Washington Post

Dodgers vs. Cardinals: NLCS matchup made in the Heartland . . . or Tinseltown

This is a great article that shows how fundamentally different the Cardinals and Dodgers teams are, even though they do share one thing…a storied history. I only disagree with one point…no way do the Dodgers win this thing in six. Go Cards!

St. Louis teams are drilled in fundamentals and are often greater than the sum of their parts. They don’t need superstars if it means paying them $250 million. That’s why Albert Pujols is now an Angelic anchor around the neck of that other Los Angles team for the next eight years. The Cards are doing just fine with Allen Craig, David Freese and Matt Carpenter, none of whom can be identified by anybody who lives beyond the reach of KMOX.

The Dodgers are always better, or worse, than their collective parts depending on whether Pisces is in the fifth house of Kasten or the number of Miley Cyrus wannabes in the Chavez Ravine box seats. The Dodgers have more stars than Orion. Matt Kemp ($160 million) is out for the season, but you hardly notice since Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the game, Zack Greinke backs him up and five other Dodgers are playing under contracts with an average value of over $100 million. If you don’t make $60 million, the clubhouse guy won’t pick up your wet towels.

In St. Louis, the populace believes that if a shirt has buttons, God meant for them to be buttoned, all of them. In L.A., you’re lucky if anybody, man or woman, wears a shirt at all. In St. Louis, you dress up for the Cards. At Dodger Stadium, if all 10 toes aren’t exposed, they won’t let you in the gate.

In St. Louis, everybody is friendly and gracious to visitors. If your team loses, they say, “Better luck next year,” while thinking, “Fat chance. Our Cards are anointed by Branch Rickey and washed in Bob Gibson’s sweat.” At Dodger Stadium, it’s friendly, too, unless you wear a Giants jersey in the parking lot. Then “Pulp Fiction” breaks out.

via Dodgers vs. Cardinals: NLCS matchup made in the Heartland . . . or Tinseltown – The Washington Post.

Grim Duty in Section 60

One more article about the “Arlington Ladies,” and the quiet work that they do.

On a winter day when the rows and rows of white headstones were shrouded in a band of low-lying mist at Arlington National Cemetery, Jane Newman took her place in the white-gloved military honor guard. As the ashes of the latest fallen soldier arrived, she placed her hand over her heart in the civilian salute.

She didn’t know this soldier or the family that shuffled behind his urn, shoulders stooped in grief. As usual, she knew only his name, Keith E. Fiscus. His age, 26. His years of service in the Army, four, and the names of his next of kin. Yet when she went through the paperwork that morning, she felt a pang. He was one more soldier killed in Iraq.

When she was invited five years ago to become an Army Arlington Lady, Newman, the wife of a 30-year Army artillery officer and herself a retired Army nurse, was drawn to the group’s mission: No soldier is ever buried alone. Every fourth Tuesday of the month, she spends the day at Arlington, standing graveside, hand over heart, at up to six funerals a day.

via Grim Duty in Section 60.

Couch Slouch: Albert Pujols’s California dreams quickly turn to nightmares

Love this article from the Washington Post! Comparing Albert Pujols to New Coke? Ouch! But so very deserved…

A year ago, Albert Pujols was a post-modern Stan Musial. Today, he is a living, breathing “John Carter.”

(“John Carter” cost $250 million or so to make and was a bust at the box office. Pujols cost $250 million or so to land and has been a bust at the ballpark.)

Pujols thought he was going to Disneyland; instead, he’s wound up in Dante’s Inferno.

In the offseason, Pujols, 32, left St. Louis for Southern California. He became the second baseball player ever to sign a contract worth more than $200 million — remarkably, Alex Rodriguez has done it twice, with the Rangers and the Yankees — and might become the first player to return the money with a note that says, “Oops — can’t hit no more.”

Pujols is the only player in MLB history to hit 30 or more home runs in each of his first 11 seasons; in this, his 12th season, he has one.

He’s averaged 40.5 homers a season in his career; he’s currently on pace to hit five. Pujols — a career .326 hitter — is batting .196.

Right now, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn if he fell asleep with his bat resting on the side of a barn.

If he jumped out of a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he might not hit water.

He went without a homer in his first 27 games as an Angel, sat out one game, then finally connected in his 28th game and 111th at-bat with the team.

Have I mentioned Pujols has one homer this season? I hate to be critical, but how hard can it be? Heck, Josh Hamilton hit four homers last week in less than 21 / 2 hours.

Pujols — at least publicly — is not fazed by the power outage: “I come out here every day and try to get myself ready for the game and give 110 percent to this team.”

(I always worry when that number is cited, like when O.J. Simpson said he was “110 percent not guilty.”)

Now, if Pujols — who signed a 10-year contract — doesn’t defunkify, we’re looking at something that goes beyond massive free agent bust; he’s entering hallowed cultural territory.

Here are, unofficially, the five biggest flops of the last half-century in American life:

●New Coke (1985): Was anybody complaining about Coca-Cola? What were they thinking? This was like adding skylights and terraces to the Pyramids.

●Chevy Chase’s talk show (1993): Magic Johnson’s talk show actually was worse, but he was a point guard; Chase is an entertainer.

●Ben-Gay Aspirin (1990s): Yes, Ben-Gay Aspirin. For real. I mean, I’ll smear that delightfully smelly stuff on my back, but do I care to swallow it?

●Dennis Miller on “Monday Night Football” (2000-01): I still have nightmares of the former funny guy referring to Coach Mike Shanahan as “Shanny” 37 times in four quarters.

●Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979-81, 1999): Hey, I was as big a fan of women’s suffrage as the next guy, but I don’t want some feminist coin rolling around my pocket ruining the feng shui of my favorite quarters and dimes.

Frankly, Pujols never should’ve abandoned the Cardinals. Stan The Man never left St. Louis. The Gateway Arch has never left St. Louis.

In addition, Pujols didn’t consider the adjustment of living in Southern California. St. Louis is so small, most players walk to games; Los Angeles is so large, most players helicopter to games.

Plus Pujols failed to grasp the geography of the area. He thought he was coming to L.A. when, in fact, he was coming to Orange County. He likely was thrown by the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” moniker, which is marketing malarkey.

(It’s like real estate that’s labeled “Beverly Hills adjacent,” which means you live near the rich but not among them — if you’re lucky, you can get a whiff of the foie gras from their trash bins.)

In Pujols’s defense, SoCal makes fools of a lot of people. For instance, sources tell me ex-Laker Lamar Odom wasn’t even sure which Kardashian he was marrying; next thing you know, he’s down and out in Dallas.

Anyway, there’s still hope for Pujols — as it turns out, “John Carter” is doing pretty well overseas. Hmm. Is there a Gateway Arch in Japan?

via Couch Slouch: Albert Pujols’s California dreams quickly turn to nightmares – The Washington Post.

Why Doesn’t John Adams Have a Memorial in Washington?

I have been thinking about this topic all week, and then I stumble across an article on the same topic…why is there no memorial to John Adams in Washington D.C.? Washington and Jefferson both have monuments in their honor, (and rightly so), and yet our second president, equally influential in my opinion, is overlooked. Through the research I’ve done so far this summer, John Adams has really become my favorite of the Founding Fathers, (if one can have a favorite), and he was so instrumental in our country’s quest for independence that it seems very unjust that there is no memorial in his honor. I hope that the Adams Memorial Foundation is successful in having a monument erected in his memory.

“Where is John Adams, our feisty second president and lifelong American patriot? If George Washington was the sword of the revolution and Thomas Jefferson the pen, why have we neglected the voice of our nation’s independence?

Adams himself predicted this omission. “Monuments will never be erected to me . . . romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors,” he wrote in 1819, nearly two decades after his single term in office. At his farm in Quincy, Mass., Adams worried that he would be forgotten by history, and for good reason: The temperamental Yankee could never outshine Washington and Jefferson, Virginia’s two-term presidential all-stars — one a brilliant general unanimously chosen to lead the nation, the other the eloquent author of the Declaration of Independence.”

via Why doesn’t John Adams have a memorial in Washington? – The Washington Post.

Breaking down the Situation Room

I thought this article was fascinating–a rare glimpse into the setting of the “Situation Room” during the execution of a major military operation:

“Here is a tour of everything you need to know about the action in the photo and the specs of the room — from its gadgetry, to its cultural representations on TV and film, to its interior design — from our in-house experts.”

via Breaking down the Situation Room – The Washington Post.