The Art of Fielding is a brilliant baseball novel not to be missed -- and, yes! -- it contains no magic realism...

Read this book now. You’ll regret every minutes until you do.

This is what I’ve been telling friends about “The Art of Fielding,” Chad Harbach's first novel which is being touted as one of the best novels of the year.

I don’t know about that. I do know it is one of the best baseball novels of all time. It ranks in my top five. Top three. Well… give it time to settle in but right now… yes, top one

It’s that good.

Here’s a coincidence. I received the book for Christmas from my main squeeze. I also received Ted Williams book: “The Science of Hitting.” Batting approaches have evolved since Williams wrote “The Science of Hitting” but the ideas are still useful. After all, the bats are still wood, at least in the big leagues, and the balls still have 108 stitches.

The coincidence? “The Art of Fielding” is based on a fictional book with the same title written by a great fictional shortstop, a shortstop not unlike Ozzie Smith. His text, “The Art of Fielding” is obviously meant as a placeholder for “The Science of Hitting.”

Only the snippets we get of “The Art of Fielding” read more like Zen, more like “Zen in the Art of Archery,” than Ted’s prideful attempt at physics and geometry.

What I love is “The Art of Fielding” is not set in either the major leagues or the minor leagues. It is set in the world of small college baseball and, to my ear, Harbach has perfect pitch. He not only nails the life of small college athletes – in my opinion the last true heroes of sport – he nails the life of small colleges.

The president of Westish College is perfectly familiar to anyone who has taught in a small college. So is his daughter, who we often see sitting in the back row of our classrooms blossoming out of the funk of her previous defeats in life. I think the other three main characters were enrolled in my Theory and History of the Mass Media class last semester. Or, maybe the semester before. As I read, I had no trouble putting faces to names.

Thankfully, this baseball novel doesn’t suffer from magic realism like darn near every baseball novel you've ever read. You keep waiting for the magic moment when Joe Jackson walks out of the corn or the third baseman straps two-by-fours to his broken legs, and it never arrives. When our hero has gotten so strong and so obsessive he can’t stop doing chin-ups from a tree limb, you think maybe the magic moment is here. But that’s as close as it gets. The scene shifts and presumably he finally gets tired and walks back to the dorm.

This novel forces me to rethink my ideas about why writers use baseball to tell their stories. The story here isn’t really much about greed. It isn’t much about corruption. It isn’t about the sacred territory of men and it isn’t about the trouble women create when they invade it. In fact, I'm not sure it has a hero at all, let alone a typical baseball fiction hero.

All that seems to persist from other novels is the sense of baseball as a pure thing, an art. It understands baseball better than any other novel I’ve read. Late in the story, the college president stares at a baseball on a shelf and thinks how perfect it is, how it simply invites a person to pick it up and throw it. That's as true a thing as has ever been written.

I'll be back with more later. In the meantime, read the damned book. You won’t regret it.

--Lofflin

The bastardization of American history

I'm a fan of the television show "American Pickers,"  the History Channel program where two "pickers," a.k.a. antiques buyers and sellers, visit farms, old houses and dead businesses across the country, buy their best stuff for cheap and then sell it for a profit.

While many have debated the obvious ethical questions behind such a line of work - Is it fair for these guys, who are experts in the field, to swoop in to an innocent civilian's home, buy items for bottom-dollar prices, then sell it at a huge markup? - I've come to peace with that part of it. "Picking" is a business, just like any other. When you get right down to it, everybody tries to make a profit by buying low and selling high. So I don't accuse the Pickers of any ethical violations here - if the owner of the property is unhappy with the Pickers' offer, nobody is holding a gun to their head making them sell. In fact, some of the best parts of the show are the tough negotiations between picker and pickee.

But then, while watching a rerun of the show this afternoon, I discovered something that makes my skin crawl.

The History Channel runs a website called the American Pickers Warehouse. On this site, you can purchase items discovered by the Pickers on the show.

Well... not exactly.

Take this Sinclair Gasoline sign, an American icon you can own for the reasonable price of $115.00. It's scuffed and rusty, which only adds to its beauty.

The problem is, it's a reproduction, made to look like something discovered by the Pickers after being hidden away in a dusty barn for fifty years.

The website makes no bones about the fact that the items are fake. Here's the description of the Sinclair sign:

Get the look of the featured Sinclair Gasoline sign seen in the show with this reproduction metal sign offering the same bright colors and classic logo; you’ll think it was the original!

At issue here is not the production of reproductions. That's been going on for centuries. My problem is the arrogance of selling these items openly to the masses. I don't know how much the actual, real-life Sinclair sign sells (or sold) for, but from watching enough episodes of "Pickers," I can make an educated guess that it would probably cost around $250 or $300. But hey, why sell one sign for $250 when you can sell a thousand signs for $115?

In addition to signs, you can also buy replica hood ornaments, fake record players, faux-vintage telephones, a bicycle costing $660, an inauthentic Coca-Cola soda machine for over a thousand bucks, and even a just-like-the-real-thing gas pump for a whopping twenty seven hundred bucks which, apparently, "has all the retro looks of the original."

There's another big problem here as well. By placing seemingly high prices on replicas, the History Channel is diluting the importance of having the real thing. If you were the owner of a genuine, vintage Sinclair Gasoline sign, and it was displayed proudly in your den... when I came over to your house, how would I know you didn't order it off the History Channel website as an authentic reproduction?

How can you tell the difference anymore between what's real and what's not?

Apparently, the buying public doesn't really care. The Sinclair reproductions have been a big hit. As of this writing, the sign is currently sold out.

But don't worry; there's plenty more fake history for sale where that came from.

The divorce is final, Some relationship advice for Missouri and Kansas basketball fans

Border War? come on.

No aspect of a college basketball game can be responsibly described as war. The Star's ombudsman may think it's silly to question his newspaper's poor choice of words. His tepid work on most others subjects speaks for itself. But the folks who have complained to him about the use of 'war' as a description of a basketball game, deserved more than a snicker.

War it is not.

Over, it is.

Missouri divorced the Big 12, not the other way around. Like all divorces, the split left hard feelings on both sides, but certainly more hard feelings on the divorcee's side. Like all divorces, the reasons don't really matter. The fact is, once you divorce you are -- if you are mentally healthy -- not going to date each other again.

This divorce is nearly final. The two sides have one more court date and it doesn't promise to be congenial. This is the time for Missouri and their fans to move on. You're part of the SEC now. Make some friends there. Date someone else. Build a relationship you can fashion into a rivalry.

KU will always have Kansas State to rival. Not a bad natural foe. Of course, KU also has a natural rivalry with Duke and a pretty special desire to beat North Carolina.

It is a shame money is driving a wedge into big time college basketball rivalries. It's 2012, and as Cindy Lauper said, money changes everything. The bottomline here is this relationship -- no matter how storied -- is over.

The divorce will soon be final; stop asking your ex if he wants to take you out to dinner for your birthday. He's moving on and so should you.

--Lofflin

After 365 days at full speed, one month off

I come to you in confession and apology today.

I apologize that I haven't written in a while, leaving all the heavy lifting in the able hands of John Lofflin.

I confess that I haven't written a single word in one month.

What have I been doing with myself? A full-time job, of course. A lot of reading. Playing with my new tablet computer. Playing a lot of video games. Watching some television. Taking more than a few naps.

Basically, I've been doing absolutely nothing of value.

As a writer, I feel crummy about myself. Writers stay sharp by writing. And my writing skills are dull right now. But as a person, I feel pretty terrific. The month of January 2012 has been extremely restful. I've shared lots of laughs with my wife, friends and family. I've grown more and more excited about the pending birth of my first niece or nephew, due in two weeks. I've refueled my tanks after a long, grueling year, and I'm now ready to tackle a variety of things.

(If you don't know, 2011 was grueling for me because of the blog My Daily Fortune. For that project, I opened a fortune cookie every day in 2011 and, basically, did whatever the fortunes told me to do. Then I wrote about it. Every single day.)

I have big plans for 2012 - in addition to being a great uncle. I have two book projects in the works, and more ideas bubbling up constantly. I plan on writing for this blog a lot. And I hope to re-sharpen my skills from a month off.

And it all starts now. I can't wait to see where this road leads.

The all-white neighborhood is extinct! Tell that to the guy on 155th Street stuck between all-blonde SUVs...Oh, and KC ranks high in desegregation?

Good news? Well, my guess is some members of the local media will doubtless see it that way.

Segregation, as a disease of the last century, is in remission, according to a study released today by researchers at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. And, according to the work of Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor, Kansas City shows one of the biggest declines in segregation among the nation’s most segregated cities.

Now, if you’ve driven down 155^th Street recently from State Line west into the sunset, you might think, ‘Ah, what magic you can do with numbers.” Stopped at the light at Metcalf Ave., for example, you find yourself boxed in by giant SUVs piloted by blonde drivers with blonde children in soccer uniforms staring blankly out the back windows… or – just as likely – sticking their pink tongues out at you for whatever indignity you apparently suffer.

Lexus in front, Mercedes behind, Tahoe to the left, BMW to the right. You’ve no doubt wondered as you waited where all this money comes from. What do these people do?

So, these statistics deserve a closer look than I’m offering here. Much closer.

Start with this: Kansas City ranked ninth among the 10 most segregated American cities in 1970. That’s no surprise in a city once ranked first for the most highway miles between population centers. Wichita ranked seventh on the most segregated list and Chicago, of course, ranked first.

In 1970, 91.1 percent of all Chicago metropolitan census tracts were segregated. The researchers utilize a statistical tool called a dissimilarity index – a tool I will not pretend to understand. The index number for Kansas City was 87.5 percent in 1970.

What I think this means is that in 87.5 percent of the city's census tracts, at least half the African American faces with have to be replaced with white faces to achieve perfect integration.

By 2010, Kansas City had fallen to 57.7 percent on the index, a decline of 29.8 percent. This was the fourth largest decline among the top 10 most segregated cities. Oklahoma City, Wichita, and Dayton, Ohio, experienced larger declines in the index.

And in the first decade of this century, Kansas City ranked ninth overall in the decline of segregation. Between 2000 and 2010, census information shows a decline in segregation – measured by the dissimilarity index -- in Kansas City from 68.6 percent to 57.7 percent, a 10.9 percent decline. In the same decade, Detroit went from 84.2 percent to 68.6 percent. But Detroit was also essentially depopulated.

Of course, Kansas City was still the fourth most segregated city on the list of biggest losers.

I’m not sure how hard we should pat ourselves on the back about this. It will be interesting to see what the local media does with this story in the coming days. The researchers, however, were sufficiently impressed with the results they culled from the census numbers to declare the all-white neighborhood is "extinct" in modern America. Extinct.

Well, they do hedge a bit when they explain what they mean by extinct.

“All-white neighborhoods are effectively extinct. A half-century ago, one-fifth of America’s urban neighborhoods had exactly zero black residents. Today, African-American residents can be found in 199 out of every 200 neighborhoods nationwide. The remaining neighborhoods are mostly in remote rural areas or in cities with very little black population.”

Allow a statistical idiot to rephrase. What the latest census data found is 199 of every 200 neighborhoods has at least one African American resident. That feels a bit closer to reality.

By this definition America is completely integrated, thanks in particular to those Latin immigrants the great grandsons of Polish and German immigrants love to hate. The researchers point out 99.8 percent of all census tracts in America contain at least one person who claims Hispanic heritage.

All these numbers remind me of a time I was interviewing a demographer at Johnson County Community College. I was curious about whether the constant booster boast that the golden goose sported the second highest income per resident in the nation was actually true. This demographer showed me something else, something that had been at first a statistical puzzle for her staff. They had compiled a scattergram of residents of color in the county. And right there square in the middle of Mission Hills was the highest concentration of black dots in the entire scattergram. How could this be?

They did a little checking. No, they found no hitherto hidden ghetto of color just west of State Line. The census had simply picked up a large concentration of live-in help. Gardeners, chauffers, maids.

Perhaps the most telling results of today’s study come from the researchers’ own cautions. I’ll quote them at length because they are worth pondering:

“The 1960s were the heyday of racial segregation. During those years, segregation seemed a likely cause of many of the troubles afflicting African-Americans. Segregation was so enormous, and so unfair, that it seemed to create a separate and unequal experience for African-Americans everywhere. During those years, the fight against housing segregation seemed to offer the possibility that once the races mixed more readily, all would be well.

“Forty years later, we know that this dream was a myth. There is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create that change. Yet we now know that eliminating segregation was not a magic bullet. Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt. At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.

“The difficult lesson of these decades is that society is complicated and single solutions rarely solve everything. While the decline in segregation remains good news, far too many Americans still lack the opportunity to achieve meaningful success.”

--Lofflin… more on this later…

Star columnists: Helling on truth, truthiness and truthfulness... why not just say no? and why waste space on fried macaroni?

Just say no.

For a journalist, saying no is difficult to impossible. But, in my opinion it's the real answer to the question Dave Helling raised in his Kansas City Star column today.

First, let me say I liked the column. The question of holding journalism's feet to the fire of truth is always a good one. And Helling makes a good case for the difficulty of establishing THE truth of a statement or a situation. His trick question about gas prices is compelling and not foreign to most reporters.

Of course, as Sissela Bok carefully pointed out in "Lying, Moral Choice in Public and Private Life," (must reading for every reporter) truth and truthfulness are different things. If a reporter held himself to only presenting THE truth, she'd only write once in a great while. But, her intention to be truthful, is a noble way of life.

But what does "intention to be truthful" mean?

I'd like make a small case for a different vision of it from the one often practiced by reporters in the field.

It means thinking hard about what truth means in the context of actually working for a news organization. Here's a centering question: Does getting the most truth out of the situation mean more than being first with the story?

It means rethinking what a story is, what news is. It may sometimes mean saying, "Whoa, this isn't a story. Yes, this here quote is sure newsworthy, but it isn't true, so it isn't a story."

What that suggests is reporters, who are, after all, in the truth business, ought to intend to discover the truth in every statement they report. "Every statement?" I'm writing this and cringing at the thought. But I'll stand by it. So, if they're reporting on the price of gasoline during Barack Obama's administration of the White House, it is incumbent on them to report all three of the "truths" Helling offers in his piece.

Because three competing truths exist doesn't mean the reporter should be paralyzed. It means the reporter should provide all three to the reader and let the reader decide.

But I'm wondering if sometimes the reporter should just say no. Of course that may mean Tony Botello will have the story first on his blog. Or somebody on television will mention it first at 6 p.m. Or, heaven forbid, CNN will get it first.

Competition is not a persuasive argument for anyone BUT reporters. The people whose lives are affected by news stories are certainly not persuaded by the argument. Nor are the readers who go to the newspaper or the blog for information. The only people persuaded by the necessity of beating the competition, are reporters. And, of course, the people who sign their paychecks.

Senator Jones calls Senator Smith a racist. Once Helling decides to write this story the cows are out of the barn. Let's say he calls Smith and asks him if he's a racist and Smith says, "Hell, no!" and Helling puts that in the second graph, or even in the lede. Nothing changes. A large percentage of readers will at least wonder if there is some truth in the charge and many will be sure it is true.

So, here's a novel idea. What if Helling decides not to write the story until his own highly developed sense of truth is satisfied? What if he demands evidence? What if he checks every angle as thoroughly as the responsibility of his profession demands? And what if he decides, then, not to write?

Would not writing be more truthful than writing in the traditional manner -- charge, denial, counter charge, denial?

Wouldn't providing all three truths about gas prices serve the reader better, especially if he also held the source's feet to the fire of all three truths?

I respect Helling's position here, don't get me wrong. I just want to push the argument a little farther.

When you think about the import of what Helling tackles in his column today and consider two other Star columnists chose to waste their space on Paula Deen, you can't help but be grateful. Now, really, Mary Sanchez and Jenee Osterheldt would have served us all well if they'd just said no to the temptation to write yet more vacuous words about Paula Deen. There is only so much of value you can say about fried macaroni.

They may have written the truth. But, then, who cares?

--Lofflin

Mark Wahberg, Mike O'Neal-- Don't apologize. Say it loud, say it proud, 'This is who I am, this is what I really think; I'm a jerk, okay...'

...

This is getting old. Another person in the spotlight apologizes for something stupid he or she said. It was Mark Wahlberg, this time, for saying he would have done what he does in movies if he had been on one of the planes that were steered into the World Trade Center.

I don’t want him to apologize. I want him to stand up and say, “Well… really, that’s what I would have done. Call me stupid, that’s what I said and I meant it.”

But, no.

I don’t want the speaker of the Kansas House to apologize as he did for a really stupid e-mail message he sent about Michelle Obama. I want him to stand up and be proud.

You read that right. I’m sick of apologies. I’m especially sick of forced apologies.

Here’s how it goes.

1. Folks in public life do, say, and write stupid things.
2. The Word Police -- or TMZ -- comes down on them, and
3. … after a few days while they wait to see if the storm blows over, they issue a statement saying they are sorry for the offense.

It reminds me of a person I know who always prefaced her statements with, “I don’t want to be rude…” but was, then, invariably, rude.

So, Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal published a cartoon which shows him to be a jerk. It shows him to be insensitive. It shows his subscription to the politics of disdain which run so strongly through the Republican Party (and the Democrat Party when a Republican is president…). It shows some degree of racism. Political wives and husbands have generally been off limits unless something in their activities was newsworthy and certainly Michelle Obama’s hair is not newsworthy.

So, be a big boy, O’Neal. Stand up to the nanny state you hate and say it straight. Yes, I published that cartoon. What of it? It was just a joke. Guys like me have been making jokes like this about people we don’t like forever. I don’t like Obama and I don’t like his wife. I don’t think they deserve respect just because they are in the White House.

Just once I’d like to see one of these guys with enough guts to stand up and say “I did it and I’m proud of it.” Then, of course, it would be clear what they stand for, how they feel, and exactly who they are.

Terrorist or freedom fighter? Let's take this peace journalism idea up a level; a world of death and destruction is just plain stupid

...

One man’s terrorist is, I’m afraid, always going to be another man’s guerilla fighter. The river between is unbridgeable.

This is a gloomy start for the first entry of the new year, but if we’re going to search for real answers to the war and strife that engulfs us humans, we have to start by being honest. Make no mistake, the peace and joy of our Christmas is an illusion we can afford to create for ourselves. Much of our world cannot.

My colleague, Steven Youngblood, returned home from Uganda just before Christmas having brought together natural enemies one more time in hopes of fostering a thing he calls “peace journalism.” Steve and I have talked about this movement many times, all the way back to the days when we were trying to name what he was advocating in Moldova, I think. Here’s what he wrote on his blog about his pre-Christmas foray in Uganda.

Specifically, government spokespeople from the army, police, and local government and journalists sparred over whether the Ugandan government was justified in banning live coverage of protests earlier this year, and restricting official updates of the investigation of the July, 2010 terrorist bombings in Kampala. Each side played its part, with the journalists crying foul at the heavy hand of the government while the security officials maintained that the moves were designed only to protect people and property. Predictably, no consensus was reached. I did express my opinion that the ban on live coverage represented a journalistic decision, and thus should not have been made by the government.

I told Steve that looked to me like an exhausting list of tangles to work through. In fact, he had written once when his transport was stuck in the mud that he hoped the conference went more smoothly than the trip to it and from his conclusions I would guess the mud he encountered wasn’t just under his wheels.

Every single question in his post -- those raised in this paragraph and those raised in the rest of the piece -- could occupy a semester's study in a journalism ethics class. They are not new and they are not unique to Uganda. They were debated right here in the land of the First Amendment during the race riots of the 1960s. Should journalists cover events that will inflame the passions of others? Should they quote language that will further divide communities and may lead to bloodshed. Should they practice self-censorship and if they don’t, should government step in?

To be honest, I think most, if not all of the questions he enumerated from the conference, are unsolvable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work on them because every increment toward agreement is good. But the fact that one man's terrorist is another man's guerrilla fighter, a question I've been troubling students with since I started teaching in 1980, is just almost impossible to resolve. And, in many ways, it is the heart of the disagreement. A society with only one word for murder would be in a big philosophical pickle.

Orwell saw this. War is peace. Repression is protection.

You can usually get somewhere in ethics by bringing down the scalpel on a problem, by trying to divide it into its parts and solve each one individually. But the problem with this one is that once you divide it, it gets tougher. If the difference between freedom fighter and terrorist is in eye of the perceiver – in other words, it boils down to the perceptions of the aggrieved vs the perceptions of the privileged -- then both will always see it differently. So you try to define the difference in terms both can agree on. And that is really thorny, as well. Were not Americans involved in terrorist acts against the British? Don't all revolutions begin with terror? Were Americans not ruthless terrorists against the Indians? Was Sherman not a terrorist? And what about the American president who unleashed the mighty power of the atom bomb on the people of Japan? Was that not an act designed specifically to create terror?

Suddenly defining terrorism gets uncomfortably sticky. How is terrorism different from war? Is it not an act of terror (taking the phrase literally) to bomb a village from an airborne drone in an effort to kill several terrorist leaders hiding in the village? What sort of terror does that unleash on the innocent?

I detest the notion of civilized war. ‘Just war’ theories just confound me. War is the breakdown of civilization. War is the breakdown of justice. War is the absence of humanity. To attempt to bring humanity to it is like trying to hold water in your fist.

I know writers and photographers, journalists and movie directors have created a huge body of work finding all those virtues in the throes of war. To be honest, I don’t buy it anymore. I'm just too old to see anything but destruction and waste. I’m not saying good people don’t fight and die and provide examples of loyalty and bravery in war. They do. But the war itself, well, as Edwin Starr once said, “What is it good for?”

I'm afraid the only just position I can find on terrorism is the pacifist position. If you rule all violence out of bounds, then these differences don't matter.

OK, so what then is pacifist journalism? Might as well take the idea of peace journalism to its logical conclusion. Would that simply mean condemning all violence, from capital punishment to war and everything -- terrorism and guerrilla fighting -- in between? A tougher pill to swallow, eh? Martin Luther King, Jr. vs. Malcolm X. Gandhi vs. Che.

You might rightly say that's an easy position for a person who lives in comfort in Missouri in the US of A to take. If you were on the butt end of a repressive and brutal government, maybe you’d sing a different tune. Perhaps. But, maybe it is the only real position on this issue. The only way around the horns of this ancient bull.

I'm thinking Youngblood’s 'security' officials would never buy into such a notion. And, no aggrieved journalist would either. Their jobs sort of depend on violence, or, more precisely, the threat of violence. Terror, in short.

I keep coming back to that Who song, "Won't get fooled again." Check out the lyric somewhere on the Net if you haven't heard it in a while. Would these two sides see the wisdom in it? Because the song takes the long view that most people in strife can't afford to take. If you make a violent revolution, you always wind up in the same place. "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss..." Brilliant lyric. I'm thinking the only real revolution is a non-violent one. The only real change is possible through non-violent strategies. Change from within.

Mankind's record of change through violence doesn't seem to me -- not a world historian but a casual observer -- to be very good. Violence is like lead poisoning -- the more of it you engage in, the more of it remains in the bodies of your people forever. Slavery, for instance, the ultimate violence, can never be cleansed from a country's soul. Not even when a member of the former slave class becomes president. You can run from these things in your history but you can't hide. They aren't just pages in your history book; they are poisons in your system.

--Lofflin

And, unfortunately, the beards have all grown longer overnight...

Please, someone explain what is happening at Kaufman Stadium... Fool me once... fool me twice? Betancourt's baaaaaack!

Oh no!

You simply won't believe this.

--Lofflin

Jolly thoughts for a cold dark morning with steam rising on the ponds and ducks in the water-- Not!

Bah Humbug.

No, this is not a Christmas rant. I've got no gripe with Christmas this morning. My gripe is with morning.

Morning, I hate you.

Especially in winter, I hate you. I hate waking up in the dark, stumbling around in the dark to get the coffee pot fired up. Looking for my shoes, rubbing my eyes red, the taste of elephant hooves in my throat, and not even getting to dip a fishing rod in the water as a reward.

Ah, morning. A rod in the water, hot coffee in the Thermos, the promise of crappie for lunch. Dream on.

Ducks leave wide sparkling wakes on the big pond off Highway 45. Steam rises and the sun is barely above the horizon. Yes, but no joy for me. I left my camera at home and I don't have time to fish. Drive on by, big boy.

Instead, I have a final exam to give. Which these days means presiding over a room of 30 people who feel exactly as I do about morning; me feeling their angry eyes for interrupting their progression to the credential they believe they need to have a decent life. As a tiny reward, I'll show them "Who's On First" from "Naughty Nineties," knowing they could find it themselves on You Tube any time they wanted, anyway.

Some mornings I feel useless. I feel like life has passed me on the highway and decided not to take a picture.

A few minutes later, I'm sitting in a coffee shop with fake logs in the fireplace, unlit, watching the sun come up over Taco Bell and the early arriving employee who unlocks the door then sucks down one last cigarette in the cold air on the sidewalk outside. Man, what those gloves must smell like after a few of those morning heaters! A chubby carpenter works his way into a pair of brown quilted coveralls. He’s got a cranberry colored awning to fix this morning.

It's just 8:15 but the Taco 12-Pack is back and we've got to get ready.

And I'm ready for another day of murder, abuse and mayhem in the early years of the new century. Child abuse is much in the news these days -- and the accused are the he-men of the big time sports world. Funny thing about child abuse, in the 1800s it didn't officially exist. The first case was brought by the ASPCA. That's right, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The first case required an 11-year-old girl to be declared an animal for the court to hear the case.

Then child abuse kind of went away until an article in a respected medical journal in the 1960s declared it a disease. It was everywhere for a while, then it kind of went away again.

And now it is back with a vengeance. Priests and coaches have made it news this time. And, do not take me wrong, it should be. I just wish I wasn't here to witness it. I just wish I could have gotten in and out of this life without knowing such a thing existed. Without watching it endlessly crawl across the bottom of the television screen while I'm trying to lose myself in a basketball game.

Selfish, eh? I stand accused.

Well, it will be one of those days if I turn on a television or read a newspaper over somebody's shoulder or click on a newspaper Web page. Nothing but static. Stomach turning crawls, bright faced talkers bringing horrific news and all the brain killer static of modern life. The Republicans will be after Obama -- they remind us of our first and second wives who could find something objectionable in everything we did. And murders in bucolic Kansas City will be reported. Dead bodies discovered. Road rage pile ups. Some favorite food found unhealthy. Tony will be busting out the exclamation points and big healthy mostly uncovered breasts. Otherwise, meanness and stupidity will be everywhere.

Have a good day, sir. Would you like a bag for all that stuff?

--Lofflin, just a bit out of sorts. Be glad yours is not the next paper I grade...

My Frank White story from I-70 Baseball.com; Warning! Reading this will only make you madder...

“It was twenty years ago today

Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play…”

By John Lofflin

Published 9/31/10

It was 20 years ago yesterday Frank White last ranged across the dirt of a major league infield as the second baseman of the Kansas City Royals. You can imagine him, the consummate glovesmith, waiting on the first pitch from Kevin Appier to Luis Polonia, opening and closing the broad pocket of his light brown Rawlings mitt, silently thinking through the calculus of Polonia’s tendencies versus the grass and dirt between home and his cleats.

It was Sept. 30, 1990, and the Royals were finishing an unremarkable season in Anaheim, Calif. Appier had 11 wins against 8 loses and with a victory that California afternoon would finish the season 12 and 8, George Brett was hitting .328 when the game ended, and Bo Jackson broke a 1-1 tie on a 3-1 count in the bottom of the ninth with a pinch hit blast into the right field seats.

But Frank White was hitting just .216 that afternoon, last in John Wathan’s batting order. And, it was White who watched from the dugout while Bo Jackson walked to the plate in his stead with no outs in the ninth. Whether he knew it or not, this would be the last time Frank White’s name would be written anywhere in a major league lineup. But it would not be the last time he suited up, nor the last time he calculated the possibilities of bat, ball and infield dirt, even if he sat behind a microphone two decades later to do it.

Twenty-one years spent as a player on the field, counting three years in the minors, and 20 years as a major league coach, minor league manager and teacher-announcer. That’s a lifetime in baseball… and at the highest level.

It’s almost always a mistake to judge a ballplayer by his last game, even if Frank was the pivot man in two double-plays during that tense pitcher’s duel in California. The last game tells you little about an 18-year career. Every sixty-two year old softball player knows the feeling of coming to bat for the last time in late September praying for a crisp line drive double to take into the snowy nights, but grounding out instead. After all, Babe Ruth struck out in his last at-bat.

Frank White out, Royals bare hand another slow roller to third and throw the ball into the stands

Frank White is out as a home team broadcaster, according to the Kansas City Star this morning.

Just when you thought it was impossible for the brain trust to handle home town public relations worse, they manage to blow the lid off the curve.

Frank White was the ONLY reason to watch a Kansas City Royals broadcast. Why? Well, you might actually learn something about the game. Or, you might actually hear somebody in this tight-assed organization dare to criticize a player or management of this lousy ballclub. Denny Matthews wasn't afraid and neither was Frank. Denny usually communicated his feelings by the dead air he left after some homer comment from one of his sidekicks. Frank just came out and said it.

You had to love it when Frank, after watching another Sports Center inspired attempt at bare hand fielding, quietly asked why the fielder, or his sidekick, thought Mr. Rawlings made ball gloves. Of course, this was coming from a eight-time Gold Glove winner, so what would he know?

On second thought, the brain trust is right. Frank shouldn't be sitting up there in the broadcast booth. The fact is, Frank White should be sitting in the dugout next spring managing the competitive team the Royals are finally putting on the field. That's where he should be.

--Lofflin

Sam Mellinger did a good piece this morning that will only make you madder.

What I'd like to see next, but won't, I'm only dreaming, is Frank White's next visit to Kauffman Stadium be in another uniform as the manager of a ball club he deserves. I'm with Frank White -- done with the Royals.