An Exchange of Words: David B. Coe’s Weblog

My kids came down to breakfast today all riled up because they’d heard on the radio that Barack Obama was dropping out of the Presidential race.  My nine year-old, who is a Hillary supporter (yes, like the National Democratic Party, ours is a house divided) was excited.  My twelve year-old, who is an Obamaniac, was a bit more skeptical, but she wanted to make certain that the report they’d heard on the radio (which apparently included a clip of Obama announcing his withdrawal “in his own voice”) was merely an April Fools’ prank.  I assured her that it was.

Maybe it’s just me, but this seemed a pretty clumsy attempt to fool people.  If you’re a radio station looking to trick your listeners, and your target audience turns out to be somewhere between the ages of 9 and 12, you’re aiming too low.  Off the top of my head I was able to think of several false stories that would have been far more convincing.

Let’s start with the obvious:  tell us it’s Hillary Clinton who’s dropping out rather than Obama.  THAT would have gotten my attention.  I still would have been skeptical, but at least she’s in more of a position to give up the race.  The guy with the lead in money, delegates, popular vote, and current horse race numbers probably isn’t going to quit….

Or tell us that John McCain has chosen his running mate and will announce the name at noon today.  Drop a few names as possibilities — Crist, Rice, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty. And then throw in a whopper just to make it interesting:  Lieberman.

Or, with baseball season starting up again, tell us that new names have surfaced in the steroid scandal, including not only several current major leaguers, but also Vice President Dick Cheney.  As proof, point to Cheney’s baldness, his jowly look, his hyper-aggressive statements and behavior.  That one I’d believe….

Happy April Fools’ Day all.  Oh, and by the way, did I mention that I’ve decided to pitch the whole writer thing and run for Congress?  Yeah.  I think voters here in rural Tennessee are ready to elect a liberal New York Jew with a beard and an earring.

Today’s music:  Sphere

It’s a bit early in the year, but nevertheless, today marks the opening of the 2008 Major League Baseball season.  It’s before 8:00 am here and the first game is being played right now.  How weird.  Red Sox-Athletics, in Tokyo.  Part of MLB’s continuing effort to expand the game globally.

In spite of everything that has happened in the baseball world over the past several years, I remain a committed fan.  Here’s hoping that this season brings competitive pennant races, spectacular individual achievements, and an end to the steroid/HGH scandal.

Happy Opening Day, everyone.

Go Mets!

What do Darryl Strawberry, Liza Minnelli, and James Taylor have in common?  Okay, yes, they all have had problems with substance abuse.  Let me be a bit more specific.  What do they (and Little Feat keyboardist Bill Payne) have in common with me?

Yup, that’s right.  Today is our birthday.  All of us.   And, I’m happy to the report that of the five of us, I’m the youngest.

I’ve never been much of a Liza Minnelli fan — just not my style of entertainment — and though I liked Darryl Strawberry when he was with the Mets, I was deeply disappointed in the way his career ended.  I’m sure he was too.  But I have been a fan of James Taylor since I was seven years old and my older brother first played for me his brand new copy of Sweet Baby James.  When the rest of my friends were listening to Free To Be You and Me and other insipid kids’ music, I was listening to Mud Slide Slim and One Man Dog.  When my cool friends in junior high were listening to Zeppelin and CSN and the Dead, I was too, but I was also listening to Gorilla and In the Pocket.  I didn’t tell my friends, of course.  James wasn’t cool; at least he wasn’t to them.  Once I reached high school I started caring less what other people thought of my musical taste.  I listened to JT and Flag and Dad Loves His Work, and I didn’t hide it from anyone.

I still listen to James Taylor.  I have pretty much every album he’s put out (except for the disc of Christmas tunes and some greatest hits collections made up of songs I already have on other recordings).  And I still encounter people who make it clear to me that this is not cool music, that it’s too mellow, too close to “Easy Listenin’”.  I couldn’t care less.  For me James Taylor’s music is like New York style pizza.  It’s like Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry.  It’s like M*A*S*H reruns.  It might not be the finest music in the world, but it’s familiar, and it’s comforting, and it’s damn good.

Taylor’s lyrics have always been sensitive and insightful.  At times they’re brilliant.  The song “Gaia” on the Hourglass album might be the most moving elegy for our environment anyone has written.  His melodies manage to be appealing without being trite.  

It’s been forty years since his first release; thirty-eight since “Fire and Rain” reached number 3 on the Billboard Top Forty. Taylor has enjoyed a good deal of success at points in his career.  He’s experienced lean periods as well.  But he never sold out, never tailored (pardon the pun) his sound to the market.  Forty years.  You’ve got to admire that.

James Taylor turns sixty today.  And as one birthday boy to another, I wish him the best, and I thank him for all that his music has given me over the years.

Today’s music:  “One Man Dog”

Pitchers and catchers report tomorrow, which, for those of you unfamiliar with baseball terminology, means that spring training is about to begin.  This is usually a time of rejoicing for me; an end to a long, lonely winter of sports about which I don’t really care.  Football, basketball, hockey — usually they’re just games to read about when there are no boxscores, a way of marking time until baseball awakes from its winter hibernation.

This year was a bit different, in part because of the Giants’ unexpected success (I’m still in shock) and in part because it was such an ugly offseason for baseball.  All steroids all the time.  I feel like I’m holding my breath, waiting to see how the sport will disgrace itself next, wondering how much more of this I can take.

But spring training is a time of possibility.  The trades have been made, the ink is dry on newly signed contracts, rookies are gearing up for the exhibition season, hoping to make that magical leap from unknown to phenom.  The Mets managed to sign the best pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana.  The Yankees managed to re-sign the best everyday player in the game, A-Rod.  And the Red Sox, for the second time in the last four years, begin the season as defending world champions.  Wouldn’t it be great if the baseball world found a way to get their collective s#%t together and put together a great season?  A few pennant races in the variouis divisions, close competitions for individual honors, maybe a no-hitter or two.  It wouldn’t take much.  Those of us who love the game are looking for reasons to care about it again.  

A new season.  Hope springs eternal.

Was on the road with my family for 10 days, and though I left with every intention of posting along the way, it was nice to get away from writing for a little while.  Saw many friends and spent time with family (mine and Nancy’s).  Lots of driving, but we had Harry Potter books 2 and 4 on cd with us and that kept all of us, including the girls, happy and entertained for 2,400 miles.

Now we’re back, and aside from sitting beside a fire, watching a little football, and taking care of a few small chores around the house, we have nothing planned for today.

I have resolutions for the New Year, of course.  Some are obvious — write more, blog as often as possible, be more efficient with my work time, continue to exercise, etc.  Others I’m less willing to share.  I know the things I need to do to make myself a better person, a better Dad, a better friend.  And I’ll try to do them.

My wishes for 2008 (aside from happiness and good health for my family and friends, and an end to the war):

1) A pennant for the Mets.  Yeah, I know.  But I can dream, can’t I?

2) A bestseller.  Not really; I know better.  But I would enjoy a year of good reviews, improved sales, and big fat book contracts.

3) A Presidential Campaign that addresses real issues, rises above the politics of ”swift-boating” and  wedge issues, mud-slinging and personal attacks, sound bites and pandering.  If we’re going to stretch out the political season, let’s at least have a debate that edifies, that makes people think about the issues and about the real sacrifices we will all have to make in order to solve the problems facing this country.

Happy New Year to all of you.  May 2008 bring you joy, love, prosperity, and good health.

Today’s my Dad’s birthday.  He would have been 88.  It’s been eleven years since we lost him and I still think about him every day.  And each time I do, the memory of him brings a smile to my face.

He was an easy man to love — great sense of humor, terrific smile, infectious laugh.  He became friends with pretty much everyone he met.  He only got to know my older daughter briefly before he died; he never met the younger one.  He would have adored them both, though, and they would have been crazy about him.  He also never got to see any of my books in print, and I think he found it a bit strange that I wanted to spend my life writing what he thought of as fairy tales.  But he would have gotten a kick out of seeing my career progress.  I can see him shaking his head and saying, “They actually pay you to do this?”

He would have been fascinated by cell phones and mp3 players — he loved gadgets.  On the other hand, my siblings and I tried for years to get him to buy a computer and he always refused.  “When would I ever use it?” he’d ask.  To which we’d say, “All the time!”  But we never convinced him.  He would have been disappointed by the baseball steroid scandal.  He would have gotten a kick out of watching Tiger Woods play golf.  And he would have despised this President and his immoral, illegal war.

He worshipped my mother and spent the last few years of his life helping her cope with the illness that eventually claimed her life.  He stuck around for a while after she died, but his heart wasn’t in it.  His father lived to 103 — outlived him, actually.  His mother died at the age of 91.  But without my Mom, Dad barely made it to 77.  Love is a powerful force, and so is grief.

This post isn’t intended to elicit sympathy.  Far from it.  I miss my Dad a lot, but it’s been years since we lost him, and at this point my memories of him are joyous and fun.  Think of this more as a birthday card, and a way for me to tell you a bit about my father.

Happy Birthday, Pop.  I love you.

It’s been a dark couple of days for us baseball fans as the fallout from George Mitchell’s report on steroid use in the sport continues, and it promises to get worse before it gets better.  Players implicated in the report are starting to put out statements either accepting blame for what they’re said to have done, or, more likely, denying having ever taken steroids or HGH.  It won’t be long before the Players Union marshals its PR forces to fight the report, and the team owners and management look for ways to absolve themselves of culpability.  Congress intends to hold hearings.  This is going to be ugly.

Some thoughts:

Anyone who was surprised by the names on the list or the number of players involved hasn’t been paying attention for the past several years.  ESPN and the various news outlets made it seem that the inclusion of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte in the list was a shock.  Give me a break.  Does no one remember the news out of Houston last spring, when they were implicated in the Astros’ mini HGH scandal?  Did no one suspect anything when both players suddenly shaved their heads a few seasons back?  (Hair loss is often a symptom of HGH use and players often seek to hide this by shaving their heads — For more information, I refer you to the coifing histories of Bonds, Barry; McGwire, Mark; Palmeiro, Rafael.  Head shavers all.)  Did no one think it strange when, during the 2000 World Series on a routine broken bat groundout by Mike Piazza, Clemens inexplicably picked up the head of Piazza’s shattered bat and threw it at him?  Granted, Clemens has been a head case for a long time (For more information I refer you to the American League Playoff series of 1989, when Clemens had a now-infamous meltdown with the home plate umpire) but didn’t the bizarre incident in 2000 raise any eyebrows?  (Hyper-aggressive behavior is another HGH symptom.)

Staying with Clemens, and Bonds as well.  One of the really sad things about this is that it has called into question the careers of two players who were certain Hall-of-Famers before they ever picked up a needle.  Clemens was the dominant pitcher in baseball from 1986 through the late nineties.  He won three Cy Young Awards without using any performance enhancing drugs.  He was on track to strike out three thousand batters in his career; he might well have gotten to 300 career wins.  He would have been remembered as one of the ten greatest pitchers in baseball history.  And Bonds, for all the criticism he’s taken throughout his career for being an anti-social jerk, would quite likely have been remembered as one of the three greatest left-fielders ever to play the game, along with Ted Williams and Stan Musial.  He was on pace to hit 500 home runs (a number that once meant something), to steal five hundred bases, to score close to 2,000 runs and drive in 1,700.  He won three MVP awards early in his career, as well as eight gold gloves.  They were the best of the best — both of them.  They didn’t need to do anything to make themselves better.  But driven by ego and money and, in Bonds’ case, his jealousy of the adulation heaped on McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, they threw it all away.  Now they’ll be lucky to make the Hall of Fame.  And their names will be linked first and foremost with scandal, cheating, shame, rather than with baseball excellence.

Isn’t it interesting that Miguel Tejada, the Baltimore Orioles’ all-star shortstop, who was named in the report, was traded the day before it was issued?  Was it just coincidence that Andy Pettitte completed negotiations on a $16 million contract also the day before the report came out?  Doesn’t the trade of Jim Edmunds (another head shaver, and a player who has managed to recover with notable swiftness from injuries that might have ended the careers of other men) the day after the report came out raise red flags for anyone?  The team owners and general managers knew what was going on the whole time — any attempt on their part to claim ignorance or innocence is completely disingenuous.  This was a scandal in the deepest sense of the word.  500 foot home runs and 100 mph ratings on the radar machines gauging pitch speed were and are good for attendance.  Baseball, for all its recent problems, has never been more profitable for players and ownership alike.  The performances made possible by steroids and HGH are partially responsible for that.  So players juiced, and owners, GMs, and managers looked the other way.

Just in case people think that steroids automatically make you a great player, I refer you to the following players listed as users in Mitchell’s report:  Mark Carreon, Chuck Knoblauch (a once great player who couldn’t save his career, even with the drugs), Jeremy Giambi . . . .  The list goes on.  HGH was used by players to speed the healing process from injuries and surgeries.  And, yes, it was used to improved on-field performance.  But as Mark Carreon found out, it couldn’t help a player learn to hit a curve ball.  As Knoblauch learned, it couldn’t restore the confidence of a once decent second baseman in his ability to throw the ball to first.  It could make a decent hitter better by putting more pop in his bat.  Maybe it could make a good player great.  Certainly in Bonds’ case it made a great player into the greatest offensive force the game has ever seen.  But I would be willing to bet that for most, the on-field results were nowhere near the cost in terms of long-term health and damage to their reputations.

For me, the saddest thing in the report was what Mitchell had to say about the prevalence of drug use in the minor leagues.  These are basically kids, barely out of high school or college, who are destroying themselves for a shot at glory and huge amounts of money.  The game has been poisoned, the problem is systemic, and the healing process is going to take years.

Today’s music:  Mark O’Connor