Mays returns to his home -- in center

Gwen Knapp

San Fransisco Chronicle

Wednesday, July 11, 2007



Willie Mays stands in front of a photo of him as a young man in Harlem where he played stickball. The baseball legend spoke at a dedication ceremony of the Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club at Hunters Point.

For most of this week, Barry Bonds was the be-all, end-all, and everything-in-between of the 78th MLB All-Star Game. But for about 10 minutes Tuesday night, Bonds happily played a lesser role. He became a personal assistant, doting and solicitous, helping a 76-year-old man into a shiny 49-year-old Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

Willie Mays climbed in it and took a ride around the park, tossing baseballs to the crowd to finish the most important appearance of the evening.

It's moments like this -- not an innovation about determining home-field advantage for the World Series -- that keep the All-Star Game relevant. It's the past that keeps things fresh.

Mays' appearance didn't quite match the pomp of Ted Williams' return to Fenway Park for the 1999 All-Star Game, because Mays brushes whimsy over most occasions and, unlike Williams, he hasn't isolated himself in retirement.

Still, the Giants and MLB choreographed the event with ample symbolism and nostalgia, having Mays make his entrance in center field, turf he hadn't trod since the Giants opened the park in China Basin seven years ago. It didn't matter. Center field everywhere belongs to Willie Mays.

The ceremonial first pitch happened in shallow center field, with the current All-Stars trailing behind Mays like courtiers in a royal procession. Bonds and Derek Jeter walked by his side, and Jose Reyes, representing the Mets, Mays' last stop in baseball, got behind the temporary home plate to catch the pitch.



Willie Mays throws balls to the crowd as he rides in a 1958 Cadillac El Dorado around the field during pregame ceremonies in his honor.

Mays' impish side came out when Reyes set up for the catch. The septuagenarian motioned for the 24-year-old shortstop to move back a little, and then some more again. Mays finally let loose a throw that found Reyes' glove, not bad at all for a man who said before the tribute, "I hope I don't do anything to hurt my arm, because I just had an operation.''

He rubbed his right shoulder and rotated it a couple times, then immediately clarified: "It was just 'scoped,'' he said. "I don't want it to sound like I had a big surgery.''

Mays was settled in a chair in equipment manager Mike Murphy's office, where he turns up every now and then. His eyeglasses perched low on his forehead, hands clutching a newly autographed ball, Mays had about 15 minutes to show time. He said he didn't feel any jitters.

"You don't get nervous. You block them out,'' he said.

He'd already been through one big ceremony for the day, appearing at the dedication of the new Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club at Hunters Point in the morning. The Giants have pledged $2 million in donations to rebuild the clubhouse, near Mays' old haunt on Candlestick Point. The All-Star workouts and Home Run Derby helped raise funds for the renovation, another finer point of the Classic. It connected with the future as well as the past.

For the ceremony, a renowned picture of Mays playing stickball on the street in Harlem was blown up and used as a backdrop. "That was 1954,'' he said. The Giants, then in New York, won the World Series, and their center fielder routinely warmed up for his job by playing with the kids outside his home. "Day games, I'd play from about 10 to 11, and night games, I'd be out there about 3 to 4,'' he said.

Another copy of the photo was hanging on Murphy's wall, signed and dated by Mays. He has trouble keeping the image in his own home. "Because people always come to the house and ask, 'Can I have that picture?' " he said.

On the field Tuesday, he was handing out mementos at every turn. He signed the ceremonial ball for Reyes, a thrilling player, a constant joy to watch, very much like Mays. As he waited for the autograph, Reyes looked like a star-struck 9-year-old.

Then Mays took off his specially made All-Star jacket with "Say Hey'' on the back and gave it to Ken Griffey Jr. as a keepsake. Mays handed another jacket to Jeter. Jeter and Griffey had interviewed him for Fox Sports the day before, again connecting the present and the past, and Mays said he admired both of them. He felt a little bad that Griffey didn't get to escort him along with Jeter and Bonds.

"But I gave him my jacket, my coat to put in his house,'' Mays told the AP after the ceremony. "... We were fine. We're OK.''

The strip-down didn't appear to be rehearsed. In fact, as Mays sat in Murphy's office, he didn't know that he would be entering in center field.

"Tell you the truth, I'm out there, whatever comes up, that's what I'm going to do,'' he said.

The door to Murphy's office opened and Bonds peeked in, smiling. "I'm just making sure you're OK,'' he told his godfather. Then he gently reminded Mays that it was time to get ready.

On the field, Bonds said later, they didn't talk. He was at Mays' side to guide him, not to share the moment.

"It was Willie's stage, and ... obviously, everyone knows Willie's eyesight is not as good as it once was,'' Bonds said, "and we wanted to be there to make sure Willie got to the places he needed to get to.''

As they escorted him to the '58 Eldorado, Bonds protectively pulled the temporary home plate out of the way, then helped Mays into the seat, a hand on the older man's back. The car pulled away, and Mays started his circuit. The fans stayed on their feet and cheered. Whatever outrageous sum they had paid to see an All-Star Game in San Francisco, they had just gotten their money's worth.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

ESPN's 'Bronx Is Burning' scorches

BY DIANE WERTS
diane.werts@newsday.com

July 9, 2007

ESPN knows drama, maybe better than the TNT channel that uses that slogan.

The sports cabler's first series, "Playmakers," was a surprisingly hard-hitting pro football saga. It hit so hard, in fact, that the NFL reportedly "strongly suggested" the channel not renew the award-winner, despite its keenly compelling depiction of the sport's money, drugs, misbehavior and, oh yeah, on-field competition.

Now, the subject is baseball (another sport to which the channel holds game rights), and ESPN has this time chosen the relative safety of the past and a dead protagonist.

"The Bronx Is Burning" revolves around late Yankees manager Billy Martin and specifically his 1977 season, when the mercurial Martin returned the Bombers to prominence with a World Series win, with/despite the help/interference of owner George Steinbrenner and the talent/temperament of free-agent slugger Reggie Jackson.



(L to R)John Turturro as Billy Martin and Kevin Conway as Gabe Paul

As well as New Yorkers know these three characters, it's amazing how quickly the real faces fade and the three actors here become their own "strong-willed people," as Steinbrenner puts it in yet another make-nice meeting with his contentious manager.

Oliver Platt, an actor who threatens to steamroll any portrayal (witness his wanton sex-and-drugs lawyering in Showtime's "Huff"), is actually the perfect casting for the overbearing owner, whose familiar visage is quickly erased by Platt's starched '70s hair and browbeating patter.

Turturro's tour de force

Even more impressive playing Martin is John Turturro (Emmy winner as Tony Shalhoub's brother on "Monk") -- a New Yorker playing a folksy westerner, a cerebral actor inhabiting an impulsive personality.

Though this role would seem less natural than, say, Howard Cosell (Turturro played the scrappy sportscaster in the TV movie "Monday Night Mayhem"), he disappears into the brooding, volatile, hard-drinking manager with no more external aid than some outsized ears.

The tempestuous relationship of owner and employee -- soon to become ex-employee and then employee again, several times over -- provides a dramatic bedrock that "Rescue Me" co-star Daniel Sunjata's depiction of the über-confident Jackson doesn't so penetrate as chip away at, though the star player's ego certainly impacts a Yankees team that gets some strong screen time of its own.



(L to R) Eric Jensen as Thurman Munson and John Turturro as Billy Martin.

Eric Jensen makes a memorable Thurman Munson, their beloved captain/catcher, while Joe Grifasi captures the offbeat resilience of coach/ confidant Yogi Berra.

"The Bronx Is Burning" also captures something else crucial -- the roiling, reeling city in which such sports spectacle was only part of the high drama.

The raucous '77 mayor's race unfolds here in interwoven news footage, with Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo and hat-sporting sparkplug Bella Abzug challenging Abe Beame in the wake of President Gerald Ford's "drop dead" response to New York City's financial crisis.

Separately re-created in dramatized fashion is the contemporaneous serial murder spree of Son of Sam. As police detectives track the letter-writing shooter, his reign of terror is expressively chronicled in prose pecked out by then-Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin (played by Michael Rispoli of "Third Watch" and "The Sopranos").

Later a Newsday scribe, Breslin isn't this paper's only connection to the film. Sports columnist Steve Jacobson is also portrayed (by "Scrubs" actor Alan Ruck). And both men served as advisers on the production (along with player turned broadcaster Fran Healy, ex-Yankee Graig Nettles and former team publicity chief/author Marty Appel).

Historic video

Authenticity is something to which the film clearly aspires, fairly seamlessly incorporating much vintage footage of both baseball action (including the famed Martin-Jackson dugout clash) and news events.



New York Yankee great Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher and three-time Most Valuable Player, poses with actor Joe Grifasi who plays Berra in ESPN's upcoming mini-series "The Bronx is Burning".

On-screen graphics identify players and other participants. The '70s era is evoked in video of World Trade Center climber George Willig, in references to cultural touchstones such as the self-help fable "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," and in background props including a locker-room cigarette machine. A sort of wah-wah disco score percolates on the soundtrack.

Which means we should remind ourselves "The Bronx Is Burning" is a dramatization, not a documentary. The first three hours (all that ESPN provided for preview) seem to paint Jackson, in particular, more as a flamboyantly egotistical jerk than a shrewdly self-assured loner.

It's likely the truth lies somewhere in between. How Jackson and Steinbrenner react to the film will be interesting to see.



John Turturro as Billy Martin, Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner in " The Bronx is Burning ".

Martin died in 1989, in a drunken Christmas Day car crash near Binghamton. At his death, he was again working -- as a special consultant -- for the Yankees. Steinbrenner never got the chance to fire him a sixth time.

THE BRONX IS BURNING. Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson go mano a mano, and (loud)mouth to (loud)mouth, in a sharp and snazzy eight-week docudrama re-creating what the 1977 Yankees meant to a troubled New York City. Series premieres Monday night at 10 on ESPN.

A HIGH AND DRY NIGHT

Guerrero unloads on bleachers; kayakers leave empty-handed

Ron Kroichick, San Fransisco Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 10, 2007



Vladimir Guererro


The bayside ballpark at China Basin seemed like an ideal venue for Monday's Home Run Derby. It was tantalizing to picture homer after majestic homer soaring over the right-field wall, plopping into the chilly waters of McCovey Cove and causing an all-out, souvenir-seeking kayak frenzy.

Or maybe not.

No home runs reached the crowded cove -- zero, zip, nada. Instead, the derby evolved into Vladimir Guerrero, Alex Rios and their right-handed hitting friends peppering the left-field bleachers.

Guerrero emerged the winner, smacking three home runs in the final round to dispatch Rios, who hit two. That came after a lively second round in which Rios brought the capacity crowd to its feet with a string of long balls, Guerrero launched one homer into a parking lot and another more than 500 feet, and Albert Pujols threatened to catch Guerrero and reach the finals.

But the most feverishly anticipated sight -- Bonds-ian blasts finding a watery home -- never happened. All three left-handed hitters in Monday's contest - Justin Morneau of Minnesota, Prince Fielder of Milwaukee and 2006 champion Ryan Howard of Philadelphia -- were eliminated in the opening round, without making any official splashes in McCovey Cove.

Morneau and Fielder each sent one foul ball into the water, but that was the extent of the activity for the flotilla of kayakers. Howard offered the most imposing threat, but he made seven "outs" before his first home run -- and then he hit one to straightaway center field and two to right-center.

Asked about the kayakers heading home empty-handed, Howard shook his head and said, "I thought about that a little. They must be upset, a little disappointed. Sorry."



Alex Rios

If the absence of soggy theatrics disappointed the crowd of 43,615, it also highlighted the difficulty of reaching McCovey Cove. Remember, there have been only 58 "splash hits" in 7 1/2 seasons at the ballpark, and Barry Bonds has hit 34 of those.

By contrast, five home runs landed in the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh -- beyond the right-field wall at PNC Park -- during last year's derby, including two by Howard. Curiously, there had been only one "splash hit" into the Allegheny in the previous six seasons of Pirates games.

At any rate, Guerrero earned his victory. He hit nine homers in the second round, including one (measured at 469 feet) into the Giants players' parking lot beyond the left-field seats. Guerrero later launched an epic, 503-foot blast to left-center -- the ball clearing the seats, sailing toward the giant mitt and ultimately landing beneath the walkway fronting the mitt.

The display probably tormented Giants fans who wanted their team to pursue Guerrero when he was available as a free agent after the 2003 season. The Giants showed no interest in Guerrero, who signed a five-year, $70 million contract with the Angels.

"When I was a free agent, I didn't know where I was going to end up," Guerrero said after the derby. "But I've always swung the bat well in this park."

Rios smacked 12 homers in the second round (after hitting five in the first round), finishing with a flourish: He hit five on five swings when he was down to his final out. That earned Rios a standing ovation, pumping energy into an event clearly in need of a jolt at that point.

"It was great hitting with the loud crowd," Rios said.



Albert Pujols

Guerrero and Pujols followed with a nice little show of power. Guerrero was down to his final out, needing another homer to stay alive, when he planted one in the first row of the left-field seats, a precursor to the 503-foot monster. He finished with 14 homers in the first two rounds, one more than Colorado's Matt Holliday.

Pujols was the last semifinalist to step to the plate. He was stuck on 11 homers and needed three more to tie Guerrero -- and Pujols promptly hit two before his final fly ball died on the warning track in left-center.

The final round was anticlimactic, as Guerrero and Rios clearly grew tired. Rios managed only two homers, and Guerrero made seven outs before hitting the decisive No. 3 - and he sauntered away with the ball still in the air, before it even landed in the seats.

Guerrero and David Ortiz combined on a memorable moment in the first round, and Ortiz wasn't even in the derby. He interrupted Guerrero's turn, tossed aside the bat he had been using and presented him a new bat delivered in a special box, a la the "Wonderboy" used by Roy Hobbs in "The Natural."

Guerrero had no homers at the time, but he hit five with his new bat to advance into the second round.

"It was my bat," Guerrero said of Ortiz's delivery. "We had it planned. If I wasn't doing well at the beginning, he was going to bring it out to me."

Bonds, who made big news by declining to join the derby, did make an appearance during the event. He sat down for a live television interview along the first-base line, then wandered toward the third-base dugout to engage Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez in a long, earnest conversation.

But Bonds didn't grab a bat and swing for McCovey Cove -- and nobody else offered a suitable impersonation.



Matt Holliday

2007 -- Vladimir Guerrero, Angels (host: San Francisco)

2006 -- Ryan Howard, Phillies (Pittsburgh)

2005 -- Bobby Abreu, Phillies (Detroit)

2004 -- Miguel Tejada, Orioles (Houston)

2003 -- Garret Anderson, Angels (White Sox)

2002 -- Jason Giambi, Yankees (Milwaukee)

2001 -- Luis Gonzalez, Diamondbacks (Seattle)

2000 -- Sammy Sosa, Cubs (Atlanta)

1999 -- Ken Griffey Jr., Mariners (Boston)

1998 -- Griffey, Mariners (Denver)

1997 -- Tino Martinez, Yankees (Cleveland)

1996 -- Barry Bonds, Giants (Philadelphia)

1995 -- Frank Thomas, White Sox (Texas)

1994 -- Griffey, Mariners (Pittsburgh)

1993 -- Juan Gonzalez, Rangers (Baltimore)

1992 -- Mark McGwire, A's (San Diego)

1991 -- Cal Ripken, Jr., Orioles (Toronto)

1990 -- Ryne Sandberg, Cubs (Cubs)

1989 -- Eric Davis, Reds/Ruben Sierra, Rangers (Anaheim)

1988 -- None (rain, Cincinnati)

1987 -- Andre Dawson, Cubs (Oakland)

1986 -- Darryl Strawberry, Mets/Wally Joyner, Angels (Houston)

1985 -- Dave Parker, Reds (Minneapolis)


Home Run Derby 2007

ROUND 1

Justin Morneau - 4

TIEBREAKER - 1

.

Matt Holliday - 5

Ordonez Magglio - 2

Albert Pujols - 4

TIEBREAKER - 2

.

Alex Rios - 5

Prince Fielder - 3

Vladimir Guerrero - 5

Ryan Howard - 3

ROUND 2

Holliday - 13

Rios - 17

Guerrero - 14

Pujols - 13

ROUND 3

Rios - 2 (19)

Guerrero - 3 (17 Total)


By the numbers

0

Splash hits and the number of left-handers to advance past the first round.

3

Homers hit by Prince Fielder, the NL leader with 29, and defending champion Ryan Howard.

7

Number of "outs" by Howard before his first homer.

12

Homers hit by Alex Rios in the second round, the most by any player in any round.

31

Total number of homers (not including tiebreaker) hit in the first round (Bobby Abreu hit 24 by himself two years ago).

503

Distance in feet of the longest homer hit in the competition (Vladimir Guerrero).

E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

MAY'S GAME

Say Hey Kid had storybook career in Midsummer Classic alone

John Shea, San Fransisco Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, July 9, 2007



Singular sensation: Willie Mays hits a single in front of Tigers catcher Bill Freehan in the 1968 game in Houston. He scored the game's only run and was its MVP. Associated Press photo, 1968

Whitey Ford was no slouch. He owned the best winning percentage among 20th-century pitchers, holds World Series records in career wins and strikeouts and was the ace of the great Yankees teams of the '50s and '60s.

But to Willie Mays in All-Star play, he was a batting-practice pitcher.

Mays flourished as an All-Star, and much of it can be traced to his confrontations with Ford, a Hall of Fame left-hander who used many pitches, some awfully suspicious, to fool batters and compile a 236-106 record and 2.75 ERA.

Mays had six straight hits off Ford over four All-Star Games, and the National League won them all and dominated that All-Star era, going 17-6-1 in Mays' 24 consecutive All-Star appearances.

"Sometimes you can't explain that. Whitey was always a good pitcher. Whitey was my friend," Mays said in a recent interview. "Don't ask me why. It's kind of hard to explain."

Ford doesn't get it, either.

When informed in a phone interview last week that Mays had six straight All-Star hits off him, Ford said, "I knew it was bad. I didn't know it was that bad. Six straight? How about the World Series?"

Four-for-nine in 1962.

"Well, that's good," Ford said. "It's under .500."



1964 Topps Giant

Mays' All-Star streak off Ford ended in 1961 when Ford struck him out in the first inning -- at Candlestick Park, of all places.

"It's a great story," began Ford, who traveled to San Francisco with Yankees teammate and good buddy Mickey Mantle. The two played golf the day before the game at the Olympic Club as guests of then-Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who hosted a celeb-studded party that night at the St. Francis Hotel.

"We play golf and then spend about $600 on sweaters and shirts and golf balls and charge it to Horace. We get to the party, and I tell Mickey, 'Let's give him $300 apiece.' We're about to do that, and Horace says to me, 'I tell you what, if you get in the game tomorrow and face Willie and get him out, we'll call it even. But if he gets a hit, you owe me $1,200.' I said, 'Sure, I'll bet you.'

"Well, we were rooming together, me and Mickey, and Mickey got only six hours sleep. We were drinking quite a bit. But the only thing Mickey thinks about is the bet with Stoneham. So in the first inning, I get the first two outs and then Willie's up and hits two foul balls about 500 feet.

"I say to myself, 'This is not an official game. They're not watching me closely. Let's screw with the ball a little.' So I throw him a spitball, and it starts right at him. Willie about falls down. He thinks the ball is going to hit him, and the umpire says 'strike three.'

"The inning ends, and Willie walks by me and says, 'What the hell was that you threw?' Mickey's coming in from center field clapping, and Willie says, 'What's that crazy son of a bitch clapping for?'

"I told Willie I'd tell him after the game.

"We ended up getting all the sweaters, hats and golf balls, no charge."

Ford was Mays' main All-Star victim, but not the only one. It would be tough to argue that any player was more responsible for the NL's All-Star dominance in those years -- an 11-1-1 record in the '60s -- than the Say Hey Kid.



Mays is tied with Hank Aaron and Stan Musial for most appearances and holds records for at-bats (75), hits (23), runs (20), steals (six) and multiple-hit games (six). He's the co-leader in extra-base hits (eight), total bases (40) and triples (three) and is fourth in homers (three) and RBIs (nine). He batted .307 and was the starting center fielder 18 times in one 20-game stretch.

He said he came to win.

"When I came in, the American League was way ahead. That's what I was told," said Mays, referring to the AL's 12-8 edge before his arrival. "But when I came in, other guys were coming in, too. Like Hank and Frank Robinson. We started winning games, and I wanted to play every inning."

In those years, starters didn't leave after two at-bats, get dressed and jet home. They stuck around until the end, often remaining in the game until the final out. All-Star Games lasted 10 innings in 1961 and 1966, and Mays never came out.

"I played just about every inning until the game was decided one way or another," Mays said. "There were a few of us who did that."

The Yankees won the World Series 10 times in 16 years through 1962, the year they beat the Giants in seven games. Mays hit .250 in the Series but .444 off Ford, who started Games 1, 4 and 6. For Ford, that was a great accomplishment based on how Mays owned him in All-Star Games.

Here's a recap:

-- In Milwaukee in 1955: Mays was instrumental in the greatest comeback in All-Star history. The NL trailed 5-0 before Mays singled off Ford and scored in the seventh inning (making it 5-2) and hit a two-out single off Ford to begin a three-run rally in the eighth (making it 5-5).

Mays also leaped at the wall to glove Ted Williams' towering drive that looked like a home run -- "he was at second by the time I caught it" -- and Stan Musial won it with a homer in the 12th.



-- In Washington in 1956: Mays hit a pinch-hit, two-run homer off Ford to put the NL ahead 3-0 in the fourth, and the NL cruised 7-3.

-- In Pittsburgh in 1959: Ford entered in the eighth, and Mays greeted him with an RBI triple to score Hank Aaron and cap a two-run rally and turn a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 victory.

-- In New York in 1960: Ford was the starting pitcher in his own park, Yankee Stadium, but Mays opened the game with a single and stole a base and added a third-inning homer. The NL won 6-0.

"I remember Whitey coming back after All-Star Games, saying, 'I don't care what I throw, he hits it,' " recalled Bobby Richardson, Ford's teammate in New York. "Willie was the show of seemingly every All-Star Game."

Mays won two MVP awards but could have had several more. For one thing, he played in 11 All-Star Games before Major League Baseball started giving out the awards in 1962.

"We played a lot without getting awarded anything. Look at the Gold Gloves," said Mays, referring to the defensive awards that weren't issued until 1957, at which time Mays started a streak of winning 12 in a row.

He was named All-Star MVP in 1963 and 1968, though he had just one hit in each game. In '63 in Cleveland, he went 1-for-3 but had two RBIs, two steals, scored twice and robbed Joe Pepitone of extra bases in a 5-3 victory, the first of eight in a row (and 19 of 20) for the NL.

At Houston in '68, a year in which pitchers dominated hitters, the 37-year-old Mays went 1-for-4 and scored the game's only run. He opened the first inning with a single, advanced two bases on an error and wild pitch and scored when Willie McCovey hit into a double play.

Mays' best All-Star year was 1960 when he went 6-for-8 and hit for the cycle.

All-Star Games were played twice a year from 1959 to 1962, and Mays went 3-for-4 in Kansas City on July 11, 1960. Two days later at Yankee Stadium -- in Mays' return to New York two years after the Giants' departure -- he went 3-for-4 again. He singled, doubled and tripled in the first game and homered in the second (off Ford, of course) to complete the two-game cycle.

The NL swept that year, and nobody other than Mays had more than three hits in the doubleheader. The Dodgers' Walter Alston managed both games -- two of his seven All-Star victories -- and Mays recalled one time Alston asked for help with the lineup.

"He said, 'OK, you make out the lineup,' " Mays said. "I said, 'OK, I'll lead off.' I could hit a home run or walk and steal second. (Roberto) Clemente, I put him second because he hits behind the runner, and he could get me to third in some kind of way. Hank was a flyball hitter, a home-run hitter, put him third. Put Mac (McCovey) fourth. After that, they can put in anyone else they want to."

That was the order in 1966, a 2-1 NL victory in 10 innings. Mays singled and scored the first run.

Mays said his favorite All-Star Game was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1959. He was the cleanup hitter, and his game-winning triple off Ford came in the eighth after the AL moved ahead in its half of the inning.

"That triple went over Mickey's head," said Mays of Mantle, smiling. "It was a big center field."

Other memorable All-Star Games involving Mays were 1954 in Cleveland (his first; he entered in the fourth as the center fielder, and Duke Snider moved to right); 1961 at Candlestick (he doubled home Aaron to tie the game in the 10th and scored the winning run on Clemente's single); 1962 in Washington (he chased down a ball hit by Luis Aparicio with two aboard in the ninth to end a two-run victory); 1964 at Shea Stadium (he drew an 11-pitch walk to begin the winning rally in the ninth); and 1965 in Minnesota (he homered to open the game, drew two walks and scored the winning run).



Willie Mays, Juan Marichal and Johnny Callison at the 1964 All-Star Game.

Juan Marichal was the MVP in '65, throwing three scoreless innings and receiving one more vote than Mays (46-45) among writers and broadcasters. McCovey was MVP in '69 after homering twice, and Bobby Bonds homered and doubled to win the '73 MVP. That's five MVPs for the Giants over 11 years.

But the All-Star among All-Stars was Mays, whose average through the '68 game was .348, before he went 0-for-9 in his final five games in his late 30s and early 40s. Williams once said, "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays."

Just ask Ford, who won a Cy Young Award in '61 by going 25-4, though he was overshadowed by Roger Maris' and Mantle's pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season homers record.

"Ted and Willie were the toughest batters I ever faced," Ford said. "But I had a little success against Ted."


E-mail John Shea at jshea@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Melanie Phillips: Britain's War Against...Well, You Know

USA Today
July 10, 2007

Terrorists targeting the West populate a virulent strain of Islam. Skirting that unfortunate truth — as the new prime minister seems apt to do — will only prolong the battle and embolden the enemy.

London, July 2005

Britain is now fighting a war it dares not name. The recent failed car bomb attacks on a London nightclub and Glasgow airport demonstrated once again that Britain is a principal target for al-Qaeda. But even now, the British response is dangerously confused.

After eight people in the medical profession were arrested over these attacks, there was widespread shock that those who cure should also want to kill. This naive and ahistorical reaction demonstrated yet again the extraordinary state of denial about the Islamist jihad. After all, Osama bin Laden's sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahri, is a doctor. So are other Islamist terrorists, including Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas strongman in Gaza.

But because the deeply empirical British do not understand how religious fanaticism twists the human mind, they tell themselves that Islamic terrorism must be driven by rational grievances such as deprivation, "Islamophobia" or British foreign policy.

Many continue to believe that Britain is a target because of its involvement in Iraq. While the war is undoubtedly used to whip up hysteria in the Muslim world, the irrationality of believing that it is the cause of Islamic terror is clearly demonstrated by the fact that British Muslims who have been jailed for terrorist offenses were recruited even before 9/11. Al-Qaeda is also heavily engaged in places such as Indonesia or Africa, which have no connection to Iraq or the Middle East.

A global target

In Britain, all these grievance excuses are wearing very thin, thanks to the recent emergence of former jihadists who have renounced their extremism.

Ed Husain, in his book The Islamist, and another former radical, Hassan Butt, have made the case that the doctrines to which they once subscribed are rooted in nothing other than a fanatical desire to Islamize the world.

But while these courageous people are telling Britain that, far from being motivated by despair, Islamist terrorists kill as an act of religious exultation, the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, has banned his ministers from using the word "Muslim" — and presumably "Islamic" or "Islamist" — in connection with the terrorist crisis. He has also put an end to the phrase "war on terror."

Accordingly, in her statement to Parliament about the attacks, the new home secretary, Jacqui Smith, referred to them as "criminal" acts rather than Islamic terrorism and talked about "communities" that are involved rather than Muslims.

For those in the coalition of the willing who have been nervous about how Brown's leadership will differ from that of Tony Blair, such a signal is deeply alarming. How can Brown talk about winning a battle of ideas — when he is not even prepared to name the central idea that is driving the terrorism?

This is a disastrous misjudgment, and not merely because a society cannot possibly defend itself against a threat it is not even willing to identify. More seriously still, it means the British government is pandering to the refusal by most British Muslims to acknowledge that Islamist terrorism is rooted in their religion and that this is a problem with which they must themselves deal.

Because it is not enough for them to condemn terrorism. They must also repudiate, publicly and authoritatively, those parts of their religion that mandate hatred of the unbeliever and holy war. The Brown government's censorship of language lets them off that crucial hook and, by signaling its own moral and intellectual weakness, emboldens the radicals.

Softening in the USA

Brown's failure of nerve is being reflected in the USA, too.

Despite President Bush's aggressive rhetoric about the "war on terror," he has in fact fluctuated wildly over identifying religious fanaticism as the central driver of the problem. After 9/11, he said "Islam is peace." And although for a period he started referring to "Islamic extremism" and even "Islamo-fascism," he recently sounded a full retreat when he appointed an American special envoy to the deeply Islamist and anti-western Organization of the Islamic Conference.
With such an instinct on both sides of the Atlantic to appease Islamist fanaticism, the "war on terror" becomes an empty sound bite as the West advertises its weakness to the enemy.

Undoubtedly, the latest attacks upon Britain were designed to test the will of the new British prime minister. His censorship of the language, however, was far from the only indication of a disturbing weakening of that will. For he has brought into his government a string of people who were opposed to the Iraq war, thus signaling a distancing from the United States — and opening up an exceptionally dangerous crack in what should be a staunchly united alliance in time of war.
Such new ministers include Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who blamed Israel in last year's Lebanon war; the new higher education minister, John Denham, who resigned from the Blair administration over Iraq; and most startling of all, the new second in command at the Foreign Office, Sir Mark Malloch Brown, a former United Nations official who has downplayed the U.N. "oil for food" scandal and condemned the United States over the Iraq war.

Britain has never been in a more dangerous position — not just because of terrorism but because, faced with an enemy whose platform is the decadence and weakness of the West, it is going out of its way to prove the terrorists right.

Melanie Phillips is a columnist for the Daily Mail in London and author of Londonistan.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What's So Bad about Planned Parenthood?

http://www.nationalreview.com

July 10, 2007 6:30 AM

Gloria Feldt, former President of Planned Parenthood

Political life should be hard for a conservative who has nice things to say about the group. What’s so bad about Planned Parenthood? It’s a question Americans must wonder about as they see pro-lifers protesting or praying outside clinics. And it deserves an answer because it gets to the heart of some key and contentious questions we face as a society, one that is ever creeping toward a brave new world (in many respects already living in it) as biotechnological choices propagate.

Consider that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood in her Senate runs. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, has given money to them in the past. Ann Romney, wife of the former governor of Massachusetts, another Republican, who is a fairly recent pro-life convert, once gave money to Planned Parenthood too.

Democrats’ associations with Planned Parenthood are no real surprise. Close ties and the support of, and for, the nation’s largest abortion provider is not really a shock. On the Republican side, it’s a different story. The GOP’s platform is pro-life, as the party’s presidential nominees tend to be. While it’s no secret that Giuliani is pro-choice and Mrs. Romney is not actually a candidate herself, the recent revelations about their donations do feed into a sense that Planned Parenthood is as American as apple pie.

So what’s so bad about Planned Parenthood? What is it about the organization that makes pro-lifers go wild with outrage and concern? After all, Planned Parenthood does do things other than abortion. Along with providing abortion, they provide contraception. As Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani recently explained, he gave the group money “Because Planned Parenthood makes information available. It’s consistent with my position.”

To anyone who does not follow Planned Parenthood headlines, that makes some sense. The rest of his answer, though, begged for further interrogating: “I disagree with (abortion), I think it is wrong.” He has also said that he hates abortion. But it’s not believable that someone who truly hates abortion could ever have anything nice to say about Planned Parenthood.

Browse on over to their web magazine for minors, http://www.teenwire.com/, and you’ll find, among the question-and-answer, a question from a teen who says she had an abortion “a little over a month ago,” is pregnant again, and wondering if a second abortion is safe. Not only does the teenwire.com staff cavalierly tell the girl (who, I remind you, got pregnant again a month after her first abortion) that abortion is “very safe” the first or second time around, but that abortion “is much safer than giving birth.” While they do throw in a line about preventing pregnancy by using birth control, there’s no talk about adoption or other alternatives — such as raising the child, and getting help to do so — that a desperate girl could afford to hear.

Of course in an America where abortion is legal, that Planned Parenthood steers women who don’t want their kids toward abortion, is not wholly unexpected. But what about kids who are wanted? In the wake of the Laci Peterson trial in which Scott Peterson was eventually convicted of killing his wife and unborn son (Connor), then-Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt argued against federal legislation that would protect the legal rights of both the mother and child in such a horrific double-homicide. Feldt insisted that there was but one victim in the Peterson case, Laci, the mother. So radical is Planned Parenthood that they cannot concede that a wanted unborn child is also a victim when his life is taken.

While it’s questionable that donations that total less than $1,000 indicate enthusiastic support for the work of Planned Parenthood, as Mayor Giuliani’s did, any honest executive at Planned Parenthood has got to be a bit excited by the prospect of Rudy Giuliani as the nominee of the Republican party. Here’s a Republican guy who is essentially on their side. His willingness to buck them up as he aims for the White House is an opportunity to confront this front for a culture of death ironically hiding “Parenthood.”

© 2007, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

Victor Davis Hanson: Thyestean Feast?

This is a horrifying and absolutely unbelievable report...I can't imagine behavior that can match such barbarism. So these are the people we're fighting...this is what they do. We had better stop being surprised by car bombs and start paying attention to the fact that we have a real war on our hands. - jtf

[Victor Davis Hanson]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Greek mythology often encapsulated an entire culture's worst fears and depravities-and over centuries of story-telling became ever more complex and layered and bizarre.

But what is strange about reading Michael Yon's graphic descriptions from Iraq is that al Qaeda (or its kindred) seems almost in a single generation to be outdoing a millennium of savagery present in Greek history and myth. You have to go to Thucydides's Mycalessus to find a parallel of wiping out even the animals of a small village.

On Friday, Yon reported that al Qaeda served up a son for dinner to his own family— a barbarism reminiscent of Atreus (hence the "curse" on the House of Atreus) cooking (sans feet and hands) and then serving his twin brother's sons to their unsuspecting father Thyestes. So Yon reports a revolting modern-day Thysestean feast:

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man's words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, "What did he say?" Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

What is striking about all this savagery—whether with the filmed beheadings of Westerners in Iraq to the recent flaming Johnny Storm human torch at Glasgow, screaming epithets as he sought to engulf bystanders and ignite his canisters — is the absolute silence of the West, either distracted by Paris and i-Phones or suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome and obsessed with Guantanamo.

It is hard to recall an enemy so savage and yet one so largely ignored by rich affluent and distracted elites as the radical jihadists, as we have to evoke everything from mythology to comic books to find analogies to their extra-human viciousness.

For a self-congratulatory culture issuing moral lectures on everything from global warming to the dangers of smoking, the silence of the West toward the primordial horror from Gaza to Anbar is, well, horrific in its own way as well...

07/09 10:57 AM

A-Rod, Matsui, Cano hit 3-run homers in 12-0 win

YANKEES 12, ANGELS 0

BY KAT O'BRIEN
kat.obrien@newsday.com

July 9, 2007

Yesterday morning, it would not have done the Yankees much good to dwell on the "could have beens" and "might have beens" of the first half of the season. All they could do was aim for one last win to send them into the All-Star break on a positive note.

A 12-0 drubbing of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who are a half-game off the best record in baseball, certainly was a feel-good finish. Manager Joe Torre talked about needing to get to 20 games above .500 to have a good shot at the playoffs, a lofty goal for a team that is 42-43. But the Yankees did win five of their final seven games against the Angels and Twins.



"It's good momentum for us," Alex Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez helped create that momentum with yet another superb performance in what has been a torrid season. He went 2-for-5 with four RBIs and hit one of the Yankees' trio of three-run homers. He has a major league-leading 30 home runs and 86 RBIs in the Yankees' 86 games (counting the suspended game June 28 in Baltimore), and Torre called his first half "phenomenal."

Yesterday's homer gave the 31-year-old Rodriguez 494 career home runs, pushing him past Lou Gehrig and Fred McGriff into sole possession of 22nd place on the all-time list. He has the most home runs by a Yankee at the All-Star break since Roger Maris hit 33 in 1961. He also has the most RBIs by a Yankee at the All-Star break since Gehrig had 90 in 1934.



But the performance of A-Rod's compadres might have been even more significant. Chien-Ming Wang (9-4, 3.36 ERA) went 6 1/3 innings for his eighth victory in his last nine decisions; he has a 2.67 ERA in that span. And a trio of offensive players who have lagged at times - Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano and Bobby Abreu - came through.

Matsui hit a three-run homer off Ervin Santana (5-10) into the upper deck in rightfield for a 4-0 lead in the first inning. Cano hit a three-run homer off the screen attached to the rightfield foul pole to spark a six-run fourth and Abreu had two hits to lift his current hot streak to 11-for-22.

"Any time we've had team success this year," Rodriguez said, "all those guys you just mentioned have been hitting."

Said Cano: "That's what I'm talking about the other day. We need to step it up and get some hits and get on base for the other guys."

"We need those guys," Torre said. "... I'm expecting to hang on to it. These are things that they're capable of doing. These are things that we expect from them."

If they had been hitting this way all season, the Yankees would not be in the desperate position they're in now. They enter the break below .500 for the first time since 1995. They are 10 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East; in the wild-card race, they are 8½ games behind the Indians and seven behind the Mariners.

But they quickly did something about it yesterday. Wang walked Reggie Willits to begin the game, but Jorge Posada caught him stealing for the second time in two days and only the fourth time in 22 attempts.

Five straight Yankees reached base with one out in the bottom of the first, with Rodriguez blooping an RBI single to left-center and Matsui hitting his third home run in five games. He is 8-for-22 with seven RBIs in the last six games.



"Certainly, these last few games I've felt much better at the plate," Matsui said through an interpreter. "I just see the ball better now and I distinguish balls and strikes better right now."

The Yankees scored nine of their 12 runs off Santana. By the end of the fourth inning, it was 10-0 as Rodriguez followed Cano's home run by lining a three-run shot just over the leftfield fence off Chris Resop. Miguel Cairo added a two-run double in the seventh and Rodriguez flied out to the warning track in center in his bid for a second three-run homer.

All the while, Wang kept on getting outs. He gave up just five hits and two walks although his cracked right middle fingernail bothered him again.

"That was very good," Wang said. "After the break, we have to do the same."

That will be the true test. They have no more time for fits and starts.

Announcing this year's Klappies winners

Sunday, July 8, 2007

By BOB KLAPISCH
BERGEN COUNTY RECORD COLUMNIST

The All-Star break offers something for everyone, whether you currently rule the world (Red Sox) or happen to be on a bullet train to pitchers-and-catchers (Reds). There are no guarantees in July, of course, but with 50 percent of the schedule in the books, we have a good idea of where the glass is half-empty (in the Bronx) and where it's half-full (Shea).

And it's not too early to entertain a hunch about what's in store in October (a Mets-Red Sox World Series).

That said, here are the annual halfway honors – the Klappies – dedicated to all that's not yet complete, but still worthy of an award.


Dan Haren


Cy Young, AL
Dan Haren, A's.

It wasn't so long ago that everyone anointed Rich Harden as the new Tim Hudson. Injuries have detoured Harden's destiny, allowing Haren to catch the AL by surprise. He's the first pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000 to take a sub-2.00 ERA into July. If only the A's could hit, Haren might be in line for an MVP season, let alone the CY Young.



Jake Peavy

Cy Young, NL
Jake Peavy, Padres.

Coin flip, really, between Peavy and the Dodgers' Brad Penny. But Peavy has a better ERA (2.19 and 2.39) and a lower opponent's average (.213 to .244). Peavy also is leading the NL in strikeouts. What's not to love?

MVP, AL
Alex Rodriguez, Yankees.

You can make a strong case for Magglio Ordonez, who's singlehandedly taking the Tigers to the postseason. And it's true the Yankees could've sunk into a double-digit deficit with or without A-Rod. But he's been on a historic run with all of New York breathing hotly on his neck. In fact, without A-Rod, Joe Torre already would've been fired. That's pressure of its own kind.



Chase Utley

MVP, NL
Chase Utley, Phillies.

Third in the NL in RBI, out-pacing even his own teammate, Ryan Howard, which is fairly impressive for a middle infielder. Doesn't run like Jose Reyes, who merited consideration, but Utley has hit for a higher average and for more power.

Surprise team, AL
Mariners.


We don't like their chances of catching the Angels, but at 12 games over .500, this is a better team than anyone expected. And that just increases the impending drama: where is Ichiro Suzuki in 2008?

Surprise team, NL
Brewers.

Taking full advantage of the vacuum created by the Cardinals' inability to score.

Surprise player, AL
Hideki Okajima, Red Sox.

One Yankee veteran said it best after facing the Red Sox' lefty in Fenway in April: "I can't pick up the ball out of his hand. Whatever's he doing, it's different than anything I've ever seen."



John Maine

Surprise player, NL
John Maine, Mets.

How did this guy not get picked for the NL All-Star team?

Common sense award
David Wright, Mets.

For bailing out of the home run derby in San Francisco. Smart move, considering how the contest ruined the Mets' third baseman in 2006. He arrived at the All-Star Game with 20 homers, a .315 batting average, 74 RBI and a .575 slugging percentage in 339 at-bats. After the derby and All-Star Game, Wright slipped to six homers, a .305 average, 42 RBI and a .469 slugging percentage in 243 at-bats.

Weasel of the Year
Bud Selig.

For so far refusing to renounce Barry Bonds and his phony home run chase. If the commissioner had any guts, he would boycott Bonds' 756th blast the same way Hank Aaron will. But we're not holding our breath.

Mother Teresa award
Mike Hargrove.

He had the decency and self-awareness to walk away from managing the Mariners, knowing his heart wasn't in it anymore. If only Phil Garner would bestow the same gift onto the Astros.



Willie Randolph

Telling it like it is award
Willie Randolph, Mets.

For letting Jose Reyes know that failing to run out a ground ball is baseball's equivalent of a felony. Not many managers have the guts to speak plainly to their superstars anymore. Randolph showed unusual guts in sticking it to Reyes.

Runner-up: J.P. Ricciardi, Blue Jays general manager.

For saying exactly what he thinks of A.J. Burnett's chronic injuries. Imagine if all baseball executives were this unfiltered?

"I think [Burnett] is going to have to get over that hump at some point and just maybe pitch through some pain or realize the difference between being hurt and really being hurt."

Willie Sutton award
Carl Pavano, Yankees.

Would've been more honest if he just showed up at the Stadium with a gun and a mask and demanded $40 million.



Prince Fielder

Rock of Gibraltar award
Prince Fielder, Brewers.

Short and sumo-wrestler thick, but he's got lightning-quick bat speed, leading the NL in home runs -- and he's indestructible, playing in each of the Brewers' first 86 games this year.

Out of sight, out of mind award
Curt Schilling, Red Sox.

Think the Sox' executives aren't high-fiving each other over their decision not to give Schilling a contract extension this spring?

On the way up
Joe Girardi.

The longer he holds out, the greater his value as the next manager in (fill in the blank).

On the way down
Ozzie Guillen, White Sox.

The clock is ticking to his dismissal.



Alex Rodriguez

Meter is running award
Alex Rodriguez.

We're not just talking about the turbo-millions that await A-Rod this off-season. It's his home run pace that captures purists: Rodriguez's 429 HRs at age 31 beats Aaron (366) and Bonds (259).

Home cookin' award
Hackensack Troasts.

National semipro powerhouse in our back yard.

We're all ears award
Kirk Radomski.

Who's been juicing for the last 10 years? This man knows, and he's talking to the feds.

We told you so award
Diamondbacks.

Did they honestly think they could keep Randy Johnson off the disabled list? And they're into him for another $10 million in 2008.

Irshad Manji: Islam's Problem

The New York Post

July 8, 2007 -- LAST week, two very different Brits had their say about the latest terrorist plots in their country. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the nation that "we have got to separate those great moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practice violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their religion." By contrast, a former jihadist from Manchester wrote that the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology."
Months ago, this young man informed me that as a militant he raised most of his war chest not from obscenely rich Saudis, but from middle-class Muslim dentists living in the United Kingdom. There's sobering lesson here for the new prime minister.

So far, those arrested in connection to the car bombs are, by and large, medical professionals. The seeming paradox of the privileged seeking to avenge grievance has many champions of compassion scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, disenfranchised, and resentful about both?

WE should have been stripped of that breezy simplification by now. The 9/11 hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, their ringleader, earned an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, pursuing his post-graduate studies in Germany. No servile goat-herder, that one.

In 2003, I interviewed Mohammad Al Hindi, the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, Dr. Al Hindi explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," the good doctor diagnosed. "But most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."

In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else. And, time and again, the very people committing these acts have articulated what that something else is: their religion.

CONSIDER Mohammad Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who master minded the July 7, 2005 transit bombings in London.

In a taped testimony, Khan railed against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Western imperialism, he emphasized that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model." Khan gave priority to God, not to Iraq.



Mohammed Bouyeri

Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered Amsterdam film director Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into van Gogh's body. Knowing that multiple shots would finish off his victim, why didn't Bouyeri stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate van Gogh?

Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement associated with 7th-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into van Gogh's corpse, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry.

Let's credit Bouyeri with honesty: At his trial he proudly acknowledged acting from "religious conviction."

DESPITE integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Canada's parliament buildings and behead the prime minister. They called their campaign "Operation Badr," a reference to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.

For people with big hearts and good will, this has to be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words.

If the guardians of public safety intended their silence to be a form of sensitivity, they instead accomplished a form of artistry, airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out under its banner.

THEY'RE in fine company: Moderate Muslims do the same.

While the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, a more important distinction must start being made - the distinction between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones. Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam - but deny that Islam has anything to do with it.



By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions - effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations.

To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.

Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for re-interpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over. Re-interpreting doesn't mean re-writing. It means re-thinking words and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a twenty first-century pluralistic context.

Un-Islamic? God no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze, and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.

Irshad Manji is a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, the creator of the PBS documentary "Faith Without Fear" and author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." From TNR.com, the Web site of The New Republic.

Mark Steyn: British bomb plot and Michael Moore-style health care

Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
July 8, 2007

The legacy of Britain's socialized medical system is a growing reliance on foreign doctors, like seven of the eight suspects arrested in the failed London car bombing and Glasgow airport attack.

There are many things wrong with U.S. health care, as there inevitably are with any health care system. The question is whether America wants to go down the British-Canadian-Cuban route, to name three government medical systems that Michael Moore admires in his new film "Sicko." Cuba, of course, is a totalitarian state, and even Hollywood celebrities, though they like to visit, wouldn't want to live there. (Incidentally, the best health treatment available on Cuba is at Gitmo.) The United Kingdom, by contrast, is a free society, but last week's incendiary Jeep Cherokee at Glasgow Airport has shone a rare light on the curious character of its government health system.

Of the eight persons arrested as of Friday in the terrorist plot, seven are doctors with the National Health Service (the eighth is the wife of one, and a lab technician at the same hospital). The bombs failed to go off because a medical syringe malfunctioned. I don't mean it malfunctioned as a syringe (even in the crumbling NHS, the syringes usually work) but as a triggering mechanism, to which it had been adapted, though evidently not too efficiently.

Does government health care inevitably lead to homicidal doctors who can't wait to leap into a flaming SUV and drive it through the check-in counter? No. But government health care does lead to a dependence on medical staff imported from other countries.

Some 40 percent of Britain's practicing doctors were trained overseas – and that percentage will increase, as older native doctors retire, and younger immigrant doctors take their place. According to the BBC, "Over two-thirds of doctors registering to practice in the UK in 2003 were from overseas – the vast majority from non-European countries." Five of the eight arrested are Arab Muslims, the other three Indian Muslims. Bilal Abdulla, the Wahhabi driver of the incendiary Jeep and a doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow, is one of over 2,000 Iraqi doctors working in Britain.

Many of these imported medical staff have never practiced in their own countries. As soon as they complete their training, they move to a Western world hungry for doctors to prop up their understaffed health systems: Dr. Abdulla got his medical qualification in Baghdad in 2004 and was practicing in Britain by 2006. His co-plotter, Mohammed Asha, a neurosurgeon, graduated in Jordan in 2004 and came to England the same year.

When the president talks about needing immigrants to do "the jobs Americans won't do," most of us assume he means seasonal fruit pickers and the maid who turns down your hotel bed and leaves the little chocolate on it. But in the United Kingdom the jobs Britons won't do has somehow come to encompass the medical profession.

Aneurin Bevan, the socialist who created the National Health Service after World War II, was once asked to explain how he'd talked the country's doctors into agreeing to become state employees: "I stuffed their mouths with gold," he crowed. Sixty years later, no amount of gold can persuade Britons to spend their working lives in the country's dirty, decrepit hospitals (they spend enough of their nonworking lives there, waiting to be seen, waiting for beds, waiting for operations). According to a report in the British Medical Journal, white males comprise 43.5 percent of the population but now account for less than a quarter of students at UK medical schools. In other words, being a doctor is no longer an attractive middle-class career proposition. That's quite a monument to six decades of Michael Moore-style socialist health care.

So today the NHS is hungry for medical personnel from almost anywhere on the planet, so hungry that the government set up special fast-track immigration programs: Mohammed Asha, Mohammed Haneef and their comrades didn't even require a work permit to come and practice as doctors in state hospitals. You don't have to be the smartest jihadist in the cave to see that as an opportunity, any more than it required no great expertise for the 9/11 killers to figure that the quickest place to get the picture IDs with which they boarded the planes was through Virginia's "undocumented worker" network. Everyone else from the Venezuelan peasantry to the Russia mafia knows the vulnerabilities of Western immigration systems, so why not the jihadists?

Maybe their mistake was trying to blow up the airport instead of wreaking subtler havoc on the infidels. Did you see this week's scare-of-the-week from the Chinese health system? "About 420 bottles of fake blood protein, albumin, were found at hospitals in Hubei province but none had been used to treat patients, said Liu Jinai, an official with the inspection division of the provincial food and drug administration."

Well, this being China, where public lies about public health are routine, we just have to take Liu Jinai's word that "none had been used to treat patients." But imagine what Doctor Jihad could get up to if he stopped trying to use the syringe as a detonator and just resumed using it as a syringe?

But beyond that the Glasgow Jeep story symbolizes a more basic reality. The NHS is the biggest employer in Europe, and it's utterly dependent on imported staff such as Dr. Asha and Dr. Abdulla. In the West, we look on mass immigration as a testament to our generosity, to our multicultural bona fides. But it's not: A dependence on mass immigration is always a structural weakness and should be understood as such. In the socialized health systems of the Continent, aging, shrinking populations of native Europeans will spend their final years being cared for by young Muslim doctors and nurses. Indeed, in the NHS, geriatric medicine is a field overwhelmingly dependent on immigrant staff.

And what of the other end of the medical business? Take Japan, a country with the same collapsed birth rates as Europe but with virtually no immigration. In my book, I note an interesting trend in Japanese health care: The shortage of newborn children has led to a shortage of obstetricians. For in a country with deathbed demographics, why would any talented ambitious med-school student want to go into a field in such precipitous decline? In Japan, birthing is a dying business.

Back at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, three doctors were under arrest, and the bomb squad performed a controlled explosion on a vehicle in the parking lot. Pulled from the flaming Cherokee, Dr. Kafeel Ahmed is now being treated for 90 percent burns in his own hospital by the very colleagues he sought to kill. But at one level he and Dr. Asha and Dr. Abdulla don't need to blow up anything at all. The fact that the National Health Service – the "envy of the world" in every British politician's absurdly parochial cliché – has to hire Wahhabist doctors with no background checks tells you everything about where the country's heading.

William Easterly: What Bono doesn't say about Africa

Celebrities like to portray it as a basket case, but they ignore very real progress.

WILLIAM EASTERLY is a professor of economics at New York University, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "The White Man's Burden: How the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good"

The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com
July 6, 2007


JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."

It's a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that's being offered up to TV watchers and coffee drinkers. But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

Let's begin with those rampaging Four Horsemen. Do they really explain Africa today? What percentage of the African population would you say dies in war every year? What share of male children, age 10 to 17, are child soldiers? How many Africans are afflicted by famine or died of AIDS last year or are living as refugees?

In each case, the answer is one-half of 1% of the population or less. In some cases it's much less; for example, annual war deaths have averaged 1 out of every 10,800 Africans for the last four decades. That doesn't lessen the tragedy, of course, of those who are such victims, and maybe there are things the West can do to help them. But the typical African is a long way from being a starving, AIDS-stricken refugee at the mercy of child soldiers. The reality is that many more Africans need latrines than need Western peacekeepers — but that doesn't play so well on TV.

Further distortions of Africa emanate from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's star-studded Africa Progress Panel (which includes the ubiquitous Geldof). The panel laments in its 2007 news release that Africa remains "far short" of its goal of making "substantial inroads into poverty reduction." But this doesn't quite square with the sub-Saharan Africa that in 2006 registered its third straight year of good GDP growth — about 6%, well above historic averages for either today's rich countries or all developing countries. Growth of living standards in the last five years is the highest in Africa's history.

The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 — more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the "poverty trap" of being "too poor to save" endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it's too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?

Instead, the international development establishment is rigging the game to make Africa — which is, of course, still very poor — look even worse than it really is. It announces, for instance, that Africa is the only region that is failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs in aid-speak) set out by the United Nations. Well, it takes extraordinary growth to cut extreme poverty rates in half by 2015 (the first goal) when a near-majority of the population is poor, as is the case in Africa. (Latin America, by contrast, requires only modest growth to halve its extreme poverty rate from 10% to 5%.)

This is how Blair's panel managed to call Africa's recent growth successes a failure. But the reality is that virtually all other countries that have escaped extreme poverty did so through the kind of respectable growth that Africa is enjoying — not the kind of extraordinary growth that would have been required to meet the arbitrary Millennium Development Goals.

Africa will also fail to meet the second goal of universal primary education by 2015. But this goal is also rigged against Africa, because Africa started with an unusually low percentage of children enrolled in elementary school. As economist Michael Clemens points out, most African countries have actually expanded enrollments far more rapidly over the last five decades than Western countries did during their development, but Africans still won't reach the arbitrary aid target of universal enrollment by 2015. For example, the World Bank condemned Burkina Faso in 2003 as "seriously off track" to meet the second MDG, yet the country has expanded elementary education at more than twice the rate of Western historical experience, and it is even far above the faster educational expansions of all other developing countries in recent decades.

Why do aid organizations and their celebrity backers want to make African successes look like failures? One can only speculate, but it certainly helps aid agencies get more publicity and more money if problems seem greater than they are. As for the stars — well, could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

The real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts. A respected Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda, made this point at a recent African conference despite the fact that the world's most famous celebrity activist — Bono — was attempting to shout him down. Mwenda was suffering from too much reality for Bono's taste: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?" asked Mwenda.

Perhaps Bono was grouchy because his celebrity-laden "Red" campaign to promote Western brands to finance begging bowls for Africa has spent $100 million on marketing and generated sales of only $18 million, according to a recent report. But the fact remains that the West shows a lot more interest in begging bowls than in, say, letting African cotton growers compete fairly in Western markets (see the recent collapse of world trade talks).

Today, as I sip my Rwandan gourmet coffee and wear my Nigerian shirt here in New York, and as European men eat fresh Ghanaian pineapple for breakfast and bring Kenyan flowers home to their wives, I wonder what it will take for Western consumers to learn even more about the products of self-sufficient, hardworking, dignified Africans. Perhaps they should spend less time consuming Africa disaster stereotypes from television and Vanity Fair.

Thomas Lifson: Global Warming is So Yesterday

July 09, 2007
Thomas Lifson

http://www.americanthinker.com/

Al Gore talks during a press conference to promote the July 7 Live Earth concerts, in Istanbul, Turkey, June 12, 2007. Gore will attend the Live Earth concert at Giants Stadium. Concerts are also scheduled for Tokyo; Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Hamburg, Germany. The concert slated for Istanbul had to be scrubbed because of a lack of sponsors and interest. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

My very favorite excuse for low attendance at the much-ballyhooed worldwide Live Earth global warming concerts yesterday came from Johannesburg, where concert organizer John Langford "believes extremely cold weather... kept people away from the concert." Well I suppose that if you are trying to whip up fears about global warming, cold weather does tend to dampen enthusiasm somewhat.

Of course, the global warming enthusiasts have already tried repackaging their rhetoric of doom, so Langford found himself musing, "...we've had a strange winter... is it climate change?" The brilliant stroke claiming that any weather at all is evidence that something is very wrong works on idiots, ideologues, and children too young to remember every year it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. But evidence is accumulating that most normal people are fed up with being lectured about the need to conserve energy by people who fly in private jets and own multiple mansions. Fifty-six percent of the British public, for instance, believes that global warming fears are "exaggerated."

Repackaging is quite the order of the day when products flop in the marketplace. So we have the curious spectacle of morphing press coverage. For example, an early Reuters report bluntly described the extremely poor turnout for the free Live Earth concert in Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach (on a "perfect" winter night - when tropical Rio is merely comfortably warm) as les than 100,000. Since the hype had it that over a million would come, and since Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones managed at least twice as many concert goers a year ago in the same location, it does look like an embarrassment.

But in the hands of the Associated Press, the same concert was a huge success - the biggest crowds in the whole world for the triumphant effort. Suddenly less than one hundred thousand became "400,000" and they were "packed" onto the famous beach, which just recently was thought able to handle a million-plus concert-goers.

I have yet to see any crowd estimates for the Washington, DC concert, but the photos in the Washington Post show what looks like an awfully puny turnout there. Apparently the concert in Wembly Stadium in London sold 65,000 tickets, though. For their money, the fans got to see Madonna simulating sex with a guitar and other big names of yesteryear doing their thing. The critics were not impressed, while at least some of the fans weren't buying the ideology:

Certainly, on the way into the show, some of the 65,000 people who'd spent $110 on a ticket appeared unaware of the seven-point pledge that Al Gore, the event's chief impresario, had asked all spectators to make. Asked about it, they offered blank looks and said they were there for Madonna (whose annual carbon footprint, according to Buckley, is 1,018 tons -- about 92 times the 11 tons an average person uses per year).

"I'm not even sure who Gore is," said Georgie Simpson, 35, from Ipswich, in eastern England. "I saw Gore on TV," added Sue Bourner, 38, a health service manager from Hampshire. "But frankly, I think it's cheeky of Americans to come over here and lecture us. They are the worst polluters."

Sue, if you want cheeky, check out Gore's energy-gobbling house in Nashville.

The biggest disaster of a concert appears to have been in Hamburg, Germany. Even though the stadium venue had covered seating, rain is being blamed for a poor turnout. Since I am reasonably certain that there are days when it doesn't rain in Hamburg, I guess we can just chalk this flow up to "climate change" too. Even Earth Times admitted, "...there was no overlooking that turnout was poor, with many of the more distant seats in the stands empty."
Or maybe the Hamburgers shared the outrage of Greenpeace over the sponsorship of the German concert by Daimler Chrysler.

Meanwhile, pillars of the scientific establishment are showing early signs of buyer's remorse for having climbed aboard the bandwagon before the evidence was really in. It wouldn't be the first time that the common sense of ordinary people is way ahead of the experts.

The collapse of the global warming hot air balloon promises to be one of the most interesting spectacles of the next few years. Despite the overwhelming support of powerful corporations, formerly trendy cultural figures, and many governments, the truth will out. In the meantime, there will be no worldwide shortage of irony and hypocrisy as the privileged try to sell sacrifice and conservation to those who lead more modest lives in the name of a poorly-substantiated alarmist theory.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of American Thinker.