Friday, April 24, 2009

Mendacity

We have become a society--not just politically but socially--that will be characterized in the future as insincere. In every walk of life, we lie. We lie about why we go to war, why we want to change the medical system, the purpose of taxes, the reasons for ethanol fuel, why we are supporting GM, why we did not support Lehman Brothers, why we have no charter schools, why some students do badly regardless. And who knows what global temperatures mean now? Or the acid in the ocean? The way we are going we will outlaw mathematics. And we lie to ourselves: the students with the lowest scores on achievement tests have the highest self esteem, political correctness supplants comity, torturing three murderers on an island is a terrible break with our history of love towards all, even in combat.

And we expect insincerity. No military guy can answer straight. Nor does it matter. Obama says he won't pursue the torture question and the next day he says he will. No one blinks. The guy who audited the S&L disaster in the 80's was interviewed in a hearing recently and was asked to estimate the amount of fraud in each government contract and he said "7% off the top and then whatever trickles down at each level." A culture that is completely crippled by lies. It is symbolically fitting that the greatest economic meltdown in history occurs because "no one trusts each other".

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Ultimate Outsource

These are times that make good ideas bad. Hedge funds, derivatives, borrowing on the house—all good ideas at the time—are now stultified.

My good idea was this: Find the typical Pittsburgh sports team and pull its fans closer by having typical Pittsburgh fans actually play for the team. There is, of course, only one prototypical Pittsburgh team: A team that is declining in the rust belt, whose leadership has never demonstrated any quality other than self advancement in almost a generation, whose useful talent always leaves for other cities and whose long-term contracts are with players beyond their prime. Fading glory, terrible leadership, inability to retain young talent, black-hole long-term obligations with non producers: The Pirates are not symbolic of Pittsburgh, they are Pittsburgh.

Now how could the fans participate? They cannot become the executives because it is not their money. Coaching is out because the executives would not approve even if the fans’ random decisions were no worse than the professionals’. They cannot replace the broadcasters because no one would be better than Bob Walk. Position players require some skill like catching, hitting, and throwing. The Pirates can do that, albeit remedially. Starters? A fan could replace Jimmy Anderson but he is gone. Closers? The Pirates are actually strong there.

But there is an area where the fans might be able to improve the Pirates—or at least be a wash and cheaper: Middle relief. The Pirates have no middle relievers. They have declining starters who hope to start again and declining closers who hope to close again. But the city is filled with healthy strong men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s still wearing high school letter jackets that would be able to fill in.

This is my plan. The Pirates hold tryouts looking for men with good health, reasonable arms, and a love of the game. Then they teach the better ones the knuckle ball. They would not have to be strong: Weak arms might actually be an advantage. It is said Hoyt Wilhelm threw his knuckler in the 40-mile-an-hour range. Tim Wakefield throws his in the 60s. Certainly a major league pitching coach could teach a bunch of athletic men one pitch. Then select the best and rotate them to the middle innings. One man an inning or two. It would be a public relations bonanza, a human interest feeding frenzy, and the men would be cheap and, most importantly, expendable. If a 40 year old wore out after a few weeks, just replace him with another knuckleballer from the stable. The newly retired guy would be thrilled with his experience (and the extra bucks). On the off chance that someone showed real ability, trade him immediately for real talent and replace him.

Regrettably the Pirates were ahead of me. This year the Pirates signed two guys who had never played baseball before to be pitchers. They are both from India. In essence, the Pirates thought of my idea independently and, true to their Pittsburgh zeitgeist, outsourced it.