Whatever one thinks of Roger Clemens’ veracity (let alone possible steroid use), the idea that his criminal trial ends without a verdict because the prosecutors blatantly disregarded the court’s instructions by showing the jury inadmissible evidence is just astounding. Brings to mind former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s famous question from the 1920s — should the suspect go free because the constable has blundered?

From the reports I’ve read, this was either incompetence or intentional overreaching, as the U.S. Attorneys’ office played in open court a videotape of congressional testimony in which a member read aloud portions of an affidavit (from Andy Petti’s wife) the court had declared — correctly, in my view — could not be used (at least not until rebuttal, if the defense attacked Pettit’s credibility). Astonishing. The meaning of this fiacso is that the government, no less and perhaps more than any other litigant, cannot under our American system of constitutional justice avoid its responsibilities to ensure fairness in criminal prosecutions.

Posted via email from glenn’s posterous.

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I had no idea until hearing it on the radio this morning that the America tradition of having our president throw the first pitch on baseball’s opening day in the spring originated with William Howard Taft — pictured below — in 1910.

Thankfully presidents in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are a bit more muff than large Mr. Taft!

Posted via email from glenn’s posterous

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Complete nine-inning games by baseball pitchers used to be common until the 1970s, when relievers, closers and the like overtook the sport. So it’s refreshing that someone still can accomplish the task, like Livan Hernandez did last evening. Washington’s Hernandez Goes the Distance in L.A. [WashingtonPost.com].

All that’s left is for the anal-compulsive baseball stat freaks to tell us how far the percentage of complete games has dropped in the past four decades. (MLB Powerhouse reports that the last of the top 5 career leaders in complete games, Walter Johnson, retired from the old Washington Senators in 1927. And Baseball Reference says that Hernandez led the majors last year with nine complete games, while Steve Carlton and Fergie Jenkins led in 1971-72 with 30 each season.) Anyone?

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Between them, both Tom Boswell and George Will sing poignant tunes about what they call the “timeless” rhythms of baseball. Read the two linked columns — one about the new Washington Nationals, the other about 39-year old Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux — and you’ll see that these otherwise smart men are living in the past. As I’ve said before, these guys are “throwbacks to an idyllic agrarian American past that — as anyone from the Midwest or the Great Plains knows —never really existed in the first place.”

George Calin was right! His hilarious comparison between baseball, our former national pastime, and football — excerpted below — “tells us something about ourselves and our values. And maybe how those values have changed over the last 150 years.”

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game; football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his recievers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe. “I hope I’ll be safe at home!”

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Emotionally, that is. Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald has a fascinating column in the April 11 issue of ESPN The Magazine. It observes that:

The angry Bonds who opened spring training with a snarl by calling reporters liars? That’s the guy I see in those first five minutes [of interviews]. The broken one leaning on a crutch and sounding so defeated a few days later? That’s the guy I see after he drops the armor.

You’d be surprised how insecure superstars can be.

Unfortunately, the piece is not available on the Web. Non-subscribers will have to settle for this March 2005 column by Le Batard, which is almost as insightful. Bonds’ Pain More than Physical [Herald.com].

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It’s only day two of the ’05 baseball season and I am already sick of these luddite pundits who just can’t stop talking (endless talking is really baseball epitomized) about the return of MLB and the “Nationals” to Washington, D.C. Like Tom Boswell of the Washington Post, who today described baseball lyrically as a game in which “[h]ours of incident simply set the stage for a handful of truly crucial confrontations.”

Sorry, Tom, you are living in another century. Baseball is long stretches of absolutely nothing punctuated by a few, brief moments when almost everyone is looking the other way. The NFL is the official state religion of the United States. Baseball is for you, George Will and other throwbacks to an idyllic agrarian American past that — as anyone from the Midwest or the Great Plains knows — never really existed in the first place.

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Gotta love it. New Yorkers serenaded Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez with chants of “Who’s Your Daddy?” as the former phenom posted another loss at Yankee Stadium. Red Sox Are Yet Again Barking Up Wrong Tree [NYTimes.com]. The guy’s a basket case, with an ERA of about 6.0 against the Bombers and a history of explosive outbursts — exactly one year ago today — against 72-year old opposing coaches. The Yankees are in his head, and the Sawx are going down once again. 1918!!

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Acording to the Boston Globe, the Red Sox are different now in that they aren’t fatalistic about losing constantly to the New York Yankees for more than 85 years:

The old attitude was based on New York entitlement and Boston fatalism. The Yankees would win because they always had. The Red Sox would lose because they always did. History became destiny. The new Boston attitude, from the front office to the clubhouse, is a mixture of envy (26 world championships to five), resentment (those unlimited Yankee dollars), admiration (those 26 rings again) and a fresh spirit of defiance.

Well, defiance does not win championships, Beantown. Boston wasted Pedro Martinez in coming back against the A’s from an 0-2 hole, so their pitching will not be at its best. And while the head-to-head season series between the two teams was basically a wash, the Yankees once again played well down the stretch and have dominated — despite a few hiccups — in the post-season. So long, Sox, the Curse of the Bambino will strike again.

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The New York Yankees face the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis today with baseball’s American League divisional playoff series tied 1-1. Roger Clemens starts in his last season, having notched 310 wins under his belt in a storied 20-year career. But the Twins and their “homer hankies” of 2002 are still a hot and talented team. So, yes, Bombers fans, it’s time to worry, just a little.

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The New York Yankees have lost 12 of their last 13 home games — the worst such streak in the franchise’s long history. In contrast, as a group Yankee pitchers began the season 16-0.

That pace may have been unsustainable, but since then Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina have each lost three times and 40-year-old David Wells is nursing a leg injury. No sooner did Derek Jeter return from a dislocated shoulder than center fielder Bernie Williams went on the disabled list with a knee injury that could cause him to be out at least a month. Oh, and the Red Sox hammered Clemens to deny him win 300 on Monday. History Not on Side of Yanks, Clemens [washingtonpost.com]. Things are just not right in Yankee-land. Is it time to panic?

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