As I continue down in Florida without my sports books (thus
having forgotten to bring some extra quizzes with me), I’m
having to be a little creative, though this time I owe George Will
and a recent column he wrote for Newsweek and the Washington
Post. It concerns his visit to Jim Evans’s Academy of
Professional Umpiring. The participants have a final exam
containing 200 questions, two of which are these:
1) “Two outs, bases loaded. The batter hits a home run. He
rounds first base and passes the runner who was on first. The
runner from third touched home plate before the batter passed the
runner from first, but the runner from second had not touched the
plate at that time. (a) Four runs count because the infraction
occurred during a dead ball situation. (b) No runs score because
the batter made the third out. (c) This is a time play. One run
scores. (d) Because the runner from first did not advance one
base, the third out is considered a force out. No run scores.”
2) No outs, runner on first. A hot grounder is hit up the middle.
The shortstop fields the ball but throws wildly trying to retire the
runner approaching second base. At the time the ball rolled into
the first base dugout, the runner from first had just rounded
second and the batter had touched first. Place the runners. (a)
Both runners score. (b) Runner scores; batter is awarded third.
(c) Runner scores; batter is awarded second. (d) Runner is
awarded third; batter is awarded second.”
Answers below.
President John F. Kennedy…Space
I didn’t make it down to Cape Canaveral this trip, but the other
day I was musing about President Bush and his announcement
that the U.S. would begin work on a manned mission to Mars,
after building a permanent base on the moon, and then I was
ticked off he didn’t have the guts to mention it in his State of the
Union address because the program will cost a lot of money we
don’t have, or so the argument against the program goes, nor has
he said a word since…so, I looked up one of President John F.
Kennedy’s key speeches on our nation’s space effort
…September 12, 1962, Rice University. For you younger
folk, remember the context, the time of the Cold War and our
race with the Soviet Union in every possible human endeavor.
—
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for
progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all
three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a
decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and
ignorance. The greater out knowledge increases, the greater our
ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world
has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that
this Nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12
years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our
population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the
unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip
our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but
condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history
in a time span of but a half a century. Stated in these terms, we
know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of
them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to
cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man
emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only
five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels.
Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press
came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this
whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided
a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric
lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became
available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and
television and nuclear power and now if America’s new
spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally
reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but
create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems,
new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high
costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are
a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State
of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those
who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This
country was conquered by those who moved forward – and so
will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the
Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions
are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be
enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is
that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined
and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead,
whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures
off all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other
nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode
the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of
modern invention, and the first wave off nuclear power, and this
generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the
coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it – we mean to
lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the
moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we
shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a
banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not
see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with
instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this
Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short,
our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and
security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require
us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for
the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-
faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be
gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and
used for the progress of all people. For space science, like
nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own.
Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man,
and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence
can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace
or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or
will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more
than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but
I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding
the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has
made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer
space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest
deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful
cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the
moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask
why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the
Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in
this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy,
but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to
organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because
that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the
others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift
our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most
important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in
the office of the Presidency.
In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for
the greatest and most complex exploration in man’s history. We
have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of
a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas
which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to
10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have
seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful
as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered
together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a
new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story
structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of
this field.
Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the
earth. Some 40 of them were “made in the United States of
America” and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far
more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the
Soviet Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most
intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy
of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape
Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard
lines.
Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer
course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of
hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and
icebergs.
We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not
admit them. And they may be less public.
To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in
manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this
decade, we shall make up and move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new
knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques
of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and
computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school.
Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these
gains.
And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has
already created a great number of new companies, and tens of
thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are
generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel,
and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in
this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old
frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new
frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston,
with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a
large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5
years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects
to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to
increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a
year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory
facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1
billion from this Center in this City.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year’s
space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is
greater than the space budget of the previous eight years
combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year – a
staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes
and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some
more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a
week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for
we have given this program a high national priority – even
though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and
vision, for we do not know what benefits await us. But if I
were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon,
240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant
rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field,
made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been
invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times
more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a
precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment
needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food
and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial
body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the
atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat
about half that of the temperature of the sun – almost as hot as it
is here today – and do all this, and do it right, and do it first
before this decade is out – then we must be bold.
However, I think we’re going to do it, and I think that we must
pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any
money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done
in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you
are still here at school at this college and university. It will be
done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here
on this platform. But it will be done. And it will done before the
end of this decade.
I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a
man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United
States of America.
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who
was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to
climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”
Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon
and the planets are there, and new hopes, knowledge and peace
are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing
on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on
which man has ever embarked.
Thank you.
—
You know, say what you will about JFK, but some of his
speeches are among the best ever. And while I recognize the
above was not normal ‘Bar Chat’ fare, put on your politician’s
hat and think about what an opportunity President Bush missed
by not using some of this language in his State of the Union
address. On the practical side, in a nation crying for jobs, going
back to the moon and Mars are jobs programs, and what’s wrong
with that? And these are the kinds of jobs we want our children
to aspire to…scientists and engineers…the professions that the
Chinese and Indians are beating us at. Instead, our president
hasn’t supplied us with any kind of vision outside of his initial
Mars discussion. We’re in a time of war now, while JFK was
leading a nation during a time just as troubling, and a month later
would get far more hotter. Seems to me like President Bush has
a winner, he just doesn’t know it. That’s just one’s man opinion.
Time for a beer.
Stuff
–So I’m down in Southwest Florida and the local paper has a
story on Johnny Bench and an appearance he gave in the area the
other day. On the subject of Pete Rose and the Hall of Fame,
former teammate Bench said the following:
“Why can anybody else be held differently? We’re all held
accountable for our actions. It stops them cold when I say (to
parents) go home and tell their kids there’s no more rules.
(People say) ‘Well, I never thought about it like that.’ Doctors
can lose their license. Lawyers can get disbarred. Why should
anybody be more important than the game? No one is.” [Dana
Oppedisano / Naples Daily News]
On the subject of the New York Yankees and the acquisition of
A-Rod, Johnny said his 1975-76 Reds teams were still better
(plus it’s not like the Yankees have won anything yet). “That’s a
pretty good nucleus, but they don’t have Joe Morgan, they don’t
have Cesar Geronimo, they don’t have Ken Griffey and they
don’t have George Foster.”
Anyway…here is the Yankees’ projected lineup for 2004.
CF – Kenny Lofton
SS – Derek Jeter
3B – Alex Rodriguez
1B – Jason Giambi
RF – Gary Sheffield
DH – Bernie Williams
C – Jorge Posada
LF – Hideki Matsui
2B – Miguel Cairo (Enrique Wilson, John Edwards, Al Sharpton
…it just doesn’t matter)
*Of course we do have two alleged steroid users in Giambi and
Sheffield. Maybe they go sterile by mid-season…at the plate, I
mean.
–Back to beer, at Daytona they were handing out copies of a new
magazine for the NASCAR set, American Thunder. It’s actually
pretty good and I may subscribe to it since it has some potential
material for this space, if nothing else. Here are some thoughts
from Ellis Weiner on the “Best Budget Brews…all
unpretentious, all for regular guys.”
Pabst Blue Ribbon – Decent body, modest but sincere beer
flavor. Its flavor doesn’t hint at more than it delivers, doesn’t try
to flatter you with sweetness. And sometimes that’s all you ask.
Coors – No pesky flavor to distract you, no deep golden color to
raise your hopes. It’s a mass-market beer that doesn’t do any
harm.
Budweiser – Better than it has to be, not as good as it could be.
But aren’t we all? Its modest flavor and slight sweetness goes
well with food.
Miller Genuine Draft – Has a sweet, hoppy flavor, surrounded by
a generic lager taste. What’s so “genuine” about that? “But I
have flavor!” it keeps yelling at you, when you’re long past
caring.
Rolling Rock – Medium body and medium-to-light color. Like a
high school flirt, it keeps hinting it’ll get interesting, but it never
does. Still, you could drink a case of this and not lose your self-
respect.
Busch – Thin, pale, with a sour leading edge that makes you
think: “Is that it?” and “Well, at least it’s beer.” It’s like the beer
you drink while you’re waiting for the real one to arrive.
There you have it, beer fans. Kind of makes you want to treat
some of these with more respect than you probably already do.
–There is another column in American Thunder by Jim Wright
titled “What’s Cooking?” Just a small passage many of you guys
out there will appreciate, even if the women don’t.
“Everyday cooking is a chore few men ever get around to, or
even care to get around to. We’re happy sitting in the easy chair,
watching the Speed Channel while skillets sizzle and pots
simmer somewhere else. We’re grateful this is how things have
worked out. So grateful, we’ll even help with the dishes from
time to time. Unless there’s a game on. Or we need to take a
nap.”
–Lawrence Ritter died. He’s the author of one of the great sports
books, “The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days
of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It.”
–Sacramento’s Chris Webber is NOT an author of one of the
great sports books of all time, instead, he’s a perjurer and a drug
abuser…so, the NBA suspended him for 8 games; 5 for violating
the league drug policy and 3 for pleading guilty to lying to a
grand jury in the University of Michigan booster scandal. We
wish Webber the worst.
–Charlie Fox passed away, a former manager of the San
Francisco Giants and a man who spent 50 years in baseball. In
other words, he lived his dream…not many can truly say that.
–Steroid Update: Reminder…athletes who gave false testimony
in the BALCO case could later face perjury charges.
Top 3 songs for the week of 2/19/72: #1 “Without You”
(Nilsson) #2 “Let’s Stay Together” (Al Green) #3 “Hurting
Each Other” (Carpenters)
Baseball Quiz Answers: 1)… ‘c’…one run scores. 2) … ‘d’…
runner is awarded third; batter is awarded second. [And I thank
Mr. Will again for bailing me out.]
Next Bar Chat, Tuesday.
