ghost of miles

That, sir, is a scorer's judgment call.

Yes, OBP is the modern gold standard for hitters, as opposed to BA.

Just want to be worthy of the dialogue here and meet like with like, walk tall and honest and straight like a Texas Ranger does, fear no man, etc., etc. No, I understood it, but it's grafting a logic onto something in light of previous comments/arguments that doesn't extend in a logical manner. I've had my share of blue-collar, s*&#-slinging menial jobs as well. Work is good, you should do work to the best of your ability, whatever it is. No real need to romanticize/sentimentalize work, though, which is the drift I'm catching here, even as such categorization is railed against elsewhere. It grinds a lot of people down, doesn't pay them what it should, doesn't make them happy at all. Part of that may be their attitude; part of it may stem from larger forces over which they have little control or influence. As for honesty, all for it, as long as it's not subservient to ego, which is all too often the case in this little society of ours.

Yes--by the nature of the game, it's more difficult to get a hit than it is to get somebody out, partly because there are eight other players besides the pitcher to apprehend any ball that the batter makes contact with. Over the years certain statistical yardsticks have come to stand for success, though many of the stats we grew up with are now considered old-school and less meaningful (batting average and ERA, for example). I'm not as clued in to the stat geeks' New Math as I should be... it's an interesting new set of standards that some folks now swear by. And obviously certain other factors have altered what constitutes statistical success, whether it be smaller (or larger) ballparks, raised or lowered pitching mounds, steroids, etc. Obviously Josh Hamilton is not a failure because more often than not he's not only not going to hit a walkoff home-run, he's going to make an out. Just noting the logical limits of the argument made. There's just as much merit in celebrating what Derek Jeter did on Saturday as a symbol of persistence, work, discipline, and whatever else one might care to value, including baseball's ability to occasionally produce moments that are magical.

We re-aired Extension: Clare Fischer in the 1960s this past week and it remains archived for online listening.

Pity they never issued that great Hi-Los/Fischer/Paich session on CD, David! Yes, I can't even remember where I pulled that from for the show, Bill. I think we may have it on vinyl here at the station.

So by those lights, 70% of the time Josh Hamilton is a shameful failure who did not work, did not execute successfully, and that's not how it's done. Hell, in any other line of work Josh Hamilton would probably get canned! Even the most inept, stagnant, poorly-run businesses tend to demand a better than 30% success rate when it comes to successful completion of tasks. I know what you're saying here, but that's where that logic ultimately ends up. I'm not trying to denigrate your standards for how you enjoy the game. You're looking at it through your own eyes and digging it in a profound and personal way that connects with how you go through the world and what you see in it. Others may have a different set of experiences and may view it differently. That doesn't make them suckas, whores, chumps, idiots, phonies, or what have you. I'll tell you what I see too much of in the world, what brings out my inner curmudgeon: cynicism, bitterness, anger, fear, out-of-whack value schemes, dearth of genuine feeling and empathy, a culture of vitriol, attack and arrogance, self-righteousness, self-pity, self-obsession, ersatz pessimism and negativity, willful blindness, hypocrisy, spiritual lassitude, souls grown fat, souls malnourished... hell, I'm just getting started. There's plenty for my inner curmudgeon to feed on, should I choose to do so. The reality we're in today is complex, it's messy and screwed-up, it's not going to be changed by any one person, any one legislative body, or any Gigantic Creator Force. All I can do is acknowledge it for what it is and yeah, *work* to put whatever good I can into my life and into the world, do my best to make up for past mistakes, omissions/failures, etc., and treat other people with as much love and respect as I can.

On the strictly MLB front--how does everybody feel about where their teams are at as of the All-Star break? What players have exceeded your expectations, failed to meet them so far, etc.? Based on what you've seen so far, how do you anticipate the rest of the season unfolding?

Dude, you don't have to tell me--two of the great love affairs of my youth were with actresses, so I know! Ironically enough, had a bit of discussion along these lines on Facebook earlier tonight, because I've spent most of my weekend--ostensibly free time--working, and I've enjoyed doing so. The next six months look pretty much to be the same way--working quite a lot past the regular 40 hours, in terms of evenings and weekends. I don't mind, because I'm very lucky to be doing something that I love (and something that I need to continually work at in order to get better, especially with new responsibilities that have now come my way). Love of work is indeed a good thing. I wasn't suggesting that there's no "work" involved in playing baseball. There's a ton of work, even in the off-season. I wasn't suggesting that work is a bad thing. I'm simply saying that the mechanics of certain kinds of work produce results that are much more meaningful to people on an emotional/intellectual/spiritual level than simply as acts of work. Anybody can appreciate any job well done, and whatever you do, you should try to do it as well as possible, whether it's cleaning hotel rooms, driving a taxi, managing a group of clerical employees, playing baseball, or playing Stanley Kowalksi or Blanche Dubois. But people are generally more interested, pleased, or what have you, when certain kinds of work are performed in ways that don't reveal the amount of work that went into whatever act it is the audience is witnessing. Watching a movie is perhaps an even better example. A movie is certainly the outcome of a great deal of work, but people go to see it not because they want to watch people working, but because they want to see, enjoy, and/or contemplate the spectacle that was created. As for success, I'd define that simply as doing something that you enjoy doing and doing it to the best of your ability (all the while pushing what you think of as the best of your ability to a new boundary), and hopefully making some other people's lives a little bit better in the process. And not letting the great grind of life or other people mess up the things that drive you on the inside, that make your experience in the world meaningful. Strength, character, and persistence, along with however much or however little talent you started out with. That makes great moments like Jeter's home run yesterday all the more meaningful. How often do things like that happen? What's amazing is how often the guy's shown up and put on the uniform (work!), how many days, weeks, months, years he played to get to that plateau of 3,000 hits. Hitting a home run to reach it was incredible theater, one of those seemingly magical events that lifts people out of the quotidian everyday for a little while. Did it permanently change anybody's life for the better? Almost certainly not, save maybe for the guy who caught the ball and then gave it back... I think he just cemented himself a nice, lifelong reputation as a very cool human being. But it was a nice little jolt of transcendence, which is one of the reasons why people come back to sports again and again. Hell, I wish more people came to jazz for the same reason! And you need to find and create your own jolts of transcendence... you can't rely on Derek Jeter, Josh Hamilton, or who-have-you to produce them for you. But there's nothing wrong with appreciating such moments nonetheless, whether it's Hamilton hitting a walkoff home-run, Paul Gonsalves blowing for 27 choruses, or Jsngry writing a great and illuminating post. All such things are the result of work, but they are so much more than that as well.

The new Smithsonian jazz anthology.

Word. And they fetishize the object because they have mythologized the sport. It's a great game and you have to have rare skills to excel, but when it's all over, it's men at work, period, and all that comes along with that. You, I, and the guy driving the jackhammer down the street might qualify simply as "men at work," but we don't have 50,000 people cheering us on as we go about our duties. Sports, like it or not, is more than just people at work. It's a kind of theater. Like anything else, people can get too hung up on it, and in this culture they surely do.

More about fan who gave ball back to Jeter ... great guy, and someone at a young age who already seems to know the real and relative value of things in life, whatever the passion of his Yankee fandom. Lopez news feature

Thanks much, ES--it's really good to hear that. Do you listen to fellow board member Lazaro Vega on Blue Lake Public Radio? Some of the best jazz programming in the country, in my not-so-humble opinion. (Full disclosure: they also carry Night Lights. )

"Jazz On the Side" on Blue Lake Public Radio.

http://www.lonestarball.com/photos/50-41-the-rangers-just-made-magic-happen/2039470 Now, can we leave the emo shit behind and get on with things? If you really want to get "non-emo" about it, why not talk about how f'd up it is that fans fetishize having an MLB baseball so much that they'll inadvertently risk their lives to catch one? Talk about "emo"! I'm not going to go there... but if you really want to go all Brave New Hardcore-And-In-The-Moment, that's sure as hell part of the problem. Human beings being what they are, I don't know that you'd get much in the way of results. People get attached to things, and to representations of things. Sometimes, often even, it can turn into an unhealthy thing. I don't see anything wrong with a guy wanting to catch an MLB baseball, especially if he thinks his kid will get a bang out of getting one. Accidents do indeed happen. People get upset about them in the aftermath. People need to get upset and talk about what happened in order to "move on." That's not "emo," that's part of being alive and TRULY moving towards getting on with life. I'm sure the Rangers will address or have already started to address any railing-safety issues. As Jsngry's pointed out, any such issues are hardly confined to the Rangers' ballpark. But--and I'll say this as a longtime, passionate (yay, even "emo," I suppose!) baseball fan--there is a LOT of f'd-up stuff about sports culture and sports fandom in this country. A lot of waaaaaayyyy overplaced priorities in the grand scheme of things. And in terms of "emo," the value placed upon MLB baseballs is surely up there on the "emo" list. Take Jeter's homerun ball/hit #3000 yesterday... one report said it might have fetched as much as $250,000-400,000. That's insane! And kudos again to the guy for simply giving it back to Jeter. It surely has meaning to Jeter, and I'm sure it had meaning to the guy who caught it. But a quarter of a million dollars, that's just ridiculous.

Ted Gioia's revised edition of THE HISTORY OF JAZZ.

A-Rod elects to have surgery The absolutely correct decision IMO. Although NY will certainly miss having him for the next month or so, it will also give A-Rod (soon to turn 36) a nice rest in the middle of the season. No doubt he'll take a few days to get back into the swing of things come mid-August, but he should be in good shape for the stretch drive in September. A bummer, though, that Eric Chavez is out with an injury as well right now.

On a lighter, everyday-baseball note, what a pitching duel today between Shields and CC! With the Yanks scoring the game's only run as a result of two Tampa Bay errors. And why, oh why have the Orioles not even played to their .400 level against the Bosox? Losing today as well, 7-6 in the 5th, which means in all likelihood we'll go into the All-Star break with Boston in first place. Still, at the beginning of the season I would not have predicted, not by a longshot, that NY would be anywhere near Boston in the standings at this point. But what with the road/home schedule remaining, A-Rod's either missing a month or playing with a power-crippling injury, and the uncertainty of how well Garcia and Colon will hold up through the brutal August/September stretch of games (though we at least now have a better-pitching Ivan Nova to step in if either Garcia or Colon goes down), I'm still guessing that the Yanks are ultimately competing for a wildcard spot. That they actually even have a chance to make a race of it in the division is a pleasant surprise.

Jsngry--I'd intended to respond to Dan's thoughts as well, but you already made, with more eloquent elaboration, some of the points I would have made. All I can add is that Hamilton seems to be genuinely invested in faith, recovery, or whatever you want to call his grounding philosophy, and that part of that philosophy is accepting that life will continue to present painful challenges to you (often unexpectedly) after you've gotten your big, positive changes underway, and that dealing with them is part of the game (so to speak). Also, Hamilton was making a gesture of spiritual/material generosity, and while it's a terrible irony that the father died as a result of attempting to receive it, it's ultimately the kind of random and tragic outcome that the universe tends to offer up. (I'm a "person of faith" too, much as I despise how that phrase is used in our media culture, but I don't believe this man's death was an "act of God" or that it had some profound, hidden meaning, the Creator moving in mysterious ways and all of that kind of talk.) If Josh Hamilton had relapsed, gone out driving, and slammed into this man's car, thereby killing him, Josh Hamilton would not now be "fine." But that's not what happened. I don't doubt that he feels not just bad about what happened, but disturbed that he was directly involved in the sequence of events. I don't doubt that it will linger with him for awhile; but I also don't doubt that he'll be able to "move on" (another phrase that gets used to the point of abuse, but so be it), in terms of accepting that painful, difficult, and almost-inexplicable moments and events are going to happen. And while pills, alcohol, or other methods of altering one's consciousness can perhaps chase that knowledge away for a little while, they ultimately bring on their painful difficulties that are even worse, at least for Josh Hamilton and a whole lot of other folks wired in similar ways.

I know, Dave--I just read the story myself, and it makes a great baseball moment even better: Fan simply gave Jeter back the ball ...but nice of the Yankees in return to give him all of that swag anyway.

Storybook moment: Jeter's 3-2 count home run for hit #3000 History with an exclamation point indeed! The entire at-bat, pitch-by-pitch. ...and Jeter ends up going 5-5 and knocking in the game-winning run in the bottom of the 8th.

Derek Jeter gets hit #3000 with a home run? Beautiful! Only the second player ever to do so... Wade Boggs did it that way as well.

Happy birthday, Jack, with much appreciation for all you've given jazz lovers to explore for many years.

Best birthday wishes to you, Barak.

I'm guessing that's why Tom put "birthday" in quotes. I still dig the continuing ceremonial association between Louis and the 4th of July, even though his actual date of birth turned out to be different.