Thank You, Dwight Howard: Part II

Playoff coverage has become ridiculous. Obviously, each game carries urgent weight, but the way the storyline and analysis swing so wildly after each outcome is overblown. Heroes become eternal chokers and vice versa in the span of two games. Shouldn't we at least wait four games before writing the tombstone on someone's career?

To wit, the treatment of the Magic's star center, Dwight Howard. After his team blew a 14-point lead in Game 5 against the Celtics three weeks ago, he was taking heaps of criticism for not carrying his team as a superstar should. (Howard didn't help his cause by complaining about his coach and teammates during the postgame press conference.) So much for that scorn, though. Since then, he delivered a masterful performance in the next game, the Magic won the series and, over the weekend, defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers to reach the NBA Finals. His overall statistics for the 2009 playoffs: 21.7 points per game and 15.4 rebounds per game. Those numbers are generally unassailable to me.

Howard, who's only 23 years old, really could be a transformational player in NBA history. His combination of sheer power and nimble athleticism are astonishing for a man who is 7 feet tall, weighs 265 pounds and has deltoids that are thicker than my waist. Last week, against the Cavaliers, their (and the NBA's) star player, guard LeBron James, was racing down court and stopped short to shoot a three-pointer. Howard was galloping after James, caught up, leapt past James and yet was still able to pivot his body so he turned to block James' shot. Truly incredible body power and control. (Ridiculously, Howard was called for a foul.)

Howard's offensive game is crude and reliant on his ability to overpower defenders rather than deftly beat them. But even then, it's like nothing my generation has seen from NBA centers, who have always been lumbering, even when they were elegant low-post players such as Hakeem Olajuwon. Howard moves like someone half his size, which has many unimaginable implications that are very exciting. And he's always smiling and clearly having fun, making millions of dollars playing a game. How can you beat that?

Magic beat the Los Angeles Lakers in six games.

What Do Jack Kerouac And My Dad And Uncle Have In Common?

They both created their own dice baseball games in their youth! The article in Saturday's Times detailing Kerouac's adolescent invention and meticulously chronicled games and stats was, by far, the greatest thing I've read in a paper in weeks. Kerouac even wrote "news stories" about league happenings. He also had his own fantasy race-horsing circuit, both of which are the subject of a new collection and book at the New York Public Library.

Even one of 20th century's coolest Americans and most lauded authors, a founder of the Beats, loved baseball so genuinely that he went to the extremely sweet, dorky lengths of creating his own dice baseball games. As an adult, he was driving around the country, living where and as he chose, as part of an iconic group of writers, whose cultural effect will resonate for decades and decades. But at the age of 16, he was huddled over his notebooks and playing cards, just like I, my dad and uncle were at 16! I doubt there is a more convincing argument that baseball truly is America's pasttime and one of the few things that can be defined as quintessentially American. (The other things on my list are corn, apple pie, jazz, rock and perhaps, at least in the postwar era, speculation and/or entrepreneurship. Please add your own items in the comments section.)

Speaking from experience, playing dice baseball automatically qualifies you for teasing about it by your friends. The Times' story notes that Kerouac hid his hobby from nearly all his fellow writers. (I just can't picture Allen Ginsberg getting into it.) When I told my dad about this over the weekend, he sounded excited, especially about the part that Kerouac wrotes his own stories. He told me for the first that he and his brother did the same. They would mock the Sporting News' way of writing, he said. Apparently, Kerouac's did the same to United Press International.

I was always partial to Strat-o-Matic's game, but, for my 12th or so birthday, my uncle actually re-created their original game, created in Sheepshead Bay, in 1960s Brooklyn. If I ever have more free time in my life and/or a mid-life crisis, I'm going to play another season of dice baseball.

Say It Ain't So, Manny

Among all my era's great hitters, Manny Ramirez always seemed the least likely to be doping. I hate the vaguely racist "idiot savant" explanation of his feats, but what he does at the plate is so serendipitously natural, as though batting were goofy second-nature -- "I don't know how I do it. I just play" -- that I doubted he would ever be stained like so many others have.

Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. Perhaps the female fertility drug he took really was prescribed for medicinal reasons. He says his results have been clean in numerous other tests. But apparently this drug is used to help men naturally produce testosterone again as they come off a cycle of steroid use. The positive test is too hard to explain away. My heart sank when I heard the news. One of my friends, who's a gigantic Sawx fan, had this Facebook status update last Thursday: "is tearing up."

Once baseball players test positive for steroids, or are strongly assumed to have taken them, it's hard to place them within the game's historical context. Is Barry Bonds still a Hall-of-Famer? How about Roger Clemens? The central dilemma is, Once a player is confirmed or assumed beyond a reasonable doubt to have used performance-enhancing drugs, how much of his accomplishments can be ascribed to natural talent and how much to the drugs?

Perhaps Manny could even be placed at the top of the group of players including Jim Thome, Jeff Bagwell and Carlos Delgado, great hitters and weak fielders whose peak was circa 1996-2004, when all of baseball became dominated by offense and outsized numbers. These players might not belong in the Hall of Fame. Their career stats could be read as a product of their anomalous era, not proof of their status as one of their era's great position players. I just can't lump Manny with them, though. As lumbering a man as he could be, Manny's hitting was nimble and electric, loads of fun to watch.

One of my favorite memories of the past four years was sitting in a Cambridge bar for four long hours on a Friday night, watching the Sawx and Angels in Game 2 of the 2007 ALDS, perhaps one of the longest nine-inning games ever, when Manny hit one of the most electrifying home runs ever to win the game. It flew off his bat instanteously. A bar full of drowsy people leapt up. There was never any doubt where it would land. Everyone knew it, including Manny, and they basked it in. (As a disclaimer, I still don't like the Sawx. Only Manny.)

Now, Sawx fans and Boston sportswriters get to bask in the positive drug test as a confirmation of how Manny ignomiously left town last year. It only buttresses their arguments that he's a selfish, uncomplicated, unlikeable man. I hope they aren't correct, but they might be. Here's that home run, on wonderfully grainy hand-held video:

Is This For Real?

Not exactly sure why, perhaps morbid curiosity, but I was browsing Journalism Job's Web site yesterday, when I saw this job posting:

"Description:
Softball Reporter

"Roll Call seeks an energetic reporter/blogger for a three-month, part-time (10 hours/week) position covering Capitol Hill’s summer softball season for RollCall.com’s new softball Web site. The successful candidate will have: experience in and around the Congressional, House and/or Senate softball leagues; news reporting experience, preferably sports-related; an engaging writing style; and the flexibility to work evening hours. Send or fax resume with cover letter, and writing samples to: Roll Call Inc., Attn: HR Dept., 50 F Street, NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20001 or fax: 202/824-0475 or e-mail hr@rollcall.com. No phone calls please. EOE."

I realize Washington, D.C., largely closes for the summer -- your tax dollars hard at work! -- but does Roll Call really need reporting, snarky or otherwise, on summer softball leagues? How does one gain experience in the Congressional softball circuit? How does someone apply to this job while maintaining a modicum of self-respect? Can you imagine having "softball correspondent" printed on a business card? Perhaps when your industry is dying and laying off anyone it can, you'll accept the job of softball correspondent as long as it's a paying gig.

Hold On, 21st Century

Making fun of Twitter is easy. The product's name is childish and the parlance -- "twitterverse," "twhirl," "tweet" -- even more so. And the idea of updating people on your personal life in 140 characters or fewer is self-indulgent at best. ("Eating a sandwich, boy it tastes good"? Or, "Landed at the airport, can't wait to party"? Who cares.)

However, I'm one of Twitter's biggest converts because of its genuine practical and business applications. The Times had a nice piece last month about ways it's being used: organizing political and consumer protests, live feed of a surgery and an application that documents each time a baby kicks. It's no surprise that at least 15 percent of all Twitter users work in P.R. or real estate. I also think politicians can productively harvest Twitter, not only for promoting their agenda, policy and unfiltered spin cycles, but also just to let people know where they are physically and what they're doing each day. (Writing an update takes two minutes maximum, so not having the time is no excuse.) I've already seen a few public officials doing this and think it's incredible, almost like a 21st-century variation on transparency, because we know how it is they spend their days and our money.

And, of course, there are newspapers, who might benefit the most. The industry's broadest lesson the past three years is media can no longer control the platform and compel news consumers to consume how and when they want, i.e. the printed page, each morning. The news producer has to go out and seek the reader. Twitter is about as simple a way to do this as possible. Posts, again, take two minutes and, for 140 characters, have a few useful categories: breaking news updates, summaries of and links to a story, and glimpses into what's happening in the newsroom, such as which reporters are headed where and who's stopping by for an interview. (If celebrities of all stripes can use Twitter [and the Internet in general] to fly over the media's filter, why not weaken the newsroom's filter, too?) All of the above stoke interest in a paper's stories, while personalizing the staff and operation, which drives people to the homepage, aka where a newspaper makes money online.

Hopefully Twitter starts to make money soon, without drastically changing its content/mission, or finds a buyer who knows how to it and is willing to support its losses. (Apple is reportedly the latest to be interested in buying it, though Gawker's sourcing appears weak, as do most things about that site.) It's one of the few things I like about about the era of always being plugged in.

Update: Matt Bai, in a recent essay in the Sunday Times magazine, has a compelling argument for why Twitter shouldn't be adopted by Washington's political class: In an era where politics is defined by high-pitched, immediate reacting to ideas rather than the ideas themselves, instead of the much more valuable reasoned, deliberate compensation, Twitter does nothing to help.

Enough With The 21st Century

Traveling to Austin, Texas, and back last weekend via four plane rides, I was struck by how many people own iPhones, Blackberries or some other PDA. They constantly checked and fiddled with them in the airport and on planes, even when, to form superficial judgments, they looked like the type of people who really had no need for one.

Is there really a need to be plugged into an electronic device all the time? When we're sitting and waiting, killing time, do we need to be updating someone else on this or learning what someone else is doing? Obviously, consumption inherently connotes status and the type of products two people have create class hierarchy: What do you think of someone who owns an iPhone versus a Verizon flip cell phone? A Kate Spade bag versus one by Marc Jacobs? But the practical reason for owning a smartphone -- staying connected to the network so you can remain productive while traveling -- has been supplanted by the image of work -- looking busily at a small portable screen only to use it for emphemera such as crossword puzzles and text messages. Signifier trumps substance yet again.

The most striking thing is how we've forgotten how to be alone. (Yes, Jonathan Franzen's oeuvre rears its head again in these pages.) The concept of placing a device in our pocket and opening a magazine or book -- any magazine or book, for that matter; not even something pretentiously ponderous -- is foreign. Leave the rest of the infinte (cyber)world alone for two hours and see what exists in between the (in)finite space of your temples and the covers of a book. At the heart of this problem is a lack of interest in challenging our mental capacity and, instead, settling for the vapidity of our iPhone's applications.

Update: Malcolm Gladwell, in his mildly odd recent story in the New Yorker, about applying the principles of militant insurgency to success in everyday life, has a side note about how the 21st century is defined by "real-time processing," aka receiving a constant stream of conglomerated data to make decisions instantaneously. Everything before it was "batch," aka collecting information over the course of X period of time and waiting to make a decision. The story centers around a Little League girls' basketball coach, who also happens to be a Silicon Valley executive, who argues the Federal Reserve should take a real-time approach to setting monetary policy. I think there's something to be said for "batch" thinking more often than not. Obviously, someone who's made lots of money from a book about the advantages of making quick decisions disagrees.

Thank You, Arlen Specter

Many things have not been lost in Senator Specter's decision to defect last week, but it's again worth noting that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the U.S. political spectrum now resides in the Democratic Party. This is not insignificant. Everything, especially the broader public's political preferences, is cyclical, but now that politicians ranging from Specter to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, live in the same house, policy debates will only happen in that house.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina can say he'd rather have 30 pure conservatives' votes than those of 60 GOP moderates, which is noble-sounding. But that doesn't do much when those numbers mean he's blocked from accomplishing anything, even compromising, on federal legislation. (Peggy Noonan uses DeMint's comments against him well, in her most recent WSJ op-ed column, to prove why Republicans' preference to cannabilize is not a good long-term strategy.) And since when is DeMint and his political bretheren so concerned about staying punk and not selling out?

Not that I really care. If the Republican Party wants to continue to advocate for expanded income inequality, the deregulation of industries that can cripple the financial system when they're deregulated, the persecution of gays, Hispanics and other minorities, and the dismissal of science on evolution and climate change, it can go right ahead. That approach has led to its marginalization and I'd be very happy if it only became more exaggerated.

Sure, Specter is still center-right, meaning he'll confound the Democratic caucus on many votes that it wants secured. The majority is not fillibuster-proof through 2010 -- and that's, on occasion, a good thing. But if he wants to run as a Democrat in his next election, it means he'll have to establish a Democratic voting record. He may be an opportunist, but opportunists can't only hang out with the in-crowd; they have to start acting like them. Sometimes, it'll be forced on Specter's part and other times, it will be genuine. Either way, it's a very good thing.

Update: If further proof of the GOP's follies is needed, see former Vice President Cheney's comments last weekend that he'd rather have Rush Limbaugh than Colin Powell as the Republican Party's standard bearer. Sure, Powell endorsed Obama in last year's presidential race, but one deviation from the norm shouldn't lead to exile. Powell likely still believes the U.S.'s guiding principles should be a strong military, low tax rates and small government, aka the GOP's calling card. He might not like the offensive, demeaning rhetoric that now characterizes the party, but that's no reason to throw him out with the trash.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians haven't realized the severe problem with making Limbaugh their leader. Limbaugh would surely like to see a country governed by his political principles, but he's an entertainer, not a politician. He makes his money by being provocative, not winning elections, and he'll earn his money, fame and influence whether the GOP is the majority or minority. In the end, his core motivation is different from the party's. Somehow, the party misses this crucial point.