St. Johan Day

Johan Santana makes his first start for the Mets today. He’s probably limited to 45 pitches, but we hope each and every one is a nasty sucker.

Stray baseball thoughts:

If you haven’t looked at the Obama of Dreams site lately you need to check out their new designs. The St. Louis Cardinals shirt is excellent, as is the New York Yankees one. I like them a lot more than the Mets shirt, but of course I cannot wear those. Religious reasons, you understand.

I also received a comment from the founder of the site, who wrote:

Hi, This is Morris Levin. I started the website, obamaofdreams.com. I would like to donate to the Obama campaign and I am discovering that there are strict laws around running a business and using the proceeds to donate to a political campaign. The answer is that I do hope to donate, and want to everything 100% legally.

I looked up some information on campaign contributions and found this, Federal Election Commission - Contributions. It looks like the only way for a company to make a contribution is to form a PAC. The rules seem to favor big business — their big legal departments being able to help funnel business dollars into a campaign.

Sandy Koufax visited the Mets’ spring training complex and after reading about it I scurried to Baseball Reference to look up his stats. Koufax retired in 1966, a few years before I got interested in baseball, and I’ve never seen him pitch, not even on videotape. 200 innings (IP in the table below) is considered a lot for pitchers these days, and hardly anyone pitches a complete game (CG) anymore. Koufax’s numbers are astounding:

I also looked up some quotes by Koufax and read this:

The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don’t have to ask anyone or play politics. You don’t have to wait for the reviews.

This reminded me of what Barb and Hawaii wrote about Hillary Clinton in Ieeww …:

Barb: This is the last stand and she was in attack mode last night. But it might be too late. And since Obama is ahead he just needs to stay on-message and not go negative. If the race was closer would he match her negative campaigning with some of his own?

Hawaii: Clinton is beginning to annoy me as her tactics, and seemingly personality too, keep on changing. I realize some of this is infighting within her own campaign with one group trying to be presidential and the other going on the attack to make one last stand. But if she cannot control the tenor of her own campaign, how can she get control of the multitude of forces visited upon a president? Our current president certainly has been blown around by forces that wish to control him, the country, the power structure, and possibly the world. A president needs to be calm and in control, and sadly, she doesn’t appear to be either right now.

I find sports appealing because when you come down to it all that matters is what happens on the field of play. It doesn’t matter what players or coaches or fans say, or who has the best endorsement deal, or who might have the hottest supermodel girlfriend. It’s the game that counts. There is a cleanness to it, very much unlike politics. Which is why I think people are upset with the issue of performance enhancing drugs in sports.

Clinton has needed to change her strategy and while going negative has worked in other campaigns it never works for me. There is a way to be critical without being nasty. Personally, I have felt a little sorry for Clinton as Obama has come from out of nowhere to take the lead and maybe even win the game. But when she said during the debate in Texas “I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. Absolutely honored” it sounded so phony to me. It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone who is snippy, negative, and a fake.