I was interviewed by the blog Red Sox Super Fan, a blog which, as you may have guessed, is about everything Red Sox.
Meanwhile, the Yanks lost a tough one last night. The game was mostly decided in the sixth. After the Yanks scratched out two runs against Josh Beckett to take a 2-1 lead, the mediocre Mike Mussina promptly handed the lead right back. That is very Mussina-esque.
My brother, who probably knows more about baseball than I do, and I have a mutual concern about Mussina, who was 11-10 with a 5.15 ERA last year.
We fear not that he’ll stink so badly that he’ll get pulled from the lineup, but that he won’t; that he’ll be consistently kinda bad, just like last night, in which a clutch pitcher would have held that lead, and that he will stay in the lineup to fail the Yankees at clutch moments all season long.
Is there less of a big-game pitcher in baseball than Mussina?
Is there anything more demoralizing in baseball than to take a lead against one of the stingiest pitchers in the game, knowing that you need just another inning or so to give the ball to Joba and Mariano, and then have your guy giftwrap it right back?
I’d love to see a rise-to-the-occasion performance today from young Phil Hughes…who, unlike about 99% of Harvard professors, has a blog!
The Globe covers Harvey Mansfield’s “feminism” conference, and mostly the ongoing debate about the relationship between gender and intelligence. Yesterday afternoon, Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University and Steven E. Rhoads of the University of Virginia offered students vastly different takes on women’s scientific prowess and why they make the professional choices they do, during a seminar titled “What Larry Summers and Nancy Hopkins Didn’t Say: Women in Science.” …While there may be fewer women involved in math and science, Rhoads said, they tend to dominate in the field of psychology and the humanities. But this disparity has not raised concerns among academics, he said.“We’re not going to have affirmative action for men going into child development,” he said. “I don’t see that argument being made.
Chien-Ming Wang was masterful as the Yankees silenced the Red Sox, 4-1, last night. The Times has an amazing statistic: On Thursday against Detroit, the Red Sox saw 212 pitches. Last night, Wang needed only 93. (And that home run to J.D. Drew? Should have been caught.)Psychologically, this was an important game for the Yanks—playing at Fenway, early in the season, the Red Sox having just won the Series….and Wang made it look easy. He’s won 19 games in each of the last two seasons. It’d be terrific if this was the year he hit 20. At the moment, he’s 3-0….
Barring technical and/or other complications, I’ll be speaking with Dennis Miller (yup, that Dennis Miller) live on Westwood One Radio at 11:30….Addendum: Dennis Miller knows his baseball!
Just in time for the first Yankees-Red Sox series of 2008, I’m in Boston to talk about The Greatest Game. I’ll be speaking at the Borders bookstore at 120 School Street at 1 PM…and I’ll tell you right now, my intention is to convince every Red Sox fan in attendance that their future health and well-being depends upon them buying this book. Meanwhile, TGG gets a nice review in the Garden City [New York] News. (Hey, I hadn’t heard of it either, but I’ll take ’em where I can get ’em. Bradley does a really good job with his subject. He sets up the context well and had many excellent interviews with the players concerning the game and the rivalry and also provides fascinating details about the individuals involved (Perhaps most poignant was the story of Bucky Dent’s attempt to find his father) while providing an insightful pitch by pitch account of the game. Meanwhile, tonight’s game features Chien-Ming Wang (2-0, 1.38) versus Clay Bucholz (0-1, 5.40).I’m liking the Yankees on this one….but I wish Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada were in the lineup.
That’s how Harvey Mansfield is advertising his conference on “feminism” (who knows what that word means anymore, and Mansfield is probably using it ironically anyway). As the Crimson reports, The oft-controversial Government professor and author of the book “Manliness” is hosting, of all things, a feminism conference. The poster for the event bills it as “The Conference the Radcliffe Institute Didn’t Want to Host” and, though the event is free, promises that “ladies receive an additional 50% off.” In the tradition of Bill Buckley, there’s something a little immature about all this—the 50% off joke, for example—but there’s also something worthwhile in trying to figure out whether the claim that Radcliffe wouldn’t host a conference of “conservative”(another essentially meaningless label) feminists is true.Why? Because before she was president of Harvard, Drew Faust was dean of the Radcliffe Institute, and if she wouldn’t host such a conference, it suggests something about her. Like what? Perhaps that her politics in this area are more important to her than open intellectual debate. Or that she knew such a conference would alienate her base of support within the university. Or that she didn’t think the people involved were particularly intellectually meaningful. On the other hand, Mansfield could just be making it up to stir the pot; he himself spoke on the subject of “Manliness” with Nancy Cott at Radcliffe in, I think, 2003. Not his finest hour—Mansfield was on pretty shaky ground with that whole “manliness” argument, which was not intellectually serious.
Anyone driving down/up I-95 between New Haven and Boston should stop in—take Exit 61 off the highway, take a right (if you’re headed north), then left at the third light, and R.J. Julia is on your right hand side.
What a great little bookstore! A steady stream of readings (coming soon: Barbara Walters and Bobby Flay), shelves full of staff picks, a big section for the classics, smart people working there—and lovely people who come to their readings.
I heard a terrific story from a man who told me that, then 17, he had to go to work bagging groceries during the playoff game…so he brought his transistor radio with him to the supermarket.
Everyone has a story about the Bucky Dent game, and it’s a pleasure to hear them….
The Red Sox have Opening Day at Fenway, win, get their rings, and redeem Bill Buckner.
Pretty impressive. And for Buckner, it must have been wonderful, which is great. The guy’s had a lot on his shoulders the last 22 years.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are in trouble: Both Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada are hurt. Jeter has a pulled muscle; Posada says his arm feels “dead,” and the Royals stole four bases off him yesterday before he was removed from the game. That is not good…..
Meanwhile, here’s something irritating about the New York Times: On occasion, like today, it gives the Red Sox more play than it does the Yankees. Check out the Sports page of its website. Find the Sox wrap-up; then try to find an account of the Yankees game….
Jeremy Knowles is remembered in the Boston Globe (via the Atlanta Constitution, for some reason) and the Telegraph.
Here’s Neil Rudenstine in the Globe:
“Deans and leaders like Jeremy come only rarely,” Neil Rudenstine, who became president of Harvard when Dr. Knowles took over as dean, said in a statement. “He had a penetrating mind. He had wit and charm and taste. Above all, he understood the nature of a university and what it meant to search for knowledge or discover even a single truth. The standard could never be too high.“
And the Telegraph:
As a young man he had played the piano and was a great dancer (his father claimed to have been taught by Fred Astaire); he retained a love, and thorough knowledge, of classical music, especially JS Bach (his eldest son was named Sebastian).
His children were trained to bring him a glass of gin and tonic when he arrived home at the end of each day, when he would chat with them about any topic until dinner time.
Those of you who’ve read this blog for some time (or who read Harvard Rules) will know that one of the things that struck me as upsetting about the Larry Summers-Cornell West episode was the criticism West received for making a “rap” album.
I put that in quotes because anyone who listened to the record would know that it wasn’t rap. But even if it was, the attack on West for making that record felt deeply racist to me. If he’d made an album of classical music, would Harvard’s president (and so many outside commentators) have objected? I highly doubt it.
I thought of that undercurrent of racism again when reading this opening line from an article by the National Review’s Rich Lowry about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick:
It could be an item on a David Letterman Top Ten List of “How to Know Your Mayor is Headed for a Major Scandal” - he’s known as the “Hip-Hop Mayor.”
Hmmm. Well, that’s an interesting connection. Because he’s associated with hip-hop in some way, he’s headed for scandal?
Lowry doesn’t bother to explain the logic, probably because, for himself and many of his readers, it’s self-evident: Hip-hop is generally African-American music, and it’s popularly associated with poor blacks.
So: hip-hop=inner-city black=”headed for scandal.”
Let’s try another equation: Rich Lowry=racist.