Salute to Miami Senior High: The Wheel Deal

With apologies to the Norman Maclean character in A River Runs Through It, I am now haunted by cogs. But, in the words of a future saint--be not afraid--it is a friendly haunting.

It all began with an entry in Howard Kleinberg's book, The Stingaree Century. Last night, I was reminded that Jonas Hodges had played the cog card--as in, "I'm just a small cog in ..."--on the TV program 24. Then this morning, I watched a fascinating video about ingenuity at Babalu and saw a real cog in action.

The first cog didn't so much jump out at me as it ambled over slowly, not unlike how a 95 year-old Gardnar Mulloy might approach a microphone at a Hall of Fame dinner, and proceeded to pull up a chair in my head.

Mr Kleinberg [Class of 1951] highlighted the following from a 'Did You Know That ...' section of The Stingaree--the Miami High School [MHS] school newspaper--dated January 22, 1926:

• MHS enrollment has doubled in the last year [to almost 2,000]
• That we need a new building [it would come 2 years later]
• Pete Desjardins, current a MHS student, is a world champion diver
• The Stingarees are the current state basketball champs
• MHS is the southernmost large U.S. high school
• That you are a cog in the wheel that makes up MHS

What would my high school predecessors have thought when they read that last item? Who aspires to be a cog in the wheel? Who is even OK with being a cog in the wheel? I am in a position to answer those type of questions, at least for my fellow 'cogs' who also attended the great Miami Senior High School.

If I had stumbled upon that item 50 years later when I was a junior at MHS in 1976, I suspect I would have quickly realized they were probably referring to kids like me--average student, cut from the basketball JV, some club activity and spent 37% of my waking time at MHS doubled over in laughter--shrugged and thought, 'cool.' You see, while no one aspires to be 'just' a cog in the wheel, you are more than OK with it when you love the wheel. And I loved that MHS wheel, then and now.

Saturday night I attended an event intended to recognize some of the *spokes in our wheel. The 'spoke' folks were the Class of 2009 Sports Hall of Fame [HOF] inductees. It was a wonderful evening, marred only briefly when a politician, who did not attend Miami High, actually read an actual proclamation onstage. The inductees and their presenters were:

• Vince Schaefer, son Chuck [Class of 1964] accepted / Bob Kaufman [Class of 1962]
• Pete Silas [Class of 1949] / Lester Johnson [Class of 1948]
• Gene Bennett [Class of 1952] / Ray Moretti [Class of 1953]
• Raul de Quesada [Class of 1968] / Manny Crespo [Class of 1968]
• Douglas Edwards [Class of 1989] / Shakey Rodriguez [Class of 1971]
• Udonis Haslem [Class of 1998] / Frank Martin [Class of 1983]
• Gardnar Mulloy [Class of 1932] / Claude Potash [Classy, but no Class]
  

As I sat and listened to the ceremony, including a particularly moving speech by Raul de Quesada--who touched on the issue of the changing demographics at MHS during his time and the sacrifices made by his, and likely most of the Cuban-American parents of those in the audience--the evening became less about individual athletic achievements and more about the people with whom those achievements took place. While the physical place is important, even our beautiful and historic building is not the main thing. It was the MHS community being celebrated that evening, not the least of which by all the inductees, whose humility and appreciation was a common thread across the many generations onstage. In fact, evidence as to the greatness of our MHS community was not limited to those onstage.

Sitting behind me was inductee Douglas Edwards' extended family. Basketball skills aside--three very accomplished coaches [Kaufman, Rodriguez & Martin] all agreed that Edwards was the most talented high school player they had ever seen--what might be most impressive about him is that family sitting quietly in the audience. Douglas was one of three Edwards [Steve and Allan would follow] who eventually played for MHS. All were talented and successful, but I can semi-gossip and tell you that how people who know them speak of the Edwards family when they are not present, would make them blush if they were. Just quality people.

Sitting in front of me was Helen Grier [Class of 1951], a cog that evening, but a 'spoke' herself, I later learn, a few years back [HOF 2002]. Sitting to my right, the most beautiful cog of the evening--Nora Galego [Class of 1979]--was taken on a fascinating recap of MHS history by Ms Grier, which I was privileged to eavesdrop on. More on Ms Grier from Kleinberg's book:

Helen came back to Miami High in 1983 as an English Teacher. She also was an adviser to the Miami High Times and, in 1992 became head librarian upon the retirement of Patricia Temple. In November 1992, she was stricken with a rare virus that cost her the use of her eyes. Undeterred, Helen went through training at the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and returned to Miami High's library in 1993 as a reference librarian, where she continues in the schools centennial year [2003]. "The kids don't mind using their eyes for me," she told Miami Herald Publisher David Lawrence in 1993. "I find them to be very receptive. They go through the halls helping me."

If I had sat elsewhere, the stories would have changed, but not the message. The message is that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who were Stingarees and those who wish they had been.

I imagine that Gardnar Mulloy has better things to do with his time. But if he so chose, being a motivational speaker is clearly one of his options. Mr Mulloy gave a funny and seemingly whimsical talk. Given his age, there is a natural tendency to watch him and try and gleam tips about his longevity. I took much from what he left unsaid. A man whose career included being a lawyer, a Navy commander during World War II, and a tennis champion, chose to not look back at those accomplishments, but rather joke about his very early athletic failures, or as he put it, the "failure of coaches to recognize his talents." Like the drop shots he is known for, it was a nice touch to end the evening.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who were Stingarees and those who wish they had been. I [Class of 1977] know because more than a few teachers--Coach Kaufman and Mr Dorste come to mind--told me so back then, and I have lived it ever since.

*- If anyone attempts to lecture me on the mechanical inconsistencies of my cog, spoke and wheel analogy, except for the newly inducted HOF/engineer Mr Silas, I will pay MHS cogs who didn't get to graduate [for excellent reasons] to hurt you.

The Miami Herald article about the HOF dinner is copied in full at end of post.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Big night at Miami High

Posted on Sun, Apr. 19, 2009

BY ALDEN GONZALEZ
Miami Herald Writer

For nine illustrious decades, Miami Senior High has been a dominant fixture in Florida high school basketball.

On Saturday night, members old and new of the vaunted program gathered in one historic auditorium.

That's where Miami Senior finally gave the best basketball program in the state its due by enshrining six members -- whose graduating years ranged from the late 1940s to the late '90s -- as the school's first basketball Hall of Fame class.

Before Saturday night, the school honored only former football, baseball and soccer players.

Inducted Saturday night were: big man C.J. ''Pete'' Silas (class of 1949), former All-State guard Gene Bennett (1952), honorable mention All-American Raul De Quesada (1968), former NBA player and star forward Douglas Edwards, Miami Heat power forward Udonis Haslem and legendary coach Vince Schaefer.

Also inducted with that class was a man whose success spanned several decades: former tennis star Gardnar Mulloy, who will turn 96 in November and won the Wimbledon doubles final in 1957.

''Our committee is a blend of the old and the younger,'' said committee member Fred Darwick, one who pushed for the enshrinement. ``And the enthusiasm to do this was great. I think it's obvious that with the blue and gold, and with the Miami High tradition -- from Mulloy in '32, to Udonis Haslem in '98 -- the feeling is the same: Miami High tradition is the best.''

It's pretty hard to argue with that.

Ever since the Florida High School Athletic Association began the state basketball championship in 1922, nobody has dominated it like the Stingarees. They have claimed 19 state championships -- six more than the runner-up -- have made 52 state tournament appearances and have 153 wins in state tournaments.

The Stingarees' state titles date from 1925 to 2005.

And although presenters, inductees and video tributes honored that legacy on Saturday, pretty much everything that was spoken about Miami Senior seemed to go back to Schaefer.

Schaefer, whose son, Chuck, accepted the honor on behalf of his father, was Miami Senior coach for 37 years -- from 1945 to 1981 -- finishing with 704 victories. During that tenure, his teams won five state championships. He also was an assistant coach on the football team, which won 12 state titles during his time.

''The person responsible for all of this -- whether directly or indirectly -- is Coach Schaefer,'' said Killian's Bob Kaufman, a former assistant at Miami High. ``There's just no getting around it. In fact, we all owe our coaching careers to Coach Schaefer.''

Haslem, who enrolled at Miami High as a junior in '97 and led the school to back-to-back state championships, was a four-year starter at the University of Florida and is now a starter for the Heat.

He couldn't attend the ceremony because he was in Atlanta preparing for Miami's first-round playoff game against the Hawks on Sunday night.

Instead, Haslem's parents accepted the honor on his behalf. Former coach Frank Martin introduced him, and Haslem thanked the six-member committee in a video.

Edwards, a 6-8 forward best known for leading the Stingarees to the 1987 Class 4A state championship as a sophomore, which ended a 31-year drought, was proclaimed by several presenters as the best talent they had ever seen.

That included former coach Marcos ''Shakey'' Rodriguez, who now heads up the basketball program at Krop High.

'Through all of my years coaching, I often get asked, `Who is the best player you've ever coached?' '' Rodriguez said in his speech. ``And I find myself not even giving it a thought.

``It comes out quickly, and abruptly, and without hesitation. The name Doug Edwards pops out of my head.''

That same assurance also might be given when asked which is the best basketball program in Florida.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Isiah Thomas: The Anti-Cristobal

The hiring of Mario Cristobal as the football coach at FIU was a welcome departure from the safe practice of hiring 'names.' He was a young coach with extensive roots in the area, personal and professional. The perception was that a hungry young coach was being given the opportunity to build a program in his hometown. FIU could legitimately be seen as Cristobal's dream job. That decision has been seen, almost without exception, as a positive one, especially when the team began showing signs of improvement during his second season last year.

FIU's recent coach Sergio Rocco, was also a young local product. In a way, the change in philosophy about who FIU hires is a reaction to his tenure not working out. But Isiah Thomas? Is bling now king at FIU, at least for hoops? Is it all about name recognition? Could the hiring philosophy be any more different between Rocco, Cristobal and now Thomas? I am an alumni and I dislike this coaching hire for the message it sends about what FIU values.

In my view, even if FIU basketball experiences success in the near future under Thomas, that would not change why I dislike the decision to hire Thomas. I dislike the decision because it implicitly endorses the 'bottom line is everything' way of thinking. It's not, but even if it were, FIU should not be its champion. So keep your bling, stuff your reality show, being recognizable is not the same as being admirable and not all change is progress.

Here is what the Thomas hiring states: Getting very young men--who are susceptible to older mentors who likely admire Isiah Thomas and don't care what he has done lately--to sign with your program is everything. Sign the top recruits and the other factors will fade away. Those other factors are:

• Character
• Continuity
• Local connections
• Comparable experience
• Organizational skills
• Concept that actions have consequences

If FIU had announced the hiring of Isiah Thomas on April Fools' Day, it would have taken an appearance by Anucha Browne Sanders at the press conference before anyone stopped nervous-laughing. Given that FIU is supposedly in the final stages of choosing a new University President, one can only hope that the criteria there will differ from the set of criteria which lead to Isiah Thomas. Otherwise, we might also be soon welcoming Katie Couric back to the area.

Bill Simmons article about Isiah Thomas is copied in full at end of post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Idiot's Guide to the Isiah Trial

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - Updated: September 27, 5:18 PM ET

By Bill Simmons - Page 2

My days of chronicling sleazy sports-related trials peaked six years ago, when I won the Pulitzer Prize for my "Idiot's Guide to the Gold Club Trial" column. That one will never be topped. We had a villain named "Ziggy." We had a woman described as the "Michael Jordan of strippers." We had a group of strippers kick-start a champagne-room orgy with the '97 Knicks by screaming, "There are no rules tonight!" We had guest appearances from Dennis Rodman, Madonna, Stephen Baldwin and the King of Sweden. Best of all, we had Patrick Ewing giving thousands of high school seniors their yearbook quote by saying, "The girls danced, started fondling me, I got aroused, they performed oral sex, I hung around a little bit and talked to them, then I left."

Isiah Thomas' video deposition provided plenty of tabloid fodder in New York.
Anucha Browne Sanders' sexual harassment lawsuit against Madison Square Garden and Knicks GM Isiah Thomas lacked the same tremendous upside potential, but that didn't stop me from following the newspaper coverage religiously and taking copious notes, just in case enough stuff happened for another "Idiot's Guide." Well, enough stuff happened. After three semi-surreal weeks, we're headed toward jury deliberations Friday, and I couldn't wait another day to hand in my column. Here's everything you need to know about this goofy, inexplicable, sordid trial that never should have happened. Please note that all the relevant information in this piece is based on reports from the New York Daily News, Newsday, New York Times and wire services:

Q: What happened? Why is there a trial?

A: In January 2006, Browne Sanders was fired by the Knicks from her position as vice president of marketing. Her $10 million lawsuit claims she was unfairly dismissed after hiring a lawyer to pursue a sexual harassment suit against Thomas, who allegedly made unwanted advances and repeatedly addressed her in vulgar tones. Her attorneys set out to prove MSG, which owns the Knicks, allowed these incidents to happen and keep happening because of a "frat-boy mentality" in its offices (as explained in this New York Daily News feature Sunday).

Meanwhile, the Knicks claim Browne Sanders was fired for four reasons: For sneaking around the office trying to get subordinates to back up her claims against Thomas; for repeatedly struggling to handle her marketing budget and comprehend profit/loss statements; for demanding $6 million to stay quiet about her allegations against Thomas; and for making the moronic Steve Francis and Jalen Rose trades and foolishly signing Jared Jeffries and Jerome James.

(Wait, that last part's wrong -- I got my "struggling Knicks employees who can't handle a budget" mixed up. But the other three parts were true.)


Anucha Browne Sanders says she was unfairly dismissed after hiring a lawyer to pursue a sexual harassment suit.
Q: Considering the Knicks have thrown money around like a drunken billionaire at a strip joint over the past seven years, why didn't they pay off Browne Sanders so none of these seedy allegations saw the light of day?

A: That's a great question. I'm glad I asked it. For an accuser in a sports-related sexual harassment trial, Browne Sanders has strong credentials: She's a former college basketball star at Northwestern, a married mother of three children and one of the few notable African-American female executives in professional sports. Even if her allegations were proven to be false, the last thing the Knicks needed was a potentially damaging and embarrassing trial, especially when they could have settled with Browne Sanders for half the money it cost to buy out Rose.

Of course, when James Dolan is involved, all semblance of logic has to be thrown out the window. (If they ever build The Incompetent Legacy Kid Hall of Fame, he'll get in on the first ballot.) Other than stubbornly refusing to settle with Browne Sanders, Dolan's biggest mistake was the way he allegedly reacted with the actual firing: Once MSG's VP for human resources, Rusty McCormack, told Dolan over the telephone that Browne Sanders was impeding his investigation, Dolan flipped out during a helicopter trip and terminated her contract almost immediately -- without getting advice from MSG's legal counsel first. As Jimmy explained in his video deposition, "All decisions at the Garden, I make on my own," and "I specifically did not consult with counsel. I felt that the overall health of the Garden was in jeopardy here, and that would overrule any opinion of counsel."

(Yeah, why would you want to consult with your legal team before firing a high-ranking African-American female executive who's claiming that your high-profile GM sexually harassed her? What a waste of time! By the way, I'm calling Dolan "Jimmy" for the rest of this column on the off-chance he ends up reading it. He just seems like the kind of guy who would get upset when someone calls him "Jimmy" instead of "James.")

Q: Holdonholdonholdon ... there's a Jimmy Dolan video deposition???

James Dolan
James Dolan testified that Anucha Browne Sanders was fired for her actions on the job.
A: You betcha! It's almost as grisly as the fake Meg White sex tape -- we see the Knicks owner wearing his trademark skeevy black sweater, emulating James Lipton's posture and shifting uncomfortably in his seat for 11 minutes. The highlight: When asked how he felt about Isiah's allegedly calling Browne Sanders a "bitch," Dolan responds, "It's not appropriate. It's also not appropriate to murder anyone. I don't know if that's happened here." Now if you'll excuse me, I have an NBA team to ruin!

(Follow-up note: In Dolan's court appearance Tuesday, he reiterated that Browne Sanders was terminated because she tried to prod subordinates into backing her harassment claims; because she had the gall to demand $6 million to drop the charges; and because she kept failing at her job. That last claim led to the highlight of the testimony -- Browne Sanders' lawyer sarcastically asking Dolan if he believed Thomas had done "quite a good job," followed by Dolan's hesitating for several seconds before finally responding, "Yes." You can see the complete exchange on The Perjury Channel tonight at 8.)

Q: So if there's a Dolan video deposition, is there an Isiah video as well?

A: You betcha! (Watch out, there's some bad language in there.) The highlight happened when Isiah denied cursing at Browne Sanders and offered that "a white male calling a black female a bitch is highly offensive," but when asked if he believed it was just as offensive if a black man said the word, he confessed, "not as much." Upon leaving the courtroom after they showed the tape in court, a mortified Thomas told reporters, "Please don't mischaracterize the videotape shown in court today. I don't think it's right for any man to call a woman a 'bitch,'" then repeated those feelings on the stand by saying, "It's very offensive for any man -- black, white, purple." Purple??? The rest of Isiah's testimony went smoother -- he denied Browne Sanders' accusations, said "I've never cursed at Anucha; I've cursed around Anucha" and made a big deal about how his mother taught him how to treat women with respect.

(Thomas had only one rough moment: During a 15-minute break in the late morning, he nearly spent the Knicks' entire free-agent exemption on a 53-year-old bailiff named Norm.)

Q: When MSG's defense team argued Isiah just happens to be one of those touchy-feely guys who hugs and kisses everybody, why didn't they show videotape from the 1988 NBA Finals when Isiah and Magic kissed each other on the cheek before every game?

A: Probably because they didn't want to confuse the jury. It was confusing enough in 1988. That reminds me, Isiah explained a controversial 2005 hug with Browne Sanders like this: "I went to give her a kiss on the cheek and she recoiled in such a way that it made me feel uncomfortable, and I said, 'What? No love today?'" That's when I expected one of the defense lawyers to pull a Brian Fantana and say, "Take it easy, Champ, why don't you stop talking for a while?" and then demand a 30-minute recess.

Q: Speaking of uncomfortable, were there any disturbing Dolan revelations that came out of this trial?

Knicks City Dancers
Sanders testified that Dolan was very interested in every aspect of the Knicks City Dancers' performances.
A: Well, we did learn about his curious fascination with the Knicks City Dancers. According to Browne Sanders' testimony, Dolan "had a special interest in making sure the dancers were perceived well, and we made sure we took a lot of time to plan out what the outfits would look like. ... Mr. Dolan wanted to be involved in that process, so we involved him. ... He had feedback on what they were wearing, feedback on types of numbers that they would perform to."

(Ladies and gentleman, the Jimmy Dolan era! The man doesn't budge for three years while his GM is blowing out the payroll, pulling the trigger on four or five genuinely indefensible trades and antagonizing the entire fan base ... but if there's a debate about whether the Knicks City Dancers should use "Hot For Teacher" or "Pour Some Sugar On Me" for their routine before the second quarter, count him in!)

Q: Did we learn anything else about Dolan's leadership skills?

A: Yeah, one thing: Browne Sanders testified, "Mr. Dolan was easily agitated, and we all knew it. If he had a problem with something, he would let you know it, and he would yell."

I said I wanted their outfits to be as tight as possible! Do those tops look tight to you?!?! DO THEY? DO THEY LOOK TIGHT TO YOU?!?!

Q: What are the strengths of Browne Sanders' case?

A: She has three things going for her: Dolan canned her just a few months after giving her a $76,000 bonus (seems a little fishy); Isiah was clearly a little touchy-feely (although the extent of that touchy-feeliness is unclear); and she's suing the most incompetent franchise in professional basketball.

Q: What are the issues with Browne Sanders' case?

According to testimony, she had so much trouble keeping a budget, the Knicks were thinking about firing her as early as August '05, when MSG vice-chairman Hank Ratner wanted her gone after she couldn't answer many of Dolan's questions during a financial forecast meeting. Two especially damaging revelations surfaced during the trial:

1. MSG Sports CEO Steve Mills testified he'd never heard one Thomas-related complaint from the plaintiff until an e-mail sent Dec. 15, 2005, one month after she had already approached him in tears about being overwhelmed by her position and wanting to leave. According to Mills, Browne Sanders told him "she's lost the confidence of the people she worked with, and she can't do this anymore. I agreed." Mills also testified that he agreed to keep Browne Sanders on the payroll while she searched for another job. A few weeks later, she filed a lawsuit. Hmmmmmm.

2. During Browne Sanders' testimony, when MSG lawyers interrogated her about four years of false income tax returns that she had filed between 2001 and 2004, Browne Sanders couldn't decipher Schedule C on those returns. For God's sake, even Eddy Curry could figure out Schedule C on a tax return! Are you kidding me?

Q: Isiah was already in the running for "Least Popular GM of the Decade." Please tell me he didn't rebuff Browne Sanders' 2004 request to sign renewal-request letters to past season-ticket holders by hissing, "Bitch, I don't give a f--- about these white people!" This didn't happen, right?

A: Well, that's what Browne Sanders testified (and Isiah vehemently denied). In Isiah's defense, I scream "I don't give a f--- about these white people!" at my Page 2 editors every week.

Browne Sanders made several other claims about Isiah, including that he ...

1. Repeatedly called her a "bitch" and "ho" in private conversations nobody else heard.

2. Played H-O-R-S-E with her once, declared he loved her afterward and explained, "It's like the movie 'Love and Basketball.'"

3. Dismissed her efforts to get more players to show up for corporate events by yelling things at her like, "Bitch, I don't give a f--- about the sponsors. I don't give a f--- about ticket sales," and "We're not going to do any more of these f------ community events. I'm here to win f------ basketball games."

4. Found a scar above her eye appealing because he had one as well, even writing in her diary in 2004, "Isiah told me that he was very attracted to me after pointing out a scar above my eye."

(Note: What high-ranking sports executive would ever keep a diary? Are you kidding me? Can you imagine Mitch Kupchak lying in bed this week and writing, "Dear Diary, I think it might be time to trade Lamar Odom ... ?")

Q: What was Browne Sanders' most bizarre accusation during her testimony?

When she testified that Mills allegedly warned her to keep quiet, or else Thomas would start rumors Browne Sanders had been having an extramarital affair with another MSG executive. Browne Sanders said she responded, "Steve, is that a threat? Do I need to find a lawyer?" During his testimony, Mills vehemently denied the incident took place.

(Look, it's hard to say that ANYTHING is too preposterous in this case, but that accusation sounded like something Demi Moore would have made up in "Disclosure." How could someone rise to the position of CEO/president of Madison Square Garden, then stupidly play the "If you keep this up, we'll make up an evil rumor about you" card? If we're to assume the Knicks would be going to such great lengths to save money, wouldn't they also be planting incriminating evidence at Jerome James' house to get him off their salary cap?)

Q: All right, let's get to the good stuff. Did any juicy sexual revelations come out of the trial?

A: Well, we've all heard about the watershed Stephon Marbury testimony at this point, but for the kids reading this column 25 years from now, let's rehash the best parts of a multi-layered story that eventually led to the Daily News headline, "MSG Intern Had Backseat Sex With Marbury."

• In her determination to prove the Knicks had handled sexual incidents callously in the past, Browne Sanders testified about the time in 2005 when Marbury and his cousin Hassan Gonsalves ran into a group of Knicks employees outside a Mount Vernon strip club. Gonsalves allegedly made a filthy come-on to one female intern that began with "you look good in those pants" and ended with a sentence that kinda sounded like something Miggs screamed at Clarice in "Silence of the Lambs." A little bit later, the intern allegedly climbed into Marbury's car for a sexual encounter. According to Browne Sanders, the intern was drunk and felt pressure to, um, service Marbury's needs because he was the star of the team. In his testimony, Marbury (described as "fidgety" by Newsday) never admitted to having sex with the intern, although he did admit to meeting her outside the strip club and said cryptically, "We got together right across the street."

(Note to the young females reading at home: If you're ever outside of a strip club and the cousin of an NBA player makes you feel like you're in a Jodie Foster movie, then the NBA player offers to show you the backseat of the car ... you might not want to climb in the car. It's a good rule of thumb.)

• On Monday, the intern (Kathleen Decker, resembling Sherry Stringfield during her second "ER" run) took the stand and denied ever telling Browne Sanders that she was forced to do anything with Marbury, even saying, "I wasn't drunk, I was in control." She argued the sex was "consensual" and added, "He asked me, am I going to get into the truck, and I got in." Well, then. She also testified to a "very bizarre" meeting near the end of 2005 when Browne Sanders badgered her about the rumored tryst with Marbury, explaining, "I told her what happened because I felt pressured to." So we can agree on this: At some point, Decker felt pressured to do something. By the way, my daughter is 16 years away from being eligible to become a Knicks intern. I will now smash a fire log against my head.

• My favorite wrinkle of Decker's testimony: We learned she had an ongoing fling with Marbury's cousin during the same time frame as the Marbury tryst. (Shades of Lacey Underall juggling Danny Noonan and Ty Webb in 1980!) Now here's where it gets REALLY interesting: Decker testified that she landed a full-time job with the Knicks soon after her tryst with Marbury and received another big promotion six weeks before the Browne Sanders trial began. She also testified that Browne Sanders was a brutally demanding boss who made her feel "so inferior and so unimportant." True or untrue, we're definitely headed toward an X-rated parody of "Devil Wears Prada" crossed with the Knicks scandal, starring Mr. Marcus as Marbury and Ron Jeremy as Jimmy Dolan. It's probably in production as we speak.

Q: Was that the most damaging portion of the trial for Marbury?

A: Actually, no! Marbury testified that he never heard Isiah call Browne Sanders "a black bitch" or a "ho," explaining that's "not his style" (that's good to know). But that wasn't the damaging part. When asked to remember a heated exchange with Browne Sanders after she wouldn't give him free tickets to a home game, Marbury made one thing clear: "I didn't call her a black bitch. I called her a bitch." Don't expect to see that quote in the next NBA Cares commercial.

Q: Wow, Isiah never said anything that awful to Browne Sanders, did he?

A: According to former assistant GM Jeff Nix, a 15-year employee of the team who was recently fired, he witnessed Thomas calling Browne Sanders a "bitch" and "ho" and recalled one 2004 meeting in which Thomas yelled at Browne Sanders, "Don't forget, you f------ bitch, I'm the president of this f------ team." Where was Rick James during all of this? We don't know.

Meanwhile, John Cudmore, MSG's senior VP of finance, testified that Browne Sanders used the same bad language Thomas used, even saying, "She would use the word 'f---' regularly, often." Coincidentally, Knicks fans used the F-word regularly and often during the past four seasons.

Q: Any other stuff we should know about?

A: Here were my five favorite random stories from the trial ...

1. Because Dolan fired Browne Sanders so abruptly, MSG didn't have enough time to get everything down on paper, so McCormack testified in his videotaped deposition that the organization drew up a "here's why we need to fire Anucha" memo after the fact. That same memo suggested Thomas undergo sensitivity training and Mills meet with human resources to discuss what had happened (neither person followed those suggestions). And it came from McCormack's desk with his name on it, even though he testified later that he never wrote it. By the way, MSG is supposed to be a major company.

(Note to anyone holding Cablevision stock: SELL! SELL!)

2. One of the jurors has been repeatedly falling asleep throughout the trial. This immediately qualified him to become a Knicks courtside season-ticket holder.

3. During an open practice for season-ticket holders in 2005, Robert Levy (a season-ticket holder) testified he witnessed Thomas placing his arm around Browne Sanders' shoulders and remarking, "it was distracting working with someone easy on the eyes" as an uncomfortable Browne Sanders pulled away. In Isiah's defense, he pulled the exact same routine with Rick Mahorn in 1989.

4. After Marbury's testimony, he fled away from reporters in a blue Rolls Royce. I don't know why I enjoyed that detail so much, but I do know this: I wouldn't want to touch anything in the backseat.

5. During jury selection, one prospective juror asked the judge, "Can I speak freely? In my opinion, [Isiah] evaluates talent well, but he hasn't done well as the GM of the Knicks." Another told the judge that he "used to be a fan of the Knicks" as Thomas pretended to be disappointed and dropped his head to the table. Looking back, that might have been the signature moment of the trial: Someone was disqualified from the jury because they "used to be a fan of the Knicks." In other words, at least 8 million other New Yorkers would have been disqualified as jurors. And counting.

Q: What's been the most shocking thing about this trial?

A: That Isiah didn't try to knock it off the front pages by making an insane trade that would have turned everyone's attention to the 2007-08 Knicks instead of this lawsuit. Every time I log on to ESPN.com, I expect to learn Isiah traded David Lee, Malik Rose, Dan Dickau's expiring contract, Fred Jones' expiring contract, $3 million and first-round draft picks in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030 to Phoenix for Shawn Marion. Don't rule this out.

Q: So what's your final prediction?

A: It's so tight right now, I almost wish Vegas would give us a gambling line so we knew who was favored. But even if MSG prevails, there's no question that $10 million worth of P.R. damages -- at least -- was done over these past three weeks. This was one of those rare trials in which everyone will end up losing in the end, especially Kathleen Decker's father.

I see only one happy ending here: At the 11th hour, Gus Johnson comes in out of nowhere, brokers the peace between Browne Sanders and Isiah and convinces both sides to settle before there's a verdict. After seeing the man work his magic in Vegas two months ago, I'm convinced he could settle the bad blood here in 45 minutes and maybe even pull off a four-way hug with Browne Sanders, Isiah, Jimmy Dolan and the judge. But that would have made too much sense.

My final prediction: We're headed for a verdict in favor of the defense, which would double as the first big win for the New York Knicks franchise in six years. If only they could celebrate at the Gold Club.

Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. His book "Now I Can Die In Peace" is available in paperback.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

The Daily Gospel

The most practical and effective email list a lot of my friends and I are on is the The Daily Gospel [DGO]. As the title suggests, it is a daily reminder of that day's Gospel reading. DGO is produced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Anyone can subscribe by going to the DGO's home page - click here.

Today's reading is a favorite of those of us who are part of the local Emmaus community:

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 24,13-35.

Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing as you walk along?" They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?" And he replied to them, "What sort of things?" They said to him, "The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see." And he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

See the DGO's commentary on today's reading at end of post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Easter Wednesday : Lc 24,13-35
Commentary of the day
Saint Gregory the Great (c.540-604), Pope, Doctor of the Church
Homily 23 on the Gospel (©Cistercian Studies series)

"Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him"

You have heard, dearly beloved, that the Lord appeared to two disciples while they were walking on the road. They were talking about him, even though they did not believe. He did not show them an appearance which they could recognize, but the Lord behaved before the eyes of their bodies in accord with what was going on inwardly before the eyes of their hearts. Within themselves they were both loving and doubting; and the Lord was present to them out. outwardly, but did not show them who he was. He manifested his presence to them as they talked about him, but hid the appearance by which they would recognize him on account of their doubts. He did indeed talk with them, reproving the hardness of their understanding and opening to them the mysteries of holy scripture concerning himself: and yet, because as an object of faith he was still a stranger to their hearts, he made a pretense of going on farther... The perfect Truth did nothing deceitful; he was only manifesting himself to them materially as they were thinking of him.

It had to be shown whether those who did not as yet love him as God were at least able to love him as a stranger. Since those with whom Truth was walking couldn't be alien to charity, they invited him, a stranger, to be their guest. But why do I say they invited him, when it is written that they compelled him? We must surely infer from this example that strangers are not only to be invited to be guests but even forcibly persuaded.

They set the table, brought food, and recognized in the breaking of the bread the God they did not know as he explained the sacred scriptures. They were not enlightened by hearing God's commandments, but by putting them into practice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

A Miami Herald Editorial Bull's-Eye

No Irish bull. I thought Monday's Miami Herald Editorial regarding the changes to the U.S. Cuba policy struck a perfect tone. An excerpt:

Considering the hoopla that preceded it, President Barack Obama's decision to relax the rules governing travel and cash transfers to Cuba might seem to some like a daring new policy initiative -- but it isn't. Mr. Obama is making a marginal change in U.S. policy to signal that he is open to fundamental revision, but only if the Cuban government reciprocates -- and that has always been the real stumbling block.
...
This is unlikely to happen soon, but we hope Mr. Obama's decision will prompt other leaders in Latin America -- who have been pressing for a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba -- to call for Havana to mend its own ways. That, after all, is where the problem lies and where it must be addressed.

It must never be forgotten that the fundamental problem in U.S.-Cuba relations is the absence of freedom and civil liberties under the Castro regime. Until Cuba has a "normal" government -- one that acts with the express consent of the governed -- no U.S. government is likely to take steps toward "normalizing" relations.

Editorial referenced is copied in full at end of post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Cuba rules send important signal

April 13, 2009

OUR OPINION: U.S. OPEN TO CHANGE, BUT ONLY IF HAVANA WILL RECIPROCATE

Considering the hoopla that preceded it, President Barack Obama's decision to relax the rules governing travel and cash transfers to Cuba might seem to some like a daring new policy initiative -- but it isn't. Mr. Obama is making a marginal change in U.S. policy to signal that he is open to fundamental revision, but only if the Cuban government reciprocates -- and that has always been the real stumbling block.

Policy reverts

Mr. Obama's action is a commendable step, to be sure, but it needs to be put in perspective. In removing travel and gift restrictions for Cuban Americans, the president is reverting to rules that prevailed before a change imposed by President Bill Clinton. That came after the Cuban Air Force, in a cowardly act, shot down two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, killing four innocent men. President George W. Bush tightened the restrictions after Fidel Castro cracked down on dissidents in 2003, sending scores into prisons where most still remain.

This history and the strong feelings that surround Cuban policy ensure that any change in policy, no matter how slight, carries political and policy risks for any U.S. president. Mr. Obama has made a calculated decision that the move will be largely welcomed by Cuban Americans who want to see the U.S. government get out of the business of regulating how often they see their families.

This fulfills an Obama campaign pledge, and it may give Cubans living under the yoke of the Castro brothers more freedom to act independently, but it hardly amounts to a significant change as far as most Americans are concerned. They are still banned from visiting Cuba; and the trade embargo is still in place.

For any further change to occur, the Cuban government would have to make reciprocal gestures. Such as putting an end to the usurious fees and other obstacles it imposes on Cubans who want to leave. Such as freeing more political prisoners. Such as making the Internet more accessible to average Cubans. Such as ending the ''tourism apartheid'' that keeps most Cubans from having contact with tourists.

It's up to Havana

This is unlikely to happen soon, but we hope Mr. Obama's decision will prompt other leaders in Latin America -- who have been pressing for a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba -- to call for Havana to mend its own ways. That, after all, is where the problem lies and where it must be addressed.

It must never be forgotten that the fundamental problem in U.S.-Cuba relations is the absence of freedom and civil liberties under the Castro regime. Until Cuba has a "normal" government -- one that acts with the express consent of the governed -- no U.S. government is likely to take steps toward "normalizing" relations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Carl Hiaasen & The LSD-PL Syndrome

Carl Hiaasen is a great novelist. So sayeth Tom Wolfe, which is good enough for me. Hiaasen is also a long-time South Florida resident who has left of center political views and airs those views as a regular columnist for the Miami Herald. Among his left of center political views has been to oppose the U. S. limited economic embargo towards Cuba. So right away we know that we are dealing with someone who, from a policy perspective, has been butting heads with pro-embargo Cuban Americans for a long time.

My views on the the CANF's recent policy proposal are that, merits aside, it is always a smart political move to get out in front of change. I would make a case that this position need not be seen as a repudiation of the thinking which helped define previous policy positions. But for people who have disagreed with our position, it's payback time. That's what most interested me about Hiaasen's column. He tried to be Michael ["it's not personal ... strictly business"], but his response was pure Sonny [after some college and much counseling].

Let's take a step back, we are almost too close to appreciate what is being debated. Hiaasen's column is about what the proper U.S. foreign policy disposition should be towards the Cuban government in 2009. A 50-year dictatorship which has caused the U.S. periodic immigration problems and attempted to destabilize the region. He used the following words, presented in order, with a negative connotation.

1. fire-breathing opponent - CANF, before their enlightenment
2. failed strategy - CANF's previous support of embargo
3. hard-line - people for embargo
4. utterly failed - results of U.S. embargo position
5. bombastic leader spinning in his grave - Jorge Mas Canosa, founder and former leader of the CANF
6. n/a - no actual words to quote here, but I am awarding bonus animus points for ripping a man who died of cancer over a decade ago in a current policy dispute
7. treasonous - Hiaasen is predicting the language used to oppose the change in policy on AM radio by pro-embargo Cuban-Americans
8. exile radio hosts - in any other market, they would just be local radio hosts
9. decades of frustration and futility - effects of U.S. embargo position on Cuban-Americans
10. huffing macho, as always - Bush administration
11. tough rules - rules which limited remittances and travel
12. cold-hearted - pro embargo position
13. long-running botch job - results of U.S. embargo position
14. Libya - direct role in blowing up plane
15. vocal exile lobby - pro-embargo Cuban-Americans who vote
16. fruitless course - pro embargo position
17. chronic economic mess - Cuban economy

So there you have it, in an 811 word column, Mr Hiaasen makes 17 negative references, one against the Cuban economy, one against Libya, and the rest against, well ... us, pro-embargo Cuban-Americans.

Here's my take on the above language, it's over the top, relative to a column about a former policy opponent which has amended their position. Someone is trying too hard when they resort to the language I've highlighted above. Typically, the better your argument, the less you resort to hyperbole--i.e. see any George Will column. When the person trying too hard is also a great novelist, that's when you know the issue is not just business, it's personal.

Given that we are now in the Easter season, I must make the most generous assumption possible in guessing at Mr Hiaasen's motivations. Like Sally Fields, I can only hope that Carl really, really likes us--if only for all the material we provide--so I exclude personal animus towards us long-standing pro-embargo Cuban-Americans. No, I blame the 'Long Suffering Dinner Party Leftists Syndrome' [LSD-PLS].

I can't help but think of Mr Hiaasen at all the 'right' dinner parties of the literary world or literary-world wannabees. I mean can't you see and hear it too? Glasses, dishes and the silverware serving as a constant muted cymbals backdrop, cross-chatter with periodic laughter among the truly beautiful people, and then comes the inevitable question; "Carl, what's it like down there with those [fill in the blanks]?" If you went to Vegas right now and wagered $1 that he typically answers that we are, on balance, the embodiment of the American dream as can be experienced by immigrants, you may have just won $10 million dollars!!!

See, Mr Hiaasen is their voice in this fight, made all the more heroic because of his Jonas-like location. Although the belly of a typical pro-embargo, middle-aged Cuban-American takes a back-seat to no whale, this crowd hungers for any leftist political victory, albeit one of a watered-down, too-little too-late variety.

As usual though, I think they and Mr Hiaasen have missed out on the bigger picture. You see the conversation on the other side of the table was about what a genius Bernie Madoff was, but the Hiaasen-wing of the dinner parties were in full-spittle fury at us at the time and thereby missed out on the hot financial tips.

Carl, like Footprints in the Sand, we were there for you and you didn't even know it.

Column referenced is copied in full at end of post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CANF makes sober proposal about U.S. policy on Cuba

Posted on Sat, Apr. 11, 2009

By CARL HIAASEN

In an historic turnabout, the most prominent Cuban exile organization in the country now wants the Obama White House to expand and enhance relations with the Castro regime.

The Cuban American National Foundation, once a fire-breathing opponent of dialogue with Cuba, has produced a comprehensive 14-page proposal for a different -- and long overdue -- approach.

Published last week, the white paper is titled ``A New Course for U.S.-Cuba Policy: Advancing

People-Driven Change.'' It urges the Obama administration to discard the failed strategy of ''containment'' in favor of a ``people-to-people'' initiative that focuses on improving the lives of Cuban citizens.

The paper is a frank acknowledgment that the old hard-line policies have utterly failed to destabilize Cuba's communist leadership, or bring any meaningful reforms to the island.

As foundation president, Francisco J. Hernández, a Bay of Pigs veteran, explained: ``For 50 years we have been trying to change the Cuban government, the Cuban regime. At the present time, what we have to do is change the emphasis to the Cuban people -- because they are going to be the ones who change things in Cuba.''

For the first time, CANF is advocating direct diplomatic engagement between the United States and Cuba. Jorge Mas Canosa, the bombastic leader of the foundation in its early years, must be spinning in his grave.

The idea of communicating with Cuba will be denounced as treasonous by some exile radio hosts, but their time is fading. Polls show that a rising percentage of Cuban Americans are ready for a change, which isn't surprising after decades of frustration and futility.

For many, the tipping point came in 2004 when the Bush administration -- huffing macho, as always -- imposed tough rules limiting how often exiles could visit relatives on the island, and how much cash they could send to family members.

The cold-hearted plan accomplished nothing except punishing the Cuban people. The Castro brothers suffered not one bit. That fairly sums up the story of the long-running botch job that passes for America's Cuban policy.

We have diplomatic relations with many countries whose human-rights records are as bad, or worse. We eagerly converse (and heavily trade) with nations that lock up dissidents and journalists, or have no serious democratic aspirations.

We talk with China, Vietnam, Russia, Saudi Arabia -- even Libya, a regime that had a direct role in blowing up a Pan Am jet full of innocent people.

It's mainly because of South Florida's vocal exile lobby that the United States has persisted on its fruitless course of trying to isolate Cuba. Ironically, the trade embargo turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Fidel Castro, presenting him with a ready scapegoat for the country's chronic economic mess.

Although the CANF white paper doesn't call for an end to the embargo, the foundation does support a plan for allowing Cuban Americans and others to send cash, building materials and farm equipment to the island. It also favors an executive order allowing direct aid to pro-democracy groups in Cuba, which have struggled for outside funds under rules enacted during the Clinton administration.

As a top priority, CANF strongly supports President Obama's promise to remove the punitive restrictions on travel and remittances, which the White House has said will happen probably this week.

Obama made this one of his campaign pledges, rightly calling it a humanitarian issue. Cuban Americans should be able to visit family members in Cuba as often as possible and send them as much money as they wish, as other immigrants and exiles are allowed to do.

The dramatic about-face by the Cuban American Foundation could bolster current efforts in Congress to broaden contact with Cuba. Both the House and the Senate are considering bipartisan legislation that would basically permit all Americans to travel there.

It's likely that the Cuban-American members of South Florida's congressional delegation will stick to the shrill hard line, but the political tide is turning. Many U.S. companies have been pushing for years to get the trade barriers lifted, and a receding domestic market makes Cuba look even more appealing.

Capitalism works

With Fidel frail and fading, and Raúl seeking to make his own mark, there's an opportunity for the United States to finally start making a positive difference in the country. The best way is to establish a presence, beginning with tourists and then trade.

Nothing promotes capitalism as effectively as saturating a place with products, services and entertainment supplied by a capitalist system. China is still not a democracy, but its people today have more freedom -- and a bigger appetite for freedom -- than ever before.

What happened in Beijing could happen just as quickly in Havana, if the United States ever unleashed its potent weapons of mass consumption: Mountain Dew, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Levi's jeans . . .

Raúl wouldn't know what hit him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Great Silence

The following is from the Catholic Radio Dramas website:

The Lord descends into hell* (*Limbo the place of waiting)

Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: "My Lord be with you all." Christ answered him: "And with your spirit." He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: "Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in a paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Read more!

Angels in Our Midst: Smile Pinki

The smiling little girl on the right might not appear to be someone who has overcome great odds, someone who inspired others to do God's work. But that's only because you haven't seen the trailer to the movie, Smile Pinki.

As usual, thanks to the Freakonomics blog for the interesting subjects it chooses to give attention to.

See article at end of post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pinki brings smile to UP village

Anuraag Singh, Hindustan Times
Email Author - Varanasi, January 25, 2009
First Published: 23:55 IST(25/1/2009)
Last Updated: 23:56 IST(25/1/2009)

The million-dollar Pinki smile has done it again.

The Oscar nomination for the Hindi-Bhojpuri documentary film Smile Pinki has come as a blessing in disguise for Rampur Dabahi village of Mirzapur district. This is the village where the film’s protagonist Pinki lives.

The district administration of Mirzapur, 300 km east of Lucknow, has been moved by the Oscar nomination for the film, which is shot largely in Rampur Dabahi. It has decided to adopt Rampur Dabahi and develop it as a model village.

The administration has also decided to pay for Pinki’s entire education. Pinki is a class II student at the government primary school in Rampur Dabahi.

Officiating district magistrate Jaswant Singh said on Sunday that the village would be developed as an ‘Adarsh Village’ (Model Village) through implementation of a 10-point programme. The programme includes developing or providing roads, power, potable water, schools and widow pension benefits.

Singh further said Pinki’s father Rajendra Sonkar, a daily wager, has been assured by the Uttar Pradesh government that her educational and other expenses would be paid for by the state.

“It’s an honour for the entire district that Pinki’s smile brought back by surgeons in Varanasi has put Mirzapur under a global spotlight. Now we want the world to know about a fully-developed Rampur Dabahi village,” Jaswant Singh said.

If the assurances of the authorities see the light of day, they will usher a new dawn in the lives of the villagers of Rampur Dabahi. They have complained that they have to travel two kilometres just to get potable water from a makeshift canal in Khoria village.

The residents of the hillside village had also told an HT team that the last electric pole was installed at Bairampur, three kilometres from Pinki’s village.

Smile Pinki, a 39-minute documentary by American director Megan Mylan, has Pinki as the protagonist. It is the real life agony-to-ecstasy tale of Pinki and other children born with cleft-lips, who have been given the million-dollar smile by a group of doctors in Varanasi led by young plastic surgeon Dr Subodh Singh under a global initiative, Smile Train Project.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=5bd24f44-0977-4172-ae3b-6201e7f39886
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

May 15th: Miami Heat will Shock the MVP

Tonight's loss by the Philadelphia 76ers practically assures the Miami Heat of earning the 5th spot seeding in the Eastern Conference playoffs--they are now a game ahead of Philadelphia with 4 to play and hold an edge in the conference record tiebreaker. When they defeat the Atlanta Hawks in the 1st round, they will then likely play the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2nd round. The NBA's MVP winner will be announced right around that time, it will be Lebron James. On May 15th, the 6th game of the Eastern Conference semifinals will be played.

The Heat has a 1-3 record against Cleveland this year - here's a Heat-vision recap of the 4 games:

• Game 1 at Cleveland on 12/28 - Loss - Miami blew a double digit lead in the 4th quarter.
• Game 2 at Miami on 12/30 - Win - Miami takes early lead and hangs on.
• Game 3 at Miami on 03/02 - Loss - For the 2nd time this season, the Heat blow a double-digit lead 4th quarter lead to the Cavaliers as Mo Williams took over game.
• Game 4 at Cleveland on 03/07 - Loss - Again, Mo Williams took the game over in the 4th quarter.

I realize that most NBA games come down to the final quarter, but it is significant that the Heat has had late leads in all these games. The point is that Miami matches up well against Cleveland, despite their much better record. If Wade and James largely cancel each other out, then it might come down to how the 2nd best player performs.

• Mo Williams scoring in the series: 20 / 10 / 30 / 29
• Michael Beasley scoring in the series: 9 / 8 / 8 / 17

I might not have given Beasley the advantage early in the year or even in the middle of the year, but more and more he looks like the 2nd pick in the draft. So that's the why of my prediction: A future MVP will help lead the Heat past the current MVP, in support of a once and future Playoffs MVP.

Read more!

Is Double-A the New Triple-A?

If you were once a position player with a MLB team and find yourself in Triple-A, unless it's a rehab assignment, be afraid, be very afraid. The odds are high that you are not in your team's future plans. In theory, you are still competing at the highest level of Minor League baseball. But the fact that you didn't stick in your initial opportunity, means that you just went from hotshot to long shot.

When I read in the Sun-Sentinel blog last week that the Marlins had released Dallas McPherson, I was surprised. Despite his poor Grapefruit League play, the man hit 42 home runs at Triple-A Albuquerque last season. Let me repeat that, Dallas McPherson led the minor leagues in home runs last season and was looking for a job a week before the next season opened. This was not a Crash Davis-type accomplishment either, the guy is only 28 years old.

So it made me wonder what it means to excel at the Triple-A level? To the casual fan [me], MLB's minor league system represents a steadily increasing level of play, culminating at the Triple-A level. Back in 2003, the Marlins had two examples that indicated that something was amiss with the average fan's perception that the Triple-A level would house your best prospects, when Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis both made their jumps to the big leagues from Double-A.

This is a subject worthy of in-depth analysis, but anecdotal thoughts are the best I can do during tax season. To do so, I need to invoke a name which, in a perfect world, mere mortals such as myself should really not be allowed to bandy about in a public forum. But this is not a perfect world and so his name is Bill James.

If you followed baseball and weren't afraid of numbers in the early 80's, Bill James was a revelation. He ripped the job title of 'baseball analyst' away from ex-players with network and local broadcasting jobs. He did so by delving into statistics with imagination and wit. It was eye-opening and intoxicating to realize that many of the 'experts' weren't so much experts as they were cliche-machines. It was hard to seriously discuss baseball with anyone who hadn't read James. Here's what one well known economist and MLB fan, James Surowiecki, wrote in 2003:

Over the past 25 years, [Bill] James' work on player evaluation, player development, and baseball strategy—which inaugurated the body of baseball research known as sabermetrics, has revolutionized baseball analysis and overturned decades' worth of conventional wisdom.

I remembered that James had written that minor league statistics do mean something, that they had a correlation to a player's eventual major league performance. I could not find that article to link. However, I did find an article by David Luciani in 1998 which discussed James initial article:

It has been more than fifteen years now since Bill James first wrote that minor league data meant something and it could be understood. James told us all that inevitably, major league baseball teams will eventually have to accept that. Surprisingly, major league GMs have paid too little attention to James’ philosophy and are suffering as a result of it.

In Luciani's own analysis, he actually ascribed a percentage to predict various offensive categories going from minor to major leagues, i.e. 68% for home runs. Luciani summarized:

Quite simply, minor league statistics do mean something and perhaps the difficulty in accepting them has been because no one really knows how to read them. Even the so-called equivalencies that have become popular are useful but tend to over-reduce some columns and under-reduce others.

But enough of the serious math, back to my anecdotal analysis.

So is Double-A the new Triple-A? It reminds me of a kind of reverse Spinal Tap logic. [If you don't think the volume knob reaching 11 is funny, please leave the blog now - see video here]. So let's see how the current Marlins players [many who came up in other organizations] path to the big leagues have gone in terms of the number of games played at the various levels of Minor League baseball. While I do confine myself to players who were with the Marlins this Spring, only 4 of the 17 position players minor league careers were spent entirely with the Marlins, as such it is indicative of the mindset of various [18] organizations. The link to all the Marlins Minor League affiliates is here.

This is what I get from the numbers in my spreadsheet.

• An organization's best position player prospects are found in Double-A. That's where an organization houses what they believe to be their gems. Rehab aside, Triple-A is more of a spare parts factory.
• Where Chris Coghlan is reassigned to will reveal what they think of his prospects of being a MLB player. If it's Double-A he's still a hotshot, Triple-A he's now a long shot.
• A bigger appreciation of the kind of odds John Baker has overcome to earn a starting catcher's position in MLB after over 348 games in Triple-A without having reached a MLB roster.
• Even young stars pay their dues in the minor leagues. Hanley Ramirez spent four seasons in five cities affiliated with the Red Sox organization; Ft Myers [for loyal blog readers, this can not be used as one of our miracles] Lowell MA, Augusta GA and Portland ME. But not [of course] Pawtucket, RI--their Triple-A affiliate.
• Players--like Dan Uggla--who never return to the minor leagues after getting their initial opportunity, are rare.
• Partial guess, but the players with the most games at the Triple-A level probably constitute the next generation of coaches in professional baseball. These people have learned their craft, talent being a factor outside their control.
• Players learn that baseball is a business long before they appear on the radar of us fans. A player is much more likely to have been traded and/or promoted based upon factors other than talent, i.e. arbitration timetables, another prospect at same position and teams using up their allotted player movements [i.e. Andino].

You have to feel for Triple-A players. They might appear to be closer than ever to their ultimate goal, but in effect they were told to get on a ship headed the wrong way based on someone's evaluation. Those evaluations are an art, not a science. The contrast in expectations reminds me of a scene in the movie Rudy, where the reserves are told not to even look at the starters.

I picture a Triple-A player reading his morning paper during the season and learning that a player from Double-A was just called up. A player with less experience and who is competing against inferior competition than he is, is getting his shot. At that moment, Triple-A guy knows something intuitively that Double-A guy can not possibly imagine. While there are exceptions, as a matter of pure odds, another player's dream just began to die.

Click on image to enlarge or print out

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marlins show McPherson the door - Posted by Juan C. Rodriguez

The Marlins continued to pare down their roster after Tuesday night’s game, releasing infielder Dallas McPherson and reassigning outfielders Michael Ryan and Alejandro De Aza, and left-hander John Koronka to minor league camp.

McPherson spent all of last season at Triple-A Albuquerque and led the minor leagues with 42 home runs. He batted .239 (11 for 46) with three doubles, a homer, five walks and 15 strikeouts in Grapefruit League play.

With McPherson, De Aza and Ryan out of the out of the picture, the Marlins will not have a left-handed bat off the bench until the switch-hitting Alfredo Amezaga is ready to come back from a sprained knee.

The moves bode well for Brett Carroll, who is the only reserve outfielder remaining in camp.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moneyball Redux
Slate talks to the man who revolutionized baseball.
By James Surowiecki
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 1:15 PM ET

Although Michael Lewis' new book Moneyball is about Billy Beane and his successful transformation of the Oakland A's from also-rans to pennant contenders, the book's unsung hero is a man named Bill James. Over the past 25 years, James' work on player evaluation, player development, and baseball strategy—which inaugurated the body of baseball research known as sabermetrics—has revolutionized baseball analysis and overturned decades' worth of conventional wisdom. For most of his career, though, James was the archetypical prophet in the wilderness. He had a dedicated following of readers—many of whom went on to do groundbreaking statistical work of their own. But baseball owners and general managers essentially ignored him. In the past five years, though, all this has changed. The success of the A's, thanks in no small part to Billy Beane's clever application of sabermetric insights, brought James new attention, and this year a major league team (the Boston Red Sox) hired him as a senior adviser. For the first time in his life, Bill James is no longer a baseball outsider. So, to accompany last week's Book Club about Moneyball, I asked James to talk about Lewis' book, the future of baseball analysis, and some sabermetric puzzles.

******

To begin with the obvious question, what did you think of Moneyball? More specifically, what did you think of the book's account of your own work and of sabermetrics in general?

I tried to skip over the parts about myself. I established a policy many years ago of trying not to read anything written about myself. Mr. Lewis was very kind to me, and I appreciate his kind words, but ... it is unhealthy to base one's self-image on what other people say about you, even if they are generous.

For a lot of people, Moneyball will be the first sustained discussion of sabermetric analysis they've read. Given that, what do you think are the most important ideas—about player evaluation, player development, and team strategy—to take away from the book?

Well, of course, the ideas that made the greatest impression on me are the ones that aren't mine. The stuff in there about how an offense actually works, the relative value of little ball to power baseball ... I hardly saw that stuff as I read through it, because I knew that 20 years ago. What made an impression on me was, for example, the notion that some teams were paying a lot of money for unique packages of skills, when they could easily replace each of the individual skills by looking for different packages, different combinations of skills. The "front office view" of sabermetrics was extremely interesting to me, because I am trying to step up to the challenge of actually participating in a major league organization.

Reliably projecting a player's future is central to the success of any organization that can't—or doesn't want to—pay market rates for already established players. What are the most important attributes to look at in projecting a player's future? Is the future of a young hitter more predictable than the future of a young pitcher?

Yes, hitters are far more predictable than pitchers. Putting it backwards, because backwards is how you could measure it, the "unpredictability" of a pitcher's career is 200 percent to 300 percent greater than the unpredictability of a hitter's career.

In projecting a pitcher, by far the largest consideration is his health. There are a hundred pitchers in the minor leagues today who are going to be superstars if they don't hurt their arms. The problem is, 98 of them are going to hurt their arms. At least 98 of them. Pitchers are unpredictable because it is very difficult to know who is going to get hurt and when they are going to get hurt.

One of your most important insights is the idea that minor league batting statistics predict major league batting performance as reliably as major league statistics do. There have been certain players—think of 1980s players like Mike Stenhouse, Doug Frobel, Brad Komminsk—who seemed as though they would be terrific hitters but never really made it in the big leagues. Did they not get enough of a shot? Are they outliers? Or is there such a thing as a Four A (too good for Triple A, not good enough for the majors) hitter?

Well, no, there is no such thing as a Four A hitter. That idea, as I understand it, envisions a "gap" between the majors and Triple A, with some players who fall into the gap. There is no such gap. In fact, there is a very significant overlap between the major leagues and Triple A. Many of the players in Triple A are better than many of the players in the majors.

The three examples you cite are three very different cases. Stenhouse never had 180 at bats in a major league season, so one would be hard pressed to argue that he got a full trial.

Frobel is a different [instance], in which I think there probably wasn't a real strong case that he was a good hitter to begin with. Frobel hit .251 at Buffalo in '81, hit .261 at Portland—Pacific Coast League—in 1982. We would expect, based on those seasons, that he would hit .200, .210 in the major leagues, with a pretty ghastly strikeout/walk ratio—which is what he did. Then he had the one good year at Hawaii in 1983, looked like a better hitter, and fooled some of us into thinking that he was better than he was. But ... it was one year, 378 at bats, of performance that isn't that impressive. It wasn't enough, in retrospect, to conclude that he was actually a good hitter.

[Then] there are some players whose level of skill changes—drops—between two adjacent seasons or between two seasons separated by two or three years, usually because of an injury but sometimes because of some other factor. Frank Thomas is not the same hitter now that he was a few years ago; Tino Martinez isn't; Mo Vaughn isn't.

When those "disconnects" happen between major league seasons, we ascribe them to sensible causes—aging, injury, conditioning, motivation, luck, etc. Comparing major league seasons to minor league seasons, occasionally you get the same disconnect. Sometimes a guy simply loses it before he establishes himself in the major leagues. That's what happened to Komminsk, I think—he shot his cannons in the minor leagues.

I'm trying to make two general points here. Point 1: When there is a disconnect between a player's major league and minor league records, some people want to ascribe this to some mystical difference between major league baseball and minor league baseball. Unless you can say specifically what that difference is, this is akin to magical thinking—asserting that there is some magical "major league ability," which is distinct from the ability to play baseball. The same sorts of disconnects happen routinely in the middle of major league careers—not often as a percentage, but they happen. Everybody who plays rotisserie baseball knows that some guys you paid big money for because they were good last year will stink this year. It is not necessary or helpful to create some magical "major league ability" to explain those occasional disconnects between major league and minor league seasons.

Second point ... the creation of new knowledge or new understanding does not make the people who possess that new knowledge invulnerable to old failings. I can't predict reliably who is going to be successful in the major leagues in 2004, even if we stick with the field of players who have been in the major leagues since 2000. I can't do that, because there are limits to my knowledge, and there are flaws in my implementation of what I know. The principle that minor league hitting stats predict major league hitting stats as well as major league hitting stats predict major league hitting stats can be perfectly true—and yet still not enable me or you to reliably predict who will be successful in the major leagues in 2004, because I still have limits to my knowledge and flaws in the way I try to implement that knowledge.

Within the sabermetric community, a pitcher's strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio has traditionally been taken as a good indicator of his overall performance. The A's starters in the last two years—and especially this year—have relatively mediocre strikeout rates but have done a very good job of keeping opponents from scoring runs. Is there anything surprising in this?

The question embodies four assumptions that I would be reluctant to sign on to. First, it assumes that statistics from a third of a season are meaningful. Second, it assumes that what is true of the individual pitcher must be true of the team. Third, the special importance that we attach to strikeouts has to do with projecting a pitcher into the future, not with evaluating the present. As to evaluating the present season ... the strikeouts are no more important than the walks, probably less. Fourth, the A's strikeout-to-walk ratio is better than the league average.

Right now, there are at least three teams—the Red Sox, the Blue Jays, and the A's—who appear to be employing a sabermetric methodology with some rigor. Even with more outlets for experimentation, are there still ideas you've proposed (either in terms of player evaluation or game strategy or organizational structure) that are still too radical for teams to consider?

Oh, certainly. Well ... it depends on what you mean by "proposed." I follow the maxim that you never start an argument you can't win. If an idea has no chance of gathering a following, I might sit on it rather than throwing it out to drown.

There's a general perception in baseball that players are now aging differently and continuing to perform better for longer (players like Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds being obvious examples). Do you think this is actually true, or is it simply a matter of a few extraordinary outliers?

It's just outliers. Randy Johnson and Clemens and Bonds are not only the obvious examples; they are the whole basis of the argument. Clemens and Johnson were born in 1962, 1963, and are still pitching well, and this focuses attention on them. But if you make a complete list of pitchers born in 1962 and 1963, their value peaked in 1990 and has declined by more than 80 percent. Other pitchers of the same age include Mark Gubicza, Doug Drabek, Jeff Montgomery, Randy Myers, Sid Fernandez, Danny Jackson, Chris Bosio, Mark Portugal, Jeff Brantley, Eric Plunk, Bill Wegman, Bobby Thigpen, Jose Guzman, Scott Bankhead, Greg Harris, Les Lancaster, Greg Cadaret, Todd Frohwirth, Jay Tibbs, John Dopson, Jeff Ballard, Charlie Kerfeld, Urbano Lugo, and Calvin Schiraldi. Have you seen Chris Bosio lately? He's a pitching coach somewhere. ... Looks like he's about 63.

It seems as if one of the places where teams might be able to carve out a competitive advantage for themselves is in the area of keeping pitchers healthy. The A's seem to think they've figured out how to do this. Do you think they have? If so—or if you think it's possible to adopt a program that would keep pitchers healthy—what would the key components of that program be?

It is an area infinitely capable of research, learning, and improvement. So if you're asking, "Are the A's at the finish line?" the answer is "Nowhere near." If you are asking if the A's are ahead of the rest of us, the answer is "Apparently they are."

To generalize wildly, defense has always seemed like the most difficult skill to capture statistically. Your Win Shares method seems to do a good job of describing players' defensive performance. But what do you think of the prospects of using play-by-play analysis to differentiate players' defensive skills? Is it possible to draw a meaningful separation between data and noise at the play-by-play level?

Yes, it is possible. But ... this is among my primary projects right now, and I don't want to talk about the sauce while it's still in the skillet.

What's the next frontier of baseball analysis that will be explored? What's the next frontier that should be explored?

Whether it is the next great frontier, who the hell knows, but one area that is open is the area of league decision-making—trying to think logically and clearly about how leagues should behave. Teams try to behave logically; players try to behave logically. Leagues, because they are formed of competing interest groups, often fail to address issues clearly, and thus arrive at illogical positions from the failure to address issues proactively. Simple example: It would have been far better for [professional] baseball to have provided bats for the players. At the start of each game, the umpire brings out 24 bats to be used by the two teams; these bats are the only bats which can be used in the game. There are several reasons why this is better, from the league's standpoint, than allowing the sporting goods companies to become pro bono suppliers of bats. But they didn't do it, simply because nobody was thinking about the issue from the standpoint of the league.

In the 1984 Baseball Abstract, you wrote: "When I started writing I thought if I proved X was a stupid thing to do that people would stop doing X. I was wrong." Twenty years later, at least a few teams have stopped doing X—and, just as important, started doing Y—because of your work, and the Red Sox are now paying you to tell them what they should be doing. Why did it take so long? How does it feel?

How does it feel ... good, but our vocabulary to describe feelings is limited. The other thing—I wouldn't write that anymore and can't really relate to it. The world is a cacophony of competing explanations. It takes time for people to focus on what you are saying, to sort it out of the thousands of other explanations. It was a part of the naive arrogance of youth to suppose that the world would react quickly to things that I learned, as if I were a doctor tapping the knees of the baseball universe. At 53, I am astonished at how much people react to what I write, rather than how little.

Did you learn anything about baseball from Moneyball?

Yes; I didn't have a real good idea of some of the things the A's were doing until I read the book. Actually—shouldn't admit this, I guess, but ... I had been working for several years on a book about baseball history, and thus, for several years, had not paid an awful lot of attention to what was happening in our own time.

I didn't, until reading the book, have any sense of who Billy Beane was, who J. P. Ricciardi was, or how they had been able to sustain the A's organization through difficult times. Some of those things I didn't know because I hadn't really been paying attention, and some of them I didn't know because, until the book came out, they hadn't been reported.

Finally, do you think most baseball teams will eventually adapt, and incorporate sabermetrics into the way they work on a day-to-day basis? Or will there always be a Pope to the sabermetrician's Galileo?

There will always be people who are ahead of the curve, and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve.

James Surowiecki writes the financial column at The New Yorker.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2084193/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Minor League Stats Really Mean
by David Luciani
Published April 11, 1998

It has been more than fifteen years now since Bill James first wrote that minor league data meant something and it could be understood. James told us all that inevitably, major league baseball teams will eventually have to accept that. Surprisingly, major league GMs have paid too little attention to James’ philosophy and are suffering as a result of it.

Quite simply, minor league statistics do mean something and perhaps the difficulty in accepting them has been because no one really knows how to read them. Even the so-called equivalencies that have become popular are useful but tend to over-reduce some columns and under-reduce others.

I thought that if minor league numbers do mean something (and they do), then it would follow that some categories would translate to major league ability more than others. Before looking for data, my hypothesis was that a batters’ home runs would drop but that stolen bases would drop less, except as a result of a likely drop in times on base. Walks, I thought would go down and strikeouts would go up. Intentional walks would virtually disappear, at least in a player’s first year or two.

In order to “solve” the problem, we took data on every player who appeared in the major leagues the past four seasons and compared what they did in the majors to what they did at any one of a number of minor league levels in the same season. What a player did at Triple-A a year before playing in the majors doesn’t tell us what we want to know. A player can improve or decline during that year. We wanted years in which the player played in both the minors and majors and played a significant part in both seasons.

We then adjusted data for the environment in which the player appeared. If a player played half of his major league games in Oakland and half of his minor league games in Edmonton, we needed an adjustment for that. For pitchers, we needed to look at the league itself. Was it a hitter’s league or a pitcher’s league?

We made adjustments for playing time so that a player who had 500 plate appearances at Triple-A but 100 plate appearances in the majors has the 500 plate appearances at Triple-A reduced accordingly to match the context. We also performed a probability analysis on it to determine whether we had enough significant data to draw a conclusion.

What we discovered was that for batters, anything as far as down as the most competitive Single-A leagues, such as the Florida State League, can include significant data. For pitchers, anything below Double-A did not have any consistency whatsoever in relation to major league performance. Excluding playing time, we then examined everything on a per plate appearance (for batters) or per batter faced basis (for pitchers). Here were the results for the Triple-A level, results we often use in making projections of recently-promoted minor league players:

AAA BATTERS (% TRANSLATION PER PLATE APPEARANCE)
AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB IB K SH SF SB CS
101% 83% 76% 53% 68% 80% 74% 89% 55% 125% 172% 88% 76% 79%

AAA PITCHERS (% TRANSLATION PER BATTER FACED)
G GS CG IP H R ER HR HB BB IB K W L SV
127% 76% 22% 91% 110% 134% 139% 157% 119% 125% 198% 75% 63% 111% 21%

Note how much more a batter is asked to bunt in the majors. The best Triple-A hitter is just another bench player in the majors and the frequency of sacrificing reflects that. The speed translates pretty well, essentially the same when you consider how less frequently the batter will be on base in the majors.

For pitchers, look at how little Triple-A saves mean. Your 25 save guy from Triple-A becomes a five save guy even if he faces the same number of batters in the majors.

Obviously, you can’t just translate statistics and assume that it tells you exactly how a player would have done in the majors. You need first-hand knowledge of the player and witnessing his talents in person is the ultimate test. However, this tool gives you an accurate forecasting tool that can be used at least as a starting point, in combination with first-hand knowledge, to achieve better results.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more!

Faith, Hope and Clarity

I find much much to be distressed about in the news of the times and the latest charlatans. But if I remain distressed, it is due to a combination of my failures. First, is the failure of faith and then is the failure to appreciate history.

An example to make my point: What if we were dropped into Poland in 1918? Would we be more of less pessimistic than the average U.S. citizen today? If you were to have followed the local blogs at the time, you would probably have been informed of the following through the years:

• 1918 - Partitioned for 123 years among her three predatory neighbors--Russia, Prussia and Austria--the newly resurrected Polish Second Republic came into existence following WWI.
• Reborn Poland faced a host of daunting challenges: extensive war damage, a ravaged economy, a population one-third composed of wary national minorities, an economy largely under control of German industrial interests, and a need to reintegrate the three zones that had been forcibly kept apart during the era of partition.
• 1919 - Treaty of Versailles settled the German-Polish borders in the Baltic region.
• 1919 - The Polish-Soviet war began.
• May 1920 - Poland gained its first major military victory since the battle of Vienna in 1683 and a conquering hero, Marshall Pilsudski.
• 1921 - Poland adopted a constitution designed as a republic, modeled after the French Third Republic, vesting most authority in the legislature. The postwar Polish parliamentary system proved unstable and erratic, much like that of the French Third Republic.
• May 1926 - Piłsudski assumed power in a Coup d'État. For the next decade, he dominated Polish affairs as strongman of a generally popular centrist regime.
• The center of Poland's postwar foreign policy was a political and military alliance with France, which guaranteed Poland's independence and territorial integrity.
• 1932 - Poland signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets.
• 1934 - Poland concluded another pact, with Germany's new Nazi government, subsequently rejecting French proposals for a security pact directed against Germany, as it involved no guarantee of Poland's eastern frontier with the Soviet Union.
• September 1939 - Germany invaded Poland.

Here's what we would likely have not been aware of.

• August 1905 - Helena Kowalska was born in Glogowiec, a small villiage near Lodz.
• 1912 - Kowalska heard a voice in her soul calling her to a more perfect way of life.
• 1920 - Kowalska made her parents aware of desire to enter into the convent.
• May 1920 - Karol Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, a small town near Krakow.
• August 1925 - Kowalska applied for the second time to the Congregation of The Sister’s of Our Lady of Mercy and was accepted.
• April 1926 - Kowalska received her habit and her name in religion, Sister Mary Faustina.
• April 1929 - Karol Wojtyla's mother died.
• February 1931 - Sister Faustina had a vision of the Lord.
• December 1932 - Wojtyla's older brother Edmund, a doctor, contracted scarlet fever from one of his patients and died within five days. Edmund Wojtyla was 26 and Karol's hero.
• June 1934 - The Image of Divine Mercy was completed by artist E. Kazimierowski under the guidance of Sister Faustina.
• April 1938 - Sister Faustina's superiors decide to send her to the hospital in Pradnik. She is suffering from asthma and tuberculosis.
• Summer 1938 - Karol Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at the Jagiellonian University.
• October 1938 - Sister Mary Faustina dies.
• 1939 - Nazi German occupation forces closed the Jagiellonian University. All able-bodied males were required to work.
• 1940 - Wojtyła begins working various jobs--including a manual laborer in a limestone quarry--to avoid being deported to Germany.
• February 1941 - Karol Wojtyla Senior died. The son had lost his entire family before he turned 21 and was greatly bothered that he had not been present for any of the deaths. He would later reminisce, "I never felt so alone."
• October 1942 - Wojtyla applies for the priesthood.

Which of the above sets of events do you think matter most today?

One final event:

• April 2000 - Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska was canonized at St. Peter's in Rome, Pope John Paul II presiding.

Lodz PL and Krakow PL are 188 kilometers apart [or about 117 miles], which is about the same distance between Miami and Ft Myers. So next time your faith is running low, just drive towards Ft Myers in silence and contemplate the saintly possibilities.

Read more!