AT ITS ESSENCE…

A duel between pitcher and hitter.

The game of baseball, at its core.

Five decades ago, in the now infamous summer of 1968, as I was in the throws [NO pun intended] of trying to survive, and get home from Vietnam], major league baseball faced a serious problem: NOBODY could score.

St. Louis Cardinals legend Bob Gibson posted a 1.12 ERA, still a record for the live-ball era, which began in 1920.

Hitters reached base less than 30% of the time, a level of ineptitude that harkened back to the 19th Century.

That winter, the league lowered the mound in an effort to generate offense, the lasting legacy of a season known as the “Year of the Pitcher.”

But as ugly as that looked, it in some ways doesn’t compare to the state of affairs today.

For the first time ever, major-league batters strike out more often than they record hits, the ultimate distillation of the realities of modern baseball, where power – on BOTH sides of the ball – reigns.

NEVER before had MLB seen a full month with more total strikeouts than hits. There hadn’t even been a month where the gap between the two was less than 100. April 2017 was the closest the sport had come to strikeouts overtaking hits, with a difference of 138.

Until now, that is.

Heading into today’s slate of games, the final 11 scheduled contests on the April schedule, hitters had whiffed 7,163 times. They had collected just 6,808 hits.

Nearly 35% of ALL plate appearances this season have ended in a walk, strikeout or home run, up from less than 29% 10 years ago.

In my opinion, the single biggest reason for the above statistics, hitters can count on seeing a fresh bullpen arm ready to unleash the heat [pitchers throwing between 93-100 plus MPH these days], from the sixth inning on.

h/t: MLB.com & ESPN Insider

Finally, let me add a recommendation: one of the best baseball books that I’ve ever read concerned the 1968 season by Tim Wendel called Summer of ’68. Do yourself a favor, get a copy this afternoon!

CHINESE CHECKERS, anyone?

Toward the end this week, we may get a clearer sense of our relationships.

NOT only going into next week, but for the next generation or so.

China and the US.

At issue: T-R-A-D-E.

The Chinese government is publicly calling for flexibility on BOTH sides.

Donald John Trump‘s two biggest demands: 1) a mandatory $100 billion cut in America’s $375 billion annual trade deficit with China [tariffs, tariffs, tariffs]; and, b) curbs on Beijing’s $300 billion plan to bankroll the country’s industrial upgrade into advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric cars and commercial aircraft [America telling a communist country “how” to run its economy – am I the only one that finds this ironic?] .

In its most simple terms, it appears to the old lobsterman that Beijing feels its economy has become big enough and resilient enough to “stand up to the United States.”

Trump is about to enter the major leagues!

The Chinese are tough, smart and strong. They play to win and they know how to win.

Trump may be able to con nearly 36% of Americans, but he won’t be able to con the Chinese.

Trump may be able to bully his cabinet members, but he won’t be able to bully the Chinese. He can’t fire them.

And, he can’t find any Chinese leaders that work for FOX News to hire.

Chinese officials have reached out to Treasury Secretary Stevie Mnuchin, who has reacted positively to China’s overtures in the auto and financial sectors. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who will be on the Trump administration’s team in Beijing later this week, has sought to calm investors in global financial markets, some of whom have been alarmed !!! by the consequences of a trade war for stock prices and economies.

The factory labor economy and coal mines are dead!

Globalism has created a world where inexpensive goods and services freely flow across boarders to the benefit of ALL.

Bear this in mind: If it comes to a trade war, the Chinese will have The Weave for lunch.

How & why: US exports will lose their largest market [1.4 Billion human beings]; American farmers/ranchers, builders, auto workers, innovators of ALL ilk, and high-tech industries will be extremely hard hit; American consumers will be paying more for just about EVERYTHING they buy; and, we’ll still be burning coal and puttering around on an ill-run Amtrak while the rest of the world is buying Chinese solar cells, and zooming by on 300-mph bullet trains.

Trump’s history of serial casino “successes” must be kept in mind as he brings his brand of negotiation strategies and his hand-picked cronies to the inscrutable Orient.

 

EXCELLENT ADVISE to ALL

In between the NFL Draft, trying to get my Pampas bushes cut, watching my Celtics advance to the next round of the NBA playoffs, ditto my Bruins in Game 1 of their playoff game against Tampa Bay, disciplining my 30-lb Maine Coon cat, assisting in the rehabbing of my wife’s right knee, and watching/listening to/of the lunatic rantings of the 45th president of the United States [he’s becoming an obese hyena – take a close look at the similarities], I realized that I needed the in-depth philosophy of Marx…

 

NEVER fails around 2:30 in the morning.

ABANDON HIS LEVERAGE?

The world is getting more and more, by the hour, it seems, as regards the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea President Moon Jae-in, which took place last Friday.

The international media is reporting this morning that Kim told Moon when they met that he would abandon ?! his nuclear weapons if the United States would agree to formally end the Korean War [South Korea NEVER signed the truce in ’53; just the US]and promise that it would NOT invade his country, a South Korean government spokesman said earlier today, local time.

In a faith-building gesture ahead of a proposed summit meeting [NO date or location have been negotiated yet] with our current president, Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States to watch the shutdown next month of his country’s only known !!! underground nuclear test site.

These comments by Kim were made on Friday when the leaders of the two Koreas met at Panmunjom, a village on their shared border, the South Korean spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, said today, in providing additional details of the meeting.

Kim’s willingness to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal was revealed just as newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike “Orca” Pompeo [confirmation vote of 57-42]disclosed that he had had a “good conversation” with Kim during his surprise visit to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, over Easter weekend…

 

My advise: Keep your powder dry.

ISAIAH 40:31

It took longer than most football people [experts] thought it would…

But, finally it happened.

Yesterday, on the third and final day of the National Football League (NFL) Draft a franchise in the great Northwest delivered that call.

That franchise is the Seattle Seahawks.

The player: Shaquem Griffin.

Pete Carroll, the coach of the Seattle Seahawks, is known for taking chances on players.

Carroll and John Schneider, the team’s general manager, spent the 141st overall selection in the NFL draft on linebacker Griffin.

That fifth-round choice, announced in Seattle, drew loud cheers from fans across the country.

Griffin, whose left hand was amputated when he was four, had become one of the most popular players in this draft because of his perseverance, outgoing personality and, of course, his talent.

An inspiration of the first order!

What makes this story even more heartwarming, Shaquem’s twin brother, Shaquill, was drafted by the Seahawks last year.

So they NOT only played together at the University of Central Florida, they now will be on the same professional team together.

A Hollywood script awaits…

Here’s the scene after getting the call from the Seahawks yesterday, at the Griffin household…

 

SYMBOLIC for NOW

In many ways, for those of us over seventy, time had stopped in 1953.

The Korean Peninsula.

Yesterday, clocks were rewound, and started again.

I’m referring to the summit between the leaders of North and South Korea that took place in the Demilitarized Zone.

It was roughly for 8 1/2 hours.

Kim Jong-un, in a black Mao suit, stepped across a low concrete barrier into the South Korean territory, a first for a North Korean leader since the catastrophic and unfinished war seven decades ago. He reached out to the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, and led him back over into the North’s territory…

 

After spending last year proving that his backward nation could hurl missiles across the Pacific, and could test a weapon many times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, Kim seized on an invitation from South Korea to take part in the ’18 Winter Olympics and suddenly played the statesman.

Yesterday, according to international reporting, he hinted anew that his nuclear arsenal might be on the table, if the price was right.

Our 45th president insists that his own actions are responsible, that his threats of “Fire and Fury” and, more important, his intensified sanctions, forced Kim to this moment.

Listen, he is partly right. Trump has shown an energy in confronting ! North Korea that Presidents Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush, and Reagan NEVER did.

This brief symbolic encounter did everything it was supposed to do to set up the next summit meeting, between Kim and Trump.

That is the moment, South Koreans say, for any nuclear deal to be struck, something that can only happen when an American president is in the room.

The question is whether Kim is really ready to make that deal, or whether he is betting, as most East Asian experts think he is, that he can get help to normalize the North’s economy while keeping at least parts of a fearsome arsenal that he believes has kept the Kim family in power.

The agreement published yesterday afternoon says little on the nuclear topic.

It sets NO schedule for denuclearization.

That is a critical point, because until now the Trump administration’s position has been that the North must surrender ! ALL its weapons first, and that any talk of treaties or trade, or sanctions relief, would come only when its weapons, its uranium and plutonium and its missiles are securely out of the country.

Trump says he will solve the North Korea problem, once and for ALL.

Which means he faces the task of explaining “how” to Planet Earth…

I can’t speak for the rest of you…but that thought scares the crap out of me.

Wie Geht’s?

 

Mir geht’s nicht gut, Donnie!

TRUMP on LINE 6…

Historic.

A classic trainwreck.

Impossible to duplicate.

The below video, from “Fox and Friends,” this past Thursday, is “must see” entertainment.

Keep in mind that the person who hogs the majority of the 30 plus minutes [you have to watch ALL thirty minutes in one sitting, or you won’t get the full effect] of this clip is the ‘elected’ president of the United States of America.

It’s NOT a sketch from SNL!

Let me break this down for me, what you’re about to witness is a petulant junior high student bitching about “why” he got an F in English.

As Donald John Trump rages and rambles, his tirade resembles those little robot vacuum cleaners that veer off on a new direction each time they bump into furniture, or a living human being, with his/her wits about them.

Cogent thoughts, NO.

Ability to convey and complete understandable sentences of speech, NO.

Taking every possible position on every topic he brings up, MOST DEFINITELY.

He says he NEVER watches certain television channels, and then he critiques their shows in minute detail.

He says everything on CNN is “fake,” and yet he praises the network’s anchor Anderson Cooper for his fine work.

He says he is ‘stymied’ by obstructionist Democrats, then claims to have accomplished more !!! than any other first-year president, news that might surprise George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and W. Bush to name just a few of our past presidents whose initial 12 months put Trump’s in a more appropriate perspective.

The FOX hosts and their complete inability to control the situation is in itself the price of buttered popcorn…

LIFE’S MESSAGES are EVERYWHERE

I noticed this morning driving past one of the millions of health clubs [NOT reality, just perception] within the metroplex, a daily message:

2 THINGS IN LIFE NEVER LIE – small children & yoga pants!

There’s only one of these that I can attest to…as being 100% factual.

Drive on, young man, drive on.

THE FIFTH…

Our current president’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael “The Fixer” Cohen, will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed against the president by Stephanie Clifford, the adult-film star better known as Stormy Daniels.

“I will assert my 5th Amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York,” Cohen cited the Manhattan investigation in his filing yesterday, saying that, if called as a witness in Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit.

Citing the Fifth Amendment in the Clifford case allows “The Fixer” to avoid being deposed and revealing sensitive information in the more important criminal investigation.

That investigation – which prosecutors say has been going on for months – became public in dramatic fashion on April 9th, when agents from the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided ! Cohen’s office, apartment and a room at the Loews Regency Hotel he had been using.

Attorneys for Cohen suggested yesterday that they were already taking steps to “gird themselves for battle.”

In new court papers, they said that they were setting up “war rooms” to review the seized materials, testing and vetting “systems” to process them, and marshaling what seems to be a small legal army of “operations and technology personnel, paralegals, discovery experts, associates and senior reviewing partners.”

Get Sgt. Friday on the phone NOW…