Dishing it...

Through The Looking Glass, Darkly

                                
                   Kel-Tec 9mm semi-automatic, the same model used to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin

From the The 2010 Florida Statutes (including Special Session A)                       Chapter 776.012, also known as the Stand Your Ground law:  

776.012  Use of force in defense of person. - A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony;

So far, most of the national conversation has focused on George Zimmerman's (and his defenders') invocation of the Stand Your Ground law as a defense for his having shot and killed Trayvon Martin during an altercation in which the allegation is that Martin was the aggressor. Trayvon started it. He was skulking around in a neighborhood where he didn't belong, probably planning some kind of mischief. He jumped on top of Zimmerman, slammed his head into the ground, broke his nose, and caused Zimmerman to fear for his life. Therefore, the logic follows, Zimmerman had the legal right to pull his gun, aim it at the assailant, and shoot him dead. A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if ... He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony... It says so right there in the law. George Zimmerman had every justification for using deadly force against an attacker who was viciously beating him.

                                                   

But there's an overlooked element in this chain of events. We know that Zimmerman was in his car tailing Martin, who was walking in Zimmerman's neighborhood, talking to his girlfriend on a cell phone. We know this from the 911 tapes that have been released and dissected ad infinitum in the search to find, depending upon which "side" one takes in the discussion, either signs of racism in Zimmerman's comments or indications of the kind of aggression from Martin that would justify the use of deadly force against him.

The thing is, Zimmerman got out of his car. He got out of his car with a loaded gun. Trayvon hadn't pulled a weapon at that point; according to Zimmerman's own words to the 911 operator, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about." Then he tells the operator that Martin is "staring at me... he's got his hand in his waistband... something's wrong with him... yeah, he's gonna check me out... he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is." Zimmerman never at any time says that he sees a gun or any other weapon, merely that the person he's following has his hand in his waistband and "looks like he's up to no good." Zimmerman was in his car while he was saying all this. Then we hear a car door slam and the unmistakeable sound of wind whistling past a cell phone as Zimmerman says rather enigmatically, "They always get away." At this point the operator asks him if he's following the suspect and Zimmerman replies, "Yes." "We don't need you to do that," the operator tells him. But it's clear from the sounds of the wind blowing past the phone that Zimmerman ignores that instruction and continues to follow Martin on foot.

It's here that I ask myself: if I were walking down the street and saw a car tailing me with a driver who looked somewhat menacing, and then the driver got out and started to approach me, how would I feel? How would I react? How did Trayvon feel as he saw Zimmerman get out of his car? He'd been on the phone with his girlfriend and expressed some concern about a vehicle he said was following him. So we can reasonably infer that he was probably a little scared, at least a little nervous. I don't care if I'm six foot nine and three hundred pounds, if a car tailed me down the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood and the driver got out and approached me, I'd be a bit panicky. I'm not sure how I would respond physically, but I think my heart would be racing. Was Trayvon's heart racing as Zimmerman got out of his car? Was he wondering what Zimmerman wanted? Was he worried that Zimmerman was "up to no good"? We may never know.

What we do know is this: Zimmerman got out of his car. If he truly, reasonably believed that Martin had a gun or a knife on him, as he implies when he says, "...he's got his hand in his waistband," does it make any sense at all that he would then get out of his car? If I were in a car and saw a person who I thought might have a weapon on him, do I get out of my car and confront that person - even if I too have a weapon? Or do I step on the gas and get as far away as possible, as fast as I can, from the person whom I regard as an imminent threat?

                                                                                       

                                                                   

At the moment George Zimmerman got out of his car, he became the aggressor. It was Trayvon who was in fear of some sort of bodily harm from the stranger approaching him, not the other way around. Zimmerman knew he had his loaded gun to "protect" him; Trayvon knew his only "weapons" were a bag of skittles and an iced tea he had just bought at a nearby convenience store. Who was the aggressor, and who was the person who actually believe[d] that such conduct [was] necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force? Since it was Zimmerman who exited his vehicle, which he could have used instead to remove himself from the danger he insists he thought Trayvon represented; since it was Zimmerman who was packing a loaded weapon, the logical inference is that it was he, not Martin, who was the agressor, and that therefore Martin, not Zimmerman, was the one who by law had the right to use force in defense of his person.

                                     

So even if it turns out to be true that Zimmerman suffered wounds and lacerations from the severe beating he alleges he took at Trayvon's hands - evidence of which is detectable in the form of superficial wounds to his scalp seen in the enhanced police video of Zimmerman being processed after the shooting - it's still much more reasonable, and certainly more logical according to the laws of human nature, to conclude that Trayvon Martin feared for his safety as soon as he saw Zimmerman exit his vehicle, regardless of whether or not he saw a gun pointed at him, and thus by Florida statute it was Martin who had the legal right to use any and all means at his disposal, including deadly force - which would encompass slamming his attacker's head against the pavement - to defend himself from the imminent use of unlawful force against him.

George Zimmerman has his detractors as well as his defenders, like sort-of friend Joe Oliver and occasional no-show lawyer Craig Sonner,** who have been all over the 24-hour television news cycles speaking in defense of the shooter. Zimmerman himself may soon enough be speaking on his own behalf once he's either charged with a crime or exonerated of any legal culpability for what he did. Trayvon Martin, the young man who was shot and killed, is dead and cannot speak for himself, but he is not voiceless.

                                               

** UPDATE: Several days after this posting, George Zimmerman fired attorney Craig Sonner and hired well-known Orlando-area former assistant state attorney general Hal Uhrig. Uhrig has already begun characterizing his client as a "victim" on multiple cable news outlets and programs while invoking such disparate elements as O.J. Simpson and a "rush to judgment" as well as Shaken Baby Syndrome in his comments about Zimmerman's state of mind during the altercation that led to Trayvon Martin's death.

                                        

A Very Presidential Perspective

                                                              

                                                 

In the case of PFC Bradley Manning, who has been incarcerated for almost two years while waiting to be tried for allegedly “aiding the enemy,” President Obama has not only made his opinion unequivocally clear, he has done so in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits “undue command influence” on cases to be tried by military tribunal or court martial. Responding to a Manning supporter at a San Francisco fundraiser last year, the president proclaimed: “We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.”

Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)

ART. 37. UNLAWFULLY INFLUENCING ACTION OF COURT

(a) No authority convening a general, special, or summary court-martial, nor any other commanding officer… may attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal…”   

 

In the case of George Zimmerman, who stalked, shot, and killed an unarmed teenager in Florida and then claimed he did so in self-defense, the president has urged restraint and careful examination of all the evidence before judgment is rendered about the guilt or innocence of the shooter.

At a White House press conference yesterday, this is how he weighed in: “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans take this with the seriousness that it deserves, and we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened.”

“Every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and everybody pulls together, federal state and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

 

Iceberg Ahead

 

                                                  

                                               Turning and turning in the widening gyre
                                             The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
                                             Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
                                             Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
                                             The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
                                             The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
                                             The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                                             Are full of passionate intensity.

                                                  -  The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

 

As much as it turns my stomach to even look at Jerry Sandusky’s face, I feel compelled to post this interview with him conducted by NBC news back in 1987, twenty-four years ago. It’s a creepy look at the face and mindset of a predator, and there is something important to be learned from watching and understanding its implications beyond Penn State and the young boys Sandusky brutalized with such ease and impunity for so long.

                                                                                                                                              

I know from having witnessed my twin sister’s decades-long descent into the clutches of addiction - multiple addictions to alcohol, downers, uppers, opioids, amphetamines, whatever was available at any given time - that there are certain observable traits manifested almost universally by addicts, including pederasts who crave anal intercourse with boys. One is that they lie - and they'll do it with a soothing smile while looking you right in the eye. Another is that addicts will almost always gravitate to those arenas of business, social, and family life that offer access to the substances they crave, or in the case of sexual predators, to potential victims. Some purposely design and construct channels granting unlimited access; hence, Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for at-risk kids.

 

My sister, as wonderful and giving a person as she was, chose nursing as a vocation, and with the clarity that hindsight so often bestows too late, I’m now convinced her choice emanated as much from a subconscious need to maintain a proximity to drugs as it did from a genuine desire to help the ill and the injured. Human nature compels us to gravitate to the things we crave, the behaviors that comfort us, no matter how destructive those cravings or behaviors actually are, and even though my sister wasn’t actively taking drugs at the time she made her decision to go to nursing school, I believe she still wanted the proximity to pills and pharmaceuticals that her chosen profession grants because she knew the time would come when that proximity would lead to the promised land of unlimited access to whatever drugs she wanted. That is a primary reason she became a Registered Nurse. She never addressed her illness in a sustained, therapeutic setting or ever really committed to sobriety - although she did her best to commit to periods of sobriety, particularly while she was raising her two sons when they were young - so she never completely extricated herself from the devil’s maw of her myriad addictions. There were brief intervals of good health punctuated by the false hope that she would eventually be okay, but they always turned out to be only temporary camouflage for her overriding need to be near the drugs she believed she could not live without.

So we see that Jerry Sandusky, a pillar of the Happy Valley community, founded a charity for vulnerable at-risk youth that gave him unfettered, unrestrained access to the victims who fed his addiction for decades. Mark my words, there are many more boys he has harmed than the eight named in the indictment against him, nor has his behavior towards his own adopted children yet been examined. The full scope of Sandusky’s depravity during the last quarter of a century hasn’t yet come to light. When it does, it will be much, much worse than anything we already know. There's a proverbial iceberg up ahead, and we've barely seen the tip of it so far.

 

                                               

The complete, horrifying picture is just now beginning to emerge, as it did so slowly and painfully from the Catholic Church when the first waves of sexual assault survivors started to come forward with shocking tales of abuse and betrayal by their parish priests. The Penn State scandal will not be limited to one campus, or even two or three; we will learn in the coming months and years that there are athletic coaches everywhere, on every high school and college campus, who have constructed their lives and careers around the access they need to find, identify, and groom their victims. The issue of adults sexually preying upon children won’t go away when Jerry Sandusky is convicted of his crimes in a court of law; it is already spreading and metastasizing like the cancer it is. Witness the disturbing news coming out of the Citadel, the South Carolina military academy, that an alumnus assaulted several young boys on campus and was, like Sandusky, allowed to continue his predations unfettered and unpunished for years until he was finally arrested. As victims become energized and emboldened by the courage of those who take the first steps to identify their rapists, more will come forward. It’s about to become an institutional nightmare for any college, university, or high school with an athletic program, because those are the settings towards which predators like Sandusky naturally gravitate in order to feed their cravings. They’re also, paradoxically, the very settings that imbue predators with the aura of “goodness” and “caring for kids” that so successfully disguises their true intentions and prevents others from recognizing their corrupt motives.

There are many decent, well-intentioned adults on the boards of universities and in positions of power within the scholastic and collegiate athletic arenas, but we are about to witness a raging torrent of victims demanding accountability and punishment for the few liars and betrayers of their trust who prey upon them while relying on the inertia of the institutions and communities around them to protect the predators rather than the victims. If all it takes for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing, the widening Penn State scandal has to be the poster child for that particular trope, but it definitely and oh, so horribly won’t be the only one.

 

 

Memory and Meaning

 

                                              
                                              Warren Barber Kertland: May 20, 1953 - March 10, 2011

It's been six months since my identical twin sister Warren died, and ten years since the 9/11 attacks. Without diminishing the macrocosmic significance of the terrible events of a decade ago, I choose to mourn my sister as a stand-in for those who perished that awful day. The photos here are from her wedding ceremony in 1989 when she was several months pregnant with her second child. Her husband David had promised to marry her when she was one year clean and sober, so their wedding represented a lot more than their commitment to each other and their children; it symbolized the boundless optimism and support offered her during her ongoing struggles by all of us who loved her.

She battled most of our lives, from the time we were eleven years old, to free herself from the shackles of one addiction after another. She fought and won, and fought and won, and fought and won again. At the end, she was worn down by fighting and finally succumbed, but I will never stop being thankful for her courage, her perseverance, and her two beautiful children, my nephews Jesse and Warren, both of whom have become wonderful young men. My love for my twin and her sons sustains me now and always will.     

                                                 
 

Bless the dead and the dying on this day of sorrow and remembrance, and those of us who remain as well.

                                     No man is an island, entire of itself.
                                     Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...
                                     Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.
                                     Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
                                     It tolls for thee.

                                      - John Donne, Meditation 17, from "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"

                                                  
                        

                                 

They Don't Always Wear a Uniform

 

                                                                                                                         

Today is Veterans' Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, and I remember Airman First Class Dick Stello, who served honorably in the the United States Air Force during the Korean conflict.

Dick was a guest instructor and I, a young student on my third trip to Harry Wendelstedt's Umpire School in 1984. He'd already been a National League umpire for sixteen years, so I was very much in awe of him when we first met. He was the adopted son of hardworking  New England farmers, a Massachusetts transplant with a Bahston accent that wouldn't quit, living in Pinellas Park, Florida at the time, and during the winter months I lived with my aunt Pat McGehee in Clearwater, just north of there, so after school let out in February we became fast friends and devoted country music compadres. Dick was always a lot of fun; he just emitted this great, positive energy, and he had a genuine appreciation for a good joke - in a former life he'd been a stand-up comedian - that was completely contagious. He loved to go to a country music night spot called Joyland not too far from his condo right off of U.S. 19, and he delighted in taking me to see the local bands that played there. He was friends with a lot of musicians, and although he wasn't a very proficient guitar player, he loved strumming away during impromptu jam sessions with me, cheerfully pickin' and grinnin' to the twangs of the country standards we both loved.

Before I knew him he'd been married to an exotic dancer and art house film actress named Chesty Morgan; that was about as much as I knew about her, other than that Dick never spoke of her with anything other than affection and respect. It turns out that Ms. Morgan was, and still is, a completely remarkable woman in her own right; her real name is Lillian Wilckzowski, and she's a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1939 during which her father was shot and killed by the Nazis and her mother was separated from her, never to be seen again. Lillian escaped to America and became wealthy and well-known under the Chesty Morgan burlesque trademark, marrying and divorcing Dick during a fabulous and turbulent performing career that demanded she be on the road at least as much as he was. Lillian still lives in Tampa; she and Dick had planned to celebrate the holidays together the November he was killed even though they'd been divorced for years by then. They still cared about each other and didn't let divorce get in the way of a good relationship long after their marriage had dissolved.

Dick sort of adopted me after I got out of umpire school, and each spring he would lend me a car while I was in Florida. Because I'd grown up in New York City and hadn't even learned to drive until 1980, and definitely didn't own a car, Dick would just let me have one of the vehicles from a St. Petersburg car dealership of which he was part owner so I wouldn't have to rent one. He never asked me to pay anything; he'd just let me have it for two or three months, free of charge, while I was umpiring in Florida until I was ready to go back to New York in April to start working high school and college baseball up there. One time I even brought back one of his loaners with a huge dent in the rear where I'd backed into a pole or something and he never said an unkind word to me, just laughed and told me not to worry, that he'd take care of it. That's the kind of friend he was.

                                                               
In November of 1987, Dick was getting ready to move from his Pinellas Park condo to a more spacious home in an upscale, golf course-style development situated right on Tampa Bay called Feather Sound. He was very excited about the move and looking forward to his upcoming twenty-first season as a National League umpire. He'd worked the All-Star Game in Oakland that past July, his second such assignment, and had two World Series (the great Red Sox/Reds series of 1975, and the not-so-great strike-scarred, split-season Dodgers/Yankees debacle of 1981) under his belt, so he was in line for another post-season job any day now. Life was an adventure to him, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

He and a business associate drove to Lakeland on November 23rd to buy some vehicles for their classic car dealership. Dick would go to this huge auto auction in Lakeland a couple of times a year for this purpose, so he was very experienced at all the little details and logistics that go into trading, purchasing, and transporting multiple vehicles at once. This day he forgot one small detail, and when he remembered and took action to correct it, it proved to be his final, fatal mistake.

He and his friend pulled over to the side of the road somewhere between Lakeland and St. Pete; Dick's vehicle was in front and the friend's behind his, both of them parked on the shoulder. It had occurred to Dick while he was driving that he hadn't put a particular kind of dealer's sticker on the rear of the car he had just purchased, so he and the friend pulled off the road and stopped while Dick walked to the rear of his car and bent over to apply the sticker. A driver approaching in the lane closest to the shoulder suddenly veered to the right, rear-ending the vehicle behind Dick's - he was between the two cars as the one in the rear got propelled forward - and Dick was smashed like a bug in an instant. I'm sure he never knew what hit him, but it's a graphic and gruesome image that has kept me safe lo these many decades, during which I've driven more miles than I care to account for and seen drivers pulled over to the side of the road in so many similar situations, changing a flat tire, or switching seats from driver to passenger, or just taking a break. I say a little prayer for their safety when I do - theirs and that of any other driver on the road whose split second of inattention might cost them their lives, as it did my friend Dick Stello's. Since that day, I don't care if I have to ruin a tire, a wheel rim, or the entire car, I never, never, never  never stop on the side of a road. If I have mechanical trouble or feel sleepy or in immediate need of a bathroom, I do whatever I have to do to get to an exit so I can get off the road to a safe place where cars aren't whizzing by. Getting hit at just ten miles an hour can kill a pedestrian or person on the side of a road, so I don't take any chances. If you think about it, the probability that someone, just one driver, won't be paying attention for the fraction of an instant it takes to cause an accident like the one that killed Dick is so astronomically high, it's ridiculous and downright dangerous to assume you won't get hit if you stop by the side of the road. So anyone who reads this, please take heed and stay safe out there.

Dick Stello served honorably in the uniform of an Air Force pilot during the Korean conflict; perhaps that's one of the reasons why I adored him so much, because my father Larry Barber was also an Air Force pilot in the same war. Dick is buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery in Largo, Florida, not too far from where he lived and died, right next to a serene, palm tree-ringed pond full of ducks and other local fauna. A little stone bench with his name inscribed on it across from his grave invites rest and peaceful reflection about the meaning of life and other mysteries. Dick's ex-wife Lillian was a soldier of a different kind, but I'm giving her a shout-out today too, for her extraordinary courage during wartime and the character and tenacity that led her out of the hell that was the Warsaw ghetto during World War II to become a productive, healthy mother, wife, and United States citizen who still contributes to her community and her adopted country.

On this day and every day, I pay tribute to the service of our veterans past and present, including my father, USAF pilot James Laurance Barber; my mother, Jaqueline Barber Davies, who did not serve but helped recruit American women for the Navy during World War II in her persona as Winnie the Wave; my great-uncle, Army Colonel Marlon Ellison; Marine Sargeant Bobby Wagner, killed in action in Iraq in 2004; my  longtime upstairs neighbor and friend in New York, Dino Cerutti, a pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II; the men and women of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, and the Reserves; and any and all other support personnel who put their lives on the line to answer the call their country has sounded.

 

                   

                                                            

The Predictability of Human Nature

Faisal Shahzad, the Connecticut family man turned inept terrorist who planned but failed to detonate an explosives-laden SUV in Times Square last May, has been tried and convicted in open court here in New York City, not in some secret  military tribunal, and was sentenced today to life in a supermax prison. The sentencing judge, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, was by all accounts very patient, even gracious, in allowing the unrepentant Mr. Shahzad to express his martyred acceptance of his punishment while he condemned the actions of the United States in the Middle East, offering them as the impetus behind his abiding hatred of all things American.

So the NYPD and the federal government, with a little help from an alert sidewalk vendor, somehow managed to halt an attack, track down and arrest the naturalized Pakistani-American terrorist who planted the bomb, accord him his due process, and put him on trial with all his constitutional rights intact. And the sky didn't fall... Thus do we exercise our freedoms as Americans, by honoring and observing the same laws we apply to the criminals who break them - not by unilaterally declaring which ones are terrorists, then hunting the accused ones down with no oversight or restraint, and certainly not by abducting, torturing, and keeping them locked up even when there is no credible evidence to suggest they're actually terrorists. Not by hypocritically  bleating about how putting terrorists on trial in a major American city will cause all kinds of disruptions, unmanageable stresses on police and security resources, unnecessary revelations of top-secret government secrets, and other assorted ginned-up potential catastrophes. Nor by hiding behind the shield of American Exceptionalism, meaning holding ourselves  to a different standard - if we choose not to apply to suspected terrorists the very laws we say we seek to uphold, it's okay because we're Americans doing it in the name of eradicating terrorism and spreading freedom! - than the one to which we hold non-Americans, thereby conveniently exempting ourselves from compliance with those same constitutional precepts we say we cherish so much even as we circumvent and betray them.

 Shahzad said this before being sentenced to life in prison: "...the past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace."

Is anybody listening? If we don't understand what generates and drives terrorism, how will we ever "defeat" it? Acts of terrorism aren't conceived in a vacuum. Until we stop deliberately cultivating violent retaliation for  our calculated destruction of non-military targets and escalating slaughter of innocent civilians, terrorism will continue to be a nine-headed hydra: cut off one head, and two will grow back. For every terrorist we kill under the guise of Keeping America Safe, many more will rise up like myrmidons from the plague-stricken earth, cursing us for the previous killing and claiming it as the reason for their remorseless rage. That doesn't sound like terrorism to me as much as it does perfectly predictable human nature.

                                                            

 

 

 

Nine Years Since 9/11

                                                                 Today marks the beginning of the tenth year since 9/11, a date which will live in infamy alongside December 7th.

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese/Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps euphemistically called "relocation centers" with names like Manzanar, Heart Mountain, and Tule Lake. Pleasant enough sounding names; but they articulate a grotesque chapter in American history. Close to a hundred thousand American citizens were imprisoned in these camps just because they happened to be of Japanese descent or bloodline. Some were detained for years simply for being married to a Japanese/American, or for having a relative who was. Their property was taken from them, they were forced to abandon their homes and sometimes their families, and they were packed into makeshift prisons under unimaginably cruel conditions. They were punished for being part Japanese, not because they had committed a crime. Agents of our federal government treated them as if they were the ones who had flown the planes into the sky above the Arizona early on a Sunday morning  in Hawaii and rained bombs and bullets down on our sleeping service members below. 

                                                       

When action is a reflexive response to fear or suspicion, the results seldom lead to anything glorious. We as a people allowed our government - the government of a beloved, democratic, socially progressive president - to send Americans who hadn't done anything wrong to prison without trials, without basic habeus corpus rights, without legal recourse to protest their incarceration, which is a fundamental constitutional right for any person accused of a crime on American soil, not just for Americans. We did this reprehensible thing to our own fellow citizens. Now, nine years after the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania became charred memorials, we're showing disturbing signs of repeating our own odious history, oblivious to the lessons of our stained and bloody past. An entire religion is being demonized because of the actions of a microscopic few, and Muslims in America are feeling the very real and very dangerous heat. Perhaps that's because they're more attentive students of our own history than we are.

I don't believe 27-year-old FDNY firefighter Mike Brennan of Ladder 4, Division 3, Battalion 9, whom I knew briefly before he was killed in the Towers, or the son of my friend June Wagner, Marine Sargeant Bobby Wagner, who was  killed in action on August 1, 2004 while serving as a civilian contractor in Iraq, died so that we could do to Muslims in America today what we did to Japanese/Americans during World War II. I don't speak for either of those brave young men, but I choose to believe their sacrifice requires a vigilant effort NOT to repeat the terrible mistakes we made almost seventy years ago. If  Mike or Bobby died "for" anything other than the impulse to help one's fellow human being in times of crisis or to serve one's country when called, I believe it was to uphold the idea that Americans welcome the expression of religious freedom by all celebrants, and we don't close ranks against an entire religion just because a few psychotic extremists with narcissistic delusions of grandiose martyrdom did something really bad while claiming to represent all of Islam. Those hijackers no more represent Islam than the so-called reverend Terry Jones does Christianity, or Snooki and The Situation do Italian/Americans. Assigning a small group of twisted, murdering fanatics such elevated status within a religion that abhors and repudiates what they did, and continuing to use that false depiction as a means of mining anti-Islam anger nine years after the original crime, is indicative of the level of fear towards Muslims on which so many of our attitudes and policies have been based since 9/11.

This country was founded by people who gave up much of what they held dear to escape the intense suffering caused by religious persecution. We fought a revolution against oppressors an ocean away, and a civil war against the worst and most inhumane among ourselves, to uphold the right to be unenslaved by any person or political conceit, to worship as we choose, and to be happy as long as we obey the law. America used to be the place other people always set their sights on as a beacon of something better. They wanted to work hard and prosper, to live freely and happily, to pursue and achieve the American dream. In the neighborhood where I was born and raised on the upper east side of Manhattan, Muslims own businesses and patronize the stores and live in the apartment buildings and send their children to school with Jewish, Protestant, Shinto, and Roman Catholic classmates. They get coffee at P.J. Bernstein's and stop after work at P.J. Clarke's. I sincerely doubt that any of them is plotting to impose Sharia law on the rest of us. They certainly wouldn't want to try it on my block... If you think about it rationally, it makes more sense to believe they're here to escape that kind of restrictive dogma, not to expand it. Isn't that why immigrants have always come here? To make a life for themselves and their children that's better, freer, than the one they left behind?

We are turning our backs on our own history, our own reason for existing, when we say "Move the Mosque" or "Burn the Koran." If Mike Brennan and Bobby Wagner died for a reason that makes any sense at all, I don't want to believe it was to foment hatred towards practitioners of a particular religion or to encourage desecration of any religion's holy books. If they died defending "freedom," then I don't think either of them would want me to be held hostage by hatred and hostility towards Muslims, or anyone else, for another seventy years.

                                         

Remembering George

March, 1990: After twenty-eight years with the New York Mets, my friend and mentor Arthur Richman had recently matriculated to the Yankees' front office at his good pal George Steinbrenner's insistence. One of the first things Arthur did upon assuming his vice-presidential duties was hire me to umpire some Yankees spring  training games in Fort Lauderdale. I met Mr. Steinbrenner on quite a few occasions: here's a photo of him my husband at the time, Tom Vris, took while he was sitting next to him in the stands at a split-squad game I was working over on one of the practice fields at Legends Stadium in Tampa in 1996. And here's a shot of me working the actual game, a Cincinnati Reds@Yankees affair featuring Jimmy Key, a high-priced rehab project coming off the disabled list, on the hill for the Bombers. The Yankees are obviously on offense in this picture, and I can't positively identify the batter behind me who appears to be on his way up to the plate while eyeing me as if I were an alien, but it may be Ruben Rivera.

                                     

George was always cordial and welcoming to me, whether I was in uniform or visiting the ballpark in street clothes as Arthur's guest at a game. But there was one game in particular, the very first Yankees intrasquad I ever worked over in Fort Lauderdale in 1990 and the first time I met the legendary owner, that sticks out in my mind and which I share with you now in tribute to the passing of a lion. (What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming work-in-progress, Kiss the Umpire. Coming forth sometime this century, presumably.)

                   **************************************************************

 ... I had umpired dozens of spring training games since 1985, but this would be my first with the Yankees and I definitely wanted to make a good impression. I wasn't exactly nervous, but I was concerned about working the three-umpire system because I had very little experience with it at that time. My partners, a local ump named Joe Stirone and a long-retired American League arbiter, Frank Umont, and I decided to make it easy on ourselves and not use any regular rotations, which are often complicated choreographies whose movements are dictated by specific plays. The plan we devised was simple: Joe was to stay behind the plate. Big Frank, at 72 rendered almost immobile by infirmity and only a year away from a fatal heart attack, would plant himself on the foul line behind the first baseman, and I would be ready at all times for plays at second and third. In other words, nobody had to move except me.

This strategy turned out to be a boon for all of us, but especially for yours truly. It also made me, temporarily, the apple of George Steinbrenner’s eye. Arthur had introduced me to the oft-maligned magnate before the game started. He was holding court in one of the dugouts and seemed pleased to meet me, but a bit confused about who I was. He addressed me as “Pam” and I explained that I was Perry, not Pam Postema, who at the time was the only woman calling regular season balls and strikes in all of pro ball. The spring training games I work are often scheduled only a few days before they get played, sometimes even the night before, and local high school or college umpires like me get hired at short notice for them by the equipment managers or the traveling secretaries of the major league teams. I had friends in these positions all over the National League, but until Arthur switched his allegiance from the Mets to the Yankees I had no such champion among the  American League clubs. This would be my first opportunity to test myself on unfamiliar territory, and I was determined to make the most of my audition. Even in the nondescript uniform of an umpire it doesn't hurt to be charming, so while I had Steinbrenner’s attention I thanked him for the chance to work the game. “Arthur says you’ll give him a lot of shit if I don’t do a good job!” I teased. “I give him a lot of shit anyway,” he joked back. I nodded. “He tells me about it all the time.” It was true. Arthur confided in me frequently about his spirited interactions with the legendary owner. Ranted, was more like it. According to Arthur, the two of them ranted frequently, chiefly about each other.

The game started off with a bang. The leadoff batter singled to right, which meant that as soon as he hit the ball I was sprinting towards the middle of the infield from my position on the third base line. The batter rounded first, looking over his shoulder, and saw the right fielder having trouble getting a handle on the ball. He sped up and motored towards second as I settled in smoothly, waiting for the tag by the shortstop. “Safe!” I shouted, confident and alert. I saw Umont beaming at me from behind first base, proud of his little protégé. A murmur arose from the crowd, signaling an ever-so-slight defrosting of their initially chilly reception. General reaction had been lukewarm at best when the public address announcer introduced the umpires, and I heard the usual shocked queries. “Look, is that a girl?” people asked, as if I were from Mars or the IRS.  “I didn’t know girls could do that, daddy,” a tot squealed. I have very mixed emotions about such comments. They should make me happy and proud, but my delight at hearing them is often tempered by regret because of the solitary nature of my calling. Umpiring may be a crowded fraternity, but for me it’s almost always been a sorority of one.                                                                                     

Have you ever watched the movie Thelma and Louise? There is a scene in it where Geena Davis and  Susan Sarandon, on the lam from the law, are driving around the rim of the Grand Canyon. “I feel awake,” Davis tells Sarandon. “Wide awake. I don’t remember ever feeling this awake.” That’s the sensation I get, a sort of calm hyper-awareness, a hormonally induced high, when a game starts to flow. It’s like being charged with a low hum of focused energy. Once the Yankee pitchers found their rhythm, the pace picked up dramatically. I glided in and punched a runner out on a close play at second with an aggressive, strategically timed motion. Joe was nailing his plate game and Umont was still vertical. We were firing on all cylinders. By the fourth inning, I knew I had the crowd in the palm of my hand because everybody was pretty much ignoring me. And for an umpire, being ignored is a good thing. After watching me suspiciously up until that point, most people could tell I knew what I was doing so they started paying attention to the game again instead of scrutinizing every move I made. I was really beginning to loosen up when I found myself on the infield near second base, with runners at first and second. This positioned me for a play at second or third while Umont was making like a statue at first and Joe, obviously, was home. The batter swung and bounced a double play ball, the umpire’s best friend, right towards shortstop Alvaro Espinoza.

There is something colloquially called a “phantom tag” that shortstops and second basemen apply on the front end of a double play in order to spare themselves unnecessary risk of injury from a runner sliding or crashing into the bag. The phantom tag occurs when the fielder motions as if he were tagging a runner but doesn’t actually touch him, or steps on the ground in the immediate vicinity of the bag rather than directly on it, to avoid getting hurt by a runner. Umpires will permit this and grant the out if a fielder clearly could have gotten it but chooses not to because of an oncoming runner. In other words, if the ball is there, call an out even if the fielder doesn’t actually touch the base or the runner. Fans might get upset when they see umpires allow a fielder this leeway, but it is a ruling generally accepted without protest by players and managers. Nobody wants to see a player get hurt for no reason, especially one making millions of dollars. Espinoza decided to test this theory of sympathy for the irritatingly rich by stamping his foot on the ground expectantly as he snared the ball and whipped it to Steve Sax at first base. The only problem for me was that the place he tapped was not all that close to second base. As a matter of fact, it was so far off the bag there was no way I could justify calling the runner out. I would look ridiculous if I did, and invite an argument. So I called safe, and wound up with an argument. Only it wasn’t even mine! A photograph memorializing that episode appeared in the local newspaper the next day. In it, I am dwarfed by pitcher Tim Leary, infielder Steve Sax, and base coach Joe Sparks. My back is to the camera as the three Yankees loom over me, and I remember taking a couple of breaths to steady myself as they ganged up and moved in on their prey. But wait! They wanted to discuss Umont's call, not mine. 

                                               

I did what any umpire in this situation should do. I told them to go away and leave me alone. “Forget it, guys,” I halted them, raising my hands palm side out as if emitting a force field. “I’m not going to talk to you about the play at first because I didn’t make the call,” I said firmly. “And since Frank Umont, the umpire over there who did, was in the major leagues for twenty years, I doubt he’ll want to discuss it with you either.” Umont was auditing this exchange with interest, barely concealing his mirth at the sight of me defending his decision to the menacing Yankee posse. “I’ll talk to him,” I nodded towards Espinoza surveying our little tableau nearby. “The rest of you, go away.” Glumly, the trio dispersed. Like mischievous children, they were testing me to see how far they could get, but I was in no mood to be lenient. What I needed was to establish my boundaries and let them know exactly what I expected from them so there would be no future confusion. Espinoza strolled over and eyed me without expression. “You don’t give me that call?” he asked, all innocent. “We don’t get too many umpires who make that call like that.” “Oyé me, Alvaro,” I sighed, his newest ally. “I’m under the microscope out here. If you want me to call the runner out on that play, you have to help me. At least make it look legitimate so I can call him out and not look like an idiot. You don’t want me to look like an idiot, do you?” Espinoza, no idiot himself, shook his head. I wouldn’t necessarily try this approach in a high school game. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old might say yes; they’re little snots at that age. But the Yankee shortstop was all pro. “From now on, you have to actually touch the base for me,” I admonished him. “Entiendé? That way, neither of us will look like we’re trying to get away with something.” Espinoza listened without comment and nodded. “Okay,” he said, and that was that. With one out and the bases loaded, the next batter grounded to him again. This time he stepped on the bag as deftly as a dancer before throwing to first for a thrilling double play that ended the half inning, drawing lusty cheers from the crowd. I breathed a sigh of relief at such a satisfactory dénouement and jogged to the outfield. I had withdrawn my head unharmed from the mouth of the lion to emerge smelling like a rose, and the perfume of success was intoxicating.                

                                                                                                                     

I stood off by myself in short left center field while the next pitcher was warming up, and spied one of the ball boys running towards me from the first base dugout where Steinbrenner had enthroned himself. He raced across the outfield clutching a cup in his outstretched hand, his little legs churning as he struggled to balance it without letting a single drop of liquid spill, and I gratefully anticipated a tall sip of cool water. The boy slowed as he approached me and shyly held out the cup. He appeared to be very young. “Mr. Steinbrenner says he thinks you made a good call on that play at second base, and he’s sending you this Coke as a token of his appreci…appreciation,” he stammered adorably. I regarded the lad with amusement. “Please tell Mr. Steinbrenner I said thank you, but I don’t drink soda during games. It’s bad for me and only makes me thirstier,” I advised him. “Take it back and tell him a nice cup of water would be great, but I really don’t want this.” No more than eight years old, he suddenly had the glassy-eyed look of someone who has just been condemned to death. His rosy little lower lip started to tremble, and I heard a sob catch in his throat as he envisioned the unspeakable horror that awaited him when he returned the despot’s offering and told him it had been spurned. I thought better of my ingratitude, for the sake of the child. “Tell you what,” I said, taking the cup from him. I leaned my head back and slung the liquid in it over my shoulder and behind me so it appeared to the faraway spectators that I was drinking. I touched the cup to my mouth as I straightened up and licked my lips for effect. “Mmmm, good,” I said, smiling at the little tyke to ease his pain. “Just tell him I said thank you, and next time I’d prefer water.” I gave the empty cup back to him and sent him on his way, spared from imminent execution. Umpiring is not just calling safe and out, after all. It’s protecting the youth of the world from the boogeyman, too.  

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Now, I am not implying that George Seinbrenner was a despot or the boogeyman; that's mere metaphor, a literary device used here to illuminate his basic humanity. Far from being someone to be feared, he was a visionary, complex, often excessively kind and generous man who privately performed many charitable acts that have never been made public. He was unfailingly courteous and warm towards me, he resurrected the careers of several players others had written off, and he gave Arthur a reason to survive a sorrowful break-up with the Mets so he could go on to thrive for nearly two more decades with his beloved Yankees.

The sports world just dimmed a little bit, but the baseball firmament must be brighter for his passing. I can see it now: Arthur, George, and Bob Sheppard all sitting around somewhere, having toddies and watching the All-Star game together while Arthur asks them, "Hey Georgie! Bobby! Do you need any money?"

                     

The Great Leap Over

The internet has been abuzz recently with this video of Fordham University shortstop Brian Kownacki somersaulting over Iona catcher James Beck in an airborne bid to score a run, and there seems to be some confusion among bloggers and commenters about whether or not it was a legal play and if the plate umpire made the right call. But there's a lot more to Kownacki's handspring and the events immediately before and after it than at first meets the eye.

 

One of the things I find so beautiful and fascinating about umpiring is that it offers me insights into not only what takes place on a ballfield so I can illuminate my friends about what just happened out there, but into human nature in general. Bruce Lee said, "All knowledge leads to self-knowledge," and this is particularly true of umpiring, an activity that requires, as one of my LinkedIn pen pals, Thomas McKenney, put it so poetically, "being centered in one's self to see what's around..." I learn a lot about myself as a person by paying attention to how I conduct myself on the ballfield and heeding the lessons inherent in an exciting and unusual play such as the Kownacki vault. To the casual observer or even the experienced baseball analyst, the play poses several salient questions. Is it legal for a baserunner to leap, tumble, somersault, do a handspring over, vault past, or otherwise jump over, a catcher the way Kownacki did over Beck? And if it is legal for a baserunner to do what he did, did the plate umpire make the right call - meaning, was the swipe the catcher made at Kownacki before he landed on the plate a legitimate tag, or did he miss him? Should the run have been allowed to score?

The answers to these questions are actually the easy part of understanding this play. (Yes, with qualifications, yes, and yes.) A more complex task is recognizing the tremendous skill and expertise it took for the umpiring crew to maintain order on the field, not just during the "discussion" between the Iona head coach and plate umpire Rob Harty that immediately followed the play, but during the ensuing action as well. To me, this play is all about the umpires and the actions they took to ensure that the game would continue without further delay or disruption once Kownacki unsuspectingly vaulted into cybercelebrity. And what's even more impressive  about what they did is that their actions made it possible for the game to be completed in a safe and timely fashion. This is a concept fundamental to our craft, one that's key to keeping the pace and flow of a ballgame from stalling or reaching the boiling point.

NCAA and professional baseball rules permit baserunners to do what Kownacki did, but high school (Federation) rules expressly prohibit them from emulating his acrobatics. Diving head-first is forbidden in high school ball, although leaping or hurdling is permitted - but only if the catcher is prone on the ground. This is intended to prevent potential injury to both the runner and catcher, and is an entirely appropriate safety restriction for that age group. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if as a result of all the fuss about the Kownacki vault, the NCAA rules committee decides in the near future to amend the college rule to more closely reflect those same safety concerns. 

But it's not what Kownacki did during this play that stirs me to breathless admiration, it's what Rob Harty, Fred DeJesus, and Frank Endl did. They're the three umpires sent to Fordham that day by Nick Zibelli,  president and assignor-in-chief of the CBUAO, the same college baseball umpires' association to which I belong and through which I get my NCAA assignments here in the northeast as well. Freddie and I have worked as partners in various local leagues over the years, and  I get a kick out of working the National Baseball Congress tournament in Wichita, Kansas each August, because to the umpires out in the heartland, Freddie is a Noo Yawk legend. (And now to us here as well.) Harty and Endl are established NCAA umpires, and as a crew that evening the trio functioned like a well-oiled machine even though they had never worked together previously, although DeJesus had umpired with Harty once before. Frank Endl was the rookie on the crew, relatively speaking; it was only his second assignment working the three-umpire rather than the two-umpire system. Each umpire's ability to merge with his partners into a cohesive unit served as an efficient mechanism for keeping the game flowing smoothly. This ability to help a game progress undisturbed over the bumps and blips that can dull its intensity is an important component of every umpire's arsenal of tools and skills, and one that doesn't necessarily involve a display of force or throwing one's weight around. It's also one of the divine secrets of baseball, part of its magical mystery: that umpiring is about so much more than merely calling ball, strike, safe, out, fair, and foul, or showing the players who's boss.

Imagine, if you will, Iona head coach Pat Carey's mounting frustration at the moment Kownacki jumped over Gaels catcher James Beck. Iona had accrued a nine-to-one lead by the fourth inning - the Fordham starter, John Flanagan, didn't make it past the first two hitters of the third inning - then watched it evaporate in the bottom of the eighth while the Rams scored an impossible nine runs, building on three they'd scratched out one by one in the third, sixth, and seventh to take a 12-to-9 lead going into the top of the ninth. So Carey was definitely primed to explode about something, and the Kownacki leap was his tipping point. When the Fordham shortstop came up to bat in the eighth, he'd already gotten on base once that half-inning by being hit by a pitch. Now with two outs, Kownacki got plunked a second time, which landed him on first base and forced runners to second and third. The sacks were full of Rams, and the 6-and-26 Iona Gaels badly wanted the win they were about to let slip away. Fordham's season wasn't going much better, as they had eked out only a paltry 12 wins out of 22 losses. So conditions were ripe for an eruption of some sort from somebody - but the umpires were prepared.

"During our pre-game in the locker room, I talked to both my partners about a game earlier in the season where Pat Carey got ejected," Fred DeJesus told me by telephone when I called to ask him about his role in the Kownacki play. Freddie had been at third base and Manolo Alejandro at first for a Marist v. Iona contest during which plate umpire Rich Maggio, an imposing but amiable man, had tossed Carey after he came out to argue a call and wound up angrily hurling a piece of equipment. That act rated the coach instant ejection, a penalty from which no umpire could have absolved him, and Freddie spoke of the incident to give his partners an idea of the discontent simmering inside him, the kind that could make a man do something he might regret later. DeJesus wanted to prevent a repeat performance from happening on his watch in order to keep Carey in the game, not go looking for reasons to throw him out. This holistic approach to pre-game preparation is one of the most important yet invisible aspects of our job. It actually starts at home the day before, with adherence to good sleep, nutrition, and hydration habits, and continues with a detailed meeting in the locker room before a game starts during which we discuss anything and everything from weather and field conditions to which umpire covers what play on which rotation (a "rotation" being a sometimes intricate choreography that dictates where each umpire will go for what purpose on any particular type of play, whether it be a fly ball to right with runners on first and third, or a ground ball to short with a runner on second only) as well as news about any potential trouble brewing amongst the players or managers. For instance, when two teams with a combined record of 18-and-47 are playing each other, it's a pretty sure bet that something's going to pop. The trick is sensing when this is about to happen and knowing how to contain the damage an eruption might cause before things go to hell in a handbasket. The Kownacki leap highlighted exactly the kind of game and situation that could have ended very badly if not for the leadership and composure of the umpiring crew, who coolly defused the level of hostility and frustration instead of ratcheting it up. Even though there was only a half-inning left in the game after Kownacki's leap, which came with two out in the bottom of the eighth, it still could have disintegrated into an ugly meleé very quickly and ended on a decidedly down note instead of an upbeat one (at least for the Rams.) That it didn't, that play resumed without undue delay and nobody got knocked down or spiked or bloodied in the top of the ninth, speaks volumes to the preparedness and professionalism of the entire crew.

Within seconds of Kownacki's leap and Pat Carey's excited appearance at home plate to argue the call, DeJesus is seen hustling in towards the Iona catcher and pitcher, who have joined in their coach's chorus of protests. Freddie leads them towards their dugout, away from the plate area where Carey is in animated discussion with Harty. "I could hear Carey telling Rob he was out of position," Freddie reflected, a charge directly refuted by the video evidence, which shows Harty positioned perfectly to see the play. "Meanwhile, the catcher was telling me he tagged the runner. I didn't want to respond to him about the play while my partner was discussing it with the head coach, so I just told him, look, let's walk away. I told him and the pitcher, just go out to the mound and wait until this is resolved. They saw I was serious and did what I asked without griping about it, which I appreciated. It was a tough situation all around because of the standings of the two teams and the nature of the game, and my partners and I were mostly concerned with letting the players finish up and seeing everybody walk off the field in one piece." What the video doesn't show - it ends at 1:19, before Carey leaves the plate area - is DeJesus walking him back to his dugout once Harty signals the conversation between him and Carey is over by turning and walking away. "Freddie, I need this win," DeJesus recalls the beleaguered coach telling him plaintively as they approached  the Iona bench. The confrontation that could have ended with at least one ejection, maybe more, was instead controlled by the umpires without anybody getting thrown out or hurt. Carey didn't get his victory that night; the Rams refused to relinquish the lead they had wrested from him so dramatically, and the game ended 12-to-9 in favor of Fordham with no further disruptions.

Back in the dressing room after it was all over, Freddie and his partners talked about what had just happened and how they had handled themselves. "None of us had any idea Kownacki's play would become such an internet sensation," DeJesus told me. "You don't think about that stuff when you've just lived through it. We were all just grateful we'd been able to keep things under control because it had been a long game, more than three hours, and it was after ten PM and everybody was mentally exhausted by the time it ended." The mental exhaustion to which he refers is a familiar by-product of the adrenaline and testosterone that flood the nervous systems of both umpires and players, male or female, during even the most unexciting of athletic  competitions, and this one was about as far from unexciting as the first moonwalk or watching Willie Mays. It had supercharged everybody involved in it so that now, winding down afterwards and dissecting their own performance with surgical precision, the umpires could leave the ballpark confident they had done a good job, a superb job actually, of "managing" the game. Game management skills are a big part of what we do out there, maybe even bigger than making decisions about plays, because the tone for the entire game begins and ends with us. It starts in the dressing room during the pre-game conference and extends to the home plate meeting with the managers during which we have a chance to establish the fact that we're there to work in concert with the players and other personnel, not against them, and to ensure that everyone has a safe place in which to participate or watch the game. It doesn't end when we walk off the field, either. That tone, the atmosphere that umpires foster and encourage by virtue of our own conduct, can make or break a game, can turn a well-played contest into a nightmarish and draining experience for everyone as a result of just one player's bad behavior and the ineptitude or failure to take charge by an otherwise well-intentioned umpiring crew. But the trio of DeJesus, Endl, and Harty acquitted themselves not just admirably, but excellently, and their leadership skills helped them maintain order and civility at a time when those attributes were crucial to a good outcome. Theirs was textbook umpiring at its finest and most polished. Because of their actions, the world can focus on the visual appeal of Kownacki's tumbling act rather than the bad vibes left hanging over both teams as a result of some totally preventable altercation that might have ended a young ballplayer's career. That never happened, and it's due in large part to the expertise and teamwork of the three umpires.

The most important function they fulfilled that night was not calling a good game or getting the calls right; it was managing the game so it didn't get out of hand once it started approaching critical mass. They kept the tenor of the game from deteriorating into chaos and intentional retaliatory brutality by handling the situation with dispatch and aplomb. A better performance I haven't seen in a long time, and my cap is off to all three of them. The bottom line concerning Kownacki's leap: the umpires did an absolutely stellar job from start to finish, and while this play may be legal under NCAA and pro rules, it is totally illegal in high school and youth leagues. And however much fun it may be to watch and parse, it should also come with a caveat: DO NOT try this at home, or anywhere else. 

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The day after Brian Kownacki etched his name into the cyberpedia of weird and memorable plays, Fred DeJesus and his partners were back to laboring on other fields in familiar obscurity, umpiring not for the gelt or the glory but for the pure love of the game. While Kownacki was being elevated to a dizzying level of fame few would have forecast for him twenty-four hours earlier, Freddie was cheerfully plying his trade at a Kutztown@Adelphi contest out in Garden City, Long Island. But that's the way it is with umpires, and the way it should be.

                                                                       
                                                                          Fred DeJesus

 

 

 

 

The Way We Wage War

There is something extremely disturbing about this video, and it isn't just that it graphically shows more than a dozen people being killed by gunfire from a far-off Apache helicopter. Even more chilling than the massacre it memorializes is its inescapable implication that the mindset of the American forces involved in the killing - and whether it was of actual enemy insurgents or innocent civilians isn't germane to this discussion - has been so severely warped by the unholy trinity of fear, military training, and the exigencies of the "war on terror" that the shooters can somehow discern a threat in the person of an unarmed male whose camera, slung casually over his shoulder, is mistaken for an AK-47, but completely miss the sight of two children sitting in the front passenger seat of a van whose driver pulls up and gets out to aid the photographer they have just mortally wounded.

Once the initial spate of firing has ceased, a van drives towards the dead and dying while one of the men in the Apache excitedly describes it as "... looks like possibly, uh, picking up bodies and weapons." Looks like. Possibly. No proof or verification of the "picking up weapons" part of the description is offered at any time before we hear him begging his superior officer to let him "engage," the military euphemism for "kill." "Can we shoot?" he pleads. "Fuck!" Then, "Come on, let us shoot!" His breathless, pre-orgasmic insistence on being granted permission to fire upon the vehicle while two small figures are centered ominously in the Apache's crosshairs borders on the pornographic. After being informed by troops on the ground that a couple of the "targets" they've shot are children, one of the Apache crew says, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle." "Right," the other soothes him. They're already absolving themselves of any culpability or remorse for having injured two children. This is not the exchange of warriors who believe what they did is glorious or justified, yet they are apparently so immune to the emotional ramifications of the horror they've just inflicted that they can view the scene with complete and utter detachment, as if it were a joke instead of a gruesome reality. While more than a dozen bullet-riddled cadavers lie strewn about in the rubble of the street they've just obliterated, the Apache crew laughs about the fact that a Bradley tank, summoned to the scene after the gunfire has ceased, has just run over one of the bodies. To them, an Iraqi corpse being crushed by a tank isn't so much an indecent defilement as it is comic relief straight out of a scene from The Naked Gun.

The men in the helicopter may as well have been playing a video game. We see the action through their  technology-enhanced eyes, and everything appears on a screen with images supplied by optical systems and sensors, described by army-technology.com this way: The target acquisition designation sight, TADS (AN/ASQ-170), and the pilot night vision sensor, PNVS (AN/AAQ-11), were developed by Lockheed Martin. The turret-mounted TADS provides direct-view optics, television and three-fields-of-view forward-looking infrared (FLIR) to carry out search, detection and recognition, and Litton laser rangefinder / designator. PNVS consists of a FLIR in a rotating turret located on the nose above the TADS. The image from the PNVS is displayed in the monocular eyepiece of the Honeywell integrated helmet And display sighting system, IHADSS, worn by the pilot and copilot / gunner. And here's a description of some of the AH-64's weapons capabilities from guncopter.com: ...behind terrain, the Apache can pop up and engage targets, then retreat behind cover. In the close support role the Apache's rocket pods and 30mm cannon can bring devastating firepower to bear against a wide range of enemy units... The Apache can remain hidden behind terrain and still engage the target with its Hellfire laser-guided missiles. This is a hovering testicle with a rock-hard penis for a tail that two men, trained to feel the adrenaline and testosterone-fueled rush of combat but not the spiritual consequences of numbing themselves to their delivery of death and widespread damage, climb into and hide inside while they shoot with enough firepower to destroy an entire armory at moving human targets on the ground whom they can't distinguish from actual threats.

This is what we do now. War has become so impersonal, so removed from the realities of the toll it takes on the soul and spirit, its human costs rendered so inconsequential, that we send our fighting men and women into battle completely desensitized to any moral inferences they might draw from their own actions. Separated from their prey by steel and sky, hovering and hiding above while viewing everything below through the fractured prism of crosshairs shaped like a crucifix on a video screen, our defenders of democracy shoot to kill without knowing at whom or what they're aiming. And when they find out, it still doesn't matter.