Posted 3:00 PM by Floyd

Augh! How can I watch any more baseball games ever?! Let's list the horrifying events of the last two weeks (using patented UL technology):

• The Oakland A's have a three-year streak of futility in the first round of the playoffs. This year they play the dangerous Boston Red Sox, and win the first two games. Then they fumble away Game 3. Then they take a lead in Game 4 (at which point I started screaming, on my way to Orchard Supply Hardware: YEAH! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU YOU BOSTON MOTHERFUCKERS!) Then the Sox come back and win. Then the teams return to Oakland for Game 5. Zito pitches beatifully but runs out of hammer juice. The A's chip away at the Sox lead. In the 9th inning they get two men on base with no outs, load the bases with two outs, and lose.
  
• The Chicago Cubs, favorite team of The Declarer's sainted mother, beat the Atlanta Braves. They slam the Marlins and take a 3-1 lead. Then Dusty Baker leaves his pitcher in the game until his arm falls off. Cubs lose three straight.
  
• The Boston Red Sox are down 3-2 to the Yankees. No problem, they are loose. They win Game 6. They take a 4-0 lead in Game 7. Then Pedro Martinez runs out of hammer juice, and Grady Little leaves him in until NO! NO! I CAN'T WRITE THIS AGAIN! FIGURE OUT A NEW WAY TO CHOKE! STOP TORTURING ME!
  

Obligatory stupid sportswriting, from the SF Chronicle's Bruce Jenkins:

Manager Grady Little will be roasted on the Boston talk shows all winter after his handling of the Boston pitching staff Thursday night. People will be calling for his head, and they just might get it. That's a shame. Little managed with his heart in this Game 7, and too few people understand what that means. Know-nothing critics ripped Dusty Baker for staying with Mark Prior in the Cubs' fateful Game 6 against Florida, forgetting everything about the team and the people involved. The Cubs' entire world revolved around Prior winning that game -- not some stiff out of the bullpen. Prior is the National League's best pitcher, known for starting what he finishes. Giving him the hook amounted to building a movie around Sean Penn, then replacing him with the governor of California for the final scenes.

Are you mad? The Cubs want to go to the World Series. If Baker dressed up a goose and it threw strikes they would be happy winning. These are major league ballplayers, not a focus group for shmaltzy feel-good movie scriptwriting.

Little wasn't blind to the remarkable success of the Red Sox's bullpen lately. He also knew the deeper truth, that you don't replace the game's most genius-like pitcher with someone named Timlin, Embree or Williamson if the genius wants to keep working.

Pedro Martinez is less effective after 100 pitches. This is not a fucking movie. Yank his ass, pat him on the back, and get a fresh pitcher in to win the game.

Martinez did his job, too. He coaxed a dreadful little pop-up out of Jorge Posada in the eighth inning, the blooper that turned into a two-run double and a 5-5 tie.

"Pedro has been our man all year long," said Little, "and in situations like that, he's the one we want out there -- over anybody we can bring out of that bullpen."

Absolutely. Big games must be decided by the big people, whenever possible, and that's certainly why the Yankees are about to host the Florida Marlins in the World Series.

That certainly is why the Yankees are about to host the Marlins. But not for the reason that Jenkins imagined.

Posted 7:03 PM by Floyd

It's Fractured Metaphor Day at the San Jose Mercury News letters page:

Contestant 1:

If you believe the pundits, California was like a train heading to a bad place. A majority of people on the train (voters) decided to oust the engineer.

The new engineer has appointed a transition team of passengers, many of whom were responsible for the train going to a bad place. What's insane is to expect the replacement engineer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to take the train (California) to a better place with the same old passengers running the train.

Robert Prentiss
San Francisco

Aren't people on the train called "passengers"? Do passengers run the train? Not the last time I looked. And isn't all of this moot because a train goes where its track leads it? I mean, have you ever seen a train make a right turn, or turn around?

Note Prentiss' helpful hints in parentheses. Robert, I can understand metaphors -- as long as they come from literate human beings.

The next entry is pithier, but not more comprehensible:

No more paint

The president has painted our nation into a corner in Iraq and is asking for more paint.

Congress must not approve his $87 billion request without an account of what went wrong and what will be done differently now.

Gregory Faris
Menlo Park

So if $87 billion is paint, then George Bush must have originally painted himself into a corner in Iraq by means of ... a lot of money? No, he invaded Iraq with America's armed forces.

Traditionally, people who have painted themselves in a corner are in trouble because they can't move -- not because they want more paint.

Posted 3:56 PM by Floyd

The San Jose Mercury News publishes letters from schoolkids on Saturdays. These opinions are usually awful, but even the youngest letter-writer isn't as dumb as this grownup:

Wildlife victimized by feral cats

Regarding the outcry about the feeding of feral cats along the Guadalupe River (Page 3B, Oct.):

Will anyone ever speak up for all the wildlife that is killed by feral cats? Why don't these cat lovers talk about all the songbirds, frogs, lizards and mice that are being killed by these cats?

While cats and dogs are fed with a silver spoon, we have wildlife that is suffering -- wildlife that is in major decline in our urban wildlife corridors. Feral cats are a major contributor to the songbird population decline in our wild places. Feral cats do not belong in wildlife corridors.

These cat lovers need to look at the big picture. They need to understand that feral cats do major harm to our wildlife and need to be eliminated from our wildlife areas.

John B. Wardell
Santa Clara

What does "feral" mean? It means, uh, "wild." The statement "feral cats do major harm to our wildlife" can be restated as "wildlife does major harm to our wildlife". If you really looked at the "big picture" you would realize that songbirds are tasty, and other wildlife want to eat them.

An "urban wildlife corridor" -- also known as a "park" -- is in close proximity to lots of pet cats and dogs. The only way to guarantee the existence of every songbird who lives near the Guadalupe River would be to exterminate every cat in the San Jose metropolitan area. I imagine that Wardell is just weird and senile enough to desire this.

Posted 8:17 PM by Floyd

Read it and weep, homies: The Caroline Club conquers again. Here are two interesting hands from the semifinal match, which we won by 5 imps after trailing by 2 at halftime.

1. Vulnerable v. not, you deal hold: AQxxxx Kxxx — KQx. You open 1 and LHO preempts with 4. Partner bids 5. What do you do when RHO passes?

2. All vulnerable, you hold in fourth chair: Txx — AT98xxx Axx. LHO opens 1, partner overcalls 1, and RHO bids 3, which is a preemptive raise. What now?

Let's suppose you bid 4. LHO bids 5 and partner and RHO pass. What now?

The first hand was held by my left-hand opponent and by my teammate Eric. At our table, my partner Scott preeempted 4D. Opener decided to bid his void, 6. His partner held Kxxxx Ax AT AJxx. He didn't like the diamond void opposite his ace and decided not to risk the grand.

Eric risked 5. He was cue-bidding a king but had very powerful offense. This led to a slower cue-bidding sequence (6 - 6) and Brian was able to bid the grand. This gained us 13 imps.

The second hand was my bidding problem. I chose to bid 4 to set up a force. When partner passed I decided that with a void and good offense, I should bid 5. RHO also thought I should bid, as he had Qxxxx of trumps!

He led a heart and Scott, with AKJ9x xxx K Kxxx, ruffed. Diamond to the queen and king, heart ruff. Club to the king, heart ruff. Now the diamond ace dropped the jack! Scott shed two more clubs on diamonds. RHO got two trumps and we were +850 -- for a push!

Posted 10:54 AM by Floyd

Kepler spent years fitting the positions of planets into his laws of elliptical orbits. Then there is Evan Kirchhoff, who spent his entire youth puzzling out the lyrics to Chess:

(* footnote for people under 20: there was no internet in the 80s, so it was literally impossible to solve problems of this kind.)

Posted 9:49 PM by Floyd

One peculiar tic that afflicts political reporters is that they believe that certain politicians are beloved by the people. (Said politicians always seem to be Democrats, but maybe there is sample bias from my living in California.) For instance, here are two recent blog entries from Mickey Kaus:

[Quoting David Broder:] A man who I was talking to said, "If Leon Panetta's name had gone on the ballot as an alternative, he would be winning this race hands down.

How long before California Democrats, in their recriminations, turn the blame against popular U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein? She could have saved them from the Davis debacle--if she'd entered the race she almost certainly would have won; Schwarzenegger might well have stayed out.

I am sure that for moderate-liberal politics junkies like Broder and Kaus, Panetta and Feinstein have the same cachet that, say, Brett Favre has to a football fan. But most Californians have a dim awareness that Feinstein is one of their senators ("How many does each state get? I think it's two.") I would wager that 95% of adult Golden Staters could not tell you who Leon Panetta is. Maybe Panetta and Feinstein did not have a magical ability to beat Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe Schwarzenegger would have pasted them as handily as he did his actual opposition.

Posted 2:13 PM by Floyd

A very busy weekend. Yesterday I played with my friends Scott, Eric and Brian in a three-round knockout in Santa Cruz. Scott lives forty minutes the opposite direction of Santa Cruz, so he came by Friday night and slept over. We woke up at 7 a.m. and left at 7:40. We drove on routes 84, 280, 85, and 17, and arrived at the site after an hour of driving.

There will be some detailed bridgeblogging later, but suffice it to say that we won. We played a good team at 9 a.m. and beat them handily, played another good team at 1 p.m. and won by only 5 imps, and then won the 7 p.m. final.

Sherry's relatives are coming over today, so I am busy cleaning. In addition I need to finish the powerwashing of our redwood deck.