This Is Why Pete Rose Isn't in the Hall of Fame

Pete Rose has just passed away at 83. That will no doubt bring forward yet again one of the diciest of ethical issues in sports: Should he be selected to Baseball's Hall of Fame?

On paper, it's a no-brainer, and ridiculous to suggest otherwise. He's still, and because of big money contracts and the inclination to retire early now, probably will always be, the all-time leader in base hits with 4256. Beyond that, his on-field actions, his aggressiveness (sometimes pretentious, as when he would sprint to first base upon walking) and nickname of Charlie Hustle made him an icon to many.

But Rose smudged the game itself. Addicted to gambling--and upon his own admission, though much later--he bet on baseball games while managing one of its major league teams. Implicitly, he's been blamed for the sudden death of Bart Giamatti, then commissioner of baseball and a raging idealist of the game's contributions to our world ("Baseball breaks your heart," he once wrote, in a hauntingly prescient phrase), who died very soon after making the ruling that banned Rose from baseball from that day forward.

He has also been linked to fooling around with underage girls--not a good image for someone trying to be in someone else's Hall of Fame. His baseball accomplishments are terrific. How he conducted himself beyond his sports career is not. 

The betting alone is shaky, but if he had bet on horses or football games, he might even be forgiven. But he didn't. He bet on the game he said he loved so much, despite how bad he made it look.

For many of the Baseball Writers of America, the institution in charge of nominating and selecting the members of the Hall of Fame (with the exception of a players' committee which might override a rejection here and there), what Rose did is unforgivable. I happen to know something about some of the members of that group, or at least those who used to be.

During the 1980s, I earned myself a master's degree in journalism from Marquette University. To do that, one must write a thesis. I figured to combine two things I loved, journalism and baseball (I was in the middle of my experience of writing a local sports column), after reading a book that suggested that baseball writers--which I once dreamed of becoming, but life got in the way--didn't especially like what they did but you know, like other things, it's a living.

So I thought, pre-internet: They must stay in Milwaukee while the teams they cover play at (then) County Stadium. They would most likely work out of their rooms and they might eat breakfast or lunch at those hotels. I also did some digging as to who wrote for what newspaper (still in that heyday, soon to sunset). I also learned the hotels at which the visiting teams stayed and wondered, Could they be the same? Would make sense to try to get 'insider' stories.

I put that guessing together and called front desks. Sure enough: not only were the writers there, they were dispatched to me straightaway and suddenly I would be talking to them (our world now being much different, I highly doubt that you'd be able to do this now). I invited them to lunch. Most said yes; this to someone they'd never met.

I brought my tape recorder. We'd have the most fascinating talks. Going around the league, contributing to their newspapers in an important way--what fan didn't turn to the sports page every morning?--but operating mostly facelessly, they were eager to talk to anyone interested in what they did and how they did it, to get a glance under the hood, so to speak.

I was having the fun of my life. There's nothing like the enthusiasm that original research gives you. And I learned quite the opposite of what I had postulated: Baseball writers loved what they did, but like most of the rest of us, would take a moment to whine about its challenges and its daily grind of deadlines and need to say about games in a fresh way, even though what would take place on the field would have ringing similarities to the last game and the one before that.

But they also considered (and still do, I'm sure) themselves guardians of the game's lore and history, a significant contribution to our culture. They knew that what they wrote on a daily basis, while not necessarily anything a Pulitzer Prize committee might consider, would be ensconced in someone's library and archives forever. That status, they took very seriously.

I talked to just a few of them at later dates. They were crabbier, which meant I'd interrupted them in the middle of something, which could be any time of the day or night for baseball writers, who write about baseball generally besides the teams to which they are assigned. In no indirect way, then, they have to be 'on' 24-7, because staying in, maybe, Seattle, they might get a call about something in New York. They do not take fools gladly.

Considering all that, their stance against Rose being in the Hall of Fame makes sense. If they're the ones who measure the greatest of the sport they knew more about than just about anyone else, if it still means something very important to a vast bunch of us, then determining who gets that honor must still contain the essence of honor--being a cut above people who, even though a different kind of elite in that they, too, were major leaguers, didn't quite measure up. That means setting standards, standards they're allowed to set for the Hall, and thus for the sport.

But some of the BBWA's hallowed practices have bordered on the silly. After an obvious first installment, for a particularly long time, nobody got a placement on the first opportunity, after the five years that the BBWA required to wait for it. Willie Mays didn't. Hank Aaron didn't. (Go ahead. Look it up.) That was preposterous, a 'tradition' that made absolutely no sense and diminished the Hall of Fame's seriousness rather than extol it. It made the process look much like a conjured star chamber.

Rose, for his side, said he didn't bet against his team (though he would bet on them to win), and didn't throw any games to win bets. I believe that. I don't think he stooped as low as Joe Jackson, a member of the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919, who did throw two games of the World Series, then changed his mind, except it was too late and too little to prevent his team's defeat.

But that didn't mean Rose's actions weren't highly questionable or beyond the realm of decent ethics. They were akin to insider trading. Betting on major league baseball games, when one has been a player and manager, means you're taking advantage of information and a sense of learning few others have about those who play the game, either genuinely because you've done it yourself, you know and have watched the people themselves, or implicitly because the game itself has to be played at a certain level and you can tell who can get it done and who can't. I've played the game at a Division III collegiate level, for instance, but I can't extend that experience to knowing how to hit, say, Corbin Byrnes of Baltimore, if I could at all. 

Pete Rose knew enough, or thought he did (though he ended up losing a lot of money, because the game is still full of inexactitudes, full of statistics compiled only after the fact), to think he could fool the system and make plenty of money on the side. He took advantage of a privilege that he had earned, but one that few can have, and to the hardworking members of the BBWA, that's being something of a sneak and a bully.

Rose never apologized, either. The road back to forgiveness belongs to the perpetrator, at least at first. Rose thought that not betting against his team was enough for him to secure a pathway to the Hall. But he played fast and loose with the rules. 4,256 hits should have been more than enough, and no one lives a perfect life. He also slapped the deciders in the face, though, again and again, and that tells you something about him. The writers hold the keys to the door. His key never fit. (Shoeless Joe Jackson apologized, but with more than 3000 hits, he's still been denied entrance, too. So there's that.)

I don't like attaching Rose's denial of entrance to Giamatti's untimely death at age 51, though. To say that speaks to a sense of the Salem witchcraft trials, where bad events were blamed on people who had nothing to do with them. My own heart attack can't be tied to anything going on in my life at the time, though I had just moved from a very nice apartment under duress because my rent had been jacked up and I felt a sense of betrayal about that (though business is business in that racket, too). My cholesterol count was way-way up there, though.

If Giamatti passed away that soon, something else would probably have gotten him, and not too far later. It's not like being commissioner of baseball is a cakewalk. Did Giamatti's good karma get drained by Rose's bad? Come on now. That means the bad guy won. You want to go with that?

No, let's not go there. Let's stay with the core issue: Rose isn't in the Hall of Fame because the Baseball Writers of America say he shouldn't be. Their reasons are fair enough. But the grudge match can be called off, too, now that Rose has passed. He can't enjoy it now, not even for a day. That might change the equation.

I leave that to you. It's still not an easy call. Much will be made of it on the sports talk shows. If it happens, it will probably have to be some time later, after the greyhairs of the BBWA (and many of us) are gone. 

Can certain values remain? Which ones? We'll be making a different evaluation of that, too, after November 5. That determination is still far more imporant.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The V-P Debate: Could Be the Biggest Deal

The campaign, by all accounts, has settled into a photo finish catfight. Nobody knows how the swing states will split.

The country, in other words, has a chance of making the same terrible mistake it made eight years ago. Ex- has turned down the possibility of another debate, having been horribly thrashed earlier this month, but nobody believes he has made that a binding decision.

What will determine it could easily be what his running mate does in his upcoming debate on October 1.

With a race this close, people who aren't tied to policy matters want to see somebody come out ahead in something. They don't want to be wracked with indecision. Here may be their last chance, short of some revelations that may or may not be true.

Vice-presidential debates aren't supposed to matter much. This one may be different.

The polls are all over the place. MSNBC thinks Harris is pulling away. The New York Times believes ex- is tightening his hold on the Sun Belt toss-up states. It points to a public that is skittish and waffling, as difficult as that may be to understand. It needs something concrete. It may get it, regardless of its genuineness, next Tuesday.

J.D. Vance is the perfect clone of ex-. He has changed his mind more often than his clothes. He has no principles other than what's been declared before the American Revolution. I hesitated to say that he's out of his mind, because I'm not sure his mind has much left in it that's genuine. Yes, he wrote a best-selling book that doubles down on the victimization of Appalachia, but he has come around to even double down on that. Now, not only is abortion wrong across the board, but childless women have diminished value, regardless of whatever their minds and efforts can develop. Now, he can make up, a.k.a. lie, about things that advance what he believes to be a winning agenda, including that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

The latter sentiment has thoroughly pissed off Springfield's mayor, a declared Republican. That apparently doesn't bother Vance or ex- at all, so I wonder, now, if that mayor would like to reconsider his vote in 

November. Those declarations have set off threats in Springfield's public schools such that state troopers have to be called out to reassure parents that their kids won't get blown up or shot up or otherwise harmed just for attending school.

I hope, indeed I pray, for Tim Walz to casually ease that into whatever conversation the two of them have, having been a high school teacher himself. I think Walz would be well advised to treat Vance as he would have in class a bragging student who has little if any accuracy attached to his statements. In all likelihood, Vance will try to pin Walz into a corner, probably about immigration. Walz can use facts, quietly and calmly, to refute Vance just like social studies teachers like me did when annoyed with some student who liked to sound off but had nothing behind it except what he wished were true, what's being slogan-ized on the street, and/or whatever someone else told him to say, cheap shots notwithstanding, which might be considerable.

Walz's ability to handle what will surely be Vance's outrageous comments might create a bulwark against nonsense that might just take whatever hesitation that's left of some voters and turn them blue. Ex- is doing a fine job of stepping on rakes; posing Vance as ex-'s mini-me might just drag them into the ditch together. 

But maybe not. Without ex-'s acquiescence to a second debate with Harris, this would be the final public, national showdown between the two campaigns. Both can point to a need to gain ground--one to overcome what's analyzed as a deficit, one to create space between the two and confidently drive to the end.

Either way, the two men must know the stakes. Walz can't necessarily win if he has a good debate, but he can lose if he has a bad one. Vance could lead a rally that creates a successful photo finish. Barely a month to go now. Tough for someone to recover from a lousy performance.

Vice-presidential debates are often the stuff of 48 hours of jabbering, followed by a return to electioneering as usual. This one may take that form, too. But maybe not. Tim Walz has a lot to prove Tuesday. If he walks away the winner, he'll make it tougher to deny him and his running mate the prize. New problems will emerge if that happens, but nothing like the devastation that will accompany the other side's triumph. Good luck, Tim.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Remember: He's Terminator 2. Do Not Forget This.

Well, she did it. Fabulously. It couldn't have gone better had she scripted it herself.

Now what? How do we look at things now?

It is over? Some would say that. I say no. The numbers have moved here in Wisconsin, and that looks promising. But the very fact that they haven't clinched the deal means that the cult of attachment to ex- holds tight and can be defeated only at the edges.

This monster is like Terminator 2. Remember that film? He was destroyed and blown to bits more than once. Turns out you couldn't rely on doing that, ever. He re-formulated himself, literally pulled himself back together, and went on attacking, meaning to kill.

This is that sci-fi come to life. Ex- has gone right on lying (Did you really expect him to stop?). Turns out the mayor of Springfield, Ohio is getting pretty sick of portraying Haitian immigrants as pet-eating barbarians. They're not. They're contributing members of that community. That awful, disgusting rumor is partly the brainchild of his running mate, J.D. Vance, something Ohioans should remember when going to the polls, and again when Vance, should he lose, runs for another Senate term.

Meanwhile, we're coming in on 50 days left. What will ex- do now, besides lie about everything?

I predict he will come up with video lies utilizing artificial intelligence. He has plenty of money to hire the most deceptive people; I'm sure Elon Musk is fairly poised to pounce like a cougar. He will make Kamala Harris look sleazy, dishonest, herself a liar. I predict there will be a new set of ads coming out within three weeks. They will attempt to be devastating.

The Republicans will have to pull the ad claiming that "Bidenomics isn't working." Because it is. The rate of inflation is finally flattening out--just in time. The same ad also brags that gas prices are going up. They aren't. The price of gas in the Milwaukee area is beneath $3.00 in several places. Can't remember when that happened. It has to be happening elsewhere.

There will be plans to intimidate voting officials anew, to potentially smear them where a breakthrough to victory is most possible. Ex- won't have to do it; his enablers can and will try it without attribution. The closer we get to Election Day, the more this will emerge.

There will be new threats to Harris' campaign because her victory is no longer a distant idea. Recall that an assassination attempt nearly took ex-'s life, inches from succeeding. Someone will get it in their heads that Harris somehow deserves the same treatment. Expect this, regardless of source. The Department of Homeland Security has wisely increased the security around the Capitol in anticipation of another January 6 uprising, regardless of result--but you know where it's aimed.

Meanwhile, ex- has said he won't debate Harris anymore. Don't believe this for a second. He wants to catch us off-guard, so he can somehow utilize the advantage of surprise: Look, I've changed my mind! But I highly doubt that Harris, with her savvy so nicely demonstrated last Tuesday, will bite on this ruse. In fact, she announced that she's ready for another one.

If the numbers turn and remain against him, he will call for debate so quickly it'll make your head spin. If he gains ground, he will hedge his bets. If a debate still happens, he will remember to look at her this time to make his insults look better. For him, it's nothing about substance; all about the image. It's worked so far. But he'll have to try it again if the numbers don't respond. Will his self-delusion finally finish him off? We'll have to see.

This kind of deception is old hat for him. Like obsessing with crowd size, we should just yawn. The shock factor is wearing off. He doesn't get that. Too bad for him. That's why he must try to change reality. See above.

Harris has him in a corner. He must either change his approach--he hasn't yet; no reason to assume he will--or she will just keep saying versions of "Had enough?"

But he has overcome what has appeared to be massive odds before. Like the Terminator, he finds a way to charge right back at his foe. And the attention of the voters never lasts all that long.

If anything, Harris has bought time for herself. There will be different challenges, those we haven't heard of yet. October is coming. New polls will be released. Keep breathing.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Joy" Is Running Out

I remember the last time "joy" was used as a campaign slogan. Or ploy, if you want to get cynical about it.

It was 1968. The purveyor was Hubert Humphrey. It might just have been the attitude he wanted from the start. Or it might have been something else.

Ex- isn't the only person running for office who's tried to get people to look over here instead of consider what might be aspects of his candidacy that might condemn him to defeat. Happens, in fact, quite often.

In 1968, the Democrats had lots of reasons to try to get people to look the other way. In August, they'd waded through an awful, chaotic, divisive national convention that included a riot in a nearby park that included tear gas and hundreds of arrests; a party hack at the front podium accusing the police of "Gestapo tactics" in the streets; and a 'no decision' on whether or not to support the withdrawal from a war that had already cost the nation more than 25,000 lives. In other words, a complete mess.

Humphrey, then the Vice-President, received a nomination more of less by default, since President Lyndon Johnson, who had supposedly withdrawn from running for another term that past March 31, had seriously considered changing his mind, swooping into the convention, and reclaiming the front-runner status. His control of the Democratic Party was that pervasive. He could still hover anywhere he wanted to.

Humphrey didn't even have the overall support of his own party back then. He began the campaign a full 16 points behind Richard Nixon, who was about to undermine Humphrey with secret negotiations with North Vietnam so he could take credit for getting the country out of the war--not Johnson, who tried a bombing halt just days before the election. North Vietnam didn't engage in progressing negotiations, choosing to wait until Nixon, hopefully, took office.

In the meantime, Humphrey's emphasis on the "joy" of politics and campaigning helped bring him closer and closer to Nixon, who sat on his lead the rest of the way. As we know, Humphrey just about caught him, coming within half a percentage point. He failed, though, partly because of George Wallace's independent candidacy, which freed six southern states from their traditional Democratic mooring.

All that looks to insert itself into this campaign, only two months from concluding now. Ex- will look to unravel that tonight at the debate--if that's what you want to call it.

Because he won't be debating. He'll be destroying, ruining, catastrophizing. His exaggerations and lies will stand on their own. Many on the other side can't wait to hear them--again. They've long ago succumbed to being misled. They've already disdained the possibility that America can find a better place in the world without him running it. Harris may try her best to discount his endless nonsense, but will only partly succeed.

The country that he wants you to conclude is genuine is false and wrong and hopeless. And yes, it can become that way--if he's allowed to be at the top of the decision chain for another four years. It would get there in a hurry now, because he can't wait to get back at those who have written and spoken against him, and he knows something about the mechanics of doing so. He would also hire sycophants who are slavishly loyal and pliant to his every wish.

If Harris' "joy" survives tonight in any form, she will win and perhaps even pull away. But he is frighteningly persuasive. His very presence overwhelms some people despite the phoniness. Force and power are all he knows--but they work.

We stand at that brink. I wish the country well.

You, too. Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Debates Sound So Good Now. But.

I had this thought the other day, which was absolutely delicious. Then I had the next thought. Which wasn't. Wonder if you have, too.

Kamala Harris now has the Democratic presidential nomination sewed up, days after Joe Biden got out of the race pretty much the way he got us out of Afghanistan--Okay, we're done here. The Democrats also pulled off a refreshingly united, seamless convention in codifying the unification of their efforts. 

If you're like me, you're looking forward to having her take on ex- in a debate, which is happening on Sept. 10. Kind of licking our chops, actually.

I can think of a bunch of reasons, too: Because Harris chooses to use the brain her parents gave her; because she's not nearly as likely to freeze up when ex- says something incredibly untrue or incredibly stupid; and because she'll put the best foot forward when explaining the successes of the Biden Administration, which the president so strangely failed to do in the last, disastrous debate.

The mistake you might be making--and I can't blame you for doing so--would be to put a great deal of weight on the results: First, because regardless of the lies that ex- will be mouthing, people continue to believe them as well as reject any factual information that Harris will put forward; second, he's at his best when deeply, ridiculously insulting someone; and third, you have to admit that he's getting pretty good at upfront non-answers, avoiding any responsibility when he can possibly do so.

The momentum has shifted, though. A surge seems on. The Democratic deep dive in the polls has stopped, and Harris has regained some of the losses Biden absorbed. All that does is assure that the election will be a photo finish at best, and once again, a few thousand votes in a few states will decide whether we go on in some degree of gridlock, forcing compromise, or descend to mindless, devastating, undemocratic authoritarianism.

Ex- can read, so he knows that debates, which he figured to avoid, must be taken on. Harris might do well. She might stumble. Ex- will try to undo her, to frazzle her, to discombobulate her. I doubt that he will succeed, but the total effect he leaves has to be to diminish her in some way, to get the public to conclude that having the first woman president will make the country weaker. But the total effect will be unknown until they finish and wags like me prattle on. 

The election seems hers to lose now, though, and her demeanor seems very fit to face down this awful person. She must come through. One of the results of the debacle of the earlier debate was that Biden's performance was so disturbing that it distracted from how awful ex- actually was himself. He has feasted on withdrawal from reality, counting on enough of the country to bask in it so he needn't face any of it; recall how often he spoke facing the floor. It is he who is dangerous, not Harris. If Harris can show that, she may run away with the whole deal. At bottom, she must avoid appearances of intimidation.

I can't help but remember, though, during my first few days in Texas in 2014, the gubernatorial debate between Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis, which stands as a template to consider the effectiveness of any debate between any two people. Abbott was riding a huge lead, and Davis was hoping to cut into it. By any stretch of logical deduction, she buried him with facts and fresh approaches to problems that had been plaguing Texans for decades. Much of what he did was shrug and go aw-shucks, diverting and ducking any problems that Republicans had been responsible for.

Anyone with a brain walked away from that display with nothing but respect for Davis' strong delivery on things like women's rights and tax fairness: Not only what she did but the way she did it. I couldn't help but think that, with this show of competence against Abbott's show of wishy-washy blather and constant inclination toward avoidance, she had to start cutting into his lead.

Didn't work. Not even close. I looked it up again. She lost by 21 points. Didn't even get to 40 percent. Abbott, as we so sadly know, went on to do things like send thousands of undocumented immigrants to so-called "sanctuary cities," to show everyone what a challenge dealing with such people can be. He signed a bill, too, limiting Texas abortion rights to a minuscule, nearly impossible, token degree.

So there is no assurance that, when ex- takes on Harris, the results will make any sense at all. (Look at the last unexpected result.) But you never know. That was ten years ago, and Texas is Texas. You would like to think, though, that Harris will leave folks with a better impression than President Biden did.

Ex- also keeps giving Harris plenty of new ammunition, what with his ridiculous, strange, and totally false assumption that the Black part of Harris' race has somehow been kept in hiding until recently. That message, says more than one commentator, is for sharpening the support of his pliant MAGA backers, who believe and accept anything that comes out of his pathetic mouth.

The debate would, in the end, be significant for those last five percent who are still unsure of what to do. (I find that remarkable, but maybe they're smarter than the rest of us.) As usual, they will decide the election, either by throwing up their hands, holding their noses and choosing at the last minute, or by staying home and letting someone else do it for them--definitely the wrong move. That not nearly enough of us spend not nearly enough time reading and talking about this devastatingly big choice--which takes, in its essence, so little time but means so much for so long--is enough of an abrogation of political responsibilities for the maintenance of our republic. The tokenism of it all is sometimes awful to consider.

But here we are. Again. In about 73 days now, a good and worn down man will be replaced by either someone who wants to take democracy somewhere new, or a bad and worn down man who wants to take democracy, flush it down the toilet (along with some important government papers, but I digress) and replace it with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for illiberalism. Maybe debates will allow that to emerge as a realization. It could actually save us from ourselves for another four years.

Let us hope. Here we go.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

I Met Pete Buttigieg. Here Are My Impressions.

I was once in a position to meet important national politicians, so I wasn't at all nervous to step up and talk to Pete Buttigieg. Once I spotted him, I was looking forward to it.

Senator Tammy Baldwin held her 12th annual barbecue just outside of Stoughton, which is a little bit southeast of Madison, last Sunday. The crowd was nearly overflowing and charged with enthusiasm--not only, I would guess, from the sudden and inspiring emergence of Kamala Harris as a real threat to stop ex- from the White House, but also because Baldwin's campaign opponent, Eric Hovde, a superficial and phony impostor with vague notions that remind me of Ron Johnson (who has never stopped being a bloviating phony), has run a slick, attractive media campaign with $14M in self-funding (so far) because he's a bored billionaire. It has made the race tight as a tick, which shouldn't be--Baldwin has been a hard-working, genuine legislator focused on what she can do for the state and not at all anything connected with ego. 

Hovde is running on nothing but ego, with little demonstrable knowledge of Wisconsin's challenges, throwing whatever mud he can at Baldwin's connections with what was once a struggling Biden ticket. It remains to be seen whether Baldwin can refocus the state's attention to her genuine, lasting accomplishments for Wisconsin and the country in these last 75 days; I certainly hope so. If Harris keeps surging, she might grow coattails. Baldwin's reserved, humble manner should still fit well within Wisconsin, but plenty of money semi-legitimizes plenty of nonsense, sad to say. 

This race looks to be cliff-hanger. I had to show my support. A 90-minute drive didn't seem excessive to do that. I arrived fashionably late and walked into a cabin teeming with energetic Democrats.

The buffet serving line at The Fields Reserve wasn't moving very fast, which was annoying until I took a closer look. Moving successively down the long row and pressing the flesh, as he was brought out to Wisconsin to do, was our Secretary of Transportation and his husband, Chasten. Of course, everyone took a few moments to say hello and kibitz. It owes to Buttigieg's natural, very real friendliness and down-home kind of charisma that it all took so long.

So I had a moment to prepare what I was going to say. It came simply, because I meant it: "I'm glad you're here."

Buttigieg looked me right in the eye: "So am I." He seemed to mean it, too. And his grin wins you over instantly.

He is disarmingly small. He can't be 5-9 (Take a good look at the holy picture I finagled on my Facebook site.). I thought of him as taller. But that made some sense: Buttigieg's public stature, earned by countless appearances, especially the daring ones of earned media on Fox News, which have no doubt helped keep Democrats and the Biden Administration real and grounded in fact, have already given him something of a larger-than-life presence. 

But that disappeared instantly with me. I liked him immediately. He struck me as having few pretenses--an extremely valuable benefit for someone who might still be seeking more national attention.

I was also impressed that he brought Chasten. Pols don't normally do that unless they are also running for office. Then it struck me: Maybe he is, in 2028. He tried a presidential run in 2020 and came up short. But, as a well-spoken union pol was accustomed to pointing out, politics is the land of ten thousand tomorrows. Harris' election might result in his continuance as Transportation Secretary, but might also open more doors for juicier, more noticeable spots, like national security advisor, say. Right now, though, Buttigieg can utilize his Cabinet position to remain relevant to public conversations. Because his position is more publicly noticeable because he presents so well, he can have it both ways for another few months.

Regardless of how this presidential campaign turns out, four more years of seasoning will only help him. Perhaps it will put more grey hairs on him, which wouldn't hurt: His looks are still, dark beard notwithstanding, breathtakingly boyish. He's incredibly smart and quick on his feet--use You Tube and review the interview he did with Stephen Colbert Wednesday night--but he also looks like he might have just cut your lawn. It comes off as almost too modest. But his talents win out; he can't help it.

On the stump, Buttigieg doesn't bellow. He rarely raises his voice beyond a few decibels. He does that for emphasis, not intimidation and certainly not as a self-serving demagogue. He tries hard to be as matter-of-fact as possible. It is a clear, unwavering voice that is as reassuring as the facts he brings to you. That he stays in that lane, exaggerating almost nothing, establishes that one factor that people want and need in their politicians: trust. Say what you want about Mayor Pete, he won't fill your head with nonsense. He doesn't have to. He has his finger on enough simple truth to carry the day.

Will Buttigieg be president someday? It feels like he still wants to be and wants to try again. We know the hurdle he must climb, so he may never get there. A multi-racial woman overcoming a traditionally white male bastion, though--granted, an awful example of it--in November might edge that door open and leave accessibility available to those of other minorities. A Kamala Harris victory might do even more than save our democracy; it may also change the presidential paradigm.

I look forward to watching his progress through our often chaotic political system. That Buttigieg has gotten this far so soon indicates that others have noticed his obvious talents and are comfortable at the way he has handled the attention. Where all this goes from here is anyone's guess. But a disappearing act, at least not right now, is not in the cards.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Only One of Them Sang

I wonder if anyone else noticed.

The Olympics is, somewhat sadly, about patriotism as much as about the world-class competition, which once again had breathtaking moments over 16 days. If that isn't true, then why do nearly all of the gold medal winners sing the words to their countries' anthems when they are being played in celebration of their victories?

Nearly. Not all. And I couldn't help but think about the U.S. men's basketball team, all NBA players, as they observed their own hard-earned gold medal last Saturday.

Twelve of them stood there, initially locking arms as they stepped up to their top podium. The Dream Team Avenged, they had struggled to put away the two other medal-winning teams, Serbia and France, in their last two games. Basketball, once an overwhelmingly American-dominated sport, has now become a world display of skill and talent. That world has caught up. This may be the last of America's latest streak of gold medals for some time.

Maybe it was that realization that evoked more relief than elation with them. Perhaps some journalism ex post facto will reveal that. But pure joy it could not have been.

The big names in U.S. basketball were there: LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant. The whole was so much better than all the parts that players like Jayson Tatum, an NBA All-Star if there ever was one, barely got a chance to play. And all three of those above mentioned players stepped up when the pressure was greatest. They made great plays and timely baskets.

Thing is, they had to. France and Serbia did not go gladly into their nights. A rim-out here, a bad bounce there, might have led to a significant U.S. embarrassment. After all, these were the best players in the sport's best country. Right?

But the NBA has globalized, too. Some of its very great, or soon to become very great, players--Nikola Jokic, who has entered the conversation as the world's best player; and Victor Wembanyama, the upside to whom isn't even close yet, which makes him really, really scary and who will likely make Jokic's reign of greatness seem puny in comparison--are from elsewhere in the world. They play in the NBA, but are nowhere near as intimidated or humbled by what they face in the States. Rather the other way around.

James, Curry, and Durant are in all likelihood through with Olympic basketball (though with LeBron, you never know; at 39, he still defies age). At least, we will not see the combination of them ever again. It all felt like a page was turning. Maybe they felt it, too.

So when the Star-Spangled Banner played in Paris' basketball stadium to celebrate the 39th of America's 40 gold medals, I thought it odd that only Steph Curry sang the words.

That's it. Only him. The camera scanned the group. All the other players stood respectfully, but none of the others sang. In fact, they didn't even smile.

You can't help but think that the fact that all of them were black must have had something to do with it.

And this: LeBron went out of his way to say, in his post-game interview, that America had a lot wrong with it right now and at least it could forget about all that for a few days and unite behind this great team.

It was like, in its own way, a challenge: Okay, you wanted us to do this and we did it. What are you going to do now?

To which some of us might respond: Hey, every last one of you has more money than God, with your gushing NBA contracts, which don't even require that you play in all your scheduled games. Now you have gold medals, too. You are the pinnacle of black success in a country which has denied it to others who also have deserved it for centuries. And you want something else? Where do you get off?

What they want cannot happen, or won't for more decades: Acceptance of genuine equality. Blindness when it comes to noticing race. Respect for thinking that might not dovetail with whites. Maybe some of that washed up into standing (mostly) silent for the Star-Spangled Banner; maybe it was a statement of dominance in one of the few categories where it can be shown and demonstrated. Tough to say. I hope some of them reveal their thoughts.

Admit it, though: Had the men's basketball team not won the gold medal, the whole U.S. Olympic effort might easily have been written off as a partial failure. It took twelve talented black men to temporarily combine their efforts and emerge victorious against the rest of the world that's certainly gotten a lot better.

They did it again: They bailed us out again. Just like blacks showing up at the polls will be vital in battleground states to bail us out against a terrible threat to democracy that will turn our lives inside out should he still rally and win. They saved Joe Biden. Will they save us through Kamala Harris?

We don't make nearly enough of that. Either. Way-way overdue.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark