Friday Afternoon Meanderings

I haven't been able to watch the games this week. Today, though, I'm taking a break to watch the game and let my mind wander through everything Cubs. Here, then, is a collection of mid-April meanderings jotted as I watch.

Editor's Note: If you watch the games on DVR or something, and you subscribe to Agony & Ivy's RSS or Atom feed, don't read any more until later! There's spoilers.

On the offensive t-shirts
So, has everyone heard about the t-shirts being sold outside Wrigley Field by now? (continue...)

An Unprecedented New Yorker Cover

My jaw literally dropped when I picked up my weekend mail this evening, and saw the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker. The title is "Lost and Found" by Mark Ulriksen. Here's the image (with its source pulling the image directly from the "About Us" page of the New Yorker website for this issue):
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Already Familiar

We're four games in, and this season already feels familiar because the Cubs are suffering from the same problems they've been fighting for the last several years. Too many at-bats have featured batters not working counts--let alone taking walks-- and guys are swinging on pitcher's pitches. As for the pitchers and defense, the Cubs have made some crucial errors, and have given up some crucial walks and hit batsmen. Toss in a few questionable managerial decisions and what we've got are a couple of games in which the Cubs were not only outplayed, but did not do the little things well enough to give themselves the best chance to win.

As a result, the Cubs have lost two winnable games, and have now taken the first lead in the race to the bottom at 1-3 instead of 3-1, or 2-2.

Too early to get concerned? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there are 158 more games and the Cubs best players have not yet come close to hitting their stride. But no, in the sense that these are the things they should have been working on all spring because they've plagued the Cubs for seasons now. (continue...)

Our Year

The crowd was vocal. Because the subject here was baseball and the stadium was full of scholars—and historians—and soon enough I found myself engaged in learned debate with all these ... strangers, these ... guys.

--Mason Marzac in Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out,” Act Two.
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Saturday night around eleven o’clock I went to one of my stacks of books and pulled out my copy of “Take Me Out,” a play by Richard Greenberg. I bought the script about a year ago after the Zach Scott Theater here in Austin performed it. I thought the play was not only excellent but of exceptional literary quality, so I ordered a copy from Amazon or somewhere to add to my library, where baseball literature does its best to counterbalance the stuffier law books that look as heavy as they are. (continue...)

On The Naming Rights to Wrigley Field

If the question is whether the owner of Wrigley Field should sell its naming rights to a sponsor, there is no correct answer.

However, approaching it from any given perspective, it feels like there is a correct answer—sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes the answer feels very strong. Unless we have some form of analysis to identify the proper perspective—and we don’t, besides each person choosing her own—this means we’re asking the wrong question.

The right question is much deeper. It encompasses the inherent tension between baseball as business and baseball as sport, as pastime, as tradition. It encompasses the tension between our past and our present, our legacy and our policy. It encompasses the tensions in our country’s changing culture, especially regarding technology, media, and advertising. (continue...)

What Baseball's Comprehensive Steroids Policy Needs

Many of the games I’ve attended at Wrigley Field and about two dozen other stadiums blend together. This is inevitable when you attend so many; when baseball consumes a significant part of your life. Certain ones stand out though, and it's one of these on my mind today: Friday the 21st of August, 1998.

It was a hot, hazy, humid afternoon. Typical for Chicago in August. (Miserable.) It was also the weekend I moved in to my non-airconditioned dorm as a freshman in college.

We parked off of Roscoe Street because in those days you could still find free parking off of Roscoe if you got there early enough. Kerry Wood pitched against Orel Hersheiser that afternoon. The Cubs came from behind in the bottom of the ninth. Sammy Sosa singled; Mark Grace walked; Henry Rodriguez singled; Jose Hernandez singled; and the Cubs won 6-5. We stayed until the end and drove away slowly, stuck in traffic, completely drained, but also completely content.

Earlier in the game, Sosa hit his 49th homerun.

Steroids? Not on our radar that day. Not really. Sosa’s and McGwire’s homerun chase? Very much on our radar, as was the Cubs role in the wild card race. How could we have known that soon a cloud would hang over this era, this season, even perhaps this game? That Sosa, while never proven, would become a strongly suspected steroid user? That weeks later, Bonds would see the acclaim for Sosa and McGwire, probably leading to his own steroid use in the following years, and probably now a trial for perjury?

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There’s an analytic concept that has proven useful to me recently in thinking about steroids and baseball. It’s not perfect, but it’s helped me grapple with not only what baseball should do, going forward, but also how I think—and feel—about assessing blame and culpability looking back. The concept is the distinction between rules and standards, a distinction between types and forms of laws that I’ll explain in a moment. (continue...)