Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with an essay by Keith Pavlischek.

10-4-87 This is one of the happiest days of my life, and not because of something I did or achieved. The Detroit Tigers, my favorite baseball team, clinched the American League East Division title by beating the Toronto Blue Jays, 1-0, in Tiger Stadium. Larry Herndon drove in the only run of the game with a home run and Frank Tanana pitched a masterpiece. Detroit finished 98-64, two games ahead of hapless Toronto. I say “hapless” because the Blue Jays lost their final seven games of the year. Seven games. A week ago yesterday, when Toronto beat Detroit 10-9 in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Jays led by three and a half games. Since then, however, it has been all Detroit. The Tigers won Sunday in thirteen innings, split four games with Baltimore [the Orioles] (while Toronto was losing three straight to Milwaukee [the Brewers]), and then swept a three-game series in Detroit. Now there is no need for a season-ending playoff game. As I say, I’m delighted by this turn of events.

What a year this has been! At one point the Tigers were 11-19. Since then, they’ve played .659 baseball, ending at .604. That’s the best winning percentage in baseball. In fact, the Tigers fell only six games short of their 104 victories in 1984, when the team went 104-58. The team scored 896 runs this season, for an average of 5.53 runs per game, and hit an astounding (and major league-leading) 225 home runs. Detroit is now the first team to repeat as Eastern Division winner since 1981. In 1981 the [New York] Yankees won, followed by Milwaukee, Baltimore, Detroit, Toronto, and Boston [the Red Sox]. It was supposed to be Cleveland’s [the Indians’] year, but the Tigers won instead. Before I forget, I should mention that all seven games with the Blue Jays this past week were decided by one run. The scores were 3-4, 2-3, 9-10, 3-2 (thirteen innings), 4-3, 3-2 (twelve innings), and 1-0. A series could not be any closer than that. As for the Blue Jays, one can’t help but feel sorry for them. They’ll go down in history as one of the great “choke” teams of all time, and what a long winter it’ll be for George Bell, Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield, and the gang. As for the Tigers, it’s onward and upward!

The playoff matchups are interesting. Detroit plays Minnesota [the Twins], while St Louis [the Cardinals] plays San Francisco [the Giants]. None of last [sic; should be “the previous”] year’s divisional winners repeated, so we’ll have a new world champion this fall. Minnesota isn’t all that good, but no team can be taken lightly in a seven-game series. The Twins play well at home (in the Metrodome), and the Tigers are definitely not an astroturf team. The Tigers play better on grass. But Detroit’s starting pitching is hot right now, so I expect the Tigers to win in six games or less [sic; should be “fewer”]. I’ve also predicted that San Francisco will defeat the favored Cardinals and that Detroit will win it all. [The Twins beat the Cardinals in the World Series, four games to three.] A World Series with Sparky Anderson and Roger Craig would be perfect, because Roger was Sparky’s pitching coach during the miracle year of 1984. Now Roger has his own team, the Giants. Speaking of Sparky, he should be manager of the year for what he pulled off with this year’s team. [He was.] And Alan Trammell should win the MVP [Most Valuable Player] award over George Bell. Like it or not, the award typically goes to the best player on the best team, and that’s Alan. [Bell won the award, which was disgraceful.]

I rode the crazy route again, leaving as soon as the game ended. Needless to say, my spirits were buoyed by the Tiger victory, and I made it a point to take good music along to boot. I heard UK, Genesis, and Van Halen as I pedalled [sic; should be “pedaled”] over the desert terrain. For the third straight week I stopped at Rob McLean’s apartment, only to find nobody home. There was a stiff headwind on the way home, so it was doubtful that I’d break a speed record. Then my left pedal started acting up. Evidently a bearing came loose, because it became progressively harder to pedal. Finally the entire pedal came off. I used one leg for a few miles, then stopped to screw the pedal back on. I ended up with a disappointing gross-average speed of 16.33 miles per hour for the 50.55 miles. I’ll get the pedal fixed or replaced during the week. Weatherwise, it was nice. The high temperature was ninety-six degrees [Fahrenheit] and it was sunny.

My average pulse [i.e., resting heart] rate since 13 November 1985 (a total of forty-seven readings) has been 57.3. Yesterday, not having ridden my bike in six days, I recorded a rate of fifty. That’s one of my lowest ever. I once heard that the average pulse rate of an American adult is seventy-two. As you can see, my cardiovascular system is in good shape. [My resting heart rate eight days ago was 45. It’s been as low as 42 during the past 20 years.]

1. The Cleveland Indians crushed the hapless New York Yankees this evening, 12-3, in the first game of their five-game division series. Alex Rodriguez continued his postseason ineptitude by going 0-2. He is a roiling cauldron of doubt at the plate. He is Mr NonOctober.

2. A couple of readers have commented on my posts about New York’s payroll. My point is simple. New York outspends every other team by a significant margin. This gives New York an advantage. There should be no such advantage in a sport. That New York hasn’t won a World Series in seven years only testifies to the incompetence of team management. When you outspend your rivals by as much as the Yankees outspend theirs, you ought to win every year. Did I mention that it’s a great time to be a Yankee hater?

3. In my 40 years as a baseball fan, I have never seen anyone as uninspired as Bobby Abreu or Hideki Matsui. I have no idea how or why Yankee fans tolerate these duds. By contrast, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada are among the most inspired players I have ever seen. As much as I hate the Yankees, I have never been able to dislike either Jeter or Posada.

4. I told you about Cleveland. The Indians are relentless. If I were a Yankee fan, I’d be worried.

5. Kenny Lofton of the Indians went 3-4 and was named Player of the Game by TBS. I’ll bet not many of you know that Kenny was a star basketball player for my Arizona Wildcats when I was a graduate student. I had no idea, at the time, that he also had baseball talent. Kenny, now 40 years old, is one of the true gentlemen of the sport. He played for my adopted Texas Rangers this season.

I enthusiastically recommend these. You can buy them from Amazon.com or from any of these retailers.

As I’ve said before, Barack Obama wouldn’t be taken seriously as a presidential candidate if he weren’t black.

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Given your interests, I thought you might appreciate this book: Mill on God: The Pervasiveness and Elusiveness of Mill’s Religious Thought, by Alan Sell. It’s in a series that examines the philosophical theology of particular thinkers. They have other volumes on Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Kant, and Hegel. I’m surprised that one of the first books is on Mill, since he’s not really known for this subject.

Jim Slagle

Here is a profile of my friend Mylan Engel Jr. We went to graduate school together at the University of Arizona. I didn’t like Mylan at the time, and I’m sure he didn’t like me. Mylan worked in epistemology. I worked in ethics. Years later, after he had gone off to teach at Northern Illinois University and I had gone off to teach at the University of Texas at Arlington, we discovered that we had a shared interest in animal rights. I consider Mylan’s essay “The Immorality of Eating Meat” the best thing I’ve read on the topic. Mylan blogs with me at Animal Ethics.

In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first commencement in the Greek poets with the Iliad. After I had made some progress in this, my father put Pope’s translation into my hands. It was the first English verse I had cared to read, and it became one of the books in which for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read it from twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought it worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if I had not, as I think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as I should have expected both a priori and from my individual experience. Soon after this time I commenced Euclid, and somewhat later, algebra, still under my father’s tuition.

Note from KBJ: I find it incredible that Mill read this work 20 to 30 times. Which book have you read the most times? I don’t think I’ve read any book more than three times. I read R. M. Hare’s The Language of Morals (1952) in 1984, 1999, and 2005. I read Hare’s Freedom and Reason (1963) in 1992, 1999, and 2007. Both Mill and Hare are utilitarians.

Here.

To the Editor:

While Gail Collins’s column neatly captures the excitement Barack Obama raised in a huge and diverse crowd in Washington Square Park (“Never Trust Anybody Over 49,” column, Sept. 29), she misses the very good reasons his message resonates so strongly with the younger generations.

Though the Clinton campaign runs on nostalgia for her husband’s years in the White House, those years were less than golden for those of us coming of age then.

We saw the cost of our education skyrocket, and with it our indebtedness. Our chances of getting health insurance dwindled, as did our chances of affording our own homes without resorting to risky loans. The tech bubble burst, and partisan rancor swallowed Washington, as Clintonian triangulation empowered the radical right.

Given that experience, can you fault “Gen XYZ” for wanting to move in a new direction, rather than cling to false nostalgia?

David Silverstone
New York, Sept. 29, 2007

Note from KBJ: Have you ever read anything so narcissistic? I want mine! Mine, mine, mine! (Notice the difference between [1] “I vote for the candidate who will be best for America” and [2] “I vote for the candidate who will be best for me.”)

1. What will Alex Rodriguez have to do in the playoffs to get rid of the “choke” label? Supply the numbers.

2. I had the most wonderful flashback during yesterday’s game between the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was Alan Trammell in the Cub dugout, and there, across the field, was Kirk Gibson in the Diamondback dugout. These are my heroes from 1984, when my beloved Detroit Tigers won the World Series—the greatest World Series ever played. (The greatest World Series ever played is, by definition, the latest World Series won by the Tigers, just as the most beautiful woman in the world is, by definition, the woman I marry.) Take a look at the team’s record after 40 games. I think either of these men could be elected governor of Michigan, if he wanted it. Maybe one day one of them will want it. It’s a travesty that they’re not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It should be called the Hall of Shame.

3. Did I mention that I hate the New York Yankees? Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Hitler, only worse.

4. Tom Withers of the Associated Press describes the Yankees as “the most successful franchise in North American professional sports.” Is that true? Defend your answer.

5. Speaking of the Montreal Canadiens, I see that the National Hockey League has begun its season. What a goonish sport. The players fall down all the time; they pretend to fight, so as to entertain the bored fans; the fattest player is dressed up in pads to stop pucks from entering the net; and nobody, even the players, can see the puck. It looks like ants running around to no purpose. Hockey should not be played until the final out of the World Series, and it should end before the first day of spring training. It is for Canadians who have nothing better to do in their frozen wasteland.

6. Predictions:

a. The Boston Red Sox lose in the first round of the 2007 playoffs. Terry Francona is promptly fired. Jason Varitek is named player-manager.

b. The Seattle Mariners need pop in their batting order, so they ask Ichiro Suzuki to supply it. He is moved to the clean-up position and hits 50 home runs. His batting average falls to .300.

c. Rick Ankiel of the St Louis Cardinals returns to the mound and wins 20 games. He also hits 14 home runs.

d. The New York Yankees get swept in the 2007 World Series by the Chicago Cubs, losing the final game by a score of 17-0. Joe Torre retires (under duress). He is replaced by Lou Piniella after someone explains to George Steinbrenner that Billy Martin is dead.

e. Yours truly is hired as the general manager of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who, under his wise stewardship, make the 2008 playoffs.

Crazy, you say? Crazy like a goddamned fox.

Here.