Achieving a Fair and Fast Sudden Death

Tim Harford is another one of the interesting young economists which use their profession to make sense of things in the real world. Like a possible overtime game in the Super Bowl.

OK here's the problem; In NFL overtime games, there is a statistically proven [60 to 70%] advantage to the team which wins the coin toss. Harford gives us two possible solutions.

Divide-and-Choose

In a football overtime, the divide-and-choose rule would dispense with the kickoff and just give the ball to one side. The coin-toss loser would decide how far forward the offense would start—say, the 30-yard line. The coin-toss winner would then decide whether to take possession or let the coin-toss loser have the ball at the 30. The nice thing about these rules is that they would naturally adapt to the game's changing dynamics. The current system, by contrast, seems to have been fair when introduced in 1974, but as field-goal kickers became more accurate, possession has become more valuable.

"Divide and choose" isn't perfect. The coach who divides is at a small disadvantage, because what he does gives a hint about his thinking and his concerns—all sorts of imponderables from his kicker's form in training to the morale of his defensive lineup. The other coach, however, can keep his cards to his chest until the last moment.

Chris Quanbeck's Field Position Auction

Auction off possession of the ball in the natural currency of the game: field position. The team that was willing to begin closest to its own goal line would receive the privilege of possession.

Football's number crunchers reckon that this "privilege" turns dubious about 15 to 20 yards away from your own goal line. That is, the expected value of having the ball so far back is negative—it's more likely that your opponent will score before you do. But it's not clear that the same would be true in overtime, when teams would be attempting to get within field-goal range rather than trying for touchdowns. If this system were implemented, it might take a couple of seasons for a consensus to develop about how far back is too far back. Still, everyone would be trying to work that out from a position of equal ignorance.

The auction idea puts the emphasis on the skill and judgment of the head coaches and their backroom staff—exactly where it should be. And it has some subtlety. For instance, having a powerful defense has an unexpected advantage in an auction: Because the other coach will fear your defense, he's more likely to drop out of the auction and concede possession to your offense in a favorable field position.

Article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Flipping Awful - Why the NFL should replace the overtime coin toss with an auction system

By Tim Harford - Posted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, at 6:49 AM ET

If the Super Bowl goes into overtime for the first time ever, it's fairly certain who will be victorious: the team that wins the coin toss. In the first round of the playoffs, the Chargers beat the Colts 23-17 in OT, marching down the field for a touchdown after winning the toss. In the 14 overtime games that produced a winner this season, the coin-toss victor won 10 of the games, more than 70 percent. Since 2002, the team that's gotten the toss has won more than 60 percent of overtime games.

Chess faces a similar problem—it's generally regarded as an advantage to play white. But the chess world has long had a solution: Take it in turns and play a lot of games. That's easy for the chess guys—they have all the time in the world, and more forgiving TV schedules. College football has a similar philosophy, giving each team the ball at the opponents' 25-yard line and alternating possessions until someone breaks the tie. But the NFL's competition committee, which pondered the overtime problem in depth in 2003, decided to stick with the status quo of "sudden death."

With a little ingenuity, there is a way for overtime to be both fair and fast. One solution is usually associated with cake-cutting: one person divides, the other chooses which half to take. In a football overtime, the divide-and-choose rule would dispense with the kickoff and just give the ball to one side. The coin-toss loser would decide how far forward the offense would start—say, the 30-yard line. The coin-toss winner would then decide whether to take possession or let the coin-toss loser have the ball at the 30. The nice thing about these rules is that they would naturally adapt to the game's changing dynamics. The current system, by contrast, seems to have been fair when introduced in 1974, but as field-goal kickers became more accurate, possession has become more valuable.

"Divide and choose" isn't perfect. The coach who divides is at a small disadvantage, because what he does gives a hint about his thinking and his concerns—all sorts of imponderables from his kicker's form in training to the morale of his defensive lineup. The other coach, however, can keep his cards to his chest until the last moment.

An even more elegant solution to the overtime problem was proposed in 2002 by Chris Quanbeck, an electrical engineer (and Green Bay Packers fan). Quanbeck's idea was to auction off possession of the ball in the natural currency of the game: field position. The team that was willing to begin closest to its own goal line would receive the privilege of possession.

Football's number crunchers reckon that this "privilege" turns dubious about 15 to 20 yards away from your own goal line. That is, the expected value of having the ball so far back is negative—it's more likely that your opponent will score before you do. But it's not clear that the same would be true in overtime, when teams would be attempting to get within field-goal range rather than trying for touchdowns. If this system were implemented, it might take a couple of seasons for a consensus to develop about how far back is too far back. Still, everyone would be trying to work that out from a position of equal ignorance.

The auction idea puts the emphasis on the skill and judgment of the head coaches and their backroom staff—exactly where it should be. And it has some subtlety. For instance, having a powerful defense has an unexpected advantage in an auction: Because the other coach will fear your defense, he's more likely to drop out of the auction and concede possession to your offense in a favorable field position.

After Quanbeck and his brother Andrew worked out the details of their overtime proposal, they wrote letters to various NFL owners and coaches in 2003. They won some attention—including an expression of interest from the NFL's head of officiating, Mike Pereira—but no changes in the rules of the game.

One person who did notice the Quanbeck proposal was Columbia University economist Yeon-Koo Che, a leading light in the theory and practice of auction design. Che wrote not to the NFL but to the economics journals and proved that "divide and choose" was much fairer to the loser of the toss than the current system. But what interested Che and co-author Terrence Hendershott was whether an auction might be even fairer than "divide and choose." They concluded that it would be, because the auction is completely symmetric—unlike with the "divide and choose" method, neither coach is forced to make the first move, so nobody has a built-in advantage. For Che and Hendershott, then, "divide and choose" partly solves the coin-toss problem; the auction fixes it completely.

While it's easy to see why the game's authorities don't want to mess with a successful formula, I'm guessing that the overtime auction would prove intuitive and popular. Just imagine the possibilities for stagecraft. The Quanbecks suggested that the referee could act as an auctioneer, calling out the field position in 1-yard increments. The first coach to throw his red challenge flag wins the ball at whatever yard line the ref last spat out. Or perhaps the two head coaches could come to midfield with sealed bids, with the envelopes to be opened by a cheerleader representing each team—a gridiron version of Deal or No Deal. Now doesn't that sound way better than calling out heads or tails?

Tim Harford is a Financial Times columnist. His latest book, The Logic of Life, will be published in paperback on Feb. 10.
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How Senate Republicans Saved Obama

If we are lucky, that will be the headline four years from now when people look back on Obama's first term. If we are not, the fiscal stimulus plan will emerge largely unchanged in the Senate and become law. I don't think that will happen. I have faith in our political institutions that they will not make a mistake as big and as obvious as this one. While avoiding bad laws is easier than creating good ones, it is no less a valuable skill.

The stimulus bill will be good for one thing though. It will help cement who the Obama kool-aid crowd is. Some [not me] may be willing to give a pass of sorts for the campaign bias, but reasonable people will not be supporting this bill. Anyone who praises this bill can rightly be dismissed as a political hack going forward.

Here is why the bill is so bad:

David Brooks

They’ve created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences.

1. The money spent on long-term domestic programs means there may not be enough to jolt the economy now (about $290 billion in spending is pushed off into 2011 and later).
2. By pumping so much money through government programs, the bill unleashes a tidal wave on state governments. A governor will suddenly have to administer an additional $4 billion or $5 billion. That money will be corrosive both when washing in, and when it disappears in a few years time.
3. Permanently alters the role of the federal government, thus guaranteeing a polarizing brawl at the very start of the Obama presidency.
4. Warnings about deficits have been put aside. There is no fiscal exit strategy. Instead, permanent spending commitments are entailed with no permanent funding stream to pay for them.

WSJ Editorial

The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic "stimulus," is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects.

Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.

Martin Feldstein

The largest proposed outlays amount to just writing unrestricted checks to state governments. Nearly $100 billion would result from increasing the "Medicaid matching rate," a technique for reducing states' Medicaid costs to free up state money for spending on anything governors and state legislators want. An additional $80 billion would be given out for "state fiscal relief." Will these vast sums actually lead to additional spending, or will they merely finance state transfer payments or relieve state governments of the need for temporary tax hikes or bond issues?

The plan to finance health insurance premiums for the unemployed would actually increase unemployment by giving employers an incentive to lay off workers rather than pay health premiums during a time of weak demand. And this supposedly two-year program would create a precedent that could be hard to reverse.

A large fraction of the stimulus proposal is devoted to infrastructure projects that will spend out very slowly, not with the speed needed to help the economy in 2009 and 2010. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that less than one-fifth of the $50 billion of proposed spending on energy and water would occur by the end of 2010.

If rapid spending on things that need to be done is a criterion of choice, the plan should include higher defense outlays, including replacing and repairing supplies and equipment, needed after five years of fighting. The military can increase its level of procurement very rapidly. Yet the proposed spending plan includes less than $5 billion for defense, only about one-half of 1 percent of the total package.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Cleaner and Faster

By DAVID BROOKS - January 30, 2009 - Op-Ed Columnist

Throughout 2008, Larry Summers, the Harvard economist, built the case for a big but surgical stimulus package. Summers warned that a “poorly provided fiscal stimulus can have worse side effects than the disease that is to be cured.” So his proposal had three clear guidelines.

First, the stimulus should be timely. The money should go out “almost immediately.” Second, it should be targeted. It should help low- and middle-income people. Third, it should be temporary. Stimulus measures should not raise the deficits “beyond a short horizon of a year or at most two.”

Summers was proposing bold action, but his concept came with safeguards: focus on the task at hand, prevent the usual Washington splurge and limit long-term fiscal damage.

Now Barack Obama is president, and Summers has become a top economic adviser. Yet the stimulus approach that has emerged on Capitol Hill abandoned the Summers parameters.

In a fateful decision, Democratic leaders merged the temporary stimulus measure with their permanent domestic agenda — including big increases for Pell Grants, alternative energy subsidies and health and entitlement spending. The resulting package is part temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part targeted and part untargeted.

It’s easy to see why Democrats decided to do this. They could rush through permanent policies they believe in. Plus, they could pay for them with borrowed money. By putting a little of everything in the stimulus package, they avoid the pay-as-you-go rules that might otherwise apply to recurring costs.

But they’ve created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences. First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well. The money spent on long-term domestic programs means there may not be enough to jolt the economy now (about $290 billion in spending is pushed off into 2011 and later). The money spent on stimulus, meanwhile, means there’s not enough to truly reform domestic programs like health technology, schools and infrastructure. The measure mostly pumps more money into old arrangements.

Second, by pumping so much money through government programs, the bill unleashes a tidal wave on state governments. A governor with a few-hundred-million-dollar shortfall will suddenly have to administer an additional $4 billion or $5 billion. That money will be corrosive both when washing in, and when it disappears in a few years time.

Third, the muddle assures ideological confrontation. A stimulus package was always going to be controversial, because economists differ widely about whether or how a stimulus can work. But this bill also permanently alters the role of the federal government, thus guaranteeing a polarizing brawl at the very start of the Obama presidency.

Fourth, Summers’s warnings about deficits have been put aside. There is no fiscal exit strategy. Instead, permanent spending commitments are entailed with no permanent funding stream to pay for them.

Fifth, new government expenditures on complex matters are being designed on a hasty, reckless timetable. As readers may know, the policy I am most passionate about is pre-K education. Yet I fervently hope that the Head Start expansion is dropped from this bill. A slapdash and shambolic expansion could discredit the whole idea.

Wise heads are now trying to restore structure and safeguards to the enterprise. In testimony this week, Alice Rivlin, Bill Clinton’s former budget director, raised the possibility of separating the temporary from the permanent measures and focusing independently on each. “A long-term investment program should not be put together hastily and lumped in with the anti-recession package,” Rivlin testified. “The elements of the investment program must be carefully planned and will not create many jobs right away.”

The best course is to return to the original Summers parameters — temporary, targeted and timely — thus making the stimulus cleaner and faster.

Strip out the permanent government programs. Many of them are worthy, but we can have that debate another day. Make the short-term stimulus bigger. Many liberal economists have been complaining it is too small, so replace the permanent programs with something like a big payroll tax cut, which would help the working class.

Add in a fiscal exit strategy so the whole thing is budget neutral over the medium term. Finally, coordinate the stimulus package with plans to shore up the housing and financial markets. Until those come to life, no amount of stimulus will do any good.

This recession is scary and complicated. It’s insane to try to tackle it and dozens of other complicated problems, all in one piece of legislation. Leadership involves prioritizing. Those who try to do everything at once will end up with a sprawling, lobbyist-driven mess that does nothing well.
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WSJ Editorial - A 40-Year Wish List

JANUARY 28, 2009

You won't believe what's in that stimulus bill.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic "stimulus," but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make "dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy." Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren't likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President's new budget director, told Congress a year ago, "even those [public works] that are 'on the shelf' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy."

Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on investment. Most urban transit systems are so badly managed that their fares cover less than half of their costs. However, the people who operate these systems belong to public-employee unions that are campaign contributors to . . . guess which party?

Here's another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?

Another "stimulus" secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments -- that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren't job creators.

As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits. These include the Economic Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 federal job training programs, and many more.

Oh, and don't forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That's more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that "No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools." Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.

The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending bonanza will become part of the annual "budget baseline" that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and into the future. Democrats insist that it will not. But it's hard -- no, impossible -- to believe that Congress will cut spending next year on any of these programs from their new, higher levels. The likelihood is that this allegedly emergency spending will become a permanent addition to federal outlays -- increasing pressure for tax increases in the bargain. Any Blue Dog Democrat who votes for this ought to turn in his "deficit hawk" credentials.

This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead -- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.
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An $800 Billion Mistake

By Martin Feldstein
Thursday, January 29, 2009; A19

As a conservative economist, I might be expected to oppose a stimulus plan. In fact, on this page in October, I declared my support for a stimulus. But the fiscal package now before Congress needs to be thoroughly revised. In its current form, it does too little to raise national spending and employment. It would be better for the Senate to delay legislation for a month, or even two, if that's what it takes to produce a much better bill. We cannot afford an $800 billion mistake.

Start with the tax side. The plan is to give a tax cut of $500 a year for two years to each employed person. That's not a good way to increase consumer spending. Experience shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year's tax rebates led to additional spending.

The proposed business tax cuts are also likely to do little to increase business investment and employment. The extended loss "carrybacks" are primarily lump-sum payments to selected companies. The bonus depreciation plan would do little to raise capital spending in the current environment of weak demand because the tax benefits in the early years would be recaptured later.

Instead, the tax changes should focus on providing incentives to households and businesses to increase current spending. Why not a temporary refundable tax credit to households that purchase cars or other major consumer durables, analogous to the investment tax credit for businesses? Or a temporary tax credit for home improvements? In that way, the same total tax reduction could produce much more spending and employment.

Postponing the scheduled increase in the tax on dividends and capital gains would raise share prices, leading to increased consumer spending and, by lowering the cost of capital, more business investment.

On the spending side, the stimulus package is full of well-intended items that, unfortunately, are not likely to do much for employment. Computerizing the medical records of every American over the next five years is desirable, but it is not a cost-effective way to create jobs. Has anyone gone through the (long) list of proposed appropriations and asked how many jobs each would create per dollar of increased national debt?

The largest proposed outlays amount to just writing unrestricted checks to state governments. Nearly $100 billion would result from increasing the "Medicaid matching rate," a technique for reducing states' Medicaid costs to free up state money for spending on anything governors and state legislators want. An additional $80 billion would be given out for "state fiscal relief." Will these vast sums actually lead to additional spending, or will they merely finance state transfer payments or relieve state governments of the need for temporary tax hikes or bond issues?

The plan to finance health insurance premiums for the unemployed would actually increase unemployment by giving employers an incentive to lay off workers rather than pay health premiums during a time of weak demand. And this supposedly two-year program would create a precedent that could be hard to reverse.

A large fraction of the stimulus proposal is devoted to infrastructure projects that will spend out very slowly, not with the speed needed to help the economy in 2009 and 2010. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that less than one-fifth of the $50 billion of proposed spending on energy and water would occur by the end of 2010.

If rapid spending on things that need to be done is a criterion of choice, the plan should include higher defense outlays, including replacing and repairing supplies and equipment, needed after five years of fighting. The military can increase its level of procurement very rapidly. Yet the proposed spending plan includes less than $5 billion for defense, only about one-half of 1 percent of the total package.

Infrastructure spending on domestic military bases can also proceed more rapidly than infrastructure spending in the civilian economy. And military procurement overwhelmingly involves American-made products. Since much of this military spending will have to be done eventually, it makes sense to do it now, when there is substantial excess capacity in the manufacturing sector. In addition, a temporary increase in military recruiting and training would reduce unemployment directly, create a more skilled civilian workforce and expand the military reserves.

All new spending and tax changes should have explicit time limits that prevent ever-increasing additions to the national debt. Similarly, spending programs should not create political dynamics that will make them hard to end.

The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big but that it delivers too little extra employment and income for such a large fiscal deficit. It is worth taking the time to get it right.

The writer, an economics professor at Harvard University, is president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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The Ghost of Orange Bowl Past is Smiling [tic]

A historical injustice is about to be corrected. The Miami Herald article notes that plans have been finalized for another stadium to rise where the Orange Bowl once stood. In her informative The Business of Sports blog, Sarah Talalay from the Sun-Sentinel, highlights the various concessions the Marlins have made since the original outline of an agreement. The Marlins and local governments unveiled their plans--see the actual documents, about which more in due time--for the new stadium. The City and County votes has been set for Friday, Feb 13th, of course.

I am tempted to evoke the words of Hyman Roth, by wondering why there "isn't even a plaque - or a signpost - or a statue of [the OB] in that place!"--but it was hard to tell from the drawings released. You would think that honoring the Orange Bowl will be a given at the new stadium. If for no other reason, but to follow my lead.

Stadium Critics - A Few Observations

Something to keep in mind from those attacking the stadium plans between now and Feb 13th. For the local critics, it is fair, and telling I submit, to ask where they stood on the construction of the Arsht Center. If those who oppose the stadium were OK with the Arsht Center, their opposition is a matter of tastes not principle.

My other point is a great example of how bias is practiced underneath the surface of the stadium arguments. The actual stadium construction costs are listed at $515 million. The problem is that that has been the quoted cost for a few years now. Stadiums are notorious for costs overruns. I'm sure part of the reason the Marlins insisted on negotiating for their own architect and construction company, is an attempt to keep those costs under control. But a major factor in the stadium deal is the fact that the Marlins are on the hook for additional costs beyond the $515 million. If that were not the case, the fact that the $515 million is likely an understated amount would be prominent in those arguments against the stadium. Look for that the next time a stadium critic notes that the Marlins share of the stadium costs are too low. Fairness would dictate that they note that the Marlins percentage is certain to rise. My follow up question would then be; Too low compared to which other recent stadium construction project?

I provide Hyman Roth's full quote referred to above, below. I do so not for context, but out of pure lust. WARNING: Please don't try to read out loud without inserting the 16 verbal tics so necessary for an accurate rendition. The soul of Lee Strasberg is listening, you child. [Even this last sentence, if spoken, should be done so with a disdainful tone worthy of a Gust Avrakotos].

There was this kid I grew up with - he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me - you know. We did our first work together - worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition - we ran molasses into Canada - made a fortune - your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him - and trusted him. Later on he had an idea - to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI's on the way to the West Coast. That kid's name was Moe Green - and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man - a man of vision and guts. And there isn't even a plaque - or a signpost - or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order - when I heard it, I wasn't angry; I knew Moe - I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead - I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen - I didn't ask who gave the order - because it had nothing to do with business!

Articles referenced are copied in full at end of the post.

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Marlins Stadium Update No. 2012000, Updated

Posted by Sarah Talalay at 2:07 PM

The Marlins are hoping Friday the 13th turns out to be their lucky day. Miami-Dade County Commissioners and Miami City Commissioners are to vote Feb. 13 on the five agreements that spell out the financing, construction and other details to make their ballpark at the site of the former Orange Bowl a reality.

The five agreements – Construction Administration; Operating; Non-Relocation; Assurance; and City Parking – were released Tuesday. If you want some light reading, take a look at the documents here on the county’s website.

Acknowledging that I haven’t read every page YET, the agreements overall appear to extract more from the team, thereby offering more protections for the public. The budget for the ballpark is to remain the same, the documents show, ($347 million from the county; $155 million from the team; and $13 million from the city), but the team is responsible for any cost overruns incurred on the ballpark AND the public infrastructure. That means if there are overruns on the estimated $21 million in drainage, sewer and road work the city and county will split, the team will be responsible for those.

The team’s rent payment of $2.3 million a year will rise 2 percent a year – meaning more money for the county to cover its debt. The team will provide 81,000 tickets – or 1,000 a game at an “affordable price” starting at $15 in the ballpark’s inaugural year. Another 10,000 – double the original 5,000 – a season will be provided free for youth groups and community organizations.

If the team is sold within seven years, the team would have to pay a higher percentage than initially planned, to the county as a profit share. Under last year’s agreement, the team would pay 10 percent if the team was sold in year one; under the new agreement, that’s shot up to 18 percent. The percentage falls each year, but is significantly more onerous than in the earlier agreement – arguably creating something of a disincentive to sell.

Neither County Manager George Burgess nor Marlins President David Samson would say the changes were made to appease the concerns of county commissioners who have threatened to vote against the ballpark agreements.

“We wanted to get something stronger,” Burgess said.

“You do what you think is right to achieve a goal you have. Our goal from the beginning was to partner with the city and county … through the course of negotiations there were certain provisions that changed,” Samson said. “Our focus has been to get this deal done.”

Even if the commissions sign off on the agreements, there’s still an option for any of the parties to terminate them by June 30. Burgess and Samson said they don’t expect that to happen. They expect construction to begin this summer with the ballpark opening in 2012.

The city commission is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. Feb. 13, followed by a 1 p.m. meeting of the county commission. The county commission must approve the agreements by a two-thirds vote -- or 9 -- of the 13 county commissioners. Expect it to be another long day.
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Vote on Florida Marlins' stadium coming Feb. 13

Posted on Wed, Jan. 28, 2009

BY CHARLES RABIN AND JACK DOLAN

Miami and Miami-Dade leaders are poised to cast rapid-fire, historic votes that could end the decade-long search for a permanent home for the two-time World Series champion Florida Marlins.

If approved Feb. 13, the partially glass-encased, 37,000-seat facility with a retractable roof would rise to face the downtown skyline from the Little Havana grounds where the revered Orange Bowl once stood.

The votes, required for five contracts that must be approved before ground can be broken, could be vindication for team owner Jeffrey Loria, who, like the two owners before him, suffered through a series of broken last-minute deals at the hands of government.

Passage is not guaranteed, as construction and management agreements require a two-thirds majority vote by county commissioners. And, even if approval comes, critics question whether the dire economy could derail construction and cause the county's borrowing cost to jump.

Yet the team has never been closer to having its own stadium, with renderings and final contracts released Tuesday, and supporters saying the public-works project will infuse the economy with jobs.

As County Manager George Burgess released the terms of the five remaining contracts, city of Miami staff members unveiled previously unseen stadium renderings.

The stadium would be surrounded by garages and parking lots that could fit up to 6,000 vehicles, intersected by walkways, with a grassy open field to the northwest just above home plate. In between the field and home plate is the stadium's ``Grand Entry Plaza.''

Total cost, including parking spaces: $609 million, with almost two-thirds coming from the county, and the city donating land. The team is contributing $120 million, and will repay the county another $35 million via rent payments.

TEAM CONCESSIONS

Burgess said the Marlins -- who would become the Miami Marlins -- agreed to a host of contract concessions, moves likely to help shore up support of the two contracts requiring a two-thirds County Commission approval. The other contracts to be approved involve an assurance agreement and deals for parking and nonrelocation.

''We got more because I felt like we needed to get more,'' said Burgess.

Among the changes:

• If Loria sells the team next year, the county would get 18 percent of the profit, a share that diminishes annually until year eight, when the county would no longer share in the profit.

• The ball club's $2.3 million in yearly rent will go up by 2 percent each year.

• Extra costs incurred due to scheduling or problems between the contractor and subcontractors will now be paid by the Marlins.

The Marlins or any potential buyer would be obligated to play at the Little Havana ballpark for 35 years, the team will give away 10,000 free tickets to youth groups each year and 1,000 seats for each home game will go for $15.

''He's [Marlins President David Samson] probably throwing darts at our pictures as he speaks. He's made a lot of concessions,'' said Burgess.

Not exactly. Reached Tuesday, Samson called the deal fair and said he will meet personally with the 18 commissioners from the two boards over the next two weeks.

''We had very strict marching orders from Jeffrey,'' Samson said. ``That was to save baseball in South Florida.''

GOVERNMENT PAYMENT

The county's share of the stadium's cost is likely to rise. That's because Miami and Miami-Dade have agreed to split the cost of moving electrical lines and road improvements, expected to be as high as $10 million each. Both governments will also pay $1.7 million to keep the Little Havana ballpark green.

Also, because of rising interest rates, the county's ultimate cost over the 35-year-agreement may rise by millions of dollars.

To pay the yearly nut, the county will rely on tourist taxes. Its most recent budget predicts growth in tax revenue but acknowledges that the stream of money ``could be affected by economic conditions.''

Tourist taxes already pay for the Performing Arts Center, the Miami Beach Convention Center, the Homestead Miami Speedway and the AmericanAirlines Arena.

Any of the three parties -- city, county or team -- can kill the deal by July 2009 if bonding is in jeopardy. The county gets more days to use the stadium, with 50 percent of the profits going to yearly stadium capital improvements. The county and city each get use of a suite for 40 games.

The team gets all the revenue from the stadium, including the naming rights, which could exceed $2 million a year.

BARRIERS & INCENTIVES

The question now is whether the team's contract changes will be enough to persuade a County Commission that barely passed a series of votes a year ago to keep the stadium deal alive.

Because there was no bidding for the construction or management groups -- both hired by the Marlins -- a two-thirds majority of the 13-member County Commission must vote to accept.

County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, a stadium-deal skeptic, said the Marlins aren't paying enough. He also fears that the souring global economy could undermine the county's plan to pay for its share through loans and hotel bed taxes.

''Last I heard, tourist revenues were down,'' he said. As for interest rates to be applied to bonded money, ``Are we just going to roll the dice and hope they are not too bad?''

Commission Chairman Dennis Moss, a stadium supporter, agreed that the current economic climate is tough but said it can't last forever. ''Clearly, there's risk involved,'' Moss said, ``but it's kind of a leap of faith.''

In contrast with earlier approvals, which critics felt were rushed with little public input, Moss insisted that commissioners get at least two weeks to review the new proposal, which includes more than 350 pages of contracts, budgets and artists' renderings.

''I hope by then we have enough information to vote this thing up or down,'' Moss said. ``That's going to be the big day.''

To sweeten the pot, Major League Baseball agreed to pay $3.2 million to build a youth baseball academy in Hialeah. It comes with a caveat: Commissioners must pass the vote before the academy is built.

County Commissioner Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz said MLB's input goes a long way. ''I think they're generally interested in helping the kids in our community,'' he said.

Loria and Samson believe that a new ballpark, with money from concessions and corporate suites, will keep the franchise in South Florida.

FACE TO THE FUTURE

Annually ranking near the bottom of baseball in payroll and attendance, the Marlins have long cried foul about the team's lease agreement with H. Wayne Huizenga at Dolphin Stadium.

That lease ends after the 2010 season, but the new ballpark will not be ready until Opening Day 2012. Team officials hope to work out a one-year lease with soon-to-be Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.

Samson said Loria has good relationships with the banks ''that are eager to do business with us.'' The team doesn't have to pay its $120 million until construction is almost complete -- giving it the benefit of accumulating cash through ticket sales before it borrows money.

County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, trying to sell the deal in a county with a skyrocketing unemployment rate, said Tuesday that the stadium was being built for the community -- not the Miami Marlins.

''Let's not forget -- right now a stadium means jobs, thousands of jobs,'' the mayor said.

Miami Herald staff writer Larry Lebowitz contributed to this report.
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Disenchanted With Castro's Revolution

A WSJ article takes a hard look at life in Cuba today for a 56 year old woman and her family. An excerpt:

In 1981, with the blessing of her husband, Ms. Vallejo used an opportunity of a trip to Finland to get eye treatment to take a ferry to Sweden to try to defect. But Sweden's then-socialist government of Olaf Palme handed her back to the Cubans, who swiftly exacted revenge. Her husband and mother both lost their jobs, and they began to be constantly harassed by party officials. On the door of their family home, someone spray-painted "Gusanos," or "Worms," the Cuban words for counterrevolutionaries. When Ms. Vallejo would run across teachers at the university, they would spit in her path.

Ms. Vallejo and her husband sank into a depression that lasted until 1988, when Mother Teresa visited Cuba to open up one of her charity's missions. Because Ms. Vallejo was active in the Catholic church, she served as Mother Teresa's interpreter. During the visit, the late sister befriended Ms. Vallejo and told her God had a mission for her: To care for Cuban children with cancer. "After our first visit to the children's ward (in Havana's main oncology hospital), I cried and prayed to God that I wouldn't have to do this," says Ms. Vallejo. "But, somehow, Mother Teresa knew exactly what we needed."

For the next 15 years, Ms. Vallejo and her husband visited the children in the cancer ward several times a week, organizing parties, bringing presents and trying to cheer them up.

The entire article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Disenchanted With Castro's Revolution

JANUARY 28, 2009 - WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter

On Jan. 8, 1959, 50 years ago this month, Fidel Castro rode into Havana on a column on tanks to mark the triumph of the Cuban revolution, cheered on by throngs of flag-waving Cubans and heralding what many hoped would be a new dawn for the island, the hemisphere and the world. It was a day that would forever mark Carmen Vallejo's life.

The story of Carmen Vallejo and her family is, in many ways, the story of the revolution itself and its legacy over the past half century. Like many other Cubans, the Vallejo family strongly supported the revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista and brought Mr. Castro to power. But the ensuing years brought disillusionment, disappointment and despair..

Today, Ms. Vallejo, 56, feels trapped by the events of 1959. She can't travel outside Cuba or hold a prominent job, the result of a failed attempt to defect in 1981. Desperate to find meaning in their lives outside of politics, she and her husband, Rey, have dedicated the past 19 years to helping Cuban children with cancer. But even that mission is met with hostility from a government that never forgives those who question it.

"Having a totalitarian system means total control. They don't like it when someone else tries to resolve problems for people," she says.

Such talk is rare in Cuba, where most people are afraid of getting jailed for speaking out against the government. But Ms. Vallejo has spent her life coming to terms with her country, her family's role in helping the revolution, and her fate. Her favorite poet is Anna Akhmatova, a Russian who lived under Stalin and wrote about the despair of totalitarianism. Ms. Vallejo has underlined the following lines from one of the poems: "I am not one of those who leave my country. I am, unfortunately, where my people are doomed to be."

Ms. Vallejo's family had an unusually distinguished revolutionary pedigree. Her father was a prominent Cuban physician named Rene Vallejo, who served with the Third U.S. Army in postwar Germany, running a hospital that cared for the sick and war wounded. There, he met a Ukrainian nurse who had been in a Nazi forced labor camp and passed herself off as Polish to avoid being sent to the USSR. The couple married before returning to Cuba.

After about a decade in Cuba, Mr. Vallejo left a successful medical practice and took his two brothers to join Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains to topple the Batista regime. Later, he rose to the rank of commander and became Mr. Castro's personal doctor, aide de camp and close friend. Mr. Vallejo's wife, Maria Witowska, also helped the cause, using her home to hide rebels and send supplies to Mr. Castro during the revolution. After the revolution, she became his personal secretary. A picture of her taken by Alberto Korda, the photographer who took the iconic portrait of Che Guevara, still hangs in Carmen Vallejo's Havana apartment.

Children with cancer celebrated a patient's birthday at the library of Havana's main oncology hospital. Ms. Vallejo and her husband, Rey, visit a couple times a week to organize parties and cheer up the patients.

During the first few years after the revolution, Mr. Castro remained so close to Rene Vallejo that the comandante often spent the night at Mr. Vallejo's home, staying up for hours discussing politics. "I never liked Fidel because every time he would come to our house, I was rushed by my father into a bedroom and told to be quiet," says Carmen.

But the Vallejo family slowly fell out of favor with the revolution. Her father, having spent time with the Americans in World War II, encouraged Mr. Castro to make amends with Washington. He was heavily involved in a then-secret attempt to re-establish U.S.-Cuban ties in 1963, according to Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the Washington-based National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institution. That effort, which had President Kennedy's blessing, ended with the president's assassination.

Ms. Vallejo thinks her father simply ended up being too much of a free spirit for Mr. Castro to fully trust. "He had respect for every person, for every individual, and the regime does not care about individuals," she says. Whatever the cause, after Mr. Vallejo's death in 1969, he was largely airbrushed out of Cuban history, and today few Cubans know of his role in the revolution.

Ms. Vallejo's mother, Maria, meanwhile, became suspect for her Catholic beliefs. She gave her daughter a first communion ceremony in 1960, raising eyebrows among Communist Party officials. Soon, she was demoted from Mr. Castro's personal secretary to translator. She grew increasingly disillusioned about having survived Stalin and the Nazis only to end up with another totalitarian regime.

Before her death in 1990, Maria Vallejo wrote a letter to her dead mother: "My life is wrecked. I ask myself: What am I doing in this land? .... What sentence do I have to pay and why? Why do I have to suffer like this? …. Must I always, always have to suffer? Will they keep humiliating me? Why? What did I do that was so wrong? …. Mother, come, don't leave me alone. Why didn't you tell me the world and its men were so cruel?"

Carmen Vallejo suffered the privations of ordinary Cubans, despite her family's prominence in the revolution. A lack of vitamins during her college years left her with damage to her left eye.

In 1981, with the blessing of her husband, Ms. Vallejo used an opportunity of a trip to Finland to get eye treatment to take a ferry to Sweden to try to defect. But Sweden's then-socialist government of Olaf Palme handed her back to the Cubans, who swiftly exacted revenge. Her husband and mother both lost their jobs, and they began to be constantly harassed by party officials. On the door of their family home, someone spray-painted "Gusanos," or "Worms," the Cuban words for counterrevolutionaries. When Ms. Vallejo would run across teachers at the university, they would spit in her path.

Ms. Vallejo and her husband sank into a depression that lasted until 1988, when Mother Teresa visited Cuba to open up one of her charity's missions. Because Ms. Vallejo was active in the Catholic church, she served as Mother Teresa's interpreter. During the visit, the late sister befriended Ms. Vallejo and told her God had a mission for her: To care for Cuban children with cancer. "After our first visit to the children's ward (in Havana's main oncology hospital), I cried and prayed to God that I wouldn't have to do this," says Ms. Vallejo. "But, somehow, Mother Teresa knew exactly what we needed."

For the next 15 years, Ms. Vallejo and her husband visited the children in the cancer ward several times a week, organizing parties, bringing presents and trying to cheer them up.

Children with cancer in Cuba get free treatment courtesy of the state, but they also face additional horrors in addition to their disease, including a lack of the latest treatments, clean sheets, air conditioning and even basic food. Aimee Linares's son Nelson, 7, had a malignant tumor in his intestines. During bouts of chemotherapy, the only food the boy seemed able to digest was apples, which the hospital couldn't provide. His mother would walk the streets until her feet blistered looking for a single apple for sale.

Ms. Vallejo and her husband's group began attracting attention from foreign diplomats stationed in Havana, and soon got donations from abroad, mostly from Europe and the U.S. A hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., began a program to send chemotherapy medications that were unavailable in Cuba, and bringing Cuban cancer specialists for month-long stays to learn the latest treatments.

But in 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cuba arrested scores of dissidents and threw them in jail. The European Union broke diplomatic relations. The following week, the children's ward ended visiting hours, making it impossible for Ms. Vallejo to carry on her work. Ms. Vallejo says she learned from the hospital staff that party officials were punishing the group for their contact with foreign enemies.

The couple convinced a local priest to let them organize a cancer support group at the church held every Saturday. Parents with children at the oncology hospital come and meet with former patients who survived or children who still have cancer but are living at home. During a recent Saturday, the children were busy drawing with crayons (a luxury in Cuba) while the adults talked with Sergio Davila about his four-year-old son Brian, who has leukemia.

"I feel like crying when I see him, but I know the thing he needs most is for me to be strong, and smile," said Mr. Davila, 47, who is from another city and has been living in Havana since his son entered the hospital. He sleeps in the hospital corridors.

Despite the altruistic nature of the group's work, the Cuban state still interferes, throwing up bureaucratic obstacles and harassing the children's mothers. Recently, some Western diplomats were going to throw a Christmas party for the kids, many of whom had never seen a Santa Claus. Secret police turned up at the homes of several parents and told them not to send their kids to the party because it was being held by the enemy. "I told them that I didn't care what country someone was from as long as they could put a smile on my little boy's face," says Ms. Linares.

Ms. Vallejo says the group has given her life meaning again after she lost all hope of ever leaving Cuba and building a normal life. Looking back on 50 years of the revolution and her family's role in it, she has only one thing to say: "No more revolutions, please. My life has taught me that change should be gradual. No more revolution. Never again."
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Wayne Huizenga -- Great Yield, No Grace

My take on Wayne Huizenga's effect on sports in Miami is: great personal yield, no public grace.

That is an obvious imitation of the famous line penned by a fellow Cuban, former MLB player and then scout, Mike Gonzalez. Gonzalez--partially due to a lack of English skills--once wired in a four-word scouting report now revered for its brevity: "Good field, no hit."

South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports columnist David Hyde, does a great job of presenting the money side of sports ownership when he provides a bottom-line financial analysis of Wayne Huizenga's ownership of the Miami Dolphins--a $735 million profit.

Hyde avoids the typical columnist outrage over the fact that someone profited as much as Huizenga did, while benefiting in part from public monies [State tax refund and transit infrastructure around the stadium]. He also avoids the other side of the morality-based analysis, by trying to tell us what a great person the owner--who was already incredibly wealthy before his very profitable investment in the team--was. We really have no idea what kind of a person people in sports are by their public reputation; So why pretend?

We can't even tell what kind of person they are by their charitable contributions. To the mega-wealthy, charitable contributions are a necessary line item on a financial statement in terms of their public persona. But by virtue of their hard work and good fortune, it is difficult to give enough to hurt themselves financially. So Huizenga's millions are really no match for the little old lady who unfurls a dollar bill at Mass on life's real scoreboard. Don't think people like Huizenga don't realize that late at night. OK, maybe very very late at night.

Here is the type of thing we can rationally deduce. As a stadium owner, he benefited to the tune of approximately $4 million annually by having the Marlins as a tenant. Once he sold the Marlins, his incentives no longer included having the Marlins find a new home. That would explain why a typical businessman would seek to block the Florida Marlins plans to secure a mostly publicly--but not from local taxes--funded new stadium. But we've established he's not typical. He earned a dominant position in our local sports market and he chose to use that power to block the new stadium. His right of course. As is our prerogative to judge the man in the court of stadiums public opinion.

That's the part which regular fans like me can't quite put our finger on the motivations. It evokes the 'how much is enough' poor-man's query--the Mammon-ites know the answer is always, 'a little more.' The Miami Dolphins did not explode in value over the past few years. Owning an NFL franchise has been a great investment for many years now. As such, Huizenga could have been reasonably secure in knowing that a large payday for selling the team was his for the asking, especially since the time of Marino's retirement [1999]. Let's even grant him that Ross was a great catch as a buyer. Instead of an approximate net profit of $700 million, let's say $400 million was a more reasonable estimate.

As someone who profited as much as Huizenga has from Miami's sports fans, his efforts to block the MLB team from securing a new stadium are as reflective of his character than any legacy spending sprees will reveal. As with much about Huizenga, his record is pockmarked because of that.

Column referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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For Huizenga, Dolphins were money in the bank

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Dave Hyde - Sports Columnist - January 27, 2009

I can back into this column by noting H. Wayne Huizenga was a fine Dolphins owner who spent money, tried to win, was liked by employees, hired people who were considered best for the job and, in this final season, finally reaped a public reward for his 15 years as owner. All of which I believe.

Or I can just note Huizenga banked an estimated $731 million by owning the team and stadium and that surely trumps his warm and fuzzy feeling from this final season. Or any pain of the Wannstedt Years.

Did he have fun as an owner or what?

Some fans who don't know the facts of life, or sports, will be surprised by this number. Others, of course, will be angry, for some reason. But Huizenga simply was following the normal walk of a successful sports owner and never forgot the most important goal: Sell high.

Actually, it wasn't even a normal walk for Huizenga. He didn't get a stadium built for him, which is typically the foundation of most sports-induced fortunes. Instead, he spent big on the stadium, as you'll see.

Still, it goes without saying as fans and media shout about Ernest Wilfork's $6 million signing bonus how this is mere spittle in the spittoon of the bigger game playing out. At the right price, in the right sport, time always makes the owner a winner. It sure did for Huizenga in the NFL.

Let's examine how. First, there were his costs. Huizenga paid $168 million for the team and stadium in 1994 and assumed $100 million of debt on Joe Robbie Stadium. He bought 107 acres around the stadium for $11 million. He also said the recent upgrades around the stadium totaled $300 million. Total cost: $579 million.

Now, let's add up the profits. First, there's the biggie, the $1.1 billion sales price that Stephen M. Ross reportedly is paying for the team, stadium and land.

Next come the team and stadium profits. The two were intertwined in some cases. Club and suite seats, for instance, were set up to pay off the stadium's debt. Two sources said the Dolphins made an estimated $10 million to $15 million annual profit, depending on varying factors such as players' signing bonuses, facility upgrades or, say, the cost of Bill Parcells.

Andrew Zimbalist, a prominent sports economist, said those annual profit figures are in line with what the Dolphins should make. Let's be conservative. Let's say they made $10 million a year. So in the 15 seasons Huizenga owned the Dolphins outright, the team's profit would have been $150 million.

The trickiest part is the Marlins' payment to the stadium. It's a mathematical game where the Marlins pay the stadium 5 percent of ticket sales on attendance up to 1.5 million, 30 percent of concessions and merchandise, 62.5 percent of parking and so on.

A source said, after costs and annual upkeep, the stadium made about $2 million a year on the Marlins. That would be in line with a Zimbalist study in 1997 (back when Huizenga owned the team) based on an internal Marlins document. The stadium also has received $2 million annually from the state as a stadium tax refund. Put all this at $4 million a year — or $60 million over 15 years.

So is it as simple as adding the $1.1 billion sales price with the $150 million Dolphins profit and the $60 million from the stadium — $1.31 billion — and subtracting the costs of $579 million?

"It's that simple," Zimbalist said.

Estimated payout: $731 million. Not bad considering his Dolphins investment began with four season tickets on the Orange Bowl's bench seats in 1966.

Why is this anyone's business?

There is a practical answer to this, of course. It's that you can stick your fingers in your ears and hum, "Money makes the world go 'round" the next time a sports owner bellyaches about how much it costs to run a team. Eventually, they'll get theirs. At least if they're in a well-run sport like the NFL.

There is an answer of fairness, too. For all the times media and fans drub players about their high-priced contracts, the wider view of sports economics needs to be shown. Well, here it is.

There is the answer of moving forward as well. The Marlins want the public to finance a new stadium. It's a fair request, given what's gone on with some South Florida teams as well as other cities. But can you look at Huizenga's story — $400 million into the stadium between debt service and enhancements — and see why a free stadium is such a draw?

Huizenga, if you meet him, is more than just money. His employees will say that. But to not address the money is to miss the person, too. I once met him in his office, early in his sports career, and he addressed his interest in sports.

With Waste Management, he said, he rented trash cans. With Blockbuster Entertainment, he said, he rented movies. With his sports teams?

"I'm renting seats," he said.

Better yet, he rented the team. He just handed it to Ross, the new renter. Ross may win more games than Huizenga. But let's see him try to beat Huizenga on the real scoreboard.

Dave Hyde can be reached at dhyde@SunSentinel.com

Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Must Love Dogs and The Dooze

Bill Simmons describes what it was like to get, have and lose a great pet. A golden retriever nicknamed, The Dooze. A sample:

We had our new roommate within two weeks: an 8-week-old puppy named Daisy, or as we ended up calling her, "The Dooze." Her obsession with tennis balls started as soon as she could cram one in her mouth. And, yeah, I know goldens stereotypically love tennis balls ... but The Dooze took it to another level. Within a few months, she could repeatedly bounce them off the ground and catch them like she was dribbling a basketball. Our first apartment had high ceilings, so we'd watch TV and bounce balls off every inch of the wall for her. That's how I spent the 2004 Red Sox season -- sweating out games and dinging balls off that 10-foot wall. Soon she was chasing down ricochets like a four-legged Ozzie Smith. On walks, she sniffed out any stray ball within a 100-yard vicinity, dragged us over to the ball's precise location, somehow locating it even if it was buried inside some 6-foot bush. There was one hill a few blocks away -- the front lawn of someone's house -- that she would race atop, then drop the ball so it would roll down. She loved the way it rolled. We'd throw it back up, she'd chase it down like Jim Edmonds, then she'd drop it back down and watch it roll. She never wanted to leave. Soon we were making trips to Target every few weeks just for more tennis balls.





We lived on a street with especially wide sidewalks and little traffic, so we trained her to sprint for balls without ever straying into the street. Eventually, we starting using two balls and taught her how to fetch one, run back at full-speed, drop the first one as she was approaching us, then keep going 40-50 yards the other way for the second one (like a nonstop series of wind sprints). It was amazing to watch. She looked like a race horse. Woooooooosh. We didn't have a single neighbor who wasn't totally and completely impressed. She would never NOT chase a ball, so the sessions usually ended with The Dooze lying on her side and her tongue hanging five feet from her body ... but waiting for the next throw.

Article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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One final toss for The Dooze

Thursday, January 22, 2009

By Bill Simmons - Page 2

Before I proposed to my girlfriend, we had already discussed getting a dog. But what kind? We debated it constantly. We loved Great Danes, but they never seem to live long enough. We loved Newfoundlands, but their back legs go too fast. We loved golden retrievers, but my father had two and we didn't want to copy him. We loved the thought of rescuing a mutt, but we worried about getting one with "I hate kids" DNA, and we wanted to have kids.

The decision ultimately didn't matter. Unwilling to raise a puppy on the concrete streets of Boston, we decided to wait until we moved ... somewhere. By this time, it was the summer of 2002. I was thinking of taking a job writing for a television show. As part of the deal, we had to move to Los Angeles and leave everyone behind: Our friends, our family, my teams, the things we loved, everything. I needed a change. If you write for a living, it's good to keep moving. Keeps you fresh. My fiancée wasn't as crazy about leaving.

"We can get a dog," I kept telling her. "We can take her to the beach. We can take her hiking. It will be 75 degrees every day. The dog will have a good life."

That swung her vote. I moved to California on Nov. 16, 2002. She joined me eight weeks later. As she was packing and settling everything back home, she was frantically searching for a puppy. She wanted one immediately. When I rented an apartment next to a house with a young golden retriever named Zoe, we thought that was a sign. We were getting a golden.

We had our new roommate within two weeks: an 8-week-old puppy named Daisy, or as we ended up calling her, "The Dooze." Her obsession with tennis balls started as soon as she could cram one in her mouth. And, yeah, I know goldens stereotypically love tennis balls ... but The Dooze took it to another level. Within a few months, she could repeatedly bounce them off the ground and catch them like she was dribbling a basketball. Our first apartment had high ceilings, so we'd watch TV and bounce balls off every inch of the wall for her. That's how I spent the 2004 Red Sox season -- sweating out games and dinging balls off that 10-foot wall. Soon she was chasing down ricochets like a four-legged Ozzie Smith. On walks, she sniffed out any stray ball within a 100-yard vicinity, dragged us over to the ball's precise location, somehow locating it even if it was buried inside some 6-foot bush. There was one hill a few blocks away -- the front lawn of someone's house -- that she would race atop, then drop the ball so it would roll down. She loved the way it rolled. We'd throw it back up, she'd chase it down like Jim Edmonds, then she'd drop it back down and watch it roll. She never wanted to leave. Soon we were making trips to Target every few weeks just for more tennis balls.

For that first year or so, I was working long hours and my wife hadn't found a job yet. She was constantly doing things with Dooze: they'd go to the beach, go hiking, go for one-hour walks, you name it. She carried Puppy Dooze around in a little front pack like a baby. We even brought The Dooze on our mini-honeymoon. By the spring of 2004, my wife was working and I was writing full-time for ESPN again, so our roles reversed: I finally got to spend more time with my dog and crammed morning and afternoon ball throws into my daily work routine. When my arm started aching, I bought one of those green ball-thrower sticks and turned into Greg Maddux, circa 1995, with that thing. I had pinpoint aim. I wanted to compete in the Olympics with The Dooze in whatever you would call this category. Nobody could consistently fling balls reminiscent of a perfect golf drive quite like me. What a dumb thing to be proud of ... and yet, The Dooze was the only one who fully appreciated it.

We lived on a street with especially wide sidewalks and little traffic, so we trained her to sprint for balls without ever straying into the street. Eventually, we starting using two balls and taught her how to fetch one, run back at full-speed, drop the first one as she was approaching us, then keep going 40-50 yards the other way for the second one (like a nonstop series of wind sprints). It was amazing to watch. She looked like a race horse. Woooooooosh. We didn't have a single neighbor who wasn't totally and completely impressed. She would never NOT chase a ball, so the sessions usually ended with The Dooze lying on her side and her tongue hanging five feet from her body ... but waiting for the next throw.

I spent that spring and summer writing columns, finishing a book and doing my Maddux routine with Dooze. Then we bought a house, my wife got pregnant and we found Dooze a brother named Rufus. They came from the same breeder and actually had the same father, so they were half-brother/half-sister like "90210" characters. Rufus immediately attached himself to The Dooze, followed her around and pretty much dominated our lives from that point on; he was like Marley crossed with Satan. The first week we had him, he whimpered so loudly that we had to sleep with him every night. He just didn't leave us a choice. He hated being alone.

And since The Dooze was a loner of the highest order -- every time she jumped on the sofa next to us, it was an unexpected treat, like she had graced us with her presence -- she absolutely despised her brother at first. Whenever he lay beside her, you could see her thinking, "I wish he'd go away, I wish he'd go away ..." Knowing that she'd never get the same attention (especially after our daughter was born), The Dooze settled into a new role as protector of our house. She stayed near the front door and barked at anyone suspicious. At night, she scared away a few people in our kinda-sorta-maybe-sketchy-at-night neighborhood. We rewarded her with more ball throws and a few coveted beach trips.

Her biggest save happened in January '07. My wife went out to pick up dinner, and I was watching a basketball game. Somehow our tiny daughter, at that specific moment, decided she would sneak away, open our front door (a brand-new trick, unbeknownst to us) and stroll outside. How does this happen? In the 25 seconds that passed between my realizing the door was open and my sprinting outside like Usain Bolt, she made it all the way to our street. And it was pitch-black. Fortunately, the dogs followed her and shielded her like two offensive linemen. I am convinced to this day that Dooze saved her; had it just been Rufus, he would have followed her out, then skipped away to eat cat poop or something. When I noticed a car stopped in the street and someone carrying my daughter back to our house, I almost had a heart attack. My little girl was fine. The driver said, "If it wasn't for those two dogs, I wouldn't have seen her." Gulp. Everyone with kids knows that you have to catch a few dumb breaks along the way; this was one of ours. Hopefully, it will remain the biggest dumb break. The Dooze saved the day.

We moved again that summer to a bigger house with a pool. Within a week, Dooze was swimming in it. Every time the fence surrounding the pool was open, she brought a tennis ball out there, "mistakenly" dropped it in, looked around a few times, then said, "I gotta save that thing!" and jumped in after it. Rufus was terrified of water and was annoyed that she kept going in, so he'd just stand there and bark, then hump her to reclaim alpha status when she climbed out. Eventually, we just started pushing him in and that's how he learned to swim. The one thing he never stole was the ball-throwing gimmick -- she always outraced him, so he settled on just being her sidekick (his Pippen to her Jordan). He copied everything she did. She guarded the house; he did, too. She was obsessed with tennis balls; he was, too. She loved swimming; suddenly he did, too. They were like Frick and Frack. I even think The Dooze grew to like him. You know, except for the humping. At the end of the night, he came to bed with us and she stayed downstairs to guard the house. And that's how it went. Every morning when we went downstairs, the first thing we heard was her tail happily banging the floor.

Last winter, my wife became convinced something was wrong with The Dooze. She was definitely looking older, but geez, she had just turned 5, and we kept her in phenomenal shape. How could anything be wrong? Was she depressed because we had our second child and weren't giving her enough attention? The only weird part was Rufus was sniffing her a lot. (We realized later he was doing that for a specific reason. Dogs know. They always know.) One night, we noticed The Dooze's eyes looked blue. Blue? We took her in to the animal hospital and they worried it was glaucoma or even something worse. They ran some tests on her. Within a few days, we were on the phone with a doctor who told us grimly that The Dooze had stage-5 lymphoma. That led to this exchange:

Us: "Stage 5? How many stages are there?"
Doc: "Five."

Just like that, The Dooze was dying. We were demolished, obviously. Ages 6 through 10 are the best years for a pooch -- that's when they mellow out, when they cease surprising you, when you can guess everything they might do before they do it. You know them as well as you know anything. That's what happens when your dog grows old. We always imagined The Dooze in 2017 as a 15-year-old with creaky hips and a white face and unconscionably bad breath, only every time we came home, her tail would start wagging and she'd roll a ball toward us, and we'd shake our heads and it would be like a cheesy movie scene. That's what we always thought. Now the doctors were saying she might last 10-12 months with chemotherapy injections and a better diet.

Months?

My wife took charge and made it her personal mission to get The Dooze to her sixth birthday. By the summer, she was having mostly good days and only a few bad ones (always the day after chemo). She spent her time sleeping, swimming and chasing balls, although she didn't have the same wheels anymore. Ever the wily veteran, she saved her fifth gear only for the longest tosses, cruising at a controlled pace for everything else. Every time we thought she was fading, we'd be watching TV and The Dooze would amble over with a ball, drop it, then crouch and take a few steps back: Her famous, "Hey, how 'bout a few ball throws, whaddya say?" move. (Note: She trademarked this as well as her unique habit of repeatedly walking between our legs any time we returned to our house.) There was one point in early December when she went blind -- out of nowhere -- and we thought that might be it. Special eye drops saved the day. She made it to her sixth birthday, made it on our Christmas card, made it through the holidays and made it to 2009. We couldn't ask for anything more than that. Miracles don't happen with lymphoma and dogs. People, maybe. Not dogs.

Meanwhile, something unexpected was happening, something we hadn't counted on: Our little boy had become enchanted by The Dooze.

The first word he ever said was "Day-zee." Once he started crawling, he'd crawl to the front of our house and smother Dooze. Sometimes we found him lying on her or gently tapping her head. I have never seen a dog who was sweeter with a little kid -- he could pull her ears, sit on her head, poke her in the eye, pull her tail and she didn't care. She just laid there and let him do his thing. Like she knew he didn't know any better.

Once Dooze started visibly declining, our daughter knew something bad was happening, so we told her that Dooze was heading to the moon soon and went through the "it's better on the moon, she'll be happier there" charade. Now she thinks everyone goes to the moon when they die. This will be awkward if she ever meets Neil Armstrong. But that's the part nobody prepares you for -- not just losing your dog, but watching your kids lose their dog. As a parent, you feel obligated to protect your children from the things you don't want them to see, and then suddenly there's your dog slowly dying in the house, and they're seeing it every day. It's not fair.

Right after New Year's, Dooze took a turn for the worse. She looked skinny and frail, just a bag of bones with a beautiful golden coat. She was sleeping all the time. Rufus was sniffing her constantly. We had entered that despicable "How do we know when it's time?" mode. We kept telling ourselves that Dooze would let us know when she was ready -- somehow, someway -- but that's the thing about dogs, you just never know. If we bounced a tennis ball and she didn't respond, we figured that would be it. But every time we bounced the ball, her head popped right up. We couldn't tell how much she was suffering. There was no way to know. Dogs can't speak. Dogs have a huge threshold for pain. You just don't know. You can't know.

Last week, she finally told us. She started limping a little, then a lot, then all the time. Her back legs started failing. There was one walk when she made it only one block before lying down. Her breath stunk like holy hell. Every time we bounced the ball, her head would jostle, but only a little. She planted herself near our front door and wouldn't move. She was 6 years old going on 16. The cancer had rooted itself in her bones and wasn't going away.

It was time. We thought it might happen last Thursday, then Friday. Nope. She wasn't giving us The Sign. On Friday afternoon, my parents were visiting and The Dooze rallied one last time. Even made her way over to the pool and seemed like she wanted to jump in. Just for the hell of it, I tossed a ball in the water knowing that I'd probably have to dive in there to get her. Maybe she wanted one last swim. She looked at it. She looked at it. She looked at it. She didn't go in. Oh, man.

When she could barely stand Saturday morning, that was that. She was officially suffering. We couldn't let it happen. We drove her to the vet's office (bringing along a tennis ball, of course) and stopped at AstroBurger for her last supper; she wolfed down a cheesburger in 4.2 seconds in the back of the car. Even to the bitter end, she couldn't turn down AstroBurger. Upon reaching the veterinary clinic, we carried her inside in her little dog bed, almost like how they use those stretchers for injured football players, then we waited in a little room that smelled like stale pee. We laid down next to her. She licked our faces with her smelly breath and we didn't care. It was like she knew.

And then something crazy happened.

The Dooze fought through the pain, rose to her feet, grabbed the ball, rolled it over to us, took a few wobbly steps backward and dusted off the "Come on, throw it to me" face. We tossed her a few from short range, then a few more. She caught every one of them. This was her last hurrah. She tired quickly and laid down again ... and that was that. The doctor came in a few minutes later and euthanized her, with that same ball resting right next to her mouth. We had her cremated with it. We just thought it seemed fitting. When the time seems right, we're heading to the beach and spreading those ashes in the Pacific Ocean. So much for our first dog. We didn't even have her for six full years. She belongs to the West Coast, and because of her, maybe so do we.

We came home and Rufus was a mess. He knew. I don't know how dogs know, but they know. Dogs always know. Now he spends his days lying in Dooze's spot next to the front door. Like he inherited it.

Our daughter didn't cry. She didn't even seem that upset. When we asked her why, she explained, "It was time for her to go to the moon. I'll see her again some day." Oh.

The day after The Dooze left us, our little boy woke up and my wife carried him downstairs to feed him like she always does. I was still half asleep and could hear her footsteps. Then I heard this: "Day-zee. Day-zee." That part didn't make me sad. The part that made me sad happened three mornings later ... when my wife was carrying him downstairs again and he didn't say anything.

Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. For every Simmons column, as well as podcasts, videos, favorite links and more, check out the revamped Sports Guy's World.
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Game Theory and the Pirate Puzzle Game

I found an interesting blog about game theory, named Mind Your Decisions.

As a way of getting you in game theory mode--the mode in which nothing is as it appears--here's a joke:

The dumbest kid in the world

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!” Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store.

“Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”

The Mind Your Decisions blog uses the pirate puzzle game to make their point about fair division. The scenario and rules are listed below. Before you read the answer, think about who you think has the advantage in this scenario. Hint, it does not pay to be 2nd, but why?

Pirate Puzzle

Three pirates (A, B, and C) arrive from a lucrative voyage with 100 pieces of gold. They will split up the money according to an ancient code dependent on their leadership rules. The pirates are organized with a strict leadership structure—pirate A is stronger than pirate B who is stronger than pirate C.

1. The strongest pirate offers a split of the gold. An example would be: “0 to me, 10 to B, and 90 to C.”
2. All of the pirates, including the proposer, vote on whether to accept the split. The proposer holds the casting vote in the case of a tie.
3. If the pirates agree to the split, it happens.
4. Otherwise, the pirate who proposed the plan gets thrown overboard from the ship and perishes.
5. The next strongest pirate takes over and then offers a split of the money. The process is repeated until a proposal is accepted.

The pirate puzzle analysis is copied in full at end of post.

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The Pirate puzzle - the game

Three pirates (A, B, and C) arrive from a lucrative voyage with 100 pieces of gold. They will split up the money according to an ancient code dependent on their leadership rules. The pirates are organized with a strict leadership structure—pirate A is stronger than pirate B who is stronger than pirate C.

The voting process is a series of proposals with a lethal twist. Here are the rules:

1. The strongest pirate offers a split of the gold. An example would be: “0 to me, 10 to B, and 90 to C.”
2. All of the pirates, including the proposer, vote on whether to accept the split. The proposer holds the casting vote in the case of a tie.
3. If the pirates agree to the split, it happens.
4. Otherwise, the pirate who proposed the plan gets thrown overboard from the ship and perishes.
5. The next strongest pirate takes over and then offers a split of the money. The process is repeated until a proposal is accepted.

Pirates care first and foremost about living, then about getting gold. How does the game play out?

The solution

At first glance it appears that the strongest pirate will have to give most of the loot. But a closer analysis demonstrates the opposite result—the leader holds quite a bit of power.

The game can be solved by thinking ahead and reasoning backwards. All pirates will do this because they are a very smart bunch, a trait necessary for surviving on the high seas.

Looking ahead, let’s consider what would happen if pirate A is thrown overboard. What will happen between pirates B and C? It turns out that pirate B turns into a dictator. Pirate B can vote “yes” to any offer that he proposes, and even if pirate C declines, the situation is a tie and pirate B holds the casting vote. In this situation, pirate C has no voting power at all. Pirate B will take full advantage of his power and give himself all 100 pieces in the split, leaving pirate C with nothing.

But will pirate A ever get thrown overboard? Pirate A will clearly vote on his own proposal, so his entire goal reduces to buying a single vote to gain the majority.

Which pirate is easiest to buy off? Pirate C is a likely candidate because he ends up with nothing if pirate A dies. This means pirate C has a vested interest in keeping pirate A alive. If pirate A gives him any reasonable offer—in theoretical sense, even a single gold coin—pirate C would accept the plan.

And that’s what will happen. Pirate A will offer 1 gold coin to pirate C, nothing to pirate B, and take 99 coins for himself. The plan will be accepted by pirates A and C, and it will pass. Amazingly, pirate A ends up with tremendous power despite having two opponents. Luckily, the opponents dislike each other and one can be bought off.

The game illustrates the spoils can go to the strongest pirate or the one that gets to act first, if the remaining members have conflicting interests. The leader has the means to buy off weak members.

Don’t get caught up in the exact assumptions or outcomes of the game—just remember the basic lesson. In the real world, it might be necessary to buy a vote with 20 gold coins. Nonetheless, the general logic is the same. Here are some of the main insights from the game:

Lessons:

* Players should think ahead and reason backwards
* A leader can win by exploiting conflict among weaker members
* Players derive worth from voting power, and some players can be bought off
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Today, Somewhere in West Bengal, India

My future caretaker turned 25. I wish to send a happy birthday salute to her today and a message to the her in my future. Please stop slapping me when everyone leaves the room. Saludos

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Being Human

Prayer for the Unborn

Heavenly Father, in Your love for us, protect against the wickedness of the devil, those helpless little ones to whom You have given the gift of life.

Touch with pity the hearts of those women pregnant in our world today who are not thinking of motherhood.

Help them to see that the child they carry is made in Your image - as well as theirs - made for eternal life.

Dispel their fear and selfishness and give them true womanly hearts to love their babies and give them birth and all the needed care that a mother can give.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, Your Son, Our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.

Find pro-life information here.

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Should You Love Your Work?

Fr Valle's homily of Jan 25 says yes.

I. Paul and no horse
Today’s feast gives us, visually speaking, one of the most misquoted passages in Scripture. We characterize conversions as, “being knocked off a horse,” ala St. Paul. In Europe, many pulpits in the great Cathedrals show a fallen horse with Paul tumbling to the ground, for example the pulpit in the city of Louvain where I studied. However, you will notice that the passage from Acts says nothing about a horse. Just as we often get that little detail wrong, we often misunderstand the nature of conversion. Paul is not converted from a persecutor of Christians to an apostle, that is only what happens on the outside. Conversion takes place on the inside. What changes is not the circumstances of my life or even my actions. What changes is my heart. Christianity is not a different way of thinking about the world, it is a different way of being at the world

II. Story of waiter
[Here is a story I stole from my good friend Fr. Jose Alvarez. I will tell it in the first person because stories just work better that way]. A few years ago, I was at the Appleby’s in Chicago. The food was good but even better was the service. The waiter was extraordinary. He was personable, attentive, competent and, most of all, just very happy. It was kind of infectious. Watching him smile kind of made you want to smile, too. Anyhow, as we were leaving, I told him that this was the best service that I had ever had at a meal and that he was probably the best waiter I ever had. He told me that he loved his job and that made it easy. He said that he had not always been like this. He said that ever since he was young he had been a very driven, type-A, personality, that he always had to get straight As and excel at everything he did. Her ultimately entered Northwestern Medical School where he was top of his class for two years. Then, he had a mild heart attack. When he recovered, he took stock of his life. He realized that he had never been happier then when he was waiting tables. So now he was going to be the best waiter ever. But that was not difficult to do because, when you love what you do, what you do, isn’t hard to do.”

III. Three lessons
This, I think, is the modern day story of a man who was metaphorically knocked off his horse, of course Paul was only metaphorically and not literally knocked off too! In any event, I think the story teaches us three lessons. First, conversion is not about externals. It does no good to change you job or your clothes or your wife, if you do not first change your heart. This is why conversion is called change of heart, metanoia. Second, as Descartes said, “choose the right profession.” The right profession is the one that makes you happy and gives you joy when you’re doing it. Every day of my life, I thank God that I am a priest and a philosopher. I will never be rich. I will never be powerful. Even in my chosen professions of priest and philosopher, I will never publish a historically important philosophy book or become a bishop. But, and here is the important part, every morning I get up, I teach, I read, I write, I preach and I administer the sacraments. There is not one aspect of that which I consider drudgery. If you love your work, it is not work but joy. If you hate your work, you hate your life.

IV. Keys to the kingdom
Third, do not seek external stuff. Happiness is only to be found in the heart. Augustine defined happiness as getting what you desire and desiring nothing that is evil. But it is hard to purify our desire in today’s world. We are constantly being fed so much stupidity. Watch an hour of TV, commercials included. We are being told everything from how we look to where we shop will make us happy. I guess being knocked off one’s horse is not such a bad image after all. Being up on one’s high horse implies power, position and prestige. None of that will make us happy. Humility, tenderness and kind laughter, these are ways to joy and the keys to the kingdom of God.

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