LETTER TO GLENN BECK & COMPANY June 17, 2010
Gents –
I support your desire to keep youth baseball fully competitive in nature. May I suggest a procedure by which it can also be uniquely valuable to these kids as professional players of he future?
Every inning, rotate the defensive positions. In the first inning, a given kid pitches. In the second inning, he catches. In the third, he plays first base, and so on, through all nine positions. All the other kids rotate in the same order.
I thought of this idea because I got sick of watching “my” team, the Colorado Rockies, blow all their assets on primadonna pitchers who didn’t deliver. Robert Heinlein, in his list of things a person should be able to do, said, “Specialization is for insects”. I want to make players generalists rather than specialists. And given the fact that Babe Ruth began as a pitcher and his hitting abilities were only recognized later, I believe this system would help kids achieve the best they’re capable of.
Besides, it would be fun to watch.
I’ve already written briefly about this in a novel called _The American Zone_ (as part of my _The Probability Broach_ series). I plan to write a new novel next year that focuses completely on this rotational game being played at the professional level.
Just a thought, but one that’s strongly felt,
L. Neil Smith
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments»
Well, Neil, since I find baseball boring, this might spice it up a little. But, since it is a team sport, and there is no “I” in team, I don’t tend to watch the overplayed “Boys of Summer” perform. I think perhaps making it a combination of baseball and that Mayan staple “deathball” (executing the losing team) might spice it up, too.
Nah. I’ll just watch Jerry Miculak go full auto on a 1911 at 623 rpm. Now THAT is a sport.
Actually, it was the _winning_ team that got executed, Neale, making it a genuine sacrifice of the kind Ayn Rand taught us to despise. Imagine playing to win in that game! I wonder what effect that had on Mayan genetics and the sorry course of their history.
The Brits, you may know, lost a _third_ of their non-elderly males in WWI, and lost a third again in WWII. The loss turned them into an enormous, ineffectual, jiggling bread pudding of country, run by old maids and widows — and girly-men raised by old maids and widows.
But we have digressed. I’m gonna keep throwing rotational baseball until it sticks to the wall, beginning with a Win Bear novel called _Kill the Umpire_. Baseball is a ceremony of great beauty (read Walt Whitman on the subject), and if you knew more about it (honestly, I’m not trying to be insulting here) you’d like it, too, as it has a certain appeal for the contemplative. As a beginning, I strongly urge you (and everybody else) to get ahold of _Bull Durham_, possibly the greatest baseball movie ever made.
And the funniest.
And the sexiest.
“The rose goes in front, big guy.”
A better option would be to toss the television out. You get an extra several hours a day to develop a skill or create something useful.
By the way, who got killed in those, or any, wars was and is mostly a matter of luck. So a random culling of males isn’t going to change anything genetic (and genetically, males are superfluous since they’re replaced within a generation).
It must be so or the US would surely have degenerated into passive-spectator pudding land after the enormous death toll from their war between the states..
oh..
Also, as a non-native (honorary) Brit I have to say that the people here seem a perfectly normal mix of types of people, similar to what I’ve encountered in other countries. The proportion of girly-men doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t generalize about a whole country that I hadn’t even lived in just from meeting a few people from there, or seeing something on television.
For example, I wouldn’t subscribe to the sometimes stereotype of Italians as bombastic cowards merely because of RD. My guess is that they’re regular people just like in the other countries I’ve been to.
The Bambino played most every position.
The example of the greatest player (or was that Mays?) should be good enough for everybody.
Baseball aside, LNS makes a valid point about war culling the best. Armies only induct the fit and the young and then send them off to kill or be killed. The bravest and most aggressive are likely to be the first ones killed. The short, skawny guys with bad eyes get to stay home and reproduce.
Neil- I like to play, hate to watch. I should have been more specific. But my problem has always been simple. I am not a team player. Never have been, probably never will be.
As to Asswipe- his opinions don’t matter to anyone important to me. But if he were to ever meet Da Sicilian Doc, and attempt to be the asshole he is online to Rich’s face, I think the old gentleman would surprise the hell out of him.
Last but not least, war should go by the “Cripple Shield Wall” principle. “Nuff said.
One trouble with being highly specialized to do one thing is…what do you do when that thing goes away? A pal of mine got a degree that made him an expert at old-fashioned paste-up layouts, just before the Mac computer revolutionized that field.
He works in a factory these days.
Baseball is a game. Games are supposed to be fun. Is it more fun to switch positions or always play the same one? This should answer the question for sandlot.
As for pro/ semipro, and school teams I am inclined to favor swapping positions. Maybe we should create new leagues that play that way. Please note that this would create jobs and a whole new set of stats. Comparing stats is of course half the fun for lots of true baseball afficionados.
more fun for everybody.
The central problem, IMNSOHO, is the concept of “spectator” sports in general.
I’d much rather crank the reloading press, or, better, head down to the range and pop some caps, than observe any spectator game.
Sitting down at the computer and doing some writing is good too.
BTW, got my deer tag in the mail yesterday. I’ll be up near Ely Nevada in persuit on 10 September. That’s opening day of the muzzleloading hunt for that area of Nevada this year.
Unless you are betting money or supporting kids’ effort (this includes cheering on object of affection, lustful or otherwise) spectator sports are less fun than participating. FMPOV this will not change until pole dancing is recognized as an Olympic sport, and then that depends on the attire used.
Sport should be about having fun, not generating advertising and pay per view revenue!
This rotational system would be interesting. I have no philosophical or purist objections but I need to point out a few things.
It would lead to a lot of runs as the offense would have a distinct advantage over the defense.
The reason being that fielding skills and tactics are not the same for each position. Players need to practice their positions all the time or they will not be able to play up to their ability when it counts. Plus the battery members have additional things to work on such as batter tendencies, pitch selection in certain circumstances keeping the runners honest and so forth.
In a rotational system the players are only going to get one ninth the experience, whether in practice or games, at each position which means that they will not be optimally skilled at any position.
In addition, physical attributes determine what position somebody plays. There is a reason that fast guys with play shortstop and center field and slow pokes are stationed on first and at catcher.
That means in this system you will have, at times, big, slow-footed lumberers trying to defend at shortstop while a speedster who depends on his legs and knees to make plays crouching behind the plate trying to remember what the best pitch is for this situation as his pitcher struggles to get the ball over the plate because while he has a strong outfielder type arms he does not have the micro-control needed to reliably get strike batters out or get them to hit fieldable balls.
I recall that in another thread somewhere you mentioned that the mound would be moved up which would give the batter less time to react and thus make strike-outs a bit easier.
This may be but then it also means that the pitcher is closer to the batter and has less chance of reacting to a comebacker and so I would see flinching, especially amongst non-specialists pitchers to be a problem.
In addition, moving the mound up creates a defensive hole behind the pitcher and it means that on balls hit to the first baseman where the pitcher needs to cover the bag the pitcher has a longer distance to travel to get there. Further it makes pick-off plays harder as the pitcher is farther away from the bag and at a more severe angle. So keeping runners honest is much more difficult and makes stealing easier.
While fielders will get only one ninth the experience at any given position the same is not true for batters. Even if the amount of batting practice is reduced to make time for more fielding practice batters will still get a lot more batting practice in than they do fielding which gives hitters the edge.
If I were playing in this system I would concentrate on batting skills as there would be more of a payoff. Adding a few hours of fielding practice divided by nine positions is qualitatively less useful than adding those hours to hitting practice. If you can score runs teams would want me and my general lack of fielding skills would not be noticed amongst the baseline skill level for all fielders.
Plus it is easier to practice hitting than it is fielding. Sure you can shag flies* are get grounder reps in but a lot of fielding is knowing what to do after you get the ball. And for that you need at least one other fellow (more if your practicing more complex situations) to help out and enough room to work in. Whereas in batting practice you can set up the machine yourself and all you need is enough room to set the machine far enough away and give you room to swing the bat. Hanging nets handle to balls and if the space is designed right the balls will roll back to the machine to be picked up and thrown again.
So for all these reasons it would be an offense heavy game. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
*Once I learned “shag” was a slang term for sexual intercourse the phrase “shagging flies” added a whole other and totally unwanted mental image to my imagination.
I’m sure I wasn’t intoxicated when I wrote the above. I even went over it to see if there were any mistakes.
I apologize for the high number of type-OH!s
About the other topic which sprung up, concerning who was sent to fight by the gang leaders of various countries…
In Martin van Crevald’s book Fighting Power he compares and contrasts the different approaches to war pursued by the US and Germany.
Germany DID send their best to the front. They selected and trained (both troopers and officers) for quality and their fighting doctrine was operation based, with attacks being the dominate doctrine. This meant that a large percentage of their best was always within the sound of the guns and thus in range. They had high casualties in their officer corps as a result and this led to the promotion of many NCOs to officer rank as the war went on.
The American way of war was about managing resources. Just keep shoving things at the enemy and overwhelm them. This meant that individual officers and men did not need to be as highly skilled as German troops so there was no perceived loss in keeping the better men back from the fighting. Also the US mobilized so many men that were was an over supply of officers so as they got killed off they could be easily replaced with a new poorly trained expendable. So their was not as much upward mobility in the US Army which meant that highly experienced and kick-ass NCOs tended to stay where they were and were not able to propagate what they had learned over a larger group of men than they unit they served in. Not being promoted and being forced to obey some FOB dickhead caused problems with morale.
Also, the officers kept back from the fighting were nearer to the seats of power from which promotions and plum assignments flowed so that men who had never led troops or been exposed to any sort of risk gained (not earned) promotions faster than the men who were risking it all. This also was a morale problem.
These are just a few of the reasons why the German Army was better at war fighting than the US Army. They caused more causalities and took less casualties regardless if they were attacking, defending, were numerically superior or were outnumbered.
It may be the Germans that lost their manhood on the fields of battle, not so much the US.
Gee, and yet we managed to only take 300,000 deaths fighting a three front war.
of course it can be argued that the real war in Europe was the Russian front and that the war in Italy and the Normandy landings were just commando raids to distract Schicklgruber from pursuing his fight with Dzhugashvili.
Enjoy the company of Audie Murphy and General MCAuliffe’s ghosts.
Sorry about sarcastic tone of previous comment. That said, given that Americans were fighting in The European Theater of Operations, the Pacific Theater, and the China Burma India Theater against enemy troops that had something like three years of experience on them we seem to have done Okay. Also it is reported that the Germans had problems during the Battle of the Bulge because the Americans fought harder than expected, holding positions longer than the Germans had planned and thus leaving the Germans without resources to complete their objectives.
Given this it is a little ironic that Americans fought by managing resources while the Germans fought by being better trained and led.
Audie Murphy worked his way up to Second Lieutenant serving in Combat and was promoted to First Lieutenant and reassigned to liaison work in February of 1945.
McAuliffe is known by the nickname “Nuts” for his reply when the German General he was facing at Bastogne graciously offered him a chance to surrender.
That was one of the weaknesses of the German doctrine.
If the outmaneuvered enemy didn’t surrender The Germans were forced into a stand up fight which cost them a lot of resources. The Germans were overwhelmingly focused on attack operations therefore things like logistics, siege trains and all the little ancillary things that go with a war effort were given correspondingly less attention which made it difficult for them in such situations.
For various reasons the French did not stand and fight and left only little pockets of resistance for follow on troops to reduce. However in Russia, the next year, those cut-off troops did not surrender en masse which meant the Germans lost a lot of time and men and material in reducing those concentrations and it is this that cost them the war.
And my point wasn’t that the US Army didn’t have any good troops in the field it was that the system did not select for excellence as did the German system because it wasn’t as important. Troops were cheap and there were a lot of them so it made no sense nor would it have been possible to train them all to German standards. And as you will see below you would not want to train them like that.
US troops were shabbily treated from induction all the way to placement in a unit and even when wounded. I cannot summarize all the points in the book but I will point out that the US Army was not very interested in the individual whereas the German Army was. They did this to maximize the fighting power of each soldier and by doing so the unit he belonged to and the army as a whole.
This led to well trained and led units but it also meant that those troops were more willing to commit atrocities than were American troops.
Generally, American troops committed individual crimes such as robbery, rape and murder of individuals while German troops committed mass crimes such as massacring civilians and POWs, looting national treasures and waging an aggressive war in the first place.
So by concentrating on the individual, the Germans molded men into groups that were quite willing and able to commit evil as a matter of course where the US Army treated men, as socialists and communists are wont to, as a disposable resource which left the men (most of them) unwilling to act out such horrors.
So by concentrating on individuals the Germans created practitioners of group think while by treating men as parts of a group the Americans left their individual integrity intact.
The Germans often complained of our bass ackwards approach to war and its peculiar effectiveness (and its truly stupid and surprising failures, consider the German military slang, Ronson)
Back to original topic more or less:
What is it with the 19th Century sentence structure used by the guys calling games. E.g.:” high over the left field wall did Jeter hit that home run.”
I like it but americans haven’t spoken that way regularly since the 1920’s or even earlier.
I would like to combine the two topics but my sources are silent on how the US or German High Commands viewed the concept of Rotational Baseball.
I’m sure that they both based their opinion on instilling respect for doctrine and proper procedure rather than having fun.
Al, I believe that “Ronson” was British slang, not German (”Lights up the first time, every time!”). German slang for that particular piece of kit was “tommycooker” and the problem apparently had little to do with it’s gasoline engine (as is often reported) but rather the ammo storage locations.
Back to the original topic, it might be worthwhile looking at the history of volleyball for ideas on how rotational baseball might actually work out and evolve…there is tension in volleyball between the rotation aspects of the game and the specialist aspects particularly in the different variations. I strongly suspect that rotational baseball would evolve to be a quite different game than “our” baseball, particularly in the N. A. Confederacy where the pro leagues would not have a government mandated monopoly.
I keep thinking a new set of leagues using the rotational system could be set up in parallel with the current positional leagues. The game]s would be as different as soccer and rugby, if not soccer and American gridiron football/
The point would be for players and maybe spectators to have fun.
Neil, have you sent your book (TPB) to Glenn Beck. Everytime he talks about a book it goes to No. 1.
Thank you, Iris. I can’t say I’m overly fond of Mr. Beck. His religiosity — or maybe his repentance — make my teeth itch, as a friend of mine is fond of saying. I just know so many other people with a similar life story.
On the other hand, I don’t know anybody I agree with 100% about everything. That’s probably impossible, and certainly undesirable.
So I will take your kindly advice, and see whether I can’t get _TPB_ or one of my other books to the guy. It would be fun to see my long-suffering family finally enjoying more of life than they can now.
Totally off topic but worthy of a yay:
Supreme court Rules that 14th Amendment binds the states to respect 2nd Amendment right of individuals to keep and gear arms!
Sadly, they allow “reasonable restrictions”. Daley has already said requiring licenses, registration, Liability insurance, and banning the possession of ammunition are ALL on the table. We may have the right to own a gun, but we don’t, apparently, have the Constitutional right to the ammo for it!! I move we all turn in our ammo to the appropriate authorities immediately.
READY!!!!!
AIM!!!!!!
FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
REPEAT UNTIL ALL AMMO HAS BEEN SURRENDERED TO DALEY AND FRIENDS.
Mac v. C is one victory in a long fight. Overthrowing “reasonable restrictions” are part of the rest of the struggle.
Those of you on my mailing list have had to put up with me gushing about MacDonald since about 10 AM of yhe day it was announced. Here’s why:
a. With Heller, MacDonald ends for the time being claims that there is no individual right to keep and bear arms. I’d rather fight “reasonable regulations” than a belief by the state that I have no right to arm myself.
b. one of the pretexts for passing the 14th Amendment was to overthrow Black Codes that banned gun ownership by Black people after the War of the Secession. Of course it therefor applied to protect all people’s RKBA. Seeing a law intended to protect rights actually applied to protect rights is emotionally satisfying.
C. Heller and MacDonald assert that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. In trying to get past the Second Amendment various leftists have claimed that the Second Amendment was meant to protect a collective RKBA of a community. This interpretation, if upheld, would have opened the door for erasing the concept of individual value of the person and reduced us to only being part of a collective.
You would gave no value as you, only as part of us. In the words of Eddie Murphy, “fuck that shit.”
Heller and MacDonald have closed one of the doors into that hell.
Being me and opposed to seriousness I must point out that the ostensible goal of “reasonable gun laws” is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. If this is so, Mayor Dalet will never own a gun.
Al- all good points, and I, for one, will never uit the fight, even after the battle is won. “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” (probably misquoted, but close enough.)
Don’t you recognize that it’s the best time to receive the home loans, which would make your dreams come true.
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How a discussion on Glenn Beck and rotational baseball “went rogue” into an exchange on German versus American tactical doctrines during World War II….
Ah, the hell with it. Indulge.
I’m a very old wargamer - a “grognard” - with an extensive military library and some half-assed published credit in this area, so I’ve got to be careful getting into this. The line being taken by Warren is kinda right, but not completely. I would direct attention to the writings of Jim Dunnigan and his bunch of ex-SPI guys (start with http://www.StrategyPage.com) and go from there.
A friend of mine who had done active service in USAEUR during the ’60s told me about a bar session in on which he’d sat with a bunch of other young U.S. Army officers quizzing an old Wehrmacht officer serving in the Bundeswehr.
“Who had the best infantry you had to fight against?”
“Oh, the British. Consistently professional, very well led.”
“Next best?”
“The Russians. Poorly trained, but absolutely fanatical.”
Disappointment. “Didn’t you fight against us Americans?”
“Oh, yes. But I never fought against American infantry.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, you see with the British, they would bombard us with artillery, and then their infantry would assault, and we would either throw them back or be forced to withdraw. With the Russians, it was much the same. Artillery, then attack.
“But with the Americans, the artillery would start coming in. And it would keep coming in. And keep on coming in, worse and worse.
“And if you did not withdraw, the American artillery simply destroyed you.
“So I never fought against the American infantry.”
And that about says it. Yes, there were American infantry assaults - and defenses - in combat against the Germans in World War II, but the American fighting doctrine definitely de-emphasized infantry tactics in favor of “mechanized” warfare, with stress upon heavy, HEAVY firepower.
The Brits had the “stonk.” The Germans had some pretty good artillery, too.
But the U.S. Army invented “time on target,” and coordinated cannon like nobody else in history. They didn’t need to do the Russians’ “wheel-to-wheel” crap. The redlegs simply tied everything together by phone and radio and put the hammer down, coordinating stuff from corps-level assets (considerable!) down through divisional artillery battalions, regimental cannon companies, and even 4.2 inch chemical mortar companies and tank platoons throwing 75mm high explosive rounds from fixed positions on drive-up dirt ramps.
Historian T.R. Fehrenbach (*This Kind of War*) once observed something to the effect that the Europeans fighting in the U.N. forces in Korea came to realize that if an American infantry commander came under fire from a sniper perched under the eaves in the Louvre, that 0-2 would not hesitate to bring down eight or ten battalions of medium and heavy artillery on that building - “priceless” art be damned - and blow it completely away rather than lose a single man digging out that sniper with grenades and small arms.
They did NOT want Americans ever to find themselves “up against the wall” against the Warsaw Pact in Western Europe, and therefore they pitched in with considerable enthusiasm to keep NATO ground forces along the inter-German border a credible conventional deterrent.
Cheaper by far than having an American army “go to the mattresses” anywhere near where you live.
As for Glenn Beck….
Feh. Too much the religious traditionalist brand of conservative. I quote from F.A. Hayek:
“As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such, while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead. There would not be much to object to if the conservatives merely disliked too rapid change in institutions and public policy; here the case for caution and slow process is indeed strong. But the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the [classical] liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.”
He goes on to observe that the conservative really has NO friggin’ principles whatsoever, and that sure as hell fits Glenn Beck when you get right down to it.
The reason that so many libertarians are SF fen - essentially futurists - is that the libertarian mindset is ANTI-conservative in every real sense imaginable.
We understand that purposeful human action, unrestrained by government thuggery, will result in changes that might well upset some applecarts. Gotta happen. GONNA happen.
Well, little kids outgrow their shoes. What the hell are you going to do about it? Foot-binding?
No, you gut it up and shop for shoes.
The conservatives are - and I really cannot think of a better term for ‘em - cement-heads.
Glenn Beck is just another theatrical cement-head. Going “goshwow” at Hayek’s *The Road to Serfdom* while ignoring the man’s later *Constitution of Liberty*.
And especially ignoring the closing essay in that latter book, “Why I Am Not a Conservative.”
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We can use the conservatives’ heads to build the wall of our ballfield. there, back on track
What’s going on with Wikipedia?
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“Wiki-bloody-pedia,” the online information source that has been co-opted by gun-grabbers, global warming fraudsters, and other enemies of individual rights?
What the hell is NOT “going on with Wikipedia?”
Is there some sort of problem that can be explicitly described?
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Speaking of Wikipedia sent correction today on article regarding Roswell Texas. Pointed out that Wild Bill Bear is RT’s universe’s analog of Win Bear’s dad, not Win Bear himself (as was pointed out to me back when).
time to seize back Wikipedia by submitting articles of libertarian bent and/or creating alternative on line site from a libertarian point of view.
Meanwhile am suffering from too much time living among statists, even statists who love freedom but aren’t quite sure what to do about it. Save me, Save me!!
You think YOU’VE got statist problems! I have an entire state that actually thinks we are gonna successfully TAX ourselves out of the hole and on to Easy St. At least SOME Texans believe in personal freedoms. Here, we have people who have actually said to me, WORD FOR WORD, that “Americans have too many rights. We need to learn to be more like the reast of the world and restrict some rights. Otherwise, Europe and Asia will NEVER like us.” And “Just because it is in the Bill Of Rights, that doesn’t mean we have to do it anymore. That is such an outdated pile of ideas.” Got a spare bedroom or 6???
Neale, when somebody hands you any of that crap, ask them if they’re bucking for a job as a concentration camp guard, because that’s sure as hell what it sounds like.
You can also go to gun shows and other meetings and distribute this graphic: [TURNS OUT THAT THIS SOFTWARE WON'T LET ME GIVE YOU THE URL -- PUT "SCOTT BIESER" IN YOUR BROWSER BAR, GO TO THE SITE, LOOK FOR "POSTERS" AND FIND "SOCIALISM IS FOREVER"]. You can print it out in mass quantities from the site (don’t tell Scott I told you that — be sure and credit it correctly) or you can buy a big version of the poster from CafePress. The URL is on that page if you scroll down a little.
Scott also has a version that eliminates the three words at the bottom and just makes the flat statement that comprises the poster itself. You’ll have to ask him where it is.
It’s time to start hitting these morons below the belt where they’d keep their cojones if they had any. We don’t have any time left to be subtle or polite.
actually I was complaining about their negative effect on my immorals.
Meanwhile such people those who advocate that people give up liberty should be invited to the gulag of their choice where they can enjoy the socialist blessings they want for the rest of us. For example I have suggested elsewhere that those politicians who would impose gun control laws on the rest of us should only be allowed to hold office if they can pack heat according to the laws they would (and have) impose(d) on everyone else. Everyone should practice Vermont carry. These gits chose these rules, let them live by their own rules.
see what I mean? I’m starting to buy into the myth of using one tyrannical act to correct another. save me, save me!!
Speaking of baseball. Many years ago it came up in a discussion of 1920’s pop culture whether or not the Bambino was the the greatest ball player ever. One of My kids who had a hatful of labels on him proceeded to give a tutorial on who the greatest player was and tossed in comparing the differences between the rules of the Twenties and later time periods. He made me look ignorant about baseball but for that moment he got to shine bright as the sun and to rise above the labels, It was worth it,
Same kid had earlier made comment that one of the problems leading to Columbine type incidents was that cheerleaders would never date the likes of him not so much out of snobbery (though that was indeed an issue) as out of cliqueishness. One of the cheerleaders in class promptly and sincerely offered to date him.
Another student in another class pointed out that he had been to Columbine for a baseball camp a year before the shootings and saw graffiti warning that such an incident was coming.
It is amazing how much signs like these and hearing what the kids have to say are ignored and that instead repression is used to “create a positive learning atmosphere” to the point where the school systems have forgotten anything else is possible.