Odds And Ends

Odds And Ends

I have been cynical about the January 6 riot hearings; it appeared to me to be little more than another pompous effort to damage Trump as a 2024 candidate--and as a politician. Some reasonable people think these hearings are more significant.
Peggy Noonan was really impressed with the Hutchinson testimony. She thinks it makes Trump indictable.
And, in National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote that Hutchinson's testimony was devastating in that it portrayed Donald Trump as “singularly culpable” for the events of 1/6.


The Pirates lost last night 19-2. They could not hit, catch or pitch. Despite the comedy, the game raised two serious questions.
First, the Pirates used an infielder to pitch the ninth. The logic goes that you don't want to use up a pitcher in a lost cause. Interestingly, Milwaukee used a position player to finish the ninth, presumably the obverse of the argument, you don't want to waste a pitcher on an obvious winning cause. This takes a terrible lopsided game and diminishes it further. Bob Walk said that the game had gotten rid of pitchers hitting because they clearly couldn't hit and that discrepancy diminished the game; so what about position players pitching?
The second question is a more serious matter: cruelty. The Pirate pitcher in the eighth could not get anyone out. Eight runs scored before any out and he pitched over fifty pitches. Now a team has some responsibility to have players that are at least in tune with the game, that have some basic abilities to perform it. Having a uniform and playing by the rules is not enough. And humiliating marginal players is too high a price to pay for the owner's profits. The fans have become peripheral here. But the league owes more to its players. It should protect them from heartless abuse.