Hank Kalet

Baseball coverage has become a rather trendy and silly enterprise. Forget the standard, over-the-top writing (see today’s column by Mike Lupica) — that’s not the problem. What drives me crazy these days is the instant annointment of the next big thing.

Consider the way we turn mediocre hitters into superstars based on a half season of production

ESPN offers its predictions for the playoffs. Of the 17 “experts,” eight have the Mets going to the World Series — a rather small number considering that the Mets won 10 games more than any other National League ball club. The reason — which I can only assume based on some of the yammering ex-ballplayers on Baseball Tonight — is that they had a bad September or that they have become succeptible to left-handed pitching or that they can be handled if you pitch them inside or …. Suddenly, because of a hot September, two incredibly flawed ball clubs — the Dodgers and Padres — are seen as hot picks by some. Now, I’m no expert and I am the first to admit that the Mets are flawed (they do have trouble with lefties and their starting pitching is thin), but they won 97 games and have the best lineup of the teams still playing in the National League.

For me, the entire National League playoffs depend on three things: 1. How Jose Reyes plays; 2. How the Mets relief corps performs; and 3. Whether the Mets’ starters can consistently give the team six innings. If Reyes is on base, the rest of the league will have fits, and the rest of the Mets’ lineup will follow suit, making for a potent offense. If the starters can go six and the relievers do the job they’ve been doing (no one in the NL has as deep a bullpen), then the Mets will be fine.

And make no mistake, the World Series will be won by an American League team if the Mets cannot get there. The Mets were the only team to hold its own against the AL this season (if you ignore the debacle against Boston).

Anyway, my rant here is not so much about my feeling that the Mets are suddenly underapprecited — the playoffs have become a crap shoot in many ways, as the regular success of the wild card teams attests — as it is the blathering by baseball writers that elevates players and managers to superstud status before their time.

Ryan Howard had the NL’s best season and probably does deserve the MVP. But only based on his season-long totals. When his name first came up, it was at the expense of Albert Pujols, who carried his badly bruised and busted team into the playoffs — a place the Phillies failed to reach.

And then there is the weird saga of Joe Girardi, manager of the Florida Marlins. The Marlins were a nice story this year, far better than they were expected to be, but Girardi has been the consensus manager of the year since shortly after the all-star break. Three things to consider, however: The Dodgers and Mets were a combined 28 games better than last year, the Marlins were under .500 and had a worse record than last year and, perhaps most importantly, Girardi was fired today.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Another school shooting. Another bunch of dead kids. Another inexplicable moment in the modern world. Three in one week, seemingly dozens in the last decade.

I can’t fathom this, except to say that the prevalence of guns in our society is at least a partial explanation, not all of it, not by any means.

But here is what I wrote shortly after Columbine in 1999:

Violence Strikes Close to Home
The Progressive Populist, July 1999

Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, violence begetting violence, ending with dead teenagers in the library of a suburban high school. Perhaps we should have expected it, this rash of shootings, the bloodshed.

Perhaps.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be outraged, shouldn’t demand answers, shouldn’t take that difficult look within ourselves.

Even now, nearly two months after the shooting in Littleton, Colo., we seem at sea about what happened. We want to blame music, movies, television, video games, anything but the simple premise that we are a violent culture becoming more and more violent everyday.

This is a story about guns, about brute force, about a culture that respects and demands violence in its everyday interactions. This is the story of American society, played out at a high school in the Midwest. The story of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., of Bethel, Alaska, of Jonesboro, Ark., and Wyoming, Del. This is the story of kids with guns, of a culture of privilege and power and the powerless and the violent methods we’ve sanctioned to level the playing fields.

The story of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris and the shootings at Columbine High School, according to various press reports, begins with a school culture in which the more popular students, the stronger students, the jocks preyed upon the weaker students and outsiders, pushing them into lockers and generally harassing them.

“Jocks pushed them against lockers, yelled ‘faggot’ and ‘loser’ at them while they ate lunch in the cafeteria,” according to Rolling Stone. “One day a few weeks before the killings, Dylan, Eric and Brooks Brown (a friend) were standing out on Pierce Street near the school, having a smoke, when a car full of jocks rolled by. A bottle came flying from the car and shattered at the feet of the three boys.”

This is the kind of thing that happens everyday at high schools across the country. It is the kind of atmosphere that allowed the teen-aged football players in Glen Ridge, N.J., to believe they could rape a mentally retarded classmate, that they could perform savage acts upon her, that they could do so with impunity. It is the kind of attitude that allowed members of California’s teen-age Spur Posse to play its abusive games of sexual conquest and to view their female victims as little more than collateral damage in their escapades.

It is the legacy of the bully, a legacy we seem willing to accept and even endorse, its sinister effects seeping into our political and economic cultures, our films and music and television, our everyday dealings with just about everyone with whom we must interact.

It is visible in the way New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani deals with his critics as he lashes out at protesters and reporters, calling them names, questioning their motives and almost never taking the time to listen to their questions or offer answers. It is visible in the way police departments across the country storm their inner cities as if they were invading superpowers.

It is a Republican Party moving to circumvent the will of the voters during an ugly and divisive impeachment proceeding, a Democratic president bombing Iraq and Serbia, turning to the violent option and abandoning any notion of diplomacy, negotiation or compromise to make his point heard.

It is Chainsaw Al Dunlap methodically dismantling companies without regard for the people who work for them, the cities in which they are located or anything other than the quick and dirty profit.

It is the swagger of the professional athlete, the rock and rap star, the pictures of the privileged enjoying privilege on television, in the movies, in music videos.

This is not to excuse the Littleton killers. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are the ones who pulled the triggers, are the ones who left 13 people and themselves dead at Columbine High School. They bear the ultimate responsibility.

But there is no doubt in my mind that we helped create the killers that Klebold and Harris were to become.

Not because they listened to Rammstein or KMFDM, or because they played Doom or watched the films of Quentin Tarantino. That would be too easy.

This violent streak is part of our American mythology, is central to the legend we’ve created about our westward expansion, our growth as a superpower. We believe we always should meet might with might, strength with strength and violence with violence. John Wayne’s strong, silent avenger, Clint Eastwood’s no-name gunslinger, Dirty Harry, Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme are the products of our dysfunctional imaginations. So are hard-core speed metal and gansta rap, video games and the panoply of violent entertainments proliferating through our economy. They are not the genesis of our violent culture. They do not create the violence in which our society wallows. They are a reflection of the depth to which violence has become a part of us.

And when you add easy access to firepower, an ability to buy guns — not just handguns, but assault rifles and all manner of weapons — on the black market or at gun shows, then conflagration almost seems inevitable.

Anywhere.

Which is why it is so scary.

Our best hope is not to impose restrictions on films and music, to scale back the First Amendment or deny artistic or press freedoms. That will do little to stem the violence.

Our best hope is to impose restrictions on the manufacture and distribution of guns, to stop the open sale of fire power at gun shows, to limit the kinds of guns companies can produce, to limit the possibility that weapons can get into the hands of teens like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I’m glad someone pointed out how silly this sign thing is when drivers in the region — and especially here in South Brunswick — seem to enjoy pressing on the gas. (I didn’t get a chance last week because I was at the Dodge Poetry Festival for a couple of days.)

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

It is still difficult to know what to make of this, but the state seems ready to at least talk about Route 1. Then again, we’ve been hearing this for more years than any of us can actually remember.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Tom Kean Jr. may not be as independent as he claims — at least that’s what Herb Jackson, one of the deans of New Jersey political reporting wrote today.

Kean’s record as a legislator shows he may not be the independent fighter he says he is. Not only does he serve in the Republican leadership in Trenton, a database analysis by The Record found that Kean voted the same way most of his GOP colleagues did at least 93 percent of the time.

the voting record, when placed along side the very real impact that a Kean victory might have on the composition of the U.S. Senate — ensuring that it stays in the most conservative of Republican hands — should dispel any notions that the young state senator might have a moderating effect on his party in Washington.

And Jackson hits Kean on his signature issue — ethics reform:

Kean’s criticism of ethical lapses has been aimed almost entirely at Democrats, with no discussion of Republicans’ transgressions, either in New Jersey or in Washington.

Kean’s response is to be expected:

“This goes beyond politics,” Kean said. “It just so happens that the last several years Democrats have been in charge of the State House.”

True enough — but also incredibly disingenuous, as has been the entire GOP push in New Jersey for pay-to-play reforms. No peeps from the GOP when Whitman was handing out contracts. Nothing about Tom DeLay or the Jack Abramoff mess being uttered by young Kean, raising questions about his commitment to ethics reforms.

In the end, Tom Kean Jr. appears to be nothing more than your standard political entity, no more principled or groundbreaking than his opponent but considerably more conservative. And that seems to be what the November vote should be about.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick