Is There Baseball In Heaven?

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Stan ‘The Man’ Musial Passes Away at 92

The St. Louis Cardinals announced on Saturday that legendary left-handed batter Stan “The Man” Musial, a Hall of Famer, passed away at the age of 92. Musial was one of the best hitters to ever play the game. He was a World War II veteran.

Cardinals Chairman William DeWitt Jr. said in a statement that Musial was the “most beloved member of the Cardinals family.”

“We have lost the most beloved member of the Cardinals family,” DeWitt said. “Stan Musial was the greatest player in Cardinals history and one of the best players in the history of baseball.”

His Hall of Fame biography reads:

After 22 years as a Cardinal, Stan Musial ranked at or near the top of baseball’s all-time lists in almost every batting category. The dead-armed Class C pitcher was transformed into a slugging outfielder who topped the .300 mark 17 times and won seven National League batting titles with his famed corkscrew stance and ringing line drives. A three-time MVP, he played in 24 All-Star games. He was nicknamed The Man by Dodgers fans for the havoc he wrought at Ebbets Field and was but one home run shy of capturing the National League Triple Crown in 1948.

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This gives me a chance to tell my favorite baseball joke:

Two old baseball players, Abe and Sol, sit on a park bench feeding pigeons and talking about baseball. Abe turns to Sol and asks, “Do you think there’s baseball in Heaven?”

Sol thinks about it for a minute and replies, “I dunno. But let’s make a deal — if I die first, I’ll come back and tell you if there’s baseball in Heaven, and if you die first, you do the same.”

They shake on it and sadly, a few months later, poor Abe passes on. Soon afterward, Sol sits in the park feeding the pigeons by himself and hears a voice whisper, “Sol… Sol… .”

Sol responds, “Abe! Is that you?”

“Yes it is, Sol,” whispers Abe’s ghost.

Sol, still amazed, asks, “So, is there baseball in Heaven?”

“Well,” says Abe, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Gimme the good news first,” says Sol.

Abe says, “Well, there is baseball in Heaven.”

Sol says, “That’s great! What news could be bad enough to ruin that?”

Abe sighs and whispers, “You’re starting tonight.”

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Rest in peace, Stan.

Parsing Words

Go ahead, make my day!

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No, Sidwell Friends School has no armed guards

The National Rifle Association is airing a television ad (and has on its website this four-minute video) that says the private school that President Obama’s daughters attend, Sidwell Friends School, has 11 armed guards. It doesn’t.

In fact, it has no armed guards. My Post colleague Glenn Kessler, who writes The Fact Checker column, wrote about the issue here and quoted Ellis Turner, associate head of Sidwell Friends, as saying: “Sidwell Friends security officers do not carry guns.”

Parents and students say they have never seen one either.

The president’s children are protected by Secret Service agents, which is required by federal law, but that is not the same thing as armed school resource officers.

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Between working as a defense investigator and a criminal defense attorney, I learned to parse words carefully.

First of all, Sidwell Friends does indeed have security officers. Not only that but armed Secret Service agents are present at the school on a daily basis. But if you really parse that statement carefully you will notice that Ellis Turner does not say that the security officers have no access to guns.

My first question would be “Are there any guns allowed on campus, and if so, where are they?”

Don’t get me wrong – I think armed security guards are a good idea, at least at some schools. I used to work as an armed guard. The mere presence of an armed guard can deter a lot of crime. The decision whether or not to have guards should be made by the individual school districts.

My point here is you should always read carefully.

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Don’t Do The Crime If You Can’t Do The Time

Aaron Schwartz

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There have been a lot of twisted knickers over this story:

Did Holder’s Department Drive an Internet Pioneer to His Death?

In January 2011, Reddit co-founder, RSS creator, and Internet-freedom activist Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR in protest of the weighty fees charged for accessing articles, and those dollars going to publishers instead of writers.

“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world,” Swartz wrote in 2008. “We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.”

JSTOR declined to pursue any civil action against Swartz, and even eventually made millions of its articles accessible to the public free of charge. MIT, whose archive was hacked while Swartz was a fellow at Harvard (which gave him access to JSTOR), was less forgiving.

The Justice Department, though, slapped Swartz with charges including wire fraud and computer fraud, altogether carrying the possibility of 35 years behind bars and up to a $1 million fine. Prosecutors eventually offered Swartz a deal to avoid trial in which he’d have to plead guilty to all 13 charges and spend six months behind bars.

Two days later, on Jan. 11, 2013, Swartz hung himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old.

His grieving father, Bob Swartz, told the Los Angeles Times that people should know “the evidence showed clearly that Aaron did not break the law, that the network was open, that access was not unauthorized by MIT, and that he was not guilty of any crime.”

“He was killed by the government,” he declared at his son’s funeral.

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The death of Aaron Schwartz is tragic, but there is no one to blame but Aaron Schwartz.

Schwartz didn’t like the law, so he knowingly and intentionally broke it in protest. Then he got arrested. Rather than pay the price for his actions he committed suicide.

I believe in the rule of law. That means we all have a duty to either obey the law or face the consequences. Presidents are supposed to obey the law. So are reporters. There is no special dispensation for law-breaking by protestors. Calling your law-breaking “speech” does not give you a get out of jail free card.

I realize it’s not a perfect system, but just because the president gets away with breaking the law doesn’t mean we don’t have to obey the law anymore. If you disagree with a law, get it changed. But if you break it, be ready to pay the price.

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Halfway Point

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Look at the bright side. As of tomorrow we are half-way through the Age of Obama.

I hope nobody was expecting some deep and pithy thoughts this morning.

This is an open thread.

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