Steven Rubio's Online Life

fun with numbers

Look at this list of numbers: 136, 94, 97, 84, 86, 73.

Here’s one that’s even more consistent in its way: .510, .444, .437, .420, .394, .384.

This one’s a bit more herky-jerky: .383, .290, .332, .294, .319, .280.

And finally, a last list that goes in the opposite direction: 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37.

Now, imagine that it’s your job to figure out what the next number will be in the above lists. The last one is the easiest … odds are, even without knowing what the numbers represent, that we can guess 38 with confidence. Again, context matters, so we’re just guessing here, but for the top list I’d guess somewhere between 60-75. For the second list, .360-.390. For the third, .270-.300. I’m sure to be wrong here, but I’m willing to claim that I won’t be very far off. The first three lists are of numbers that are all becoming gradually smaller, the last list is of numbers that are getting larger by 1 each time.

These numbers are the OPS+, SLG, OBP, and Age for Ivan Rodriguez over the past six years. Longtime readers will have an easy time figuring out what comes next: there is a rumor that the Giants are thinking of signing Pudge to a one-year deal. He’s getting worse every year, he’s well-past his sell-by date, he doesn’t get on base, he plays a position where the team already has a young guy in waiting … he’s the perfect Sabean pick. (It must be noted that these rumors don’t often pan out.)

Since the Giants moved west in 1958, there have been nine catchers who managed to play at least 81 games in their “age 38” season. There are some very good players on that list (Carlton Fisk and Gary Carter, to name two) … you have to be good to still play half your team’s games at C when you are 38. Do you know how many of those nine players managed an OPS+ of 100 or better when they were 38? None. You know how many had an OPS+ of 75 or lower? Five. The best season any of them had was Gregg Zaun last year (OPS+ 97), with the Giants’ own Benito Santiago second at 96. There is no one else in the 90s. Those great catchers I mentioned earlier? Gary Carter hit .218 when he was 38, Carlton Fisk hit .221. Elston Howard, a pretty good player in his day as well, posted an OPS+ of 42 when he was 38.

Do you think Ivan Rodriguez, clearly declining with age, is likely to somehow jump above every player on that list of nine, to become the first player since 1958 to catch half his team’s games while providing league-average offense? The most similar player to Pudge-at-37, according to Baseball-Reference.com, is Ryne Sandberg, a Hall-of-Famer who didn’t have 2288 games squatting behind the plate to slow him down. What did he do at age 38? Whatever it was, it wasn’t playing baseball … Ryno retired.

I sure hope Rodriguez’ defense balances out his offense. Oh, let’s be honest: I sure hope Rodriguez is nowhere near a Giants’ uniform in 2010. The best possible conclusion to this blog post would be that it became irrelevant because Brian Sabean saw the light.

ode to stupak-pitts

Joss Whedon somehow managed to get Dollhouse on Fox. Then Fox screwed with it, and for whatever reason, lack of power, willingness to compromise, whatever, Joss did what he could and kept at it. The show was always flawed, but the changes made it worse. By the time Whedon was given (or took) more control of the series, the damage was done … no one watched, the key episode that marked the transition from a mess to something interesting was buried on the DVD, and now the show is cancelled.

A hodgepodge that started slowly, fell apart due to compromises, and ultimately failed. We can question whether the series was ever going to be a hit … Whedon is rich in cultural cache, but his last two series have flopped, and even Buffy/Angel were cult faves, not top-of-the-chart hits. (His primary recent success was the left-field Dr. Horrible, which was pretty much compromise-free.) But I think it is safe to say that if Joss had managed to get his original vision, as advanced by the “extra” Season One episode and much of Season Two thus far, on without compromises, we might have a different story. Now we’ll never know.

When we make large compromises, we may end up with something that barely resembles our first ideas. And those compromises still don’t necessarily guarantee success.

i read the news today, oh boy

Jonathan Bernstein:

Liberals have expressed a lot of frustration about which policy positions are considered mainstream, and which are considered liberal, radical left, conservative, and far conservative. Liberals -- I'm not going to look for a citation here, but anyone who reads liberal blogs will recognize this -- believe that conservatives have succeeded in moving the "center" well to the right over the last couple of decades, mainly through pure bullying tactics.

I don’t think of this as a liberal blog, but I have definitely expressed the frustration Jonathan refers to here. But I don’t think of it as “conservatives moving the center,” or even that they are bullies. I will say this: in my memories, which have every possibility of being tinted with the crap of nostalgia, “liberals” and “Democrats” were similar the way “conservatives” and “Republicans” are similar. These days, too often, I see the debate framed as being fought by liberals, Democrats, and conservative Republicans. Liberals are being defined right out of the party that I’ve always assumed was their home. What was once a national discussion between the moderate left and the moderate right becomes, in the absence of those increasingly-ignored liberals, a national discussion between the center and the right. When that happens, the “center,” that point midway between the most common ways of approaching a problem, has itself moved to the right. And I think some of the frustration Jonathan identifies comes from the realization by liberals that it’s not just the right wing that is opposing them, but what they thought of as their own party … not exactly opposing them, but ignoring them, which can be just as lethal.

mad men, season three finale

And so ends another season of the reigning holder of the Best Show on Television crown. For a show that is usually so dark, and for an episode that featured the end (finally) of the dream marriage of Don and Betty, this was surely the first episode ever of Mad Men to make the audience cheer with delight. My friend Shelley nailed it when she said there was a “Let’s put on a show!” element to the shenanigans. So much positive energy put to use in an attempt to … what? The temptation is to say Mad Men has taken three seasons to put us right back where it started. But that wouldn’t come close to what’s really happened.

Yes, Mad Men will continue to be about a group of interesting characters working at an ad agency. But look how far these characters have come. Don has lost a wife, but (perhaps … one never knows with Don) he has gained a different kind of family. If you believe the things he told his future co-workers, he finally sees them not just as an extension of himself, there to do his bidding, but also as individuals with unique attributes they bring to the table. And each of them, in turn, demands Don’s recognition of their talents before they climb on board. Roger waits for Don to say he values what Roger brings to the company … Peggy waits to be treated like Peggy instead of like a pet dog … Pete waits for Don to admit the various things Pete actually does well … and then, in the most anticipated yet obvious move of them all, Roger makes the one phone call that will give the new business a chance to survive: enter Queen Joan, right on cue.

The main character who loses the most, I would argue, is Betty. I’ve always identified more with Betty than with any other character on the show … her low-grade neurosis, her sense that something about her perfect life isn’t quite right, her realization that she has given up a lot of what makes her who she is just to be a part of a fairytale that won’t ever come true. But in the end, she makes less progress than anyone. Yes, she finally leaves Don, but only to find herself with another man. My guess is, he’ll be a kinder and gentler version of Don, and Betty will continue to be mildly depressed without knowing why. Meanwhile, the women in the work force are blossoming: Peggy is inching her way towards something resembling equal status to the men who do the same job, and Joan’s skills are finally recognized for the vitally important necessities they are. In the past, when Joan has shown the ability to work above her station, no one notices … as soon as her job is done, she becomes invisible again (if Christina Hendricks could ever be invisible, which she can’t, god bless her). Now? Joan may not get promoted, may not get a new title … she may just go back to being the office manager. But we get the feeling Office Manager (caps intended) is going to be taken more seriously now. The company can’t exist without her, and everyone knows it.

The result is that Mad Men, which has always paid plenty of attention to the role of women in the time period of the series, finds new and heartening ways to show how women can advance, but those women are leaving the Bettys of the world behind. Being a wife and mother just doesn’t get it in the Mad Men universe, where people are largely defined by their jobs and wife/mother isn’t considered “real” work. It’s entirely possible we won’t see much of January Jones in the future … Betty isn’t as necessary as she used to be … whereas Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (and the series itself) finds a way to bring Joan back into the fold.

No matter how much depth Mad Men offers, no matter how detailed the recreation of the past, no matter how many fine actors work their way through fascinating characters, ultimately, Mad Men is about Don Draper/Dick Whitman. In the season finale, we saw Don at his most vile, calling his wife the worst word he knows, “whore.” We also saw Don rejuvenated, and (although, again, time will tell how real this is) we saw a Don who might finally be connecting with other people on something other than his own terms. The smile on his face as he watched the crew work in the hotel room … how often have we seen Don smile like that? I doubt Season Four will be Mad Men, the Fun Years. There is still plenty of darkness down the road, I am sure. But the people who confront that darkness … Don and Roger and Bert and Lane, Peggy and Joan and Trudy (the one wife who seems to have found a way to fit into her husband’s work world, unlike Betty), Pete and (hopefully, although he’s not back yet) Sal … these people are not the same people we met in the first episode of the first season. I can’t wait to see what they’ll be up to next.

Grade for season finale: A+

Grade for Season Three: A

i read the news today, oh boy

Andrew Leonard:

Obama is not Roosevelt in part because, well, he's not Roosevelt, but also because the times (in addition to the Senate) will not let him be Roosevelt.

what i watched last week

The Road Warrior. Yes, there is some silliness … if in the future, gasoline is so precious, why do the bad guys waste fuel driving around in circles acting scary? So what. The final chase scene is unmatched in film history, taking The General and Stagecoach into the future and cranking up the pyrotechnics so that, even though I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen times, I still grip my chair anxiously. The movie is best at providing thrills; if it took Joseph Campbell to give George Miller his vision, that’s fine with me, but really, it’s all about the action. Still, the archetypical characters suck us in … that hardly any of them actually speak only adds to the feeling that they’ve been dredged up from our common visions of hell. It’s a rare movie that can overcome its own pretensions and win us over because of the masterful use of space, editing, camera work, and iconic characters. Even Brian May’s “I Am the Max Steiner of the Future” soundtrack works. Max is a hero for his time, which is to say he is no hero at all … despite the film’s attempt to present his story as one of growth, there is no evidence that he is any different at the end than he was in the beginning. As he says, he doesn’t have a choice when he drives the tanker … he hasn’t decided to be good, he’s just out of wheels. This film is the standard by which all such action movies are judged, and you can’t blame Miller that almost every attempt to duplicate its success was crap (well, OK, you can blame Miller for Mad Max 3). #391 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time. 10/10.

The Brothers Bloom. I think this movie, in the con-artist genre, has something it wants to say about something. Or maybe it’s just a con. Entertaining, good acting, confusing plot, and totally inconsequential, even if it is about something. Which is probably isn’t. 6/10.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. If these weekly posts are meant to highlight movies I’ve seen, then this probably doesn’t belong. It’s hard to say what it is: a movie, a special episode of a TV show, or what it really feels like, a compilation of deleted scenes. Not that the scenes are actually deleted … while The Plan uses footage from the series (the only chance we get to see Starbuck … Katee Sackhoff is otherwise MIA), there is plenty of new material. But none of it is essential … it’s about as valuable as the deleted scenes on a typical DVD. You learn a little more about a few characters, you find out that the infamous “Plan” wasn’t much more than One being petulant, you get to see a little bit of nudity (none from Six or Eight, for you fans of Tricia Helfer and Grace Park) that will be gone by the time this airs on Syfy … and you get something that will be completely incomprehensible to anyone who has never watched the series. The rest of us get a barely coherent hodgepodge of scenes, not without interest but not really a movie. 5/10.

fucking dickheads

Just when I thought I could retire the saying … to be honest, just when I was about to chew certain Democrats’ ass about abortion rights … I came across this, via Talking Points Memo: