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Check out the “Bear Down” podcast

I love the idea of podcasts more than the actual things. They promise more than they actually deliver, they almost always need editing and truncating, and most importantly, I never have time to hear the whole thing. I sometimes wish I had to commute every day, so I could find some really good ones and, even more ambitiously, keep up with them. The ones I listen to have been piling up in my ipod like unread newspapers and copies of Atlantic and Money Magazine. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for them all.

But I want to give a shout-out to my old friend Matt Walsh (of Upright Citizens fame) and his friends who’ve been putting up the “Bear Down” podcast for two seasons now. Stationed out in LA (which they say gives them perspective), they analyze the results of the week’s Chicago Bears game with insight and humor, knowing enough to actually be interesting and funny enough to not be ponderous.

It’s like watching the game with funny fans who aren’t meatheads (mostly), or bitter former jocks, or short-fused know-it-alls, or macho masters of the world who dream of the day when they can buy a skybox and piss down on the fans. They also have great fake interviews with coaches, owners and former players that are almost believable, and completely hilarious.

So if you need a weekly recap in which no one is shouting at the camera or radio, and like a good laugh besides, check out the “Bear Down” podcast.

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We Few, We Buffoonish Few

So now the list of candidates for the mayor of Chicago has come down to five candidates. A measly five candidates, in every sense of the word. At least, that was the number that filed their petitions with the city clerk today.

When Da Mare announced he was retiring next year, hordes of local politicians began to jockey for position like the hopefuls who would pull the sword from the stone. Unknown aldermen held press conferences, state senators began to send out gossip tidbits about forming exploratory committees, etc. It looked like it was going to be a humorous campaign with more hyperbole than you could shake a Chicago Spire at.

But aspirants quickly began to fall away in October, when people realized they would be running against Rahm Emanuel and his money, and maybe when they realized that the city is pretty much broke right now. It was like Henny Penny in reverse, with everyone gung ho at the start but falling away when they realized how much work was involved and how slim their personal chances were.

So we’re left with Rahm Emanuel, Carol Mosely Braun (sheeesh), Gery Chico (probably Daley’s pick), Miguel Del Valle and US Rep. Danny Davis (he’s seemingly everywhere–does he hold more than one office?). They’re all politicians who know how to bloviate and hurl accusations and innuendo, but there are no outsized characters in the group except Emanuel. State Sen James Meeks is expected to file his petitions before the deadline next week.

Which is all too bad for me and my ilk. For a couple weeks I was trying to figure out how I could lampoon this process somehow, especially with some short dramatic episodes on the radio. I stirred and stirred the ingredients but nothing seemed to gel in my mind. Back in the 80s, Aaron Freeman hit a home run with his “Council Wars” episodes about the fights between Harold Washington and various retrograde aldermen who were acting like big men to oppose him. What would work this time? King Arthur? The Godfather? SpongeBob? Sniffing around the idea of a “Cannonball Run” take-off sounded okay, but who can remember anything distinctive about that piece of slop? (It may have been the presence of Sheriff Tom Dart as a possible candidate that made me salivate for the chance to bring in some Southern law enforcement burlesques, but now we’ll never know, since Dart declined to run in order to spend time with his family. And his current job, which has nothing but upsides for him.)

And now, as the initial thrill fades and the field thins out, we’re left with the almost-certain election of Emanuel to the mayor’s office. It will be loud and profane, but I don’t know if it will lend itself well to ridicule and parody.

Unless after the election, some of the aldermen grow a pair and stand up a little bit against the new mayor.

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

For more, better, and nastier observations about what’s going on in Chicago politically, check out Driftglass. It’s hilarious.

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The Bounty of the Harvest: Hard Cider

It’s a beautiful fall day here in Chicago, though it’s hard to consider 65 degrees as very autumnal. But the harvests are all in, and that has meant it’s time for apple cider.

And while apple cider is nice — one of God’s true gifts to humankind — hard cider can be even better. Or at least it appeals to the part of me that likes gadget and likes to play mad scientist once in a while.

(It’s not that my daughter in the background was scared of my fermenting experiments or the skull candle. She’d just woken up from a well-earned nap.)

Last year I fermented some ciders using a lager yeast, which came out pretty tasty. However, the drafts tasted a lot like those that I made years ago with champagne yeast. They weren’t quite as dry as the champagne batches (which were too dry to even enjoy), but they were very very crisp.

So this year, I made the trip over to “Brew and Grow” to see if they had any yeasts that were specific to making cider. (Cider of course will ferment on its own, if left to its own devices, but it can be a bit of a gamble to end up with a flavor that you like.) And sure enough, amidst all the hydroponic and home gardening equipment for closet-grown “tomatoes”, they sold some yeast specifically made for ciders. The pack was for five gallons of cider, which is about three gallons more than I will drink this winter, so I just estimated the proper amounts. No big deal to put too much in.

I made different batches by using cider from two different farms: Seedlings Orchard, which is run by a friend of mine, and Crane’s Orchard, which is the big chimichanga up by our cottage. The bottles from Seedlings had been pasteurized by ultra-violet light, while Crane’s was just au naturel. (Seedlings is also marketing their own hard cider at liquor stores in the Chicago area, though I haven’t tried it.)

After 10 or so days in the jugs, the bubbling subsided, and I took a measure of specific gravity. Surprisingly, it read that there was NO potential alcohol in either batch. I still haven’t figured that one out — did this yeast not produce any alcohol when it digested the sugars? That seems impossible. Will have to talk with other brewers about this when I think of it. So I siphoned off the liquid into beer bottles and capped them, as shown above, after priming each half-gallon with about a teaspoon of corn sugar. After a week, I brought some to a friend’s house for his birthday.

The results? The cider from Crane’s was clear and crisp, with just the right amount of carbonation. Good adequate drink. But the batch from Seedlings had a lot more complexity, a little peppery bite to the flavor, a touch more carbonation. If forced to choose between the two, I think I’d take Seedlings.

Now I need to find a bottle or two of the commercially made stuff and see if mine is at all similar to it. Seedlings has some “varietal” ciders, with mutsu and jonagold and the like, which they were selling at the farmers markets this fall. To me, those flavors are so delicate that I think fermenting them would almost remove the flavor. For now, I’m going to stick with the generic apple cider, though I do like Seedlings’ combo of cider and cherry juice.

Better living through chemistry.

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A Salute to Sparky Anderson

The Tigers have lost another legendary personality. George Lee Anderson, better known and loved as Sparky, has died at the age of 76. Along with the loss of Ernie Harwell earlier in the year, it’s a one-two punch to the gut for Bengals fans. Sparky was the genuine article, by all accounts, and never forgot his humble beginnings. As such, he was the perfect fit for a place like Detroit, a place with a very finely tuned bullshit meter (not that it stops them from electing fools and felons, naturally).

For a terrific appreciation of Sparky, check out Joe Posnansky’s excellent piece in Sports Illustrated. It will tell you all you need to know about why this guy was such a classic. However, I’m waiting to read in even one of these tribute articles that Sparky was a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, for his minor league playing days in Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Royals. (The picture with this post came from their website.)

And so, I felt the need to salute Sparky with a poem on Bardball. It just started with small phrases and kept going. It seems very fitting. Sparky was not an educated man, so a flowery tribute would’ve rung hollow. So long, Sparky. The Hot Stove League in heaven just got livelier.

The snowy hair
The doleful stare
The mangled speech
The subtle preach
The dubious start
The gentle heart
The hook that stings
Three Series rings
The postgame pipe
The misplaced hype
Shaggy dog stories
Humble glories
A light gone dark
We’ll miss you, Spark

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White Zombie

For one of my favorite old horror movies:

“White Zombie’s” honeymoon bride
Gets bewitched and leaves her man’s side.
But even before,
This drip’s such a bore,
It’s hard to be certain she died.

With dark graveyard scenes, voodoo in the “Haitian” countryside, a big creepy castle, and Bela Legosi’s unibrow, this movie is a B-classic. It’s on one of the cable channels this week — catch it.

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Ordinary Time

Well, I was going to write a post about how summer was over and it was back to the old grindstone in the City on the Make. Full of little tidbits about what the family had done during the hot months, designed to bring smiles to those who know me well and envious grimaces to my enemies, since as they say, “Living well is the best revenge.”

Then I looked up and, whaddyaknow, it’s already the beginning of October. The time for winding down, clearing out the garden, making sure last year’s boots are still waterproof. The first tenuous weeks of school are finished, and now the kids have to actually get some work done. Big Ten teams need to stop beating up on Eastern Michigan and Bowling Green and Illinois, and start playing against actual football programs. The demands of Halloween loom, when us creative people have to step up and deliver with the house decorations and costumes (no leftover medical scrubs or softball uniforms for our lot). Then, it’s the greased chute to Christmas, and the whole “what the hell just happened?” feeling that accompanies it.

But poor, poor September. Aside from Labor Day, no one gives it any love. No big special events, no big sales (except back-to-school), no big debuts since no one cares about network TV anymore.

September is starting to feel like a segue month, a time to bide until other, bigger, flashier months come up. The church calendar talks about “ordinary time,” which consists of the weeks that don’t fall under Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. This can maybe apply to the secular calendar too, the weeks when we catch our breath and maybe ponder what our lives are all about. If so, September leads the pack, followed by January, March and maybe June (although graduations bisect that month nicely, and weddings can give it an extra urgency).

So, as it begins to feel like “The years just flow by, like a broken down dam” (John Prine), maybe we should savor the ordinary times like September. At least until we can figure out a way to commercially exploit it.

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Nighty-Night, White Sox

So the Chicago White Sox finally managed to mathematically eliminate themselves last night by losing to the Oakland A’s. Way to back into it, guys. Holding the door to the post-season open to the Twins. I didn’t think such politeness was such a feature of the South Side, and of the Good Guys Wearing Black.

What a frustrating year. When the Sox were firing on all cylinders in midsummer, they were playing the kind of baseball I love: dominant pitching and defense, a little small-ball mixed in with a dramatic game-winning home run once in a while. But such consistency is beyond these guys apparently.

We can be grateful, though, that that former Macy’s balloon Manny Ramirez completely embarrassed himself with his lack of hitting in the final weeks. No temptation to sign him again, I trust. Brush up on your Japanese, Manny.

So this team might get broken apart when the season ends, which would be a shame. I like the make-up of the team. But I doubt they’ll let Paulie Konerko go. He’s such the complete face of the franchise that he should be carried off on a shield after giving up his final iota of strength. I hope they keep AJ, who always makes it interesting. Bobby Jenks? Yeah, probably time for him to move on; he’s had five seasons to show himself as not-a-headcase since the World Series, and with his other injuries, I’d say it’s time to look for another closer.

As a cap to the season, I’d like to offer a prayer for Sox fans to repeat to themselves when they kneel down by their beds tonight. Posted on Bardball last week, but that was premature. Or at least completely realistic.

Now we lay us down to sleep.
Who really thought that we could sweep?

We thought we had a chance at Central,
If Ozzie kept from going mental.

God, forgive us of our sins
And tell us why you made the Twins.

Tell us why we let go Thome,
Then brought in that dreadlocked phony.

Thank you for our newfound heroes,
For Edwin Jackson, Alex Rios,

Thank you for our older guard,
Thanks for Paulie going yard.

Please keep the squad from getting creaky.
Make sure A.J. keeps playing sneaky.

Now we’ll watch the Hawks and Bears,
Trying to ignore our fears

Of Kenny really signing Manny
And Ozzie going to Miami.

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Tea Partiers Come Closer to Catching the Car They’re Barking After

From what I gather on some of the political websites, there’s been some kind of tectonic shift in American politics, now that some “Tea Party” candidates have ousted Republican favorites in some Senate and House Primaries. Katie, bar the door, and all that….

I haven’t paid any attention to the Tea Party movement for more than a year. At one time, they seemed like a genuine force to be reckoned with. But as certain “leaders” have emerged, they strike me as little more than telegenic nihilists. Not informed about how government operates, not interested that there can be more than one side to an argument, not particularly honest with the people whose emotions they have stoked and manipulated. They argue that having no government would almost be better than having the government we have now. (If you really think that having no government would create some kind of Rousseau-ian paradise, go visit places with failed governments like Yemen or Sudan, then come back and report.)

Hey, they wanna “throw da bums out”, that’s fine. That’s why we have the system.

But what kind of makes me sick is the way this is treated in the media, like these people are like Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, swooping down at this particular time in history to reclaim this country. That’s the rhetoric of the movement, but now the trope is worming its way into news coverage about it.

This morning on NPR’s “Morning Edition” (which I was only half listening to), the reporter described the Tea Party movement as a robust threat to the Republican establishment. It was done in such an awestruck and admiring manner, that I had to think to myself:

“Would a serious movement from the left, challenging Democratic incumbents, have received such a glowing report? Or would a “Coffee Party” (or whatever) be treated as a ragtag bunch of crazies that want power and won’t know what to do with it when they get it?”

I think you know the answer. Which all goes back to the way the supposedly liberal elements of the media establishment are still an establishment, and treat conservative power with way more deference and analysis than it deserves. Conservative power is about one thing only: Power. Not good governance, not justice, not equality, not the future of the country. Just power, and holding onto it.

I’m not saying the Democrats can be trusted to act in ways that advance those ideals, or that they don’t crave power like a junkie. It’s just that I get tired of the media giving these Tea Party dress-up whores so much credit, and their government suitors any credibility. IT often looks like the Tea Partiers have stolen the keys to the family van, and are sitting up in a tree taunting the Republican officeholders, and the officeholders are making lots of cooing noises and waving candy hoping to get the keys back. Billionaires are funding the Tea Party movement and pulling the strings behind the candidates, and any doofuses in tri-corner hats who think that these backers have the fate of the average citizen in mind deserves the paddling he’s going to get.

It’s only going to get interesting again when some of these “reformers” get elected to office. But then, that’s me. I’m a cynic, but not a nihilist.

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Bud Selig, on Bardball

I wrote this a couple weeks ago, but never posted it here. Thought some of you might like it.

THE LEGACY OF BUD SELIG

Tons of money for the owners.
Ignorance of player-dopers.

More exploitative contract bids
For dirt-poor Caribbean kids.

A baseball classic for the world
Where U.S. players rarely hurled.

With anti-trust still holding fast,
Small-market teams still finish last.

Now, Milwaukee celebrates this schwanz
With a Selig statute cast in bronze.

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Ron Santo, Font of Baseball Wisdom

From Bardball this week:

The Cubs and Cards are tied at two.
Your heart is beating like a drum.
The Cubbies could still win this thing.
Professor Santo opines, “Umm.”

A walk and then a stolen base–
Is Sorey slowing down a bit?
Should Castro bunt or swing away?
Our sage says, “Cubs could use a hit.”

Two outs with men on first and third.
The pitch scoots past Molina–HOW?
Alphonso races home! Cubs Win!
Mr. Insightful stammers, “Wow!”

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Fun in the Minor Leagues

Posted today on Bardball, a true account of a game I attended last year at Fifth Third Park, home of Grand Rapids’ minor league Tigers affiliate, the West Michigan Whitecaps.

Too much fun. If you haven’t gone to a minor league baseball game recently, you’re missing out on a lot, including pork chop sandwiches and lots of local color.

Remember, Bardball exists only because of reader submissions, so if the baseball muse strikes you, submit it to the site and we’ll put it up.

Superhero Night with the West Michigan Whitecaps

To augment the human-sized, foam-rubber eyeball footraces
(Sponsored by a local optometrist)
And the hot wieners bazooka’d into the crowd
(Brought to you by an insurance agency)
And the horrible-hued disco dance contest
(Courtesy of Q-107–”You Can’t Stop The Rock”),
The special events crew rented costumes
Of Captain America and The Hulk,
Complete with stitched-in muscles,
And waved and flexed and danced and clowned.

In between,
Pitchers strained,
Batters swung,
Fielders pounced,
Dreaming of the show.

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Printers Row Lit Fest Highlights

This year’s Lit Fest down in Chicago’s Printers Row was a little smaller than last year, as far as the number of exhibitors goes. The booths going up Dearborn Street did not stretch past Harrison Street, as they have in years past. And some of the booth space that did exist was taken up by an Acura dealer, a furniture maker, and a huge traveling exhibit that the Tribune trots out from the McCormick Freedom Foundation. I think the recession made it hard for bookstores to come a long way to exhibit there.

The Lit Fest is at a crossroads, I think, as many of these kinds of events are. I’m very grateful the Tribune sponsors so much of the festival, without a doubt, but is it mainly a used book fair, with a few panels and readings sprinkled in? Is it a place for writers to connect with readers, or to explore where publishing is headed? Is it always going to compete with the Chicago Blues Festival, and always take place in the rain? How does it complement or compete with Columbia College’s Story Week and the Chicago Humanities Festival? Time will tell. The name of the event was changed from “Book Fair” last year, to broaden everyone’s perception of what’s going on, and I hope it doesn’t pass away with the shrinking of the traditional publishing paradigm.

I was a participant in two events (pretty soon people are going to wonder when I’m actually going to publish something new, or whether I’m now a washed up eminence grise at 49). The first was the panel “Cubbie Blues,” with my friends from that compilation of 2008 (left to right in the photo) Rick Kaempfer, Donald Evans and Robert Goldsborough. Our main topic, within the context of why the Chicago Cubs still and always suck, was why baseball is the most literate of professional sports. We talked about baseball as a conduit for memoir (Cardboard Gods, which I just finished, is a great example of that), literature (ditto The Man with Two Arms by Billy Lombardo), and poetry. My conclusion, which no one bothered to refute, was that baseball had a monopoly on the public imagination for 60 years, until the advent of television, and baseball has so much down time, even during a game, that it allows reflection, and that allows for better writing. And the Cubs are an evergreen topic because, well, they are just so multifaceted in their losing. The stories seemingly never end.

I also sat in for part of a discussion of Get Capone with the author, Jonathan Eig, and Trib writer and WGN radio host Rick Kogan. As usual, it was riveting stuff, and Rick is probably the best interviewer in town. A mysterious transformation came over Jon, however, when during the interview he felt himself transformed into a figure from a Red Chinese propaganda poster, looking across the bountiful harvest toward a glorious future. Rick, of course, was nonplussed by this. Who wouldn’t be?

I spent the remainder of Saturday shopping, although I did take in the panel discussing mysteries and graphic novels. Some of the results of my shopping are below.

On Sunday, I had the privilege of being one of the judges at the first National Story Slam Competition, held at the Harold Washington Library. It was a terrific time. My friend Bill Hillmann has been running the Windy City Story Slam for almost three years, while at the same time other slam-type storytelling events have cropped up nationwide. So Bill managed to bring 9 champions from Oregon, Baltimore, South Carolina, Boston, and other places to compete. The winner, Nancy Donoval from Minneapolis, wove a captivating narrative about bone spurs, unicorns and regaining her virginity by proclamation by a friend (after it had been taken by force years before) that had heart, great narrative structure, humor and pain in wonderful amounts. She scored a 49.5 out of 50, so it was darn near perfect. You can read bios of all the competitors at the Story Slam website here. Nancy won the first belt from the judges, a huge gold girdle like a boxing champ can win. A second belt, given to the performer with the highest applause from the audience, was taken in a very very close competition by Chicago’s champ, Alex Bonner. The crowd of more than 200 were loud and appreciative. I’m really excited to check out more slams in the future.

So, shopping at the Lit Fest wasn’t too exciting this year. I think I was in a cheapskate frame of mind. I did buy a hardback copy of U of C Press’ The Chicagoan, but luckily it was marked down to half-price. The only other things I dived for were a few dusty paperbacks, to add to a ragtag collection I’ve somehow gotten of these titles over the years. First, I found a couple paperbacks from the “Get Smart” series, as shown below. This brings my collection of these up to five out of nine (I think). I passed on paperbacks of Chips, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the Bobby Sherman Show.

Then, at my last stop on Sunday, I found a couple of old Dell Mysteries from the 1940s, the cool ones with the “Crime Map” on the back cover. These are pretty collectible, I guess, but I don’t want to get into all that stuff. I buy them if they amuse me, but how could anything printed with a “Crime Map” fail to amuse? I also liked the name of one of the authors, Zelda Popkin. It’s almost the same as Hellzapoppin’. Maybe she’s got a sister.

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Riding the Long Tail of the eBook

Here’s an example of how quickly my brain pan cooks an egg. The Kindle has been out, what, three years now? And the iPad about a year?

Hmmm, nice little platforms, I’ve been musing. Electronic books might become a market for me sometime in the future, when I get a little footing again among the NY publishers. Then maybe, when I convince someone in NY to come out with a 20h anniversary edition of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, we can talk about how to use this platform to deliver more of my writing.

Only, publishers aren’t going to go for a 20th anniversary edition of PCBS, not unless I’ve got another book or three in the pipeline. And when you consider that the NY pipeline has been pretty uninterested in what I’ve been writing for the past decade (with one exception), it would look like the publishing establishment is not going to be much help in me getting my books to people more directly and instantaneously.

In other words, the middleman was not going to be much help in cutting out the middleman.

Oh.

(Time passes, as I attach a drill to the mechanism of a large wall clock and make the hands spin in rapid comic fashion.)

Maybe I should do it myself.

Ding.

Actually, I can’t even really take credit for this notion of releasing my out-of-print books as ebooks. After seeing his name in a story in TimeOut Chicago, I started browsing the website of Chicago writer JA Konrath, author of the “Jack Daniels” series of mystery novels. Konrath is a complete convert to the idea of selling ebooks at the same time as real tree carcasses. Hell, he’s a convert to giving the stories away free on his website. Go ahead, read his site and his blog, and see if you don’t become convinced that the new publishing paradigm is already here.

Konrath is a very prolific writer. I’m not, to my shame and chagrin. Because my output isn’t monumental, it’s always eaten away at me that my most popular books have been out of print since 1998. What a waste, and not just monetarily. I’m a Midwestern boy, Detroit-bred, and I like the idea of being productive and being thrifty. So why should I let my old books go to waste, just because a decade ago they needed more shelf space in the warehouse?

This ebook idea has charged me up like nothing in the past year. I don’t expect much in revenue from them, I just want the people who want to read them to be able to do so, and for me to get my vig. Getting credit for the stories that spawned a hundred imitators is also a big motivator. “Little Red Riding Hood” and the rest of them often pop up on people’s websites, usually intact and credited. (“Red” is also by far the story most reprinted in Literature textbooks, FWIW.) Why people do that, I don’t know. It used to bug me a little, but now I’m grateful, for the following reason.

The original electronic files for Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories are nowhere to be found. For all I know, they’re still on some 5″ floppy disk somewhere, but I can’t find them. I can find reams and reams of paper and floppies for book ideas that never panned out, let alone got published, but the ur-files for PCBS are missing.

I was faced with a long boring session of retyping the stories so they could be transferred to the proper types of files, until I realized that other people had already done much of this for me. Fans out there through the years have been posting the stories around the web — all I have to do is collect them and compare them to the printed versions. Howzy! No scanning, OCR, or voice software to wrestle with!

So this is a thank-you to those folks who took the time to type up my stories for me, with the intent of sharing them with the world. I intend to share them too, with a little fee added on. I’m not QUITE there yet with the idea of giving them all away. But we’ll see what the future brings.

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The Armando Galarraga Saga

Last night’s blown call by umpire Jim Joyce, which took away Armando Galarraga’s perfect game, will be talked about for years, by bitter Tiger fans crying about how their team can’t get a break, and paranoids and conspiracy fans everywhere.

But I’ve argued before that baseball is filled with human error (hell, if there’s a statistic for “Errors”. then it must be a big part of the game). I’m not too much in favor of the instant replay, though it seems to have been integrated well into the action. My heart wants Galarraga to get credit for his efforts, but my head says that it is what it is. I can’t start changing my attitude just because a Tiger was involved, and just because the umpire got the yips and got confused about THE ONLY THING HE’S GOT TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHEN HE’S WORKING ON FIRST BASE!!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

I was frankly impressed with both the player and the umpire this morning. How many people in public life, caught in a big mistake, just come out and say it was their fault, and that their decision will haunt them the rest of their lives? (When was the last time you heard a politician or a CEO, our national “leaders”, say such a thing, at least when it still mattered?)

And how many players showed Galarraga’s grace and character in the face of a crushing disappointment? My hat’s off to him.

Here’s a little piece of doggerel I whipped up for the brouhaha on Bardball this morning, hoping to earn points for timeliness if not :

Nobody’s Perfect

After the call that the umpire blew,
What could Armando Galarraga do?

Drag him to court in front of a judge,
Since now his market value was smudged?

Argue some kind of liberal plot?
Threaten to meet Joyce in the parking lot?

Hire a hit man to mangle his mug?
Break down on “Oprah” to get some O-hugs?

Threaten his wife, kids, brothers and sisters?
Publish his home phone number on Twitter?

Beg ol’ Bud Selig for some Commissioner’s magic?
Hire some flacks for his story so tragic?

Buy off some pols to rewrite the rules?
Sic Milton Bradley on his family jewels?

But Armando showed character larger than fame.
He smiled, shook hands and went on with the game.