Man Bites Blog

If progressives were to identify organizations, issues, and people within those organizations who were unlikely to change the organization’s position on that issue, I suspect the Catholic Church, abortion, and Pope Benedict would be in the top five.

Yet, Timothy Noah, apparently in all earnestness, has written an open entreaty to the Holy Father asking him to loosen up the Church’s position on abortion in order to enable health care reform to pass.

So, to summarize, proposed legislation is running into the well-known and established position of a 2000 year old religion that is followed by a large number of Americans. The apparent solution is not to adjust the legislation so it does not bump into that, but to try to convince that religion to change its stance, or try to convince the leaders of that religion that it really doesn’t run against their principle, because the CBO says it’s deficit-neutral.

One interesting note is that by taking this gambit, Noah is implicitly admitting that he considers the Democratic Party to be more dogmatic about abortion than the Catholic Church. In his opinion, lobbying the foreign leader of the Catholic Church to endorse a specific piece of legislation, overruling his bishops in America, something that has never happened in history, is a more hopeful path than working with the American legislators who are drafting health care reform to do so in a way that does not run against Catholic principles. This in spite of the fact that many Democratic Senators and Representatives, including the Vice President and Speaker of the House, are Catholic.

So who are the inflexible dogmatists?

BTW, Michael Novak tried this gambit with John Paul II (though, unlike Noah, Novak is in fact Catholic) with the Iraq War. JPII declined then, and I think Benedict will do the same.

In the dotCommonweal thread I alluded to below, the following concerns about the Tebow ad were raised:

• It would be wrong to imply that it is likely that those who choose life will be rewarded with a Heisman Trophy winner
• The message should be that all life is sacred, not just that of a Heisman Trophy winner.
• It would be better to represent a wide range of outcomes.

Well, yeah. The ad is not designed to be an air-tight self-contained comprehensive presentation of the pro-life point of view.

It is a single story that may get people to start thinking and asking questions. And when they do, it’s up to the rest of us who consider ourselves to be pro-life to be there with answers.

As I said below, the principle of double effect states:

This set of criteria states that an action having foreseen harmful effects practically inseparable from the good effect is justifiable if upon satisfaction of the following:

• the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
• the agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or as an end itself;
• the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm.

So how do we determine if the bad effect is truly separable from the good effect, or if the effect itself is good?

I propose the following standard: If efforts to minimize the bad effect, either before or subsequent to the act would make sense (absent a change of heart or realizing the first act was a mistake), then it may be the case that the act itself is good and be permissible under the principle of double effect.

For example, if I fire a gun at somebody, it may make sense for me to use a silencer. It may make sense for me to call for medical assistance immediately afterward. But it would make no sense for me to yell “Duck!” as I’m firing (beyond the practical limitations). The loud noise may be an unwanted side effect. The target’s death may be an unwanted side effect. But the bullet reaching its target is not.

Some more examples:

• It would not make sense to call someone a racist, and follow it up with, “no offense.”
• It would not make sense to provide SCUBA gear to somebody I was about to waterboard.

One other example that comes to mind is that offering Christ the wine as He was on the Cross was merely a cruel joke. They were torturing Him to death. That his the point of crucifixion.

If any effort to minimize the harm would render the act senseless, then that negative effect is an intrinsic part of the act. It is impossible to waterboard someone without intending to give them the sensation they’re drowning.

Let me stress that if an act clears this bar, it does not mean the act is justified; merely that, in the words of Cardinal Dulles, it “might arguably be licit.”

For example, the US dropped warning pamphlets before dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This made sense in terms of acting to minimize the harm. But, in itself, it does not establish the morality of the bombings.

Apparently, if Bill Donohue ever tires of dramatically flopping to ground at anything remotely provocative to Catholics, it appears Micheal Sean Winters is prepared to step into the breach:

In CMR’s analysis of the 2008 election, the first four items on their issues list were all related to gays in the military or, as they nicely put it, creating a “San Francisco military.” Surely, Professor George, if not the people at CMR, knows that before San Francisco was a city, he was a saint, and a pacifist, so the allusion to a “San Francisco military” is as offensive to Catholics as it is to gays.

So, apparently if you name something after a saint, then associating qualities to that thing that are contrary to its namesake is supposed to be offensive to Catholics.

Please.

By this standard, if a Michigan fan shouts, “Notre Dame sucks” at a football game, Catholics should take great offense, because before Notre Dame was a university, she was Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and thus the allusion to Our Lady performing any kind of sexual act is as offensive to Catholics as it would be to the football team.

But wait, there’s more! Isn’t there a team called the “San Francisco 49ers?” Didn’t St. Francis give away all his possessions and live a life of poverty? And now his name is being associated with gold rushers? Could we imagine a less fitting name? And people get upset about the Washington Redskins…

What this reveals is an almost desperate attempt to take offense, and I have to confess I just don’t get it.*

And, by the way, here’s the chain that connects Prof. George to the offensive phrase:

• Prof. George is the founder of the American Principles Project.
• The American Principles Project linked to an article from the Center for Military Readiness.
• In its analysis of the 2008 election, the CMR used the term “San Francisco militant.”

And this is a significant part of the case Winters mounts to begin, “Professor George’s organization betrays a bigotry that is at the very least unseemly in a tenured professor.” and conclude with, “But, the bishops who support and applaud Professor George should be aware of what they are signing up for. He is not only a thoughtful defender of natural law, he is also the proprietor of a D.C.-based advocacy organization that is embarrassing in its bigotry, especially embarrassing to an intellectual. Especially to a Catholic.”

Then there’s the ridiculous part where Winters attempts to put APP’s efforts to block the appointment of Kevin Jennigs, who wrote the foreword to a book called “Quering Elementary Education,” in the same category as efforts to remove “The Catcher in the Rye” from school curricula.

I understand why a progressive would find much to disagree with from the APP (though if you visit their website now, you’ll have a difficult time finding the obsession with homosexuality that Winters and others accuse them of, though you will find much evidence of support for Democratic pro-life Representative Bart Stupak) and Prof. George. I am with Winters in thinking that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is ill-considered, needlessly discriminatory, and ought to be repealed. I just don’t think that everyone who disagrees with me is a bigot.

Prof. George is one of the most effective advocates for issues Catholic progressives claim to embrace. Pro-choice writer Will Saletan wrote of Prof. George and Christopher Tollefson:

They’re civil, logical, and smart. I’ve seen George pick apart fuzzy-thinking adversaries at meetings of the bioethics council. It’s like watching a cat with mice. Today, unfortunately, I’ll be the mouse.

In what I have read from him, Prof. George is tough, but fair. I would not want to be on the other side of a debate with him.

But those wanting the US to move in a pro-life direction shouldn’t want to see him dismissed as a bigot, either. That doesn’t mean he should be immune from criticism, but I think it should take more than an organization he founded linking to a page from and organization that once used the term “San Francisco militant” for us to throw him to the curb.

*One possibility is some hard feelings over the 2004 election, and some of tough words Prof. George had for John Kerry and his supporters. My responses:

On the rare occasion when Vox Nova takes a break from relentless pro-lifer bashing and actually advocates on behalf of the unborn, the structure of the post is typically as follows:

1. Straightforward summary of the current events.
2. Jab at Republicans for failing to embrace said policy consistently.
3. Recommendation for how the Administration should proceed.
4. Note that this would be consistent with the Administration’s campaign promises and general character.
5. Lament that this will still not be enough to convince some pro-lifers that the Administration is not the most radically pro-abortion in history.
6. One last shot that this would all be unnecessary if Republicans claiming to be pro-life would just go along.

If the Administration fails to take the suggested action, there is no subsequent post holding them accountable.

If promoting the cause of the unborn were a crime, I wouldn’t want to be the prosecutor trying to mount a case to convict.

UPDATE: And don’t get me started on the carnival of concern trolling going on in this dotCommonweal thread.

The structure of this post was inspired in part by this hilarious video:

In 2006, after stumbling to an 83-79 regular season record, the St. Louis Cardinals went on a surprising postseason run culminating in a World Series title.

I’ve commented before that I found the Cardinals’ run something less than captivating.

Perhaps part of the reason is that between almost every inning I was treated to testimonials from Sheryl Crow, John Danforth, Michael J. Fox, and parents of children with diseases that I needed to vote for a constitutional amendment declaring that embryos were not persons, and that the state would never interfere with them being used for research. These ads were 95% funded by a single family that stood to materially gain from the amendment’s passage.

These ads annoyed me. Yet it never occurred to me that the thing to do was to pressure the network showing the baseball playoffs and World Series to stop showing these ads. Or to mumble threats about the impact the celebrities’ advocacy would have on their careers. Or to contemplate how I would shield my children’s eyes from these terrible ads.

I just kind of figured that seeing ads that piss me off, even ads advocating what I consider the legalized killing of innocents, was part of the price I paid for living in a free society.

How silly I was, since as the links above show, this is not how those in favor of abortion (and in this case, please don’t tell me that blocking a woman from sharing her story is “pro-choice”) react when the tables are turned. (Though I should note that there are some reasonable voices on that side).

But I suspect that if I were to have chosen that course, I would have been dismissed as a freedom-hating crank who cannot handle views other than his own.

But maybe it’s for the best, since the controversy has done more to publicize Tebow’s story than a single ad ever could. Even if CBS yields, anyone who now follows the news knows Tebow’s story.

And they also know that the abortion industry is desperate to keep you from hearing that story. That the right to abortion is so delicate that it requires blowing away almost every other right we hold dear. At this point, I almost hope they do keep it off the air.

In a recent Slate article, Emily Bazelon recounts her and her husband’s response when their 10-year old son protested their tradition of having a birthday book swap with classmates rather than having gifts.

My first response was to salute Bazelon and her husband for hearing out her son’s concerns, even if it didn’t have an impact on the tradition.

The majority of the commentary seems to be that Bazelon and her husband are very selfish parents for turning their children’s platform into a platform from which they preach their pro-reading anti-consumerist Gospel. And I did find myself nodding along.

But then I found myself asking why. Well, it’s his birthday after all. And it should be about him, not his parents. Who are they to dictate how he should celebrate his birthday. And isn’t it rude to tell guests what gifts are acceptable?

Perphaps. But it is also true that Eli is part of a family. And that family has certain values, and occasions like birthdays are occasions for reinforcing those values.* That the world doesn’t revolve around you, yes even on your birthday, is an important lesson.** And since Eli is only 10, the values of the family are still determined by his parents.

I’m quite sure that the mainstream of middle-class American culture has not arrived at correct answers about everything, and finding the right answers will involve some families going against the grain. I’m not certain Bazelon’s family has hit upon the ideal way to do that, but I applaud the general direction.

Some commentators predicted that the boys will one day rebel if forced to continue this. I think it’s at least as likely that they will be glad they were part of a family that had values, and wasn’t willing to just go along with the prevailing culture.

Others were concerned about Bazelon and her husband teaching Eli to “conform” to their values. But aren’t these commentators demanding that the family conform to the prevailing culture? And isn’t this more dangerous?

I’ll take child that grudgingly goes along with the values of his family over a family that just goes along with the demands of the prevailing culture.

** I say this as a man who has married into a family that has family reunions at a campground in Michigan on weekends that invariably bracket or include my birthday. I am not a camper. So, I am quite disabused of the notion that my birthday will be all about me.

In this thread at Catholic and Enjoying It, the question was raised about why some find it necessary to rain on Massachusetts Citizens For Life, and I thought I’d answer..

Let me start by saying that anyone who labors on behalf of the unborn deserves our prayers and respect, and MCFL certainly has mine. It is an absolute scandal how many Catholics are willing to keep themselves at arm’s length from the pro-life movement, and criticize their efforts from the sidelines, and I certainly don’t want to be a part of that.

Nevertheless, we can all sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees, and can use the benefit of outside perspective to get us back on track.

Continued below the fold…

Read the rest of this entry »

The Principle of Double Effect, at least according to Wikipedia, states:

This set of criteria states that an action having foreseen harmful effects practically inseparable from the good effect is justifiable if upon satisfaction of the following:

• the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
• the agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or as an end itself;
• the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm.

Emphasis mine.

Many in the Catholic blogosphere seem to read that as, “If you determine that an act that has a negative effect has a greater positive effect, or is better than some alternative course of action (or inaction), you may (or even have a positive duty to) proceed with the act as if the negative effect does not exist.”

Take the healthcare debate. As the Stupak and Nelson amendments were being debated, some in the Catholic blogosphere thought this was an opportune time to argue that Catholics should accept a health care reform even in the absence of these amendments, under the principle of double effect. Or to call those who insisted on such amendments hypocrites.

This may or not be the case. What is the case is that those who were working to add pro-life amendments to health care reform were working to minimize (or eliminate) the harm. And this type of commentary served to undermine those efforts. This isn’t minimizing the harm.

A statement by Cardinal Avery Dulles was often referenced to justify this position:

To vote for an appropriations bill that includes some provisions for funding abortions would not be so gravely sinful as to warrant excommunication under Canon 1398. The vote might arguably be licit if the funding for abortion were only incidental and could not be removed from a bill that was otherwise very desirable.

Emphasis mine again.

This is not the type of statement that lends itself to being followed by, “QED” in arguing for he acceptability of health care reform that includes funding of abortion. It would be difficult to imagine weaker language Cardinal Dulles could have used.

Yet, commentators wrote things like “Dulles applies” as if a bill clearing that bar was sufficient to establish its morality. That’s pretty far from what Cardinal Dulles said.

And today, we have the spectacle of pro-lifers celebrating the election of the pro-choice Scott Brown as Senator of Massachusetts.

It does seem that Brown was the least bad option, and I can understand why pro-lifers would be pleased to see that seat one by someone who could not be relied on to always vote for expanded action to abortion.

But there ought to be a limit to such joy. And it seems to me that dreaming of turning the Right to Life March into a rally to seat a pro-choice senator exceeds those limits.

Like Just War Theory, The Principle of Double Effect is not a series of hurdles we must clear before doing what we really want to do. It should guide what we do, and when we do apply it and choose an action that has a negative effect, we should do so with a heavy heart, always acting to minimize the harm of the bad effect.

Via Conor Friedersdorf, if they really were three independent suicides on the same night, then:

the United States did a bad thing — after all, our own government concluded that one of the detainees didn’t have any connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and posed no threat to the United States when he was scooped up at age 17, so in the best case, we arrested an innocent teenager and held him in Cuba absent any evidence of wrongdoing so long that he decided to kill himself.

And I would put the probabilty of this best-case scenario at less than 10%.

Tuesday’s blog post:

Envision us all at the March for Life with our signs. One I had thought of: “MA = 41st vote”. If you have any ideas for signs, please let me know. I can also see everyone from all over the country, at the top of Capitol Hill, turning left to the Senate to go in and demand that Scott Brown be seated now before there are any more health care votes.

Imagine that.

Only 37 short years after Roe v. Wade, pro-lifers can march on Washington and demand the seating of a Senator whom his pro-life supporters concede supports Roe v. Wade.

MLK’s got nothin’ on us.

I shudder to think what we might accomplish in another 37 years.

At XX Factor, Jessica Grose links to New York Magazine’s write-up of the recent abortion from teenage character on Friday Night Lights. It includes this sentence.

Other than Becky’s mom railing at the state-mandated pro-life speech that the doctor has to deliver, there’s not a single reference to the cultural war that still rages over this intensely personal issue. Instead, there is just Becky’s intensely personal journey:

Emphasis mine.

The author uses the adjectival phrase “intensely personal” twice in the space of two sentences. In addition to likely angering his high school composition teacher, this demonstrates that he expects this phrase to do some work for him.

In this case, it seems that “intensely personal” is designed to pre-empt any moral criticism from an outsider. This is a journey for the character and character alone, and everyone else can butt out, thank you very much. It seems to serve the same purpose that “prudential decision” sometimes serves in Catholic discussions — to make a decision off-limits to moral analysis.

But, when you think about it, “intensely personal” is almost tautological in its meaninglessness. What experience do we have that could not be described as “instensely personal”?

This is manifested in the next XX Factor post where Amanda Marcotte ridicules the idea that Tiger Woods suffered from sex addiction. I am inclined to agree with Marcotte (now there’s a rarity) that Tiger is in more need of penance than therapy.

But could Tiger’s experience also be considered “intensely personal?” Sure. That doesn’t meant that his behavior was not objectively wrong. Or that the rest of us can determine that.

So even though this post is intensely personal, feel free to criticize it.

Just when I start to feel good about the Democrats being taken down a notch, along comes Marc Thiessen to summarize last night’s election as, “Waterboarding Wins.” (HT: Disputations).

Say what you want about how the Democrats reacted to their 2006 and 2008 victories, but I don’t recall that many reactions along the lines of, “Abortion Wins” or even “A Victory For Choice.”

If this is how Republicans are going to respond to victories, I think we better be sure not to give them another opportunity to do so.

Apparently, fresh off completing perhaps the greatest career in college football history, Tim Tebow is working with Focus on the Family to produce a Super Bowl ad telling the story of how his mother was advised to abort him, but carried the pregnancy to term resulting in Tim Tebow.

This, of course, launches snarky posts from Matt Yglesias and Ed Kilgore, and a comment thread on Yglesias’ site featuring many obscene alternative activities Tebow should engage in rather than film a commercial.

Kilgore and Yglesias’s posts take on the vaguely menacing tone of, “Nice (or actually perhaps not-so-nice) pro and endorsement career you’ve got there, Tim. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”

Really? Just here in St. Louis, we drafted Lawrence Phillips #6 overall after he assaulted his girlfriend. Leonard Little has played here for ten years after killing a woman in a drunk driving accident, and another seven years after being picked up for drunk driving again. You really think an NFL GM is going to pass on a player who could help his team because he made an ad that associates him with a political position that is shared by a significant minority of the populace?

In any instance, I think this shows the tendency of progressives these days to overplay their hands. Everyone they know is pro-choice, so obviously if an athlete expresses pro-life views, he should be punished for it in his livelihood.

And then they wonder why people don’t want to give them more power.

I’m not a particular fan of the filibuster and how it’s currently being used, but I must confess that it doesn’t exactly break my heart that these guys aren’t able to simply translate their worldview into policy.

Pretty much all I know about the Massachusetts Senate race, I learned from this Daily Show clip:

so, take what I say with a grain of salt (but I think the tone of Stewart’s program may be part of the problem. I’ll also add one zinger — Coakley was served clam chowder, and asked why it wasn’t red).

But in my opinion, I think a big reason the Democrats were dealt a defeat today is that they have exhibited a strong sense of entitlement that people are finding off-putting.

Yes, they won the election. But, this was with an incumbent of the other party in place, embroiled in two losing wars and an economic catastrophe, running against a candidate bereft of ideas, and running a very appealing candidate themselves.

It was like the Patriots’ 59-0 win over the Titans last October. The Pats were playing well, and were facing demoralized opposition in conditions that favored them. But, as we found out in the playoffs, this didn’t mean the Patriots were a great team.

But many progressives took this to mean that the public was completely in their corner, and they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to do.

And when Ted Kennedy died, the seat was theirs by birthright. They didn’t need to vet their candidate too heavily. That candidate didn’t have to campaign too hard. It’s Massachusetts. We’re Democrats. It’s ours.

We like to think people are working to earn our votes, not just believe it is rightly theirs. We’d like to see you break a sweat. We’d like to see that you’re listening a bit.*

Ann Richards once quipped that George W. Bush was born on third base and acted like he hit a triple. Sometimes the Democrats seem like they were born on third base and are pissed because they haven’t scored yet.

The good news for Democrats is that this may not mean that the public hates health care reform and other initiative. We just hate you. Not sure which is easier to fix.

Mark Cuban has a post up arguing that criticism of Jeff Zucker’s handling of NBC’s late night situation is hurting America, because we need people like Zucker to take risks.

A few responses:

• Zucker’s experiment failed. It did not fail due to unforeseen circumstances, or because the competition took some dramatic action. It failed for pretty much the exact reasons people thought it would.
• We don’t, at any level support people who take risks that fail. If I quit my job and started a business that failed, there might be safety nets that would keep my family from starving, but I would also expect to receive criticism rather than applause for taking a risk.
• Didn’t we get into this recession as a result of banking execs taking huge risks and being insulated from the consequences?

But perhaps the oddest part is Cuban continuing the hot shot CEO myth:

I have a saying, “No Balls, No Babies”. It was told to me by a blackjack dealer when I asked if I should double down on an 11. The message was simple. If you dont take the risks, you dont get the rewards.

What Zucker did was more like doubling down on a 12. With the dealer having an Ace showing. But lets’ continue..

Well that used to be the case. Its not anymore.

In today’s corporate world, if you don’t take the risks, you don’t get skewered on blogs, on cable news, in the newspaper. Public condemnation appears to be a far worse consequence than financial success is a reward. Thats a huge problem for our country.

So these guys need to take multi-million dollar risks, but they’re going to get scared by a little negative commentary?

Give me a break.

@Jaysonst tweets:

Is there ANYTHING about the NFL playoffs that’s better than the MLB playoffs?

Oh, let me count them:

• The game played bears a passing resemblance to the game played during the regular season.
• The time between games is generally the same as they are in the regular season.
• The games all end before my regular bedtime.
• Weather does not generally wreak havoc on the schedule.
• There has been more than one close NFL playoff game in the past two years.
• All games are on network TV.
• All games are not taking place while I’m at work.

Stark’s full article is behind the firewall, but even as a Phillies fan, if I had to rank the last two Super Bowls and World Series in rank order, it’s pretty clear the two World Series would occupy the #3 and #4 spot. Off the top of my head the last two NFL playoffs (plus this one) have featured:

• The Jets’ upset of the Chargers yeterday.
• The Cardinals-Packers OT game last week.
• The Steelers-Cardinals Super Bowl, featuring an amazing game-winning catch coming right after Larry Fitzgerald’s touchdown.
• The Giants beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl after with David Tyree’s catch.
• The Giants-Packers OT NFC Championship Game

Now, I am a fan of the one team to take part in both of the last World Series, and these are my memories of the last two postseasons:

• Jimmy Rollins’s game-winning double in Game 4 of the NLCS this year.
• Shane Victorino and Matt Stairs’s home runs in Game 4 of last year’s NLCS.
• David Price shutting down the Red Sox in Game 7 of the ALCS.

Yes, I’m cheating a bit by spanning 3 NFL postseasons and 2 MLB postseaons, but what do you remember about the 2007 MLB postseason? Can you name who won without looking it up? Thought so.

Of course, I enjoyed watching the Phillies win the World Series last year, but I can’t deny that was one ugly World Series.

The NFL postseason may not be perfect, but baseball fans shouldn’t start crowing.

The idea that we somehow “owe” star major league baseball players a Hall of Fame induction, the use of words like “injustice” and “tragedy” in describing our failure to give an additional honor to baseball players is patently absurd. This is especially true in the fee agent era, when players have been handsomely compensated for their efforts.

In some cases, like Negro League Players, the Hall of Fame can be a tool to help right a historic wrong. But I do not consider the fact that the baseball community over-valued pitcher won-lost records or undervalued on base percentage or that New York players receive more attention to be a crime crying out to heaven and earth for vengeance.

Ok, so if the Hall of Fame isn’t for the players, who is it for? Well, the fans.

I don’t mean to get off on a Jim Caple-style populist “what about the fans who pay these guys’ salaries?” rant here. I just mean to observe that we don’t need a Hall of Fame to tell Andre Dawson he was a good baseball player. He was paid quite well during his career, and received numerous awards. We put Andre Dawson in the Hall of Fame because we want to remember him, and pass those memories on to future generations of fans.

Which is why I had a bit of schadenfreude when Bert Blyleven didn’t make the Hall of Fame last week. Not because I have anything in particular against Blyleven; I’ve never heard anything about him. But against the “Eat your vegetables!” type arguments deployed on his behalf.

“Eat your vegetables” arguments have their place. On your team, you’d rather have the guy who’s a little chubby but draws a lot of walks than the “five tool” type player who looks great in the uniform but is never on base. I get that. I also get that how we evaluate past players can have a cultural effect on current decisions. If our vision of a Hall of Fame pitcher veers toward Jack Morris and away from Bert Blyleven, that might impact how we evaluate current pitching prospects, for better or worse.

So when people who are not old enough to see either of them pitch blasts some sportswriter who did watch both pitch votes for Morris but not Blyleven, I’m not impressed.

There’s also this notion that following sports is an exercise in which we dispense athletes respect that they are due. I kind of thought following sports was supposed to be, you know, fun. I suppose part of the fun is appreciating players others might not appreciate, but when I start saying that those who don’t share my appreciation are morons, I’m making the sport less fun for everyone.

If the sabermetricians want to evaluate GM’s, I can handle that. When they start telling me what players I should like, and which memories are more important, they’re hurting the sport.

I think in all the discussion of a Hall of Fame Standards, what gets lost if that what I think what the BBWAA uses to make these decisions is something like this, at least in the first few ballots:

If one were writing a history of baseball covering this player's career timeline, and left this player out, would it be a glaring omission because of that player's performance over several years?

Bill Simmons put the standard as whether you would scalp tickets to see that player when he was in town. I think that’s a little strong. Not sure that many people would have scalped tickets to see Paul Molitor or Tony Gwynn or Dennis Eckersley play, and I think they still belong.

This explains why there was a bigger initial constituency for Jack Morris than there was for Bert Blyleven. We have vivid memories of Jack Morris. Taking the ball all those Opening Days. Starting All-Star Games. The 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of the World Series.

But Bert Blyleven? Yes, I was a National League fan, and my time being a fan started toward the end of his career, but I’m still drawing a blank. And if someone wrote a history of baseball in the 70’s and 80’s and never mentioned Blyleven, I probably wouldn’t notice.

After a while, the statistics come out in relief more than a player’s impact, and so someone like Blyleven will ultimately make it. But in the first few ballots, it’s a lot about whether the player “feels” like a Hall of Famer.

There are some exceptions. Baseball history would not be complete without Hack Wilson or Roger Maris or Don Larsen, but those were flashes in the pan. Others compiled statistics without making much of a mark.

This standard is a bit tautological — a Hall of Fame induction is part of what establishes a player’s historical legacy. But for someone coming from this perspective, all the statistical analysis in the world is not going to make a difference. And it’s probably not worth getting upset about as if it’s a terrible injustice.

Bert Blyleven did not leave enough of a mark during his career that 75% of the BBWAA do not think the Hall of Fame would be incomplete without him. Calling these sportswriters Luddites isn’t going to change that.

The Cardinals signed Matt Holliday last week to a long contract. I’m not sure how it will work out.

Holliday plays left field. One reason I’m not enthusiastic about it is that with Pujols, the Cardinals will have a significant portion of their payroll committed to the two right-most positions on the defensive spectrum (unless they lose Pujols, in which case they’ve got bigger problems). Any prospect who comes up through the system who can’t play defense will effectively be blocked. If the Cardinals need to add a hitter, he will have to field a higher-skilled position. The Cardinals will likely need to fill some of the other positions with replacement-level talent, which at other positions means some serious holes in the lineup.

Holliday seems like a great guy and a wonderful player. But I’m afraid his signing is going to leave the Cardinals a bit lopsided.