Notes from around the Human Experience…

TAKE ME OUT TO THE ONE GAME WILD CARD PLAYOFF: The baseball playoffs began Tuesday with the New York Yankees defeating the Minnesota Twins in a one-game playoff to determine who opens at Cleveland Thursday. Tonight the Arizona Diamondbacks host the Colorado Rockies in the other wild card game with the winner getting sacrificed to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Let’s Cut To The Chase, Shall We?: Baseball is shooting itself in the foot with the current playoff schedule. The playoffs no longer captivate us like they used to because there are too many days off, games end too late and the World Series sometimes ends in November.  All three of these elements present golden opportunities for fans to lose interest.

To help solve this problem we are pleased to offer The Daily Dose format.

Leading Off: First, do away with the wild card game. Yes, it does its job of keeping more teams in the pennant race for longer periods of time. It does this brilliantly, actually, with the first teams – the Giants and Phillies, of course – not eliminated until September 8 and the entire American League still had a theoretical shot at postseason glory as late as September 12.

But, honestly, the whole one-game wild-card playoff – and the average teams that chase berths in it – has an air of high school baseball regionals. We would prefer baseball expand to 32 teams with eight division champions making the playoffs, but until then we favor going back to one wild-card team.

On Deck: Second, let’s change the schedule. There are too many days off in the postseason, including the six division champions having either three or four days off before starting their series. This is a great way for the casual fan to lose interest because all the excitement and urgency that comes from playing every day is lost.

If The Wild Card Game Is Inevitable…: So let’s play both wild card games on Monday, the day after the regular season ends. Teams that are inconvenienced by this should have played better and won their division. No whining. We can all take a breather on Tuesday before the four division series start on Wednesday. Make it a 2-3 format instead of the current 2-2-1 format with no days off and the team with the best record can choose whether they want to play the first two games at home or on the road.

In The Hole: Next, let’s start the following series’ two days after the end of the preceding series.

For example, under The Daily Dose format, if both American League Division Series are sweeps that end on Friday October 6 the American League Championship Series (ALCS) would begin on Sunday, October 8 instead of making everybody wait until Tuesday the 10th.

Warning!: There is a drawback to this, though! Under this format it is entirely possible one LCS would end on Wednesday, October 11 and the other would end on Wednesday, October 18, giving the first team nine days off before the World Series starts on Friday, October 20. Oh well. This has actually happened in 2007, when the Colorado had eight days off before starting the World Series. Nothing’s perfect.

Oh Yeah: And, please, start no game later than 7pm Eastern time, unless they involve two western teams. Having games end after midnight on the east coast is also killing fan interest. An exception can be made for games involving two west coast teams.

FunFact: Under this format, If every series was a sweep the World Series would end on October 18 and if every series went the distance it would end on October 29.

The Bottom Line: Interest in baseball is waning. This is not a bulletin. Football long ago replaced the grand old game as our national pastime and your run-of-the-mill Sunday NFL game draws more viewers than a World Series game. However, this plan would give baseball’s postseason a shot in the arm. If the playoffs had the same everyday schedule as the regular season, and games ended early enough so kids on the east coast could watch the last few innings, the playoffs would have the same hold on this country as college basketball does in March.

“IN YE BEGYNNYNGE…”: The first English translation of the entire Bible is published on this date in 1535. Though translated by both William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale, today History refers to it as the Coverdale Bible. Previously, there had been English translation both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament portion was based on an earlier translation by Tyndale, while the pair translated the Old Testament from German translations by Martin Luther.

Though you might think the job of Bible Translator rather innocuous, both men drew the ire of the authorities. Coverdale spent no small part of his 90-plus years in exile, while Tyndale would be executed in 1536 for daring to oppose Henry VIII’s annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Holy Living F*ck: Man reaches outer space for the first time when the Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite on this date in 1957.

Rather small at 23 inches in diameter, Sputnik-1 would transmit a series of beeps that mesmerized the world – and scared the crap out of Americans – for three weeks and would remain in orbit until the following January when it burned up re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

The effect on America was profound. Though President Eisenhower tried to reassure everyone this was merely a scientific achievement and didn’t mean the goddamned Commies had taken over the world, Sputnik-1 did provide the impetus that got America off its keister. While the Soviets did put the first man in orbit and were the first to put a spacecraft on the moon, America ultimately won the space race by putting men on the moon in 1969.

Quotebook: If you insist on governing the people with rules, regulations, decrees and punishments, they will simply evade you and go about their business….If you were to govern by moral force and personal example, they will come to you of their own accord. – Gore Vidal, Creation

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Bobby Sands died on the 66th day of his hunger strike.

Today’s Stumper: How many orbits around the Earth did Sputnik-1 make? – Answer next time!

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Notes from around the Human Experience…

CAN’T WE JUST CUT AND PASTE THE LAST MASS SHOOTING COLUMN?: We were hoping that the angry, white misfits that regularly subject this nation to mass shootings would be content to have one of their own in the White House and would lay low for a few years.

No such luck. The worst mass shooting in US history occurred Sunday in Las Vegas. The shooter was a 64-year-old white male, a bit older than most mass shooters, but angry and white nonetheless. He is also dead. As we write this he killed 59 people and injured over 500.

Sad State Of Affairs: Mass shootings have become so common we are going to be very honest and say we had been, figuratively, glancing at our watches, wondering when and where the next one was going to be. Because it wasn’t a question of if there was going to be another mass shooting, it was merely a question of when there was going to be another mass shooting.

A Personal Note: As it was, it happened in a town where lived for 14 years. We know one person who was shot. She was treated and released. Hopefully, we won’t know anyone else.  

Dry, Technical Matter: While America is hardly the only nation to have mass shootings, we are the only nation regularly subjected to them. As both a citizen and as a candidate for the US Senate and House, we’ve spent no small amount of time wondering why.

Guns aren’t the issue. Lots of countries have guns, but we are the only nation with a list of mass shootings as long as your arm. Besides, if guns weren’t available the demented would merely find another way to wreck mayhem, as cars being plowed into pedestrians in Europe, car bombs in the Middle East and knife attacks in China bear witness to.

Here We Go Again: The usual arguments you read and hear about don’t help answer this question, either. Neither trotting out the Second Amendment – as if that allows us to shrug and absolve ourselves of responsibility – nor calling for laws regulating or banning guns – as if criminals obey laws – substantively addresses this issue.

Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: We’ve come to the following conclusion:

America has violent citizens because America has a violent government. Violence begets violence.

We don’t see how this point can be argued anymore. America has been at war continuously since 1989, meaning we have raised a generation of children who have never known a peaceful day in the lives. We are paying the price for that right now: a citizenry as comfortable with violence as they are comfortable with their mobile phone.

Well, Aren’t We Miss Mary Sunshine Today: And it’s not going to vanish anytime soon because even if America were magically at peace tomorrow, we will continue to pay this price for another generation.

Once More With Feeling: We have violent American citizens because we have a violent American government. When America is at peace, then her citizens will, eventually, be at peace, too.

ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE!: Wally Schirra becomes the fifth American to enter space on this date in 1962, orbiting Earth six times on Mercury-Atlas 8 on a mission that lasted nine hours and 13 minutes. The mission did not break any new ground, though as the longest manned mission to date the effects on both Schirra and the spacecraft were eagerly noted, and the worldwide tracking and communications system also received its longest workout to date.

FunFact: Schirra would later command Apollo 7 in 1968, the first manned Apollo mission. It tested the Command/Service Module in low Earth orbit and after the mission, Schirra retired from NASA.

Please Pass The Salt: A hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends on this date in 1981. The strike lasted seven months and resulted in ten deaths, including Bobby Sands, who had been elected to Parliament during the strike.

Insert Suitable German Phrase Here: Germany becomes one nation again when West Germany and East Germany reunite on this date in 1990. Germany had been divided in 1949.

Great Moments In Getting Away With Murder: OJ Simpson is acquitted of two counts of murder on this date in 1995. He had been accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron  Goldman. In 1997 Simpson would be found civilly liable for both deaths and the victim’s families were awarded $33 million in damages, an amount Simpson has paid only a fraction of.

FunFact: On October 1 Simpson was released from state prison in Nevada, paroled after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence following a 2008 conviction on assorted charges.

Quotebook: Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The two Nazi’s sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal that were not executed on October 16, 1946, were Martin Bormann, who had been convicted in absentia and who was actually already dead, and Hermann Goring, who got petulant and had committed suicide a couple of hours earlier because he objected to being hanged instead of shot to death.

Today’s Stumper: How long did it take Bobby Sands to die after he began his hunger strike? – Answer next time!

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