On Josh Beckett's Retirement--Yankees Should Take the Hint

Dodger pitcher Josh Beckett announced his retirement this week at the age of 34. This after pitching a no-hitter back in May and recording a sparkling 2.88 ERA in 2014. However, Mr. Beckett has been slowed by injuries the past two years and apparently decided that he was tired of the rehab routine and calling it a career was in his best interests. He earned north of $15 million dollars in 2014 and was eligible for free agency in 2015 and probably could have made a few more million if he had decided not to call it quits. 

But, heck, how much pain can a body take--and why go through it again just to add a few million more to a career earnings total approaching $117 million? It was time and Josh Becket knew it.

As a Yankee fan, I wish our roster of aging, over-paid former stars would take a hint from Josh Becket and let the team and its fans off the hook by just saying good-bye. There's A-Rod, of course. 39 years old, a year away from the game and with nothing left in the tank. Except he is due more than $60 million over the next three seasons. Make Yankee fans love you again by hanging 'em up and just walking away. 

Mark Teixeira is the same age as Josh Becket and his decline has been fast and steep since 2010, and he can't seem to stay in the line-up. Injuries to wrists, to quads, to hamstrings, to ankles, to shoulders--Mark is a slugger and sluggers do not age well. Mark makes $22.5 million a year and is signed through 2016--but he's done now. You've made more than $167 million in your career--why deal with a broken down body for two more years for a few million more? Do yourself and your fans a favor and and hobble slowly into the sunset.

C.C. Sabathia--your knees are shot, you've lost your fastball and now you're basically good for batting practice. Sure, you make $23 million a year and will make even more over the next two years--but know it's your time. You're done--how much money can you spend in this life?

Beltran (37 years old, $16 million), Kuroda (39/$16 million but a free agent)--you get the idea. The Yankees have become a collection of museum pieces that flourished at an earlier time. 

Baseball is unkind past the age of 32 and it's understandable how money can be such a lure. But it's hard on the fans when clueless general managers dole out contracts based on performance that aging players will never again be able to approach. Are they just fooling themselves, or is it really just about the money? 

Make the Cowards in Congress Stand Up

To my chagrin, there seems to be support among the majority of pols, and the citizenry, actually, about the U.S., or should I say the "coalition" bombing strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. 

As avid readers of my blog may recall, I have listed a plethora of reasons why we should not be involved in that effort, since history shows that U.S. bombing in that part of the world has been ineffectual, except to the extent that it breeds greater hatred of the west (read U.S.) and ends up backfiring on us any way. We have a gift for picking the wrong side to support, which means the wrong people get our high-tech weapons in their hands and use them against us and/or their own people.

Sure, ISIS is horrible and barbaric on a Game of Thrones level, but the problems it represents are complex and impossible for the West to sort out, understand, and remedy--the people of the Mid-East will just have to work through their issues, which will probably take a hundred years or so. Europe went through such convolutions in the Middle Ages.

To me, there are two ways to extricate ourselves from the misery of perpetual bombing in the Mid-East:

1. First, let's pay for it! Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, let's add a federal surtax that all Americans must pay to finance operations in the Mid-East. Hit Americans, especially Republicans, where it hurts: in the pocketbook. We boosted taxes to pay for WWII and WWI--if we really want to eliminate ISIS, let's put our money where our mouth is!
2. Re-initiate the draft. The all-volunteer army makes it too easy to just send troops hither and yon when those making such decisions have no skin in the game. When Republican sons and Republican daughters are sent to the deserts of the Middle East to fight the savages, either fairness will be achieved or more sober reflection will be involved before military action is invoked. The draft and its attendant protest movement played a major role in the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

Of course, these suggestions are mainly facetious. Our cowardly Congress would never enact a dedicated tax or the draft because they don't believe in responsible government--heck, the Republicans don't believe government should do anything at all, except send mercenaries to fight their wars for them. 

I do guarantee, however, if the U.S. does those two things, our footprint will shrink to almost nothing in that horrific part of the world. 

This Dumb Thing I Do

I’m going down to the stream near my cabin tucked in a sheltered bluff in the foothills of Grandfather Mountain in the middle of nowhere North Carolina.  I’m going to strip off a dead branch perhaps three feet in length and maybe an inch thick and collect buckets of shiny rocks.  And I’m going to toss stones of varying shapes and sizes in the air with my right hand and thwack them with the stick held in my left hand. 

This I will do for hours on end and pretend that I am running through lineups of various major league teams from the 1960s and 70s, with each thwack and swing representing the fortunes of each batter.

 

Batters will strike out if my aim is not pure and the game will be strictly binary in nature.  Rocks that clear the stream will be home runs; everything else is a pop out or grounder. 

This I will do for hours over a period of days, my hands worn leathery from the rough texture of my “bats,” which will have to be constantly replaced as rocks carve grooves and cracks into the wood until the shredded sticks shatter. 

I will play game after game this way, hidden from the view of my wife and others who will mock this silly pastime as my father did in my youth when I spent hour after hour hitting rocks with sticks at a nearby ball field.  Though he shook his head, it did sharpen my eye and hone my hitting skills by the time my Little League years approached. 

I still love hitting rocks with sticks, the rhythm of toss and thwack and towering trajectories that clear the riverbank and disappear into the woods with a whisper of striking leaves.  It’s what I call retirement. 

Others love to toss strings with hooks into shallow water or hitting little white balls with sticks into man-made pits of sand.  I like hitting rocks with sticks over running water. 

I see nothing wrong with that!

Switch Hitting Will Get You To the Big Leagues

I grew up a baseball fanatic. As a kid, baseball occupied my life 24-hours a day. I played baseball, I read books about baseball, I talked non-stop about baseball.

I devised little games for myself that I played from my early single-digit years through high school. We had a ball field near my house, and when there was nobody to play with, I’d take a bat and ball across the street and toss the ball up and whack it as far as I could. Usually it took three or four hits to get from home plate to the end of center field. When it took fewer, I was jubilant.

We had a garage made of concrete in the back and I’d spend hours throwing golf balls(!) against the garage wall and pretending to field the ricochets like a middle infielder corralling hot smashes and throwing runners out at first base. When a ball got by me and carried into the back yard, I’d shag it down and try to cut down the runner at “home plate.”

People wondered how I became such a great first baseman with lightning reflexes on batted balls. Golf balls thrown with force against concrete will do the trick.

My baseball career was undermined by my father’s insistence that, as a hitter, I was to be purely left-handed, just like he was. Of course he was an all-state player with stupid stats, whereas I couldn’t hit a lefty curve ball for the life of me. Plus, I was mandated to play first base, just like he did.

Big mistake.

If you have a son, never let him learn his natural side. Teach him to hit from both sides of the plate from birth. And have him (or her, for fledgling softballers) learn every position on the field. The more options you give the coach, the more innings you’ll play.

I was never a superstar ballplayer like my dad who could insist on a single side in a batter’s box and a specific position in the field. But I could’ve gone a lot farther and hit a lot higher if I had developed more versatility both on the field and at bat. 

The Last Word on Derek Jeter

I guess as a devout and crazed Yankee fan since 1960, I should comment on the Derek Jeter extravaganza of 2014. And what surprises me about him. Actually, what doesn't surprise me about him. 

First of all, I hate when fans of various ball clubs assert that they are the most knowledgeable baseball fans in the world. Yankee fans cling to that illusion, which is nothing but pure Narcissism--Yankee fans are no smarter or dumber than Red Sox, Mets, Cardinals, Astros, or Pirate fans.

However, this I will say to the credit of Yankee fans. No player has been more adored than Derek Jeter, but he isn't even close to being the best Yankee player ever (although he was their best all-around shortstop). A less than complete list of superior Yankees would include Mantle, DiMaggio, ARod (sorry, yes!), Berra, Ruth, Gehrig, Winfield, Dickey, Munson, Jackson, Mattingly, Collins--not to mention all the great pitchers such as Ford, Guidry, Clemens, Rivera, Gomez among others. 

Jeter's value, of course, was the total package of his talent, leadership, presence, enthusiasm, and respect. No other Yankee embodied all those qualities in their entirety the way Jeter did. For that I credit Yankee fans for seeing beyond the stat sheet and endowing Jeter with the halo of immortality.

But then, it was easy to see during Jeter's retirement tour this season that the Jeter aura and appreciation extended to the fans and players in the ball parks where he competed. So it wasn't just about being knowledgeable Yankee fans, it was about being knowledgeable baseball fans. 

Professional Writing Advice

There is nothing more difficult than writing short.  So much of what’s written is fluff.  So much is a clearing of a throat when it comes to writing.  It’s the most urgent flaw that those who make a living writing constantly battle.

While I by no means consider myself an excellent writer, I do verge on decent at times.  But then I’m reminded of my inadequacies whenever a good editor takes his or her pen to my stuff (and it’s usually a “her” because for some reason women tend to be better editors and proofreaders and, on the whole, smarter than men).

More than any other form, sales copy must aspire to the greatest economy of phrasing.  And just when I’ve achieved the final cut, my boss or some other decent editor cuts a line or two and trims words and suddenly the copy sings even stronger. 

Professional writing means returning time and again and cutting, cutting, cutting.  Seldom are muscle and bone sacrificed, it’s always fat.  So the next time you have to write something and you think it’s finished, see if there’s some way to reduce it by at least a third.

Few of us are paid by the word.  So spend the extra time to write less.  Cutting is an extreme mental exercise that substitutes for chess and jigsaw puzzles in my case. After all, isn’t it better to complain that the book or movie was too short, rather than it was too long?

Compression is a game anyone can play.  Using fewer words will attract greater attention than using more.  I hope your job doesn’t depend on it like mine does—-and I still do not consider myself good at it.

People Are Right--And Wrong--About MEDICUS

In case you were wondering, I am starting to get a trickle of reviews in from my latest novel, MEDICUS, and all and all, they have been pretty positive. While I have written several novels, through the miracle of digital self-publishing, this is the first time I've ever made my work available to the general public--as long as the general public owns a Kindle, Nook, or other electronic reading device or tablet.

In a world where everything is critiqued and rated on the Web, I do need to get used to people commenting on my stuff and develop a thick skin when it comes to criticism. And the few areas of criticism I've received so far are a bit puzzling to me--maybe a little upsetting--but shouldn't be because I think the substance of those comments are wrong or irrelevant to the story.

But that's not the point, you have to be careful when it comes to reacting to public reaction. We all have a point of view and point of views almost always conflict one another. Some people don't like the names I've chosen for my characters, some think they're great. Some people think my main character is evil, others love her and root for her. 

So it's like anything else you see on the Web, whether you're choosing a restaurant or searching for a hotel, any reading of the comments section is only going to overwhelm you with conflicting opinions, so we end up trusting in our sixth sense anyway.

Even though MEDICUS is pulling in some high marks, take that with a grain of salt. Download the book and decide for yourself!