Decision ‘17

Election day is here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I know this because of an avalanche of mail in my mailbox and a torrent of radio, television, and social media ads that have followed me around like a Russian spy for weeks now. Here’s what I know as decision time has arrived:

I must decide among Republican and Democratic Party candidates, (and the always random Libertarian/Green Party odd-ball) for the three statewide offices, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General. Prior to this campaign season, I had never heard of most of them, but apparently they are each men and women of great accomplishment and skill...at climbing the ladder of their Party’s hierarchy. In addition to these statewide races, I will also be asked to select a Delegate to the Virginia House of Delegates from among two other candidates, one of whom is the only candidate on the ballot this year who actually personally showed up at my door to ask for my vote.

The Attorney General race comes down to a choice between a guy named Mark. R. Herring and another guy named John D. Adams. Advantage Adams. I mean, come on, the dude has an all American, iconic name, bringing to mind our second President and an excellent HBO miniseries. What are we to make of the other guy’s name? What’s the R stand for Mark...Red???

The Lt. Governor’s contest is a tough choice, as it asks the voter to make a decision between a white woman and a black man, clearly a no-win situation. Vote for the woman and it’s because you’re a closet racist and can’t handle a powerful black man in higher office. Vote for the black man and you have latent misogynistic issues, the same sort that contributed so mightily to Hillary Clinton’s upset loss in 2016...according to Hillary Clinton. So, this one is a toss up. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter who wins since the office of Lt. Governor is a toothless, utterly meaningless job with no real world consequence to any Virginian, living or dead. From best I can tell, the actual job of the Lt. Governor is to begin running for Governor as soon as he finishes taking his/her oath. So, whoever wins won’t be able to raise any mischief since he or she will be busy raising money.

The Governor’s contest has been a nasty one, especially these past couple of weeks. As the campaign reached the homestretch, accusations have begun to fly all over the place. If all I knew about either of these guys was what I have heard in commercials for the last two weeks, my choice would boil down to this:

I can vote for a greedy, money grubbing lobbyist who’s supporters are out there tormenting young children with pickup trucks, forcing their parents to comfort them after they wake up from their nightmares to assure them that mean old Candidate X will NOT be the next Governor!! Or, I can vote for the guy who isn’t even a politician, but merely a pediatrician who loves kids, would never, ever run them down with a Confederate flag draped pick up and who has lived his entire life by the VMI Keydet Code of conduct. I mean, seriously...is there even a choice here? How could I possibly bring myself to choose a lobbyist over a pediatrician??

On the other hand, there are troubling issues with regards to the boring doctor. Apparently he disdains ordinary Virginians, (probably because he’s spent half his life trying to collect fees from his cheap, reprobate Virginia patients), preferring the company of effete Northern Virginians and gang members from Central America. That doesn’t sound good. Search through his opponent’s bio and you won’t find a single gang member. What you will find is a series of wholesome waiter jobs he had while working himself through college and then a series of successful businesses he started and ran as an adult, no career politician he. Since he has experience starting companies, who better to create jobs as Governor? And, if we ever need help backing our car into the garage, he’s our guy!

Well, there you have it...Decision ‘17. I honestly haven’t kept up with the polling on any of these races. I have no idea who’s ahead or behind. I would think that the Democrat candidates would be favored since my State has turned bluer with each passing year, it seems. But, if 2016 taught us anything it’s that when it comes to politics and elections, anything is possible. So, I will head over to Short Pump Elementary and do my civic duty. You probably should too.

The Gun Control Act of 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 states, among other things, that it is illegal for a dishonorably discharged veteran to possess a firearm. The specifics are as follows:

"d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person— 

(6) who [2] has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions" 

"g) It shall be unlawful for any person— 

(6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; 

to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce" 

Here’s a suggestion. How about all of these investigative bodies descending on Texas find out who sold Devin Patrick Kelley this:

He was quite proud of his purchase, sharing this photo of it on his Facebook page a mere week ago. She’s a bad bitch, he crowed. So, apparently, despite the clear, unambiguous intent of the Gun Control Act of 1968, Mr. Kelley was able to get his hands on this weapon. The natural human plea when something like this happens is, We have to pass a law that would prevent this sort of insanity. Well, we already did...in 1968. It either didn’t work, or was not followed in the case of this particular purchase. If it is discovered that Mr. Kelley purchased this gun from a registered dealer who simply didn’t obey the law prohibiting this purchase, the dealer would be thrown in jail for the rest of his life since his negligence makes him complicit in this heinous crime. If, on the other hand, the killer got his hands on the rifle via the black market, or some other criminal...then we’re screwed. Short of government confiscation of 300 million firearms from the homes of Americans, I see no remedy. Perhaps instead of passing new laws, we devote more energy and attention to enforcing the ones already on the books...like the Gun Control Act of 1968.

With each new mass shooting, I see more and more people coming out in favor of full confiscation. The ironic thing is, many of those who are the most likely to accuse Donald Trump of being a fascist authoritarian, are the same people who are willing to empower the government with the authority to confiscate 300 million guns from the American people. I suppose “authoritarian” is in the eye of the beholder. But, most people I know who are in favor of more gun control legislation are not proposing confiscation. Frankly, most of them consider themselves supporters of the 2nd Amendment. They just look at what has happened with gun violence in their country over the past ten years or so and, in exasperation, search for some new legal remedy. I have great sympathy for that view. I too am frustrated. I simply don’t see how any new law will work any better than existing law. Even if a complete ban of gun purchases could be passed and even enforced...what of the 300 million guns in the system? And what about the fact that people with ill intent and no respect for our laws will still have access to all the guns in the world, while the rest of us will not? Maybe we could prohibit the manufacture of ammunition. Then once all the available ammo was exhausted all those guns would be useless. Or, we could mandate that every box of ammo contain one exploding bullet that will kill the shooter making the use of a firearm a Russian Roulette sort of thing?

I’m not trying to be flippant about so serious a subject. I’m just trying to point out that this is a deadly serious problem for which there is no easy remedy. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fashion some solution, but we need to be realistic and clear eyed about what is possible.

...Again

I woke up from my Sunday nap and opened my iPad. A news flash scrolled across the screen...27 Dead, 30 Wounded in Church Shooting in Texas.

At that point I didn’t know any of the specifics, just the broad outlines of a familiar story in my country. Someone had walked into a church, and started killing people. Before I clicked on the headline to hear the details I began to wonder...

I wondered if it was a black church, a white church, a synagogue, mosque or temple.

I wondered if the shooter was a black man, a white man, or a Muslim.

The reason why I wondered these things is because it would make a difference in how my fellow Americans would react.

If the shooter were a Muslim man shouting Allahu Akbar!, we would more or less be united in our outrage. 

If the shooter were a white man and the victims black, a different kind of outrage.

If the shooter were a black man and the victims white, different still.

No matter who the shooter is and who the dead are, all of us will do the national gun control dance, charges flying around like so many stray bullets.

Then I clicked on the story. At this point all that is known is, some guy dressed in combat regalia, walked into a small Baptist church attended by less than a hundred people, began shooting and when it was over, nearly everyone in the congregation was either dead or injured, including one five year old child. In the ensuing chase, the shooter was either killed or killed himself. The victims and the shooter are white. At this hour, no claims of terrorism, no claims by ISIS that this shooter was their’s. 

For me, the only thing that matters is that 27 souls have perished at the hands of an evil person, bringing the total number of such deaths to over 350 so far this year. That’s over 350 people who have been killed in a “mass shooting” event in America in 2017, a mass shooting event being here described as a single incident where 4 or more people are killed by a single gunman. No other country in the western world comes close to that number. In this regard, we are in a class by ourselves.

What the hell is wrong with us?

My Mother’s Voice

My niece, Christina Garland, posted a very special video on her Facebook wall yesterday. It was filmed on October 31, 2010. It featured my mother, holding Christina’s infant son Ezra in her arms, singing to him in her beautiful alto voice, a song of unknown origin. Part of it was vaguely familiar, but most of it was my Mother playing fast and loose with the original lyrics, and making stuff up as she went along. At one point, whoever was filming moved closer to Mom, and this new angle revealed my Dad sitting next to my sister Linda, the proud grandmother of the infant child. They were talking and laughing with each other. Dad looked happy and healthy. So did Mom. She had less than three years to live.

There’s another one of these videos around somewhere, one of Mom and Dad sitting on the sofa in our old house holding Kaitlin in exactly the same way, Mom singing some diddy claiming that Kaitlin was the most beautiful girl in the world. In that video they were both younger, less gray in their hair, thinner, more robust. I searched for it, but couldn’t find it, so I settled in and listened to Mom serenade Ezra...over and over again.

It’s funny what the sound of the human voice does to a person. Shortly after Mom passed away, Pam and I found a message that she had  left on our old land line. She needed for one of us to take her to a doctor’s appointment. Her voice was filled with sorrow and frustration. There were times towards the end when she would fall into despair, and this was one of those times. After listening to the message, I immediately regretted doing so. I didn’t want to remember her voice this way. The day I had listened to it, I had left for a four day business meeting in Chicago. It had only been a month or two since her death, and I hadn’t up to that point shed a single tear. Two days later, while on a treadmill in the gym of the Marriot Hotel, overlooking Michigan Avenue, the sound of her defeated voice from that phone message came back to me, and I immediately began to cry.

But, yesterday, thanks to Christina, I finally have a new voice from my mother to remember, a generous, loving, melodious alto spent doting on one of her great grandchildren. Much better.

Thanks, Chrissy...

Build Your McMansion With Your Own Money

Yesterday, Republican lawmakers rolled out their tax reform plan. It’s a complicated, multi-faceted bill with many moving parts, about which I haven’t yet formed an opinion. But there was one particular item that caught my attention, the limitation of the home interest deduction to $500,000. 

Question: How many people do you know who have a mortgage in excess of $500,000? Not very many, I bet. Someone with a mortgage that big would be someone quite wealthy. The payment on a mortgage of say, $750,000 would run somewhere around $3500 a month. I say, more power to ‘em. If someone has done well enough to want to build a big old house in the country somewhere and borrow that kind of money to do it, God Bless. This is America. Building big old houses is kinda what we do! 

But, let me ask you another question...why should the tax payer be forced to subsidize someone’s multi-million dollar McMansion? Why is Uncle Sam in the business of helping someone build their ten bedroom dream house? Why does someone wealthy and successful enough to build that ten bedroom house need the government’s help in the first place? These questions answer themselves. No reasonable person can justify this sort of tax giveaway with a straight face...but brace yourselves, the justifications are about to begin, and they will be loud, long and bipartisan.

First of all, the Home Builders and Realtor lobby groups will be apoplectic that this particular form of corporate welfare might disappear, for reasons that should be obvious. When the tax code provides subsidies to anyone and everyone who buys your product, with no limits, that’s a pretty sweet gig. But what is going to be hilarious will be the howls of protests coming from the Uber-wealthy status-home owners...from both ends of the political spectrum...who will be impacted by the loss of this freebie. All of those California Progressives who constantly lecture the rest of us for our opposition to out of control government spending, will scream like stuck pigs if they can no longer divert millions of tax payer funds away from poverty programs in order to provide them with their mortgage interest subsidy. Millionaire conservatives who ordinarily spend all their time extolling the virtues of self reliance, will wail like spoiled children if it looks like their mortgage interest free ride might end.

Listen, anyone who reads this blog knows my views on our tax code. What the Republican Party rolled out yesterday doesn’t even come close to my preferred reforms. Still,  I can understand the basic idea for the mortgage interest deduction..in theory. Originally, the notion was...home ownership is a net positive for people and the economy for a whole host of reasons. If the government can encourage home ownership by providing tax incentives, that would also be a net positive. Fine. But, somewhere along the line, like so many other government attempts at dogoodery, it went off the rails. A tax incentive designed to encourage first time home buyers and others for whom the purchase of a home was a colossal undertaking is one thing, allowing the likes of Barbara Streisand to stick the tax payers with the bill for her California dream home and the 10 million dollar mortgage that comes with it...is something else altogether.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone’s desire to build a mansion. But, if you’re wealthy enough to do so...do it with your own money.

Hollywood’s Comeuppance

First, it was the news media. Fox News titans Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, seemingly overnight brought low by women coming forward with charges of sexual harassment. The left coast elites were publically apoplectic with outrage, and privately overjoyed that these two high profile conservative stars were getting exposed for being scumbags. But, over the past couple of weeks, the worm has turned. Now, high profile liberal stars are are being ratted out by suddenly emboldened female accusers. Mark Halperin, of NBC News, Hamilton Fish from the New Republic, Lockhart Steele from Vox, and even Michael Oreskes from the sainted NPR, find themselves under a cloud of suspicion. Apparently, piggish sexual perverts are a bipartisan lot.

Then, Hollywood found itself in the embarrassing position of having one of its premier kingmakers, exposed as a serial rapist. Harvey Weinstein went from literally being referred to as God from the stage at the Academy Awards more times than the ...actual God, to being banned for Life in less time than it normally takes for a George Clooney movie to bomb. Speaking of Clooney, his name now appears on a growing list of hot shot Hollywood A-listers being accused of sexual harassment or worse. Along with Clooney, there’s Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Spacey. Andy Dick, and Casey Affleck are on the list too, although describing them as A-listers might be a stretch. When I say that this list is growing what I mean is that it’s growing like a wild fire in the hills of Santa Monica. Now that it suddenly appears that public opinion is squarely in the corner of the accuser in the sexual harassment business, it’s become a seller’s market. Next week this time, I’d be willing to lay odds that the list will have doubled in size. Practically since I sat down to write this, two more big wig Hollywood producer types have been forced to hire a crack team of lawyers. Chris Savino of Nickelodeon fame, along with Amazon Studios head honcho, Roy Price are now in the sexual harassment crosshairs. What in the name of Cecil B Demille is going on here??

I don’t know. I’m not sure why now, of all times, the scumbags that have always ruled Hollywood are being exposed. Make no mistake, men behaving badly isn’t exactly a news flash. Hollywood men behaving badly is practically a proverb, something that has always been. The fact that suddenly it’s all blowing up in their faces is a mystery. But, frankly, it couldn’t possibly have happened to a better group of guys! Honestly, there’s nothing in this world quite so satisfying as watching a pompous, arrogant, elitist, entitled Hollywood gasbag get their comeuppance. These stars presume to lecture the hicks out in flyover country every chance they get about everything from global warming to tax policy, from foreign policy to the 2nd amendment. To them, we are all a bunch of provincial rubes, hopelessly clinging to our guns and the square, outdated morality we inherited from our even more square and outdated parents and grandparents. They look down their perfectly sculpted, libertine noses at our quaint little monogamous lifestyles and think, Oh, how perfectly adorable. And now the empty husk of their squalid existence is being laid bare by the women they oppressed on their way up the mountain. This is the very definition of poetic justice. Pass the popcorn.

Will there ultimately be some liars among the female accusers? Absolutely. Are some of these accusers simply jumping on the bandwagon for attention? Maybe. But my trick knee tells me that most of these women are telling the truth. Men hold the power, especially in Hollywood. The sort of men who have risen to prominence in the long history of that town suggests that these accusers are probably not even telling the half of it. I say, believe the woman, no matter how many men they take down. 

I can’t wait until the Academy Awards show next year. I can’t wait for the self righteous speeches, and the political lectures. But mostly, I can’t wait to see how many men will be left to hand out Awards or even to receive any. Maybe we will have all female winners. How cool would that be?

Halloween, Then and Now

Tonight is Halloween. I hate Halloween. I hate it because it makes me feel old. It reminds me of what my Halloween nights used to be like, when Pam and I took turns walking these adorable pups around the neighborhood. Now, we sit on the front steps trying to keep Lucy contained behind us, while a parade of other people's adorable kids troop by. Most of them are the sweetest things you've ever seen, but there's always a few knuckleheads, kids who cant be bothered with actually saying, Trick or Treat!! They just stand there, with bags thrust towards us making their silent little demands. Then there's always the older teenagers, shameless leaches, who throw some lame excuse for a costume on at the last minute to horn in on the free candy action. Some dork will come up wearing a t-shirt with a giant vegetable on the front and when you ask this interloper what they're dressed as, they'll say, I'm supposed to be, like...irony. Then you smile and say, Well, ironically enough,....no candy for you, moron!

It's not really that I hate Halloween. It's more accurate to say that I miss it. I miss the days when the little ones were my little ones. Reason number 117 why I need grandchildren!!

But, there's one other thing about Halloween that gets in my craw a bit. When I was a kid, and even when my children were kids, Halloween was exclusively a kids thing. But, like so many other great things in this world that were made for kids, grownups have appeared out of nowhere to ruin everything. It seems like all of a sudden everywhere I look there are fully grown men and women running around dressed in extravagant costumes, throwing their own adult-themed Halloween parties. Men caked up with makeup and glitter, dressed like their favorite Star Wars character, women dressed as slutty versions of otherwise innocuous characters. Oh, look...its Jill from accounting dressed like what Hillary Clinton would look like if she were a hooker! Its one thing when college kids do stuff like this. That's to be expected, I suppose. But when you see some 50 year old suburbanite walking down the street, dressed like Donald Trump with an inflatable likeness of Sean Hannity with his lips attached to Trump's ample backside, well...(actually, that's a bad example since that would be hysterical).

...wait a minute, I wonder if I've got time to throw something together....

A Beautiful Paradox

When Brian McCann hit a home run in the bottom of the 8th inning to put the Astros up 12-9, I finally gave in to sleep. I had a long day ahead of me. It was midnight. Besides, I reasoned, how much more gut wrenching drama could one ball game possibly produce? This will go down as one of the dumbest rhetorical questions I have ever asked myself. How much more gut wrenching drama, you ask?

So, the Dodgers, who had already blown one 4 run lead and one 3 run lead, calmly went out in the 9th inning and scored 3 runs to tie the game. By the time the bottom of the 10th inning rolled around, and despite having already stormed back from being 4 down against Clayton Kershaw, a mortal lock for the Hall Of Fame once his career is over, and having already stormed back a second time courtesy of a 3 run homer off the bat of the Mighty Mouse Of Baseball...5’6” Jose Altuve, now in order to win this game, they would have to do it against the best closer in the game, Kenley Jansen. Enter Alex Bregman, a rookie who laced a single to center field to score a pinch runner from second to put an end to this video game style World Series game. The first time these two starting pitchers went out there in game one, the whole thing was over in 2 hours and 28 minutes. This time, the issue was decided 5 hours and 17 minutes after the first pitch. Nobody in the raucous arena they call Minute Maid Park was complaining.

If either one of these teams were my team, I would have watched every second of it, no matter how long it took. The fact that I went to bed and missed the crazy finish is something I’m not proud of, as a baseball fan. But, whatcha gonna do? This World Series has already been about as good as this game gets...and it’s not over. If the Dodgers manage somehow to pull themselves up off the mat to win Tuesday night to force a game seven...I’ll watch to the bitter end. I’m not a fan of either team, but I wouldn’t dream of missing it. It’s baseball, the most dramatic, pressurized team sport ever created, a sport where no individual player is indispensable, yet this thouroughly team game ultimately comes down to a series of individual battles...pitcher vs. hitter. It’s a paradox, but a beautiful one.

What Type Are You?

Every five years or so the geeks over at the Pew Research Center come out with their survey of American political thought or, to use their preferred phraseology...typology. This is an expensive undertaking and their methodology is strong, as it involves extensive interviews with over 5,000 of us on a wide variety of subjects. According to their findings, Americans are now divided into nine distinct camps or factions as follows:

Democrats:

16%...Solid Liberals

12%...Opportunity Democrats

14%...Disaffected Democrats

9%.....Devout and Diverse

Republicans:

13%...Core Conservatives

6%.....Country First Conservatives

12%...Market Skeptic Republicans

11%...New Era Enterprisers

If you’re doing the math, you’ll notice that these percentages do not add up to 100%. That’s because the people at Pew had a hard time coming up with a snappy name for the remaining misfits and their widely diverse views. So, they added one catch all category:

8%...Bystanders

You’ll need to read their 152 page summation to learn what constitutes each of these categories, what makes someone Devoutly Diverse, or a New Era Enterpriser I’m sure would make for fascinating reading. But, I’m more interested in this Bystander group, which from their brief description sounds like a smorgasbord of political crackpottery. They go into zero detail, unfortunately, which leaves me free to spectulate. What kind of people make up this 8% of the American population at this tumultuous time in our history? 

7%.....Those holding out for the Return of Elvis so he can take his rightful place as President of the Trilateral Commission

13%...Patriots So Thoroughly Embarassed By Politics They Have Withdrawn From The Public Square In Horror

9%.....Law Abiding, Tax Paying Citizens Who Desperately Want To Be Left Alone

16%...People Not In To Politics Because Christ Will Return Any Second Now

11%...People Who Will, like...Totally Support Whichever Candidate Who Promises To Legalize Marijuana

17%...Guns

14%...People Who Want Some Politician To Demand That Churches Go Back To Singing The Old Hymns

13%...People Who Think It Would Be Better For Everybody If The Gays Were All Forced To Move To Vermont

Why Did I Leave Maine?

The month of October is nearly over. For me, the 2017 version has been a miserable slog, made infinitely worse by the fact that it followed a sublime September spent in Maine. As I have weathered each absurd storm which has blown through our lives these past four weeks I have often asked myself, Why did you ever leave Maine? Of course, this question is only rhetorical, since it’s answer is obvious...I don’t live in Maine, I only vacation there. My house, my job, and my life is here. Still, consider the series of disasters which have befallen me and my family since I arrived back in Short Pump on September 30, 2017:

September 30...Our dishwasher flooded the kitchen, kicking off a whirlwind couple of weeks which featured loud machines running 24/7, the ripping out of hard wood flooring, a deluge of contractors and claims adjusters fighting out the details of our claim, and a promise that all will be well before Thanksgiving...if there are no complications.

October 2...One man, armed with nearly thirty weapons, unleashed a rain of fire from his hotel room on a crowd in Las Vegas gathered at a country music concert. 58 souls perished and over 500 were wounded. And now, just three weeks later, nobody, and I mean nobody, is even talking about it anymore.

October 9...A mere 60 Days after the fact, I receive the final bill from Henrico Doctor’s Hospital for my 24 hour stay in their facility. The total bill came in a ham sandwich shy of $30,000. At the bottom of the bill in cheerful green type was the happy sum of $3,450 right next to the words, Patient’s responsibility. 

October 19...I spent a delightful afternoon waging a losing battle with a bank and an out of state bureaucracy over a lost car title, which resulted in me having to pay off my son’s car in order to obtain a clear title which I will then have to transfer to his name, and send it to him via some as yet uninvented teleportation device which can insure actual delivery without getting lost by some state government employee. In the meantime, my son gets pulled over again for driving on expired tags.

October 25...My daughter’s beloved dog came down with a high fever and other troubling symptoms which required a multi-night stay at a specialty care facility. In said facility it was determined that poor Jackson had food poisoning. The good news seems to be that he will be ok. The bad news is the bill is a ridiculous amount of money, and since I don’t have their permission to reveal just how ridiculous, let me just say that what they are having to pay for Jackson’s care was only a ham sandwich less than I paid for my first semester’s tuition at Universaity of Richmond in 1977.

There you have it. In the first 26 Days since I returned from Maine, we have been hit with one thing after another. Money has been flying out of my wallet faster than starlets out of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite....faster than Trump types out Tweets with his tiny little fingers...faster than a post season appearance by the Washington Nationals.

Tell me again...why did I leave Maine?

A Sick Dog Is The Worst...

Meet my Grandpup, Jackson. He belongs to my daughter and her husband. He is 2 and a half, a big, clumsy, lovable English Creme Golden Retriever. Almost every week they send us pictures of this crazy dog doing some dorky thing or another. He and Lucy are great pals. To know Jackie-Jack is to love him. My daughter and her husband are smitten.

And now, he is sick.

A few days ago he suddenly became listless, uninterested in his food, and began to run a fever. Once the drooling began and the fever got worse, they took him to the Vet. Antibiotics were given and he was kept overnight for observation. No improvement. $800.

Now, several tests are being administered at an emergency center for pets where more specialized care is brought to bear. $1500.

Still no dependable diagnosis. Fever still high. Still not eating. Next steps are uncertain at this hour. $ ????

Here’s the thing. Everyone wants a dog, and why not? They are amazing animals which offer the type of loving companionship that we all desire. They are adorable. They make your life better, happier, more fulfilled. They offer hours of entertainment, unshakable loyalty, and unconditional devotion. But, they are expensive.

Heartworm medication. Flea and tick control. Shots. Checkups. More shots. Kennels. Food. Toys. Allergy shots. 

In the eleven years that we had our beloved Molly, we spend more on her ongoing care than we spent on medical bills for our two human children...combined. Molly was probably the finest dog in the history of that species, but she had a host of allergy issues that wound up costing us a small fortune. But, we paid it, gladly, because she became a cherished member of our family and I never could have denied her the best care. Of course, I could afford it. Younger couples trying to establish themselves in the world? Not so much. But, what do you do? Your beautiful, loyal friend gets sick, you look into their eyes, feel their anguish...then you pay what needs to be paid to make her well again.

When I hear people say, But, it’s just a dog, part of me,(a very small part), understands. When I was growing up, I had a long list of dogs: Roman, Prince Abbiba, Lassie, and Zach, none of which ever made a trip to a Vet. Most were outdoor dogs. Whenever they got sick, they either got over it on their own or wandered off into the woods and died. That sounds brutal to write but it’s just the way it was when I was a kid. Of course, we didn’t live in the suburbs then, and they did get rabies shots,(I think), but it was a different world. So I get it when people shrug and say, it’s just a dog. But, have you ever noticed that the people who say that sort of thing almost never have dogs? 

So, I am on pins and needles today, waiting for news from Columbia about Jackson. For Kaitlin and Jon, and us, he’s not just a dog. He’s a cherished member of our family who spreads joy and happiness to everyone he meets. Our family picture albums are chocked full of pictures of him and Lucy precisely because they are both part of what makes us a family.

The Stuff of Memories

The World Series begins tonight. The Houston Astros v Los Angeles Dodgers. Game one in the City of Angels.

Unfortunately, with that opening sentence, I have probably lost half of you. Such is the state of my favorite game in 2017. When it comes to sports, Americans would rather watch protesting football players, or the tattoo-covered freaks who prowl the courts of the NBA. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As a proponent of the free market, I must respect the decisions of my fellow citizens and admit that my game is no longer the national pastime. Fine. I will watch, with the same fevered anticipation I brought to the first fall classic I ever watched, the 1968 matchup between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals. That’s the one where Mickey Lolitch won 3 games and outdueled Bob Gibson. By the time the 1969 Series was over and I had witnessed the New York Mets upset the Baltimore Orioles, I was good and hooked. Haven’t missed one since.

But for me it goes further than the World Series. When I was a kid, I hated being inside...more than practically anything. Winter was the worst. Sure, snow was cool, but only for a while. By the time the end of March came around, I was about to lose my mind which meant that my Mother was down to her very last nerve. What always saved my life was the beginning of baseball.

Baseball meant that it was warm enough to be outside again. Baseball meant that me and my friends could gather in the field behind Elmont Elementary and play all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoons after church. Baseball meant collecting baseball cards and snapping off a slug of that hard slab of bubble gum inside each pack. Baseball meant that my big brother and I would set the old green radio in the window sill and reenact the Richmond Braves games from Frank Soden’s play by play call. When they were on the road old Frank would get the plays fed to him on a ticker, then recreate the action with the help of truly horrible sound effects in a studio in Richmond....

Yes fans, the pressure is mounting here in Rochester, New York on this humid night as Hal Breeden bats with the bases full of Braves. There’s nowhere to put the big guy and there’s a full count. Just listen to the roar of that crowd...(cue the pathetic crowd noise sound that sounded more like some guy trying to hawk popcorn in a wind tunnel). 

I would toe the imaginary rubber in the my back yard, then kick and deliver the 3-2 pitch to my brother who was waiting at the plate(which was the lid to the trash can), Hal Breeden’s capable stand-in. 

The Rochester hurler peers in for the sign, gets the one he wants, rocks and deals...(cue the sound of the cracking of a bat which was actually Frank tapping the base of the microphone with a number 2 pencil). Breeden swings and lifts a high fly ball deep to left field! That’s got a chance...it’s going...going...Gone!!!

Every now and then a magical moment would happen when whatever Frank had just described was exactly what happened in my back yard...my brother would swing and lift a high fly ball over the roof of our house, across the street out front and into the marshy hollow where Mrs. Lawrence’s natural spring was, a prodigious blast of over 300 feet! Of course, that marked the end of the festivities, since that property was well guarded by Mrs. Lawrence herself and her ever present 12 gauge shot gun which she would shoot every once in a while at nothing in particular, just to scare us pesky kids away. It worked. That just meant I would have to get Dad to drive us into Ashland to buy a new baseball.

So, I’ll be watching tonight, and I’ll be recalling a thousand such memories that are swimming around in my head, each of them wonderful, and oddly calming.

Play ball!

"What Does Your Wife Do?"

Today was my wife's first day back at school after her long summer break. It's as good a time as any to answer a question I get asked a lot pertaining to her employment...What does your wife do?

Setting aside for a moment my often suggested alternative question, (What doesn't she do?), she works at an elementary school here in the west end of Henrico County as an Interventionist. Whenever I use that descriptor I get puzzled looks. Actually, whenever I hear the term "interventionist" I think it should be a new Cabinet level post in the Trump White House.(but that's another story). In Pam's case it describes someone who takes small groups of K thru 5th grade students who are struggling in math and reading for specialized extra instruction in short, thirty minute sessions. I probably just made a hash of the proper description, but it's the best I can do, having not been schooled in the esoteric language of the modern education bureaucracy. However you describe the job, she is unbelievably good at it...so good, in fact, that when her students learn that they have improved so much in their reading and math skills that they no longer need to be in Mrs. Dunnevant's class, many of them burst into tears!

Generally speaking, here's how it works:

Four second graders who are all horrible at math are marched down to her class for a thirty minute session with Mrs. Dunnevant. They walk into the most colorful, crazy, fun looking class in the entire school. They meet this energetic, beautiful blonde woman who makes them all feel like they are the coolest kids in the history of elementary education and she is the luckiest teacher in America for getting to teach them! What a coincidence, right?! Then she introduces them all to the thousand ways that they can earn a stunning variety of stickers, gadgets and gizmos that she has picked out just for them! Some kids warm up to her immediately, others take longer, but eventually they all eventually fall in love with Mrs. Dunnevant.

What makes this all the more remarkable is the fact that many of her students can barely speak English. See, along with her regular, garden variety west end kids, Pam has had kids from Russia, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Vietnam. Occasionally, I'll surprise her with an iced coffee from Starbucks, and when I walk into her class it looks like a summer camp meeting at the United Nations.

But, no matter where these kids come from, by the time they finish a year with my wife a couple of things are true: #1 they are measurably better at math and reading and #2 they know that Mrs. Dunnevant loves them.

It's a part time job. She has no benefits and she gets paid by the hour, which is officially 4 and a half per day, although her actually time spent working is closer to 6 or 7. It's at times overwhelming, at other times frustrating. But, when she reports for work at the beginning of a year and hardly any of last year's students are back, she gets the incredible thrill of knowing she has made a difference.

So yeah, that's what my wife does.

The Triumph of the Id

For close to fifty years now our world has been committed to the pursuit of self expression. While our parents had been taught to keep their emotions in check and a tight throttle on their tongue, my generation and generations after mine have kicked self restraint to the curb with characteristically reckless abondon. In this new world, express yourself, has been the mantra. Don't keep your emotions bottled up inside! You be you! Cry, weep and wail, gnash those teeth, and by all means...do it in public.

Nowhere is this new brand of comportment more on display than in the sporting world. When I was growing up, I used to watch guys like Walter Payton score touchdown after touchdown, then stoically flip the ball to the referee, with not even a stifled fistpump. I would watch Bob Gibson blowing hitters away in high pressure games with a facial expression which would convince the casual observer that the man was engaged in an activity no more stressful than mowing the lawn. 

All of this changed during the 1960's, (didn't everything?), when Homer Jones performed the very first touchdown celebrating spike of a football. Soon after, Billy "white shoes" Johnson performed the funky chicken after a touchdown reception, and it was off to the races. Baseball was slow to adapt to these self congratulatory demonstrations, primarily because baseball has always been slow to adapt to anything, really. But adapt they have.

If you've watched any of this year's baseball post season you have witnessed the overwhelming triumph of the Id. When a pitcher gets out of a tight jam, he practically goes berserk in an orgy of guttural screams and fist pumping. When a batter gets a hit, even an inconsequential one, he can be counted on to gesticulate wildly to his teammates in the dugout, as if he had just won the powerball lottery or split the freaking atom or something. I'm told by all of the smart people that baseball needs more, not less, of this sort of spleen venting. More drama is what people want, more pathos, less circumspection. After all, I'm advised, sports is entertainment, and what is entertainment without emotion?

I can practically feel the eye rolling going on out there among readers thirty and younger. I get it. My day is past, your day is ascendant. But, as I have watched baseball these past couple of weeks I've had a nagging feeling that the antics I'm seeing are merely a reflection of the greater society. Everything has turned into entertainment, even our politics. And what is entertainment without emotion? It's like, fifty years ago somebody made the decision that manners and decorum were somehow bourgeois. Keeping a lid on your emotions was suddenly soul crushing. Courtesy, class and sportsmanship were vestiges of a bygone era inhabited by a generation of repressed suckers.

Then we wake up one day, and Donald Trump is President.

I don't know about you, but I could do with a little self restraint in America about now, a little less drama.  A bit of class, grace and decorum would feel like  a godsend in 2017. A touch of humility in my public officials would feel like a cool breeze on a hot summer day, wouldn't it?

Missing This...

I haven't seen my kids since this picture was taken back in July. I've talked to them on the phone, texted them, shared goofy dog pictures with them, even Facetimed them...but I haven't been able to give them a hug in three months. Some might not think this is that big of a deal. I know people whose children live on the west coast or even out of the country all together. For them, three months would be nothing. But, many of my friends get to see their kids all the time because they live on the other side of town or even down the street. When they move out of state, this is how it has to be. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I suppose I'm missing them more right now because for the last four years, October was the month when I would rent a cabin down in Gatlinburg for five days. Patrick and Sarah would drive the 4 hours up from Nashville, and Kaitlin and Jon the 6 hours from Columbia. We would have a blast. The air was chilly, the views of the Smoky Mountains from the hot tub on the deck were sensational, and Pam would make all sorts of insanely delicious fall dishes that we would all make pigs of ourselves eating. One such trip served as one of our  first opportunities to observe the new girl, Sarah, up close. We put that poor thing through the ringer, even insisting that she zip-line over a 300 foot gorge for our amusement. She was game, though, and we came away impressed with her willingness to do any stupid thing we planned for her that weekend.

But this year, our Gatlinburg trip was derailed for a multitude of reasons that are too boring to chronicle. We were planning on making up for it by making a road trip visit to both Nashville and Columbia after we returned from Maine. Alas, that plan has been sacrificed on the alter of the Great Exploding Dishwasher Disaster of '17, whereby we are being held hostage by a gang of contractors who may or may not show up at our home any minute to begin hauling our furniture away, kicking us into a hotel for a week and ripping up and replacing our hard wood floors. So, no fall trip for us.

What this all means is that the next time I will get to see my kids won't be until Thanksgiving, and even that might be weird since, our luck, we'll be staying in a Holiday 
Inn somewhere when they all get here. I'm sure everything will work out fine. It's just that whenever we are separated from these guys for significant periods of time, I get a little squirrelly. Besides, I haven't seen my Grand-dog in at least six months. Oh, the humanity!!!!

I'll get over it. Thank goodness for cell phones and FaceTime, right? But, I still miss this...

I Fought The Law...and the law won.

A day like today is better left alone, left to stew in its own juices. To speak about it, might give it even more power. Perhaps silence would be the more prudent course. Maybe, if I ignore the events of the day, they will fade into inglorious oblivion, just a droplet of water in the lost mist of time. On the other hand....I write, so there's that.

Today, I spent the majority of my time and energy doing battle with Leviathan, in this case the Tennessee Department of Revenue outpost of Leviathan, with a brief visit to the Wells Fargo division. These two institutions are both basically field offices of Leviathan, but both are fully Leviathan, root and branch. The reason for this sad 4 month project has been the quest to arrange things so that my son, who lives in Nashville, can obtain proper registration stickers for his car. Unfortunately, even though the car is his...especially since he is the one making the payments, his name appears no where on the title, since the loan is solely in his father's name. Wells Fargo, the Enron of the banking world, holds the title and will not allow me to transfer the title into my son's name while there is a lien outstanding. So far during these past 4 months, my son has received one $150 ticket for driving on expired tags. It has been my fervent hope and prayer to get this cleared up so more such tickets will not be forthcoming. Today, I had been led to believe, was going to be V-GB day( Victory over Government Bureaucracy Day). However, after nearly 4 hours of telephone conversations with three different functionaries, it became apparent to me that the day was going down in a fiery crash of recrimination and accusation. Once it was all over, I had one last job to do...inform Patrick of the results of the day. Since he has been the one ducking into parking garages at the sight of cops in downtown Nashville for the past 4 months, he is understandably vested in a positive conclusion to this bureaucratic infighting. How was I going to break it to him that we were essentially back at square one. I had promised him a phone call, but thought better of it. I decided on a carefully worded email, the first paragraph is reprinted below:

Patrick,

I'm aware that I told you that I would call you as soon as I had news about this nightmare, but I'm afraid if I do, I will forget some important detail and also, if I retell this one more time, I might lose control of myself in an undignified manner. So, I've chosen to write out this summary of today's news instead.

There is no need to regale you with the gory details of the day. Suffice it to say that when fighting city hall, the first casualty is always the sanity of the attacker. In the case of the Tennessee Department of Revenue, this loss of sanity is hastened by the thick southern drawl of the clerks in question. All of them sound like your grandmother. In your minds eye, they are wearing aprons and pulling cherry pies out of the oven while trying to explain to you why there is no way in hell they can register a car in Tennessee to someone who lives in Virginia...But, I can certainly understand why you are so frustrated, bless your heart. Even when you can get them to admit that they signed for a FedEx package which contained the transfer title in question, but somehow no one at the Tennessee Department of Revenue can find it, ...even then....they make it sound like your fault. Now, I admit that it's a shame that it got lost, but you probably should never have sent that in the first place!

So, after a 4 hour battle with the bureaucratic state bequeathed to us by FDR's New Deal and fattened considerably by every single President since, I can report that the old adage is still true...

I fought the law and...the law won.

My Entertaining Family

Pam: How come having this hole in the floor makes me not want to cook in here?

                                                                    ###

                                                                                                          

A text conversation between me and my son from yesterday:

Me: I have spoken to two people thus far this morning, one from Wells Fargo bank and one from the Tennessee Department of Revenue. Still no answer. But, someone at the Tennessee Department of Revenue is working on it and will call me back with an answer sometime today.(Editor's note: No such call back). Wells Fargo did, in fact, send the transfer title to the Tennessee Department of Revenue on the 28th of August and they have a signed receipt and a FedEx tracking number to prove it.

Patrick: OMG. Thanks for the update. All of this incompetency is making me more conservative by the hour.

                                                                ###                                            

Kaitlin: Jon made the mistake of mentioning "Lolly and Pops." Now, Jackson won't stop staring at the door.

My family provides all the entertainment I need on a daily basis.

New Things Are Hard

Everyone who knows me would probably consider me an extrovert. That's a fair assessment, I suppose, but my extroverted personality isn't absolute. I'm more like a selective extrovert, for although I am generally comfortable in large crowds of people, my comfort level has it's limits. Yesterday was a great example.

As most of you know, I have been attending a new church for the past year or so, Hope Church, just across the Gouchland County line on Patterson Avenue. After being a member of the same church for 30 years, it's difficult to start from scratch at a new place with new people. But, Pam and I have done just that. We've joined a small group and are slowly getting involved, but it's a tedious process. Every Sunday when we walk through the doors of the place we still feel like we don't know a soul. So, when I saw that the church was planning a fund raiser golf tournament to raise money for their youth ministry I thought, what better way to get to know some people? I signed up and was paired with three total strangers.

I have to confess here that I don't know that I've ever experienced such social discomfort since, maybe, junior high. As I drove into the parking lot of the golf course, an actual knot rose in my throat. It startled me. What the heck was this all about? Why was I suddenly nervous? I usually think that it's the other hundred people who should be nervous at the prospect of meeting me! But, yesterday it was me who was suddenly overcome with dread. I carried my clubs around the clubhouse and saw a sea of men. I scanned the crowd for a familiar face and came up empty. 

I finally found my cart...5B. This was not a good sign. The letter "B" meant that there was going to be two foursomes on the same tee box. In other words, I began steeling myself for a 5 hour round of golf with three guys who I didn't know. I read their names on the cart sign. Their clubs were already on the cart, but they weren't. I headed to the registration table desperately trying to recognize someone...anyone.

Wait...that guy looks familiar. He's one of the guys who does music, isn't he? Oh, and there's Pete Bowell, one of the pastors. That's a good sign. At least I know I'm at the right course. It's such an odd feeling being in such a large crowd of people, yet feeling completely isolated. Everywhere I looked there were small groups of friends yucking it up, then that group would spot another small group of friends and they both would begin yucking it up. Meanwhile, I was busy eating my boxed lunch at a table by myself...which sounds quite pathetic, but it really wasn't. It's just one of those awkward situations that we all find ourselves in every once in a while.

After woofing down my lunch, suddenly some guy walked up to me, extended a hand and said, "I know you, you're Doug Dunnevant." 

Nothing. He didn't look like a golfer...

"1976. Patrick Henry High School."

Still, nothing. The great scene from Groundhog Day flashed before my eyes...Ned Ryerson, BING.

"Robbie Robertson!!"

Yes! Sudden recognition. It was Robbie Freaking Robertson! I hadn't seen the guy since graduation. BING!!

"Robbie! Great to see you again, man! How long have you been going to Hope?"

"Naw, not me...I work here at the Club."

But at least I knew someone on the premises. Things were looking up! 

As I made my way down to the range to hit a few practice balls I spotted some dude in knickers. He had the whole Scottish highlander getup, plaid socks, beret, the whole works. I thought to myself, that guy is either a scratch golfer or completely without self consciousness. Either way, probably a fun guy. On my way back to the cart I ran across a familiar face. I recognized him and he recognized me. We stopped and stared at each other, both frantically searching our memories for a name. This guy was in my small group, for goodness sake, and I still couldn't recall his name!! How embarrassing. Finally, I think I said something lame like...small group, this week's meeting is at your house, right? Its times like this when you consider the merits of the hermit life. Maybe the monk existence has its advantages. 

Finally, we were all called to our carts by a guy with a microphone who went over the rules, then handed the mic to David Dwight, senior pastor of the church. He made a few remarks, then said a prayer. By the time I made it over to my cart, I was greeted by my cart mate for the day...knickers guy. He ended up being very nice and great fun...but sadly, not a scratch golfer.

5 hours and 35 minutes later, we finally limped off the golf course and headed to the clubhouse for dinner. That's a long time to spend on a golf course...a very long time. In fact, I'm reasonably certain it's the longest amount of time I have ever spent playing a single round of golf...certainly the longest amount of time I've spent with total strangers on a golf course. Luckily for me, they were all nice guys and we got along well. Still, by the time I made it home, I was wiped out. It turns out that playing golf poorly combined with making conversation with strangers for 6 hours is a lot like...work.

But, on the bright side, this coming Sunday I will have a greater chance of making eye contact with someone I know. There will be a flicker of recognition, then we will exchange a nod and a grin. I have determined to remember their names...Wayne, Barry, and Bill.

New things are hard. Even when you are determined and committed...new things are hard.

Third Time the Charm?

I've read twenty books so far this year, most of them novels. Some have been quite good, others mediocre, and a couple of them were fabulous. All were enjoyable. Reading fiction has always been great fun for me. Getting wrapped up inside someone else's imagination for a few days is a stimulating distraction from the relentless finality of the real world. This world, as it actually exists, requires an occasional escape, and for me a good book always does the trick.

But every single time I finish one, I close the thing and think...I could do this. I never get this same feeling about, say, the classical guitar. Whenever I listen to a recording of someone like Christopher Parkening playing something by Bach, I don't think...Maybe if I practiced a little more I could play that way. I instinctively know that all the practice in the world won't turn me into Christopher Parkening. But with writing, it's different, especially when I read something that is ordinary...Well heck, I could do better than this!

I am encouraged in my arrogance here by the fact that I have already written two novels. The first one during my 20's, written in longhand, which fills two spiral notebooks and resides in the bottom drawer of my night stand, untyped, unedited, and unread. The second one I finished last October. This one was proofread and semi-edited, then printed out in manuscript form and lives in obscurity in the middle drawer of my night stand, the piece of furniture where literary dreams go to die. 

For several weeks now, the seeds of a third effort have been swimming around in the vast empty spaces of my mind. The idea for the story came to me while I was in Maine, and why not? There's a reason why so many American novelists live there. If you can't get inspired living in a place with so many brooding landscapes and rickety barns, then you should probably hang it up. I'm thinking that if Stephen King lived in Nebraska he never could have written The Green Mile. Anyway, the idea came to me while sitting on the dock at Loon Landing, and has been gestating ever since. Last night I finally opened up a fresh Word document and started writing. If my other two attempts are instructive, it will take me around eight months or so to complete. Afterwards there will be a great feeling of accomplishment. Then the printed manuscript will take up residence in the top drawer of that night stand.

Maybe one day, long after I have gone to my eternal reward, my kids will stumble upon these efforts at the bottom of some box in the attic. They will read through them and either say, Aw, I'm so glad Dad had such a fun hobby...bless his heart. Or, perhaps they will say, Whoa, these are amazing! Maybe if we can have them published we can enjoy a spendable inheritance!! 

A posthumous Pulitzer might be nice...

Somewhere, Christopher Parkening is laughing his head off.

Progress.

For most people, history is boring. It's the domain of pointy-headed intellectuals combing over stacks of dusty books in the back corners of ancient libraries. For me it's the most instructive of all the academic disciplines. Without it we wouldn't know this:

The three leading causes of death 100 years ago in the United States were as follows:

3. Pneumonia 

2. Tuberculosis 

1. Diarrhea 

That's right, the number one cause of death in America a hundred years ago was the runs. In 1917, 59,000 souls perished because there was no Pepto-Bismol. Today, the cure cost 3 bucks. That is what is known as...progress.

A friend of mine recently posted a story online about how he was going over an old deed from a piece of property in Richmond with one of his clients, who happened to be black. In this deed from 1939 mention was made that no future sale of said property could be made to anyone who wasn't Caucasian. My friend was horrified, especially because his black client had to see such a thing. The comment section of this story immediately filled up with people talking about how horrible a thing this was and how it was prima facia evidence of rampant racism in America. This, despite the fact that today such a provision is not enforceable in the United States. Moreover, these types of provisions are no longer legally acceptable. The moral of this story should have been, aren't we glad that so many of these sorts of racial barriers, which were commonplace in America in 1939, are no longer. But instead, most saw this as a commentary on modern race relations, not a part of our past.

I believe that it is possible to hold the following two positions without contradiction: A. More work needs to be done in the arena of race relations in America because racism still exists and any remaining barriers that still hold back minorities from full participation in society need to be taken down. B. We have made enormous strides over the past 100 years with regards to race relations in America. In other words, it's possible to at once understand how far we have come while agreeing that there's more to be done. When I hear the debates today I sometimes ask myself, does anybody know what race relations were like 50 years ago? When I hear loose accusations about what a filthy, racist hell-hole America is I think, Then, why have we made so much progress since the days of the racially exclusive deeds of 1939? How could such a wretched country institute such changes?

The value of history is it allows people alive today to look back at the record of our predecessors, for good and for ill. Yes, the record shows our failures, our inconsistencies...even our shame. But it also measures our progress. It comes in fits and starts. Too fast for some, horribly slow for others. But, who among us would deny that the world we inhabit today is far superior to the one our ancestors lived in when it comes to at least two areas of life...the number one cause of death....and race relations?

Who's To Blame?

I stayed up and watched until the bitterest of endings, the filthy slider dipping under the flailing bat of Bryce Harper, putting an end to the 2017 season for the Washington Nationals. The Cubs stormed the field and for the fourth time in the past six years, the baseball team from our nation's capital failed to advance to the National League Championship Series. For the 10th straight time, a Dusty Baker managed team lost a closeout game in the postseason. This particular loss was bizarre, even by Nationals standards, and immediately pundits and fans began casting about for villains. There were many to pick from:

- Gio Gonzalez for being characteristically wild and mercurial in a clutch start which required coolness and precision...surprising absolutely no one.

- Trea Turner for taking more called strikes over the five game series than the entire Cubs roster.

-Jose Lobaton, the slowest player on the team, for allowing himself to get picked off of first base with a teammate standing on second base.

- Jayson Werth for losing a fly ball in the lights at the worse possible time.

- Matt Weiters for allowing strike three to go under his glove all the way to the backstop allowing a man to score, then compounding his error by throwing wildly to first, then following that up with catcher's interference during a bizarre span that may go down as the worst example of catcher play in the history of baseball.

- Max Scherzer for hitting a batter at the worst possible time and for having Matt Weiters for a catcher.

- Dusty Baker for...I don't know...for being Dusty Baker.

I watched these guys play all year. They were fun, talented and clutch. But, they remain most famous for losing in October. You think of the Washington Nationals and the first thing that comes to mind is opposing teams celebrating in the middle of the infleld of Nationals Park. Death, Taxes, Nationals fail to advance.

But here's the thing...it's nobody's fault. This is what drives me crazy about sports. Whenever your team loses, everyone starts the blame game, as if laying the loss at one guy's feet will absolve the failure of the entire franchise and preserve the self respect of devoted fans...My team didn't lose, it was that idiot xxxxxx. This morning's sports pages will probably coalesce around Weiters, or Scherzer. Extreme jock sniffers will blame everything on Dusty since it's never the beloved players, always the stupid manager. Wrong.

Baseball is a team sport which features a series of individual matchups.. The games are won and lost for a whole host of reasons, but seldom does it come down to one guy. Even when it does, like when a relief pitcher gets lit up and blows a save, there were a couple dozen earlier matchups, which if they had gone the other way, the closer would never have been needed in the first place. But, here's the real reason that fixing blame for a loss on one player is so dumb...sometimes a team doesn't lose so much as they...get beat. The reason the Nationals loss this series against the Cubs is because over the five games, the Cubs players won more of their individual matchups than did the Nationals. The Cubs are the defending world champs for a reason. They are a terrific ball club. How about we all just acknowledge the fact that the Cubs won, instead of harping on the fact that the Nationals lost....again? Because, that's not how human beings prefer to operate. Blame is far more satisfying than grace.