Check out this moving story about a high school star baseball player, a teammate of A-Rod and Doug Mientkiewicz, who never made it:

Butler was Westminster Christian's best player that year. A left-handed pitcher and first baseman, he went 13-0 in 1992, his junior year. He was named the Dade County player of the year, edging Mientkiewicz and easily beating Rodriguez. He was also named an all-American.

"If you would have said anybody on that team would have gone on to the pros besides Alex, I would have thought Steve Butler," said Steve Owens, a reserve player in 1992 who now works as a financial analyst. "He had a great arm and more talent than anyone. I don't know what happened to him."

Anyone who follows baseball seriously can think of other such examples (Gerry Priddy's failure to keep pace with Phil Rizzuto is the one I can think of most readily). For every successful career we watch on the major league baseball fields, there are many others who do not see, but might have. Whether due to injury, personality quirks or a simple inability to grasp an opportunity, the careers that never were haunt the games we see.

Why so few?

On another note, congratulations to Bill Simmons and the Sports Gal (scroll down to the bottom of the page for the reason).

Here's an interesting piece about why the obscene concentration of obscene wealth in NYC is good for the city and its inhabitants:

For literally centuries, New Yorkers have complained about the effects of extreme wealth on the city. Many would, of course, prefer an egalitarian paradise where the working man has a window on Central Park, too. But such utopian notions obscure what is, in fact, a very successful aspect of New York. The historical record clearly shows that when the very rich lose interest in living in a city, the dominoes tumble. Look at Philadelphia or Cleveland.

...So love them or hate them—we’d better learn to live with the rich. They’re not going away. If 9/11 couldn’t scare them off, one has to wonder what will. The very rich may be carving out more space for themselves. But in this highly uncertain economy, that’s something of a blessing, not an unmitigated curse. The ultimate definition of a city’s health is the ability to attract people, companies, and industries that can choose to be anywhere in the world. “You can argue about the dangers of having an economy at the beck and call of the very rich,” says economist Ken Goldstein. “But it basically comes down to this: It’s better than the alternative.”

Read the whole thing.

No time for anything thoughtful tonight, so chew on this outstanding piece about the NYC subways. This should be a mandatory part of the platform of any successful candidate for Mayor or Governor. I'm sure it won't be.

As long as we're on the subject of inappropriate reactions to disabilities, here's one that I've occasionally heard.

Many people of a certain religious sensibility commonly react to news of an ongoing or long-term tragedy by reassuring the unlucky party that "God only gives people what they can handle."

I know it a) is meant as a compliment, b) is the messy result of when the laudable desire to console meets the unconsolable, and c) may even be true on some level. But - coming from another person - it is also a selfish response: The person reacting thusly does so because he or she is unable to confront the reality without giving a reason, no matter how inapt. The "answer" may work for someone uninvolved with the situation on a daily basis, but here's a tip: it doesn't work so well for those who have to live with it. As such, it's about consoling the consoler.

Here are two responses I've (sort-of) bit my tongue on:

1) "Thanks for calculating our merits and deficiencies so carefully. Can we get a recount?"

2) "Suppose we want to have another child. According to the best current estimates, that child would have approximately a 1 in 15 chance of being autistic as well. So for the sake of that child, we should work hard to erode all of our coping habits and strategies, as well as undergoing hypnosis to forget everything we've learned about how to help an autisitic child. Oh yes - we should gamble away all of our money as well - it wouldn't be prudent to have any financial resources that could go towards helping an autistic child. Can't take the risk of actually being able to handle it."

It's much better to resist the impulse to answer the insoluble. Just expressing sympathy (and asking if there's anything you can do - with autism at least, the answer is usually "no," so it's a safe question) will encompass the overwhelming majority of what can be done.

This Shabbat, our synagogue featured a program on behalf of Yachad, a truly wonderful organization dedicated to Jewish individuals with disabilities.

As reported to me by Mrs. Manhattan, the Yachad representative addressed the congregation about the importance of accommodating people with disabilities on a communal and institutional level.

I agree.

In fact, it is such a good idea that we hope that our communal institutions - most notably, our synagogue which featured this excellent program - will respond by trying to be even slightly responsive to the concerns of families dealing with disabilities. Imagine that!

Dealing with autism is famous in its necessity for "doing-it-yourself" with respect to treatment and support options. One might have thought that our synagogue, led by a rabbi whom we love and respect deeply, might be somewhat proactive with respect to certain issues with which we need to deal. (Actually, we'd settle for them being somewhat reactive.) Living here long enough, we thought we knew better - yet we've still been shocked at the non-responsiveness we've encountered from our communal institutions. (We have, of course, received much support from certain individuals.) I won't go into too much detail - as some of the people in question will hopefully be reading this - but the ideals in the address delivered by the Yachad representative bore scant relationship to the reality we (and many other families we know) encounter on a daily basis. One might say that it's a finely-tuned machine for forcing families dealing with disabilities to move elsewhere.

It's nice to have an annual Shabbat program devoted to raising money and consciousness for the disabled, but it's nicer to try to integrate those ideals on a regular basis. Many families would be thankful.

Here's a nice...duck story for your weekend.

Why do I only have time to post as I'm running out the door to get home for Shabbat?

I needed this laugh today. Via Galley Slaves, here's a list of things to do once you become an Evil Overlord, based on the experiences of the evil overlords we know and love from the movies and other sources.

A few samples:

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

There's much, much more.

Check out Joel Sherman's thought-provoking piece on the just-begun baseball season (and why couldn't they have hit like this in Games 4 or 5 last year?).

Steriod vapors have indirectly addled the brains of most of the mainstream media's baseball writers (not that flexibility was their strong suit beforehand), but this piece seems a happy exception. Whether he turns out right or wrong, Sherman is at least thinking flexibly.

Also, see Jayson Stark's about-face from the "All Steroids, All The Time" mindset that has possessed most of the ESPN types and their media bretheren (Buster Olney, this means you):

We've spent this spring surveying general managers, managers, assistant GMs, number crunchers, players and other assorted experts about what comes next in this sport. Their answers will come as a major shock to everyone who has concluded that steroids are to blame for anything and everything they've come to hate about modern baseball.

The percentage of players on steroids probably never was much more than 20 percent – even at steroids' peak – which means 80 percent were always clean.

(Emphasis added.)

Please do read this extraordinary piece by Megan McArdle. It's ostensibly about the policy implications of gay marriage, but it is really about different ways of looking at and understanding the world. It defies excerpts; just go read it (even at the cost of - gasp - printing it out ) consider and ponder accordingly.

I've been thinking about the implications in light of what's been written in the blog referenced in the immediately prior post, and I don't like the results. And that's all I'm going to say for now.

(Ve ha-mayvin yavin.)

OK - I'm the last one to point this out, but this is a truly extraordinary blog. No, I don't know if this author is for real, but it certainly sounds authentic (I do have my suspicions about certain other bloggers purporting to show the seamier side of Orthodoxy). No time to reflect on the ramifications now, but there are many. I certainly won't dismiss the term "shidduch crisis" as blithely as I might have been tempted to do in the past.

to the most famous pitching non-prospect of the last 20 years, Sidd Finch. Alan Schwarz has a great retrospective in today's NYT:

Selected Mets officials were among the few people (including Sports Illustrated editors) even slightly aware of what the magazine was up to. They issued Berton a uniform and allowed him full access to their spring training complex, even letting him sit in the bullpen during exhibition games as Stewart clicked away. Fans would ask the weird-looking guy in the No. 21 jersey if he was trying out for the club, and he would reply: "Yeah. You'll hear about it later."

Did they ever. When Sports Illustrated hit the newsstands several days before the April 1 cover date, "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" staggered baseball and beyond. Two major league general managers called the new commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, to ask how Finch's opponents could even stand at the plate safely against a fastball like that. The sports editor of one New York newspaper berated the Mets' public relations man, Jay Horwitz, for giving Sports Illustrated the scoop. The St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch, and a radio talk-show host proclaimed he had actually spotted the phenom - who, truth be told, was back in Oak Park teaching art at Hawthorne Junior High.

I was writing a long post until after 2:00 AM last night. I had intended to finish it now.

I thought I had saved it.

Apparently not.

@#$%@!#)%!@$%!!!

There's no way I can reconstruct it now.

It was an extended review of all we have seen over the last couple of years regarding a certain rivalry to be renewed on Sunday night in the Bronx.

Here are some random items from the now-vanished post:

For me the greatness of the rivalry, currently at its peak, exists between the white lines. ... What gives these clashes added allure is not all the peripheral hullabaloo but rather the extraordinarily high level of baseball that is played when these two historic franchises are at their best.

- "Sully"

I'm not even a Yankees or a Red Sox fan, and I have to admit that they've played the best, most dramatic games of the 2004 season. There were times it seemed like anyone could put on the uniforms and have an epic game: Your office could split on hometowns, put on a whiffle ball tournament, and the Red Sox-Yankees match-up would go 11 innings, decided on a miraculous over-the-cubicle-into-the-water-cooler diving stab of a line drive for the last out.
- Derek Zumsteg

What can happen in a best-of-seven that hasn't already happened between these two this season? What kind of heroics can top what we have already witnessed? Is Pokey Reese going to throw three innings of brilliant relief in a 18-inning 1-0 win? Will Jason Giambi pinch-hit in a critical jam and hit a ball that's never found for a grand slam home run to win the deciding game seven? I don't know, but it's going to be interesting and it should be great baseball.
- Derek Zumsteg

You might say that expectations were met - especially if you're a Sox fan.

This has been a very depressing winter all around in NYC, but it may finally lift. Let's get it on.

OK, not just yet. One sour grape to get off my chest (seriously mixed metaphor alert). So help me God and Bill James (don't any Sox fans remember his "Tracers" or other demolitions of old stories?) - in no particular order - if I hear one more reference to how the veteran leadership showed by Varitek in picking a fight with A-Rod for no particular reason "sparked the Red Sox's turnaround" or some other nonsense, I'm sending that person 100 autographed pictures of Derek Jeter (if it's made by a Red Sox fan) or 100 copies of each of "Moneyball" and "Win Shares" (if it's made by a know-nothing in the media). Dean Barnett, consider yourself warned.

Such veteran leadership, which worked so well that the Red Sox lost several games in the standings immediately thereafter and didn't start gaining for another 2 1/2 weeks, inspired the Red Sox to grant Varitek a captaincy and a $40 million contract, which should make him a wealthy man long after his knees have expired.

Previews to follow over the next few days...assuming I remember to hit the "Save" button.