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Absent answers, don't judge Skaggs
Mike Trout (in blue T-shirt, front) and the Angels paid a final tribute to Tyler Skaggs after blowing out the Mariners in a combined no-hitter in their first game home following Skaggs's unexpected death. The toxicology report now raises even more questions.
No, I don't know yet what delivered Tyler Skaggs into the clutch of opioids, whether a one-time or more-than-once deliverance. And neither do you. But that doesn't stop people from drawing conclusions, and it doesn't stop some of those conclusions ranging from the dismissive to the ridiculous all the way back to the obscene.
The prospect of the 27-year-old Skaggs merely being reckless in taking even once doses of fetanyl and oxycodone and maybe washing them down at once with a stiff drink is a prospect not to have been wished in the hurricane of grief his death whipped up all around baseball in early July.
"Now, we are faced with our own emotions," writes USA Today baseball columnist Bob Nightengale, "knowing the death wasn't an act of God or a suicide, but self-induced by the careless use of pain killers." Remember that "careless" doesn't mean reckless, exclusively.
We're also faced with asking honestly whether Skaggs acted entirely on his own, as the Angels arrived in Texas for a pre-All Star break set against the Rangers, or whether he was prompted persuasively enough by someone who thought he was doing Skaggs a pain management favour.
Skaggs's family wants to know for dead last certain. They've hired Texas attorney Rusty Hardin to help them know. "We are heartbroken to learn that the passing of our beloved Tyler was the result of a combination of dangerous drugs and alcohol,'' they said in a formal statement. "That is completely out of character for someone who worked so hard to become a Major League Baseball player and had a very promising future in the game he loved so much."
The Angels want to know, too. Suspicions point as I referred on Friday, toward a so far unidentified Angels employee the family and perhaps the team itself thinks or fears had a hand in Skaggs's demise, perhaps by supplying him fetanyl and oxycodone through other than lawful or proper medical means.
"Everyone's searching for facts, and everyone within the organization wants facts,'' said general manager Billy Eppler at a press session before the Angels played the Red Sox Friday night. "Which is why we are actively cooperating with an investigation. It kind of goes without saying that I cannot comment more on the situation until the police conclude their investigation."
Asked whether the employee the Skaggs family suspects is still with the team, Eppler wouldn't answer. "I'm sorry," the GM replied. "I really understand your asking that question, but again, it's an active investigation." Eppler said only that the Angels have told investigators everything they know. Which may or may not yet be anything substantial. Thus the proverbial thickening of the plot.
The least-kept secret in professional sports is that performing athletes are not always the best tended alive by their teams or supervising organisations when it comes to injuries or illnesses. For too many decades sports medicine involved the fastest remedy available to get the player back onto the field, the court, the course, as fast as possible.
And for too many of the same decades athletes took to their own measures of desperation to get back to the field, the court, the course, as soon as they could, within what they considered reason, the better to keep someone else from taking their jobs when they knew in their heart of hearts that there was always someone else behind them just itching for the chance.
It was one thing, for example, to know that there were enough baseball players dabbling in actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances because they were led somehow to believe the dabbling might help them inflate their performance papers. But the arguable Joe Valachi of the actual or alleged PEDs, the late third baseman Ken Caminiti, stepped forth after his career ended to say it started for him not out of any statistical interest but out of desperation to escape the deep pain of a 1996 shoulder injury.
Caminiti surely wasn't alone in turning that way when few to none of his team's medical personnel seemed able to provide such relief. To name another somewhat notorious example, longtime Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte is on record as saying he took to a brief usage of human growth hormone because his continuing elbow pain finally drove him mad enough to give it a try.
Skaggs had an injury history. After the Diamondbacks traded him back to the Angels for 2014 (he'd previously gone to the Snakes with current Nationals pitcher Patrick Corbin in a deal making pitcher Dan Haren an Angel), Skaggs pitched in eighteen games before his elbow sent him to Tommy John surgery, causing him to miss the entire 2015 season.
He returned to make ten 2016 starts, then missed 98 days in 2017 with a strained oblique. In 2018, Skaggs opened with sixteen starts and a 2.64 ERA before his adductor muscle gave out and cost him three months. And this year, he sprained his left ankle after making three season-opening starts. costing him most of April.
"[A] normally developed, well-nourished and well-hydrated large build adult," the toxicology report described him. Except that it couldn't determine whether or to what extend he remained in any pain. Physical or otherwise. That, too, would be something both his family and the Angels should want to know.
Skaggs otherwise was known as a likeable fellow who was freshly married when spring training began this year and had everything else for which to live. He loved his young wife, Carli; he loved his teammates; he loved the game. The hurricane of grief his death provoked around baseball was real.
So were the emotions when, after the Rangers kindly canceled the game the day Skaggs died, they re-convened with Skaggs's uniform number 45 in the dirt behind the pitching rubber in the Angels's uniform font style. And, when the Angels beat them, 9-5.
And, especially, when the Angels returned home, the players fashioned a loving pre-game tribute including Skaggs's mother throwing out a ceremonial first pitch, before the Angels hit the field one and all wearing Skaggs jerseys and beat the Mariners in a combined no-hitter and an 11-0 blowout. Paced by Skaggs's closest friend and team leader Mike Trout blowing the lid off all emotion with a two-run homer in the first inning.
And, after the game, when Trout and his fellow Angels covered the entire pitching mound except for the number 45 behind the rubber with the Skaggs jerseys they wore all game long.
The toxicology report wasn't close to completion that night. Now that it is, the questions continue as only too many seem to think they have the answers. Nightengale isolates several of the key questions. Did Skaggs slip somehow into drug addiction? Did anyone know to the extent that they may carry a degree of guilt for lack of previous intervention? Did something appear to indicate such a problem?
But Nightengale doesn't stop there. Appropriately. "This was a young main in pain. Perhaps more physical than even the doctors and trainers knew. Maybe more mental than even any team therapist knew," he writes. "It will be a bigger tragedy if we never understand why. Prescription painkillers are a scourge in this country, and professional sports—with catastrophic injuries and the expectation to play through the pain they cause—are ripe for potential abuse."
This wasn't Cubs second baseman Ken Hubbs, who'd only taken up flying a few months earlier, flying his single-engine Cessna propeller airplane over Utah and crashing to his death in spring 1964, running into an atmospheric disturbance he was probably too inexperienced to navigate successfully. The tragic irony: Hubbs took up flying to conquer his fear of it.
This wasn't Yankee legend Thurman Munson, who'd bought a sophisticated Cessna Citation jet the better to spend more time with his wife and children during the season when the Yankee schedule allowed, and crashed at an airport near his Ohio home while practising evening landings. Munson was still well short of full qualification to handle the complex jet entirely on his own.
This wasn't the Indians' spring training boat crash of 1993. In which relief pitchers Tim Olin and Steve Crews were killed when their off-day boating with Crews at the wheel ended with a crash into a dock, killing Crews at once, with Olin dying the next day and pitching teammate Bob Ojeda suffering a severed scalp. Crews was considered legally drunk at the time of the crash.
This wasn't Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez, as effervescent a young player as you ever saw, around whom the Marlins only thought they'd build for seasons to follow. He and two friends drank somewhat copiously before boarding his 32-foot boat, Kaught Looking, and with Fernandez at the wheel crashed a jetty killing all three. Fernandez's estate faces litigation from the families of the other two passengers; Fernandez's attorney argues the pitcher was framed in the crash investigation.
This wasn't Oscar Taveras, the young Cardinal who electrified the game in his postseason debut, hitting a pinch homer in the 2014 National League division series against the Dodgers. (He'd also hit one out in his first regular-season major league game that year.) He was killed with his girlfriend a month later when his Camaro ran off a wet road in their native Dominican Republic. Driving six times the legal limit for drunk driving, perhaps. Seven years after another Cardinal, pitcher Josh Hancock, died in a DUI crash.
On the other hand, Ojeda needed and received copious therapy to relieve him of suicidal thoughts following that ferocious case of survivor's guilt. And Rays minor league pitcher Blake Bivens will need about a hundred times that to survive the murder of his wife, baby son, and mother-in-law last week, for which his teenage brother-in-law has been charged.
Hubbs and Munson died from inexperience. Crews, Fernandez, and Taveras could be argued to have died irresponsibly and likewise causing others' deaths. But we don't know yet what led Skaggs to the Elysian Fields. Was it irresponsibility? Did he battle heretofore unsuspected and/or undetected drug addiction or even mental illness to even a small degree? Did he have physical pain greater than his known baseball injuries?
One dismisses the kind of reckless thinking that prompts the likes of one particularly witless Tweeter who dismisses Skaggs as a junkie. Ignorant of the point that "junkie" customarily applies to heroin addicts, heroin being nicknamed "junk" for a very long time.
Absent any final answers otherwise, it's wise not to assume the judges' robes. As if even wisdom would prevent that from happening, anyway.
Posted in Baseball | Tagged fetanyl, Los Angeles Angels, oxycodone, Tyler Skaggs | Leave a reply
One pitcher's death and another's murderous bereavement
The Angels' Tyler Skaggs's (left) painkiller-related death raises a suspicion or three; murder robbed Rays minor league reliever Blake Bivens (right) of his wife, infant son, and mother-in-law. Bivens should be just as worthy of our sympathy and perhaps a degree or three more . . .
Fetanyl is a synthetic pain reliever usually though not exclusively administered for relief in cancer patients. Oxycodone, perhaps the most infamous among opioid pain relievers, is prescribed normally for those who need long-term, around-the-clock pain relief.
The Tarrant County (Texas) medical examiner says both plus alcohol were in Tyler Skaggs's system the night he died unexpectedly on 1 July. "[A]lcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone intoxication with terminal aspiration of gastric contents," the medical examiner's report is quoted as saying.
That clinical language translates to the 27-year-old Angels' lefthander vomiting and choking on it under the influence in his sleep.
Skaggs's death provoked a hurricane of grief around baseball that seemed exacerbated when the Rangers, whom the Angels were in town to play, not only canceled that night's game out of respect to the Angels but put Skaggs's uniform number, 45, in the Angels' uniform lettering style, behind the pitching rubber the following night, before the Angels beat them 9-4.
And when the Angels returned home from that road trip, they kicked off their first homestand since Skaggs's death with a staggering 13-0 combined no-hitter against the Mariners that electrified its own sport and others, from Taylor Cole pitching two and Felix Pena pitching the final seven innings to Mike Trout himself accounting for about half the Angels' destruction, his share only beginning with a two-run homer into the Angel Stadium center field rocks in the bottom of the first.
Assorted players around baseball have scratched their own little tributes to Skaggs since, including many scrawling his number 45 onto their game hats. The sole admirable sight on the otherwise execrable black (for visiting teams) and white (for home teams) Players' Weekend uniforms—which made the games resemble contests between Mad's memorably "Spy vs. Spy" strips—was the circular black patch with 45 in white in the middle on every sleeve.
We'll know soon enough, I'm very certain, as to just why Skaggs needed to take fetanyl and oxycodone. There's already an ugly rumour that an Angels employee may have had a hand in Skaggs's death; Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Shaikin says MLB will investigate the claim. And Skaggs's family has hired a Texas attorney to investigate for themselves.
Unless there was foul play of the type Tarrant County's police couldn't determine, or unless Skaggs suffered a medical condition about which none seems to have been aware, his is only slightly less senseless a death than what was done to the family of Rays minor league relief pitcher Blake Bivens.
Bivens's wife, Emily; their year-old son, Cullen; and, his mother-in-law, Joan Jefferson Bernard, were shot to death Tuesday morning. Emily and Cullen Bivens were found dead inside Mrs. Bernard's Keeling, Virginia home; Mrs. Bernard was found dead in the driveway. Bivens's teenage brother-in-law, Matthew Bernard, is in custody charged with the crimes.
A neighbour told police Bernard came to her door and punched her in the arm before she heard subsequent gunshots at Mrs. Bernard's home. Investigators found shell casings from a 30-30 rifle near the victims' bodies; Bernard was arrested naked and trembling up the road after being found in a nearby wooded area. He was jogging in a circle and refused to stop at first even despite being pepper-sprayed by one officer; when he tried to choke another neighbour, police finally subdued the naked Bernard.
"My life as I knew it was destroyed," said Bivens, a righthanded pitcher with a 4-0 won-lost record and a 3.98 earned run average but a proneness to walks for the Montgomery Biscuits (AA) this season, in an Instagram post Thursday. "The pain my family and I feel is unbearable and cannot be put into words."
The stricken reliever tried anyway.
He called his wife the one "who made me into the man I am today and you loved me with all of my flaws." He said of his little son, "I can't breathe without you here. I finally understood what love was when you were born and I would have done anything for you." And, he said of his mother-in-law, "You loved your family more than anyone I've ever seen. You raised the most wonderful girl in the world. I'm so glad y'all are still together."
It says nothing against Blake Bivens that an established major league pitcher freshly married and unexpectedly dead at 27 provoked a wider, deeper choke of game-wide grief than a six-year minor league pitcher having not even a single cup of major league coffee whose wife, infant child, and mother-in-law were murdered.
But it's impossible not to notice that Skaggs left a loving wife behind while Bivens was robbed grotesquely of his. Both are to mourn a little more deeply.
Posted in Baseball | Tagged Blake Bivens, Los Angeles Angels, Montgomery Biscuits, Tampa Bay Rays, Tyler Skaggs | 1 Reply
"You can't have one foot in one camp and one foot in the other."
David Ross, aboard Anthony Rizzo's shoulder after the Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Today Ross broadcasts for ESPN . . . and is also paid to advise Cubs president Theo Epstein. Conflict of interest?
The Mets and the Astros (as the Colt .45s) were born in 1962. In the same year, a future Pulitzer Prize winner for distinguished commentary offered a wry observation he couldn't have known would describe even more acutely the American atmosphere of 22 years after his death.
"It is impossible for a man who has enjoyed the taste of our beer and the flavour of our politics to decide which has gone more sour in his lifetime," wrote Murray Kempton, introducing a section of his anthology of newspaper and other essays, America Comes of Middle Age.
The flavour of our politics has always included partisans on any side or from within any political camp who assume those delivering, observing, or analysing news they simply don't like are employed, gainfully or otherwise, by one or another opposing campaign or office holder.
And there have been reporters and editorialists every so often caught behaving and performing as though they are employed formally if furtively by political campaigns to which they are personally sympathetic.
I raise the foregoing in part from personal experience and in part from an intriguing excursion in The Athletic this morning that examines a trend not necessarily new but necessarily troublesome.
My adult life has included about 31 years as a professional journalist, from small regional daily newspapers to small regional daily news radio (as an anchor/reporter), from trade journalism to the station from which I've practised in the past decade as a free-lance baseball writer for a vast audience, conservatively speaking, of three.
I've never been employed, formally, gainfully or otherwise, by any baseball organisation including a baseball team. Nor, in my earlier career, was I ever paid for any particular work by any political party, or by any organisation inclined to promote politics, law enforcement, education, or other matters I covered as a reporter and, yes, occasional columnist.
You'd have to be the title character of the Who's legendary Tommy (you know: deaf, dumb, and blind—oops! today we say hearing-, speech-, and vision-impaired) to doubt such things exist, of course. But no such people ever approached me that way. (Some were more inclined to approach me for an execution: my own.) If they had, I would have told them politely but firmly where they could plant such a request, usually into a certain part of their ample anatomies.
I've also dealt with readers and listeners who presumed I was so paid, not because they questioned the validity or the diligence of my work, but because they simply disagreed with where it went and what it disclosed. I have no issue with disagreement, but I have every issue with the presumption that someone with a particular formal agenda paid me to report or think one way or another.
As a baseball writer here and elsewhere, and at least four other publications have published my work in the past several years, I'm employed strictly by myself or by those who chose to publish me. No major or minor league baseball team has ever paid me to write or think anything. And I'm reasonably confident that no major or minor league baseball team might ever be foolish enough do so.
The Athletic discussed those whom the public knows to be baseball broadcasters or reporters who are not strictly former baseball players but who also happen to be employed, formally, gainfully, or otherwise, by a few baseball teams. The magazine seems uncertain whether to be amused or alarmed. It's an uncertainty about which I'm certain myself that it should seem alarming enough.
Consider Alex Rodriguez and Jessica Mendoza. Rodriguez is a retired player who has since carved a reputation as a candid analyst for ESPN since joining them last year, but who was also employed as a Yankee advisor from the moment he took his uniform off for the final time until, by mutual assent, he stopped receiving Yankee paychecks quietly last winter.
Rodriguez's relationship with the Yankees is no longer an employee-employer but an informal one, hence his presence when the Yankees flew to London to play the Red Sox there this season, but he still has a relationship with the team. Mendoza is also an ESPN commentator—and a paid advisor to the crosstown Mets. Which presented a ticklish hour or two during the run-up to this year's new single mid-season trading deadline.
Because, on one Sunday Night Baseball program, Rodriguez and Mendoza addressed that coming deadline, and Rodriguez asked Mendoza frankly whom the Yankees should have on their wish list, to which Mendoza replied without skipping the proverbial beat, "Noah Syndergaard," the Mets' righthanded pitcher who was only thought to be the prize nugget on the trading floor.
"So began an impromptu game of Let's Make a Deal," wrote The Athletic's Marc Carig, "one that illustrated an issue that has raised concerns within clubhouses and front offices alike . . . By uttering Syndergaard's name on the air, [Mendoza] indirectly revealed for millions of viewers that her team had put the pitcher on the block, the type of acknowledgment that is typically not made public."
Consider. Mendoza has broadcast Mets games against assorted opponents with deep access to both sides' clubhouses, as well as being "involved in various facets of the front office operation," as Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen indicted she'd be when he hired her as an advisor this spring.
When most baseball fans last saw David Ross, he basked in the mammoth party around the Cubs' 2016 World Series triumph, to which he'd contributed especially a one-out home run in Game Seven's top of the sixth, as well as a very viral on-camera dugout bid to ease the jitters of Cubs third base star Anthony Rizzo.
Like Mendoza, Ross is an ESPN broadcaster today. He's also on the Cubs' payroll as an advisor to president Theo Epstein, a role that includes scouting to the extent that Grandpa Rossy (as he was known affectionately by his fellow Cubs and by Cub fans alike) was involved directly when the Cubs signed protracted free-agent relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel this summer.
"It wouldn't be unusual," Carig noted properly, "for Ross' duties to take him to games involving division rivals such as the Cardinals and Brewers." If you're thinking to yourself that the conflict-of-interest potential is rather vast, be advised, as Carig notes further, that that potential seems to divide teams.
Carig observed Braves manager Brian Snitker unconcerned about Mendoza interviewing him in her ESPN capacity even while knowing she's a paid Mets advisor; and, Cardinals manager Mike Schildt gives Ross the benefit of the doubt even though he's an ESPN commentator on the one hand and a Cubs advisor on the other. "Listen," Schildt told Carig, "if ESPN trusts [Ross] to be able to do his job appropriately, then there's no reason for me to question that."
But Carig also noted that Mendoza told an ESPN conference call with reporters "that managers and players were already cautious with members of the media when speaking on the record, and that 'teams that I've been around . . . they would probably have the same concern with whatever information they give me, whether it be me working for the Mets or me working for the media'."
Adam Jones, the longtime Oriole favourite now a Diamondbacks outfielder, doesn't shy away from the prospect of a conflict of interest arising, though Carig didn't exactly phrase it that way. "One hundred percent there's potential there, because you're going on air and you're talking baseball," he told Carig.
"But [Jones] also believes that both Mendoza and Ross bring the kind of personality and insights that should be featured during broadcasts. 'I think it's good for the game,' Jones said. 'I see no harm in it'." Note the order in which Carig mentioned personality and insight. One of the greatest knocks against turning former players into broadcasters and analysts has been that they're engaged as personalities first and game callers or analysts second.
The legendary broadcaster Red Barber was known to have respected Phil Rizzuto because the former Yankee shortstop, hired as a broadcaster, approached Barber at once to teach him the craft. Barber was also repulsed by another former player, Joe Garagiola, who thought his natural locquacity was qualifier enough. On the flip side, Sandy Koufax proved a deft in-game analyst for NBC until he gave it up after five years, while chafing that his broadcast partners wanted him to talk more and more about his least favourite subject—himself.
Decades ago there were those in the sports press who suspected one or another colleague was one or another team's employee in everything but name. And even before the larger advent of players turned broadcasters, teams had their tendencies to reject the idea that their broadcasters could be and often enough were more than just team cheerleaders. Barber himself learned the hard way after a little over a decade as a Yankee broadcaster following his legendary term with the Dodgers.
When the Yankees headed toward the first dead-last standings finish in their franchise history, in September 1966, Barber called a Yankee home game in which the paid attendance was announced in the ballpark itself as 413. He ordered a camera pan of the empty park, but the camera crew refused. So Barber told his viewers, "I don't know what the paid attendance is today, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game."
Oops. One of the 413 was Michael Burke, the CBS executive who'd just been named the Yankee team president. (CBS bought the Yankees controversially in 1964.) It happened to be Burke's first visit to a live Yankee game. Burke was informed of Barber's remark and called Barber to a breakfast meeting at which he told Barber, essentially, "You're fired."
Around the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early to mid-1950s there were those who believed that the acerbic New York Daily News sportswriting legend Dick Young—who did kind of stop on the proverbial dime, turning from criticising Dodger management in the Branch Rickey era to all but canonising it by comparison as the Walter O'Malley era began—did so because he was being fed if not paid by the Dodger front office.
Young arguably brought what came to be called the New Journalism to baseball writing, observing and writing frankly about player, manager, and front office flaws in ways previously unknown in sportswriting. It's not that his technique was novelistic, as the actual New Journalism came to be, but his penchant for calling it exactly as he saw and heard it helped seed the New Journalism approach.
Eventually enshrined in the Hall of Fame as a J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner, Young also rejected the accusations that he'd become a Dodger front office promoter, though his colleagues in the press box were never entirely certain. Roger Kahn, eventual author of The Boys of Summer but the Dodger beat writer for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1952-54, once spoke for those who were:
[Walter] O'Malley hadn't planned and schemed all his life so that Dick Young would call him a bastard five days a week in the Daily News, so when he took over he put Emile J. "Buzzie" Bavasi in charge of Dick Young. I once said to Fresco Thompson in the Dodger front office, "I guess one of the first things Walter wanted was to get the Daily News and Young off their neck." He said, "One of the first things? It was the first thing.
And so Bavasi captured Young, and he was in the Dodger hip pocket all the time, until it became clear that the Dodgers were going to leave [for Los Angeles]. The Daily News was to the Dodgers what the Osservatore Romano was to the Vatican. It gave the Dodger line. Young gave the Dodger line. The guys he liked were the guys management liked. The News became a Bavasi-O'Malley house organ.
"If you put in the time, if you're there, you'll get things that other guys don't get," Young once said in his defense, as quoted in Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock.
So the guys who weren't there would always look for the crutch, and they'd say I was getting special treatment. I wasn't. Buzzie himself said to the other guys, "You come around, and I'll tell you the same thing." He wasn't going to call them up and tell them. And that applies today. You get stories by working. There's no substitute.
The kind of actual or alleged conflict of interest suspected of Young—who didn't exactly deny that he was still giving the official Dodger front office line—existed when the print press still generally dominated news and sports, when print journalists weren't former ballplayers, and not necessarily in New York alone.
Can the prospect of conflicts of interest be dismissed entirely, in today's long-enough-entrenched community of former ballplayers turned broadcast game callers, analysts, and commentators, while at least some of them are also employed formally by baseball teams?
Longtime Columbia University journalism professor Sandy Padwe, who once consulted for the ESPN documentary series Outside the Lines, said no. "You can't have one foot in one camp and one foot in the other," Padwe told Carig. "It's just not right." He'll get no disagreement from State University of New York media professor Brian Moritz. "Speaking strictly journalistically, that's a pretty strict conflict of interest," he told Carig. "It's very cut and dry on the first glance of it. You shouldn't be paid by one of the teams that you're covering."
But that begs the question of the ex-players-turned-broadcasters actually being precisely defined journalists. To which Bob Ley, the now-retired longtime Outside the Lines host, said, plainly, "Just because you're sitting behind a microphone broadcasting a game does not make you a journalist. It makes you a broadcaster."
As often as not, though, the best team broadcasters become journalists simply by doing; Barber and his protege Vin Scully were only the most fabled examples. But they were usually not employed as paid team advisors, either. An early-season MLB memo cited by Carig showed Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez and Jim Thome, former manager Terry Collins, and former players Ryan Dempster, Jim Kaat, David Ortiz, Dan Plesac, Nick Swisher, and Rick Sutcliffe also employed dually as network broadcasters and paid team advisors.
Put to one side that paranoia is as old a baseball presence as simple on-the-field sign stealing by baserunners or coaches, the conflict risk is too large no matter how diligently the broadcasters-while-team-advisors work to separate them. The Mets ended up not trading Noah Syndergaard, after all. But they might have wanted to, and perhaps working it out of the public eye would have gotten them a great return if they did it.
We'll never know when it comes to this year, of course. But who's to say when the next broadcaster/journalist who happens also to be paid as any team's advisor will drop that kind of bomb and impact something like a trade deadline one way or the other?
Proper journalists are subdivided by their particular tasks. Reporters report (we prefer to presume); analysts analyse; editorialists, columnists, and commentators, depending on your point of view, pronounce or pontificate. But if we're paid by one or another subject to report, analyse, editorialise, or comment on behalf of one or another outcome, the conflict of interest is about as obscure as a hurricane.
If you're watching a baseball game or observing the doings and undoings of a team away from the playing field, you prefer to believe that everything is straightforward and fair, but you know in your heart that boys will be boys and not everything proves such. Whether it was Leo Durocher's then-high-tech sign stealing scheme to effect a dramatic 1951 pennant race comeback, or the Cardinals caught dead to right hacking into the Astros' computer database three years ago.
But that doesn't mean you should look the other way, either, when there is a real conflict of interest potential when you watch a game and listen to the play-by-play and the in-game analyses. "Broadcasters working for teams are just another reason for caution," Carig wrote. "As always in baseball, the guard is up." Within reason, appropriately.
Posted in Baseball | Tagged baseball broadcasting, baseball journalism, conflict of interest, David Ross, Dick Young, Jessica Mendoza, Red Barber | Leave a reply
Posted in Baseball | Tagged Giovanny Gallegos, Jack Flaherty, Kolten Wong, National League Central, St. Louis Cardinals | Leave a reply
Rickey don't lose those numbers
Hiring Allan Roth (right) as MLB's first full-time (and then some) team statistician in 1947 may remain Branch Rickey's least appreciated baseball innovation.
The good news: I looked forward to appearing on a Sunday podcast for which the subject was to be Branch Rickey. The bad news: I didn't get a chance to discuss the one thing about Rickey that nobody, seemingly, thinks about whenever his name arises in most baseball discourse. The mere mention of it inspires a sub-topic change faster than you'd try to elude a visible virus; the nostalgist wishes merely to hasten back to reminiscence, the troglodyte contingent wishes you quartered without drawing first.
Understood: Say "Branch Rickey" and the usual first response is "Jackie Robinson," and that's exactly the way it should be. After decades of hoping to do so, but lacking the opportunity so long as Kenesaw Mountain Landis dictated baseball, Rickey ended a wrong with an irrevocable right and chose the absolute right player to do it. If "Jackie Robinson" isn't your first response to "Branch Rickey," the lacking is yours, not theirs.
Understood further: If "the farm system" isn't your second response to "Branch Rickey," take a remedial crash course in elementary baseball history. Even the most free agency-conscious teams in baseball today still believe in their farm systems, even if not all of them operate them as acutely or with foresight as they should. Both the rich talent pool mined since Robinson plus the farm system's continued if oft-compromised operation are Rickey legacies not to be dismissed.
If "sabermetrics" or "analytics" isn't your third response . . . Aw, jeez, not that you-know-what again! I hear you shuddering. Hear me out.
Like it or not, however shallow or deep anyone looks, statistics are the life blood of baseball. Long before anyone spoke of sabermetrics, baseball fans obsessed over baseball numbers as much as over Hall of Fame prospects. Simple (and often misleading or short on vision) though they were, baseball cards did not live by handsome face pictures alone.
For better or worse, Rickey was as obsessed with numbers and their meanings as with anything else about the game he loved and changed. And, like almost anything upon which he cast his bushy-browed eyes, Rickey dove right into the deep end of the pool, when a Canadian-born, thirty-year-old number cruncher with a passion for tabulating sports statistics, baseball in particular, convinced the Mahatma (only one of Rickey's nicknames) to hire him.
The hire was Allan Roth, who'd grown up loving baseball, hockey, and figuring out stats for both, before he was forced to forget his college plans when family issues compelled him to hire as a salesman. After trying but failing to get then-Dodgers president Larry MacPhail to hire him, Roth met then-National Hockey League president Frank Calder and got a job with that league. Enter World War II and a stint in Canada's Army to interrupt Roth's statistical career.
The Canadian Army leaned on his statistical analyses before discharging him in 1944, upon his diagnosis of epilepsy. Roth cast his eye upon the Dodgers again, with MacPhail long gone and Rickey running the Bums since. When a first meeting between the two went like "a disaster," according to Tom Cronin of Statliners, Roth managed to tell Rickey he wanted "only ten minutes of your undivided attention."
Told to give Rickey's assistant a detailed paper, Roth obeyed. As Roth's Society for American Baseball Research biographer Andy McCue wrote, "Some of these were standard, but others, such as where the ball was hit and the count it was hit on, hadn't been compiled regularly."
Roth also proposed to break the statistics down into various categories that would reveal tendencies which the front office and the manager could use to win ballgames. Breakdowns such as performance against left-handers and right-handers, in day games versus night games, in the various ballparks, in situations with runners in scoring position, are all mundane to us now. But in Roth's time, they were rarely compiled or used, and never part of the public discussion. The letter was intriguing enough to get a meeting with a still-skeptical Rickey.
It got Roth a second direct shot with the Mahatma: "The second meeting was the opposite of the first. Roth later stated that Rickey was intrigued with some of his ideas during the meeting, especially on how RBI's are overrated." This time, Rickey was more than intrigued. Once Roth solved his visa problems, and on the same day Jackie Robinson premiered with the Dodgers, Rickey finally hired Roth to be the Dodgers' statistician, the first full-time such man in major league baseball.
Roth would do the job for eighteen years, recording every pitch the Dodgers threw, every swing they took, every base they reached or advanced, every ball they fielded. He was once somewhat renowned (and often mocked) for tabulating those on copious sheets of graph paper, apparently his favourite charting device.
Taking as long as five hours after each game to break down the game and the players, Roth also spent copious off-season time digging deeper into what we know long since as matchups, best- and worst-count performances, at home and on the road. He also developed a fine sense of humor about it; The Boys of Summer author Roger Kahn once credited Roth with inventing the game Silly Records. Except that some of those silly records weren't as silly or meaningless as they probably sounded then.
Until he was pressured into selling his percentage of the Dodgers to Walter O'Malley in 1950, Rickey paid close enough attention to Roth's charts and graphs to draw plenty of conclusions of his own in addition to what Roth himself enunciated. And in 1954, as if hiring Roth at all hadn't been heresy enough, Rickey wrote and Life published "Goodbye to Some Old Baseball Ideas," much of which was mulcted from Roth's work. Including:
Batting average is only a partial means of determining a man's effectiveness on offense.
The ability to get on base, or On-Base Average, is both vital and measurable.
The correlation shows that OBA went hand in glove with runs scored.
The next measurable quantity is Extra base power . . . My own formula computing power . . . is called isolated power, is the number of extra bases over and above singles in relation to total number of hits.
Runs batted in? A misleading statistic.
Fielding averages? Useless as a yard stick.
As Brian Kenny wrote, in Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution, Rickey "didn't just say, 'Hey, ever wonder why the Dodgers have been kicking your ass for the last eight years? Would you like to know the best way of quantifying talent and production? Oh, shoot, here ya go!'" Today's sabermetricians were children when Rickey (and Roth) wrote the Life piece; baseball's lords and princelings were all too ready to take it with a pillar of salt when not laughing hysterically over the Mahatma's impudence.
The Dodgers kicked the National League's ass for most of the rest of their Brooklyn life (the Boys of Summer were, after all, Rickey teams), and the Pirates finished in 1960 what Rickey began from 1951-55. (The nucleus of that world champion was Rickey's nucleus: Vernon Law, Elroy Face, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Groat, and a talented minor leaguer he drafted from the Dodgers in the Rule 5 minor league draft: Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente.)
Which was rather splendid for a number cruncher who didn't consider himself a pure numbers man. Roth "didn't do his own taxes. He couldn't remember his phone number," McCue wrote. "What he would do is record the numbers in myriad detail and then use his true talent, recognizing what the numbers meant, to provide value to his employers. He summed up his philosophy: 'Baseball is a game of percentages—I try to find the actual percentage, which is constantly shifting, and apply it to the situation where it will do the most good'."
(Was Casey Stengel eavesdropping a little on Rickey and Roth near the beginning? Baseball, the Ol' Perfesser told anyone within earshot, is percentage plus execution. You thought the Dodgers kicked the National League's ass? Stengel's Yankees only had ten pennants and seven World Series rings in twelve seasons to show for his willingness to put old thinking, even old "traditional" Yankee thinking aside.)
Though such crustily visceral managers as Leo Durocher and Charlie Dressen spurned Roth's analyses, Walter Alston accepted them. It took Alston one full season to get his sea legs managing the Dodgers after he was hired to succeed Dressen for 1954, and there were a few growing pains as he asserted his authority and learned his players, but in Alston's second season? Dem Bums finally won the World Series.
Walter O'Malley could challenge you until you and he were the proverbial blue in the face, but the core of the Dodgers who finally made next year this year were still Rickey's boys: Hall of Famers Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, and Clem Labine. We won't suggest what we now know as analytics put World Series rings on the 1955 Dodgers' fingers, but it didn't hurt them to have the data, either.
Then they almost won the '56 Series while they were at it. It wasn't Alston's fault that the Dodgers began showing their age in their final Brooklyn season. (The average age of the regular lineup: 32.) And even their 1959 pennant winner was still a team transitioning from the further-aging Brooklyn veterans.
During the Dodgers' first serious pennant race in Los Angeles, facing a critical late-season doubleheader against the Giants, Roth convinced Alston, based on his tabulations, that Hall of Famer Don Drysdale pitched far better at night than during the day, while another Dodger righthander, Roger Craig, was almost the same pitcher day or night. Alston switched his planned doubleheader rotation, starting Craig in the day game and Drysdale for the night game.
The result? The Dodgers swept the Giants, helping them force the three-game playoff against the Braves that meant the pennant. By then even Dodger players received regularly updated Roth tabulations on their own performances and worked accordingly.
Seriously? You really thought that started in this century? Anyone who knew the Dodgers well in those years knew Allan Roth's role with the team, and that it wasn't just rehashing or writing out their baseball cards. They could have told you the Dodgers had a lot more going for them than balls and strikes, runs and hits, and Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax's latest beyond-belief performance, right up to the day the Dodgers let Roth go in 1964.
And they really had Branch Rickey to thank.
"Rickey and Roth's fundamental contribution to the advancement of baseball statistics," wrote John Thorn and Pete Palmer in The Hidden Game of Baseball, "comes from their conceptual revisionism, their willingness to strip the game down to its basic unit, the run, and reconstruct its statistics accordingly."
A man who evaluated character in hand with performance but wasn't always the most astute judge of the former when all was said and done, Rickey died a year after the Dodgers lost Roth. He was foresighted and devious, compassionate and penurious, all at once. He was maybe baseball's deepest thinker and one of its most pompous. "A man of strange complexities," the New York Times's John Drebinger once wrote, "not to mention downright contradictions."
For every one who canonises Rickey for elevating and supporting Jackie Robinson as a player and a man, appropriately, there's another who broils him just as appropriately for the shifty penury that prompted his Hall of Fame Pirate Ralph Kiner to credit him with doing the most to seed the Major League Baseball Players' Association.
"Rickey believes in economy in everything," the New York Daily Mirror's Dan Daniel once wrote, "except his own salary."
Roth's Dodger days ended, McCue wrote, after O'Malley discovered his statistician, whose marriage was collapsing, had a romantic relationship with a black woman at a time when too many Americans, O'Malley included, yet quaked over the very idea of such interracial romance, never mind the scandal quotient still attached to it. That romance ended in a shouting match and Roth's marriage itself ended, but so did his Dodger career.
He returned to free-lance work until ABC, then NBC, hired him to give announcers (including two former players he'd once analysed, Koufax and Pee Wee Reese) the same deeper analyses he'd previously provided the Dodgers and Scully, until his health failed in the 1980s. (He died in 1992.)
"Roth was a firm believer that you do not have to be an expert mathematician to record baseball stats," Cronin wrote. "You just had to be an innovative thinker and have a passion for the game. He also realized that human element of baseball and numbers could only help aid the game, not run it."
So did Branch Rickey. Sabermetricians aren't the only ones who should thank him for his patronage of and further education from Roth, no matter how dearly baseball's paleozoics would like to spank him for it.
Posted in Baseball | Tagged Allan Roth, analytics, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates, sabermetrics | Leave a reply


text:
The love of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life
Mike Selby looks at the great author's troubled marriage
May. 23, 2013 12:00 p.m.
"I hope she'll be a fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
It was the early 1920s when F. Scott Fitzgerald penned these lines for the first chapter of his seminal work, 'The Great Gatsby'. Although a work of fiction, so much of the novel came from Fitzgerald's life. Unfortunately for him, the quote above was far too real.
Fitzgerald first met his wife Zelda at a country club in 1918. She resembled a modern tabloid celebrity—the spoiled rich girl who is famous for only being famous; one who saw life as nothing more than one big endless party. Fitzgerald fell madly in love with her. And it seemed she was equally in love with him, until he asked her to marry him. Zelda refused; he had neither the wealth nor the fame she craved.
Fitzgerald sought to change that, and after Scribners published 'This Side of Paradise' in 1920, Zelda agreed to become Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their marriage heralded what would be called 'The Jazz Age' in the United States. Women were out of control—bobbing their hair, driving, smoking in public, getting drunk, and kissing men not their husbands—all while dancing the Charleston. None did any of this better than Zelda. Amused at first, Fitzgerald found Zelda's behaviour exhausting. He began to drink heavily, and continued to write.
'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' was published in Collier's magazine in 1922. The tale of a man aging in reverse, Fitzgerald based it on a remark by Mark Twain, who felt "it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end." This was followed by two novels—'The Beautiful and the Damned,' and 'The Great Gatsby.' Both books charted and explored his relationship with his wife.
Which by this time had become increasingly abusive and dysfunctional. Fitzgerald both loved and hated his wife. As her wild behaviour only seemed to increase, he began to grow suspicious of her. He turned more and more to booze, and began to write less and less. As the Depression killed off the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald was forced to face the truth about his wife: the party needed to end. There was something seriously wrong with her.
Diagnosed with what is now called bipolar disorder, Zelda spent the rest of her life in and out of psychiatric institutions.
During one of her stays, something odd happened. Zelda wrote her own novel. 'Save Me the Waltz,' was published in 1934. Her husband flipped. How dare she do this to him! He was the writer! Using anecdotes from their marriage as the book's material, Fitzgerald felt his wife had effectively sabotaged his next book, 'Tender is the Night.'
Zelda never wrote anything again.
Much like 'The Great Gatsby,' there is no happy ending here. Fitzgerald drank himself to death in 1940. Locked in a psychiatric treatment room awaiting electroshock therapy, Zelda burned to death in a hospital fire in 1948.
As he so eloquently wrote in Gatsby: "The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly."
Mike Selby is Reference Librarian at Cranbrook Public Library
Housework and other nightmares
Of the people, for the people, by the journalists

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Combine: Going from Notification Center addObserver with selector to Notification publisher I've seen how to transition to Combine using a Publisher from some NotificationCenter code, but have not seen how to do it for something like:
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(
        self,
        selector: #selector(notCombine),
        name: NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "notCombine"),
        object: nil
    )

I've seen that this is available as a Publisher, but I don't have a selector and am not sure what to do for it:
        NotificationCenter.default.publisher(
        for: Notification.Name(rawValue: "notCombine")
    )

Does anyone know? Thanks!

A: You're right to say "I don't have a selector", as that is half the point right there. You can receive notifications from the notification center without a selector using Combine.
The other half of the point is that you can push your logic for dealing with the notification up into the Combine pipeline, so that the correct result just pops out the end of the pipeline if it reaches you at all.
The old-fashioned way
Let's say I have a Card view that emits a virtual shriek when it is tapped by posting a notification:
static let tapped = Notification.Name("tapped")
@objc func tapped() {
    NotificationCenter.default.post(name: Self.tapped, object: self)
}

Now let's say, for purposes of the example, that what the game is interested in when it receives one of these notifications is the string value of the name property of the Card that posted the notification. If we do this the old-fashioned way, then getting that information is a two-stage process. First, we have to register to receive notifications at all:
NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self,
    selector: #selector(cardTapped), name: Card.tapped, object: nil)

Then, when we receive a notification, we have to look to see that its object really is a Card, and if it is, fetch its name property and do something with it:
@objc func cardTapped(_ n:Notification) {
    if let card = n.object as? Card {
        let name = card.name
        print(name) // or something
    }
}

The Combine way
Now let's do the same thing using the Combine framework. We obtain a publisher from the notification center by calling its publisher method. But we don't stop there. We don't want to receive a notification if the object isn't a Card, so we use the compactMap operator to cast it safely to Card (and if it isn't a Card, the pipeline just stops as if nothing had happened). We only want the Card's name, so we use the map operator to get it. Here's the result:
let cardTappedCardNamePublisher =
    NotificationCenter.default.publisher(for: Card.tapped)
        .compactMap {$0.object as? Card}
        .map {$0.name}

Let's say that cardTappedCardNamePublisher is an instance property of our view controller. Then what we now have is an instance property that publishes a string if a Card posts the tapped notification, and otherwise does nothing.
Do you see what I mean when I say that the logic is pushed up into the pipeline?
So how would we arrange to receive what comes out of the end of the pipeline? We could use a sink:
let sink = self.cardTappedCardNamePublisher.sink {
    print($0) // the string name of a card
}

If you try it, you'll see that we now have a situation where every time the user taps a card, the name of the card is printed. That is the Combine equivalent of our earlier register-an-observer-with-a-selector approach.

A: The use case is not entirely clear, but here a basics playground example:
import Combine
import Foundation

class CombineNotificationSender {

    var message : String

    init(_ messageToSend: String) {
        message = messageToSend
    }

    static let combineNotification = Notification.Name("CombineNotification")
}

class CombineNotificationReceiver {
    var cancelSet: Set<AnyCancellable> = []

    init() {
        NotificationCenter.default.publisher(for: CombineNotificationSender.combineNotification)
            .compactMap{$0.object as? CombineNotificationSender}
            .map{$0.message}
            .sink() {
                [weak self] message in
                self?.handleNotification(message)
            }
            .store(in: &cancelSet)
    }

    func handleNotification(_ message: String) {
        print(message)
    }
}

let receiver = CombineNotificationReceiver()
let sender = CombineNotificationSender("Message from sender")

NotificationCenter.default.post(name: CombineNotificationSender.combineNotification, object: sender)
sender.message = "Another message from sender"
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: CombineNotificationSender.combineNotification, object: sender)

For some use cases you can also make it a combine only solution without using notifications
import Combine
import Foundation

class CombineMessageSender {
    @Published var message : String?
}

class CombineMessageReceiver {
    private var cancelSet: Set<AnyCancellable> = []

    init(_ publisher: AnyPublisher<String?, Never>) {
        publisher
            .compactMap{$0}
            .sink() {
                self.handleNotification($0)
            }
            .store(in: &cancelSet)
    }

    func handleNotification(_ message: String) {
        print(message)
    }
}

let sender = CombineMessageSender()
let receiver = CombineMessageReceiver(sender.$message.eraseToAnyPublisher())
sender.message = "Message from sender"
sender.message = "Another message from sender"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


traffics Nice seller to deal with! Pleasant transaction! Thank you!
familygarage Item was sent to me by mail as I requested. Item was very well wrapped and protected. Honest and excellent seller!
msyong18 Great seller to deal with! Pleasant transaction.
@ahtan8989 is on Carousell - Follow to stay updated!


I know I promised you the recipe to my most recent cupcakes, but - I have also moved to London and started film school during this last week! Regular blogging may take a back seat until I have my own internet connection sorted and am less crazy-busy. I am so so excited to show you literally everything I have bought from Whole Foods, and to get up to date on all my photos. I don't even care if I'm the only person remotely concerned with this.
EAT: 'Beauty & the Beast' Cupcakes.


text:
About The Mysteries of Laura
Debra Messing ("Will & Grace") stars as Laura Diamond, a brilliant NYPD homicide detective who balances her "Columbo" day job with a crazy family life that includes two unruly twin boys and a soon-to-be ex-husband (Josh Lucas) - also a cop - who just can't seem to sign the divorce papers. Between cleaning up after her boys and cleaning up the streets, she'd be the first to admit she has her "hot mess" moments in this hilariously authentic look at what it really means to be a "working mom" today. Somehow she makes it all work with the help of her sexy and understanding partner, and things get even more complicated when her husband ironically becomes her boss at the precinct. For Laura, every day is a high-wire balancing act.
Status: Season 2 (Ended/Cancelled)
Network: NBC
Links: Official Site IMDb TV.com TV Guide Wikipedia
Watch: iTunes Netflix Hulu Google Play
The Mysteries of Laura 2×16 Promo "The Mystery of the End of the Watch" (HD) Season Finale
The Mysteries of Laura 2×15 Promo "The Mystery of the Unknown Caller" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×14 Promo "The Mystery of the Political Operation" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×13 Promo "The Mystery of the Dark Heart" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×12 Promo "The Mystery of the Morning Jog" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×11 Promo "The Mystery of the Unwelcome Houseguest" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×10 Promo "The Mysteries of Downward Spiral" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×09 Promo "The Mystery of the Triple Threat" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×08 Promo "The Mystery of the Ghost in the Machine" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×07 Promo "The Mystery of the Maternal Instinct" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×06 Promo "The Mystery of the Dead Heat" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×05 Promo "The Mystery of the Watery Grave" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×04 Promo "The Mystery of the Convict Mentor" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×03 Promo "The Mystery of the Locked Box" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura 2×02 Promo "The Mystery of the Cure for Loneliness" (HD)
The Mysteries of Laura Season 2 Promo (HD)
Home » Shows » NBC » The Mysteries of Laura


103793, Pushkinskaya ul., 15a. Information: 229 46 682 (NOVAYA ROSSIYA: �INFORMATSIONNO- STATISTICHESKYY ALMANAKH 1994).
PROCURATOR GENERAL --- USTINOV, Vladimir (RIA 28 Jun 00).
As of December 16, 1998 � Main Military Procuracy is to �exercise supervision over the Federal Security Service� (RIA, 16 Dec 98).
Main Military Procurator --- SAVENKOV, Aleksandr Nikolayevich, Lieutenant-General of Justice (Krasnaya Zvezda, 5 Sep 02; Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, 10 Jan 03).
[Previous Main Military Procurator, KISLITSYN, Mikhail, Lt-Gen (Agentstvo voyennykh novostey, 7 Jul 00; 18 Jan 02), "asked for resignation for health reasons" (ITAR-TASS, 14 Jun 02). �"�������� ������� � 1950 ���� � ������� ���������� �������� ������ ������� ������� (����������). ������� ��������� �������-�������� ������� ���������������� ������� (1970), ������-����������� ��������� ������-������������ �������� ����� ������ (1977). ������� ������������, ������� ��������� ��������� � ������������ ���������������� � ���������� ������� �������, ��� ������ ������������, � ����� - ������� ���������� ����������� �����. � ��� 1993 ���� ��� �������� ���������� ����������� �������� ������. �������� ����������� ����, ����������� ����� ���������� ���������." (Agentstvo voyennykh novostey, 7 Jul 00).
�[Previous Prcurator General, CHAIKA, Yuriy, retried (ITAR-TASS, 9 Aug 99).
First Deputy Chief --- NOSOV, Grigoriy, Lt-Gen Just, (Noted as a Maj-Gen, Krasnaya Zvezda 8 Oct 92 p 3). (Noted as a Lt-Gen, Moskovskiy Komsomolets, 31 Mar 94; Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, 28 June).
First (?) Deputy Chief --- SAVENKOV, Alexander, Maj-Gen (Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, 4 Mar 02; Moskovskiy Komsomolets, 4 Feb 02; ITAR-TASS, 30 Apr 02). (Noted as Col-Gen, Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, 18 Jan 02).
Deputy Chief (?) --- YAKOVLEV, Yuriy, Lt-Gen Just, (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye No. 1, 9-15 Jan 98).
Deputy Chief --- IVANOV, Aleksandr, Lt-Gen (Moskovskiy Komsomolets 31 Jan 01 P 1; Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 16 Aug 03).
Deputy Chief --- GAVETO, Stanislav, Lt-Gen Just, (Krasnaya Zvezda, 29 Dec 94; Segodnya, 28 Mar 95; Noted as a Lt-Gen, last name spelled �as GAVETON, (Interfax 27 Mar 97).
Assistant to the Chief --- BAGRAYEV, Yuriy, (Trud, 2 Apr 97).
Deputy Chief --- ROMASHKO, Anatoliy, (Krasnaya Zvezda 19 Apr 01).
�Chief --- SUTORMIN, Gennadiy, Maj-Gen, (ITAR-TASS 1430 GMT 23 Nov 92). �(Krasnaya Zvezda 16 Aug 94 p 2).
Chief --- SAMSUYEV, Vladimir, ?-Gen (Moskovskiy Komsomoletsk, 18 Apr 02).
Deputy Chief --- MAYOROV, Andrey Alfredovich (Moskovskiy Komsomolets 18 Jul 01 PP 1,4 ).
(Moskovskiy Komsomolets 11 Oct 96 p 2).
(Krasnaya Zvezda 16 Jan 92 1st ed p 2).
Chair --- PETUKHOV, Nikolay, Lt-Gen (Just) (Moskovskaya Pravda, 17 Apr 03).
Petukhov is also Deputy Chair of the Supreme Court.
Military Procurator --- ALEKSEYEV, Sergey, Major General of Justice. �Appointed, �(Moskovskiy Komsomolets 31 Jan 01 P 1).
�Chief --- MEREZHKO, Konstantin, Maj-Gen Just, (Krasnaya Zvezda 28 Jan 99).
�Chief --- ANISIMOV, Nikolay, Maj-Gen Just, (Nezavisimaya Gazeta 14 Mar 97 p 6).


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Mutation in WNT10A is associated with an autosomal recessive ectodermal dysplasia: the odonto-onycho-dermal dysplasia.
Pilot study comparing the diffusion of two formulations of botulinum toxin type A in patients with forehead hyperhidrosis.
Double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled pilot study of the safety and efficacy of Myobloc (botulinum toxin type B) for the treatment of palmar hyperhidrosis.
Efficacy and safety of botulinum toxin type a in the treatment of palmar hyperhidrosis: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study.
Side-effects of intradermal injections of botulinum A toxin in the treatment of palmar hyperhidrosis: a neurophysiological study.
Altered response in cutaneous sympathetic outflow to mental and thermal stimuli in primary palmoplantar hyperhidrosis.
Iontophoresis with alternating current and direct current offset (AC/DC iontophoresis): a new approach for the treatment of hyperhidrosis.


text:
Kristofer Axén
Music and Words
… And the Long one
Strange Light Music 2014
The Creek And the Carving 2016
The making of TCATC
Press Pics
Gig Pics
Progressive Pop
Strange Light Music
The Creek And the Carving
Strange Light Poems
… And at length
(I'm quite aware that this is pure narcissicism from the p-o-v of someone whose life humanity minus a tiny group cares little about, as is the general case for the rest of humanity. This is maybe a waste of space and the precious time of anyone, but I excuse myself with the fact that any other shit is a click away, that you're free to leave at will. A consideration of space, not 'humility'. With that little piece of brilliant promo, here's some kind of musical biography)
I grew up in a slumbering town called Mölnlycke, fifteen km from Gothenburg, nationally known for making top-quality toilet paper. I think I wrote my first song in English when I was 12, a three chords little pop thing that I called, I thought very brilliantly at the time, 'Tale of my heart'. It dealt with summer break and heart break in an intriguing combination, addresssed in somewhat questionable English. Hockey practice took up much time but increasingly little heart, so I quit at fourteen and there were spots to fill. I teamed up that same year, come summer, with my still close friend (post flower-power era) David, the two of us sharing an interest in galopping guitars as we formed a little collective hubris around the fact that we could play better than the people at our respective schools (at least so we believed). Every Friday, more or less, during the last two years of grade school, between four and nine in the school studio, that was the definite and reliable spark of my week. We recorded a four-track demo at the end of 1999, with our two-boy band Funkers Crest, in the popular genre of pop-funk-metal-boy band-rock-country. The critics were divided, but our friends liked it. Around gymnasium time, we went separate ways musically, whilst not quite loosing our hubris and our troubled sense of humour. I practiced electric guitar with head-phones on whilst my sister next-door had friends over learning social skills (they became quite good at it). Come mid gymnasium period, I formed a band with my friends Daniel Sjöstrand and Christian Ehrenborg, C-rias, or Cerias, I'm not sure whether we agreed on the spelling(?) We were ok, I think, when we practiced. Daniel is presently making music with his funk-metal outfit Motherpearl. Christian lived in the South last I spoke to him, working as an engineer (having kids? Piano?). We had a nice rehearsal place at Christian's (see below)
Christian quit and after some disorientation the band was no more. Adding to the disorientation, I started working shifts in a printer park the year I graduated from high school, working messy hours that effectively blurred night and day. In 2005, my old school chump Karl Risenfors agreed to help me putting together a first demo of my own (thanks again Karl!), recording at his parents' (thanks again parents!). I had some songs stacked up and I wanted to try the full-band thing. I'm not sure just how much Karl got out of it, but I hope he didn't think it a complete waste of his time. I felt (feel) thankful though that he put up with me for a while, knowing that he had his own music thing going simultaneously. Karl is presently perfecting beats and doing remixes under the name Krater. The result of our work was a four and a half-track thing I called "First Blaze" (pretentious name? well)
As was sort of expected (and secretly resented), my career didn't sky-rocket with First Blaze. Luckily my interest in documenting music, at least, increased. I had moved into my first appartment, and in a sweep of nest-leaving enthusiasm filled it with stuff (in retrospect: most stuff is superfluous). The advantage of a full-time job was that I could buy some music equpiment, set up a little recording spot in the bedroom, you know, the usual. For a year or three I wrote material, documented ideas and fiddled with mixing. By autumn 2008 I cut down on the little social life I had and recorded for a period of three months. My parent's sometimes remind me that I felt like shit at the time. Whatever the case was, two demos popped out of the late pregnancy (peak of pretentious language: giving birth to art) in 2008, a fourteen track collection of old and new stuff that I called 'Collected buns and biscuits' and four-track demo, 'Strange Light Music'
Going on my fift year in the printing park I felt at a sort of dead end. I think I wasn't reminded too often of this, so it was probably some kind of turning point when my girlfriend at the time said that this work wasn't for me and encouraged me to begin to study. I'm not sure if I thanked her for that, and even less sure of how she feels about her name being posted here, so, incognito, thank you very much! I moved to Stockholm in the autumn of 2009. No contacts, friends etc, but a place at Stockholm Uni, and a tiny room next to a lady and her twin cats. Over a period of three-something years I made three more demos, as secretly as I could at the lady's place, and less secretly after a year when I moved to an odd-smelling cottage in Täby. From 2011 to 2013 I started gigging a bit, hobby-style, with friends Ivo and Sara.
By the time we quit I felt the urge to make a "real" record. Through friends I got in contact with Sebastian Ring of Komodo and SeLest, and we set up some recording sessions at his studio in Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm, starting in late May of 2013. Summer came and went as I fiddled with singing and additional toy-instruments at home. The sessions and the subsequent mixing took place in oftentimes month-long intervals, with tricky scedules to match, Sebastian's free-lancing and my own putting together of a thesis in Social anthropology. Having no group, the record was a collection of contributions of musician friends. Nice it was to play the part of sound-detective, to travel around with laptop, soundcard and mic, having colors added peu à peu by the kind people willing to lend their gifts. I also had the great priveledge of getting to know the great spirit of Sebastian through the musical process (a warmly recommended form of socializing for those of you who haven't yet tried it!). Strange Light Music (all credits to be found under "Music") was recorded and, more or less, mixed by the end of 2013. After schedule-matching, additional sound paranoia of yours truly and the final mastering of Simon Ring, it was released on Marsh 7:th 2014. In 2016, I promoted my second release The Creek And the Carving with a number of live shows in the Stockholm area. The record was mixed, co-produced and drummed on by Poul Amaliel. It is the result of one week's drums, percussion and bass recordings in Poul's Stable Studios in Tobo North of Uppsala, and another week of my own recordings with guests in a studio in central Stockholm.
…. and presently, I'm arranging my third album, to be called Cross-Word Tears, together with a band. Now, who are you?
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The Delete Bin
About Rob Jones
About the Delete Bin
Posted on June 23, 2016 May 22, 2016 by Rob Jones
Spirit Of The West Play "Home For A Rest"
Listen to this track by Vancouver folk-pop institution Spirit Of The West. It's "Home For A Rest", their signature song and musical highlight as taken from their 1990 album Save This House. This record was their breakthrough, having been together since 1984, and finally signed to a major label in Warner Music Canada by 1989. It was practically a government issue release across our country, gracing the record collections of many in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Unlike many new bands signed onto a major, the band didn't make too many changes to their initial sound; the skin of traditional Celtic folk music as fused upon the bones and muscle of pop/rock musical structure. In the early nineties and in scenes all across Canada, a lot of bands were attempting to strike this very same balance. But few of them had the same impact as this band, full as they are of punk energy and musicianly chops that place them into Pogues territory. There wasn't any need for them to do anything other than what they had been doing all along, which was to write songs full of thematic gravity and wit, touching on issues of social justice, sure, but not forgetting to infuse their work with humour as well.
This song is a travelogue and drinking song all rolled into one, certainly a reflection of where the band were at during that time, touring with British pop band The Wonder Stuff. This took them to London, to the pubs, and presumably to the bottom of a lot of glasses. In an important and very Canadian way though, this song is less about over indulgence and more about a sense of identity, which if you know anything about our country, makes a whole lot of sense.
As I've probably mentioned elsewhere, Canadians don't have a dream like our American cousins do. We have a quest; to find ourselves and what it means to be Canadian. This filters down into a lot of our art to varying degrees. You can even find it here, with a narrator far from home with his compatriots, firmly ensconced in a Charing Cross Road pub, the shine on the bar maintained by the sleeves of their coats. For the most part, the "take me home!" is notable for its humour, and for how well it is to relate to. We've all been there; feeling disconnected, and finding temporary solace in a pint or ten with our friends. In this song, which was such a mainstay tune during a time when I was personally on a search for identity of my very own as a young man away from home, I always thought this was more than just the joyous drinking song that it seems to be.
Beneath that undeniable joy found in this song is that feeling of disconnection, of feeling adrift. It's the contrast between these forces that makes this song work so well. To me it was always this that connected this song to our national identity, finding ourselves far from home, longing to get back there, while at the same time not really knowing what home actually is. And yet in the singing of this song over the years, it's slowly transformed itself for many of my generation, becoming something of a binding anthem to what it is to be Canadian in the world; all in this together on a quest to find what home means for all of us.
"Home For A Rest" became a signature tune for Spirit Of The West as their stature grew in the 1990s. I think it was because this song captured something important. Its value is as ineffable as the search for Canadian identity itself. Despite being a song about feeling disconnected, in the end it has the exact opposite effect whenever it is heard. It unifies us somehow, a song about longing for home, and in the singing of it, it helps us get there, at least for a while.
In recent years, Spirit Of The West lead singer John Mann has been on something of a personal journey himself. After an impressive career as a singer, songwriter, band member, and as a second career as a stage actor, Mann is currently undergoing treatment for Alzheimer's Disease, a condition that has cut his career short as he's known it. The Spirit Of The West played its last shows at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom in April of this year, starring a multitude of high-profile guest musicians to help see them off. This was more than just a bunch of farewell shows. To me, there is a certain element of gratitude in place on the part of our nation when it comes to what Mann and what Spirit Of The West have contributed to our culture.
They came home in the end, and their audience was there to greet them.
For more about The Spirit Of The West, check out sotw.ca.
And for more about the band, a new documentary made about them called Spirit Unforgettable, and singer John Mann's current battle with Alzheimer's Disease, check out this article from the CBC.
Posted in music, Roots & FolkTagged 90s music, Canadian Bands, Canadian Music, Folk-pop, Spirit Of The West
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about randstad
careers at randstad
randstad innovation fund
recognitions & memberships.
We are an active participant in international benchmarks and platforms such as the FTSE4 Good, Euronext Vigeo, Ethibel Sustainability Index and Carbon Disclosure Project.
Dow Jones Sustainability Index
Launched in 1999, the DJSI recognizes the leading companies in each industry sector for responsible economic, environmental, and social performance. Randstad is proud to be included as the only HR services provider in the Professional Services industry of the DJSI World index.
FTSE4Good is a global responsible investment index that identifies companies that demonstrate strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices, measured against globally recognised standards. Randstad Holding continues to meet the Index inclusion criteria and is a valued member of the FTSE4Good Index Series.
Carbon disclosure project
The Carbon disclosure project (CDP) is a not-for-profit organization that runs the global disclosure system for companies to manage their environmental impacts.
SIA's global power 150 - women in staffing
In 2019, Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) named eight Randstad executives from around the globe to their 'Global Power 150 – Women in Staffing' list. The publication recognizes influential female leaders in the industry and provides a platform to celebrate many of the talented women shaping the world of work. Comprised of women from all different staffing sectors, the list is not a ranking but a shout-out to those whose unique vision and contributions take the industry forward. The final selection is based on the influence and achievements of the women nominated.
Euronext Vigeo Eiris index
Randstad is included in the Euronext Vigeo index both in Eurozone 120 (the 120 most advanced companies in the Eurozone region) as in Benelux 20 (the 20 most advanced companies in the Benelux region). Both distinguish companies achieving the most advanced Environmental, Social and Governance performances.
Ethibel sustainability indices
The Ethibel Sustainability Indices universe is composed of companies included in the Russell Global Index that display the best performance in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. Randstad has been reconfirmed for inclusion in the Ethibel EXCELLENCE Investment Register, and has been included as well in the Ethibel PIONEER Investment Register. This selection indicates that the company can be qualified as a sector leader in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility.
Oekom
Oekom research AG is one of the world's leading rating agencies in the area of sustainable investment. In the Oekom Corporate Rating from August 2017 Randstad Holding was awarded the Prime Status. Prime companies rank among the leaders in their industry.
In 2018, Randstad became a member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). As a CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses, WBCSD envisages to accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable world. In 2019, the organization will be officially launching its Future of Work program, in which Randstad is a leading partner. In this program, the organization is aiming to bring the collective voice of leading sustainable businesses into the global dialogue on the Future of Work, and to build partnerships with governments, experts, educational institutions, and civil society in order to shape solutions that create value for people, companies, and the global economy.
The Global Apprenticeship Network (GAN) is a coalition of committed companies, international organizations, and business and employers' federations, who jointly create work-readiness programs for youth and foster skills for business.
With more than 150 business and employer organization members, the International Organization of Employers (IOE) is the largest network of the private sector in the world. Through our partnership with the IOE, our contributions and perspectives are reflected in matters of international standards, business and human rights, CSR, occupational health and safety, and international industry relations.
The United Nations Global Compact is a voluntary business initiative for companies committed to aligning their activities with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment, and anticorruption. Randstad has been a signatory of the Compact since 2004.
World Employment Confederation
Through our membership in the World Employment Confederation and the World Employment Confederation Europe, we strive for recognition of the economic and social role played by the employment industry in enabling work, job security, and prosperity in our societies, and in acting as facilitators of change.
Voluntary Service Overseas
Our partnership with voluntary service overseas (VSO) combines the strength of two organizations driven by a common aim: to help alleviate poverty across the globe by sharing skills and expertise. VSO focuses on sustainable development and places volunteers in developing countries. Randstad supports VSO by providing expertise, funding, and the recruitment of volunteers.
Workplace pride
Workplace Pride is a non-profit umbrella foundation based in Amsterdam that strives for greater acceptance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people in the workplace and in society. Workplace Pride's Members include major multinationals, large domestic companies, public sector and non governmental organizations, as well as academia.
The Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC) speaks for business at the OECD. Established in 1962, it stands for policies that enable businesses of all sizes to contribute to growth, economic development, and prosperity. Through BIAC, national business and employers' federations and their members provide expertise to the OECD and governments for competitive economies, better business, and better lives.
Brussels European Employee Relations Group (BEERG) is an information-sharing and networking group established in 2002, which now has over 60 member companies headquartered in the EU, the US, India, and Japan. Through our BEERG membership, we discuss employment law and labor relations issues with other members and stakeholders, such as speakers from trade unions, the European Commission, and national or international agencies.
Business Europe
BusinessEurope is the leading advocate for growth and competitiveness at European level, standing up for companies across Europe and campaigning on the issues that most affect their performance. Through our BusinessEurope membership, Randstad contributes to the world of work on a European and international level.
The Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers VNO-NCW represents the common interests of Dutch business, both at home and abroad. Members comprise over 160 trade and sector associations, representing more than 120,000 enterprises.
WeConnect
Randstad is a member of WeConnect International, a global network that connects women-owned businesses to qualified buyers around the world. They identify, educate, register, and certify women's business enterprises based outside of the US that are at least 51% owned, as well as managed and controlled by one or more women, and then connect them with multinational corporate buyers.
labor market research
Randstad Workmonitor
randstad share
employer branding reports
employer branding case studies
misuse of our brands
Randstad N.V.
Registered in The Netherlands No: 33216172 Registered office: Diemermere 25, 1112 TC Diemen, The Netherlands
RANDSTAD, , HUMAN FORWARD and SHAPING THE WORLD OF WORK are registered trademarks of Randstad N.V.


Professional library book ends designed to firmly support light or heavyweight books.
Made from heavyweight 18 gauge rolled steel with smooth rounded edges. Tough non-abrasive scratch resistant, baked-on polyester finish will not chip or fade. Available in two sizes and four colors: GRAY, TAN, IVORY, or BLACK. Please specify color in "comments section on billing page at check out" when ordering.


text:
require 'simple_model_translations/translation_helper'

module SimpleModelTranslations
  module InstanceMethods
    def translation_helper
      @translation_helper ||= SimpleModelTranslations::TranslationHelper.new(self)
    end
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sales of server hardware and software for virtualization in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased for the first time in a year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to an IDC report issued Monday.
Shipments of physical servers destined for virtualization duty in Europe, the Middle East and Africa increased by 2.8 percent during the last three months of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008, according to IDC. Also, virtualization software revenue rose by 3.9 percent in the same period. It was the first quarter since the last three months in 2008 that sales in those two areas achieved year-over-year increases, according to IDC.
There are several reasons for the increase. Companies have been using virtualization to be able to use existing hardware longer. However, that doesn't work indefinitely, and there was pent-up demand for server hardware during the fourth quarter, according to Nathaniel Martinez, program director at IDC's EMEA Systems and Infrastructure Solutions group. Sales have been helped by an increasing use of server virtualization by small and medium-sized companies, as well, Martinez said.
Going forward, the growing popularity of desktop virtualization will help drive the sales of server virtualization, according to Martinez. Other workloads that are being virtualized more often include Exchange and SQL Server, he said.
VMware is still the biggest virtualization software vendor, according to IDC. In the fourth quarter, the company delivered more licensees than Microsoft, Citrix and Parallels put together. VMware's revenue is also more twice that of the three other vendors combined, IDC said.
However, that doesn't mean VMware's dominance is set in stone. Customers are becoming less religious about their choice of vendor, and are willing to use more than one virtualization platform and switch between different vendors, according to Martinez.


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Home / News / Energy / Mary Landrieu criticizes proposed EPA regulations
Mary Landrieu criticizes proposed EPA regulations
By: The Associated Press	June 10, 2014	0
NEW ROADS — U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu traveled to a Louisiana coal-fired power plant Monday to highlight her opposition to President Barack Obama's regulatory plan to cut carbon dioxide pollution.
Landrieu spent her afternoon at the Big Cajun II plant in New Roads, for a tour and meeting with industry representatives. The facility is owned by NRG Energy subsidiary Louisiana Generating.
The Democratic senator, who chairs the Senate's energy committee, opposes the proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon emissions. Landrieu says Congress should set the terms and goals for power plants to reduce carbon, not the EPA.
The proposed EPA regulations call for Louisiana to cut carbon emissions from power plants by nearly 40 percent by 2030.
"The goal for me is not 'clean'. It's an important part of the equation but it is not the goal," Landrieu said in a statement. "The goal is independence. The goal is security. The goal is reliability. That priority, if we follow that, I think we would be better off in Louisiana, better off in the country, better off as a nation."
Facing a tough re-election fight this fall in a heavy energy-producing state, Landrieu is trying to carve out differences between herself and the Democratic president who is unpopular in Louisiana. Her critics and three Republican opponents say she is too cozy with Obama.
The Republican National Committee replied to news of Landrieu's trip by saying if the senator was so outraged by the EPA plans, she shouldn't have voted to confirm Obama's EPA administrator.
"The regulations rolled out by the Landrieu-backed EPA head will raise electricity costs, hurting families and the Louisiana energy industry. Landrieu continues to be a rubber stamp for President Obama's liberal agenda," RNC spokesman Ben Voelkel said in a statement.
Meanwhile, environmentalists criticized the coal plant that Landrieu visited as one of the nation's dirtiest, citing a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit over its emissions.
In 2012, Louisiana Generating agreed to a settlement that required it to spend about $250 million to reduce air pollution at Big Cajun II, in response to allegations the company violated law by not getting certain permits and installing air-pollution controls after boiler modifications.
Landrieu faces three announced GOP challengers so far on the Nov. 4 ballot: U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, state Rep. Paul Hollis and retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness. The candidate sign-up period is in August.
Environmental Protection Agency EPA Mary Landrieu 9:49 am Tue, June 10, 2014 New Orleans CityBusiness
Tagged with: Environmental Protection Agency EPA Mary Landrieu