Thursday, September 24, 2015

Yogi Berra, Derek Jeter forged friendship across generations

Ian O'Connor, ESPN Senior Writer

http://espn.go.com/mlb/

September 23, 2015

Hall of Famer Yogi Berra hands Derek Jeter his 2009 World Series ring as the New York Yankees take on the Angels in The Bronx. (Getty Images)

In his oversized team jacket, slowly moving about Yankee Stadium as he checked on all of his guys, Yogi Berra would always tell friends he had one stop he absolutely needed to make. It wasn't Monument Park.

"Gotta go see Jeet," Berra would say.

Derek Jeter's locker was the place to find Berra in his final years as an American ballpark treasure. Yogi would wait there and make small talk with passersby, and eventually the captain of the New York Yankees would return from a BP session, approach the owlish figure in his path, and playfully slap down the bill on Berra's cap.

This is why Yogi kept returning to the Bronx, these moments with Jeter that would remind him of the moments he shared with Joe D. and the Mick. "Yogi and Derek were like two kids together," said Berra's friend, Dave Kaplan, the director of Yogi's museum on the campus of New Jersey's Montclair State University. "It was a warm, fun relationship. And Yogi saw Jeter as someone who cherished being part of the Yankee tradition as much as he did, and that meant a lot to him."

It meant everything to Berra that Jeter's Yankees treated him as a winning ballplayer, as one of them, rather than as another storytelling old-timer who just got in the way. That kept Yogi going; it really did. He told Kaplan he couldn't wait to get to spring training with Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada and the rest. Those Yankees made him feel like he was 25 years old.

Jeter was the one who set that tone after Berra returned to the Stadium in 1999, returned after a 14-year boycott of George Steinbrenner, the owner who had fired him 16 games into the 1985 season. Before that '99 season, Jeter had lost his grandfather, Sonny Connors, to a heart attack. The Yankee shortstop had been close to Connors, a maintenance man at a New Jersey church who had built his own life around the virtues of an honest day's work.

Jeter didn't say he saw Berra as a grandfatherly figure, and he didn't have to. "Everyone thought that about Yogi," Kaplan said. "I can't tell you how many people said Yogi reminded them of their grandfather because he was so unassuming and projected that kind of warmth."

On his web site, The Players Tribune, Jeter called Berra an even better person than player. "To me he was a dear friend and mentor," the retired captain said. "He will always be remembered for his success on the field, but I believe his finest quality was how he treated everyone with sincerity and kindness."

The shortstop's own sincerity and kindness with Berra kept bringing the old catcher back, even as his health failed. Funny how things started with them, too. Some 15 years ago, after Alex Rodriguez signed his record $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers and then publicly suggested his buddy in the Bronx wasn't worth the same cash, an agitated Jeter stood alone behind the Yankees' spring training facility and told me the following:

"I'm not trying to beat Alex's record anyway. The only record I'm concerned with is Yogi's record, and that's the 10 championships."

Berra got the biggest kick out of Jeter's futile chase, and never stopped telling the shortstop he had a few country miles to cover to even come close. Berra had won five consecutive championships from 1949-53, and not long after Jeter's Yankees lost their chance for a four-peat in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series in Arizona, Yogi hit him where it really hurt.

"Now you've got to start all over," Berra told him.

On a March morning in 2010, months after the Yankees had won their first ring since 2000 and their fifth of the Jeter era, the 35-year-old captain sat at his locker and refused to surrender to the idea that catching the catcher was out of the question.

I asked Jeter whether he felt Yogi's 10 was still doable. "Yeah," he said, "because I think it gives you something to shoot for. ... You never sit around and be happy with what you've done. A few people have won five, so you try to move past those guys. Ten is the highest number, but there are a lot of steps along the way."

Jeter smiled and pointed out that Berra didn't have to survive the division series or American League Championship Series in his day. "If we went straight to the World Series every time we won our division," the shortstop said, "we would've had so many chances. So it's a lot harder now, definitely. I was just joking with Yogi the other day that some of his don't count. But Yogi's not buying it."

Outside the clubhouse that day, I found Berra stepping into a golf cart. No, the 84-year-old Berra was definitely not buying it.

"I tell Jeter he was born at the wrong time," Yogi joked.

"I've got the most rings, more than Mickey [Mantle] and Joe DiMaggio," the wise old man continued. "How many does Derek have now, five? Well, he's got five to go. Tell him I said, 'Good luck.'"

Their back-and-forth never stopped. Jeter was pictured giving Berra bear hugs and planting a World Series trophy on top of Berra's head.

Yogi? One day after Jeter swung and missed on a high, full-count pitch, Berra asked him, "What the hell are you doing swinging at that? You looked terrible."

Jeter reminded Berra that he used to swing at pitches out of the strike zone all the time.

"But I hit them," Yogi shot back. "You don't."

Berra hit them enough in 1950 to only strike out 12 times in 656 plate appearances. He won three MVP awards (or, he might say, three more than Jeter won), and he later managed the Yankees and the Mets to the World Series to boot. It's a shame a generation or two of fans knew him more as the master of the malaprop, just like a generation of fans knew Joe DiMaggio more as Mr. Coffee. But if that bothered Berra, he never let it show.

He died Tuesday at 90 as a D-Day war hero and as the greatest baseball winner of them all. Kaplan, his friend and museum director, visited a sleeping Berra for the final time Tuesday afternoon; he'd said his goodbyes on Saturday, when it was clear the end was near. "I told him Yogi I loved him, and I'd never said that to him before," Kaplan said. "He had a slight smile and just said, 'Yeah, kid.' That's Yogi."

Berra and Kaplan had run some fundraisers and events at the museum over the years, and whenever the catcher needed some star power on the dais, he knew which locker to stake out.

"Yogi would just say, 'Hey Jeet, I need you at the museum,' and Derek's jaw would drop because you knew how many requests he got from people," Kaplan said. "Some guys would say they'd have to check their schedule, but Jeter never did that with Yogi. He always showed up."

The captain of the Yankees always made Yogi Berra feel like he was still the man behind the mask. It was only the greatest play of Derek Jeter's career.

The legacy of Yogi Berra: He made everyone smile

By Tim Brown

http://sports.yahoo.com/

September 24, 2015

LOS ANGELES – Yogi Berra passed away and the appropriate tears fell, the best stories told, the proper appreciation paid. Vin Scully nodded along Wednesday, happy for the warmth of another memory of dear Yogi. They'd spent the better parts of their lives on opposite sides of an old rivalry and a slightly older continent, though had come to know each other well enough.

"Aw, what'd you make such a stink about?" Scully would needle. "Robby was safe."

Jackie Robinson stole home against Berra's New York Yankees in a World Series game 60 years ago. Berra was the catcher. The Yankees won the game. The Brooklyn Dodgers won the series. Yogi, perhaps, is still arguing the call.

He'd laugh with Vin though, and the conversation would run off to other places.

Scully stood Wednesday evening in the back of the press box at Dodger Stadium, he too having mourned the loss, and celebrated the life, and watched it all go past. He was struck, he said, by the reactions to the news of Yogi on Wednesday, as the reactions were the same to Yogi in the flesh.

Yogi Berra's positive personality rubbed off on everyone he encountered. (AP)

"I would think his legacy is, when you mention his name people smile," Scully said. "Everybody was better if you spent a few minutes with Yogi."

And that's it, isn't it? The first impulse wasn't ever to think of the championships (10), or the home runs (358), or the All-Star Games (15), or the Hall of Fame plaque (1972), but of the man who won them, hit them, earned them and bolted them into a wall. The man who was better than the sum of his physical parts. The man who'd greet the doorman as he would the owner of the ballclub – better, probably, for a number of years – not because it was the right thing to do, but because it wouldn't occur to him not to. The man who inspired others not with speeches or posturing or tales of the player he once was, but with humility and kindness.

So when the clubhouse man for the Dodgers tried to give Don Mattingly his No. 23, the number Mattingly wore as a great Yankee, Mattingly refused. He wanted 8, Yogi's number, for the same Yogi who showed up in Double-A Nashville in 1981 and rode the buses and schlepped across the parking lots of motels, for the Yogi who managed Mattingly as a Yankee in 1984 and for a few more weeks in 1985, and for the Yogi who never thought of himself as more than a kid from The Hill who played some ball.

"I don't want 23," Mattingly told the clubbie. "I want 8, because everything Yogi touches turns to gold."

Mattingly grinned and added, "And I was looking for gold."

He'll keep digging, presumably.

He stood Wednesday afternoon a long way from New Jersey, and a long way from Nashville, and a long way from Toronto, where the Yankees wore Yogi's 8 on their sleeves. But Yogi had followed him all day, he said, starting with the late phone call the night before. Yogi was on the radio, on the TV, and when he stopped for gas on the way to the ballpark, Yogi was there, too, on the pump's video screen.

Yogi had lived as long and wonderful a life as a man could reasonably expect and was taken too soon, a paradoxical notion we may have expected from Yogi. He died just as summer turned to autumn. In a baseball sense he could claim both.

For that, Mattingly struggled for the proper emotion. Sad, of course, to see his friend go, for the family he'd leave behind. Pleased for the 90 years of Yogi, for a life so lived, as we should all be so lucky. He'd settle for both, for the remainder of the summer in Nashville, a couple seasons in the Bronx, the spring days in Tampa, one in particular when Ron Guidry was unavailable to drive Yogi to the ballpark. Mattingly volunteered and arrived five minutes early, only to find Yogi a little peeved.

The Yankees honored Berra by wearing his No. 8 on their sleeves. (AP)

"You're late," Yogi informed him.

Baseball was still serious business to Yogi.

Later that spring, Mattingly accompanied the ballclub to a game in Bradenton. Yogi stayed behind with the players who didn't travel. Their workdays ended around 1 p.m. When Mattingly returned in the early evening, Yogi was in the coach's locker room, in his civilian clothes, waiting.

"You been here all day?" Mattingly asked.

"Yeah," Yogi said. "Woulda been all day at the hotel too."

"You're right," Mattingly said. "Woulda been."

He'd witnessed his own Yogi-ism in the wild, and a decade or so later it still made him smile. That's the gift. Some would say a legacy.

Why Everything is Bad for You

By JIM WINDOLFSEPT. 22, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/

Ellen Weinstein

When I was growing up in the same New Jersey suburbs so expertly described in Todd Solondz movies and Tom Perrotta novels, the usual lunch for me was a sandwich consisting of Wonder Bread spread thick with Land O’ Lakes butter, a wad of Oscar Mayer bologna and a slice of American cheese.

The beverage was whole milk, Tang or Coke. A stack of salty Pringles rounded off the meal.

Even if I had known back then that people who eat a lot of processed meat tend to die of heart disease or cancer, and that processed cheese is held together by emulsifiers that may lead to kidney problems, and that white bread has almost zero nutritional value, and that soft drinks are sludge, and that Pringles may not qualify as potato chips, I wouldn’t have cared. I had a lot on my mind, what with school and all the playing, and I had yet to develop the fear of death.

But now that I’m an adult who apparently has nothing better to do than bathe in the light of computer screens 16 hours a day, I have plenty of time to scroll through articles eager to convince me that food is killing me.

Like everyone else, I believe every word in those articles. And when my gaze reaches the fifth paragraph, the one that inevitably quotes the university professor who has conducted the latest fear-inducing study, I nod slightly and tell myself that somehow I knew it all along, that I always had a feeling that this meat, or that vegetable, was quickening my demise.

Which is strange because at the same time, I believe that food is keeping me alive.

We’re all going to die. And we all eat food. Therefore, food must be the culprit.

That seems to be the absurd syllogism that lies beneath the surface of many articles in the health, food and science press.

By now we can recite the list. Too much red meat may lead to stroke, cancer and heart disease; until this year, chicken sold in supermarkets may have included arsenic; and even small amounts of pork, when undercooked, can give you trichinellosis, which is no picnic.

Fish that live high on the food chain, the especially delicious ones like king mackerel and tuna, may contain mercury, which leaves us with little choice but to order the squishy creatures at the bottom of the sea, like clams, oysters, mussels, cockles, lobsters, crabs and, don’t forget, those tasty periwinkles.

But while some health advocates are gung-ho about the bivalve shellfish, others remind us that they tend to soak up toxins, viruses and bacteria that may afflict people who eat them with three types of shellfish poisoning. The toxins that cause the poisonings, furthermore, “are not destroyed by cooking,” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency warns.

So there’s that.

Fruits and vegetables in general present a dilemma: the ones that are commercially grown may include pesticides linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; the organic variety may be no better, according to a Stanford study that found “little evidence of health benefits” for those with an organic diet.

Like those federal agents who brought down Al Capone on a charge of tax evasion, we are not above indicting certain food items for reasons having nothing to do with the health risks they may pose. Almonds, for example, are packed with protein, but if you imagined that you could eat them without compunction, you are not familiar with an article in The Atlantic,“The Dark Side of Almond Use,” by Dr. James Hamblin.

He reports that a single almond soaks up 1.1 gallons of water before he goes on to argue, quite persuasively, that anyone who eats this tree nut exacerbates the disastrous ecological conditions brought on by the drought in almond-rich California.

Salad eaters are perhaps equally numb to environmental concerns, according to a recent Washington Post article, which makes the case that the lettuce crop takes up too much arable space for the nutrition it delivers.

Even water has become a target. Recent articles point out that drinking eight glasses per day, long thought to be a good idea, is a fool’s game, and that too much water can kill you.

Such stories stick in the mind because of their inherent irony: The very things that provide us with sustenance, they seem to argue, may be out to get us.

I hope you don’t mind the idea of dining on dung beetles, caterpillars and locusts, among other such critters, because that’s what the United Nations recommends in an exhaustive report. We need to get over our aversion to entomophagy, its authors argue, if we are to survive on an overpopulated planet wracked with climate change.

Cooks.com, jumping on the bandwagon, offers a recipe for a protein-rich dish, earthworm chow.

Another foodstuff of sorts now considered less of a problem than, say, meat, is dirt. Actual dirt. Until recently, the practice of eating it was classified as pathological. No more. It turns out that geophagia is widespread, relatively harmless and may protect the body from toxins.

Health-scare stories, even those that are not overblown, draw their special power from the fact that we go through the days denying our mortality. Each one reminds us anew that there’s no way out.

Unable to avoid this tragic and absurd-seeming condition, we lash out against our fates by finding fresh reasons to make a villain out of the one thing that is doing its part to keep us alive: food.

We add salt to the psychic wound when we momentarily trick ourselves into believing that bugs, worms and dirt are the only things fit for human consumption.

I’m not falling for it anymore. I’m going back to bologna and cheese.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Yogi Berra dead at 90: Yankees legend, Baseball Hall of Famer was lovable character, American hero

BY BILL MADDEN
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/
September 23. 2015

For the millions of friends and fans of Yogi Berra, beloved American icon, Hall-of-Fame Yankee catcher and unintentional world philosopher, these are the saddest of possible words: It’s over.

Berra, who played on a record 10 Yankee world championship teams and 14 All-Star teams, won three American League Most Valuable Player awards, had two terms as Yankee manager and one with the Mets and coined dozens of goofy-sounding but aptly true sayings termed “Yogi-isms” such as “When you come to the fork in the road, take it” and “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”, died Wednesday. He was 90.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of a Yankees legend and American hero, Yogi Berra," the Yankees tweetedearly Wednesday morning. Just four months earlier, Berra had celebrated his 90th birthday.

Even before the “greatest living Yankee” torch was passed to him with the death of Joe DiMaggio in 1999, Berra was always at the top of the list as the most respected and beloved Yankee deity because of his clutch hitting on the field and his humility and genial disposition off it. In Berra’s 18 seasons with the Yankees from 1946-63, they went to the World Series 14 times, winning 10 of them, making him baseball’s all time “Lord of the Rings”.

It was in Game Three of the 1947 Fall Classic against the Dodgers that Berra etched the first line of his lengthy Hall-of-Fame resume when he became the first player in history to have a pinch-hit homer in the World Series. The homer was struck off Ralph Branca (who would go on to yield another far more famous postseason homer to Bobby Thomson in the 1951 Dodgers-Giants playoff game.) Berra and Branca later became lifelong pals and Yogi would often kid him that his homer off him was far more historic than Thomson’s.

In all, the durable Berra, who averaged 140 games caught from 1950-56, hit .285 with 2,150 career hits, 358 homers, 1,175 runs and 1,430 RBI in 19 big league seasons that included a four-game cameo with Mets in 1965, two years after he was fired as Yankee manager for the first time. It was Yankee manager Casey Stengel who referred to Berra as “my assistant manager” during those halcyon years, and the Baseball Writers Association seemed to agree that he was the most integral player on all those championship teams, voting him the MVP in 1951 (when he hit .294 with 27 homers and 88 RBI), 1954 (.307 with 22 homers and 125 RBI) and ’55 (.272 with 27 homers and 108 RBI).

A notorious “bad ball” hitter, the lefty-swinging Berra was regarded as having one of the keenest batting eyes of any player in history – evidenced by the fact that he struck out only 415 times in 7,555 at-bats, a remarkable 1/18.2 ratio for a power hitter.

“I just saw the ball good, maybe better than others,” was Berra’s simple explanation for being able to make contact so often. “I probably gave away a lot of at-bats when there was nobody on base, but when guys were on, that was different. I was different.”

It was upon his retirement in 1963 that the Yankee owners, Dan Topping and Del Webb, tapped him to become manager, replacing Ralph Houk, who was promoted to general manager. But while the Yankees were able to win the 1964 American League pennant by one game over the Chicago White Sox - despite the fact Whitey Ford was felled by a hip injury and sore arm the second half of the season, Mickey Mantle was hobbled by sore knees, shortstop Tony Kubek was hampered by neck and back ailments and the bullpen lacked a dependable closer until Pedro Ramos was acquired in a September trade - the perception was they had underachieved all season and that Berra was too easy on his former teammates.

The incident generally regarded as having sealed Berra’s fate with Topping and Webb was an August 20 bus ride from Comiskey Park in Chicago to O’Hare Field - after the Yankees had suffered a four-game sweep by the White Sox - in which backup shortstop Phil Linz began playing a harmonica. When Berra, sitting in the front row of the bus, ordered Linz to stifle it, the infielder didn’t hear him and, instead, at the urging of teammate Joe Pepitone, began playing it louder. This, in turn, sent Berra into a rage as he charged to the back of the bus, confronting Linz, and knocking the harmonica out of his hand.

“Phil and I never had any problems after that,” Berra said years later. “But Phil did good. He made a lot of money off harmonica commercials and endorsements.”

Even though Ford, the longtime Yankee ace, was kayoed by a blocked artery in his throwing arm in the first game of the ’64 World Series, Berra’s Yankees were able to take the St. Louis Cardinals the full seven games before finally succumbing. By then, however, the wheels were already in motion for his firing by Topping and Webb – ironically his replacement wound up being the man who had just defeated him, Johnny Keane, who decided to quit the Cardinals after learning they, too, in August, had made plans to replace him after the season.

“When (Topping and Webb) called me in, I thought they were going to give me a new contract,” Berra recalled to me in a 2002 interview. “I thought I had done a good job. But at least they told me to my face.”

It was a not-so-subtle reference to the next time he would be fired as Yankee manager – by George Steinbrenner after just 16 games of the 1985 season. That one, in which Steinbrenner had his general manager, Clyde King, perform the deed, resulted in a 14-year estrangement between Berra and the Yankees.

Vowing he’d never again set foot in Yankee Stadium as long as “that guy” owned the team, Berra kept his word until January 5, 1999 when a détente with Steinbrenner was arranged by Suzyn Waldman, WFAN’s Yankee beat reporter at the time, as part of a special show the radio station was doing from Berra’s museum in Montclair, N.J. After convincing Steinbrenner that Berra was ready to forgive him, the Yankee owner flew up from Tampa to personally apologize for the long-ago firing. Prior to going on the air, the two huddled in a private room at the museum for about a half hour, after which they emerged arm-in-arm with the grinning Yogi uttering: “It’s over.”

From there, Berra and Steinbrenner became the best of friends, with the Yankee boss staging a special day in Yogi’s honor, July 18, 1999, in which he presented him a check of $100,000 for the museum. Neither could have imagined the Yankees’ David Cone upstaging both of them that day by pitching a perfect game. At least it was opportune that Don Larsen, author of the only perfect game in World Series history – which Berra caught – also happened to be on hand that day as one of Yogi’s former teammates honoring him. Besides Larsen’s perfect game, Berra also caught both of Allie Reynolds’ no-hitters in 1951, the second of which became especially memorable when he dropped Ted Williams’ pop foul behind the plate that would have been the final out.

Berra always said that was his worst moment in baseball, although he was reprieved moments later when Williams hit another foul pop that he did catch.

Lawrence Peter Berra was born May 12, 1925, the youngest of Italian immigrants Pietro and Paulina’s four sons, and he grew up in the predoninantly Italian “Hill” section of St. Louis where his across-the-street neighbor and lifelong pal was Joe Garagiola. Garagiola would also go on to the major leagues as a catcher before embarking a second, much more successful career as a broadcaster, Today Show host and humorist. “Lawdie” as Berra was called by his childhood pals, quit school at 14 after finishing the eighth grade and worked numerous odd jobs, in a coal yard, driving a Pepsi truck, earning $25 a week which, with exception of $2, all went to his mother to help support the family.

In the summers, Berra and Garagiola played sandlot baseball for the Stockham Post American Legion team. It was during one of their games that Berra was resting between innings, sitting on the side lines with his legs crossed underneath him when another teammate and future major leaguer, Bobby Hofman, exclaimed: “Look at Lawdie over there! He looks like one them yogis!” And thus was born a nickname like no other.

There was a story told byBerra’s late wife, Carmen - whom he met at Stan Musial’s restaurant in St. Louis in 1947 where she was a waitress - in which he sent her an anniversary card and signed it ‘Yogi Berra’. When asked why he would sign his whole name on a card to his wife, Berra said: “I dunno. I guess it was out of habit” - to which Carmen countered: “I was actually glad he did, so I didn’t confuse him with all the other Yogis I know.”

When Berra was 17, a local bird dog scout in St. Louis, Leo Browne, recommended him to Yankees general manager George Weiss, who signed him for $500. Berra’s first minor league assignment was Class B Norfolk in 1943 where he played 111 games, all at catcher, and featured one incredible day in which he drove in 23 runs in a doubleheader.

“When I heard about the 23-RBI day, I figured he had a future,” Carmen once said.

They were married January 26, 1949, after Berra concluded a stint in the Navy in which he took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and they went on to have three sons, Larry, Tim, who played pro football, and Dale, who had an 11-year career in the major leagues, including two seasons with the Yankees.

Upon being discharged from the service, Berra reported to the Yankees’ Triple-A farm team, the Newark Bears in 1946 where he hit .314 with 15 homers and earned a late-season promotion to the Yankees after barely two seasons of minor league apprenticeship. Once he reached the big leagues, however, Berra was anything but a polished catcher and his first couple of seasons he played almost as much in the outfield as he did behind the plate while coming under the tutelage of Bill Dickey, the Hall-of-Fame Yankee catcher who preceeded him. In one of his classic “Yogi-isms”, Berra said frequently: “Dickey learned me all of his experiences.”

Berra would go on to surpass Dickey on all the Yankees’ all-time hitting lists.

After his first firing as Yankee manager after the ‘64 season, he left the organization and rejoined Weiss and Stengel as a player/coach with the crosstown Mets. In the spring of 1972, he was elevated to manager of the Mets when Gil Hodges died suddenly of heart attack. A year later, Berra led the Mets to an improbable National League pennant after winning the eastern division with an 82-79 record. Once again, though, he lost the World Series in seven games, this time to the defending world champion Oakland A’s. In August of 1975, with the Mets mired in fifth place, he was dismissed as manager by team chairman M. Donald Grant and that winter returned to the Yankees as a coach for his old teammate, Billy Martin. All the time he was gone, the Yankees failed to make the postseason, but beginning that ‘76 season, they made three straight trips to the World Series.

Throughout his baseball career and in all the years after as he served as one of the game’s all-time good will ambassadors, Berra became acclaimed world wide for his unintentional pronouncements/words of wisdom. About a popular restaurant in Minneapolis, he said:

“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” In discussing the perils of playing left field in Yankee Stadium with its late-day shadows: “It gets late early out there.” When feted at an awards dinner: “I want to thank you for making this night necessary.” And his general philosophy about life: “You can observe a lot by watching.”

Berra is survived by his three sons, Larry, Tim and Dale, and millions of fans throughout the world who loved him simply for being so genuine.

tsalinger@nydailynews.com

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Pope Wrongly Blames Capitalism For Ills Of Poor

BY THOMAS SOWELL

http://news.investors.com/

September 21, 2015

Pope Francis is escorted by U.S. President Barack Obama (R) after arriving from Cuba September 22, 2015 at Joint Base Andrew, Maryland. (Getty Images)

Pope Francis has created political controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor. We can no doubt expect more of the same during his visit to the United States.

Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political left among Catholic intellectuals. He is, in a sense, the culmination of that trend.

There has long been a political left among Catholics, as among other Americans. Often they were part of the pragmatic left, as in the many old Irish-run, big-city political machines that dispensed benefits to the poor in exchange for their votes, as somewhat romantically depicted in the movie classic, "The Last Hurrah."

But there also has been a more ideological left. Where the Communists had their official newspaper, "The Daily Worker," there was also "The Catholic Worker" published by Dorothy Day.

A landmark in the evolution of the ideological left among Catholics was a publication in the 1980s, by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled "Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy."

Although this publication was said to be based on Catholic teachings, one of its principal contributors, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, said: "I think we should be upfront and say that really we took this from the Enlightenment era."

The specifics of the bishops' "Pastoral Letter" reflect far more of the secular Enlightenment of the 18th century than of Catholic traditions. Archbishop Weakland admitted that such an Enlightenment figure as Thomas Paine "is now coming back through a strange channel."

Strange indeed. Paine rejected the teachings of "any church that I know of," including "the Roman church." He said: "My own mind is my own church." Nor was Paine unusual among the leading figures of the 18th-century Enlightenment.

To base social or moral principles on the philosophy of the 18th-century Enlightenment and then call the result "Catholic teachings" suggests something like bait-and-switch advertising.

But, putting aside religious or philosophical questions, we have more than two centuries of historical evidence of what has actually happened as the ideas of people like those Enlightenment figures were put into practice in the real world — beginning with the French Revolution and its disastrous aftermath.

The authors of the "Pastoral Letter" in the 1980s and Pope Francis today blithely throw around the phrase "the poor," blaming poverty on what other people are doing to or for the poor.

Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things — none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.

Geographic settings are radically different, both among nations and within nations. So are demographic differences, with some nations and groups having a median age over 40 and others having a median age under 20. This means that some groups have several times as much adult work experience as others. Cultures are also radically different in many ways.

As distinguished economic historian David S. Landes put it, "The world has never been a level playing field." But which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie?

In 1900, only 3% of American homes had electric lights but more than 99% had them before the end of the century. Infant mortality rates were 165 per thousand in 1900 and 7 per thousand by 1997. By 2001, most Americans living below the official poverty line had central air conditioning, a motor vehicle, cable television with multiple TV sets, and other amenities.

A scholar specializing in the study of Latin America said that the official poverty level in the U.S. is the upper middle class in Mexico. The much criticized market economy of the U.S. has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left.

Pope Francis' own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions he is now promoting around the world.