The Whole is Less Than the Sum of the Parts
Billy Beane was supposed to be a so-called “five tool” player. In baseball, a “five tool” player is someone who hits for high average, hits for power, has elite speed, plays excellent defense, and has a strong throwing arm. They’re also rare. A true five tool player is likely to be a multi-year All-Star, probably a league MVP at some point, and have a leg-up for the Hall of Fame.
And yet Billy Beane did none of that. Drafted in the first round of the 1980 MLB draft, Beane just could never quite put it all together. He spent most of his career mired in the minor leagues, and only managed to play in 148 total major league games over six seasons with a career .219 batting average. A major disappointment for someone with so much talent, at least on paper. (Beane could nevertheless end up as a Hall of Famer for his revolutionary work as a General Manager, but that’s another story.)
I was reminded of Billy Beane yesterday as I watched Vice President Kamala Harris give a disaster of an interview and press conference:
Kamala Harris should be a political five tool player: She’s relatively young, she has a compelling life story (daughter of immigrants), she’s telegenic, she’s intelligent, and she’s won statewide office on her own and national office as part of a ticket. On paper, she should be the female Barack Obama. But put her in front of a camera without prepared remarks, and she is bafflingly bad at it. She’s worse at it than she has any business being, and I don’t understand it. I’ll admit that I agree with her on virtually zero policy prescriptions, so maybe that prejudices my evaluation of her political skills; but I don’t think so. She’s just not good at this. And if the plan is to make her the standard bearer for the Biden administration in 2024 (unless an 81 year old Joe Biden will be running for reelection), that doesn’t strike me as the best plan.
Masks and Manners
We’ve entered — at least here in Virginia — that weird COVID purgatory where masks are medically pointless for most of us, but the habit for wearing them remains strong. (Of course there are places, say, directly to our south where masks were barely a thing in the first place, so the transition there has been minimal.)
I’ve been fully vaccinated for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been doing my best to act like it. I haven’t worn a mask to the gym in two weeks. Our grocery store says to please wear a mask unless you’ve been fully vaccinated. I have been, so I don’t. Our local Target “recommends” masks unless you’ve been fully vaccinated. But again, I have, so I don’t wear one.
It feels a little weird, but I can honestly say that I haven’t gotten any adverse reactions. At least not any that I’ve noticed. No one has said a word to me about it; and if anyone has given me a dirty look or avoided me, I was oblivious to it.
But then I was picking up lunch at our local Panera, and they had a sign on the door that simply said “Please join us in wearing a mask inside our restaurant.”
It stood out to me. There was no “if you’ve been vaccinated” caveat; nor was there any “by order of the governor.” It was simply “please join us.” So I did. I thought about why they might be asking customers to do that — maybe they have an employee that’s immunocompromised, or maybe the manager is just hyper-cautious. But whatever, they asked nicely, and it’s their restaurant. To me it’s akin to the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” sign. Sure, I could bust in there yelling about how it’s my right to come into a restaurant bare-chested and shoeless. But that would make me an asshole. And despite what my high school girlfriend and various members of my family might say, I try not to be an asshole.
As a libertarian type, I’m all for making governing decisions at the lowest level possible, starting with the individual. But that only works if we all agree to behave responsibly. To that end, I try to live my life by thinking about “could society function if everyone behaved like I do?” And most of the time, to answer “yes” means simply practicing common courtesy and basic manners. Could society function if everyone took exception to signs on restaurant doors? Almost certainly not. And yet Texas and Florida are passing honest-to-God laws that basically ban businesses from even politely asking their customers to behave a certain way, essentially codifying assholery. And I just think that’s lunacy.
The last year and a half or so has been quite illuminating in terms of what people are willing to do in order to live in a functioning society. The answer, for many, is apparently “not much.” What’s troubling is that we have an entire class of politicians who look at these adults and think “ah yes, my voter base, I must coddle and encourage them.”
Trient-Weekly Trivia
Category: World Geography
Clue: This city is the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway and home to the Russian Pacific fleet.
Vladivostok
Today’s clue:
Category: Political terms
Clue: A Republican who supported Cleveland in 1884 instead of Blaine; it's from an Indian word for “war leader.”
Dispatches from the Homefront
In addition to adding several new words to her vocabulary, my daughter has also started enunciating many words more clearly. Instead of merely saying “yeah,” she’s started saying “yep” or even “yes.” It makes her sound much more mature and matter-of-fact.
“Did you poop?”
“Yep!”
In my head a hear an implied “Sure did!”