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Tag: Pittsburgh Pirates
Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead
The Day That Barry Bonds Learned To Not Bunt During A Blowout Game
Posted on September 24, 2020 by Jason Turbow
Last week, the Athletic published a terrific oral history of Barry Bonds' time in Pittsburgh. Included in the array of stories was one that took place when the slugger was 20 years old and in his first professional season, with the Prince William Pirates of the Single-A Carolina League.
Bonds himself narrates:
"One game, we were leading by seven or eight, and I bunted and got on base. I heard the other manager over there screaming and yelling, but I couldn't calculate why. Right before my next at-bat, Bobby [Bonilla] comes up to me and puts his arm around my shoulders. He says, 'B.B., whatever is gonna happen next, don't react.' I'm like, 'What are you talking about?' He says, 'Just trust me.'
"So, I go up to the plate. I didn't think anything of it. And I got drilled almost in the head — really high on the back or shoulder. I went down to first base. I didn't do anything. I came into the dugout and Bobby Bo says, 'This ain't college, kid. You can never do that. We're up by eight runs in the seventh inning. You do not bunt.' I said, 'I got that. I'll never do that again.' "
Bonilla, of course, was all of 22, but in his fifth year in pro ball, so he knew whereof he spoke.
Starting in 1988, Bonds went 8-for-14 when bunting for hits over the course of his career (stats are unavailable from before that point), and once told Alex Rodriguez that he could have hit .400 if he'd adopted bunting as a regular strategy.
Bonds had about the highest baseball IQ of his generation, so the smart money's on him not having repeated that particular maneuver early on. Later in his career, of course, the point became moot: On those occasions that he saw a hittable pitch, Bonds wanted to take advantage in grander ways than tapping it down the line.
Retaliation
MLB Makes It Official With Suspensions: Head-Hunting Is Worse Than Charging The Opposition
Posted on August 1, 2019 by Jason Turbow
Supensions have been handed down for Tuesday's Reds-Pirates brawl, and there are some doozies:
Keone Kela: 10 games
Amir Garrett: Eight games
Jose Osuna: Five games
Jared Hughes: Three games
Kyle Crick: Three games
Yasiel Puig: Three games
David Bell: Six games
Clint Hurdle: Two games
There's a lot to read into this. Kela's obvious head-hunting—not to mention his admission of it after the fact—is seen in the league office as more offensive than Amir Garrett literally rushing the Pirates' dugout to throw punches. Ten games is no small matter, but neither is a pitcher reckless enough to target an opponent's head. (The fact that Kela had just emerged from a team-issued suspension after an altercation with a Pirates employee, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, does not speak well to his general temperament.)
Ultimately, displays like Garrett's are exceedingly rare. Displays like Kela's, unfortunately, are not. Good on the league office for sending this particular message.
Hughes' suspension seems like an attempt to keep things even-handed, even though his came in below the waist.
Bell's suspension—earned for returning to the field following an ejection with malevolence aforethought—was expected. Hurdle's—for his team's "multiple intentional pitches thrown at [Derek] Dietrich this season"—was not. Looks like Joe Torre has officially had his fill of Pittsburgh's tendencies when it comes to targeting opponents.
The rest of the suspensions—plus fines for Trevor Williams, Joey Votto and Phillip Ervin—are an effort by the Commissioner's office not just to take a stance against fighting, but against fighting between these particular teams.
"The incidents between these two Clubs remain a source of concern, and it's reflected by the level of discipline we are handing down today," said Torre in a statement.
Retaliation Gone Wrong: Reds, Pirates Boil Over After Beanball Attempt
Posted on July 31, 2019 August 1, 2019 by Jason Turbow
Keone Kela told the truth. Among the ranks of big league pitchers, this is virtually unheard of when discussing message pitches. It's the closest the guy got to respectable yesterday.
"The reason I went up and in was strictly, one, to show my intent with my pitch, and to pretty much let Dietrich know that I didn't necessarily agree with the way things went down," Kela said following a brawl-marred game between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
"Dietrich," of course, is Derek Dietrich, Reds outfielder and season-long Pirates antagonist. The up-and-in in question, in the seventh inning of yesterday's Pirates-Reds game, was a 97-mph fastball that flew past Dietrich's head and sparked the wildest brawl in the big leagues this season. It was only the latest chapter in what's become baseball's most prominent blood feud.
The bad vibes between the teams dates back at least to 2012, but yesterday's episode tracks to an April 7 game in Pittsburgh, when benches cleared after Chris Archer sailed a pitch behind Dietrich's backside, a clear response to the pimp-job the hitter did after homering earlier in the game.
In 12 games this year, reported Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the two teams have racked up 15 ejections and nine hit batsmen while facing each other, largely due to the Reds' belief that Pittsburgh pitchers consistently and intentionally target their hitters.
Kela has a funny way of showing intent. When Archer wanted to send a message back in April, he did it with a pitch below the belt. Yesterday, Kela went for the head. At that point, Cincinnati's anger, already established, could not be contained. Joey Votto yelled into the Pirates dugout from his position at first base. Manager David Bell came out to vigorously argue balls and strikes with plate ump Larry Vanover, and was ejected. In the ninth, reliever Jared Hughes—who, as a former member of the Pirates, knows whereof he pitches—officially responded to Kela's would-be beanball by hitting Starling Marte in the posterior with a fastball.
Reds reliever Amir Garrett topped them all, getting into a shouting match with Josh Bell in the ninth inning, then all but telling coach Jeff Pickler, as they were standing on the mound, that he was going to go and fight the Pirates. Then he handed over the baseball and did that very thing.
1. The Reds and Pirates brawl, the buildup, a breakdown.
Full Vid: https://t.co/ropXKTaIHc pic.twitter.com/4QuDhLjuXB
— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) July 31, 2019
2. Pirates and Red brawl, Amir Garret & Chris Archer, a breakdown
Full Vid: https://t.co/ropXKTaIHc pic.twitter.com/tBA3Gqx7Uj
3. The Reds and Pirates brawl, David Bell & Kyle Crick, a breakdown.
Full Vid: https://t.co/ropXKTaIHc pic.twitter.com/722C4xAPZe
4. The Reds and Pirates brawl, Puig Says Goodbye, a breakdown.
Full Vid: https://t.co/ropXKTaIHc pic.twitter.com/K56s2WQ8E0
What mandates examination here is not strictly Kela's terrible decision about how best to execute his message, although that certainly plays a part. (Somehow, he wasn't tossed for the pitch, and ended up striking Dietrich out.) It's that Pittsburgh has made such behavior integral to their game plan. Earlier today, Bill Baer of NBC Sports compiled a list of Pirates brawls over the last few years. It's not short.
The Pirates have explained it away as an organizational approach, wanting their pitchers dominate the inside corner. That, of course, leads to unintentional HBPs, which make the intentional ones—of which there have been plenty—seem all the worse. (Pittsburgh is tied for second in the National League in batters hit, one behind Miami. Cincinnati is well below league average, at 36.) Then there are those that come in above the shoulders.
"It's a shame that [the Pirates' head-hunting] is allowed, and they're able to get away with it," Reds manager David Bell—who went after Pirates skipper Clint Hurdle during yesterday's fight, though he was unable to effectively reach him—told the Athletic. "They celebrate it. They support it. They clearly allow it. I don't know if they teach, but they allow it. It's dangerous. … That has been going on all year. It's bigger than baseball at this point. People you care about, their health is put jeopardy and nothing is done about it. We suffer for it."
They will continue to suffer for it. So many underhanded shenanigans went down during the course of the battle, highlighted by Garrett's dugout charge, that both teams would be justified in feeling that they had things for which to retaliate.
Nothing went down during the follow-up meeting between the teams on Wednesday (apart from pregame handshake snubs by each manager), but the Pirates and Reds meet again twice more, once in August and once to close the season in September. Smart money is on more fireworks.
As for Kela, telling the truth will get him what it gets every truth-telling head-hunter: a suspension. It'll be one of the few moments to come from yesterday's events that makes any sense.
Update 8/1: Suspensions are here, and they are hefty.
When Is Stealing With A Big Lead In The Fourth Inning Acceptable? Pretty Much Always
Posted on July 25, 2019 by Jason Turbow
There was some discussion this morning about Pirates broadcasters Greg Brown and Bob Walk lambasting the Cardinals' decision to steal two bases yesterday—both by Yairo Munoz, in the span of two pitches—while holding an 11-4 lead. Suffice it to say that the Bucs' broadcasters were not impressed.
Pirates announcers Greg Brown and Bob Walk don't take kindly to Yairo Munoz running in a 7-run game #timetofly pic.twitter.com/j1hsil6PYa
— VHS (@VanHicklestein) July 25, 2019
Brown and Walk are unequivocally old-school, going so far as to initially misidentify the ensuing boos as being directed at the Cardinals' perceived breach of etiquette rather than at the home team's sloppy play. Walk even alluded to retaliation, saying, "I know exactly what would happen now, in a different era."
Holy hell, guys—it was the fourth inning. Under even the kindest reading of the code—even the code from Walk's era (he pitched from 1980 to 1993)— that's way too early to expect behavior modification. In The Baseball Codes, we broke the idea down via a series of quotes intended to convey the diversity of opinion on the subject about when a team should take its foot off the gas in a blowout game:
* "It used to be that [running with] anything more than a four-run lead was wrong, and you've got to be careful with that."—Tony La Russa
* "When I was playing, if you had a four-run lead it was a courtesy not to run. But you can do that now."—Ozzie Guillen
* "Once I had you by five runs and you couldn't tie me with a grand slam, that was it."—Sparky Anderson
* "I was always taught you shut it down at five runs after six."—Dusty Baker
* "Five runs in the sixth, I'm not stopping there. We get into the seventh inning, then I'll start chilling a little bit."—Ron Washington
* "We play [to shut it down] if you're up seven runs in the seventh inning."—Jim Slaton
"From the seventh inning on, if one swing of the bat can tie you up, it's game on," said ex–first baseman Mark Grace in 2006. "If it's 4–0, you have Jason Schmidt on the mound, and he's only given up one hit, you still go for it if Ray Durham gets on base in the eighth inning. Now, if it's 6–0, you're in territory where you might get a player hit in the brain in response."
The first three bullet points fail to mention timing, but the other four take care of that. In the homer-happy, run-barrage landscape of modern baseball, in which comebacks are more likely than ever, is it weird to think that a seven-run lead in the fourth inning is safe? Of course not. Hell, even the Pirates thought so, having first baseman Josh Bell hold Munoz on first base prior to his initial steal (despite the insistence of pitcher Luis Escobar to steadfastly ignore him).
And why wouldn't they? It was the fourth inning for crying out loud.
Bat Flipping, Retaliation, Showboating
Wednesday's Lesson In MLB: Try Not To Accidentally Hit Guys With Whom Your Team Is Already Beefing
Perception is everything, and precedent feeds perception. On Wednesday, baseball saw two games with hotly contested hit batters, and while there is a strong possibility that neither was intentional, recent history has led those at the wrong end of the pitches to leap to some obvious conclusions.
Let's start in Chicago, where the White Sox' series with Kansas City was already steeped in contention, given that the last time these teams met resulted in a rhubarb over a Tim Anderson bat toss. The Royals have already paid him back for that, so when they did it again on Wednesday—pitcher Glenn Sparkman bouncing a ball off of Anderson's head—the situation appeared ready to explode.
Except for this: It was the second inning of a 2-1 game, with nobody out and a runner on first. Also, it was a changeup—not the type of heat-seeker ordinarily utilized for nefarious purposes. For what it's worth, the pitch merely grazed the brim of Anderson's helmet—a terrible location to be sure, but more indicative of a ball that's riding up and in than a missile aimed at an earflap.
Do you think Tim Anderson was thrown at intentionally? #MLBTonight pic.twitter.com/vqDHaEo4VL
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) May 30, 2019
Anderson seemed to realize all of this. Hell, the pitch didn't even knock him down. While visibly frustrated, he more or less just stood in the batter's box, helmetless, staring down Sparkman. Anderson's lack of response was no doubt abetted by umpire Mark Carlson, who emerged from behind the plate and quickly tossed the befuddled pitcher from the game. ("It was a changeup," Sparkman can be seen explaining on replays. Even Anderson said later that he felt the pitch was accidental.)
Had the Royals not already targeted Anderson this season, of course, there's almost no chance that Sparkman would have been tossed. As it is, optics are important and Carlson did not want this game to get away from him. Sometimes it's hard to be an umpire.
In Cincinnati, meanwhile, the game was getting away from the Reds, as Pittsburgh built up a 7-0 lead by the eighth inning. That's when Pirates reliever Clay Holmes drilled Eugenio Suarez in the hand with a 94-mph fastball. There were some moments of immediate heat—Suarez approached the mound for before being led away by catcher Elias Diaz—but things cooled quickly. X-rays proved negative and Suarez is day-to-day.
Eugenio Suarez has some words for Pirates reliever Clay Holmes after getting drilled on the hand.#BornToBaseball | @Reds
STREAM: https://t.co/YkPeBsFtuW pic.twitter.com/ciAyicrmtC
— FOX Sports Ohio (@FOXSportsOH) May 29, 2019
"I don't know if they are going to hit me on purpose," Suarez said after the game in a MLB.com report. "That's why I walked up to him and asked him if he hit me on purpose. He said, 'No. Definitely not.' I just said I wanted to make sure because I don't like that pitch up and in, right on my face."
This is believable. Holmes has walked 15 batters in 15⅔ minor league innings this season, and has issued seven free passes in 13 innings since being called up. Outstanding control does not appear to be his thing.
That didn't prevent Reds manager David Bell from having a say about what had just gone down. So vehement was he when he came out to argue about the pitch that umpire Jeff Nelson ejected him.
Again, this is where optics matter.
In April, Pirates starter Chris Archer threw a pitch behind Derek Dietrich in response to the slugger taking an unusual amount of time to watch a home run that ended up in the Allegheny River outside PNC Park.
Derek Dietrich sends a souvenir into the river. 😳 pic.twitter.com/BcZ4EJfreJ
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) April 7, 2019
In April 2018, Pittsburgh's Jameson Taillon broke the selfsame Suarez's thumb with a pitch, costing the slugger three weeks. Later in the season, Taillon hit Suarez again, this time in the elbow. Never mind that none of the pitches appeared to be intentional, or that as a hitter Suarez could do a better job of turning his back toward inside pitches rather than leaning away from them with his hands exposed—a habit that got Jeff Bagwell's hand broken in three consecutive seasons. Hitting him again looks bad, so it must be bad.
Bell was fed up by the lot of it. He'd previously instructed his pitchers not to retaliate for such things. That stance may have changed.
"We know they'll do it," the manager told reporters after the game in a Cincinnati.com report, explaining his argument with the umpires. "I was doing what I could to protect our players. Clearly, we're not going to get protected. We've got to do whatever we can. We've got to take matters into our own hands. It's unfortunate that our players aren't going to get protected. That's been made clear, and we know that team will intentionally throw at people. What are you supposed to think?"
He continued.
"When someone is messing with your livelihood, your career, who knows? You've got to protect yourself. Clearly, we're not going to get protected by the umpires or the league. That's been made clear. Our players need to do whatever they need to do protect themselves. I'll back them whatever that is. For some reason, we think it's OK to throw at people. For whatever reason, that was OK many years ago, and we're still living some rules that I don't know about—that it's OK to intentionally throw at our players. The umpires think it's OK. The league thinks it's somewhat OK. Somebody's going to get hurt. We need to take as many measures as possible. Ours need to do whatever they need to do to stick up for themselves, protect themselves. They protect themselves, their career."
Bell has already proved to be angry about this topic to the point of incoherence. Still, the closest the Reds came to a response yesterday was when reliever Raisel Iglesias threw an up-and-in, 97-mph fastball to Bryan Reynolds with an 0-2 count, before eventually striking Reynolds out.
What we're left with is increasingly high tension. Bell has thrown down one gauntlet. Pirates broadcaster John Wehner threw down another on Pittsburgh radio, when he came down on Dietrich, of all people, for his homer-watching ways: "I can't stand him. … I don't understand why you have to do that. It's different if you're a Hall of Fame player, you're a 60-homer guy, you're an established guy. Nobody ever heard of him before this year."
Wehner also referenced Dietrich's grandfather, Steve Demeter, a longtime minor league coach in the Pirates system, who he said "is rolling in his grave every time this guy hits a home run. He's embarrassed of his grandson."
Let's ignore for a moment the very old-school notion of players earning whatever leeway they're afforded by the sport's unwritten rules; Wehner seems completely oblivious of the sea change that's occurred around baseball as pertains to celebrations.
However much they angered the Pirates and Royals, displays like Dietrich's and Anderson's are entering the mainstream, to the point of approval from MLB's own marketing department. Pitchers have the right to try and put a damper on them, but that tactic does not appear to be working very well as a method of dissuasion.
For those who are mad at Derek Dietrich, your hot takes have been duly noted and ignored. #LetTheKidsPlay pic.twitter.com/5DlPrTkeKE
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) May 28, 2019
At least Royals-White Sox and Reds-Pirates matchups, despite the meat-headedness therein, are far more interesting now than they were at the beginning of the season.
Let The Kids Play, Retaliation
David Bell Didn't Like What Chris Archer Did To The Point That He's No Longer Making Sense
Posted on April 10, 2019 July 30, 2019 by Jason Turbow
Reds manager David Bell got to talking with reporters on Tuesday about his team's Let-the-Kids-Play fight with the Pirates, for which he was ejected and ultimately suspended, and unfortunately for those following along, his comments didn't make a whole lot of sense. All quotes from the Dayton Daily News:
"[Derek] Dietrich clearly didn't do anything wrong because he wasn't ejected or suspended. If MLB has a problem with what Derek did then there needs to be a rule against what he did."
There is a rule against what he did—it's unwritten, and it's been around for about as long as baseball itself. We have recently been lulled into thinking that it's no longer enforced, which seemed to be fine until we realize that guys like Chris Archer still inhabit pitcher's mounds. MLB promotional slogans aside, the reality is that some players still don't appreciate showboating. Dietrich can pimp any homer any way he'd like; he just has to cop to the possibility that he'll piss somebody off in the process.
To Bell's other point, a lack of prohibition against a given act in the rulebook doesn't automatically make that act acceptable. Had Dietrich, unprovoked, decided to approach the Pittsburgh bench and spit tobacco juice onto Clint Hurdle's cleats, he wouldn't have broken any rules. He'd still be an asshole, though.
"I had one intention [in coming out to argue the call] and that was to defend our team and to defend our hitter and to get Archer ejected."
Never mind that that's technically three intentions. Trying to get Archer ejected without a warning for throwing a pitch that didn't come close to hitting a batter is, to put it exceedingly mildly, a stretch.
"I felt my only course of action was to get their pitcher ejected for intentionally trying to hurt our player."
It's unclear how throwing a ball below the belt and well behind a hitter in any way constitutes intent to injure. By this point in the conversation Bell is in full-fledged protect-my-guy mode, and appears to be spitting out whichever authoritarian argument reaches his brain first.
"Whether they throw at their heads or their backs or their legs, it is all the same to me. For that to be OK, or even somewhat acceptable that it wasn't at his head, to me that is a very dangerous approach."
This is where Bell really goes off the rails, because drawing false equivalences can be downright dangerous. What Archer did was clearly not the same as throwing at an opponent's head. What Archer did was not even the same as drilling a guy in the ribs. Any modern pitcher who intentionally rifles a ball above somebody's shoulders becomes an automatic pariah among his peers, and rightly so. Chris Archer does not remotely fit that bill, at least to judge by his approach to Dietrich.
"I don't know what those [unwritten] rules are. All I know is this is pretty simple—our hitter hit a home run and didn't do anything against major league rules or the umpire's rule or anybody's else's rules. But everybody in the ballpark knew he was going to have to stand up there and possibly get hit with a fastball, maybe hit in the head and done damage."
Waitaminute. If everybody in the ballpark knew that retaliation was imminent, Dietrich must have done something pretty obvious to inspire it. One needn't approve of Archer's response to acknowledge this reality.
David Bell is well respected around the sport, deservedly so, and I agree with him that pitchers have no business seeking physical retribution for an act so simple as showboating. But that's an awfully high horse he's decided to mount in Dietrich's defense—so high that he appears to have lost all contact with what's actually happening below. Defending his players is part of the guy's job, but over the last couple of days Bell may have been throwing himself into his work with just a touch too much vigor.
Pirates, Reds Argue Whether We're Actually Ready To Let The Kids Play
Posted on April 8, 2019 July 30, 2019 by Jason Turbow
So it seems that we're now talking in matters of degrees. We're going to let the kids play and flip themselves silly and celebrate in all sorts of ways that would have gotten them drilled by a previous generation of pitchers, and baseball is going to be better for it.
At least until somebody acts exactly like MLB has promoted in its own promotional campaigns and we're reminded that red-assed pitchers maybe don't watch too many commercials and somebody does something stupid and we're right back to where we started.
We're talking of course, about Pittsburgh's Chris Archer in the role of the Red-Ass, and Cincinnati's Derek Dietrich in the role of the Kid (never mind that he's 29, only six months younger than Archer—a marketing slogan is a marketing slogan), and Yasiel Puig as the enforcer of a player's right to showboat. (Who better, amiright?)
A quick recap: In the second inning of yesterday's game, Dietrich yammed a monster homer clear into the Allegheny, then stood in the box watching it for what even by let-the-kids-play standards seemed like an exceedingly long time.
All aboard the showboat 🚢 https://t.co/fqOj0CkjLK—
(@Cut4) April 07, 2019
Pittsburgh catcher Francisco Cervelli was the first to express displeasure, waiting as Dietrich crossed the plate to deliver some words of rapprochement, to which the runner did not respond. (According to Puig, Cervelli also warned that retaliation was coming, which, if true, surely played no small part in what was to come.)
Archer continued his team's messaging during Dietrich's next at-bat, sending a pitch to the backstop, just behind the hitter's rear end. Dietrich barely had to flinch to avoid it. Plate ump Jeff Kellogg immediately warned both benches. This is where things got interesting.
Chris Archer manages to stay in the game after throwing behind Derek Dietrich. pic.twitter.com/DboBGVR3IN
— Chase Williams WPXI (@chasepwilliams) April 7, 2019
While Dietrich was downright passive in his response, Reds manager David Bell tore from the dugout to argue the warning, followed closely by a number of Reds players and coaches, notably Puig. Almost instantly, fists were thrown. (Again: notably Puig.) Cincinnati's Bell, Puig and reliever Amir Garrett were ejected, as were Pittsburgh's Felipe Vazquez and Keone Kela.
Temps are rising in Pittsburgh after a behind the back pitch on Derek Dietrich who homered earlier in the game. pic.twitter.com/y3dIDCV7Gj
— FOX Sports Ohio (@FOXSportsOH) April 7, 2019
There's a lot to unpack here. On one hand, Archer delivered a clear and harmless message, sent well behind the batter, below his belt. Annoying maybe, but hardly impactful. ("When someone is throwing at someone, they are trying to inflict pain or possibly hurt someone or send a message," Dietrich said after the game, overblowing the details by a considerable margin.)
On the other hand, it was clear hypocrisy on Archer's part, the idea being that a pitcher like him—a showboat in his own right—has no business getting angry when an opponent dishes out some of his own. And make no mistake: Archer's emotional displays are prevalent to the point that his own team released a promo video about them before the game.
He's having too much fun.
He's too excited.
He shows too much emotion.
He's our guy and we love it.
Let. The. Kids. Play. pic.twitter.com/YqKBGBw124
— Pirates (@Pirates) April 7, 2019
Or, take Bell, whose argument with Kellogg was that by acting so quickly, the umpire denied the Reds a chance to respond. Unless his argument was that Archer should have been ejected without warning. Either of which are nonsense, given that it was the Reds who started it, and that Pittsburgh's answer didn't even involve drilling a guy. What did Bell want to do? Escalate the situation by having one of his pitchers hit a Pirate? Send a similar message without fear of ejection? To what end?
Ultimately, of course, it won't matter. If Bell or any member of his team is bent on responding, they'll have no problem waiting until the next time the teams meet at the end of May. It'd be stupid, but that's their prerogative.
There's also the idea that, according to the unwritten rules, the aggrieved party in this type of situation dictates his team's response. Had Dietrich made a mad dash for the mound, it would have made sense for his teammates to follow. But Dietrich didn't do a thing. When Bell came out to argue, Puig seized the opportunity, vaulting the dugout rail to confront Archer on the field. Puig, of course, has never been much for the unwritten rules. This alone will earn him a suspension.
If you really want to get into the woods, examine the postgame sentiments of Vazquez, one of those ejected. "[Dietrich] shouldn't have done that," he said in a Pittsburgh-Post Gazette report. "That's against the principles. If you do something like that you're going to pay for it. We're trying to play the game the right way by respecting it. Joey [Votto] can do it because he's been here a long time. But a guy like him isn't supposed to do that. He hasn't earned the right. It was a little too much. We all knew it was going to be far but you're not supposed to wait until the ball hits the ground to start running. You aren't supposed to do that."
The idea of veterans earning various rights not granted to their less-seasoned contemporaries is ages-old in baseball and, if expressed 20 years ago, wouldn't be surprising. But in a landscape where an abundance of voices are calling for freer reign—to let the kids play—it's an odd message. By Vazquez's logic, the kids should be hamstrung, just like they always were, remaining reserved in their actions until such time as they're sufficiently tenured to loosen up. That is, until they're no longer kids.
Then again, Vazquez (née Rivero), as a Venezuelan national, is taking a decidedly counter approach to that espoused by a great many Latino players, who generally tend to default toward more celebratory practices, not fewer.
Ultimately, did Dietrich learn any lessons? To judge by the homer he hit six innings later, almost to the same spot as the first, no. He stood and admired that one, too.
Derek Dietrich is sure making a splash in today's game. pic.twitter.com/d0zpq61NQG
The best thing to come out of this was @stormchasernick's response to Cut4's suggestion about art.
Ok… pic.twitter.com/M4MWTJSpnp
— Stormchasernick (@stormchasernick) April 7, 2019
Reds-Pirates, May 27. Mark it on your calendars.
Update, 4-09-19: Archer has been suspended for five games, Puig for two and Bell for one. The Archer penalty in particular, which will only force him to bump back a start for a day or two, shows that MLB viewed his actions as relatively inconsequential. Which makes sense, given that he didn't come close to hitting anybody.
Update, 4-11-19: David Bell's talking, but he's not making much sense.
With Springtime Tit-For-Tat, Pirates and Rays Already In Midseason Form
Posted on March 4, 2019 March 5, 2019 by Jason Turbow
Spring training has long been a place to settle old scores. Want to drill a guy without repercussions to your regular-season ERA? Save it for March. Just this morning I saw a tweet from @RememberWhenMLB …
And remember when Barry Zito doinked him the following spring in response? A different era.
— Jason Turbow (@BaseballCodes) March 4, 2019
… about one of the very first topics I covered upon launching this blog back in 2010. Zito did what he had to do, Fielder took it in stride, and everybody moved along their merry ways.
Baseball was different then; retaliation for personal expression is far less expected now than it was even a decade ago. This is a good thing. But just because someone like Zito is less likely to throw at someone like Fielder in the modern version of spring training doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
Just ask the Pirates.
In a game between the Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay yesterday, two Rays pitchers—Ryne Stanek and Oliver Drake—hit Pirates batters in the early going. Unless there's some yet-to-be-publicized bad blood (unlikely given that the last time these teams played each other in the regular season, 2017, none of the four principals—the batters who got hit or the pitchers who hit them—were even on their respective rosters), those pitches were purely accidental. Because of course they were. It's the only reasonable explanation.
For Pirates pitcher Clay Holmes, it didn't matter. The right-hander responded by drilling Pirates infielder Willy Adames. (He later denied intent, which is itself believable given that the primary knock on Holmes is his control.) For Rays manager Kevin Cash, however, Holmes' motivation was clear. "Are you happy?" he yelled across the field from his dugout after the pitch connected.
Holmes, a 26-year-old who made it into 11 games last year in his first season in the big leagues, understands that the best way to curry favor in one's clubhouse is to stand up for one's teammates in any way necessary. While the scope of the word "necessary" can shift from player to player, there's no mistaking that with one simple fastball, the right-hander established that the Pirates have at least one guy among their ranks unwilling to tolerate abuse (whether real or perceived) to his teammates.
Never mind that it's ludicrous to send a message about mistake pitches thrown during a period in the schedule when ballplayers are mainly trying to work out winter kinks. (Hell, Drake's a non-roster invitee who started his appearance with six straight balls.)
Plate ump Bill Welke actually warned both benches, to ensure that the foolishness went no further. "It's weird in spring training," said a baffled Adames after the game, in a Tampa Bay Times report. "You're not expecting that."
Nossir, you're not. We're now faced with the dual possibilities of A) This going away quickly because who really cares, and B) It's still only spring training, so if Cash or any of his charges wants to respond, they have massive latitude to do so. Let's hope it's the former.
[H/T Road Dog Russ]
Slide properly
Slide On Down: Baseball's Newfound Sensitivity Problem When It Comes To The Basepaths
Posted on June 29, 2018 March 6, 2019 by Jason Turbow
Who'd have guessed that the primary unwritten-rules-related topic of Major League Baseball 2018 wouldn't be bat flips or even retaliatory pitches, but guys sliding into bases? In the modern world of fielder safety, we've reached the point that players are managing to get offended even on properly executed slides.
First case in point: Last Friday in Milwaukee, the slide of Brewers infielder Eric Sogard was cut off prematurely when Cardinals shortstop Yairo Munoz, shifting over to field the throw, impeded his progress. It was a clean play all around—these things sometimes happen—yet feelings nonetheless managed to get scuffed. Sogard got up talking ("The first words that came out of my mouth," he told reporters after the game, "were 'are you all right?' "), Munoz got up angry, and within moments the benches had emptied.
Then on Tuesday, Pittsburgh's Josh Harrison slid forcefully into second base, upending Mets second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera. The slide was legit, and Cabrera didn't seem to take offense—but New York pitcher Jeurys Familia did, starting a shouting match with Harrison that, like Sogard's play in Milwaukee, drew both teams onto the field.
These follow a questionable slide already executed this season by Roughned Odor in Anaheim, tit-for-tat slides in Pittsburgh, a dustup over a slide in Wrigley Field, and a slide that left the Yankees and Red Sox brawling on the Fenway Park infield. Collectively, it's served to illustrate the unintended consequence of Major League Baseball's recent efforts to insure the safety of catchers and infielders via ever more restrictive regulations against impact. The tighter the rules, after all, the more likely it is that somebody will violate them … and the more likely that defenders will imagine violations where none exist.
Once, of course, it was legal to crash into any base in whatever way a runner saw fit, short of standing up to take a guy out. Hal McRae was the king of high barrel rolls into second base, knocking fielders backward with such viciousness that the play was eventually outlawed with an injunction that is now informally known as the Hal McRae rule. Even recently, however, low barrel rolls were seen as acceptable, none more exemplary than Alex Rodriguez's slide into second that took out Jeff Kent's knee in 1998. Kent was decidedly displeased, but on the whole, critics viewed the play as clean.
An example of barrel-rolling from the 1972 World Series, via SB Nation. Poor Dick Green.
After Don Baylor crashed into Cleveland second baseman Remy Hermoso in 1974 (a late feed from shortstop Frank Duffy had left Hermoso directly in Baylor's path while awaiting the throw)—a blow that knocked the infielder out of action for nearly four months—Orioles manager Earl weaver had to convince Baylor that the play was clean, and that such collisions were simply part of the game. It was the only time in Baylor's 19-year career, he said later, that he ever felt bad about taking out an infielder in such a manner.
Former Rangers manager (and career infielder) Ron Washington once explained to me that, as a coach, an appropriate response to such a play was not anger toward the opposition but better protection for one's own infielders. "I told my guys to protect your ass at all times," he said. "Don't go across that bag on a double-play, lollygagging. You go across that bag with two things in mind: I'm gonna turn this sucker, and if anybody gets in my way I'm gonna blow him apart [low-bridging a throw, forcing the runner to hit the dirt to avoid it]. … I don't care how simple the play is, you get yourself in a position of protection, because you never know."
No longer. Dave Nelson talked about this very topic in an interview for The Baseball Codes in 2006, when he was a coach for Milwaukee.
"I'll give you a good example," he said. "Carlos Lee went into Todd Walker last year, hard, clean. Put Walker out of the game, hurt his knee. So one of my players, Russell Branyan says, 'That's a dirty play.' And I said, 'What? That's not a dirty play. He went in there clean and hard.' He said, 'Yeah, but according to today's standards, that's dirty, because nobody does it.' I said, 'That's the problem—nobody does it.' He didn't go out there to hurt him, he went out there to take him out of the double play. This is guys' mentality today. This is how they think."
That was before baseball implemented its current spate of rules.
I examined this evolution a couple years back, well before the current spate of basepath-related issues. What's changed since that time is further restrictions on what players can legally do. Now, it seems, anything outside the proscribed guidelines—and sometimes well within them—is spurring players to anger. It goes a long way toward illustrating the effect of inherent competitiveness on a constrained landscape. The window for what is considered to be appropriate behavior in this regard is more diminutive than ever (even while the window for appropriate behavior as pertains to celebrations has been thrown wide open). Ballplayers have gained a new layer of entitlement, and damned if they're not going to leverage it for all it's worth.
After the Pirates-Mets game in which Josh Harrison was upbraided by Jeurys Familia for a perfectly acceptable slide, the Pittsburgh infielder took a reasoned approach to the situation.
"Apparently he said, 'Play the game the right way,' " Harrison told reporters after his dustup with Familia. "If you go back and look at the footage, I think I played the game the right way. Didn't touch the guy, broke up a double play without hurting the guy or touching the guy. At the end of the day, I think that's playing the game the right way."
It is. Here's hoping that the rest of baseball can come to recognize as much before too much longer.
Retaliatory Smackdown Comes Back To Bite Pirates
Wait for it.
That's a prime directive when it comes to baseball retaliation, instructing pitchers hell-bent on drilling a guy to delay their vengeance until the time is right. What that means, of course, is up for interpretation, and sometimes players interpret wrong.
Joe Musgrove is one of those guys.
In the top of the seventh inning, Arizona's Braden Shipley buried a 96-mph fastball into the top of Josh Harrison's shoulder blade, just missing his head. The blow eventually knocked Harrison from the game. Shipley then sent another fastball near Austin Meadows' head before getting him to fly out to center field.
That was enough for Musgrove, who responded in kind in the bottom half of the frame. What the Pirates right-hander had working in his favor was a 5-0 lead, plus the fact that he'd given up only four hits and no walks to that point. Musgrove was cruising, and so felt little need to wait until two were out, as is standard operating procedure in these types of situations.
He drilled leadoff hitter Chris Owings (appropriately, below the belt), and everything went immediately to hell. Musgrove then wild-pitched Owings to second. Nick Ahmed singled in Owings, cutting Pittsburgh's lead to 5-1. Shipley, hitting for himself, reached on a throwing error by third baseman David Freese (who inexplicably rushed his throw), and that was all for Musgrove. Reliever Edgar Santana was greeted with an RBI single by Daniel Descalso. Now the score was 5-2. One out later, Jake Lamb hit a three-run homer, tying the game. Arizona scored four more in the eighth to win it, 9-5.
One HBP changed the game. And Brandon Webb would not have handled as Joe Musgrove did. pic.twitter.com/Fh1Dm5ObPE
— FOX Sports Arizona (@FOXSPORTSAZ) June 12, 2018
"That's how the game is played," said Musgrove after the game, straddling the line of self-incrimination in an MLB.com report. "You're willing to go out and hit somebody, you've got to be willing to deal with what might come with that, putting the leadoff runner on base, especially late in the game like that. You don't want to start a rally."
At least his manager had his back. "You play the game and you protect your teammates," said Clint Hurdle. "It's been going on for 135 years or so." (It also appeared that the umpires had the pitcher's back, failing to issue warnings after Musgrove drilled Owings in clear retaliation.)
The fateful HBP was actually one of five in the game, two coming from Arizona relievers, and three from Musgrove. Save for the final one, to which the pitcher all but admitted, intent behind the preceding four is strictly conjecture. Even if Shipley's two pitches (the fateful one to Harrison, and the nearly fateful one to Meadows) were strictly accidental, the idea of a pitcher taking liberties around the head with a blazing fastball over which he has little control is rightly infuriating to opponents. Calmer pitchers than Musgrove have been inspired toward retaliation by less.
This actually has been a theme of sorts around the Pirates clubhouse of late. Two weeks ago, Anthony Rizzo took out Pittsburgh catcher Elias Diaz with a wide slide. After reliever Richard Rodriguez didn't so much as pitch inside to Rizzo during his next at-bat, Musgrove took things into his own hands the following day, barreling into Cubs second baseman Javier Baez with a retaliatory slide into second. "Trust me, we've talked about it," said Pirates pitcher Jameson Taillon in the Athletic. "We've had internal discussions."
Taillon spent a few minutes after the game discussing the merits of retaliation. He doesn't necessarily speak for the Pirates as a whole, but as of right now he's the guy going on the record in any kind of depth.
"They can say the ball slipped, but it's not our job to judge intent," he said. "All I can tell you is J-Hay [Harrison] gets pitched in a lot. And even if it's not on purpose, J-Hay gets hit way too much. I get sick of seeing him get spun around up there—sick of it. Something needs to be done by the staff, and Joe did it for us."
That, of course, doesn't much matter in the face of the ensuing meltdown by Pittsburgh's bullpen.
"I don't really know what's going on inside their dugout, but if it was retaliation, it certainly cost their pitcher a couple of runs and it might have cost them a win," Arizona manager Tory Lovullo said in an Arizona Republic report. "We were lying flat and dormant and being dominated by him, and I felt like it gave our dugout a lot of energy."
That much is certain. Musgrove might not change a thing if he had it all to do over again, but given the results of his approach, it's tough to deny that one can never be too careful in this type of situation.


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The comprehensive gazetteer and bibliography of the medieval castles, fortifications and palaces of England, Wales, the Islands.
The listings
Almondbury Castle Hill
Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Almanberia
In the civil parish of Huddersfield.
In the historic county of Yorkshire.
Modern Authority of Kirklees.
1974 county of West Yorkshire.
Medieval County of Yorkshire West Riding.
OS Map Grid Reference: SE15251407
Latitude 53.62216° Longitude -1.77198°
Almondbury Castle Hill has been described as a certain Timber Castle, and also as a certain Masonry Castle.
There are earthwork remains.
This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.
Early-mid C12 castle constructed on the Iron Age hillfort. The castle comprises three wards, and was partly constructed in stone. It was ruinous by the late C16. Visible now as an earthwork. The castle was surveyed by RCHME in 1995 and was excavated by Varley between 1939 and 1972, though little has been published. (PastScape)
Castle Hill, Almondbury is a good and well-preserved example of a slight univallate hillfort which developed into a small multivallate hillfort. Not only does it lie outside the main distribution, it belongs to an extremely small group of northern single-banked hillforts with an internal area of more than 1ha. It is, in addition, one of the very few small multivallate hillforts datable to the period before 400BC and is unique in that, during its multi-banked phase, the bivallate interior was surrounded by two outer earthworks set in places more than 30m apart. It also possesses other rare features, including an outwork, and its earliest ramparts preserve the pre- enclosure ground surface contemporary with earlier Prehistoric use of the site. A substantial part of the monument remains unexcavated, making it of great importance to the study of hillforts of these two types. Equally important are the well-preserved remains of the motte and bailey castle. Furthermore, in addition to the garrison and ancillary buildings whose remains survive in the bailey, the well-preserved earthworks of an associated medieval settlement are contained in the area adjacent.
Castle Hill is situated south of Huddersfield at Almondbury, on a hill top above the Holme Valley south of its confluence with the River Colne. The monument includes the remains of a late Bronze Age or early Iron Age univallate hillfort, a later Iron Age multivallate hillfort, a twelfth century motte and bailey castle and the site of a deserted medieval village. Evidence for the occupation and development of Castle Hill comes from a series of partial excavations carried out by W.J.Varley between 1939 and 1973. The earliest period of use was approximately four thousand years ago, as shown by the discovery of Late Neolithic flint tools and part of a polished stone axe. This predated the first hillfort by circa one and a half thousand years. The earthworks encircling the hill were constructed in stages over a period of roughly two hundred years. The earliest enclosure, dated by radiocarbon and thermoluminescence techniques to the late seventh century BC, consisted of an area of c.2ha at the south-west end of the hill enclosed by a single bank measuring c.3m wide. This first enclosure did not have an external ditch but the bank would have been surmounted by a wooden palisade. A simple inturned entrance bisected the bank that crossed the hill and had a small guard room to one side. Early in the sixth century BC, the first enclosure was surrounded by a wide, flat-bottomed ditch and the upcast was used to construct a new bank, also 3m wide, which roughly followed the line of the old bank but in places had a different alignment. In the mid-sixth century BC, this univallate hill fort was refortified and expanded to become a complex double- banked and ditched enclosure. New ramparts, of identical structure to the earlier, were built across the ends of the transverse ditch and were continued round the north-eastern half of the hill, effectively doubling the size of the enclosure. A new entrance was created at the north-east approach and the single bank and ditch of the original enclosure were reinforced by the addition of a second rampart. Post-holes at the front and rear of these defences were found to be contemporary and would have supported the timbers of a shelter attached to the rampart. Approximately one hundred years later this bivallate hill fort was fundamentally rebuilt. The inner rampart was widened and raised and now almost entirely consisted of two parallel drystone revetments separated by horizontal timber lacing infilled with shale and clay. A deeper V-shaped ditch was cut beyond the rampart and a short length of shale rampart was added parallel to the north-east extension. A longer stretch was built outside it and continued to the north-east entrance where an outwork was also added. This outwork shared the outer ditch of the latter rampart and created an oblique approach to the hillfort, carried along a holloway from the north- east. Two new banks, almost continuous and spaced wide apart, were built lower down the hill to entirely surround the complex. By the end of the fifth century BC, however, this multivallate hillfort had been abandoned. The vitrification of the inner rampart indicates that it was destroyed by fire at about that time, possibly during hostilities. The site does not appear to have been occupied again until the early twelfth century AD when the earthworks were modified and reconstructed to create a motte and bailey castle. A broad ditch, 27m wide and 9m deep, was cut across the top of the hill, south-west of the transverse ditch belonging to the original univallate hillfort. The upcast from the ditch was used to build a motte with a surrounding rampart. In the first half of the twelfth century, licence to fortify was granted by King Stephen and the timber palisade that would originally have surmounted the motte was replaced by a stone wall. The remains of timber buildings, and others of timber and stone, have been found on the motte. These had a number of functions and were accompanied by a 27m deep well in which was found well-preserved organic material of the medieval period in addition to medieval pottery and metalwork. Ancillary and garrison buildings, and pens for cattle and horses, would have occupied the bailey and the remains of these will survive in the south-western half of the site overlying deposits relating to the internal layout of the hillfort. The north-eastern half was, at this time, the site of a small medieval settlement which survived the abandonment of the castle by circa two centuries, being still occupied in the fifteenth century. This settlement was characterised by a row of dwellings on either side of a track that ran from the north-east entrance to the gap in the rampart of the univallate hillfort. Each building occupied a strip of land which lay at right-angles to the track and was separated from its neighbours by a shallow ditch. After the desertion of the settlement, Castle Hill remained unoccupied until the nineteenth century when a tavern was built that is still in use as a hotel and public house. In the interim it was twice used as a beacon hill, with one fire being lit there at the time of the Spanish Armada and another being prepared in the event of a Napoleonic invasion. Traditionally, in the past, it has been held to be the site of Camelot and, less fancifully, a Roman fort or the headquarters of the Brigantian Queen Cartimandua. These theories have been discounted, however, due to the complete break in occupation between the fourth century BC and the Middle Ages. (Scheduling Report)
Links to archaeological and architectural databases, mapping and other online resources
Data > PastScape County HER Scheduling
Maps > Streetmap NLS maps Where's the path Old-Maps
Data/Maps > Magic V. O. B. Geology LiDAR Open Domesday
Air Photos > Bing Maps Google Maps Getmapping ZoomEarth
Photos > CastleFacts Geograph Flickr Panoramio
Sources of information, references and further reading
National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1009846, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number 13297
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 1032947.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 2.
Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
Dave Weldrake, 2010, A tourist's guide to interesting archaeological sites in West Yorkshire Castle Hill, Almondbury (West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service)
Brigantes Nation
Kirklees Council
CastlesFortsBattle.co.uk
Turner, Maurice, 2004, Yorkshire Castles: Exploring Historic Yorkshire (Otley: Westbury Publishing) p. 92, 108, 110, 129, 179, 234
Salter, Mike, 2001, The Castles and Tower Houses of Yorkshire (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 16
Ingham, Bernard, 2001, Bernard Ingham's Yorkshire Castles (Dalesman) p. 32-3
Pettifer, A., 1995, English Castles, A guide by counties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press) p. 301
Rumsby, J.H., 1992, 'A castle well guarded' in Haigh, E.A.H. (ed.), Huddersfield: A Most Handsome Town (Huddersfield: Kirklees Cultural Services) p. 1-16
King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 2 p. 512
Faull, M.L. and Moorhouse, S.A., 1981, West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Survey to AD1500 (Wakefield) Vol. 3 p. 737
Fry, P.S., 1980, Castles of the British Isles (David and Charles) p. 178
Renn, D.F., 1973 (2 edn.), Norman Castles of Britain (London: John Baker) p. 89
Pevsner, N. (Revised by Radcliffe, Enid), 1967, Buildings of England: Yorkshire: West Riding (London, Penguin) p. 80
Ahier, P., 1946, The Story of Castle Hill, Huddersfield Throughout the Centuries, BC200-AD1945 (Huddersfield: Advertiser Press)
Illingworth, J.L., 1938 (republished 1970), Yorkshire's Ruined Castles (Wakefield)
Armitage and Montgomerie, 1912, in Page, Wm (ed), VCH Yorkshire Vol. 2 p. 24-25
Whitaker, T.D., 1816, Loidis and Elmete (Leeds) p. 327-8
Periodical Articles
Speight, Sarah, 2008, 'Castles as Past Culture: Living with Castles in the Post-Medieval World' Château Gaillard Vol. 23 p. 385-94 (slight)
Constable, Chris, 2007, 'Earthwork castles in West Yorkshire Part Two' Archaeology and Archives in West Yorkshire Vol. 24 p. 5-6 online copy
Constable, Chris, 2006, 'Earthwork castles in West Yorkshire' Archaeology and Archives in West Yorkshire Vol. 23 p. 5-6 online copy
Sneyd, Steve, 2002, 'An Enigma in the Sky Almondbury Castle' Postern Vol. 13 p. 11-18
1995, 'a prominent archaeological landmark' Archaeology in West Yorkshire No. 3 (resistivity survey)
(Varley), 1971, Medieval Archaeology Vol. 15 p. 149 download copy
Manby, T.G., 1968, 'Almondburt Castle and hill fort' The Archaeological Journal Vol. 125 p. 352-4
Brown, R. Allen, 1959, 'A List of Castles, 1154–1216' The English Historical Review Vol. 74 p. 249-280 (Reprinted in Brown, R. Allen, 1989, Castles, conquest and charters: collected papers (Woodbridge: Boydell Press) p. 90-121) view online copy (subscription required)
Brooke, T., 1902, 'Castle Hill, Almondbury' Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 16 p. 241-7 online copy
Chadwick, S.J., 1900, 'Excavations on the site of Almondbury Castle' Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 15 p. 118-19 (minor excavation report) online copy
Armitage, 1900, The Bradford Antiquary Vol. 1 p. 396-403
Clark, G.T., 1889, 'Contribution towards a complete list of moated mounds or burhs' The Archaeological Journal Vol. 46 p. 197-217 esp. 214 online copy
Brooke, T., 1874, Journal of the British Archaeological Association Vol. 30 p. 232-3 online copy
Hills, G.M., 1874, 'Examples of ancient earthworks' Journal of the British Archaeological Association Vol. 30 p. 406-13 esp. 410-13 online copy
Walker, J.K., 1873, 'Almondbury in Feudal Times' Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 2 p. 3, 8-10 (history only) online copy
Varley, W.J., 1978 (rev edn), Castle Hill, Almonbury (Kirklees Metropolitan Council)
Varley, W.J., 1969, Castle Hill, Almonbury (Huddersfield Borough Council)
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
Barnes, P.M. (ed.), 1955, The Great Roll of the Pipe for the fourteenth year of the reign of King John, Michaelmas 1212 (Pipe Roll 58) (Pipe Roll Society Publications 68)
Farrer, W. (ed), 1916, Early Yorkshire Charters Vol. 3 p. 146 online copy (Notitia of a charter of Stephen, confirming to Henry de Lascy in fee the castle of Almondbury. 1142-1154)
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
Camden, Wm, 1607, Britannia hypertext critical edition by Dana F. Sutton (2004)
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
Constable, Christopher, 2003, Aspects of the archaeology of the castle in the north of England C 1066-1216 (Doctoral thesis, Durham University) Available at Durham E-Theses Online
West Yorkshire Archaeology Service Geophysics Archive, 2002, Geophysical Survey online copy
Creighton, O.H., 1998, Castles and Landscapes: An Archaeological Survey of Yorkshire and the East Midlands (PhD Thesis University of Leicester) p. 70-1, 315-19, 758-9 online copy
RCHME, 1996, Castle Hill, Almondbury, West Yorkshire, NMR Nos. SE 11 SE, 24, 25, 26, and 28: Archaeological Survey Report (Unpublished Report: NMR, Swindon)
Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.
The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.
The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.
Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.
The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
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This record last updated 26/07/2017 09:20:09
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You are here: Home / Columns / 2006 Columns / Apr. 17, 2006: Flaggers Are Waging A Losing Battle On Referendum
Apr. 17, 2006: Flaggers Are Waging A Losing Battle On Referendum
Flaggers have never been hesitant to state their displeasure with me when I wrote something they didn't like (a fairly frequent occurrence.) Now, for the past several months I have been trying to get them to tell me about their political strategy for the upcoming elections and their silence has been deafening.
In the past, they have said all they want is a public referendum on the old state flag, which resembles the Confederate battle flag. That seems fair enough. The question is: How do you get approval for a referendum when you have alienated the very people who could make it happen?
Do flaggers think they can help elect a governor who will support their call for a public referendum? If so, who will it be? It certainly won't be Gov. Sonny Perdue, their Public Enemy Number One. He didn't support the flaggers after he was elected the first time. Who thinks he is going to support them in a second term? Perdue is definitely out.
Will the flaggers put their efforts behind one of the two Democratic candidates, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and Secretary of State Cathy Cox? Last time I looked, both are courting black voters in order to get their party's nomination. Does anybody think either candidate is going to advocate a public referendum on a flag that carries a negative connotation with many black voters? Cross off Taylor and Cox.
How about the Legislature? The Georgia Constitution says the state flag is to be determined by the General Assembly. Do the flaggers seriously think Speaker of the House Glen Richardson, who has been the recipient of flagger protests, is going to let a bill approving a referendum on the old state flag see the light of day? Not hardly. House Minority Leader Dubose Porter, another frequent flagger target, would likely be in total agreement. Do flaggers think that any legislator who wants to get a bill passed in his or her lifetime is going to cross Richardson or Porter, and push for a referendum? You can put the Legislature in the "No" column.
How about public support? I would hazard a guess that most Georgians are satisfied with the current state flag which was adopted in 2003, and which closely resembles the first national flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars. Plus, I suspect Georgians, like most Americans, are concerned today with more basic issues – taxes, energy costs, improving public education, the threat of terrorism, immigration, the state of the economy – than with dredging up the old state flag again. Forget a public groundswell.
With little or no support among the gubernatorial candidates, the leadership in the Legislature or with the general public, what do flaggers do now? Unless they know a whole lot more about politics than I think they do, I suggest they give up the fight. They have lost the battle.
A year or so ago, a third-party brokered a luncheon meeting between some of the leading flaggers and me. Having spent most of my adult life dealing with external issues, I suggested that if they wanted the public's support, they should be out in the state making a positive case for their position, instead rattling their sabers at anybody who disagreed with them. I said they needed an articulate spokesperson and some compelling talking points about preserving our Southern heritage, of which the flag is only a small part. They needed to be proactive, not reactive. Get out to civic clubs. Visit the media. Talk to business people. In short, keep their friends, but work on their enemies. I could have better spent my time talking to my water glass. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. They are still busy chasing the governor around the state with their "Punt Perdue" signs – a monumental waste of time and effort.
Hopefully, this column will kick-start a response from the flaggers and they will tell me how they intend to get a public referendum on the old state flag. It's a very simple question. I'll be interested to see how they answer it. Or, if they do.


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Port St. Lucie High wrestling standout wins Nike award
Bill Meredith
By Bill Meredith
Special to The Palm Beach Post
It would be hard to have a better weekend than the one 17-year-old Port St. Lucie resident Hunter Taroli had on Feb. 22-24.
That Friday, the junior wrestling captain at Port St. Lucie High received the Nike MVP of the Month Award from Nike representative Richard Serrano at the campus.
The award was the result of his superior leadership skills being singled out by a Florida High School Athletic Association official in a letter to the school, which was relayed by vice principal April Rogers to Serrano, manager of the Nike store in Vero Beach.
That Saturday and Sunday, Taroli competed in USA Wrestling's off-season Florida Amateur Wrestling Association state tournament in Kissimmee. He finished second in the 145-pound division, never allowing a point until the championship match.
"It was a crazy few days," Taroli said. "I wasn't sure I'd do that well at the tournament, because I was in the biggest bracket. There were 63 wrestlers in my weight class."
Having wrestled only since his freshman season for head coach Demary Brown's Jaguars, Taroli made The Palm Beach Post's Winter 2012 High School All-Area Team after winning district titles as a sophomore and junior; finishing in the Top 16 in Florida in 2011, and cracking the Top 8 last season.
"I like knowing that it's all on me to beat the person in front of me," he said, "and I've always loved being a leader."
Wrestling's one-on-one format displays a competitor's strengths or weaknesses by nature, and Taroli has long crafted strength out of prospective weakness. He's been raised by an aunt and uncle, Julie and Dennis Lambert, ever since his parents lost custody when he was a young child.
"It's unfortunate," Taroli said, "but it's a part of life, and you get over it and move on."
High school sports provided an outlet, and started to showcase Taroli's beyond-his-years leadership skills in ninth grade. The novice wrestler finished fourth in districts, and was a running back for the Jaguars' junior varsity football team.
"I want to play football again as a senior," he said. "I only weighed around 120 pounds as a freshman, and I'm up to 150 now and can run a 4.6 40-yard dash."
Fall football will be followed by winter wrestling, and hopefully a less eventful trip to the team's annual summer wrestling camp in Ohio. Last year, Jaguars assistant coach Jim Daly's van caught fire and was destroyed within minutes along the highway, thankfully with no serious injuries.
Taroli's aunt then helped mount a campaign to recoup costs for the coach. She's also started a petition on Change.org to help change the minds of Olympic organizers, who recently announced the elimination of wrestling, one of the original Olympic sports.
Changes for Taroli in 2014 are likely to include higher learning on a scholarship. The University of Oregon has expressed interest, along with The Citadel in South Carolina and Mount Union in Ohio.
"I'll probably study sports medicine in college," he said, "and become a physical trainer."
As a leader in the field, no doubt.
billmrdth@gmail.com


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Onshore wind power generation asset
Project located in Zaporizhia Region on the Sea of Azov
Building permit and Grid connection for 500 MW granted in 2015
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Excellent wind + long-term feed-in tariff
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In May 1963 the average high temperature in San Antonio, TX was 88.0°F, and this was 1.0°F warmer than the average of 86.9°F. The hottest day in May 1963 was 27 May when the temperature reached 97.0°F. Overnight the average temperature in May is 66.0°F and in 1963 the average overnight temperature was 2.4°F warmer at 68.4°F.
In May the average monthly rainfall in San Antonio, TX is 2.56 inches with rain usually falling on 10 days. In May 1963 there was a total of 0.00 inches of rain, that fell on 10 days.


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text:
Amanda in Wonderland
Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir
by Amanda Knox
Harper, 461 pp., $28.99
Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
Amanda Knox arriving at the court in Perugia during her appeal trial, four days before her murder conviction was overturned, September 30, 2011
"It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one—but I'm grown up now," she added in a sorrowful tone….
—Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
In May 2011, I went to dinner in Perugia with several reporters who had spent most of the previous three and a half years covering the Meredith Kercher murder case. They shared a sardonic, wary view of the proceedings, in which their reporting had played an outsized and perhaps decisive role. We met at a restaurant called, appropriately enough, Altromondo (Otherworld). It was underground, like so much of Perugia, including the courtroom where Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were tried and convicted for Kercher's death. In Perugia, you almost always feel like you're underground, even when you're outside. The medieval city descends a steep hill in crooked, claustrophobic side streets that cross each other at absurd angles. The narrowness of the streets is enhanced by the tendency of the city's ancient buildings to lean forward, as if about to fall on their faces. The sun doesn't shine on most streets for most of each day. The mood is relentlessly clandestine, conspiratorial, paranoid.
At Altromondo the journalists ordered pasta with wild boar and carafes of house red. I was halfway into my tripe when one journalist said, offhandedly, "I don't even know any more if Amanda is guilty." (It was an affectation of the journalists in Perugia to refer to the case's principals by their first names, just as the most junior staffer in a Hollywood mailroom might refer to Brad or Angelina.) The statement surprised me, because this particular journalist had recently published a book that accused Knox of murdering Kercher in cold blood.
Also at the table was a charming British hack whose byline regularly appeared under "exclusive" reports about the trials. The British tabloids had been inspired by Amanda Knox to great rhetorical heights, even by their own formidable standards. The greatest hits, all of which would later turn out to be misleading if not blatantly false, included "'MEREDITH DIES TONIGHT': CHILLING TEXT MESSAGE PREDICTED STUDENT'S SEX MURDER"; "THE WILD, RAUNCHY PAST OF FOXY KNOXY"; "FOXY KNOXY 'HELD MEREDITH DOWN DURING DEADLY SEX ATTACK'"; "Meredith Kercher 'SAID AMANDA WAS A DRUGGED-UP TART'"; "FOXY KNOXY, THE GIRL WHO HAD TO COMPETE WITH HER OWN MOTHER FOR MEN"; "AMANDA KNOX: I'M ONLY A TARGET BECAUSE I'M SEXY"; "AMANDA KNOX: 'ANGEL-FACED KILLER WITH ICE COLD EYES.'"
Perhaps the best example was an article in the Daily Mail titled "CHILLING PICTURES OF MEREDITH MURDER SCENE REVEAL APARTMENT BLOODBATH HORROR." It described the condition of the bathroom shared by Kercher and Knox in their odd hillside flat, which was perched on the edge of Perugia's outer ring road, overlooking a steep ravine. On the morning after the murder, before Kercher's body was discovered in her locked bedroom, Knox had taken a shower in the bathroom. She had claimed not to have noticed any obvious evidence of a crime—only two flecks of blood in the sink, and a reddish-brown splotch on the bathmat.
But in the photograph accompanying the article, the bathroom appeared to be drenched in blood. It was the kind of image you'd expect to see in a Grand Guignol horror film, and seemed incontrovertible evidence of Knox's guilt—had the red liquid actually been blood. But it wasn't blood. It was Luminol, a chemical used to detect blood, which itself turns red after prolonged exposure to the air. The journalist would have known this. Nevertheless, his article described the bathroom as "blood-soaked" and "smeared with blood." It was one of countless fabricated reports that prejudiced the public and, by limited extension, the unsequestered Perugian jury, against Knox.
Over dinner the British journalist explained to me how he did his job. He had no contract with any newspaper, but auctioned each story to the highest bidder. If a competing reporter offered a more dramatic story to editors, or one that could be written faster, he would be passed over. He was under significant pressure to sell stories, for he had to pay his own way to Perugia, and stayed at a cheap hotel in order to keep expenses down. He also admitted to me that he had no idea whether Knox was guilty and didn't care one way or another.
During ten days of conducting interviews in Perugia, including one with Giuliano Mignini, the case's chief prosecutor, I learned that there was no persuasive physical evidence tying Knox or her rich Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to Kercher's murder.* Nor was there any coherent motive, a fact plainly acknowledged by one of the prosecutors in her closing statement. "We live," she said, "in an age of violence with no motive." Part of me, I admit, was disappointed. The story of two college students imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit was far more complicated, and less dramatic, than the prosecution's theory: that a nymphomaniacal Knox, together with her boyfriend and Rudy Guede (the only suspect who left physical evidence at the crime scene), killed Kercher because she refused to participate in an orgy. But it was this lurid fantasy that proved irresistible to the journalists, television producers, and filmmakers who had descended upon Perugia during the previous four years. The story may not have been entirely convincing, but it sold.
Knox and Sollecito were set free at the end of their appeal trial, on October 3, 2011. "The only circumstantial evidence that remains," concluded the court in its final report, "…does not, in any way, establish the guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the crime of murder." Knox had been in Capanne prison for nearly four years. During that time her family, by her father's estimation, had spent more than $1.5 million on legal fees and travel. In February 2012, it was reported that Knox, who had never given a formal interview to the press, had signed a book contract worth nearly $4 million. The 461-page memoir was written with the assistance of a journalist, Linda Kulman, in about six months. It was published this April—less than a month after Italy's highest court, in a surprising reversal, overturned Knox's acquittal and ordered a retrial. The status of the retrial, at this date, remains uncertain, but it seems unlikely that Knox will be extradited (Sollecito, who still lives in Italy, may not be so lucky).
Waiting to Be Heard is, as her publisher put it, Knox's chance to "tell the full story from her point of view for the very first time." It is remarkable, though, how little of her story hasn't already been told. The details of the investigation and the trials have been heavily documented for years, albeit with varying degrees of accuracy, in the press and in the obsessive Internet chat rooms devoted to her case. The determined efforts of Mignini and his colleagues to prove Knox's guilt, and protect their own reputations, will be familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of the case, as will the portrait of Knox as a nerdy, sheltered Seattle teenager, guileless almost to the point of aberrance. As her stepfather told me: "She's the smartest person you'd ever know" but "dumb as a rock" when it comes to "street sense." She was the kind of teenager who sang loudly to herself in the halls of her high school and walked down the street like an Egyptian or an elephant. She approached homeless people in parks and asked them about their lives, and biked across Seattle at night without consulting a map. Her only serious boyfriend before Sollecito had a Mohawk and wore a kilt.
After four years in prison, Knox is no longer naive. But it's clear from Waiting to Be Heard that she—or her legal team—felt pressure to justify her whimsical, often callow behavior during the investigation and trial. This is understandable, since much of her trouble derived from observations the Italian investigators made about her actions in the hours and days following Kercher's murder. Still, the constant assertion of her former naiveté can be exhausting: "I was too naïve back then…," "I was naïve, in over my head…," "I was too naïve to imagine that…," "As naïve as I now realize this was…," "How am I still this naïve?," "I was very naïve and not remotely courageous…," "I was naïve." These are also the sections of the book that seem to bear the heaviest imprint of an older, mildly patronizing collaborator—or a lawyer. It's hard to credit a twenty-five-year-old writing sentences like "Casual sex was, for my generation, simply what you did," or "Now I see that I was a mouse in a cat's game."
Yet the shattering of Knox's naiveté is the memoir's central and most gripping narrative. Naive: from Old French, naif, just born; Knox, when she arrived in Italy, was still a child. Waiting to Be Heard belongs to the coming-of-age genre, even if Knox's transformation was unusually abrupt and violent (though not, of course, as abrupt and violent as what befell Meredith Kercher). The Italian criminal justice system provided Knox with an immersion course in disillusionment, cynicism, indifference, and cruelty. The lessons came too fast for her to digest, however, and she spent her first two years at Capanne in a state of denial.
When, after being convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty-six years, she was finally forced to make sense of her fate, she turned to literature. Her prison journals, in which she listed the books she read, reveal that she was educating herself in Existentialism (Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Sartre's No Exit and Nausea), Magical Realism (Calvino, Borges, Eco), Absurdism and Despair (Kafka, Vonnegut, Beckett, Woody Allen), and its subgenre, Imprisonment (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy). She was studying the canon. She was trying desperately to catch up. And she was taking notes. One day, her father predicted to a journalist in 2009, "she will write her own book about this."
A number of writers, beginning with John Guare in 2009, have described Knox as a modern-day Daisy Miller. "The urge to compare the two is irresistible," wrote Sam Tanenhaus recently in The New York Times:
Like Knox, James's American heroine left observers wondering whether her angelic exterior masked "a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young woman," even if she was "very unsophisticated," as James explains, "only a pretty American flirt."
Illustration by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass
But Waiting to Be Heard follows a different literary model. In her own telling, Knox's story owes less to Henry James than to Lewis Carroll.
Knox falls down the rabbit-hole four days after Kercher's murder, at the moment when she is taken into police custody. This is also, not coincidentally, the point at which the memoir comes to life. It is where Knox begins to tell the only part of her story that is new: the details of her life at Capanne prison, and the ways in which it changed her.
Earlier that morning, after a bullying interrogation during which investigators used nearly every psychological and procedural trick available in order to secure a confession, Knox had signed two statements. The statements were written in Italian by the police. Both implicated her boss, Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a local nightclub, in Kercher's murder, and in both Knox claimed to have been at the murder scene.
These were lies, albeit lies prompted by the interrogators, and in addition to her murder conviction, Knox would be judged guilty of defaming Lumumba; this ruling was held up on appeal, when she was sentenced to time served. Despite having a strong alibi, Lumumba was held in jail for nearly three weeks. He was released when forensics tests matched the fingerprints and DNA found on the crime scene to Rudy Guede, a low-level thief with no previous criminal record who had fled the country in the days following Kercher's death. Guede was convicted in a separate trial and is currently serving a sixteen-year sentence.
Knox's second statement was signed at 5:45 AM. By 2 pm she was already expressing doubt to investigators.
"What I described last night doesn't seem like memories," she says. "I feel like I imagined the events."
"No, your memories will come back," replies an investigator. "You'll see."
Knox is informed that she has to be taken into custody "just for a couple of days—for bureaucratic reasons." She is led to a room where, before a male doctor, a nurse, and several female police officers, she is asked to strip naked and spread her legs:
The doctor inspected the outer lips of my vagina and then separated them with his fingers to examine the inner. He measured and photographed my intimate parts. I couldn't understand why they were doing this.
Later that day she is dropped off at Capanne prison. One of her guards hugs her goodbye.
"Everything's going to be okay," says the guard, reassuringly. "The police will take care of you."
Why the guards and police continually sought to reassure Knox, even after she signed her confession, is as puzzling as anything Knox did in the hours following Kercher's murder (she would be criticized for stretching her legs in the police station's waiting room, embracing Sollecito and sitting on his lap, and not crying enough for her murdered friend). When Knox questions her confinement, she is told that she is being held for her own safety. She accepts this explanation—Kercher's killer, after all, was still on the loose. And she believes she is assisting the investigation. She wants badly to be of help. When Knox is handcuffed, she politely informs her guard that her cuffs are too loose. "Excuse me," she says, "but I can slip my hand out." Her handcuffs are tightened. "It didn't occur to me," she writes, "…that perhaps I should call a lawyer."
Days pass. Her captors say "it's only for a few days," "bureaucratic reasons," and "it's all under control." One is reminded of Alice, racing after the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle in order to arrive in court on time. "What trial is it?" asks Alice, panting, not realizing that it is her own.
In fact it is not until Knox's first court appearance, a week after the crime, that she figures out that she is the chief murder suspect. Even then it will be another year before she receives a formal criminal charge.
At Capanne, things get curiouser and curiouser. One day a prison doctor informs her that she has tested positive for HIV. Distraught, Knox makes a list in her diary of her sexual history: seven sexual partners, three since arriving in Italy. The information is immediately handed over to prosecutors and used as character evidence against her. Two months later she finds out that she does not have HIV. Was her positive test result an honest error, or a ploy to elicit information? We can only speculate.
Knox is separated from the general prison population and kept under constant surveillance. Guards watch her while she showers or uses the toilet. Her only friend is a prison priest, Don Saulo, who tells her things like "No matter what happens, live your life to its fullest." Her conversations with visitors are recorded, as are her phone calls. Her diaries, letters, even her grammar exercises are routinely confiscated from her cell. Her words, written and overheard, are taken out of context to justify the prosecution's theories. During a visit with her mother, Knox, discussing her alibi (she was with Sollecito on the evening of the murder), says: "It's stupid. I can't say anything but the truth, because I know I was there." She is referring to Sollecito's apartment, but the prosecution takes "there" to mean the crime scene. A couple of weeks later, the London Telegraph runs a piece under the headline "TAPE 'PUTS KNOX AT MEREDITH MURDER SCENE.'" The judge agrees with this interpretation. "It can certainly be read as a confirmation of the girl's presence in her home at the moment of the crime," he writes in a statement. This is proof, he adds, that Knox is "unattached to reality with an elevated…fatal, capacity to kill again."
More gets lost in translation—due to incompetence or malice it is not always clear. Consider the following passage from one of her confiscated prison diaries, written after it had been reported that Sollecito's DNA was detected on Kercher's bra (a finding that was later revealed to be erroneous):
Unless Raffaele decided to get up after I fell asleep, grabbed said knife, went over to my house, used it to kill Meredith, came home, cleaned it off, rubbed my fingerprint all over it, put it away, then tucked himself back into bed, and then pretended really well the next couple of days, well, I just highly doubt all of that.
The Italian translation of this passage, here translated back into English, turned skepticism into assertion, doubt into incomprehension:
I don't remember anything. But I think it's possible that Raffaele went to Meredith's house, raped her and then killed her. And then when he got home, while I was sleeping, he put my fingerprints on the knife. But I don't understand why Raffaele would do that.
The subsequent Daily Mail exclusive took the game of telephone one step further: "Amanda Knox has now accused Raffaele Sollecito of committing the murder and planting her fingerprints on the murder weapon while she slept."
It begins to dawn on Knox and her lawyers that the prosecution is manipulating the evidence. The hard drives of the computers belonging to Knox, Sollecito, Kercher, and another of Knox's roommates, which might have validated the defendants' alibi, are wiped clean by police technicians. They claim ineptitude. In order to account for the lack of physical evidence at the crime scene, the prosecutors posit that Knox erased her traces (but not Guede's) with cleaning supplies. So a receipt for pizza, found among Knox's belongings, is alleged to be a receipt for bleach.
Confronted with the absence of a murder weapon, a detective opens the cutlery drawer in Sollecito's kitchen and removes a knife. When asked how he knew to test that knife, and not any of the others in the drawer, the detective cites "investigative intuition." In a final bureaucratic twist, the prosecution sends Knox bills for "investigative expenses," including fees for the translation of her journals, which means she must personally fund the state's investigation against her.
Meanwhile Knox's lawyers continue to bungle the case in the court of public opinion. Not wanting to sink to the level of the prosecution, they refuse to speak to the press about the case. One even runs away from journalists on the street outside the court. But this strategy proves disastrous, as each point of falsified evidence is reported without challenge. Knox understands exactly how disastrous this strategy is, because her cellmates keep the television on all day and refuse to turn it off. Much of the time, Knox finds herself watching herself on television.
"I felt oddly small," writes Knox, "like Alice in Wonderland, when everything around her was so much bigger."
Yet the reader of Waiting to Be Heard gets the unmistakable sense that, at least in that frantic first week of the investigation, Knox did not resent the sensation of growing much bigger. She had traveled abroad with the goal of "meeting maturity head-on." For a year she had worked extra jobs, saving up money so that she could pay her own way to Italy, and she had fought hard to win her parents' permission. Even during her interrogation, surrounded by investigators who slapped her on the back of her head and called her a liar, she never considered leaving Perugia.
"I was determined not to let this tragedy undo all I'd worked so hard for over the past year," she writes. "The way I saw it, if I went home, I'd be admitting defeat." Her roommate's murder had forced adulthood upon her much sooner than she had anticipated. But despite the horror of the circumstances, and the fear of years in prison, how could the experience not also have been in some ways secretly thrilling? She had won her adulthood at last. And what she lost—which is what we all lose, when we leave childhood behind—was her freedom.
James Bamford
What the NSA Knows
The Language of Cinema
John Paul Stevens
The Right to Vote: A Dissent
More by Nathaniel Rich
Houses of Holes
Hiroko Oyamada's novels inhabit the borderlands between fantasy and reality, an uncanny landscape played for horror and comedy.
'The Italian Proust'
The Monsters in Cabinet 13
Un-su Kim's novels take on the capricious drudgery of modern professional life and the crazed whimsy and sociopathic violence it can inspire.
Nathaniel Rich's latest book is Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade. (December 2022)
For a detailed account of the case and the trial, see my "The Neverending Nightmare of Amanda Knox," Rolling Stone, June 27, 2011. ↩
Effie Traylor-Parkes
Mozart in the Stacks
August 5, 1965 issue


It is with great sadness that the family of Ralph Carpino announces his passing at his residence surrounded by his family on Friday, March 1, 2019 at the age of 79.
Ralph will be lovingly remembered by his wife of 55 years, Novella and his children Dina (Greg), Debbie (Mark) and Frank (Lori). Nonno Ralph will also be fondly remembered and missed by his seven grandchildren, Tyler, Sierra, Connor, Sephira, Chase, Jake and Kruz. Ralph will also be forever remembered by his sister Ida and numerous nieces, nephews and extended family and friends. Ralph was predeceased by his parents and many siblings and in-laws.
A special thank you to St. Elizabeth Palliative Health Care, Dr. Kim Adzich and two very special nurses, Babes and Amanda for their care and compassion. He loved you both.
Friends will be received at the BOCCHINFUSO FUNERAL HOME, 2 Regent Street, Thorold, from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. & 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. on Monday, March 4, 2019 with Vigil Prayers recited at 7:00 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at OUR LADY OF THE HOLY ROSARY CHURCH, 21 Queen Street South, Thorold, on Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. followed by cremation. If desired, memorial donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be appreciated by the family.