Sunday, August 29, 2010

Ballparks I have have known and loved (Introduction)

Early this month, I traveled to Atlanta for the annual convention of the Society for American Baseball Research.  I’ve been a member of SABR since 1984, but it wasn’t until six years later that I attended my first convention.  What a gas!  I haven’t missed a single one since that first experience in Cleveland in 1990 ... this year’s SABR40 meeting was my 21st in a row, and I’m already psyched for SABR41 in southern California next July and SABR42 in Minneapolis in 2012.

One of the features of the SABR convention is, of course, a group outing to the local ballpark.  That’s one of the ways I’ve been able to add ballparks to my life list (term borrowed, of course, from birdwatching).  With the addition of Turner Field at SABR40, my count of major league ballparks is now up to 43 strong.

Rather than drone on and on through the entire list in a single post, I’ll organize my review of the ballparks I’ve seen by MLB division.  It’s doubly appropriate to begin in Atlanta’s division, the National League East.  Not only is that the place for the most recent addition to my list, it’s also the division of my very first ballpark.  Following the NL East, I plan to go to the other league and the other geographic extreme ... in other words, to the American League West.  After that, I’ll alternate leagues and march across the country in each one, ending the review in the AL East.

Each division’s report will be organized alphabetically by its teams’ current location.  While there won’t be a ranking per se, I’ll offer occasional observations of my experience at the ballpark—architecture, ambiance, food and drink, diversions, and such.  I also expect to include pictures of some of the parks as well as links to boxscores of notable games I attended there (no, I won’t inflict every boxscore on you).

Stay tuned for my six-part tour of MLB ballparks, starting soon.

Monday, August 02, 2010

Ohhh Patty, really?

It’s been widely reported in the local media that the President is coming out this way on August 17 to campaign, and fill the campaign war chest of, for Senator Patty Murray.  As a Democratic activist, I’m on the very long mailing list of potential invitees, ummm, contributors.

Following up on the email invitation sent last week, today I received a beefy envelope containing another request for my bucks.  Unfortunately, the front of the envelope looks like this:

Yeah, I know everyone makes mistakes.  But really, did nobody review the appearance of that envelope before giving the go-ahead to print it?

Pix from Netroots Nation

I am, it appears, a terrible photographer.  At least, a terrible photographer with my new digital camera while indoors.

My usual photographic subject in the past has been landscape, but there was none of that to be seen at the Rio last month during Netroots Nation.

From the 50 or 60 (or more?) shots I tried to take in Las Vegas, I’ve selected six for this posting.  I think you’ll see my point about bad photography.

We’ll start with the “rock star” I mentioned in my previous report from the scene at NN ... Elizabeth Warren.  She was really difficult to photograph, because she was constantly and rapidly pacing back and forth across the stage.  Next to her is my Dartmouth ‘72 classmate, Congressman Paul Hodes (D-NH-02).  Paul is running for the Senate this year, trying to move that seat from the dark side to the Democrats.  It was the first time we’d seen each other since graduating.






Instead of attending Nancy Pelosi’s session on Saturday morning, I joined a small group of Pacific Northwest bloggers for a sit-down with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley.  On the left below is a (I hate to say it) very unflattering picture of the Senator greeting Portlander Carla Axtman while DailyKos frontpager (and Seattlite) Joan McCarter beams.  Across from that photo is, of course, Senator Al Franken (D-MN).  I took that photo while attending a reception, featuring the Senator immediately after his closing keynote address, that was run by the Nevada Democratic Party.






Finally, another shot of Senator Franken at the reception, along with a picture of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.  He was attending the Franken reception.  What I find interesting about O’Donnell’s presence is that there was never the slightest note taken of him at the meeting.  He didn’t speak, didn’t participate in a panel.  As far as I can tell, he may have been in Las Vegas only for the Franken reception.






Are you convinced as to my poor photographic skills?  Believe me, these are the best of ‘em.  Just imagine how bad the others were.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

A progressive economic vision

As I type, I’m surrounded by a couple thousand other committed lefties in a large meeting hall at the Rio in Las Vegas.  We’re finishing up our box lunches (sponsored by the UFCW) as a number of speakers address the issue described in the title of this post.

Our luncheon guests are, in a word, impressive.  Leading off was a true rock star of financial reform—the damn-well-better-be first leader of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau created by the just-passed banking bill.  Yep, Elizabeth Warren in the house!  Standing O at the beginning and the end of her talk.  Ditto for the next speaker, birthday boy (yes, we sang) Rich Trumka. 

And now, we’re listening to Congressman Alan Grayson, perhaps the unlikeliest rock star in history!

I’ll have more reports from Netroots Nation, including my interactions with a couple of freshman Senators (probably including pictures), in the near future.  But now I need to get up and offer still another standing O for Grayson…

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Way back when, when Robert Byrd joined the Senate

Upon the death of Robert C. Byrd late last month, many commentators marked the remarkable length of his tenure in the Senate by pointing out that Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House when he took office.  Byrd served in the Senate for more than 51 years, having eclipsed the record previously held by Strom Thurmond more than four years ago.  Interestingly, last month Daniel Inouye of Hawaii also passed Thurmond’s mark to take second place.  Inouye also supplanted Byrd as the Senate’s President pro tempore, traditionally reserved for the majority party’s longest-serving Senator ... and thus he now stands third in presidential succession, behind the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

While the Ike metaphor has been widely noted, I’ve seen next to nothing about the makeup of the Senate into which Byrd arrived.  When the 86^th Congress convened on January 3, 1959, it was a very different body than what we see today, but it was also remarkably changed from the legislative body that had closed its second session of the 85^th Congress on August 24, 1958.  Herewith, a few observations about the United States Senate when Robert C. Byrd first joined the world’s greatest deliberative body™:

• The 1958 election was an unmitigated disaster for President Eisenhower’s party.  When its activities for the 85^th Congress were completed, the United States Senate was narrowly Democratic, 49-47, continuing a status quo of razor-thin majorities that had existed since 1950—48D-48R in the 82^nd Congress (Democratic majority only because Vice President/President of the Senate Alben Barkley broke the tie), 48R-47D-1I in the 83^rd (Wayne Morse was the Independent), 47D-47R-1ID-1I in the 84^th (Thurmond called himself “Independent Democrat”, Morse still Independent, Dems in the majority).  In a sharp break from that deadlock, the 86^th Congress’s Senate convened as a body with 64 Democrats and 34 Republicans.
• If you sum the above counts, you’ll see that the Senate had gained two members at the start of the 86^th Congress.  That’s Alaska, which had become a state in 1958.  It elected two Democrats, Territorial Governor Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening (later to gain respect as one of two Senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution).  Hawaii, admitted to the Union in 1959, would elect its first Senators in the late summer of 1959, and they (one from each party) would take office immediately thereafter.
• Not only was the 1959 freshman class large—17 members (14 D, 3 R), along with West Virginia Democrat Jennings Randolph, who filled a vacant seat in a special election and was sworn in immediately after the 1958 election—it was also very distinguished.  Among those joining Robert Byrd in taking the Senate’s oath of office for the first time were Philip A. Hart (D-MI), Edmund Muskie (D-ME), Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT), Hugh Scott, (R-PA), and Eugene J. McCarthy (D-MN).
• Except for the two Alaskans, every single Democratic freshman filled a previously-Republican seat, and all but three did so by defeating the incumbent Republican Senator.  The three GOP freshmen all succeeded retiring Republicans.
• In addition to the newly-elected Senators already discussed, the class of 1959 included (alphabetically by state):
  
  • Clair Engle, Democrat, California.  (Male, BTW.)
  • Vance Hartke, Democrat, Indiana.
  • Howard Cannon, Democrat, Nevada.  He beat the incumbent.
  • Harrison (Pete) Williams, Democrat, New Jersey.
  • Kenneth Keating, Republican, New York.
  • Stephen Young, Democrat, Ohio.  Defeated the incumbent.
  • Frank Moss, Democrat, Utah.  Ousted the incumbent.
  • Winston Prouty, Republican, Vermont.
  • Gale McGee, Democrat, Wyoming.  Another one who beat the incumbent.  (Male, BTW.)

Several of the freshman Senators in the 86^th Congress became the first Democrats to hold that particular seat in a long time.  For example, the California seat won by Engle had been Republican since 1899.  He defeated the sitting Governor in that 1958 Senate race, replacing a Senator who had retired to run for Governor(!).  Engle’s Senate predecessor also lost his race, to Pat Brown, Jerry’s father.  The Minnesota seat taken by Gene McCarthy had previously been occupied by Democrats only twice, 1858-1863 (the seat’s first occupant after statehood) and for six weeks while the Senate was in adjournment in 1900-1901.  Ed Muskie’s seat had been Republican since 1917.  For the record, Maine’s senior Senator was Republican Margaret Chase Smith, the only woman in the Senate at that time.

Even more information about the Senate in 1959 follows…