Southern Bookman

Braves' trip to Oakland raises sympathy for suffering A's fans

The Braves' misbegotten trip to Oakland brings home the wreck of a once great franchise.

I'll go on record: I don't like the so-called "balanced schedule." Call me Mr. Boomer, but I want the Braves to play National League teams.

A few series against the Red Sox, Yankees or Orioles is fine, but I grew up loving National League ball. OK, I've accepted the designated hitter in the "senior circuit."

Seeing the nearly empty Oakland Coliseum, notorious for its sewer problems, broken bathrooms and rodents, I sympathize with A's fans.

A few hearty survivors of the Athletics' glory days still show up to the deteriorating civic ruin, wearing the team's classic green and gold uniforms to cheer their team on. I felt a pang of sadness watching a dad eating hot dogs with his little boy, who wore an A's cap.

Under owner John Fisher, a Gap clothing chain heir, the former Money Ball wonders have traded away players like the Braves' Matt Olson and Sean Murphy. Competitive for years in the American League West, the A's are now headed for the worst season in major league history.

Yet, the National League East leading Braves have dropped two straight to the woebegone A's before Wednesday's series- concluding game.

After a dreadful cross-country overnight flight from Atlanta, the Braves had to play an early afternoon game on Memorial Day, losing 7-2.

A military officer delivered a spine-tingling performance of "God Bless America" to nearly empty seats. The small wave of applause was poignant, marking the end of a love affair between a city and its team.

Despite the Braves' sleep-walking performance, Atlanta fans saw hope in the return of  pitcher Mike Soroka from two devastating injuries.

Soroka appeared fine until giving up four runs in one inning, including a home run, to a barely major league lineup. While wishing still young Mike the best, I fear what will happen when he goes up against a team like the Dodgers or Yankees.

The Athletics' decline is among the saddest stories of America's sports-obsessed, late capitalist economy. 

Unable to reach a deal with the city of Oakland for a new stadium, Fisher is laying the foundation for an ill-considered move to Las Vegas, to join the NFL's Raiders, which once played before full houses of adoring fans in Oakland.

The money-hungry Fisher has enticed Las Vegas officials to give up some of their gambling loot for a 30,000-seat stadium somewhere on the desert city's fabulous strip.

Major League baseball apparently supports the move, subject to approval by the other owners. While Vegas fans turn out for the Raiders and a Stanley Cup-worthy hockey team, the desert city appears too small to support baseball. Those 100-degree days will require a roof and heavy air conditioning.

Commissioner Rob Manfred's backing for the A's move to Vegas raises questions, when more worthy cities like Charlotte, Nashville and Portland are hungry for baseball.

Once professional sports shunned Vegas because of its gambling industry. Now, with sports betting frequently touted on NBA, NFL and Major League broadcasts, Vegas is a pro sports shrine.

The Athletics have always been a boom or bust franchise. In Philadelphia early in the 20th century, Connie Mack built some of baseball's greatest teams, then dismantled them.

The vagabond franchise wandered to Kansas City and Oakland, where outlaw owner Charlie O. Finley won three straight championships in the 1970s, then traded away stars like Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter.

During the Moneyball years, the A's developed great young talent, yet were never ever to win another World Series. With all of its stars playing elsewhere, Fisher's decimated team struggles to draw 5,000 fans.

Gritty, majority black Oakland once proudly cheered for the Raiders, the A's and the NBA Warriors. Now San Francisco's bluesy sibling by the bay will be left with no team, and a desolate coliseum.

Early days of baseball come alive in Lawrence S. Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times"

Lawrence S. Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It" is the former National Pastime's Old Testament or Illiad.

First published in 1966, the book collects first-person interviews of players from the early days of major league baseball, when each small town in America had its own team. The collection has been reprinted several times, the latest in 2010.

Ritter traveled around the country to track down baseball's pioneers from the early 20th century through the Depression era, when baseball was by far the national sport, drawing big crowds and intense interest across the country. 

Players like Rube Marquard, Sam Crawford, Fred Snodgrass, Chief Meyers, Babe Herman, Lefty O'Doul, Goose Goslin, Hank Greenberg and Paul Waner recall their brief years of stardom.

Their stories trace the game's progress from the dead ball era through the rise of the home run. In the early days, pitchers threw spitters and altered baseballs. Scuffed and misshapened balls remained in play.

Powerhouse teams like the New York Giants and Boston Red Sox drew large numbers of fans who were allowed to sit along the foul lines or in the outfield.

Several famous incidents receive repeated attention. Two involved the Giants: Fred Merkle's failure to touch second base in a game against the Chicago Cubs in 1908 that led to the Cubs winning the pennant over the Giants and Fred Snodgrass's dropping a fly ball in the 1912 World Series, a factor in the Red Sox' win over the Giants.

Bill Wambsganns entertainingly explains his unassisted triple play for the Cleveland Indians against the Brooklyn Robins, aka as the Dodgers, in the 1920 World Series.

The Indians won the American League pennant and World Series after the death of popular shortstop Ray Chapman, who died after a pitch struck him in the head. Wambsganns expresses his sorrow over his teammate, the only player who ever died from an injury received during a game.

Mythical heroes like Honus Wagner, John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb,  Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Frank Chance and Joe Tinker keep recurring throughout the book.

"The Glory of Their Times" started the baseball nostalgia movement, leading to the appearance of later classics like Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer" and renewed interest in the Negro Leagues.

The book's photos show the old-timers as young men. Their voices sparkle with the energy of an era when baseball and America shared the same story.

 

Memorial Day brings reflections on Civil War's momentous year

Memorial Day arrived on the 160th anniversary of the Civil War's pivotal year.

After the disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg in late 1862, Lincoln's Union forces in 1863 turned the tide against the Confederacy.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, and Congress enacted a national draft in March. Jefferson Davis' Confederacy also imposed a draft, stirring outrage among Southern advocates of states' rights. Lincoln's draft also drew intense opposition, yet the Union prevailed.

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in May 1863 defeated Joe Hooker's Grand Army of the Republic at Chancellorsville, a few miles away from Fredericksburg, but the victory came with a heavy loss of lives.

The losses included brilliant Confederate tactician and relentless warrior Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, mistakenly wounded by Rebel soldiers who thought Jackson a member of a Union patrol as he returned from a scouting mission with his staff on the evening of May 2. Jackson's forces had just carried out a successful surprise attack from a heavily wooded area known as the Wilderness.

Jackson's left arm was amputated, and he died at home eight days after he was shot. Lee mourned the loss of his most trusted lieutenant.

In July, the Union defeated Lee's invading army at Gettysburg, and the South's Vicksburg fell, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River. While losing at Chickamauga, the Union set the stage for Sherman's March to the Sea with victories in Tennessee.

Lincoln capped the momentous year with his Gettysburg Address in November, calling forth a "new birth of freedom." Schoolchildren used to memorize Lincoln's speech when history and civics were taught in American classrooms.

After the Union gains in 1863, the war lasted for two more difficult years, with an appalling tally of deaths. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, after the Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox.

The abandonment of Reconstruction led to the restoration of white supremacy in the South, with Jim Crow laws and the horrible spread of lynching, even carried out against black veterans of World War II, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently documented. The GOP, long removed from Lincoln's ideals, doesn't want students to learn such disturbing historic truths.

Begun in 1868 as "Decoration Day" to place flowers on the graves of slain Union soldiers, Memorial Day now honors all Americans killed in wars.

After 160 years, and those sacrifices, Lincoln's vision is far from complete.

 

 

 

Highly deveoped Mayan network of cities, super highways revealed

When I was a young man, a friend of mine and I traveled to ancient Mayan ruins in the North Guatemalan jungle.

We flew on a small plane from Guatemala City to the site of Tikal, a city that flourished from 200 to 900 A.D., the high point of Mayan civilization.

Uncovered from dense vegetation that had overgrown the ancient buildings, the site includes the famous 184-foot-tall "Jaguar temple" pyramid and mysterious passageways decorated with the Mayans' artwork, writings, religious symbols and sophisticated calendars.

A Guatemalan whom I met on our trip to the central American country gave me a tile painting of the Tikal pyramid emerging from the rainforest. The artwork still hangs on my office wall some 50 years later.

Like others who've visited Mayan sites, I was astonished at the Mayans' accomplishments and perplexed about their mysterious collapse.

We saw their descendants in small villages, selling crafts and produce in markets and carrying out Mayan-influenced rituals at a Catholic Mass.

My admiration for the Mayans again took flight when I read a recent report that their civilization was even more advanced than previously believed.

Scientists using sophisticated radar technology to peer beneath the dense jungle have discovered 417 Mayan cities connected by nearly 110 miles of super highways, dating back to 1,000 B.C., according to a recent article by Washington Post reporter Charlotte Lyon.

The highway network found beneath 1,350 square miles of Guatemala's El Mirador jungle region represents "the first freeway system in the world," the article said.

New evidence of the Mayans' well-organized economic, political and social system means that they were not "hunter-gatherers" as long believed, the article said.

Begun in 2015, the investigations using lidar, or light detection and ranging technology, have uncovered a new chapter in human history.  The new discoveries confirm that Mayan innovations rivaled or surpassed those of ancient Egypt, Greece and other cultures seen as the foundation of Western civilization.

The Mayans were carrying out complex economic transactions and developing elaborate social structures long before Europeans came to the new world.

Although they lived long ago, the Mayans were like us, experiencing a world of wonder and creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Tina Turner, an American original

I felt unexpected sadness at Tina Turner's death.

Driving home from Sandy Springs, listening to the '60s channel on Sirius/XM satellite radio, I heard about the great entertainer's death at age 83 at her home near Zurich, Switzerland. She'd suffered from a range of illnesses.

Overcoming debt and career reversals, Tina achieved superstardom relatively late in life, a triumph of perseverance and innovative talent.

After announcing Tina's death, disc jockey Pat St. John strangely played "Proud Mary," the Grammy Award-winning hit she recorded with her abusive husband, Ike Turner before she courageously escaped from his control. It's too bad St. John didn't play one of the songs that brought her fame as a solo artist.

Tina's dynamic stage performances overshadowed her singing. She had a distinctive voice, rising from a low register to impressive power. She fully expressed the desolation of the sexual hookup culture on her biggest hit, "What's Love Got to Do With It?"

Love had everything to do with her career. With all of her star power, she displayed an empathy with her fans, giving courage to women like her caught in abusive relationships.

She traveled a long way from her childhood home in rural Tennessee near the Mississippi River. She never lost her small-town optimism and courage to succeed.

 

New biographies give updated evaluations of Martin Luther King Jr., George Orwell

Martin Luther King Jr. and George Orwell both changed the world through language and ideas.

King and Orwell receive fresh evaluations in recently released major biographies.

Jonathan Eig's life of King presents the fullest portrait yet of the slain civil rights leader, according to reviews and articles. Eig was the first King biographer to examine recently released FBI files involving King.

Author D.J. Taylor gives a similar updated evaluation of the author of "1984," "Animal Farm" and classic essays.

Taylor investigated recently released documents for his "New Life" of Orwell, which updates his previous biography of the writer, published in 2003.

Eig, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote acclaimed biographies of Muhammad Ali and Lou Gehrig, told the Guardian that he had access to thousands of FBI documents, which include the agency's recordings of King during extramarital affairs. J. Edgar Hoover's organization attempted to blackmail King with the recordings.

The biography also discloses tha King's often repeated criticism of Malcolm X was based on an inaccurate interview by author Alex Haley and that the two civil rights giants admired each other. The book shows King as more radical than the standard portrayal.

Orwell and King shared a belief in the truthful use of language and the advancement of human freedom.

The two major biographies affirm their continued relevance.

Nikola Jokic and the art of passing

The pass is to basketball what the bunt is to baseball, a special skill of precision and beauty.

The Denver Nuggets' unicorn wonder Nikola Jokic's shooting reminds me of a master organ player commanding a full range of notes. He's a prodigious rebounder. But I'm most amazed by Jokic's virtuoso passing.

Jokic Monday night led the Nuggets to a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference finals with his eighth triple double of the playoffs, breaking Wilt Chamberlain's record. He scored 30 points on a variety of inside and outside shots, and pulled down 14 rebounds. But Jokic reached a higher level with his passing, totaling 13 assists.

The 6-11 Serbian pulls off unbelievable baskets like the three-pointer he hit late in the game with the shot clock running down. From about 40 feet, Jokic shot from behind his head with the Lakers' hapless Anthony Davis bearing down. Somehow, the ball rose on a rainbow arc, watched in unison by the Lakers' disbelieving fans, and plummeted through the net.

Despite some late game efforts by Davis and the intrepid LeBron James, the Nuggets prevailed over the Lakers and their house full of Hollywood stars to reach the NBA finals for the first time in team history. 

Jokic's passing thrilled me the most. Like the NFL's Patrick Mahomes, Jokic stirs wonder at how he creates such magic. The big guy steers the ball through tiny spaces in a crunch of bodies. Jokic's cross-court laser beams dart like a great outfielder's throws to home plate, revealing sports' breath-taking beauty. .

Like opera lovers rating tenors, NBA connoisseurs will compare Jokic to passing masters like Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich, Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Bill Walton.

Don't call Jokic the Joker. Call him maestro.

Farewell Martin Amis, prominent British novelist

Martin Amis' death last week at the age of 73 brought a shock of recognition.

I saw the British writer expatriated to the United States as perpetually youthful. In my mind, he had never changed from the brash novelist who shocked the literary world in the late 1980s and early '90s with his novels "Money," "Time's Arrow" and "London Fields."

That Amis was a only year older than me when he died at his home in Lake Worth,  Fla., was a memento mori.

Like his close friend and literary combatant Christopher Hitchens, Amis was a victim of esophageal cancer. All of those cigarettes, alcoholic binges, sarcastic jokes and literary battles took their toll on England's former literary outlaws.

As with Monty Python's comedy, Amis' novels were too smugly British for me. But "Experience," his 2000 memoir, was one of the best books of his generation, and I consumed the literary essays collected in Amis's  "The War Against Cliche" like a plate of fine oysters.

"Experience" warmly praised Amis's father, the lauded novelist Kingsley Amis, and Kingsley's contemporaries Philip Larkin and Saul Bellow. The book also presented a lively account of literary London in the 1970s and 1980s, including Hitchens and other then young stars.

Martin Amis showed a compassionate side with his expression of grief for his murdered cousin, Lucy Partington. Reading his heartbreaking lament for the young woman, I also felt deep sorrow and sense of loss.

Over the years, I read accounts of Amis and his circle in memoirs by Hitchens and noted biographer Claire Tomalin, one of Amis's paramours when they were both young literary celebrities.

Like Hitchens, Amis moved to the United States and proved himself an acute observer of American politics and culture.

A longtime resident of Brooklyn with his second wife, Isabel Fonseca, and children, Amis was a leading figure in the borough's re-emergence.

While I didn't care for Amis' later books, including his last novel "Inside Story," I followed his career when he made news with comments perceived as anti-Islamic and through profiles in The New York Times and other publications.

Amis's death does mark the end of an era, to resort to one of his hated cliches. Amis was one of the few writers who still commanded attention on the international stage.

 

 

 

 

 

AJC steps up editorial campaign for Atlanta police training center

The dispute over Atlanta's police training center heated up this week.

After nearly 300 training center protesters packed an Atlanta City Council meeting, AJC columnist Bill Torpy derided the group. Torpy's been a consistent proponent of the training center, which has received funding from the newspaper's ownership.

The newspaper gave muted coverage to the massive protest, running a story inside, with limited quotes from the large number of speakers. The article emphasized Council President Doug Shipman's exasperation with the unruly group.

Defying the protesters' threats of electoral defeat, the city council again approved spending $30 million for the training center. The rest of the $90 million cost would be covered by the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation.

Plans to build the training center in a wooded area in South DeKalb County has drawn heated opposition from environmentalists and anti-police groups, who for months camped out at the site. A young protester was killed in a shootout with police, and a number of protesters have been charged with "domestic terrorism."

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens stepped up the campaign in support of the training center with an AJC op-ed piece. Dickens again argued that the Atlanta police and fire departments desperately need a state-of-the art training center, which the city now lacks. Dickens said the training center would improve the police department's interactions with the public.

Answering environmentalists who say that the training center would ruin the South River's wilderness, Dickens said 300 acres would be preserved. The city over the years has used the site as a prison farm and firing range.

While the Atlanta newspaper has given the training center uproar adequate if fitful news coverage, Torpy and the AJC's intermittent editorial department have staunchly supported the plan. Training center opponents have not been granted space to express their views.

The Guardian, the Intercept and other news sites have been largely sympathetic to the protesters and critical of the police crackdown that ended the encampment at the site. Locally, the Saporta Report's John Ruch has given more complete coverage to the controversy than the AJC.

It's regrettable that Atlanta's monopoly newspaper hasn't given its readers a full range of views on the training center.

 

Atlantic, Harper's engage in debate over Ukraine's future

A furious debate rages in the Atlantic and Harper's over U.S. support for Ukraine's defense against the Russian invasion.

In dueling cover stories, the venerable intellectual journals in their current issues take opposing sides over the United States and its NATO allies increasing military assistance to Ukraine.

The Atlantic calls for the United States and Europe to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win independence from Russia, making a case for "the total liberation of Ukraine."

In striking contrast, a Harper's article advocates for a treaty that would preserve Ukraine's autonomy but give Russia control of the Crimea and other Russian-speaking areas and replace NATO with an European organization independent from the United States.

The Atlantic article presents the magazine's views, while the Harper's essay expresses the beliefs of its two writers, not those of the publication.

Based on reporting from a March trip to Ukraine by author Anne Applebaum and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic's article titled "The Choice Is Between Freedom and Fear" urges complete independence for Ukraine, including Russian withdrawal from Crimea, which it seized in 2014.

The article's title comes from an extensive interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Atlantic publisher and owner Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, also participated in the interview, in which Zelensky passionately defends Ukrainian independence.

Goldberg is a noted writer as well as the editor who has recruited an all-star lineup of writers to the magazine, funded by Jobs' wealth. The magazine recently won two Pulitzer Prizes. Applebaum, a noted expert on Eastern European issues, won the Pulitzer for her book "Gulag: A History,"

Applebaum and Goldberg give a compelling portrait of the Ukrainian army's improvised war effort, such as converting commercial drones into weapons. Photographer Paolo Pellegrin's black and white pictures show the soldiers at work.

Goldberg in his editor's note at the beginning of the magazine says "the war in Ukraine is about much more than Ukraine; it is about the very subjects that animate this magazine: democracy, freedom, justice, humanism."

Taking an opposite approach, Harper's "Why Are We in Ukraine? On the Dangers of American Hubris" gives an academic geopolitical analysis of events leading to the Ukrainian invasion.

Authors Benjamin Schwarz, former national editor of the Atlantic and executive editor of the World Policy Journal, and Texas A&M national security professor Christopher Layne fault American policy for Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Schwarz and Layne believe that American efforts to expand NATO following the fall of the Soviet Union raised intense Russian opposition, even among pro-Western liberal leaders.

In a stunning indictment of American foreign policy, the authors cite American aggression through the years similar to Russia's in Ukraine, from the invasion of Panama to the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The authors condemn U.S. NATO expansion, claiming it incited Putin's invasion of Georgia, the Crimea and Ukraine.

Making a rhetorical leap likely to stir controversy, Schwarz and Layne draw a parallel between the Ukrainian invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. They cast blame on John F. Kennedy's administration for escalating the nuclear threat, claiming the United States violated international law rather than the Soviet Union.

The article's criticism of Kennedy's action goes against the overwhelming view that the Cuban missile crisis was a high point of his administration. The authors are correct in noting that the Soviets agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba after Kennedy promised to remove missiles from Turkey and Italy, which was not reported at the time.

While NATO expansion exacerbated the conflict with Russia, that's an inadequate justification for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, Schwarz and Layne present a valid argument in their call for new European organization independent from the United States.

Countering Schwarz and Layne's espousal of a continued Russian presence in the Ukraine peninsula, the Atlantic article gives a strong defense of Ukrainian heroism and desire for freedom. If not joining NATO, Ukraine should be allowed to cast its fate with the European Union.

Both articles give essential views about the future of America, Russia, Ukraine and Europe.