Mitchell Report Effect and Expectations from a Fan

The Mitchell Report is out. This does pull the covers back a little on what we have all lived in a little denial about. The laying out of details and the naming of names was needed for the blunt reality effect of it. Even the conjecture and innuendo of the differences between accuser said versus what the accused says in retort, is needed. Before it could easily be dismissed as 'the other guy' whoever he was. The anonymous obscurity of its participants masked the extent and significance of performance enhancing drug on the integrity, the competition and dare we say it; the haloed results and records of the game - but by how much?

Likely it is impossible to be measured, just like we can not know if an athlete that did take performance enhancing substances could have been successful and achieved the record without them. I would worry about the true guile of a professional athlete that had taken that route, if that very question didn't echo insistently in their thoughts over and over again. Like the protagonist from Poe's Tell Tale Heart, tortured by this unknowable truism and the guilt of the means and the sacrifice of morality and ethics needed to achieve what they achieved uncompetitively.

Just as in life I think that the report highlights that the instance of use spreads through a social network, not necessarily an evil intent but a clandestine one none the less. Athletes as individuals need to identify and avoid these 'bad influences' and the baseball organization - Owners, Commissioner, and Player's Union needs to dedicate continuous effort and action to identify these social viruses that bring about a negative progress to the general integrity and assumptions of the game. And then have the autonomy and courage to eradicate them from their midst as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I also agree with Mitchell that the past is the past and we need to move on. Negative assumptions and doubt will forever linger with this period of the sport and further investigations will only prove it worse not better than perceived at this point. And hasn't it already been proven significant enough that further and more decisive action to eliminate this threat to the sport is needed. Sometimes knowing it is bad is more than enough to take action without knowing completely how bad.

As for the player themselves, denial and excuse is a likely reaction to accusations, but when does the players effort turn toward proactive acts and taking extreme measures to distance themselves from the remoteness of these assumptions to ensure that their good name - because in life and certainly in baseball, a person's 'good name' still means something - remains untarnished.

And specifically to those implicated in this report: Maybe you didn't take it or maybe you only tried it, but by that you are associated with it and instead you should be working as hard or harder to be as far from that association as you can be - not writing proverbial checks that your character and integrity can't cash.

Chargers Light Coming On?

As a Chargers fan, I have been struggling with understanding how this San Diego team with so much talent can be playing so listlessly - and I know I'm not the only one. I think I discovered it in a quote by Shaun Phillips: “We play better off emotion, ... we realize we're a better team when we play emotionally. " His statement rings true when watching a game, you practically see the energy and a frantic precision as the ball is snapped.

Look at the contrast within the Eagles vs Pats game, New England is a team is more comfortable in a steady rhythm, an almost sterile precision. With emotion and a few less timely interceptions the Eagles QB, Freely, would have become known as a Pats killer.

I have yet to be a Norv Turner fan, - that awful regular season record - coaching some pretty good teams -, but Norv and the Chargers brass need to recognize this answer disguised as a post game comment. Norv the quiet and reserved one and AJ Smith the one of sterile precision need to borrow a little emotion from the exiled Marty. It takes too long to change a team in the short term, here the coach needs to change a little and be more emotional, and accept and expect more emotion in the play of his team.

To coach and achieve, everyone needs to recognize what fuels the organization. You must know first what type of team you are, and then design the solution around that team charisma and chemistry. This is why formulamatic solutions do not work with consistency, even teams must learn and adapt solutions and ideas to their Entity Identity. To change results you change an approach, to change a character you have to change personnel. This applies to sports teams as well as business teams. People and teams have a hard time being something they are not. If you have the right people to be successul then approaches are a lot easier to change than the team.

Updates and Upgrades

Aggravation pays me a visit regularly. As I begin work, or play. When I turn it on and even when I turn it off. The pop-up, the reminder, and 'message box of incompatibility', buzz me like the swarm of mosquitoes poking at me to suck the time right out of me.

As we move further into the information age and further remove ourselves from being the physical attendant of the mechanical tool, we still seem to be headed toward an unsustainable burden of maintenance. Not the logical prediction of too much information, I can't get to the information highway through the speed bumps of software upgrades and updates.

Every day my virus software has to consume resources to get updates, my operating system has a regular schedule for updates, if I use more than a handful of software applications I have to go through a yearly upgrade expenditure and adventure, usually multiple times before its working like it did before I had to touch it.

I don't have to worry about computer zombies, or my system gaining a intelligence to take over the world, most of its up time and resources are consumed by this near endless maintenance. Its like a compulsive cat that has to constantly lick itself clean so its too busy interact with the world around it. Welcome to the 21st century.

Dodgers Rip Heart out of New York, Again!

1958, the New York neighborhood of Brooklyn lost its heart and maybe its identity in the migratory move of the Dodgers baseball team to Los Angeles California.

Now, and again, in 2007 the Dodgers - more by default on the part of the Yankee's management - are migrating the heart and soul of a familiar and successful New York Yankees team out to the west coast. First the skipper, much loved among his coaches and players; Joe Torre is hired by the Dodgers and with that, an apparent siphon of talent and experience if not of champions.

Mattingly and Bowa flesh out a western Yankees coaching staff. What of the players that can in their power follow that lead and their hearts to a westward way - Rivera, Pettite, Posada. Who knows maybe even Joe can get Don Zimmer back.

A championship with the Yankees replanted in sunny southern California is not likely to change dispositions or results. We're in for a period of well made dynasties with core young players which teams are built around or the hot young upstarts that can keep it going through the world series. Not aging stars in active retirement to sun and comfort.

This just may be a crumble of the walls of the evil empire with an exodus of blood and guts that put the performance on the field.

Let's hope so. I'm an Orioles fan, what else do I have to hope for?

Music Categorization

Categories are used for many things, some good and some bad. Cataloging permits groupings for finding similarities and directing us toward a style we enjoy or are interested in. In music categorizations are useful and necessary, it saves me the trouble of browsing through the Rap, Opera, and Country Music. But categories also carry the negative association of generalizations. These generalizations hide the beauty of those items that are on the fringes of classifications, offering a blending or a breakout from predefined catalog definitions.

We could use a greying ambiguity as we get to edges of a genre. These bridging and difficult to define efforts deserve a highlighting and consideration. These are artists that are pushing the envelope, testing the boundaries - arbitrary and generalized as they are. This is progress, this is the future, it deserves a consideration for the effort if not always the result. Because even these genre breaking works can be bad, but at least they are trying something new and not attempting to follow a formula. This is the real meaning behind a progressive classification.

In music and in life let us use the classification and preconceptions after we see if they are trying to confirm the generalization or break from it.