Baseball and Walker

By Jeff Orvis

This time, I decided to fore go any real heavy thoughts to give some random comments on a couple of totally unrelated subjects.

The other night, Tampa and Baltimore played an extra inning baseball game. In fact, it lasted parts of two days, 18 innings and nearly seven hours. Why anyone would want to sit through an American League game for that long, either in person or watching TV, is a bit of a mystery. I would bet that most of the players' parents, wives and girlfriends were in bed before it was over.

Part of the problem, aside from the fact that apparently neither team brought their best bats on this night, was that the two managers must have thought that whenever their pitcher sneezed, they needed to come out of the game. The two teams used a record 21 pitchers! When you consider that each pitching change probably took between three and five minutes and there were 36 interruptions between half-innings, you begin to understand why this took so long.

We live in a world of specialization. There was a time when a pitching staff might have five or six starting pitchers and two or three relievers. Now we have left-handed starters, right-handed starters, right or left handers who are closers and normally don't pitch more than one inning a day, middle relievers who might be good for two or three innings and set-up men who pitch the seventh or eighth inning ahead of the closers.

This is also supposed to be the age when major league baseball players are in better shape than in the “old days.” Fifty years ago, a lot of the players sneaked a hot dog or two between innings or perhaps a trip down the tunnel toward the locker room for a cigarette. Some of the best players of the 1960s spent their off-hours in the bar. If you were an opposing hitter in that era, would you want to face Whitey Ford if he had a hangover?

And yet, some of the statistics for the old-timers are almost beyond belief for younger fans of today. For example, the 1963 Chicago Cubs (it's my blog so I can pick my favorite team for comparison) had one 22-game winner, four pitchers with at least 10 victories, three who pitched over 200 innings, two others with at least 130 innings pitched and two who appeared in at least 50 games.

At last check, with less than a week left in the regular season, we have had one 20-game winner this season. In the 1963 season, there were 10 pitchers in the big leagues with 20 or more wins. And just so I'm not using only former Cub pitchers in my comparison, consider Bob Gibson, who pitched for the Cardinals for 17 years, He won at least 20 games five times and averaged 15 complete games per season. He finished with a career earned run average of 2.91, including one memorable season when he finished with an earned run average of 1.12 with 28 complete games and a record of 22-9 at age 33.

The discussion can go on for hours between fans who think today's players are better than they were 40 or more years ago. I just wonder how good some of my heroes from the past could have been if they took better care of themselves like so many of today's players do and if they were paid enough so that they didn't have to worry about jobs in the off-season.

Now on a totally different topic, I've had some times in these recent months to become acquainted with some daytime TV. One of my favorite shows is Walker Texas Ranger. Every episode has at least one or two scenes where Walker and his aides kick the stuffing out of the bad guys. There's plenty of added sounds to indicate just how hard the bad guy is being hit. Yet for some reason, even if he is kicked in the head, he stands there for one or two more big blows. I don't know about you, but if somebody wearing cowboy boots kicked me full-on in the face, the jaw would be broken and teeth would be scattered on the floor.

Aside from the assumed durability of the bad guys, you never see Walker and his chief deputy stay around to fill out paperwork. In fact, mere moments after they drop a dozen of the thugs and the marked squad cars arrive, they're off to their next adventure.

Just imagine what some of the actor-stunt men would put on their job resumes. They could probably say they were Walker's punching bag in six different episodes. Quite a fete!

Law enforcement is generally far less exciting than portrayed on TV. Reports have to be filed, witnesses have to be interviewed, there are appearances in court. Most times when I'm watching Walker, I'm trying to count the number of bad guys he's felled and just how few minutes he spends without wearing his beloved hat!

Some heavy thoughts on Syria and our judicial system

By Jeff Orvis

Time to weigh in on a couple of heavy subjects. Thoughts of Syria in the past few days have for some reason led me to think about our own judicial system.

As I write this on Monday afternoon, we are just over 24 hours away from a major address to the nation by President Obama. According to reports from the White House, he supposedly will be explaining why our country should take punitive action against the Syrian government in the wake of reports that its leader ordered the deaths of hundreds or thousands of men, women and children through chemical agents.

For those of you who know me, this next statement may seem out of character. But as much as I admire and support our president, I'm just not sure he is taking the right path on this one. Since news of this atrocity first surfaced, our military has sent a lot of resources to the region. They used to call it “saber rattling.” I don't know what the proper term would be when the “sabers” are surface to air missiles.

From a purely fiscal standpoint, this doesn't seem to make sense. We are still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each week trying to untangle the mess we were handed by the misinformed last administration in Iraq. More resources are devoted to our war in Afghanistan. Surely just to float several ships in seas near Syria we are spending thousands of dollars a day in personnel costs, fuel, etc.

From a tactical standpoint, the president will have to do quite a selling job on the American people to convince us that even if we bombarded parts of Syria it would stop the killing by the Syrian government. It would be wonderful if we knew where the chemical weapon stockpiles were in that country and were able to neutralize them with some of those missiles. But it appears that any hit on those stockpiles would probably spread the poison, not destroy it.

There was a time when I suspect we alleviated the problem of ruthless dictators through covert assassination, either by American personnel or by agencies of some of our allies. Our leaders would report, “problem solved” and if someone asked, “how did you do that?” you would hear the equivalent of “you don't want to know,” or “it's classified.” Besides, it has been reported that the Syrian leader has a brother who is even more evil than his brother. So you would probably have to carry out more than one assassination to eliminate the problem.

It seems like we've had problems that originated in the Middle East, even long before Sept. 11, 2001. Quite naturally, when we hear of unrest in that area, the first thought might be if we had the means, we should just level the whole area, turn it into the world's largest parking lot and start over. And that leads us to the moral question.

While it might be easy to blame an entire race of people for terrorist activities around the world, all you have to do is look into the faces of some of the children of Syria, innocent, fun-loving and wide-eyed...until they are felled by poison from their government. For that reason, the president is correct when he says we can't just stand by and watch this continue. But if we can't cut off the head of the perpetrator and if we can't neutralize the poison, we should at least devote considerable resources on the short term to relief for the millions of refugees who are fleeing the country.

Some of our armed forces could facilitate the orderly and safe evacuation of those who are attempting to get away from the tyrant. Some of our warships could be used to block any further shipments of weapons to Syria. But I don't see any way any punitive missile strikes will be the answer.

Some people who oppose the president on this matter say we can no longer be the policeman of the world. That led to thoughts of recent developments in a well-known criminal case.

Ariel Castro, convicted of kidnapping, rape and many other charges involving three girls in Cleveland had begun serving a life sentence. But just weeks after the sentencing hearing Castro committed suicide. With this final act, he either did a favor for his victims, who will no longer have to live with the knowledge that he is no longer on this earth. Or some may view it as the ultimate final insult as he cheated those who demanded justice and wanted to see him put away for the rest of his life.

At least the tax payers of Ohio won't have to pay the $30,000 or more each year to house this beast.

I am not in favor of the death penalty. Since science has progressed to the point where DNA testing can either confirm the guilt or innocence of an accused person, I wonder how many people who professed that they didn't commit a crime all the way to the chair, chamber or needle were killed by mistake.

I will admit that before more Christian thoughts can wipe away my initial reaction, when I hear about a case of a child molester, I think he should be sentenced to prison and placed in a cell with some big guy who has a small son or daughter on the outside. Those thoughts stem from reports of inhumane conditions in some of our prisons in this country.

Put hundreds of men or women together in cramped quarters with little or no promise of release and it's a recipe for violence. It has been for thousands of years. But that's a whole other story for another time.

My hope is that President Obama can offer some clarity to a definitely complicated issue in Syria and my prayer is there is some way the killing of innocent citizens in that country can come to a quick end.