Mollie you received both your English and Hebrew names from my maternal grandparents, the people I called Grandma and Pop-Pop – Mollie and Allen Price- Malka Alitza עליצה מלכה
In Hebrew Malka means queen and Alitza means joys and happiness, so very simply put Mollie, you represent the queen of our happiness and joy in this house.
Mollie Doctor was born in Montville CT in 1913. Mollie was an only child who was raised primarily by her father Josef after her mother Celia passed when Mollie was very young. She went to nursing school at Beth Israel in NYC and while there met Allen, an aspiring song writer.
Allen Price was born in a third floor walk up on the lower east side of Manhattan in 1907. He was raised by his parents Sadie and Hyman, and joined by Oscar and Vivian. Allan had a beautiful singing voice and would frequently sing to entertain the family.
They married in 1940 and had two daughters, Carol and Andrea.
For many years Mollie chaired the local March of Dimes (Mothers March on Polio) Campaign. Mollie worked as a school nurse and as a camp nurse over the summer. When the girls were grown up, she went back to work as a public health nurse and retired as the Director of Nursing for Jewish Child Services (JCS) in NYC. It was the JCS offices that housed the big giraffe that I remember and which became the animal your brother Jacob now collects.
Mollie loved to read and she instilled this love in her children and grandchildren. She often read poetry aloud, whether anyone around wanted to hear it or not. Hopefully you will love reading just as much as your name sake did. When not reading, she was doing crossword puzzles and insisted that you learn to spell correctly by doing the puzzles. These are some of the reasons why we blessed you with her name.
My recollection of my Grandma is that of strong woman, who loved children. This is very similar to your mother. Mollie spent her professional life helping children through nursing, and her personal life raising a family and ultimately spoiling her grandchildren, Lisa, Jeff and Aisha. She gave me the appearance of being the one who ran the house, and kept Allan in line, again just like your mother.
Allen made his living as a salesman, though he always loved music. He sang on key and could pick out a melody on the piano even though he could not read music. He was a “pied piper” to all the kids in their Sunnyside Queens neighborhood. As he was walking down the street he would whistle a certain tune. All the kids recognized it and came running to greet him. I hope that you have inherited the musical bug, because singing off key is not something to be proud of, though it has never stopped me.
More than music, Allen loved sports. He played 2-man handball every week with his contemporaries. When the doctors told him to slow down, he began playing doubles but with younger players. He also loved spectator sports. It was not unusual for him to have an earphone connected to the radio listening to one game and then switching between two other games on the TV. He was also not averse to yelling at the referees and umpires and as your mother will attest I have a tendency towards this as well.
To me, my Pop-Pop was a very special person, though I only knew him for the first 9 years of my life. Looking back on it, I am amazed at the influence he has had on me in those first few formative years. He helped mold me into the man I have become by instilling in me my love of competition and sports. He also trained me to use my mind, by teaching me the game of chess. I don’t think I would be where I am now, without him.
He was my hero, the person a little boy can look up and inspire to become. He was talented, athletic, warm, caring and giving. I think he relished having a grandson after having raised two daughters and I feel lucky and honored that I was that grandson. I wish I could have spent more time with him before he passed away. Mollie, since you were born, everyday I have thought about what he meant to me, and how I will now always have you to remind me of him.
Today, I consider myself very lucky to be able to give you a piece of my hero…his name, only because your mother shot down the name Thurman Munson.
Mollie and Allan along with my paternal grandmother, Bella, whom your cousin Katy is named, passed away in a tragic car accident in December 1978. They were all taken away from us too soon. The lesson of this to me is to enjoy the time we have together. Live life fully and always be happy. Work hard, but have fun.
We hope and pray that you have a long prosperous life and have the opportunity to love and be loved the way Mollie and Allan were.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Friday, January 09, 2004
Time to eliminate the DH
This article first appeared in Zisk Magazine #8 (ziskmagazine.blogspot.com)
In honor of Paul Molitor’s election to the baseball hall of fame, I would like to begin a grassroots movement to eliminate the DH from organized baseball. I believe there are 3 compelling reasons to remove this blight on the game. The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense, which is no longer necessary. The game is more strategic and fun to watch without the DH. The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues.
The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense
The 1960’s were known as the decade of the pitchers. Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Ford, Bunning, and Marichal all defined that decade. In 1969, MLB uniformly changed the rules lowering the height of pitchers mounds in order to decrease the advantage of the pitcher and give batters a better opportunity to hit the ball. After a decade of station to station baseball the American League was still looking for a way to bring more hitting to the game. So in 1973 they implemented the DH, allowing a designated hitter (DH) to hit for the pitcher, in an effort to increase offense. Evidence supports that this change helped both the hitter and hurt the pitcher, which is the intent of the rule. This effectively increased the run production in the AL compared to the NL, which is still the case today; however it had a negative effect in that it took a certain level of strategy away from AL managers.
For the past 25 years or so, the DH has effectively served its purpose bringing more offense to the game. Today, I don’t think anyone would argue that we need more offense. In fact, the way the game is played now is radically different than it was played in the early 1990’s. Offense numbers are sky rocketing, pitchers are being shellacked left and right, and where there are multiple reasons for this (expansion, shrinking strike zones, etc) phenomenon, one glaring fact is that in half the games played pitchers don’t hit for themselves. They either have an over-the-hill slugger or a slow footed youngster hitting the ball a mile rather than producing outs or sacrificing a runner to the next base. Eliminated the DH could once again help level the playing field between the pitcher and the batter.
The game is more strategic without the DH
Since 1973 it does not take a brain surgeon (in spite of Tim McCarver’s book of the same name) to manage in the AL once the game starts. Once a lineup is set with a DH, all the manager needs to worry about is when to pull a pitcher and when there is a need for a pinch hitter or pinch runner. In the NL, these decisions are integrally linked together, and that component adds a significant strategic piece to the game that is lacking in the AL.
In spite of the fact that I root for an AL team, I honestly think the NL is a more interesting league to watch for the simple reason that there is more strategy and possibilities involved. Being able to decide when to pull a pitcher because he is coming up to bat, when to do a double switch, when to sit tight adds many more facets to the game. Watching the AL, is entertaining if you like Earl Weaver’s strategy to sit back and wait for another HR. Once the lineup is set at the beginning of the game, very rarely is there a change to the lineup made unless there is an injury, a defensive replacement late in the game, or a situational hitter/pitcher match up.
Having a pitcher in the lineup alters how you plan your pitches up and down the lineup. Knowing that the pitcher is coming in the 9th spot, allows you to vary how you attack the 7th and 8th hitters in the lineup depending upon the situation and time of the game. I remember going to a Yankee game in the mid 1990’s when they were playing the Cleveland Indians and noting that the visitor had 9 players batting over .300. There is no such thing as a sure out in that lineup; any single person can kill you. How boring.
The AL has also forgotten about the sacrifice and the stolen base. I am not going to attempt to pull a Bill James here and justify the value of either of these statistics, but the fact that they are underutilized and add a surprise element makes the game more enjoyable to watch from this fans perspective.
Eliminating the DH will force managers to think more and make the game more interesting to the fans.
The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues.
For almost a hundred years the two leagues acted as separately as they possibly could. There were inter league trades, there were inter league games in spring training, but once the season began, the leagues only met in the All-star Game and the World Series. That all changed with the advent of inter league play a few years ago. It is time that they bring the rules into uniformity as well. In the past few years, the league presidents have been eliminated, umpires are now employed by MLB not by the leagues, and the All-star game is now just a glorified superstar show case and home run hitting contest, which the current commissioner has made compelling by awarding the winner home field advantage in the World Series. MLB is attempting to regulate the game time, the strike zone, and overall conformity. AL vs. NL has essentially lost all its meaning in the past few years. So the last standing bastion between the leagues should also be eliminated immediately which translates to KO’ing the DH.
Argument against eliminating the DH
Some will argue that the players union will never allow some of their own to go unemployed. There is a simple way around this argument increase the roster size from 25 to 26 or 27. This allows a team to “keep” the designated hitter on its roster. They can then be used as a pinch hitter or in the field if they are still capable. The union cannot complain about its highest paid players being forced to the unemployment lines since the teams are making provisions to keep them employed.
I know the economics of the game will never allow this change to happen, but I thought it would be fun to dream about baseball the way it is supposed to be played.
In honor of Paul Molitor’s election to the baseball hall of fame, I would like to begin a grassroots movement to eliminate the DH from organized baseball. I believe there are 3 compelling reasons to remove this blight on the game. The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense, which is no longer necessary. The game is more strategic and fun to watch without the DH. The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues.
The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense
The 1960’s were known as the decade of the pitchers. Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Ford, Bunning, and Marichal all defined that decade. In 1969, MLB uniformly changed the rules lowering the height of pitchers mounds in order to decrease the advantage of the pitcher and give batters a better opportunity to hit the ball. After a decade of station to station baseball the American League was still looking for a way to bring more hitting to the game. So in 1973 they implemented the DH, allowing a designated hitter (DH) to hit for the pitcher, in an effort to increase offense. Evidence supports that this change helped both the hitter and hurt the pitcher, which is the intent of the rule. This effectively increased the run production in the AL compared to the NL, which is still the case today; however it had a negative effect in that it took a certain level of strategy away from AL managers.
For the past 25 years or so, the DH has effectively served its purpose bringing more offense to the game. Today, I don’t think anyone would argue that we need more offense. In fact, the way the game is played now is radically different than it was played in the early 1990’s. Offense numbers are sky rocketing, pitchers are being shellacked left and right, and where there are multiple reasons for this (expansion, shrinking strike zones, etc) phenomenon, one glaring fact is that in half the games played pitchers don’t hit for themselves. They either have an over-the-hill slugger or a slow footed youngster hitting the ball a mile rather than producing outs or sacrificing a runner to the next base. Eliminated the DH could once again help level the playing field between the pitcher and the batter.
The game is more strategic without the DH
Since 1973 it does not take a brain surgeon (in spite of Tim McCarver’s book of the same name) to manage in the AL once the game starts. Once a lineup is set with a DH, all the manager needs to worry about is when to pull a pitcher and when there is a need for a pinch hitter or pinch runner. In the NL, these decisions are integrally linked together, and that component adds a significant strategic piece to the game that is lacking in the AL.
In spite of the fact that I root for an AL team, I honestly think the NL is a more interesting league to watch for the simple reason that there is more strategy and possibilities involved. Being able to decide when to pull a pitcher because he is coming up to bat, when to do a double switch, when to sit tight adds many more facets to the game. Watching the AL, is entertaining if you like Earl Weaver’s strategy to sit back and wait for another HR. Once the lineup is set at the beginning of the game, very rarely is there a change to the lineup made unless there is an injury, a defensive replacement late in the game, or a situational hitter/pitcher match up.
Having a pitcher in the lineup alters how you plan your pitches up and down the lineup. Knowing that the pitcher is coming in the 9th spot, allows you to vary how you attack the 7th and 8th hitters in the lineup depending upon the situation and time of the game. I remember going to a Yankee game in the mid 1990’s when they were playing the Cleveland Indians and noting that the visitor had 9 players batting over .300. There is no such thing as a sure out in that lineup; any single person can kill you. How boring.
The AL has also forgotten about the sacrifice and the stolen base. I am not going to attempt to pull a Bill James here and justify the value of either of these statistics, but the fact that they are underutilized and add a surprise element makes the game more enjoyable to watch from this fans perspective.
Eliminating the DH will force managers to think more and make the game more interesting to the fans.
The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues.
For almost a hundred years the two leagues acted as separately as they possibly could. There were inter league trades, there were inter league games in spring training, but once the season began, the leagues only met in the All-star Game and the World Series. That all changed with the advent of inter league play a few years ago. It is time that they bring the rules into uniformity as well. In the past few years, the league presidents have been eliminated, umpires are now employed by MLB not by the leagues, and the All-star game is now just a glorified superstar show case and home run hitting contest, which the current commissioner has made compelling by awarding the winner home field advantage in the World Series. MLB is attempting to regulate the game time, the strike zone, and overall conformity. AL vs. NL has essentially lost all its meaning in the past few years. So the last standing bastion between the leagues should also be eliminated immediately which translates to KO’ing the DH.
Argument against eliminating the DH
Some will argue that the players union will never allow some of their own to go unemployed. There is a simple way around this argument increase the roster size from 25 to 26 or 27. This allows a team to “keep” the designated hitter on its roster. They can then be used as a pinch hitter or in the field if they are still capable. The union cannot complain about its highest paid players being forced to the unemployment lines since the teams are making provisions to keep them employed.
I know the economics of the game will never allow this change to happen, but I thought it would be fun to dream about baseball the way it is supposed to be played.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
The Pete Rose Case: One Fan's Opinion
January 6, 2004 – This first appeared in Zisk Magazine #8
It is 2 days before Pete Rose’s book comes out and he is all the talk of the sports world. I was at the gym last night watching (reading the captions actually) some talking heads on CNN Headlines discuss this matter. One proclaimed ethics expert spoke of America’s ability to forgive and forget. He was essentially saying that Pete Rose has spent the last 14 years in purgatory and therefore has paid his punishment, deserves to be forgiven by the master asshole himself Bud Selig and should be reinstated back into baseball.
This schmuck clearly knows nothing about baseball and even less about Pete Rose. First off, there is one cardinal rule in baseball that is made 100% clear in any locker room (or so I am told since I have never been in a major league locker room) GAMBLING IS NOT ALLOWED. Even today’s whipping boy, illegal drugs don’t have the same effect as gambling does. Just ask any of these former players Steve Howe, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, Willie Aikens, Ferguson Jenkins, Otis Nixon, Leon Durham, Vide Blue, and Pascual Perez. They were all suspended for drug use and returned to the game after their suspensions.
Not since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, has a person associated with MLB returned to the game after being associated with Gambling or gamblers. Even Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were asked to disassociate themselves from the Yankees and Giants in the 1980s by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, when they were employed as greeters at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Whether you agree with the precedent or not, Gambling is the death penalty in baseball!! (Anyone heard from the SMU football team since they received this judgment from NCAA in 1987?) Pete Rose now admits he gambled on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. He claims not to have done it from the field, though the Dowd report has wiretaps from the managers office to his bookie, he claims not to have used insider information to his advantage, which is impossible considering he is an insider and would know if his closer is tired or his cleanup hitter tweaked a hamstring1, and he admits he only bet on the Reds to win, which in my mind contradicts the not acting on insider information statement. By not betting on your team on days you know you are benching certain players is just as bad as betting on your team when all your players are on fire.
After 14 years of lying, he has finally admitted he was gambling. Big fucking deal. You have to be living on Mars since the last real commissioner of MLB A. Bart Giamatti (who subsequently dropped dead of heart attack a few days later) suspended Rose for life, with the opportunity to apply for reinstatement after 1 year, not to know he was gambling on baseball. If he has been lying for so long, why should I believe him now?
What I have not seen or heard from him is an apology to the fans, and this gives me no reason to welcome him back to the game. Mike Francesa pointed out on WFAN in NY that Rose is broke and is desperate to get back into the game. Rose has lied for 14 years and he is carefully crafting the book, the interviews, and every other piece of PR for 2 reasons. The first is to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which he deserves, in spite of being a slimy creature who should crawl back under the rock upon which he came. The second is to return to a role in organized baseball. But what role should putz master Buddy S allow Peter to play?
The ownership of the Cincinnati Reds would hire Rose again in a minute assuming the used car salesman from Milwaukee gives #14 a full reprieve and unlimited entry back into the game. Others have suggested that Rose should be allowed to be a spring training instructor but not allowed to be a fulltime employee of an MLB organization essentially keeping him away from real games and subsequently keeping him away from temptation. What will the man who decided “I am going to call the All-star game a tie” do? I don’t know, but here is my suggestion.
A (real) commissioner of MLB, would lift the banishment for the sole purpose of allowing the BBWA to inducted Rose into the Hall of Fame prior to 2006, when his eligibility expires. Let’s face it; there are a lot of nasty folks who did some bad shit in that building. It is not a personality contest, but rather who are the best baseball players of all-time and lets face it, though I have issues with hanger’s on (Winfield, Sutton), he personified baseball in the 70’ and 80’s with his Charlie Hustle style of play. We would be able to celebrate Rose the player, not Rose the manager, not Rose the gambler. He would be in Cooperstown, and then he would go away, off the baseball radar.
For the sole purpose of allowing him into the HOF means he should only be allowed into Cooperstown and nothing else. He should not be allowed to be a spring training instructor, he should not be allowed to be general manager, he should not be allowed to a field manager, he should not be allowed to participate in old timers game, he should not be allowed to be involved in publicity nights, he should have no contact with the game without expressed written consent of the commissioner of MLB. There has to be some punishment for gambling, and keeping him off the field away from the game is the best way to accomplish that. But that is just me
Assuming Selig does reinstate Rose in some manner, isn’t time that Shoeless Joe Jackson also be reinstated? Unfortunately Joe did less than Rose and has been banned much longer than him. Jackson was a poor southerner who played in a different age and there is no one left to take up his cause. He received a lifetime ban in 1920, and his lifetime ended in 1951. His still has the 3rd highest all-time average, which to me is a much more substantial record then total number of hits.
1 – Jayson Stark – ESPN.com (January 6, 2004)
It is 2 days before Pete Rose’s book comes out and he is all the talk of the sports world. I was at the gym last night watching (reading the captions actually) some talking heads on CNN Headlines discuss this matter. One proclaimed ethics expert spoke of America’s ability to forgive and forget. He was essentially saying that Pete Rose has spent the last 14 years in purgatory and therefore has paid his punishment, deserves to be forgiven by the master asshole himself Bud Selig and should be reinstated back into baseball.
This schmuck clearly knows nothing about baseball and even less about Pete Rose. First off, there is one cardinal rule in baseball that is made 100% clear in any locker room (or so I am told since I have never been in a major league locker room) GAMBLING IS NOT ALLOWED. Even today’s whipping boy, illegal drugs don’t have the same effect as gambling does. Just ask any of these former players Steve Howe, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, Willie Aikens, Ferguson Jenkins, Otis Nixon, Leon Durham, Vide Blue, and Pascual Perez. They were all suspended for drug use and returned to the game after their suspensions.
Not since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, has a person associated with MLB returned to the game after being associated with Gambling or gamblers. Even Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were asked to disassociate themselves from the Yankees and Giants in the 1980s by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, when they were employed as greeters at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Whether you agree with the precedent or not, Gambling is the death penalty in baseball!! (Anyone heard from the SMU football team since they received this judgment from NCAA in 1987?) Pete Rose now admits he gambled on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. He claims not to have done it from the field, though the Dowd report has wiretaps from the managers office to his bookie, he claims not to have used insider information to his advantage, which is impossible considering he is an insider and would know if his closer is tired or his cleanup hitter tweaked a hamstring1, and he admits he only bet on the Reds to win, which in my mind contradicts the not acting on insider information statement. By not betting on your team on days you know you are benching certain players is just as bad as betting on your team when all your players are on fire.
After 14 years of lying, he has finally admitted he was gambling. Big fucking deal. You have to be living on Mars since the last real commissioner of MLB A. Bart Giamatti (who subsequently dropped dead of heart attack a few days later) suspended Rose for life, with the opportunity to apply for reinstatement after 1 year, not to know he was gambling on baseball. If he has been lying for so long, why should I believe him now?
What I have not seen or heard from him is an apology to the fans, and this gives me no reason to welcome him back to the game. Mike Francesa pointed out on WFAN in NY that Rose is broke and is desperate to get back into the game. Rose has lied for 14 years and he is carefully crafting the book, the interviews, and every other piece of PR for 2 reasons. The first is to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which he deserves, in spite of being a slimy creature who should crawl back under the rock upon which he came. The second is to return to a role in organized baseball. But what role should putz master Buddy S allow Peter to play?
The ownership of the Cincinnati Reds would hire Rose again in a minute assuming the used car salesman from Milwaukee gives #14 a full reprieve and unlimited entry back into the game. Others have suggested that Rose should be allowed to be a spring training instructor but not allowed to be a fulltime employee of an MLB organization essentially keeping him away from real games and subsequently keeping him away from temptation. What will the man who decided “I am going to call the All-star game a tie” do? I don’t know, but here is my suggestion.
A (real) commissioner of MLB, would lift the banishment for the sole purpose of allowing the BBWA to inducted Rose into the Hall of Fame prior to 2006, when his eligibility expires. Let’s face it; there are a lot of nasty folks who did some bad shit in that building. It is not a personality contest, but rather who are the best baseball players of all-time and lets face it, though I have issues with hanger’s on (Winfield, Sutton), he personified baseball in the 70’ and 80’s with his Charlie Hustle style of play. We would be able to celebrate Rose the player, not Rose the manager, not Rose the gambler. He would be in Cooperstown, and then he would go away, off the baseball radar.
For the sole purpose of allowing him into the HOF means he should only be allowed into Cooperstown and nothing else. He should not be allowed to be a spring training instructor, he should not be allowed to be general manager, he should not be allowed to a field manager, he should not be allowed to participate in old timers game, he should not be allowed to be involved in publicity nights, he should have no contact with the game without expressed written consent of the commissioner of MLB. There has to be some punishment for gambling, and keeping him off the field away from the game is the best way to accomplish that. But that is just me
Assuming Selig does reinstate Rose in some manner, isn’t time that Shoeless Joe Jackson also be reinstated? Unfortunately Joe did less than Rose and has been banned much longer than him. Jackson was a poor southerner who played in a different age and there is no one left to take up his cause. He received a lifetime ban in 1920, and his lifetime ended in 1951. His still has the 3rd highest all-time average, which to me is a much more substantial record then total number of hits.
1 – Jayson Stark – ESPN.com (January 6, 2004)
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