Howard Owens

Check out my landlord.

My plan this evening was to relax. Read. Read Bukowski. But I had to work late. Fortunately, I have a TV on my desk. I tuned in to ESPN2. I saw Oakland score five quick, easy runs. The first inning of a potentially history making game. I thought, this is baseball. Breaking a big record isn't going to be this easy, so when I came I home I tuned in. It was soon 11-0. This is baseball, I thought. It isn't going to be this easy.
How could Miguel Tejada, of all players, make a stupid error that turns a one-run inning into a five run inning? But without Tejada, the A's streak would have ended at least two games ago, so I kept a civil tongue in my mouth.
Imagine the pressure on the A's. Good ball players dream of being part of something special in a game so steeped in history. On top of that, the A's winning streak should have made them runaway leaders of the American League West, but the pesky Angels have been playing good ball, too. Matt Welch's favorite team has hung tough, remaining three games back. We have a real pennant race here.
In the 8th, I began to worry the game was slipping away. Tejada made another bonehead play, trying to get the tough out at home when he should have gone for the easy one at third. Instead of 11-6 with one out and runners on first and second, it was no outs with the bases load.
The Royals scored another run. It was suddenly 11 to 7. A four run lead is nothing for any major league team to overcome.
In baseball, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
The camera gave us a look at the on-deck hitter. Never have I loathed such chiseled good looks as I did at that moment. I said to my wife, "There's the most dangerous hitter on the Royals. He worries me." Mike Sweeney was on deck. The score was 11-7 and there were two men on base. Sweeney couldn't tie it, but he could change the whole complexion of the game.
Billie left the room, but rushed back when she heard my blood curdling, "Oh Fuck." She arrived in time to see Sweeney's base-clearing shot land in the left field bleachers -- barely fair. "What did I tell you," I moaned. "It's now a one-run game." My wife stated the obvious: "This game is too exciting. I'm not leaving the room again."
At that point, she didn't even realize the A's were trying to win an AL-record 20th-straight game.
Billy Koch will never be mistaken for Trevor Hoffman, the most proficient closer in MLB history. Koch is the King of Coaster Kingdom. He takes A's fans on more wild rides than any closer in baseball. Still, he throws hard and is effective more often then not. If Hoffman were closing the game, you would feel like it was almost a sure thing; with Koch, you never know.
Yeah, you don't want to leave the room with Billy Koch enters the game.
With a runner on second, Luis Alicia came to the plate. The thing about Alicia is he's a veteran. He knows how to be patient at the plate and get a good pitch to hit. He isn't swinging for the fences. He isn't going to give you a cheap out.
Koch against Alicia. You don't want to leave the room.
Now, it's 11 to 11. All square. Tim Hudson ain't getting the win (bad for my fantasy team), and you've got to think, "maybe it wasn't meant to be." But if you're an A's fan, you also know that this is a team with a flare for the dramatic. Tony Gwynn remarks in the bottom of the 9th, "You get the sense that the A's fans are just waiting for this game to end this inning. They don't know who is going to win this game for them, but somebody is going to do something this inning."
Scott Hatteberg comes to the plate as a pitch hitter with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning. I like Hatteberg. He's a good solid, middling ballplayer. He's done reasonably well for one of my fantasy teams this year. I thought, he would be a good guy to hit a home run.
Barely had the thought crossed my mind --
Boom.
It was a blast.
There was no doubt.
Going ...
Going ...
Gone!
I shouted. I screamed. I jumped. I yelled. I didn't care what the neighbors thought.
The A's win number 20. Truly amazing.
See, what makes baseball so great is that nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
What was it about all this strike talk last week? Such a distant memory now.

Instapundit notes that the Blogcritics review of "Divine Operating System" has been blurbed by the band on its site. Cool. I'll just note that I wrote the review. It's the first time one of my reviews has been blurbed.

I interviewed Geri Soriano-Lightwood a week or so ago, wrote the article last night, and it will appear on InsideVC.com in about two weeks. I'll post it here and on blogcritics.org after it appears on InsideVC.

Advance copies of "Divine Operating System" are available through Amazon.

One of the most effective weapons in the defeat of Soviet Russia was rock and roll. American music. No single aspect of American culture contains within itself all of our independence, free-thinking and aspirations. Rock and roll is totally incompatible with totalitarianism, fascism or religious fanaticism.
That's why, if we're going to defeat today's brand of tyranny, we should be exporting rock and roll to the Middle East. I'm not talking about cartoon music like Brittney Spears or Backstreet Boys, which we're already doing and is probably doing more harm than good. I mean real rock and roll. The first shot fired at Saudi Arabia should be a good dose of the Blasters. The new CD, "Trouble Bound" will hit more targets than the smartest smart bomb. This is a CD that makes you want to dance, and makes you want to shake your fist at all who would tell you how to live your life. There have been few bands over the last 20 years that have embodied the true spirit of rock and roll better than the Blasters.
"Trouble Bound" is the first real Blasters record in more than a decade. By that I mean the line up includes Dave Alvin. The Blasters just isn't the same band without Alvin, who has been busy building an Grammy-winning solo career. Dave Alvin is the heart of the Blasters, but Alvin will be the first to tell you that nobody sings his songs better than brother Phil. So, Phil and Dave Alvin on the same stage is a religious experience in itself. Fortunately, somebody at High Tone Records had the good sense to capture a spate of rare reunion shows in Southern California on tape and put out a CD of the magic.
The Blasters run through the heart of their catalog, dishing out such master pieces as "Trouble Bound," "Long White Cadillac," "Common Man," "So Long Baby Goodbye" and "Marie Marie."
Of course, they give a ripping performance of the one song that should make Islamofascists every where tremble: "American Music." Has there ever been a truer lyric than: "The whole world digs that sound from the USA"?
Speaking of Dave Alvin and live music, his new "Out In California" is another suburb addition to his body of work. The CD shows Alvin at both his rocking best and his poetic subtlety.
I know nothing about Alvin's politics. He's obviously proud of America's culture, but an ongoing theme of his music seems to be the gritty freedom enjoyed by America's working class. So long as Dave Alvin is making music, freedom is in good hands.

True music fans take songwriting credits pretty seriously. The songwriter is where history begins. Good songwriting is a craft and a talent. Aficionados cringe when they here somebody say Elvis Presley wrote "Blue Suede Shoes." When it comes to history making songs, it's important that credit goes where credit is due.

So when I read an L.A. Times article that said Ike Turner wrote "Rocket 88," I had to tell the Times how wrong they were.

My exchange with Assistant Reader Representative Barry Zwick has been an interesting excursion into just how difficult pinning down historical facts in music can be.

"Rocket 88" was recorded as Sun Studio in Memphis, Tenn. in May 1951. It was first hit record recorded at Sun and helped Sam Phillips become an important record producer, making Sun an important destination for up and coming recording artists. Many music historians consider "Rocket 88" the first rock and roll record in history, so the question of who wrote "Rocket 88" is no trivial matter.

The song was released by Chess Records and songwriting credit was given to Jackie Brenston, the song's lead singer.

I wrote a huffy note to the Times, feeling more than certain that Brenston was the songwriter.

Not so fast, Zwick replied. Not all historical accounts agree that Brenston was the actual writer. There is at least one account that says Turner wrote the song and that Brenston was falsely credited as author by Chess simply because he was listed as the singer.

Feeling some what chastised at my eagerness to show the Times up, I acknowledged in my reply that the person listed as the legal songwriter on old songs is not always the actual songwriter. For example, I read many times that Moon Mulligan wrote "Jambalaya," not Hank Williams. In fact, Williams was chagrined that Acuff-Rose bought the songwriting credits from Mulligan and throughout his life, Williams aided Mulligan financially to make up for it.

So it isn't hard to believe that Ike Turner wrote "Rocket 88" and through music business machinations, was screwed out of the songwriting credit.

But the story that Chess accidentally gave Brenston the credit also has a ring of Turner exaggeration to it. If Brenston's band was really Turner's band, as Turner likes to tell the story these days, then why wasn't Turner singing his own song? By Turner's accounts, Brenston was not normally the lead singer of his band, or a long-time or regular member. When I toured Sun Studio a few years ago, the tour guide's account was that Turner was little more than a session player.

My point is, Turner is not the most reliable source on this particular point. He does like to play up his importance to the development of rock and roll.

So who wrote the song? Well, ASCAP says that Brenston wrote it.

After bringing the ASCAP link to the attention of Zwick, his first response was that given the ambiguity over the songwriting credit, he didn't think a correction was warranted. In a follow up e-mail, he said he had reconsidered and was instead bumping the issue over to the author of the article in question and the section editors. It would be there call whether to run a correction.

Given the fact there is some dispute over the songwriting credit, I would agree that a correction is probably not in order. But a clarification would certainly be good idea. The undisputed claim that Ike Turner wrote "Rocket 88" should be allowed to just hang out there unchallenged. I would further suggest that if the Times wants to pursue maximum accuracy, they would get Sam Phillips on the phone and see if he remembers who wrote "Rocket 88." Phillips might be the best source for an unbiased account of how this song came to be. That is, if Phillips even knows, since the song was probably completed before Brenston and Turner arrived at Sun.

For more on Sun Studio, and the music born there, I recommend:

• The Sun Records Collection;
• Good Rockin' Tonight
• The Ike Turner Sun Sessions (I don't have this, but it looks worth while)
• And check out this DVD coming out in October ... anybody want to buy it for me?

Les Paul is one of the greatest guitar players ever, and one whom all modern guitarist owe a debt to. Besides being a great inovator in instruments and recording techniques, he was a master of six strings. His recordings reveal a man who played faster and cleaner than any one -- including the heavy metal shredders of the last few years -- ever. Ed Driscoll has a fine profile of Mr. Paul on Blogcritics.com.

They promised we could "listen forever," but it appears Listen4Ever.com has gone off line.

The record companies ganged up on the pirate Web site, filing lawsuits against giant ISPs, trying to force them to block access to the China-based Web site, which offered free copies of copyrighted CDs. The crush of publicity, apparently, caused the Listen4Ever.com servers to crash, or convinced the current site hosts to take it off line. Either way, it isn't accessible at the moment, and according to one report, hasn't been available since Friday.

I never tried accessing the site until today. I tried through my normal DNS configuration and kept getting a "domain not found" error, so I reconfigured my DNS settings, putting in the IP addresses for a couple of alternate public domain servers, and seemed to be getting passed by ISP at that point, but the site seemed to be down.

Maybe bringing the site down by swamping it with traffic was the RIAA's evil scheme all along. How many people knew about the site before the lawsuit was filed? How many know about it now?

While I don't necessarily support music piracy, I do support any efforts to break the major-label hold on music. Hopefully, the Net will keep finding ways to route around the RIAA's heavy-handed, major-label supporting, artist-destroying tactics.

Supreme Beings of Leisure's new CD, "Divine Operating System" is now available through Amazon.com. It's out Sept. 10, but I recommend you order an advance copy. It's so good, you'll want it ASAP. If you missed my review, here it is again.

My letter addressed to Phil Nevin, the San Diego Padres third baseman who represents the team to the players union.
Dear Phil:
My coming of age as a baseball fan coincided with the birth of the San Diego Padres. As a native San Diegan, I have remained a loyal Padres fan. I have remained a fan through many, many losing seasons and fire sales and stupid trades. I remain a fan now, even as the team under achieves once again.
When I was a kid, my favorite player was Nate Colbert, then Randy Jones came along, followed closely by Tony Gwynn. These players, along with the likes of Ozzie Smith, Dave Winfield, Johnny Grubb, Clay Kirby, John Kruk and Goose Gossage have given me many wonderful memories. It is a thrill to look back on the times I've actually gotten to talk with players such as Colbert, Gwynn, Jones and Andy Benes. I was friends with Eric Show for a time. I remember where I was and what I was doing when Colbert hit 5 home runs, when Jones won his Cy Young, when Garvey homered and Caminiti made an impossible assist while sitting on his ass in foul territory.
I mention all this to drive home the point: I am no casual fan.
So let me put this succinctly: If there is a strike, I'm through with baseball. To paraphrase an old saw: Screw me once, shame on your; screw me twice, shame on me. I will not tolerate another mid-season work stoppage.
And let there be no doubt -- if it happens, I will put the blame 100 percent on where it belongs: The Players.
As any Padres player or fan should know, something must be done to fix the income inequalities in baseball. A salary cap is the only solution. For players to oppose it is stupid and indefensible.
So, if there's a strike, you won't see my face at another San Diego Padres baseball game. I won't be cheering for you or anybody else. I won't pay the outrageous fees for the MLB Extra Inning package from DirecTV. I won't even check the box scores on ESPN.com. I'll let my fantasy teams go fallow. It will be over. Baseball will be dead as far as I'm concerned. And you shouldn't be surprised in millions of other fans react the same way.

When Supreme Beings of Leisure burst onto the scene in 2000 -- largely through word of mouth on the Internet -- they were placed squarely in the trip-hop camp, with their electronica inspired grooves, sampled sounds and programmed loops. SBOL was a dance band, but fans also recognized SBOL was a band with a difference -- songs that were actually songs, a singer who could really sing and a laid back aura that recalled Martinis and turquoise counter tops in a smoke-filled lounge.

It's been two years since that momentous debut for the L.A.-based SBOL, and a lot has changed. Gone are founding members Kiran Shahani and Rick Torres, and much of the trip-hop edges have been polished away. The new CD, "Divine Operating System," due out Sept. 10 (it's not even in Amazon's catalog yet), is lusher, groovier and more soulful. It could very well be the kind of break-through effort that transforms SBOL from Internet-phenomena to mainstream star.

The trademark lounge-cool is retained in this collaboration of Geri Soriano-Lightwood and Ramin Sakurai, but the R&B-tinged dance rhythms are smarter, more sophisticated and more infectious, if that is possible. This is stuff that makes even a 40+ rock-and-roll loving man like myself want to move. Guys like me aren't supposed to like dance music, but this music is just too good to ignore.

The sound is so full and lush that it's hard to believe these songs were written and recorded in somebody's bedroom on a PowerMac. Apparently there are some natural instruments on the record, but the electronica essence never faulters. The truth is, electronica has never sounded so life-like. This is real music -- real pop music, but it envelopes you. The music is so luxurious that it fills you with a desire to wrap yourself in the songs and let the pleasure waves embrace you.

And the feeling doesn't subside through all 11 tracks on "DOS." From the opening "Give Up," and "Ghetto," through the radio-friendly "Rock and a Hard Place" and "Divine" (my pick for smash-hit potential), "DOS" is a marvel of aural delight. This is the kind of music that belongs in a science fiction film about a future filled with computer-aided amusement. It's no wonder SBOL has seemed so perfect for the Internet age.

As I listened the first two or three times through the CD, the sound called to mind new romantic acts from the early '80s like Spandau Ballet and ABC, as well as a touch of Human League and plenty of '70s era R&B funk. The melodic bass playing of Sheldon Strickland is just the thing to anchor the groove. But the heart and soul of SBOL is the voice of Soriano-Lightwood. Her clear and powerful voice is reminiscent of Annie Lennox, but without the masculine overtones. It is a freer, more refined instrument.

Most bands stumble on second CDs, and after losing two members, you wouldn't expect SBOL to even survive. Not only has the band survived, it's actually gotten better -- and better in a way that should thrill old fans and scoop up legions of new ones.

UPDATE: Amazon is now taking orders.

For most of the 20th Century, if you were poor and dreamed of wealth, you dreamed of owning a Cadillac. The Caddy was as much a part of the American dream as a three-bedroom house and a white picket fence. Look at the poor boys who struck it rich and bought themselves Cadillacs -- Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and, of course, Elvis. In the 1950s and '60s the only car that came close to the Cadillac as a status symbol was the Lincoln Continental, but it was a distant second. In the 1970s, you couldn't be a proper pimp without a Caddy. Even in the '80s and '90s, Cadillacs lost little of their appeal even as General Motors produced substantially crappy cars.

Of course, as the gloss wore of Cadillacs, a new generation wanted to turn away from their parents' status symbols and define their own. First they gravitated toward another classic brand, the Mercedes Benz, but BMW and later upshot like Lexus grabbed market share.

These new buyers seemed oblivious to the fact that as pure statements of conspicuous consumption, these other vehicles were mere imitators. Nothing could truly capture the allure of a Cadillac. Tradition won't allow it.

You don't think a Cadillac has allure and panache? Look at all the great songs about Cadillacs:

• Brand New Cadillac -- written by Vince Taylor, revived by the Clash and covered by Bruce Springsteen, Wayne Hancock and Brian Setzer;
• Pink Cadillac -- written by Springsteen, covered by the Pointer Sisters;
• Guitars, Cadillacs, etc. -- Dwight Yoakam;
• Long White Cadillac -- written by Dave Alvin and covered by Yoakam;
• Maybelline -- Chuck Berry;
• One Piece at a Time -- Johnny Cash;
• Cadillac Ranch -- Nitty Gritty Dirt Band;
• Red Cadillac A Black Mustache -- Warren Smith;
• Baby, Let's Play House -- which originally did not mention a Cadillac, but Elvis added the line (as well as rewriting the chorus) to "You may drive a pink Cadillac, but don't you be nobody's fool").

That's eight songs right there and I've got a list of another 40 I've collected over the years.

Sure, you have your occasional song about other cars -- "Hot Rod Lincoln" (which also mentions a Cadillac) or "Mercedes Benz," or "Mercury Blues," but no song has played a starring role in more songs than the Cadillac. In fact, just as a test, I typed "Cadillac" into the search engine for All Music and came back with 90 different song titles that begin with "Cadillac." No other brand of car I can think to run through the search even comes close. Mercury has 40, which ain't bad. "Chevrolet" came back with about 90 titles, but that's a make of car, not a brand. "Ford" got about half that -- btw: who would be interested in a song about a Ford Taurus?

Granted, this unscientific search doesn't find songs with titles that don't begin with the car name, nor does it fine songs about a car that isn't mentioned in the title (such as "One Piece at a Time"), but still, that's a pretty impressive domination by Cadillac.

You would think the smart people over at General Motors would realize what a marketing bonanza they have on their hands -- a ton of Cadillac songs to use in their commercials, and free CDs of Cadillac songs for people who take a test drive, etc. It seems like a natural, but they've never thought of it, apparently. Through the Cadillac Web site, I tried pitching the idea once, but General Motors doesn't accept unsolicited marketing ideas.

Why am I writing this? Because tonight, on TV, I saw a new commercial for Mercedes Benz. It kicks off with Janis Joplin and then segues into two lesser Mercedes songs. After the initial excitement of the Joplin line, "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz," the commercial peters out. But with it, so does a missed marketing opportunity for Cadillac. Sure, using Led Zeppelin to market to the younger baby boomers now reaching Cadillac buying age was a good idea, but not as good as tapping into the romantic tradition of Cadillac as evoked by so much great music.

And, FWIW, if anybody from Rhino Records happens to read this piece -- you really should hire me to put together a box set (at least 6 CDs) of Cadillac songs.

Writer Tom Sinclair says Elvis sucks.

Rather than just call him an idiot, a musical moron, a tone-deaf jackass, I'll explain why I think he's shown his ignorance.

He writes:

But my problem with Elvis has always been the absurd degree to which this guy -- the bulk of whose post-'50s career was, by most yardsticks, an extended embarrassment -- has been lionized. Jeez, the cat didn't even write his own songs, and he barely played guitar, pioneering the use of that instrument as pure prop. Stacked up against his contemporaries -- Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis -- Elvis falls short in terms of both artistry and creativity.

Never in the history of Western civilization has a supposed music critic written such a load of crap.

Granted, Elvis did some exceedingly silly things in the '60s and '70s, but his musical output was far from an embarrassment. Few artists -- possibly no artists -- during the same period recorded as many great songs, so many great performances as Elvis Presley. I've made my own custom CDs of Elvis' best work from that period, and it fills nearly four 75-minute CDs. That's a hell of a lot of music. I can't do that with either the Beatles (unless I include all of the solo work by the four lads) or Led Zeppelin.

As a performer in the in those two decades, Presley was unmatched. Nobody had his charisma, his dynamism or his sense of showmanship.

He "barely played guitar"? Listen to those Sun recordings again, Mr. Sinclair. There are few finer rhythm guitarists in the history of rock and roll. Elvis was a natural. Listen to "That's All Right, Mama." It isn't Scotty Moore or Bill Black who created that acoustic guitar part. It was Elvis. And it's dead on perfect and it revolutionized popular music and solidified the beat of rock and roll. Scotty is brilliant, of course, and his leads and fills give the song added excitement, but the foundation of the song, as with most of the Sun sides, is the acoustic guitar. And nobody I've ever heard did that better than Elvis.

Elvis also played bass and piano. He was no slouch as a musician.

Which brings up another point. Singers are musicians, too. It takes just as much musical talent to be a good singer as it does to play another other instrument. It also takes practice and hard work, just like any other instrument. There have been few singers in the history of popular music who have even come close to matching Elvis' vocal range, or his range as a performer. Song interpretation is one of the great arts of civilization. It is also, largely, a dead art. Elvis may have been the last of the true masters, in the tradition of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Pearl Bailey, Peggy Lee and Tony Bennett.

As for writing his own songs -- which of the greats in the preceding paragraph was also a songwriter? It is a greatly misguided conceit of many a modern music critic that only performers who write their own songs are worthy of veneration. There's only one word for the conceit: stupid. It demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of what goes into a great song. Frankly, there are many songwriters who probably shouldn't be performing their own songs. Dave Matthews springs readily to mind. As much as I love Bob Dylan, the best versions of his songs are usually performed by other artists. And in today's studios, who knows how many contemporary singer-songwriters really suck as performers? The worst flaws can now be digitized away. Pro Tools is the sucky musicians' best friend. But when you hear Elvis, you are getting the real deal -- pure analog, baby.

As for Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis -- as wonderful as they were in their prime, what did they do besides record a handful (each) of great songs that pretty much all sound alike? They all made tremendous contributions to the history of rock and roll, but none of them can match (it's an insult to Presley and every intelligent music fan to even make the comparison) Elvis for artistry and creativity. None of them recorded the vast body, the vast repertoire of Presley. None of them would even attempt it. None of them had even a tenth of the talent for it.

Like Sinclair, I wasn't around in the 1950s. My first exposure to Elvis was an LP my dad bought me called "Elvis Presley Gold Vol. 1." It had such great songs "Heartbreak Hotel," "Honey Don't," and "All Shook Up." I wore the LP out, I played it so much. As a child, I also watched Jailhouse Rock many times, along with other Elvis movies. I was mesmerized. I tried to imitate his every move. The night of his Aloha special, my parents went out to dinner and it was my first night home alone without a baby-sitter. I danced all over the house during the entire concert. Elvis was King.

It wasn't until high school that I heard Elvis's Sun Sessions. I immediately gravitated toward those records to the neglect of everything else Elvis ever did. The raw energy was the epitome of rock and roll. Elvis was the first punk. I bought into the common notion that only Elvis's '50s sides mattered. Years later, when I got the '60s and '70s box sets, and bought some of Elvis's gospel records (Elvis may be the greatest gospel singer ever), I came to appreciate the artistry and creativity of his later career.

Face it, Elvis is the King. Only a few musicians from the 20th Century are even worthy to share his stage -- Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and U2 round out the list.

Sinclair is an idiot.

I'm not very good at math, but paradoxically, I've always loved statistics -- in a very sort of casual, lay statisticians way. Stats is one reason baseball is so appealing to me. I have two fantasy teams because I like the numbers of baseball. I used to play simple game when I was a kid called Dice Baseball (it used, no surprisingly a dice and baseball cards), and I kept all my own stats.
So the idea that the time honored tradition of the clean-up hitter is not statistically sound is of profound interest to me.
The New Scientist article argues that, mathematically speaking, you should bat your best hitter second in the line up rather than 4th because the number 2 spot will get more at bats than the number 2 spot. And the weakest hitter should hit 7th or 8th to put him the furthest number of batting spots from the best hitter.
There is some logic to that, but here's my problems with the story.

• Well, the first one is easy -- there's no home base in baseball. It's called home plate;
• But, how do you define best hitter? On the Yankees, who is the better hitter? Jose Vidro, who is hitting .321 with only 10 home runs, or Cliff Floyd, who has 19 home runs but is hitting only .284 (We'll ignore the fact, for the moment that Montreal has Vladimir Guerrero, who has 26 HRs and is hitting .332)? Traditionally, you put your biggest HR threat in the clean up spot, not necessarily your "best" hitter. Tony Gwynn was the Padres best hitter for 20 years, but he never batted 4th (he often batted second, but that didn't seem to help the Padres win more). So the study offers a false dichotomy of sorts. To return to Montreal's line up, there are few hitters like Guerrero who combine power and average, so he would seem a natural to hit second, but what happens when you don't have a Guerrero? Who, then, is the best hitter?

It's worth noting that it was quite revolutionary when Tony LaRussa started batting Mark McGwire #3 in the line up. Here was the strongest power hitter of his generation, and through he hit for good average, he was never a threat to winning a batting crown. But he maintained such a high HR to at-bat ratio, it made sense to get him as many at bats in a game as possible. So he hit third. The Giants do that with Barry Bonds now, and the Cubs follow suit with Sammy Sosa. The day of the high-average, low power #3 hitter, such as the prototypical Rod Carew, seem to be over. Will moving the Bonds and McGwires to the #2 hole be next?

If you're interested in the history and culture of blogs, check out the in-depth treatise from Steven Den Beste.

He discusses the rise of the A-List bloggers, those first pioneers who form the original concept and the warbloggers who prefer to discuss current affairs.

An interesting note, is the comparison to blogging and Usenet. From my vantage point, Usenet ceased to be useful around 1995. I always preferred e-mail discussion lists where spam and flames could be more easily controled.

The advantage of NetNews was that it was a single stream; it was inclusive; you could post your message and know that pretty much everyone else participating would see it. But inclusiveness was also the disadvantage, because it meant that you'd soon be flooded with messages written by idiots and unpleasant people, and by trolls.

Blogging for me is more of an extension of these lists. It gives me the opportunity to more fully express myself on a wider range of topics and hopefully reach a wider audience.

There are lots of bad jobs in the world, but two of the worst must be either being a Colorado Rockies pitcher or a Rockies manager.
If I were a major league pitcher, I'm not sure there's enough money in baseball to convince me to sign with the Colorado Rockies. I'm not sure any pitcher will ever succeed in Colorado, at least not enough of them or at a high enough level of performance to carry the Rockies to a world championship.
In Colorado, the problem isn't that balls fly further (they do) or that the outfield is bigger, giving more room for liners to drop for hits. The problem is that the thin air flattens breaking balls. A breaking ball that doesn't break is the easiest pitch for a major league hitter to slam.
Denver makes bad pitchers horrible and good pitchers ... well, horrible, too. Look what it's done to Mike Hampton. Good pitchers, of course, can go bad suddenly, but every attempt Colorado has made to find good pitchers has soured. Last year Jason Jennings looked like a hot young rookie. This year, he's mediocre at best. It's getting to the point where it's more than coincidence. There is something going on here.
My theory is this: When a pitcher is asked to make half of his starts in Coors field, he beginngs getting shell shocked. Because his breaking stuff doesn't break as much, he starts trying to adjust his delivery, his grip, his timing -- anything to get some break. It's a futile task. But what this tinkering does is gets his mechanics out of whack so that even when he pitches at sea level, he doesn't have the command necessary to get out major league hitters. Once he's thoroughly demoralized, he isn't even worth trading.
But team owners can't fire high-priced pitchers such as Hampton. The contracts are guaranteed. But the owners can fire managers, and that's what happened to Buddy Bell today. After a 6-16 start, Bell is the fall guy
Of course, I'll never be offered the managerial job in Colorado. But just for the record, I don't want it.

The idea of starting a new newspaper in Los Angeles is appealing to me. Like many newsmen, I'm a romantic about the days when competing newspapers fought hard to beat each other, when scoops meant something and every city editor had a bottle of rye in his bottom drawer.

In the good old days of newspapering, publishers weren't afraid of pushing an agenda and reporters had no qualms about aggravating a source with a hard-hitting story.

There are still a lot of things I like about newspapers today, and I think higher professional and ethical standards are a good thing, but for the most part, the edge is gone from most daily fish wraps.

If any modern newspaper man can put out an edgy, well-written, hard-hitting daily, it's Ken Layne, who is part of a widely reported proposal by former LA Mayor Richard Riordan to start publishing a five-day-a-week competitor for the Los Angeles Times.

I'm not clear on exactly what role Layne will play in the new paper, but we should hope that if this project actually gets a press rolling someday, that Layne will have a strong editorial voice.

That's the good news. The bad news is, I'm skeptical that a new daily in Los Angeles can be successful. Layne and Matt Welch, his partner in the local-media watchdog LAExaminer.com, bristle at the nay sayers and critics of this idea, but it isn't like the skepticism isn't well founded.

In this day and age, starting a daily newspaper and having it actually become profitable is a long-shot at best. Of course, media critics scoffed when Rupert Murdoch wanted to start a new television network, but Fox is doing OK. Brandon Tartikoff, Fred Silverman and Grant Tinker all predicted doom for Fox. That was in 1987.

So who am I, or, for that matter, Bryce Nelson, to say "The Daily Dick" will fail?

At the risk of drawing the ire of Layne and Welch, I'll point out a few things they probably already know, but are worthy of discussion.

• Daily newspapers have been in decline for more than four decades, at least. The trend has been for newspapers to close, not open. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner shut down in 1989. A historical trend, in itself, means nothing, but there is a reason newspapers close, such as declining readership and more options for advertisers. In defense of a start-up, the expectations are different and the revenue modal will be designed to fit the times. Newspapers that closed were obviously unable to change with the market. That still doesn't mean the right business plan can be formulated today.
• The expense of publishing a daily newspaper remain enormous, even with a good business plan. Paper is expensive, labor is expensive and you need a lot of working parts -- newsroom, circulation, classifieds, advertising, human resources, facilities. Riordan's plan calls for a staff of 40, but even then the logistics of starting a new daily will be significant. Of course, money can solve a lot of problems, and Riordan will reportedly have the financial backing.
• Classifieds are declining. The biggest problem facing daily newspapers today is the loss of recruitment advertising, the help wanted ads. The main reason your daily newspaper only costs 50 cents instead of the $2,00 (or more) it should cost, is the presence of paid classifieds. But the Internet is hurting classified sales in a number of key categories, such as autos, personals and real estate, not just jobs. The battle isn't over, but "The Daily Dick" will need a good online presence to leverage these categories.
• The big advertisers, those who buy the multi-page display ads (the other large slice of a newspaper's revenue), don't care about a newspaper's politics, its commitment to the community or the quality of its writers -- big advertisers only care about numbers, circulation numbers. And those circulation numbers need to be audited, and the circulation numbers of free papers (which Riordan is planning) are always viewed with suspicion. I have direct experience with this issue and I can tell you, it's a bitch to overcome.
• Reader loyalty for the Times will remain strong. I don't care how much people bitch about the Times, it is still their newspaper. They will be reluctant to give it up. In hectic, always-on-the-freeway Los Angeles, how many people are going to read two daily newspapers? That was the problem the Herald-Examiner finally succumbed to. If "The Daily Dick" can't compete in the areas of sports, lifestyle and entertainment, it is going to have a hard time gaining reader loyalty. And since Sept. 11, international news is in bigger demand than ever, and this is something the LA Times excels at (even with an anti-Israeli slant).
• LA isn't New York. Those promoting the idea of "The Daily Dick" are fascinated by the launch of the New York Sun, which hit the streets April 16. New York is more urbanized than Los Angeles, with residents who feel more rooted to their communities (many Angelenos are transplants, either from another country, another part of the country or another part of California) so New Yorkers are more likely be fascinated with a new newspaper that aims to serve New York. They have a bigger stake in their city and their burroughs.

Ken Layne and Matt Welch are very experienced Web publishers. I'm a little surprised that they would want to get involved in a print publication, except that I think they share my romantic idealization of the good old days of newspapering. But from a business perspective, the Riordan venture would have a much better chance of succeeding if they at least started out as an online-only publication. In that scenario, expenses could be controled and they could serve their readers better. LA is a very wired area and since Riordan seems most interested in reaching a more affluent audience, he should be able to find that audience online. Instead of wasting money on newsprint and circulation, Riordan could funnel those millions into billboards and television commercials. Also, reader expectations would be dramatically scaled back and the need to be inclusive (covering sports, lifestyle and entertainment) would be mitigated. Yes, there are some tough revenue hurdles to clear online, but I'm confident that it can be done.

CDs in the morning mail, several of them. The first one in the CD player and the only one still playing -- Now Again from The Flatlanders (scheduled for release May 21).

I didn't really mean to listen to Now Again four straight times, but it's like a good book -- you don't want to put it down.

I'm predisposed to like this CD, I guess. I already own every CD Jimmie Dale Gilmore ever put out, plus several Joe Ely LPs and I look upon Butch Hancock as one of the Southwest's great songwriters. But even with high expectations, I'm still thoroughly impressed with Now Again. It's 14 tracks of love and longing and the Texas twang that made the first collection of Flatlanders recordings such a classic.

Of course, few of use heard those first Flatlander songs until the early 1980s, after the reputations of Ely, Gilmore and Hancock were established quite apart from the Flatlanders, when More a Leg and than a Band was released. The Flatlanders first got together in Lubbock in the early 1970s, when there was no alt-country, only a bunch of rednecks in Bakersfield, some hillbillies in Nashville and maybe a few hippies in California with a steel guitar. The Flatlanders independently of the California country-rock revolution put a saw (yes, a saw can be a musical instrument) to their honky-tonk-meets-the-Beatles inclinations and created a fresh sound.

Unfortunately, few listeners, even in their native Lubbock, were ready for what the Flatlanders offered. Of course, songs off that first set of recordings would become alt-country standards, such as "Dallas" and "Tonight I'm Going Downtown." Despite the slow start, the Flatlanders became every bit as important to the development of alt-country as Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt, and Ely and Gilmore became its chief practicers.

Now, older and wiser, with no new group material in three decades, the Flatlanders have mustered their considerable talents and managed to meld their different approaches to country music in, once again, a single cohesive package.

And I've got another great CD to add to my collection.

The Padres hitting just looks really pathetic. Pitching has carried them this far, but it can't carry them forever. Bruce Bochy keeps messing with the line up, especially the outfield. I know that's always been his style, but he needs to let some guys get untracked. This is the line up he should play for at least the next 14 games: Jimenez, 2B; Kotsay, CF; Nevin, 1B; Klesko, RF; Trammell, LF; Burroughs, 3B; Vazquez, SS; Lampkin, C.
Billie and I went to the Dodger/Padres game tonight and it wasn't an entirely wasted trip. Even though the Padres fell to the hated Dodgers 5-2, we did get to see Sean Burroughs hit his first Major League home run.