B12 Solipsism

A few interesting links collected March 2nd through March 6th:

• Rispondere al telefono in bicicletta costa caro, la multa di Milano – Foto | Polizia a Chicago, swanksalot by Flickr

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• Ted Williams on Jim Bunning | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk – Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there…hen he’d say, “Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his.” Wham!
• “He doesn’t really think he’s gonna get me out with that shit.” Blam!

You already knew that Jim Bunning (R-loser) is an ass, but it’s been confirmed, by no less a personage than Ted Williams:.

“Ball Four” (Jim Bouton)

Aside from being a politician of eccentric views, and not highly popular among Republicans, Bunning is best known as a skilled major league baseball pitcher of the 1950s and 1960s. He may not have been one of the great pitchers – measured by the standards of Warren Spahn or Bob Gibson, say – but he has the distinction of being one of the few players to ever pitch a perfect game in the majors. (A perfect game being one where no opposing batter reaches first base.)

"Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his."

There are more details of Bunning’s baseball career here – including Bunning’s appearance in the best book about baseball ever written, Ball Four, by Jim Bouton:

Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He’d go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, “My name is Ted fucking Williams and I’m the greatest hitter in baseball.”

He’d swing and hit a line drive.

“Jesus H Christ Himself couldn’t get me out.”

And he’d hit another.

Then he’d say, “Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his.”

Wham!

“He doesn’t really think he’s gonna get me out with that shit.”

Blam!

[Click to continue reading Ted Williams on Jim Bunning | Richard Adams | guardian.co.uk]

Seems like the Democrats are calling Bunning’s bluff, and forcing him to really filibuster, or shut up.

Although no final decisions have been made, Democrats confirmed it is increasingly likely that Democrats will force Bunning into an actual filibuster of unemployment insurance extension Tuesday night by repeatedly offering up unanimous consent agreements to bring the bill to a vote.

Although Members often threaten actual filibusters, they rarely materialize. Instead, lawmakers tend to rely on “Cadillac filibusters,” essentially stalling procedures that can be used to block legislation without having to actually stay put on the Senate floor.

Democrats on Tuesday signaled they have the resolve to remain in session throughout the night to force Bunning to abandon his cause. The American people “want an end to these games. And I hope that today we’ll see the end. If we don’t, we’re going to have to have a long, long night ahead of us to make the point that it’s wrong for one Senator to stop our people, our American people, from getting the help they deserve,” Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Tuesday.

[Click to continue reading Democrats May Force All-Night Session - Roll Call]

Jim Bunning has theoretically caved

Under increasing pressure from Democrats and members of his own party, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) Tuesday night abandoned his one-man filibuster of a one-month extension to unemployment benefits and other programs.

In the end Bunning agreed to a deal allowing him one vote on an amendment to pay for the bill’s $10 billion cost. That proposal was offered by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last Thursday at the start of his filibuster, but Bunning rejected it because he feared his amendment would not pass.

[Click to continue reading Bunning Accepts Deal Allowing Benefits Bill to Advance - Roll Call]

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Democrats in the Senate learned from this? And forced all the obstructionist Republicans who are threatening to filibuster to actually filibuster?

Eamus Catuli – AC0063100, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

I’ve never actually been to Wrigley Field before, so had to look up both of these signs. Luckily, my iPhone got reception, and was able to find the Wikipedia entry:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field

The Lakeview Baseball Club, which sits across Sheffield Avenue (right-field) from the stadium displays a sign that reads, “Eamus Catuli!” (roughly Latin for “Let’s Go Cubs!”—catuli translating to “whelps”, the nearest Latin equivalent), flanked by a counter indicating the Cubs’ long legacy of futility. The counter is labeled “AC,” for “Anno Catuli,” or “In the Year of the Cubs.” The first two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs’ last division championship as of the end of the previous season (2008), the next two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs’ last trip to the World Series (1945), and the last three digits indicate the number of years since their last World Series win (1908).

Has Bill Moyers been reading our blog? Ridiculous question, but he comes to the same conclusion as us regarding the new Yankee’s stadium – it is a boondoggle.

[Safeco Field, Seattle, WA]

Yankee star Alex Rodriguez had a better year than [Babe Ruth or New York Governor Al Smith]. This season, A-Rod is making $28 million, just part of an annual Yankee payroll of $209 million, the richest in baseball. Their owner, George Steinbrenner, is among the Forbes 400, one of the country’s richest tycoons.

But when it came to paying for the new, $1.3 billion pleasure dome, the millionaires on the field and King Midas in his skybox came up with some razzle-dazzle plays to finance their new wealth machine – tax-free bonds, requiring ordinary citizens to subsidize the construction, and hundreds of millions more for new parking garages, a train station and parks that supposedly will replace the ones seized by the city to make room for the new stadium. The Little League games that used to flourish on sandlots just outside the old ballpark have been moved miles away, sent down to the minors on a long road trip.

That’s okay, you may think, there will be plenty of room in the new stadium for the tax-paying public to come root, root, root for the home team – even the Coliseum in ancient Rome had bleachers for the commoners. But, in fact, there will be 5,000 fewer seats in the stands. And while the Yankees reportedly promise that half of what’s left will cost $45 or less, those seats that used to cost $250, right behind the dugout, will now cost you $850. And if you want to be near home plate, you’ll have to cough up $2500 – per game.

Meanwhile there will be more luxury suites and party rooms where fat cats can gather, safely removed from the sweaty masses. Corporations and wealthy individuals will be able to rent the luxury suites for anywhere from $600,000-$850,000 a year – tax deductible – assuming they haven’t filed for bankruptcy this week.

Why aren’t the fans and taxpayers giving the Yankees a Bronx cheer? They did, but city officials rolled over them while making sure local politicians stay in the lineup. The pols are getting their own luxury suite at the new stadium for free – and first shot at buying the best available seats.

The new colossus will cast its majestic shadow across the South Bronx, one of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods. The residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of 9,000 new or refurbished parking spaces. Never mind all the exhaust, even though in this part of New York City, respiratory disease is already so high they call it “Asthma Alley.”

Not that the well to do in the infield seats will have to hear the wheezing. They’ll have exclusive access to a private club, a private entrance and a private elevator, totems of this gilded age. Let the games begin.

[From Bill Moyers Journal: Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out]

Owners of sporting teams should have deep enough pockets to pay for their own damn stadiums, and not depend upon taxpayers to fund their profits for them. We should nationalize the teams instead of insurance companies like AIG.

Surprising to nobody, really, sports stadiums are one of the biggest swindles of the 21st century.

New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Westchester, released a report Tuesday that said the city of New York played games with the assessed value of the new Yankee Stadium to get tax breaks for the team.

A legislative report says the public is paying up and getting nothing in return but higher ticket prices. City and team: It’s not true

The report, by the Assembly Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee, which Brodsky chairs, also says the city promised the stadium project would create 1,000 permanent new jobs in order to win approval for massive public subsidies, and that the actual number of permanent new jobs being created is 15.

The report says the taxpayer price tag for building the stadium is somewhere between $550 million and $850 million. In exchange, Brodsky points out, the Yankees have raised ticket prices by orders of magnitude, something the city has made no effort to stop.

“The price of tickets to the new Yankee Stadium is a matter of legitimate public concern, given the enormous public subsidies involved,” Brodsky wrote.

[From Yankee Stadium shocker: Taxpayers fleeced? - King Kaufman's Sports Daily - Salon]

The swindle works so well because there is always a second-string city somewhere who can be used as leverage (like when the Seattle Sonics got moved to BFE Oklahoma ). If city governments stood strong, the owners of the teams would end up financing the stadiums: the owners want to own a team, owners shouldn’t depend upon taxpayer largesse to fund the team’s building.

In this case, Mayor Bloomberg (and Rudy 9-11 before him) and the Yankees made all sorts of grandiose claims that the stadium would be a boon to the economy, and of course, it isn’t, and won’t be much different than the previous stadium, other than making more money for the owners.

[Sin Will Find You Out, somewhere near 54th Street, Hells Kitchen, who really remembers anymore. Scanned 35mm print, circa 1995]

I like this quote too:

Denny Hocking, who was an all-talk, no-hit utility infielder for the Minnesota Twins in 2002 when Forbes magazine published a report calling into question the claims of commissioner Bud Selig that Major League Baseball was losing money hand over fist.

“Gee,” Hocking said, “should I believe a magazine that spends 365 days a year researching finances, or a guy who has zero credibility?”

Some of the principals have changed in this case, but the principle is the same.

I am already on record supporting Cuban as the new owner of the Cubs, even though baseball bores me, and I haven’t watched a baseball game in Chicago since 2005.

[Las Vegas Showgirls at Wrigley Field]

Think of it: Mark Cuban as the Chicago Cubs’ owner, bonding with the Bleacher Bums at Wrigley Field, splurging for rounds of Old Style beer and screaming at umpires. The concept is almost Veeckian, as if Bill Veeck, the populist former owner of the Browns, the Indians and the White Sox, had had zillions of dollars.

Buying the Cubs is the latest project for Cuban, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks, but he is not alone in the expensive quest. Four other individuals and groups have given the debt-laden Tribune Company nonbinding offers of at least $1 billion for the team, its stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and 92-year-old Wrigley Field.

Cuban is reported to be the top bidder, at nearly $1.3 billion

[From Cuban Wants Cubs, but Will Baseball Want Him? - NYTimes.com]

Richard Sandomir of the NYT keeps harping on the dollar amount of fines Cuban has gotten from the NBA, but there is a clear pattern of decline there, and Cuban has been less publicly inflammatory in recent years. I follow the NBA very closely, and Cuban has been a boon for the Dallas Mavs. The Cubs, and Chicago, would be well served to have an owner as activist as Mark Cuban.

[Baseball and Beer - click for full version]

I am not a baseball fan (although I’ve been to a dozen or more games over the years), but I think the Chicago Tribune would do well to sell the Cubs to Mark Cuban.

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, one of the Major League Baseball-approved bidders for the Chicago Cubs, expects to receive confidential financial data on the team any day now and said Friday on a Chicago radio show that it is his “job” to convince everyone he is the best choice to own the franchise.

Cuban also told WMVP-AM 1000 hosts Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle he “definitely would want Wrigley Field to be part of the deal,” despite the fact Tribune Co., which is parent of the Chicago Cubs, has considered selling it separately, either to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority or a private buyer.

[From Cuban says he will 'pull out all the stops' in bid to buy Cubs]

The genius of Mark Cuban is that he is sincere in his dedication to the improvements of his teams, and the city that supports that team. From all that I’ve read, Dallas has benefitted from Cuban’s ownership of the Dallas Mavericks.

“My job is to convince everybody involved that not only is it a good financial move to sell to Mark Cuban, but it’s also, you know, a good partnership move, that I can add value beyond just my checkbook to not just the Cubs, to not just the city of Chicago, but also to Major League Baseball,” he said.

“It’s about being a good citizen. It’s about contributing to the community, and to me that’s viewed to be just as important as Major League Baseball or the Tribune Co. You know, what can I do for Wrigleyville? What can I do for the community? And what are the ways that I fit in and add value? … There are a lot of things we can do communitywise that can enhance my chances, and so I’m gonna pull out all the stops.”

Asked if he believed he could rely on the support of Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owns the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, Cuban said they “get along pretty well” and “we’re actually on the same side of issues probably 99.99 percent” of the time.

“If you talk to any of the folks in the NBA, they’ll tell you that I’m a great partner, that I bust my butt to try to do what’s best for the league,” Cuban said. “That’s not always what’s portrayed in the media. But those who know, know, and I think that will pay off. And if I can come up with a competitive bid for the Cubs, then I think I’ve got a shot.

“If talking to Jerry is something I need to do, then certainly I will and, you know, knowing Jerry he’d be wide open to it. He’s just that good of a guy.”

I hope it works out for Cuban and the Cubs.