outside in the garden adjoining our apartment that set all the neighbors from the buildings overlooking our yard to frantically phoning the local police precinct - not to complain, but to find out at what address the festivities were being held so they could come down and join the party! When Warren and I were studying at the Sorbonne in Paris the summer after we graduated high school in 1971, Jack met us there and took us to Rome where the three of us, two blond teenagers and a dishy auburn-haired beauty, stopped rush hour traffic as we crossed the Via Veneto. We saw Aida at the Baths of Caracalla with horses, elephants, giraffes, and tigers roaming the stage of the fabulous outdoor amphitheater. To this day, it is the only opera I have ever seen; I can't imagine any other could top that experience. We went south to Naples and the Isle of Capri where, against the feverish entreaties of our guide, we all leaped off his boat into the sapphire waters of the Blue Grotto and swam around until he threatened to leave us to drown at high tide inside the cave where the emperor Tiberius and his heir-apparent, that crazy Caligula, drank and debauched around the time B.C. became A.D.

Jack was always up for adventure; she loved to travel and enjoy different cultures, and collected art and antiques from Africa, Japan, and other faraway places. She never backed down from a fight, either. In 1963 she married an Austrian ski instructor she had met at a resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, and when she discovered, two months after after the wedding, his concealment of the fact that he had been a Nazi and was violently anti-semitic, she wouldn't be satisfied with simply divorcing him; she went to court and set a legal precedent concerning the nature of fraud in the New York State statutes in order to have the marriage annulled. (It's called the Barber/Kober precedent, and you could look it up!) Mom loved to drive and always had these little foreign James Bond-type sports cars when we were young, into which the three of us kids would cram ourselves and various cats and dogs and set off on road trips with her to Illinois or California or Florida to visit friends and family. She was a free spirit whose vitality was framed but never constricted by the conformities of motherhood, and she never regretted for an instant the choices she had made in her life.

She did regret a few of the choices I made. She was uneasy with the lifestyle into which I aimlessly stumbled after leaving college in Arizona, that of an itinerant troubadour, and never stopped hoping I would settle down, get married, and present her with grandchildren, the way my brother and sister eventually did. We went through periods, typical of many mother/daughter relationships, when neither of us understood the other and carried around a lot of anger and confusion, but it was hard for me to remain upset with her for very long. Rocky had played and refereed soccer during his school days - he was co-captain of the Stanford soccer team in 1973 - and when I started umpiring in 1981 and it became apparent I was serious about making it a "career" of sorts, even importuning my twin to go to umpire school with me in 1982 so I wouldn't be the only woman in the class of two hundred, mom liked to joke that she had no idea when she gave birth that she was spawning two umpires and a referee.

As much as she fretted about my lifestyle, she never complained when she came to any of the Mets fantasy camps or spring training intrasquads I worked back in the mid-eighties and saw me on the field with ballplayers she had, unbeknownst to me, idolized. See, I had no interest in baseball until I was twenty-eight years old, and had no idea how much my mother loved the game until my own burgeoning interest in it sparked a totally different way for us to relate to each other that lasted until the day she died, fourteen years and one week ago. I've always been a trivia nut by nature and one day became determined to beat my friend Barry Bell at baseball trivia, so I went to a bookstore and picked out three volumes at random from the baseball section. From the moment I first started reading about the people and the lore that give baseball its unique hold on the American psyche, I was hooked, and just kept reading and reading for more than a year until I had exhausted the shelves of the Palm Springs and New York Public libraries of most of their baseball-related selections. Palm Springs was where Jack had moved in 1972, and I found myriad excuses to visit her there and then stay for months at a time; such is the flexibility of the frequently unemployed. One day she saw me reading Larry Gerlach's The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires, and did something only a mother could do. She made the leap from seeing me read that book, which I had picked from the library shelf solely because it was, quite literally, the last one having anything to do with baseball that I hadn't already read, to deciding that it meant her daughter must want to be an umpire. How or why she made that connection, I'll never figure out. All I know is she saw something in me that I could not see in myself, and as much as it must have worried her to point me in a direction that augured mostly rejection and financial instability, she swallowed her fears in favor of helping me find something with which I would, immediately and irrevocably, fall totally in love.

I found a notice on my pillow one night when I was staying with her during the late spring of 1981, just a few weeks before the players' strike looming malevolently on the horizon would shut down major league baseball for most of the summer. At that point, we were driving together almost every night to see either the Dodgers in L.A. or the Angels in Anaheim, and the thought of not having any baseball to connect me to the universe or my mother was unimaginably horrible. So when I found this ad Jack had cut out from the local paper and deposited on my pillow to ensure I wouldn't miss it when I got home, about how a local little league needed umpires for the season, my first thought was definitely NOT wow, what a great idea, I'm applying for the position first thing in the morning! It was more along the lines of, what the hell is this? When I asked her about it the next day, she told me, "Well, I thought you were interested in umpires. You wrote a song about one." This was true; I had been introduced to National League umpire Ed Montague a year earlier after a Phillies game at the old Veterans' Stadium, and he had made such a profound impression upon me that I composed a paean to him titled The Umpire Stands Alone. "I saw you reading a book about umpires too," Jack continued. I gave her a look. "You've seen me reading books about serial killers, but that doesn't mean I want to be one!" I countered, in my dense and daughterly way.

The upshot of it was that I did indeed call the league and sign on. I amplified my qualifications a bit to get the job, but the administrator who hired me must have been desperate because before I knew it, I was holding one of those old-fashioned balloon-style chest protectors in front of me on a field full of six-year-old peewee players whose initial reaction to my presence was not exactly receptive. ("Is she going to umpire?" was the unifying thread among most of their comments.) Because I had grown up in Manhattan and hadn't even learned to drive until the summer of 1980 and certainly didn't own a car, my mother kindly chauffeured me to my inaugural assignment in Indio, a town about thirty miles east of Palm Springs. I was twenty-eight years old, and my mother drove me to my first little league game.

She sat stoically in the stands and told me after the game that she had almost come to blows with a woman behind her who had been just a bit critical of my competence (or lack thereof,) but by the time I signaled the last out Jack had her eating out of her hand, called me over, and introduced me to her as if they were best friends. The next day, several letters in the local paper excoriated me and raged about how atrocious I was, didn't know the strike zone, let the game go on for three hours, etc., all of which was true, but for some reason the sting of this criticism didn't detract from my enjoyment of the experience, as harrowing as it had been to suddenly find myself the object of so much unrestrained contempt and loathing. All my life I had been charming, witty, socially sought after, good at whatever I did, praised and petted, and now I was a lamb in the lions' den, facing one of the biggest emotional challenges of my life: not to cry on the ballfield just because people were saying mean things to me. None of what came before in my life mattered to me once I put on a chest protector and shinguards, and I learned quickly that being lovely, scintillating, and conciliatory on a ballfield is an invitation to chaos. What my mother discerned in me long before I recognized it in myself was that, through umpiring, I could become the person I really was, strong and free enough to face what I feared, unfettered by concerns about what people thought of me or what I looked like, things that until I learned the ways of the umpire, were foreign concepts to me. In retrospect, I think perhaps she steered me in the direction she did because they were things she might have wanted for herself too, but in the time and the setting in which she grew up and reached adulthood they just weren't as achievable as they are now. So she set me free by maternal proxy instead, and it is because of her that twenty-eight years later I still go out there every game, thankful I have the physical stamina and emotional fortitude to participate in such a meaningful and illuminating way in the game I love so passionately, and eternally grateful she was my mom. Everything wonderful about me, I got from her: her sense of adventure, her enthusiasm for the known and the unknown, her love of fun and good cheer, her dedication to more serious undertakings - she did lots of volunteer work for charitable agencies and drug rehab facilities, and served as a longtime auxiliary cop here in the city - and her inextinguishable zest for life, no matter how sick she was. She spent her last twelve years battling a rare autoimmune disease called Wegener's granulamitosis that eventually ravaged her lungs and kidneys until she finally slipped into a coma in April of 1994. Typically, she didn't even leave the decision to disconnect her from life support to those of us whose choice it had become; she just started winding down like a clock one night and quietly, lovingly, faded out of this world on May 3rd, nine days after her seventieth birthday.

Happy Mothers' Day, Jack, and thank you for everything.
Your loving daughter,
Perry Lee

Vernal Equinox/Infernal Paradox

Today is the first day of spring, and a very special five-year anniversary. No, not of the invasion of Iraq, although yesterday was also a depressingly sad day of commemoration for Americans who have opposed the war since bombs began raining down on Baghdad five years ago. I'm talking about the significant five-year milestone of being cancer-free that my aunt Pat McGehee of Clearwater, Florida, is marking. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in January of 2003 and shortly afterwards underwent surgery without radiation to combat it, and sInce then has had nothing but clean check-ups. Now, that's a five-year anniversary to celebrate!

Five years. That's half a decade; in grown-up years, the blink of an eye. During that time, almost four thousand American men and women have died fighting a war that two out of three citizens deeply oppose and wish to see end as soon as possible. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed, and millions more displaced, rendered homeless, and pauperized. Whatever political and social infrastructures there were have been destroyed but not replaced by something more durable, as the Bush administration assured us would happen when we first went in. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, marketing new videos and audiotapes whenever he feels the need to remind us who's running the show. But the surge is working! It's undeniable, or so said President Bush yesterday. And the fact that two thirds of Americans want to bring our troops home now, as opposed to one hundred years from now?

"So?"

That's what Vice-president Dick Cheney said. "So?" It doesn't matter to him or to the Bush administration what the people who "elected" him and his boss want. After paying reverential tribute to the sacrifices of our military men and women and their families by going for a cruise aboard the sultan of Oman's yacht, he responded to a comment by an ABC reporter that two thirds of Americans believe the war in Iraq is not worth fighting anymore with that deathless, monosyllabic retort. He then followed up with this: "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. There has in fact been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That's a huge accomplishment."

Five years after President Bush, Vice-president Cheney and their cabal of chest-thumping faux-warrior princes decided that invading Iraq would be a quick and glorious enterprise, thousands of our men and women have been killed, the American economy is in the tank, STD-infected children are dropping out of school in record numbers, affordable health care is a pipe dream for the middle class, the ill, and the elderly, and our constitution has been turned into toilet paper for the radical right.

Meanwhile, the spectacle we are being treated to most frequently on the nightly news and in the papers, other than the diverting sideshow of Barack Obama having to repeatedly explain his association with his longtime pastor while John McCain gets a free pass concerning John Hagee, a hate-spewing religious fanatic whose endorsement McCain smilingly embraces, is Eliot Spitzer's dangerous liaisons with a call girl, Jim and Dina McGreevey's weekly threesomes with the chauffeur, and the fact that Hillary Clinton was oh my god, in the Whitehouse at the same time her husband was being serviced by Monica Lewinsky. What a great nation we are, indeed. What a huge accomplishment for all of us.

In loving memory of Michael Brennan, Ladder 4, Division 3, Battalion 9, 27-year-old New York City firefighter who gave his life on September 11, 2001; and Bobby Wagner, Marine Sergeant and Army Reserves Sergeant, 28 years old when he was killed in Iraq on August 1, 2004, survived by his son Ty and mom June. We salute you.

 

The Mann Act, a.k.a. The White Slave Traffic Act

Full text of the White-Slave Traffic Act, as passed by the Sixty-First Congress on June 25, 1910:

CHAP. 395 — An Act to further regulate interstate commerce and foreign commerce by prohibiting the transportation therein for immoral purposes of women and girls, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the term "interstate commerce," as used in this Act, shall include transportation from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, and the term "foreign commerce," as used in this Act, shall include transportation from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia to any foreign country and from any foreign country to any State or Territory or the District of Columbia.

SEC. 2. That any person who shall knowingly transport or cause to be transported, or aid or assist in obtaining transportation for, or in transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or in the District of Columbia, any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such woman or girl to become a prostitute or to give herself up to debauchery, or to engage in any other immoral practice; or who shall knowingly procure or obtain, or cause to be procured or obtained, or aid or assist in procuring or obtaining, any ticket or tickets, or any form of transportation or evidence of the right thereto, to be used by any woman or girl in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, in going to any place for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent or purpose on the part of such person to induce, entice, or compel her to give herself up to the practice of prostitution, or to give herself up to the practice of debauchery, or any other immoral practice, whereby any such woman or girl shall be transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment of not more than five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

SEC. 3. That any person who shall knowingly persuade, induce, entice, or coerce, or cause to be persuaded, induced, enticed, or coerced, or aid or assist in persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing any woman or girl to go from one place to another in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose on the part of such person that such woman or girl shall engage in the practice of prostitution or debauchery, or any other immoral practice, whether with or without her consent, and who shall thereby knowingly cause or aid or assist in causing such woman or girl to go and be carried or transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any common carrier or carriers in interstate or foreign commerce, or any Territory or the District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or by both fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

So this is the almost one hundred-year-old Act being used to trumpet (and trump up) the case that Eliot Spitzer violated the law. He could go to prison for five years for paying for the train ticket of an adult woman who agreed to the transaction quite voluntarily! I shudder to think such a medieval punishment would be inflicted on anyone, even as hypocritical a paragon of public virtue and private vice as Spitzer. We and our vaunted media are ourselves so equally and selectively hypocritical about whom we choose to hang out to dry and whom to let slide, it would almost be funny if it weren't so sad and alarming.

What really bothers me, though, is the news that Spitzer liked to try to get out of using condoms with his prostitutes. ("Don't taze me, bro" will now be replaced as the phrase du jour by "I'm like, hey dude, do you really want the sex?" Perhaps this won't be such a bad thing for the women and girls of America to pay heed to.) This raincoat-free approach to his assignations could have potentially disastrous health consequences for his wife Silda, a fabulous, intelligent, accomplished, warm, funny lady who deserves better. She looked like a zombie standing by his side when he made that weirdly wooden mea culpa speech that he read from prepared remarks. Good grief, if you can't speak from the heart at a time like that, you really must be some kind of pod person. But, as Judge Judy likes to say, she picked him!

The other thing I find interesting is the Act's subtitle: The White Slave Traffic Act. If "Kristen" had been a black or Asian or Native American prostitute, would this law apply? And does it really apply anyway? It seems a bit of a stretch to use it to prosecute someone who paid for a transaction of which part was subsequently used to purchase a train ticket quite voluntarily. The Mann Act was supposed to protect young girls and women - just the lily-white ones, I guess - from being forcibly kidnaped by predators and driven across state lines for "immoral" purposes. It was intended to protect the flower of young American womanhood from the evil influences of men who wished to whisk them off to an out-of-state justice of the peace, or horrors! to have out-of-wedlock sexual relations. Consent apparently has no representation in this particular law, only the act of transporting or paying for the transport. As usual in American jurisprudence, the law seems to have been designed to perpetuate the outmoded notion that women desperately need this kind of protecting.

If only we paid as much attention to what's happening with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the transparent attempts by the Bush administration to "update" it, meaning expand it to include limitless governmental and corporate power to spy on Americans without warrants or any criminal consequences, as we now are to the White Slave Traffic Act. But the former doesn't have the prurient appeal of the latter, and so Eliot Spitzer may go to prison for paying for sex with another consenting adult while George Bush, who is responsible for the death, displacement, and disabilty of millions of Americans and Iraqis, dances on the White House portico.

 

Breaking News! Soap Opera (General Hospital) Pre-empted By Soap Opera (Eliot Spitzer)

Here we go again. The crime-busting governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, held a press conference this afternoon in which he confessed to - what? Having sex with a prostitute? Not exactly. He was a bit coy about what precisely he was apologizing for, but by then the mainstream media switchboard as well as the blogosphere were lighting up with the news that he had been named as "Client Number Nine" in a "prostitution ring" scandal. I had ABC on my television at 3 PM when the soap opera General Hospital was interrupted by one of those breaking news alerts with the dramatic music leading into Elizabeth Vargas trumpeting the news that Spitzer had been stung by the F-Bee-I and would probably resign as a result.

Really, resign? Frankly, yawn, who cares if Spitzer paid for sex with ten women at once? So a guy pays a woman for sex. So what? Men, married or otherwise, have been doing that since the beginning of time. (Would that they all did!) The only real issue here is the former chief prosecutor of New York's holier-than-thou stance on such peccadilloes, which leaves him twisting uncomfortably in the wind, hoisted on his own self-righteous petard. But to amplify his dopey shenanigans into a federal crime deserving of his resignation is a bit over the top, if you ask me. However, quite typically, the press, just coming off its group suck-up at John McCain's hideaway in Sedona, is already drooling over the prospect of revealing every sordid detail of his trysts and assignations, just slobbering with anticipation at the titillating thought of exposing every kinky act he committed with another consenting adult and somehow translating this into an impeachable offense, as if it were an Extremely Important Story. By this time tomorrow, the young woman he paid will probably be booked on Larry King and members of the media will all be engaging in a contest of Who Can Report The Most Salacious Thing about this "scandal" in order to aggrandize their own "investigative" skills and positions on the journalistic totem pole. Evidence of this is already apparent, as the calculated labeling of the virtual bordello through which Spitzer secured those sexual services as a "prostitution ring" so amply illustrates.

Perhaps a more cogent line of inquiry, other than how could the steward of an entire state be so dumb as to get himself ensnared in such an operation, is why the FBI and the IRS were expending their resources in this time of terrorism and global discord investigating an escort service to begin with. At whose behest? And with whose complicity? Concerned citizens want to know. What we actually don't want to know is what position, which accoutrements, how creative or unimaginative, etc. But I'm sure we'll be informed in graphic detail of all that soon enough whether we want to be or not.

The Green, Green Grass of Home (Plate)

Three weeks after President Bush went to Africa, leaving Americans at the mercy of terrorists who, according to him, were supposed to kill us as soon as the Protect America Act expired last month, we're still alive, and he's baaack! So is Hillary Clinton, apparently, after her three-for-four in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island this past Tuesday. Our esteemed senator from New York has pulled the rabbit out of the hat once again and confounded all the pundits, prognosticators, and the faithless who turned against her in such multitudes and with such malicious glee after the January South Carolina primary. And make no mistake about it, she is esteemed by her constituents and has done a peachy, if not unimpeachable, job of revitalizing upstate commerce, getting medical coverage and treatment for first responders suffering from illnesses engendered by their heroic efforts during and after 9/11, procuring protective body armor for our troops in Iraq through her position and pull on the Armed Services Committee, almost singlehandedly ensuring unimpeded access to Plan B for women who need it, and accomplishing myriad other gains that have gotten lost in the shuffle and torrent of vitriol constantly being spewed at and about her by those who wish she and her husband would vanish from the political landscape. Down here in Florida where I legally reside and vote, Governor Crist has gone on record stating his opposition to a do-over of the primary that didn't count, the one the republican-dominated legislature moved up against democratic party rules, thereby throwing the proverbial monkey wrench into the delegate picture. Personally, I don't see why I should have to vote again or forfeit my right to have my voice be heard at the convention just because of some in-house squabble that could be resolved by using simple common sense. A do-over will cost millions of dollars that could be put to much better use than settling a political score between the DNC and an obtuse opposition state legislature.

Speaking of scores, the good kind, the boxy ones in the sports section that list the umpires' names and positions way down at the bottom between the Inherited Runners scored stat and the Weather and Wind reports, the New York Mets opened their 2008 exhibition season by playing a game that ended in a 4-4 tie. The team that matched their total was the University of Michigan Wolverines, who might have won the game if not for an umpire's decision in the bottom of the ninth inning concerning a ball that hit the outfield wall but ricocheted back onto the field and was initially ruled in play rather than a home run.

The umpire was Theresa Fairlady, and she is one of a quartet of women who made baseball history that day - extremely obscure baseball history - by being a member of the first and only four-woman crew ever to umpire a major league spring training game. The idea to put together an all-female crew took root in my mind as the seed of a dream several years ago when Mona Osborne of West Palm Beach umpired a Mets

intrasquad with me. I had originally scheduled a third partner, a guy, to work with us that day but for some reason he didn't make it, so Mona and I handled the game by ourselves, just the two of us. Our accidental and completely unnoticed brush with history got me thinking about someday working with a crew of three or four women, as I was already friends with several down here who I knew would acquit themselves more than capably on a major league field. Theresa Fairlady, nee Cox, is the third of six women to have made it into pro ball and the minor leagues since Bernice Gera became the first, making it possible for the rest of us (and a lot of men as well who wouldn't have met the height and weight restrictions Gera got the courts to throw out in 1972) to join the ranks of professional arbiters. I've worked hundreds of games with Theresa all over the country during the last eighteen years. Mona Osborne teaches umpiring to young officials around West Palm and runs an association that supplies umpires to area high schools. Last summer in Sarasota she also became the first woman to umpire the plate for the Florida High School All Star game, and has umpired the State Championships twice. Ila Valcarcel and I met in 2005 when we were both students, she for the first time and I for the fifth, at Harry Wendelstedt's Umpire School in Daytona. Her  career has quickly taken off as she is the only woman currently umpiring for the Florida Collegiate Umpires, which assigns games for every major college in the state. She was also the only woman to attend the inaugural Major League West Coast Umpires Camp, and beyond her burgeoning officiating skills, flies airplanes and has written and recorded a moving musical tribute to the fallen heroes of 9/11 titled "No Words At All" that you can listen to by clicking here.

Two weeks before spring training started, I checked with the Mets over in Port St. Lucie to find out when their intrasquads were scheduled. I've been supplying umpires for these pre-exhibition exhibitions since 1985 when Arthur Richman, (on the left in this photo with longtime pal, Yankees pitching legend Don Larsen), then the Mets' traveling secretary and a baseball legend in his own right, put his cojones on the line for me at a time when most people regarded women umpires as little more than a bad joke, and hired me to umpire my first major league spring training game just four short years after I started calling 'em for a little league out in California. From that headfirst dive into pro ball at the old Huggins/Stengel complex in St. Petersburg during which I became the first woman in the modern era (post-early twentieth century) to umpire a game played between two major league teams (the Mets and the White Sox,) I forged a relationship with the Mets organization that flourishes to this day. Long after Arthur Richman's matriculation to the Yankees in 1989 and his retirement from active front office duty two years ago, it still thrives. That is how I came to be in a position where I could ask Theresa, Mona, and Ila to work with me, so when Charlie Samuels of the Mets called to request umpires for an intrasquad on Monday, February 25th and the University of Michigan @ Mets game on Tuesday the 26th, I jumped all over it and got on the horn to each of my partners. I told no one except my twin sister Warren out in Vancouver, Washington, to whom I confess everything, what I was planning; none of the women involved knew what was up until the morning of the game when we drove into the parking lot of Tradition Field. The surprise and delight on their faces as they realized what I had engineered limned an image I will cherish for a long time. When Charlie came to the dressing room to check in with us an hour before game time, he didn't bat an eyelash. "I trust you," he shrugged. "You know what you're doing." Inside, I wasn't quite as confident as he was, but outside, I was an amazon. We all were.

The day before, I had worked an intrasquad with Bruce Martin, who umpired in the independent Atlantic League with me, and Josh Miller, a former Wendelstedt instructor and Triple AAA umpire. My presence at spring training games usually excites no more notice than any other umpire's, and the intrasquad on the 25th followed that pattern. Tuesday the 26th was an entirely different story: our crew walked out on the field, three of us with ponytails hanging defiantly down our backs, and an unfamiliar buzz began to emanate from the crowd of two thousand plus spectators. Intrasquads can be pretty loosely regulated affairs with staged situations and few of the usual rituals such as home plate meetings or exchange of lineup cards to clutter them up. But for this game, Willie Randolph, who in four seasons of managing the Mets had come out for a pre-game conference with me exactly zero times, arrived at home plate with Rich Maloney,  the Michigan head coach. An AP photo of that meeting captioned "Willie Randolph listens to home plate umpire Perry Barber" went 'round the baseball universe and the blogosphere in a blink, and our place in history was secured. Loosely and distantly, but affixed nonetheless. Of course, with the elation of that realization comes the regret of knowing it is only because women are so underrepresented on the diamond in the first place that our crew made such a profound impression.

The game went way too fast! I was so happy to be out there I wanted it to last forever, like W.P Kinsella's mythic two-thousand inning game between the Chicago Cubs and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. My partners looked so polished on the rotations and so sharp when making their calls, I was bursting with pride for all of us. When David Wright came up to bat in the bottom of the first, he completely disarmed me by flashing the most charming smile. "You're not mad at me, are you, David?" I kidded him. The day before, I'd called him out on strikes and he didn't like it - what hitter ever does? - but he took his whiff like a pro and went back to the dugout without complaint. His next time up, I called two quick strikes on him again but then he grounded out, saving himself from a second similar fate. So during the U Mich game when I asked if he were mad at me, he laughed and said no, I had done a phenomenal job. "I'm so glad," I drawled, "because you know I worship the ground you walk on - but that was a good pitch!"

"Oh yeah," he concurred, "You had to call that one." Then he slammed, I mean crushed, the first pitch he saw over the left field fence. It looked like it went about five hundred feet. When I related this little incident to various umpire friends later on, some of them objected to my repartee with Wright, saying they thought the Michigan catcher must not have been too thrilled to hear me tell an opposing batter I worshiped the ground he walked on. "Don't worry," I told them, "the catcher was out talking to his pitcher when I said that. Besides, I'd already stroked him too!" We went the full nine innings, as the Wolverines managed to accrue a tenuous 4-2 lead late in the game through a combination of surprising pitching (using at least one new pitcher practically every inning so they were all fresh) and timely hitting. With two outs, one on, and things looking bleak (in the spring training sense of bleak) for the New Yorkers, big Michael Abreu (no relation to Bobby of the Yankees) came up to bat and hit a ball that cleared the yellow line on the outfield fence signifying home run if a ball hits above it, regardless of whether it comes back onto the field or not. Abreu pulled up at second when he realized none of us had signaled home run, while third base coach Sandy Alomar came out and started giving Theresa, the umpire nearest him, an earful for our having left the ball in play, protesting that it was a home run. Theresa did exactly the right thing: without any prompting or hesitation, she came over to confer with me. I asked her what she had seen, and when she said she saw the ball hit above the line and come back, I explained that I had neglected to go over that particular ground rule during our informal home plate meeting, and that a ball hit above the line was a home run. She turned, took two steps towards the pitcher's mound and made the little circular motion with her index finger signifying four-bagger. Abreu, all six-foot three and two hundred, forty-five pounds of him waiting patiently at second to see what the upshot of our discussion would be, made the sign of the cross, touched his fingers to his lips, and blew a kiss heavenward. The crowd, whose vocal support until that moment had good-naturedly favored the college boys, went wild! Abreu completed his circuit around the bases and touched home plate, knotting the score at four apiece, and not a moment too soon. The next batter made out, and that was how the game ended, as neither team wanted to play extra innings. Only the umpires wished it could have gone on forever.

Six hours after the final out, it was pouring rain in Port St. Lucie and the temperature had plummeted from a balmy seventy-five degrees to a frigid forty. The next morning dawned chilly and damp, and Ila phoned to tell me she had googled herself and found dozens of articles popping up all over the internet, from the pages of the Palm Beach Post (which quoted me saying we had done "pretty darn good," although I didn't exactly say "darn") to the New York Daily News, all the way to Japan and back. But by then we were already laboring in obscurity again, working our college or high school doubleheaders for little appreciation and less pay. That is the umpire's lot, and the way it should be. Female or male, we do it for the love of the game, not the glory or the reward. When those come our way occasionally, we accept our infrequent accolades with humility and grace, always keeping in mind that today's compliment may well be tomorrow's knife in the back! That's the nature of the craft and a hazard of the profession. It's also one of the things I've always found so challenging and illuminating about umpiring, and about human nature in general. As Bruce Lee said, all knowledge leads to self-knowledge.

I can't say enough about the pride and devotion I feel for the women who stood with me that day, and how wonderful it was to walk off the field knowing we had done not just ourselves, but all umpires everywhere, justice. Kudos to the Mets organization as well, whose representatives have stuck with me for more than two decades and given me the opportunity to work spring training games all these years, as well as to offer the same chance to umpires who might not otherwise ever have walked on a major league field. Sometimes it takes just one fearless person with the vision to change the world one baby step at a time. In the NBA, it was Rod Thorn who saw a void and actively sought to fill it by hiring not just one, but two women as referees. Ten years later, Violet Palmer is still working, a living contradiction to the hypothesis that women are incapable of officiating at the highest levels of pro sports, that we are too emotional, too unpredictable, too estrogen-crazed (or deficient,) too this or not enough that to be able to handle the pressures of the job. In baseball, for me at least, it's been Arthur Richman and now Charlie Samuels whom I owe so much for helping me dispel that myth, and whose generosity and support I could never possibly repay. If only there were more like them! If only there were one. Just one.

And so we look to the future, tenaciously beating on like Fitzgerald's "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," signaling balls and strikes, safes and outs, fouls and fairs, undeterred by the obstacles we face, calling 'em as we see 'em, ponytails flying in the Florida sun.

The Terrorists Are Coming! The Terrorists Are Coming!

President Bush is going to Africa! I'm so scared; who will protect us now? According to him, the terrorists will be here tomorrow night at 12:01 AM, as soon as the Protect America Act (PAA) expires. That's the recent amplification of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that gives the government license to spy on everybody, not just suspected terrorists. If the extension had been signed, sealed and delivered to the president yesterday the way he was stamping his foot and demanding of the House of Representatives, that would have been it: any chance to investigate criminal activities or breaches of our constitutionally guaranteed rights would have been rendered futile, as the primary actors in the wrongdoing would have been granted immunity from any further oversight or accountability.

Something else happened instead. For once, our legislators stood up to the ominous threats and recriminations issued by the president and refused to pass the bill the senate dumped in their laps on Tuesday. Instead, they took up the matter of whether or not to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in contempt for refusing to answer subpoenas requiring their appearance before Congress to explain their respective roles in the firing of eight United States Attorneys last year. This was a matter first introduced in July of 2007, seven months ago, but it was only yesterday that Nancy Pelosi finally mustered the troops the way she promised she would when the democratic majority was installed in 2006, strode into the House, and spoke passionately and eloquently against allowing the executive branch to further trample all over the constitution and the congressional oversight wedded to its precepts. Thus, discussion of the PAA extension was tabled in favor of addressing the Bolton/Miers matter, causing a mob of republicans to march out in a snit and strike poses around a podium on the steps of the Capitol while they adoringly mimicked the president's admonitions that we're all going to die now.

Our commander-in-chief'? He upbraided the democrats like a schoolmarm scolding the class clown. "The House should not leave Washington without passing the senate bill," he whined peevishly, adding, "I am scheduled to leave tomorrow for a long-planned trip to five African nations." I wonder exactly when this trip was "planned" and how coincidental its timing is at this particular juncture. Why, if I didn't know better I'd say it looks as if the president is cutting and running! "The lives of countless Americans depend on our ability to monitor terrorists' communications," he rebuked his intransigent charges, conveniently misremembering, to borrow a Clemensism, that purely out of pique at not getting his way, he himself had obstructed passage of the RESTORE Act which would have enabled exactly that. Also conveniently dissembling, and not even very adroitly, about the fact that when the PAA does expire, FISA still permits monitoring and wiretapping without a warrant as long is one is obtained after the surveillance is initiated.

Meanwhile, back at the mainstream media corral, a laundry list of newspaper, television, and radio outlets patriotically parroted the completely false assertion that FISA was about to expire rather than the PAA and we wouldn't be able to listen in on terrorist communications as a result, exposing ourselves to all sorts of danger. ABC's Charlie Gibson did this repeatedly, as did Fox News' Wendell Goler, Chris Wallace, and Martha MacCallum, MSNBC's Monica Novotny, NBC's Brian Williams, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Somehow, in spite of all the phony hoopla, members of the House of Representatives - the radical, islamofascist troop-hating democrats, anyway - at last had the perspicacity and courage of their convictions to say enough is enough, we're not going to let you bully us into giving you all the powers of a dictator and watch you defecate all over the constitution and use it for toilet paper anymore.

So now our fearless leader is going to Africa, leaving the rest of us to be killed immediately, all because of the terrorist-abetting democrats. I hope while he's there he at least addresses a few other issues that have been kind of bothering me lately when I haven't been so distracted by thoughts of being killed by terrorists, like the institutional rape of women and children in Congo, the unabated genocide and sexual depredations still decimating Darfur, or the ethnic violence targeting long distance runners in Kenya.

The terrorists are coming to get us! For once, the president was right: one of them already did, right here at home. But his name wasn't Osama or Mohammed; it was Steven Kazmierczak, a Northern Illinois University graduate who reportedly went off his meds - was one of them accutane? - before shooting and killing five students and then himself yesterday afternoon with several legally purchased handguns.