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I Love the Smell of Baseball in the Morning – Protesting the Padres TV Blackout

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Matthew Hall, reporter turned columnist for UT-San Diego, had an idea that tapped into a deep well of frustration for baseball fans in San Diego. In a July 14th column Hall called upon Padres fans to step up to the plate and do something about a situation that is as unfair as it is indicative of the avarice surrounding virtually all things having to do with professional sports in this day and age. Half the population of our fair city can’t watch Padres baseball on TV, due to a dispute between Fox Sports San Diego and a couple of local cable providers. Needless to say, since the Padres are pulling down a cool $800 million for the broadcast rights, fans feel like they ought to be able to watch games from home.

So the deal was that fans were going to meet up outside the Padres Petco Park at10amon a Sunday morning in the middle of July to make a little noise, maybe make those corporate suits notice that their little game was a big deal for a lot of little people. I wasn’t sure just how much response Hall was going to get. There’s a wide chasm between ranting and raving from the safety of one’s Facebook page, and actually showing up to physically do something.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Food Fight! Farm Bill Leaves People Hungry, Animals Hurting

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July 16, 2012 –The House Agriculture Committee approved legislation late last week that will cut $35 billion from the federal food and nutrition budget, about $16.5 billion of which come from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps. The cuts work by eliminating “categorical eligibility,” which provides assistance to families whose assets or income put them slightly above the technical line for SNAP eligibility. Repealing categorical eligibility means that between two and three million Americans will lose access to food stamps and roughly 280,000 children will drop out of their automatic enrollment in the free lunch program at school. SNAP assistance saved five million American from poverty in 2010 and halved the number of children in poverty in 2011.

Bowing to pressure from agribusiness combines, the House Agriculture Committee also approved an amendment that will deny states the ability to regulate any farm product, overturning animal welfare, food safety and environmental laws related to any farm product in all 50 states. The midnight vote, at the end of a marathon debate on the five year agriculture measure, would block California’s ban on the sale and production of foie gras, and a voter approved measure requiring that caged veal calves, breeding sows and laying chickens should be able to stand up, lie down, turn around and freely extend their limbs. Also gone will be state laws that limit pesticide use on fruits and vegetables.   [Read more…]

Jerry Sandusky Guilty on 45 Counts, Brings Shame to Coaches Everywhere

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Former longtime Penn St. football coach will be going to prison presumably for the rest of his life.

Jerry Sandusky, the longtime defensive coordinator and onetime heir to Joe Paterno’s job, was convicted last Friday on 45 of the 48 counts that were brought against him for child sexual abuse and related charges. At 68 years old, Sandusky—who has yet to be formally sentenced—will likely die in prison where he belongs. It’s not enough. The punishment, sadly, does not fit the crime. He won’t live long enough in confinement to adequately pay for the suffering and humiliation he brought on those 10 boys he raped…..the 10 we know of.   [Read more…]

Los Angeles Kings Win the Stanley Cup

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The oldest and most coveted sports trophy in North America will call Southern California home for only the 2nd time in its 120 year history.

The LA Kings made history the other night. In defeating the New Jersey Devils 6-1 in game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, they became the first team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup, the oldest and arguably the most coveted trophy in North America, as a number eight seed.   [Read more…]

The Crowd at the Ball Game

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Having emerged from the season opening series against the hated Dodgers with no beer or blood stains on my jersey, I thought a few observations on the nature of watching baseball were in order as we amble toward the sweet days of summer, win or lose.

In William Carlos Williams’s fine poem “The Crowd at the Ball Game” he notes the beauty, love, and menace of the crowd:

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —
all to no end save beauty
the eternal –

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied —
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
its words cut —
The flashy female with
her mother, gets it —
The Jew gets it straight –
it is deadly, terrifying —

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution   [Read more…]

Play Ball!

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Opening week is upon us and the Padres ownership debacle has already done a lot to dampen the spirits of local baseball fans even before the first pitch has been thrown. With Jeff Moorad unlikely to ever take over the majority share of the team from John Moores, many fans rightly feel they have been bamboozled once again–left to sit in a park that their tax dollars built and pay through the nose for bad baseball and overpriced beer while the swooning friars stumble uncertainly around the bases toward yet another losing season. If you watch the Vegas line, the Padres are picked to finish last in the National League West with only 70 wins. Oh, the horror!

But, of course, that is the destiny of the Padres fan: losing. As I only half-jokingly tell my friends, I have taught my son to love baseball and love the Padres so he knows from a young age the first noble truth: life is suffering.   [Read more…]

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