We Are All Replacement Refs

Awesome photograph. This picture perfectly encapsulates where we are as a nation in 2012. Two overwhelmed people looking at the same event, the same set of facts, and coming to wildly different conclusions.

Last night, the final play of the Packers-Seahawks game came down to this photograph. The splendid rookie quarterback, Russell Wilson, lofted a last second, Hail Mary towards the corner of the end zone with no time on the clock and his team down 12-7. The intended receiver, Golden Tate shoves a defender in the back just before leaping in the air to catch the ball. However, the football lands in the waiting hands not of Tate, but of Packers safety M.D. Jennings. They tumble to the ground and these two replacement officials, standing directly over the pile of players make their calls simultaneously...one ref signals touchdown, the other a touch back. Replays seemed to show rather conclusively that Jennings had, in fact, intercepted Wilson's pass. But after a 10 minute delay, the terrified referee touched the button on his microphone and told a deliriously happy home crowd that the horrible call he had just made would stand. End of game, but not the end  of story.

The twitter universe that I am contemplating joining went apoplectic with rage and indignation. The replacement officials were making a mockery of the game, Roger Goddell should be executed, this was the biggest miscarriage of justice since the acquittal of OJ Simpson, these Division II referees were totally overwhelmed by the speed of the professional game, completely out of their depth and had lost control of the game. Actually, I feel for these guys...because everyday that I wake up and go to work and try to live my modern life, I feel an awful lot like a replacement ref.

I often feel overwhelmed with the speed of life in 2012. I too, feel completely out of my depth, and everyday it's a struggle to maintain control of my slice of the world. Replacement officials...I feel your pain. One minute, you're a perfectly happy and contented Division II referee getting psyched up for the big Randolph Macon v. Hampden Sydney tilt coming up in Ashland next Saturday. Suddenly, you get a call from some really nice man from the NFL asking you if you would be interested in becoming a referee at the highest level of the game. It would be great and you would be doing the NFL a big favor, says the nice man. Plus, they promise to pay you ten grand per game! It's a dream come true, the opportunity of a life time. The next thing you know, you're standing over a pile of yellow and blue uniforms with 65,000 intoxicated, fanatical lunatics screaming their lungs out at you with the outcome of a game hanging on your decision. For a slow-motion instant, silent and dreamlike, you're back in Ashland throwing a flag on the Yellow Jackets for having too many men on the field. You wonder what you possibly could have been thinking when you said "yes" to that nice man from the NFL.

Did the refs blow the call last night? Yes. Did they call too many penalties during the game? Yes. Will the fiasco at the end of the game distract from the amazing grit and determination of a rookie QB driving his team to victory in just his third NFL start? Unfortunately, yes. Do these replacements deserve all the blame for the horrible situation in which they find themselves? No, no...a thousand times ..NO! Mr. Goddell, pay the real refs, and stop being the story. The players, and the fans deserve better.

My Great Day At The Ballpark

In a fit of generosity, my brother decided a while back to buy me a ticket to see a Nationals game. We are both stubborn, rabid baseball fans, the kind who illicit lots of eye-rolling from our friends and family when we get started quoting the starting lineup on opening day for the 1955 Yankees, or when we hold forth on the various theories concerning the philosophical underpinnings of the sacrifice bunt. So, I have been totally geeked up about this game for weeks now. The plan was for my best friend, my brother-in-law and me to meet Donnie at the centerfield gate around noon yesterday. This would involve us riding the infamous D.C. Metro from Franconia to the Pentagon, switching from the blue line to the yellow line, then switching once again to the green line at some place called “L’enfant Plaza” and then cruising into the Navy yard station that drops you off a mere 200 yards from the center field fence. To my amazement this potentially disastrous trek came off without incident, so at roughly 12:15 I spotted Donnie’s waving hand amongst the sea of red curly W’s. The sky was bright blue, the sun was out and it was 65 degrees.

We spent an hour or so enjoying the beautiful ballpark. Not only is National’s Park gorgeous, the atmosphere was buzzing with the enthusiasm that only comes with being a contender. The Nats have the best record in the big leagues. I’ve watched at least parts of all of their games on MASN and now I was finally getting the opportunity to see them in person. The magic number was 6 at start of play on September 23. All year I have watched the dominant pitching staff make National League hitters look silly. Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzales, Jordan Zimmerman, And Edwin Jackson make up a rotation that has been the envy of baseball. So who do we get to see towing the rubber on this beautiful day??? Some guy named Chien-Ming Wang. I should have viewed it as an omen of things to come, but, lost in the moment, I celebrated the diversity that is big league baseball in 2012. It was time for lunch.

We settled on Hebrew National hot dogs, a side of nachos and a Sam Adams Oktoberfest draft. Then it was time to go find our seats. Donnie had told me that we would be sitting on the second level between home plate and first base. I naturally conjured up images of myself catching numerous fowl balls off the bats of fooled Brewer right handed hitters. What I hadn’t counted on was A. the inability of Chien-Ming Wang to fool hitters, and B. the physical impossibility for a baseball to travel from the field of play to the location of our seats. See, my brother is not able to buy baseball tickets or anything else on-line. He says that this is because he is afraid someone will steal his identity. What that actually means is…he doesn’t know how. If he did he could have gotten on the Nationals’ fine, easy-to-use website and picked out a seat that in fact WAS on the second level between home plate and first base. No, Donnie prefers talking to a real person, the human interaction crucial to our well-being. So, he bought our tickets from “Flo” in promotions.

We began our climb at roughly 12:55. We were in section 321. The signs were confusing. There were rumors of an escalator, but we couldn’t find it. Instead, we took the winding switchback walkways and followed the arrows pointed upward. After twenty minutes or so, and after passing the disturbing skeletal remains of a long dead Senators fan, we finally arrived at our seats. We were on the front rail of the nose-bleed section roughly a thousand feet from the first base bag. Bob Uecker was making fun of our seats. But, it didn’t matter. We were at a big league baseball game, and I was having a blast. Then it got ….weird.

Suddenly for no apparent reason a whole section of fans in section 450 burst into hysterically raucous applause. The four of us immediately began to squint down at the field to see what we had missed, but there was no one on base and nothing of import had transpired. However, two batters later the Nationals turned one of the most amazing, exciting double plays in the history of the game that ignited the crowd into a frenzy. Later, from an usher, we learned that the fans in section 450 were a group in town for the National Association of Psychic Mediums convention ( NAPM ). A couple of innings later, the NAPM crowd let out an ominously deflated groan. We watched Bryce Harper lose a ball in the sun two batters later. These people were spoiling the game for us! It should be against the law for the clairvoyant to attend baseball games Meanwhile, our man Wang, displaying the most laborious windup in history, did not impress. During the long delays between him getting the sign and actually pitching the ball, I found time to Google this mysterious man from Taiwan. I discovered that late in 2006 Wang revealed that he had discovered that he was the biological son of a man who he had always thought was his uncle. The Taiwanese press apparently had a field day with this revelation. Mysteriously, Wang has struggled to get hitters out ever since.

By the fifth inning I was ready for more food. I laid down $20 for a chili covered bratwurst with cheese and onions drizzled over the top just because. As I was settling back into my seat, the psychics were exasperated by some soon to be revealed catastrophy. Sure enough, Jayson Werth proceeds to lose a ball in the sun and two more runs score for the Brewers. The good news was, Donnie was slowly but surely getting over his altitude sickness, and was reporting that feeling had returned to his extremities.

Yes, the Nationals lost the game 6-2. And yes, our four seats just happened to be the only seats in the stadium that remained in the shade the entire game, and yes, the high winds whipping off of the Anacosta river did enter into the stadium through section 321, and said winds were responsible for most of our nose bleeds and head aches, the bottom line was simple…we had a great day at the ballpark.

Weekend Ramblings

Here are my very unscientific college football picks for the week.

1. South Carolina will beat Missouri. Why? Despite the fact that South Carolina has the worst nickname in all of college sports, the “gamecocks”, “cocks” for short ( cringe ) are a better team. In addition, this will be Missouri’s first road SEC game, after which, the Missouri coaching staff will be demanding an explanation from someone as to why anyone thought joining the SEC was a good idea.

2. TCU will beat UVA. Why? Because it’s UVA.

3. Florida State will beat Clemson. Why? Because when a team gives up over 70 points in a bowl game, I never take them seriously again.

4.Oklahoma will beat Kansas State. Why? Because Kansas State is essentially the Virginia Tech of the Midwest, a nice little program who never beats anyone important.

5. Oregon will beat Arizona. Why? I have no idea. They play football in Oregon?

6. Notre Dame will beat Michigan. Why? Because God is on their side.

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Ok, moving on to other topics, I did go fishing yesterday. It was fun and relaxing. I caught three fish. None of them seemed too terribly annoyed. Maybe because I let them all go. I feel pretty good about myself for that $23 I sent to the government for the privilege, I don’t mind telling you. Paying my fair share to help Richmond provide “fishing programs” for my state brings an awful lot of self esteem with it.

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Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax return yesterday. Dude had 13.7 million in income and paid 1.9 million in federal income taxes. That’s a 14.1% rate, if you’re keeping score at home. But the two things that I found most shocking were A. that this release did NOT satisfy the democratic party. And B. that Mitt gave over 4 million bucks to his church. Whoa. That’s like 30% of his income. Yet another reason I’m glad I’m not a member of the Mormon church!

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My daughter came home last night for the weekend. She arrived around 10 and brought her new roommate, Jess, with her. It’s been a month since I last saw her. She is just as beautiful as I remembered, only a bit smarter. One day soon she’s going to walk through my door after another month in grad school, and it’s going to dawn on her that she is sooo much smarter than me. Who am I kidding, she probably already has. Maybe it happened last night.

Going Fishing...

Modern life can be a complicated mess. Mysteries and contradictions are everywhere. Devoted free market men like myself are frustrated to the point of cynicism when we find crony-capitalists in positions of influence in our political party of convenience. Devoted followers of Christ spend half our time appalled at the narrow-mindedness and irrelevance of the churches we attend. Small business owners are stunned at the level of contempt with which we are held by the current president. Lifelong sports fans carry around with them the unspoken intuition that our favorite sports are being destroyed right before our eyes by the influence of money and the overexposure that it brings. Nobody fixes their own cars anymore because they’re all just big computers on wheels. Every time we go to the grocery store, that tube of toothpaste or that box of maccaroni & cheese is just an ounce or two smaller than it was last month, but the price is the same. Our newspaper just got an inch skinnier, on the same day that it’s price went up 33%. A complicated mess.

But you know what’s not complicated? Fishing. I say “not complicated” when what I mean is “less” complicated. I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods the other day to buy a license, and to replenish my tackle box, and discovered that capitalism has turned fishing into a bizarre avocation involving many brightly colored accessories of dubious purpose. I resisted the urge to become a high tech, cutting age modern angler, preferring to remain a guy who just wants to take an afternoon once in a while to get away from everything and everyone and fish. The State charges $23.00 for the privilege. I was told by the enthusiastic cashier that the money from these licensing fees went towards, “ fishery and hatchery management, habitat development and protection, fishing and conservation programs, and many other valuable programs.” And here I thought that this was just another government money grab. Maybe I’ll write for a list of those “other valuable programs”. But if I do it will just hurdle me further down the dead end road of cynicism when I discover that my fishing license fee was helping to fund Planned Parenthood or something. No, I’ll pass on digging deeper into the reasons why I just paid 23 bucks for the right to fish for one year in the state of my birth.

Sometime soon, maybe tomorrow, I’m going to drive out into the countryside somewhere and find a place to fish. I will not use my cell phone. I will not use any artificial lures. My rig will be the same one I’ve always used, night crawlers and a red and white bobber. I will stare at that bobber and contemplate the meaning of my existence. I will pack a sandwich and maybe a beer or two. If I catch anything, I will enjoy the slimy feel of it’s scales as I hold it in my hand and stare into the depths of it’s glassy eye. Then I will place it gently back into the water and watch it disappear. So simple. So clear. So unambiguous.

At the end of the day I will be refreshed. I will feel whole. On the drive back into town I will try not to think about my complicity in funding those “other valuable programs”.

Game Over.

Poor Mitt. You gotta feel for the guy. For the first time in his entire campaign, he finally tells the unvarnished truth about something and BAMM...game over. Not to say I told you so, but go here for proof that I warned all of you Romney fans about the political facts of life months ago. Although he spoke the truth, there are a few quibble-worthy points to make.

It is a fact that roughly 47% of Americans pay no income tax. This is the result of 40 years of pandering by BOTH parties. This fact has indeed created a huge constituency for whom tax cuts offer no benefit. To respond, as most liberals do when confronted with this reality, along the lines of ,"Yeah, but all Americans pay payroll taxes!!" is nonsensical. Of course we all pay payroll taxes. The reason we all pay is because the law provides no escape, no deduction or qualifying dodge to get us off the hook. In addition, payroll taxes are payments we all make for a future benefit ( Social Security ). Herein lies a quibble. When Romney calculates the 47% of Americans who are "dependant" on the government, he includes retirees whose only claim against that government is the Social Security check they earned through a lifetime of paying into the system. These people are merely collecting on a promise, and can hardly be described as "dependant".

 Mitt's serendipitously recorded words were correct about the electoral landscape. Any Democrat running for the Presidency starts out with a huge base of support that in large part consists of those citizens with a vested interest in government spending. That percentage has been growing each year since LBJ's Great Society was launched over 45 years ago. But to be heard writing off nearly half the country as hopelessly dependant and helpless is never a good thing for one's electoral prospects. The fact that his statement is mostly true doesn't change the facts on the ground. Just because something might be true does not mean that it should be said. Any husband who has been asked by his wife if a particular pair of pants makes her look fat knows this instinctively.

If I was Mitt's speech writer, here's what I would have him say....

     " The fact that we have a social safety net in this country is something that we should all be proud of, it speaks well of our national character. As Americans we all believe in providing for those who have fallen on hard times, because we know that in America, bad luck and bad fortune are often temporary setbacks. Government plays a vital role in helping men and women recover from the unexpected, unplanned setbacks of life. But our safety net has over time been transformed into a hammock and government "help" has become a way of life for too many of our people, at precisely the same time as too many of us have been taken off the tax rolls. This is an untenable reality. Our tax system has become a tool of manipulation that government and business use against the rest of us. When you're in line at the grocery store and watch a twenty-something man wearing $200 sneakers buying beer and lottery tickets with food stamps, it should upset you because something is wrong with a system that allows that. But you should be equally upset when huge agri-business corporations receive billions in tax preferences to not grow things, or when politically connected businesses get subsidies written into our Byzantine tax code by their own lobbyists. Many of us complain about how complicated our tax code is, but it's complexity is by design. The more convoluted the tax code, the more power the code writers have. On day one of my administration, our 73,608 page tax code will be  replaced with a one page flat tax with no deductions for anything. For our country to be able to provide adequately for the weakest among us, everyone needs to have skin in the game. For some of you the new system will mean higher taxes, for others your bill will be lower...but all of you will be treated equally, and none of you will be able to game the system to avoid paying."

Poor Mitt doesn't have it in him to offer a transformative alternative to the cradle to grave welfare state. We can only hope against hope that President Obama, once he is no longer running for office will have the guts to confront the deniers in his own party and face the deteriorating mathematics of socialism

The Very Worst Day

This day. This bloody day. One hundred and fifty years ago, today. Near the obscure Maryland village of Sharpsburg 26,000 Americans dead, wounded or missing. This time the pools of blood dried and caked on Union soil. Body parts were stacked in piles outside of the German Baptist church. By nightfall, Miller's cornfield was mowed down, clean shaven by the artillery fire. The bloody lane was paved with the dead and dying. Mothers and Grandmothers from Louisiana to New York felt a horrified chill, a cold premonition that interrupted their work. Fathers and Grandfathers would soon descend into a lifetime of silence about this day, September 17, 1862.

This death, this carnage, would be the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. Still, no one celebrates. It's all just too much. The numbers are too daunting, the savagery too unthinkable. We did this to each other up close, hand to hand. The artillery pieces were hauled into place by horses and mules, communication accomplished by couriers, intelligence gathered from mostly unreliable informants. There were no drone attacks, no ground assets conveying coordinates to killing machines in the air, no machine guns to facilitate the destruction. This was no second hand slaughter, this was one on one brutality. These were teenagers choking the last breath out of other teenagers with their bare hands. These were grown men slashing throats with glistening bayonets. Abraham Lincoln would come to inspect the field and not long after issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He had been waiting for a Union victory so as not to appear desperate. His generals told him that Antietam was a victory. He would have to take their word for it.

One hundred and fifty summers have baked those fields since that awful day. The snows of one hundred winters have  washed away the stains of war. We don't think about it much anymore. It was so long ago, before electric lights, before Gershwin tunes and television. We would move on to new wars with more awesome weaponry. But we would never manage to experience so great a day's loss as that September day. It trumps 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and D-Day. We've forgotten most of the names...Hooker, Burnside, Hill. Lincoln didn't give the Antietam Address, so it has fallen from our national memory. But today, one hundred and fifty years later I marvel at man's inhumanity to man, and my heart trembles when I consider how high a price God asked us to pay for the sin of slavery.

The SEC...and the rest of college football

The SEC. Love them or hate them, there is no middle ground. Either you think that they are the most dominant force in college football with a death grip on the National Title, or you're convinced that they are the most over-hyped collection of genetically modified monsters in the history of sports. Everyone knows about the six consecutive national champions. I spent 3 years of my life living in Louisiana and Alabama and can tell you without hesitation that college football means more to those people than life itself. There is a fanaticism there that borders on madness. After three weeks of the 2012 season it's clear that all of you SEC haters out there are going to suffer through another year nursing that well-deserved inferiority complex.

Most of the pre-season pretenders have already crashed back down to Earth. USC, and Virginia Tech have fallen out of the competition to see who gets to be the latest team to be mauled in the title game by virtue of their losses yesterday. But there are still some teams out there with high hopes. Oregon, Texas, Florida State and Oklahoma will all take turns as the great white hope, the flavor of the month, the team upon which all SEC-hating college football fans will pin their hopes. To my eyes, however, it looks like in order to get to the best team in the country not located in the Confederacy, you first have to wade through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and LSU.

A strange and eerie silence has fallen over the Internet in the State of Virginia since yesterday. This was finally going to be the year that Virginia Tech was going to take that final step and win it all. With their Heisman trophy candidate QB Logan Thomas leading the way, Hokie faithful were sure that this year the magic would come. Frank Beamer would finally have a trophy to put in that famously empty box in Blacksburg. Tech fans would finally see their team win a game against a quality opponent in January.

Maybe next year.