Southern Bookman

Willie Mays, America's Say Hey Kid, turns 90

Happy 90th birthday, Willie.

You brightened my boyhood with your rare TV appearances, when you played like no one else. Everything you did was exciting: running the bases, making basket catches in centerfield, throwing the ball back to the infield, hitting home runs, legging out doubles and triples.

Back then, baseball played two all-star games each season, on daytime TV, and you glowed brighter than any of the other stars.

I followed your San Francisco Giants in box scores printed in the Baton Rouge State Times, and on radio when the Giants played the Cardinals or Astros. On special Saturday afternoons, you starred on NBC's Baseball Game of the Week.

Through books and magazine articles, I thrilled to your brilliant early days as the New York Giants' Say Hey Kid.

Arnold Hano's "A Day in the Bleachers" relived your over-the-shoulder catch of the long fly ball hit by the Indians' Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series.

After running down the ball in deep center field in the Polo Grounds, you spun and hurled a throw to the infield to keep an Indians runner from advancing. You always said the throw was greater than the catch.

I've watched video of the play many times, and it never loses its wonder. The picture of you going back, lit by sunshine as the ball falls toward your open glove, your No. 24, will be one of my last mental images as I leave this earth.

Happy 90th, Willie. No sports hero ever matched you.

 

 

 

 

The New York Times moves from op-ed articles to "guest essays"

The New York Times will now call op-ed articles "guest essays," another sign that the Times is no longer a newspaper, but a digital media company.

In one of the most influential innovations of American journalism, the Times in the early 1970s created the "op-ed page," appearing opposite the newspaper's august editorial page.

Contrasting with the newspaper's unsigned editorials giving its institutional views, the op-ed page offered signed opinion pieces from outside writers. Newspapers around the country soon followed the Times.

Recently named opinions editor Kathleen Kingsbury explained in a note to readers Tuesday that the "op-ed" term has become obsolete as the Times turns to a digital future. The digital format does away with the separate editorial and op-ed pages of the traditional print setup.

As The Times attracts thousands of new digital subscribers and the print newspaper's readership shrinks, the "op-ed" designation has lost its relevance, Kingsbury said.

The term "guest essay" suggests a move away from the free-wheeling marketplace of ideas envisioned by the late Times journalist Harrison Salisbury when he created the op-ed format.

For years, the Times opened the page to unsolicited articles that ran alongside columns by Times writers like Russell Baker and William Safire.

The "guest" label sounds as if the Times will requisition more articles, bringing more corporate influence over opinion pieces.

Perhaps the Times will do away with the newspaper title too. The news screen?

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Biden and John Kerry seek to save planet for future generations

President Joe Biden and environmental envoy John Kerry led the global climate-change summit, two old men setting the economic course for future generations.

The 78-year-old Biden and 77-year-old Kerry called on world leaders to slash emissions and mitigate climate change's threat to the planet.

Biden pledged that the United States will cut CO2 discharges 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That will bring a transformation in the U.S. economy, the New York Times reported.

Biden's administration is mobilizing the global campaign against climate change after years of inadequate response.

As U.S. senators and Democratic Party leaders since the 1960s, Biden and Kerry were members of a generation that refused to heed climate change warnings. Now, the world must act with urgency.

With carbon emissions soaring again as China and other Asian countries step up their demand for coal, even more drastic steps than Biden's plans will be needed, according to environmentalists.

The Biden effort to shift from a petroleum-based economy doesn't include a carbon tax, once considered essential in efforts to cut emissions.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said Friday that political opposition led to the shift away from the carbon tax. Krugman also claimed that technological innovation and lower costs for wind and solar power generation make the carbon tax less important, before conceding that the tax likely will be necessary in the future.

Claims that Biden didn't include a carbon-tax proposal because of political opposition are puzzling, since Biden didn't worry about the lack of GOP support in passing his massive Covid stimulus act. Petroleum companies now support a carbon tax, and even some Republicans might accept such a proposal.

Democratic Party progressives and environmentalists apparently have shifted away from the carbon tax, which would put a price on the production of carbon. Long supported by Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the carbon tax should remain a fundamental pillar of the campaign to reduce emissions. Under proposals by Friedman and others, the tax would not burden American households.

Democratic Party supporters hope Biden and Kerry remain active and witness the transformation of the U.S. economy they envision. But by 2030, a younger generation of Democratic leaders such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be in command. A younger, even more progressive generation will be emerging.

Perhaps the science-denying and reactionary Republican Party will by then shift course and join in the battle against climate change, along with conservative parties around the world. Once, GOP stalwart John McCain called for ambitious cap and trade legislation and a 60 percent reduction in emissions. That was in 2007, before the GOP turned to ignorance.

GOP intransigence on climate change and social reform makes the 2022 congressional election and 2024 presidential election vital for the nation and the world's future. Biden's climate change proposal is another ambitious effort to place the Democratic Party in the vanguard of the future, while the GOP remains mired in the past.

Both Biden and Kerry have overcome hardships and major political defeats to lead the world's efforts to survive climate change. They are atoning for decades of negligence, hoping to save the planet for unborn generations.

 

 

 

 

Branch Rickey stole Negro League stars, author finds

Revered for signing Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey triggered the Negro Leagues' demise.

Rickey refused to compensate Robinson's Negro Leagues team, the Kansas City Monarchs, as well as not paying other black teams when he signed their players, according to Negro Leagues historian Andrea Williams' article in Thursday's New York Times.

The article appeared on Jackie Robinson Day, the anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Dodgers in 1947. Honoring the major leagues' first black player, the members of each team wear Robinson's number 42.

Williams, the author of "Baseball's Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues," reveals that Rickey believed the Negro Leagues were illegitimate and "in the zone of a racket."

Rickey went on to sign several Negro League players without compensating their teams. Manley, the owner of the Newark Eagles, complained about Rickey stealing her all-star pitcher, Don Newcombe.

In another shift of historical reputation, Williams says that notoriously tight-fisted Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith called for Rickey and other Major League teams to pay the Negro Leagues for raiding their talent.

Griffith, castigated as a racist by black sportswriters, rented his stadium to the Negro League Homestead Grays, a practice followed by other major league teams. Griffith's principled support of the Negro Leagues contrasts with his refusal to sign black American players, instead looking for talent in Latin America.

The sainted Rickey's disparagement of the Negro Leagues mars his reputation. Williams notes Rickey's racist arrogance: "Clark Griffith on the contrary, I have not signed a player from what I regard as an organized league."

Rickey's odious position clashes with that of Major League Baseball, which recently accepted Negro League records as equal to those of the Major Leagues.

Many Negro League stars went on to gain fame in the Major Leagues. Now, baseball has fewer and fewer black players from the United States.

In signing Jackie Robinson, Rickey advanced racial progress, yet displayed a disturbing contempt for the Negro Leagues.

 

Not so blue skies: Carbon emissions rise during pandemic

Carbon emissions rose during 2020, barely slowed by the covid pandemic.

The amount of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere has reached its highest level in 3.6 million years, according to a  new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a Salon article said.

While the Covid economic shutdown impeded carbon emissions, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to 412.5 parts per million, an increase of 2.6 parts per million over the year. Scientists say that the carbon level must be reduced to 350 parts per million if the world is to escape the worst effects of climate change.

The Biden administration seeks zero admissions by 2050, but that will not prevent damages from the carbon already in the air. Biden's massive infrastructure plan calls for a shift to electric cars and more efficient buildings, without seeking major changes in the U.S. economy. But the current economic model is no longer sustainable.

A total of 300 corporate executives representing companies ranging from Apple to Johnson & Johnson and McDonald's sent an open letter to Biden calling for the United States to double emissions-reductions standards by 2030 and move to zero emissions by 2050.

The letter appeared on the same day that corporate leaders and entertainment personalities signed an ad in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal opposing Republican voter-suppression laws.

Those actions indicate that the Trump-dominated, climate-change denying GOP is further divorced from corporate and mainstream America.

Representing a shrinking minority of American voters, the party keeps its stranglehold on power through constitutional manipulation and voter suppression.

Yet the divorce is not yet final: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce demanded that the Senate reject the Democratic Party's voting rights legislation. That position conflicts with the prevailing views of American companies.

President Biden has made reversing climate change a top priority, yet his ambitious plans remain too small. Corporate leaders and journalists such as The Times' Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman believe that the growth-oriented global economy can keep accelerating after a shift from carbon. That's increasingly doubtful.

 

Ronald Acuna Jr. a rare baseball talent

The Braves' mediocre start hasn't stopped Ronald Acuna Jr. fever from raging.

AJC columnist Mark Bradley, whose pronouncements make me nervous given his track record of being wrong, anointed the buoyant Braves right fielder the best player in baseball, along with the stolid Angeles outfielder Mike Trout.

No Atlanta fans would disagree, after seeing Acuna hit a routine grounder to Phillies shortstop Didi Gregorius and beat Gregorius' good throw to first base for an infield hit. That made the sports world sit up in wonder.

In the Braves dismal loss to the Marlins Monday night, Acuna again accomplished an amazing feat, scoring from third on pal Ozzie Albies' pop up to just past second base.

Acuna's infectious spirit reminds old-timers of the young Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. Like Mays and Clemente, Acuna plays the outfield, hits and runs the bases with flair.

If Acuna played in New York City or Los Angeles, he'd be the national star that baseball so desperately seeks. 

He's as fast as Cool Papa Bell, and the young Mickey Mantle. He possesses the power of the late superstar Henry Aaron, who also played right field for the Braves. With the muscular physique and powerful legs of Jackie Robinson, Acuna runs with the same reckless, half-back's abandon.

Watching him beat Gregorius' throw made me anticipate future feats.

Like Robinson, Acuna will make stealing home part of the game.

With his ability to leg out infield hits, he can hit .400, joining Ted Williams and Josh Gibson, the last players to do so.

He'll hit 60 home runs, and steal 60 bases.

He'll switch off the light and make it to bed before it gets dark.

As players land $300 million-plus contracts, Acuna's $100 million deal with the Braves is a steal for the club.

The Braves keep the 21-year-old until he's 28. Then, if Acuna's career keeps soaring, New York or LA will offer him the sun and the moon, and a few planets.

Until then, Braves fans should appreciate seeing a rare talent in his first flowering.

 

 

 

GOP's suppression of black voting rights leaves limited options for MLB All-Star Game site

Moving major league baseball's all-star game out of Atlanta brought the "midsummer classic" its largest national attention in years.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred made the right choice in moving the All-Star game because of Georgia's law to suppress black voting rights.

Sadly, the baseball all-star game's interest among sports fans has dwindled for years. Once the National League and American League all-stars competed to win, but now the event is a meaningless exhibition.

Manfred's announcement contrasted with the NBA's insistence on holding its all-star game a month ago in Atlanta, against the initial trepidation of LeBron James and other stars.

The NBA game was played without fans and the usual onslaught of visitors. The Georgia Legislature had not yet approved the voting legislation, which Gov. Brian Kemp quickly signed into law. However, even more restrictive voter suppression bills were circulating, met by the NBA's silence.

Baseball traditionalists remember when the all-star game lineups were filled with black stars, like the NBA showcase is now. But fewer and fewer blacks play in the major leagues, making the game a nearly all-white affair.

Manfred and MLB must choose among a dwindling number of suitable states because of the GOP’s national effort to strike out black voters. That’s the Republican cancel culture.

Kansas City has the black baseball museum, but Missouri might approve its own anti-voting law. Texas, Michigan and Florida are out too. Some suggested Mobile, the home of perennial all-stars Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, but Alabama is the reddest of states, and Amazon battles a union push by mostly black workers in Bessemer, Ala.

To honor Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn would be appropriate, but the site of Ebbets Field is now a housing complex. Robinson would have hated for Yankee Stadium to be awarded the game, but the Mets have claimed the Brooklyn Dodgers' legacy, along with that of the Dodgers' bitter foe, the New York Giants.

For a more direct connection, Brooklyn's Cyclone Field, the home of the borough's minor league team, would be an off-beat choice.

Last year's all-star game in Los Angeles was canceled because of Covid, and Los Angeles hosts the game next year, which likely will preclude the home of Robinson's franchise from having the game this year. Forgotten is that the Dodgers destroyed the Mexican Chavez Ravine neighborhood to build Dodger Stadium.

It's sad that outside of a dying number of baseball traditionalists, few fans would care if the game were canceled this year as well. Or forever.

Washington Post columnist Kevin Blackistone, who began the push to move the all-star game from Atlanta, acknowledged on the ESPN gab-show "Around the Horn" that the newspaper he writes for is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who's brutally sought to crush the Bessemer union movement. 

Blackistone so far hasn't called for a boycott of Amazon.

 

 

 

 

Doublethink rules: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to buy publisher of George Orwell

Rupert Murdoch seeks to own George Orwell.

Murdoch's News Corp. announced on Monday a $349 million deal to purchase Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's book publishing unit, whose massive backlist encompasses Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm."

If the deal goes through, big-lie purveyor Fox News Network will be in the same stable as Orwell's novels. Newspeak will co-exist on Fox broadcasts and the pages of "1984."

Murdoch's Harper Collins will also gain rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Virginia Woolff's novels and Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." 

When envisioning Willie Stark and the corruption of populism, Warren might not have imagined the Republican assault on democracy fueled by Fox News. But his examination of political power and its abuses remains valid. 

Murdoch, in owning the work of Orwell, Woolf, Tolkien and Warren, shows a cynical contempt for the power of ideas. The aging media mogul and political manipulator likely believes that the lies of Fox News will prevail. "Who controls the past controls the future," Orwell warned. "Who controls the present controls the past."

The deal, following the announcement of Penguin Random House's $2.2 billion acquisition of Simon & Schuster, will bring further consolidation of the book-publishing industry. The Harper Collins-Houghton Mifflin Harcourt coupling raises familiar fears about a chill on new voices and unorthodox ideas.

Big brother will be watching even closer. Already in charge of the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, London Times and other British newspapers, the Times Literary Supplement and Fox News, Murdoch will own even more of the media industry.

All publishers will be equal, but some will be more equal than others.

 

 

 

Carl Hiaasen says farewell to Miami Herald column

Carl Hiaasen is one of those journalists revered in newsrooms across the country.

A best-selling novelist who could have left behind newspaper life, Hiaasen kept writing his column for the Miami Herald, blasting greedy Florida developers and politicians despoiling his native state's bountiful natural resources.

After 35 years, Hiassen wrote his last column for the Herald this week. Hiaasen expressed sadness at the disappearance of local newspapers across the country.

Hiaasen was admired by reporters throughout the United States for his fearless columns and his comic novels satirizing the state's rapacious business people.

Many newspaper scribes write novels, dreaming of matching Hiaasen's success. But few would continue working for a newspaper if they published a best-seller.

Hiaasen's love for daily newspapers burned brightly from the day he walked into the Herald newsroom as a city desk reporter in 1976. He began his column in 1985, his comic brilliance enlivening his exposes of corruption.

A Florida native who grew up on the edge of the Everglades, Hiaasen defended the "river of grass" from the constant threat of development. He exposed corruption in the state Capitol and local government.

Blasting rapacious business people and corporations, he also expressed love for the state's wildlife, even professing an affection for snakes.

Hiaasen in his final column remembered his brother, Rob, one of five journalists at the Annapolis, Md., Capital-Gazette killed by a gunman in 2018.

That was the most serious of constant attacks against the news media in recent years. A massive decline in advertising during the covid pandemic has worsened the already dire condition of local newspapers.

Hiaasen noted in his farewell column that developers and local politicians in communities that have lost newspapers can make shady deals without public scrutiny.

Fans of Hiassen can look forward to new novels, and he likely will keep writing for other publications. But his retirement is like the loss of a family member for Miami Herald readers.

 

 

Joan Didion's classic touch shown in previously uncollected columns

Joan Didion raised ethical questions about Ernest Hemingway's heirs editing and publishing posthumous material from the author's files.

At age 86, Didion is emptying her files herself. The writer's new collection "Let Me Tell You What I Mean" recycles previously uncollected essays from across her career.

The hodgepodge follows "South and West: A Notebook," a 2017 book that consisted of notes she made on a trip through Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in the 1970s.

Unfinished Didion had literary interest, and the new collection delivers pleasures. Several essays possess enduring relevance, while others might have been left in the scrapbook.

The collection begins with six of Didion's "Points West" columns from 1968. After moving back to her native California from New York City at the start of her career, she wrote the pieces along with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, for the long-gone Saturday Evening Post.The column was one of the magazine's futile attempts to increase readership. She used material from the columns in her breakthrough collections "Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and “The White Album.”

In a 1968 appreciation of underground newspapers, a vanished artifact of the era, she curiously cites the Wall Street Journal along with hippie publications like the East Village Other and Los Angeles Free Press for not adhering to claims of objectivity she sees as dishonest.

It's puzzling whether she's referring to the pre-Murdoch WSJ's news columns or the newspaper's even then right-wing editorial pages. In those days, the WSJ predominantly reported financial news, so perhaps she saw the reporting of facts like stock prices as being unsusceptible to being colored by opinion.

The young Didion accuses The New York Times and other establishment journals of deceptively claiming objectivity, criticism echoed today by right-wing voices.

A “Points West” profile of Nancy Reagan when she was first lady of California is an amusing historical bauble, but a report on a Los Vegas convention of World War II veterans coming to terms with their sons' Vietnam service can stand with Didion's most powerful pieces.

Didion’s crisply written feature on a visit to William Randolph Heart’s Xanadu mansion is a good companion piece for the Academy Award-nominated movie “Mank.”

"On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice" recalls the 17-year-old Didion's heartbreak at being rejected by Stanford. She initially considered swallowing sleeping pills, but recovered to attend college at Berkeley.

Didion castigates parents who seek to control their children’s lives by engineering their acceptance into the best colleges. As recent scandals illustrate, the essay possesses even more relevance today.

After the “Points West” pieces, Didion fans, and lovers of writing, will treasure "Why I Write" from 1976 and "Telling Stories," from 1978.

In the articles, she explains her process of composing novels and non-fiction work, and how she learned more about crafting sentences by writing photo captions for Vogue magazine than in a creative writing class at Berkeley.

Other essays celebrate celebrities of the past like photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the English director Tony Richardson, whose wife, Vanessa Redgrave, appeared in the Broadway production of Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking."

The concluding 2000 profile of Martha Stewart holds limited interest outside of Stewart acolytes.

The book also includes Didion's 1998 essay on the stream of Hemingway's unfinished work released years after his suicide. The essay is a searching examination of American celebrity and literary politics.

Didion concludes that it is ethically wrong for an author's heirs to release work that the writer left unfinished, especially if extensively edited.

While the release of Didion's uncollected work might raise similar questions, Didion fans will welcome the new book.

But why is it called "Let Me Tell You What I Mean?" Didion's sentences don't require further elaboration.