No, I'm not a crybaby

This has been making the rounds of social media today, 11 months after the 2016 presidential election.

I commented I couldn't agree more. Upon which I was called a crybaby, and told to get over it. And moreover, that the above-referenced clip was taken out of context.

There is nothing out of context when a person, especially an elected leader or candidate for same, mocks another human being. 

I have lived through the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Some resonated more than others. 

I've never been a crybaby. And I'm not a crybaby now.

I'm aghast at the pass our current president received to be handed the reins of our nation's leadership despite his dehumanizing behavior. Mocking the disability of a reporter was neither the beginning nor the end of his offense to decency. 

That said, I believe we will never move forward as long as progressives continue ridiculing those who voted for the current president, and conservatives continue ridiculing those who oppose him. I concede the analysis of the vagaries of the 2016 election to political scientists and sociologists who might someday reason its complexities with historical perspective. 

In the meantime, how then shall we live? 

Yes, there are political issues about which I care deeply, particularly the fragility of our global climate and the vulnerability inherent in our health care system. On these and other matters, I disagree, in some instances strongly, with the leanings of our current president.

However, nothing troubles my soul more than when our leaders degrade those who are adversely affected by their partisan decisions as if they are somehow lesser citizens. (To wit, the exultant posturing of boastful vainglory in the Oval Office each time the presidential pen strikes a blow against one or another segment of our citizenry. See below. It's not as if they're creating national parks or celebrating a moon landing.) 

This has happened on the state level in Wisconsin (upon the passage of Act 10, when teachers and public servants were castigated as adversaries of good government) and occurs repeatedly on the national stage.

If you can mock one reporter's disability, you can create whatever "reality" you wish while categorizing anything opposed to your ideology as "fake" and those who stand opposed as subhuman.

Winner take all

A two-run homer by Gary Gaetti, center, powered the Cubs to a 1998 Wild Card tie-breaker victory (Daily Herald photo)

Winner-take-all games in Chicago Cubs history:
Oct. 4, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at Chicago, Cubs 5, Pittsburgh 2
Oct. 8, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at New York, Cubs 4, New York Giants 2
Oct. 10, 1945, World Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Detroit 9, Cubs 3
Oct. 7, 1984, NL Championship Series Game 5 at San Diego: San Diego 6, Cubs 3
Sept. 28, 1998, NL Wild-Card tie-breaker at Wrigley Field: Cubs 5, San Francisco 3
Oct. 5, 2003, NL Division Series Game 5 at Atlanta: Cubs 5, Atlanta 1
Oct. 15, 2003, NL Championship Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Florida 9, Cubs 6
Oct. 7, 2015, NL Wild-Card Game at Pittsburgh: Cubs 4, Pirates 0
Nov. 2, 2016, World Series Game 7 at Cleveland: Cubs 8, Cleveland 7, 10 inn.
Oct. 12, 2017, NL Division Series Game 5 at Washington: Cubs 9, Washington 8

Baseball is a streaky game

The longest winning streaks in major league baseball history:

26 - New York Giants, 1916
22 - Cleveland Indians, 2017
21 - Chicago Cubs, 1935

The 1916 Giants are credited with the longest streak at 26 games.

From Sept. 7-30, the Giants won 26 games and tied 1. They won 12 in a row, then tied Pittsburgh 1-1 in a game shortened to 8 innings, which was the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 18. The Giants then won their next 14 straight.

Remarkably, the Giants had won 17 in a row earlier in the season after starting the season 2-13. They finished the year wth an 86-66 record, in fourth place behind NL champion Brooklyn. Subtracting the two long winning streaks, the Giants were 43-66 in the rest of their games.

(And yes, the Giants' logo was purple in 1916.)

When the '35 Cubs began their streak on Sept. 4, they were in 3rd place in the NL, behind St. Louis and the N.Y. Giants. By the time the streak ended on Sept. 27, the Cubs had clinched the NL pennant and a spot in the World Series against the Yankees.

During the Indians' streak, which ended tonight, they outscored their opponents 140-36 and were behind in only seven of the 181 innings they played.

Cousins 4.0 (with pooch)

See how they've grown: here and here and here

Happy birthday from Vinegar Bend

Coincidence? On the day Ann was born (May 21, 1956), only two major league baseball games were played: the Yankees beat the Kansas City A's 8-5, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Giants 4-1. The Cardinals' winning pitcher was Vinegar Bend Mizell, a 6-foot-3 left-hander just back from two years of Army service.

The day I was born (Oct. 7, 1960) was a travel day between games 2 and 3 of the World Series. In the first game of my lifetime, the Yankees and Whitey Ford shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates 10-0. The losing pitcher? Vinegar Bend Mizell, whom St. Louis had traded to Pittsburgh midseason.

Mizell was born Wilmer Mizell in Leakesville, Miss., but his family routinely picked up their mail in the nearby town of Vinegar Bend, Ala. That town of 200 people provided a better nickname than Leakesville Mizell.

After a nine-year major league career (with a 90-88 win-loss record), Mizell became a three-term U.S. Congressman from North Carolina until he was swept out of office in a post-Watergate Republican purge. He would later serve in the administrations of Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.

Photo: Baseball Reference. Bio adapted from SABR.

Keys in the song of life

Funny how one's memory of a thing forms and then you find you've blurred the details.

I learned today the piano I grew up with - which I bequeathed to someone long ago - has found yet another new home. They sent a picture. I didn't remember the thatched woven fronting or the Wright-like wooden music stand.

I remember it was an Everett upright, and that the right front corner was worn and rounded by years of my mother leaning on it as she taught piano lessons in our living room.

Lots of hands have touched those keys, from the groping aimless fingers of her countless elementary students whose lack of practice was painfully evident, to the occasional bright student who might still today be able to play Moonlight Sonata, to the one prodigy who began on that piano and now is a professional in the Twin Cities who makes a modest living at it.

And, of course, my impatient attempts to coax music from that piano, from hymns to 60s folk songs to my faking renditions of 70s rock music. I used that piano to try to impress a girl, and to vent adolescent rage. (In one particular tantrum, I banged on middle C so forcefully the hammer broke inside. It wasn't a sin you could overlook, like dropping a piece of rarely used fine china no one would notice until next Thanksgiving. The broken piece required immediate confession and replacement.)

But apparently, it's still playing music, which shows that things can outlast people and adapt to being useful to others who will never know the stories they could tell.

The burning bush

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, thinking about Union Theological Seminary in New York, the "burning bush" of American theology in the 20th century. The cauldron of conversations about racism, oppression and liberation. 

Thankful for James Cone and forebears Barth, Tillich and others. 

And for Nina Turner's words at the MLK Memorial in Washington, D.C.:

"We may not have gotten here on the same ship, but we are in the same boat right now."

“The mountain might be higher, but we’ve been here before. The valley may be lower, but we’ve been here before.”

"And guess what, sisters and brothers? We can’t have a testimony without a test, and we are being tested right now for whether or not we’ve got courage enough, hope enough, fight enough, love enough to do what is necessary.”