Posts Tagged ‘new york city’

2025: The Hal Chase Election

Posted: November 5, 2025 by datechguy in baseball, elections, elections, politics
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“First we must cross the river,” Benito was saying.  “Do you believe me now when I tell you that you must not attempt to swim it, or even get wet from it, or must you try that too?”

“What happens if I just dive in?”

“Then you will be as you were in the bottle.  Aware and unable to move.  but it will be very cold, and very uncomfortable, and you will be there for all eternity knowing that you put yourself there.”

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle Inferno 1976

Looking at the results of last nights elections in VA & NJ and particularly NYC two truths are apparent.

The first was expressed at Instapundit last night from Stacy Campfield a former state rep from Tennessee:

“Republicans can’t be surprised that they aren’t winning races in places that they are also leaving in droves.”

Before I list the 2nd and more important quote you need some background:

The quote comes from the SABR site, a baseball analytics group which reprinted a piece about first baseman Hal Chase by Jacob Pomrenke about Hal Chase, a first baseman who played from 1905 to 1919.

Chase was universally considered the best defensive first baseman anyone to that time had ever seen. Both Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson named him the best first baseman of all time.

But Chase was also known from the very start of his career as a man who fixed games. For years in every city where he played allegations had been out there that he threw games or arranged them to be thrown. Allegations that he loudly denied. Then in 1916 he joined the Cincinnati Reds managed by Christy Matterson the great pitcher considered one of the gentleman of baseball. A man so honest that umpires would consult him on close calls. Matterson suspended Chase for trying to bribe players to fix games, as Pomrenke noted:

The suspension by Mathewson was the first time any baseball official had seriously punished Chase for his transgressions. As usual, it didn’t stick. NL president John Heydler reluctantly exonerated Chase after Mathewson joined the military and could not testify against Chase while serving overseas.

Chase would go on to have a part in the fixing of the 1919 World Series. When He heard about this Mathewson said the quote I find relevant to this election:

 “Damn them, [baseball officials] deserve it. They whitewashed two players after I caught them with the goods.” 

The swearing was VERY out of character for Christy Mathewson but he was pissed.

And that brings us to the night after the 2025 elections in California, Virginia, New Jersey and New York:

In California I didn’t expect better after all this is the man the state keeps backing:

In New Jersey the Democrat running for Governor was involved in a scandal concerning her time at the Navel Academy. It didn’t matter, the state that Trump lost by only 5 points elected her by 13 points.

In Virginia not only did Abagail (duck and run) Springer win by double digits but the man made famous for wanting GOP kids dead won by over six points.

But the real thing is New York City:

You have a open socialist, an open communist, an open antisemite. A person whose opinion on all these things have been well documents and are even available in his own words online for years. A rich kid who never did or ran anything in his life and he not only won the election in NYC but he took over 50% of the vote in a three way race.

What’s the bottom line? Just this: In all of these elections particularly in NYC people in their respective states KNEW who and what these people were and what they supported and STILL not only voted for them, but voted for them overwhelmingly winning margins, with apologies to Sarah Hoyt, well beyond the margin of fraud.

Now it’s very possible that this might hurt the Democrats nationally in states where people have not gone insane as Scott Jennings notes:

I think we’re at the point where we have to stop pretending that Democrat voters don’t understand what Communism is, or antisemitism is or violence is or corruption is. I think we have to stop pretending that they are being decieved.

This is what the Democrat/left is. This is what they believe in and what they support this is the government that they want and by golly they’re going to get the government they deserve.

The only question left in my mind is will they be surprised when they get it?

If the White Sox move to Nashville, I might already be there to welcome them–with updates

Posted: August 27, 2023 by John Ruberry in baseball, crime, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

For the second straight post at Da Tech Guy, I’m writing about crime in Chicago.

Outside of the Oakland Athletics, who are on pace to lose over 110 games and may be headed to Las Vegas next season, no MLB team has had a worse season than the Chicago White Sox. 

Predicted to finish around the .500 mark–which is where they finished up, exactly, in 2022–the South Siders never recovered from an April 10-game losing streak. 

The Sox on are pace to lose 100 game this year, which is how many they lost in 2018. That season, the White Sox unloaded several veteran players, kicking off a rebuild project with the goal of bringing the World Series championship back to the South Side for the first time since 2005. That rebuild brought the Sox to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they won only two playoff games–losing five.

Another teardown occurred this July, the White Sox are in rebuild mode again.

August has been even worse for the Sox. Longtime team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, known to be loyal to a fault with the front office staff of the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls–Reinsdorf owns that team too–uncharacteristically fired the top two men in the White Sox front office, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams. A couple of days later, news broke that the White Sox, a charter member of the American League, might move out of its current stadium, the state-owned Guaranteed Rate Field, its home since 1991, to elsewhere in Chicago, or perhaps to the suburbs or even Nashville. The Sox have six years left on their lease at Guaranteed Rate Field. 

On Friday night, in a game where the Sox were punished 12-4 against those otherwise awful Athletics, a female fan in the left field bleachers was shot in the abdomen, another woman was grazed by a bullet. 

A move to the suburbs–perhaps joining the Chicago Bears in Arlington Heights–or to Tennessee, probably is more attractive now more than ever for Reinsdorf.

The woman who was shot Friday night is in fair condition, the fan who was grazed by the bullet declined medical care.

According to the quite reliable CWB Chicago, police officials are exploring the possibility that the bullet that wounded the woman may have been fired from a mile away. A gunshot detection system detected gunfire a mile southeast of Guaranteed Rate Field–in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The White Sox and the CPD, in several statements, have said that the shooting was not part of any altercation inside the ballpark.

If CWB Chicago is correct, the Sox and the city of Chicago still have a big problem. And there is an historic precedent that bodes poorly for professional baseball on Chicago’s South Side.

The rise in criminality since 2020 has been the dominant news story in Chicago, despite subtle attempts by the mainstream media to minimize it. Headlines routinely speak of people “injured” in shootings, rather than using the correct verb, which is “wounded.” The first Chicago Police Department statement on the Guaranteed Rate gunshots spoke of a “shooting incident,” rather than a “shooting.”

Another MLB “shooting incident,” actually a homicide, took place during batting practice before a July 4 doubleheader between the host New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds–in the Coogan’s Bluff area of upper Manhattan in 1950. The post World War II decline of New York was underway, although the city was years away from bottoming out. The way NYC’s fictional doppelganger, Gotham City, was portrayed in the Joker movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what New York was destined to become.

A teenager, in a twisted way to celebrate the Fourth of July, fired a gun from the roof of an apartment building a half-mile away from the Polo Grounds. A fan sitting in the upper deck, Bernard “Barney” Doyle, was instantly killed by the stray bullet. A horrifying photograph of Doyle slumped over, dead of course, was on the front page of the New York Daily News the next day. That pic probably gave New Yorkers nightmares for years.

The Giants struggled at the gate in the 1950s. Despite winning the World Series in 1954, only 1.1 million fans crossed the Polo Grounds turnstiles that season. In their last two seasons at the Polo Grounds, only the pathetic Washington Senator’s had worse attendance. City Journal’s Clark Whelton, writing about the Doyle killing in 2018, claims the crime was “quickly forgotten.” I’m not so sure. But Whelton did add of the team’s owner, Horace Stoneham, that he was “said to have brooded for years about Doyle’s strange demise and the run-down buildings on Coogan’s Bluff.”

In 1958, the Giants and Dodgers abandoned New York for California. When they arrived, there were plenty of Giants and Dodgers fans who had moved out to the Golden State before them.

As our day jobs wind down, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I are eyeing our exit from crime-ridden, crumbling, corrupt, and tax-greedy Illinois. Tennesse is at the top of our list for our next, and likely last, home. Both of us watched Joker for the first time this month. We compared Gotham City to today’s Chicago.

Why should we stay here?

Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Tennessee residents, were there to welcome the White Sox to Nashville?

UPDATE August 28, 2023, 7:15pm EDT:

Thank you to Dan Proft of WIND-AM Chicago. He, along with Amy Jacobson, co-host Chicago’s Morning Answer–a show I Iisten to, either over the air, or by way of the podcast, nearly every weekday–for mentioning this post on the air today. Look for Proft’s take around the 9 minute mark.

Also, here’s an update, and I have a strong feeling there will be more than one for this blog entry. Chicago’s interim police superintendant, Fred Waller, in a press conference this afternoon, discussed what his public affairs callously called a “a shooting incident” on Friday night. It was a shooting. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said. As for where the bullets originated, he added that “coming from outside [Guaranteed Rate Field] is something we’ve almost completely dispelled.”

Still, fans who have bought tickets to a Sox game, or are considering doing so, probably have a lot on their minds now, to say the least.

UPDATE August 29, 2023 4:20pm EDT:

This story keeps getting stranger. There was online chatter that one of the women who was shot had sneaked the gun inside Guaranteed Rate Field beneath her belly rolls. I mean, what kind of people make up stuff like that?

Well, they may not have to do so.

Here’s what longtime Chicago sports reporter, Peggy Kusinski just tweeted:

“As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.”

ESPN 1000 AM is the White Sox flagship radio station. It’s a credible source and Kusinski is a solid journalist.

If true, this news is a black mark for the White Sox fan base. What type of person brings a handgun to a baseball game? On the other hand, after the game, in a heavily hyped promotion, Vanilla Ice was to be the headliner of a “90s Night” concert. Were the women there for the Sox-Athletics game or for the postgame show? The White Sox cancelled the gig due to what they called “technical difficulties.” They lied. Shame on the White Sox. Police officers wanted to keep stadium lights on to look for evidence.

And how does a gun detection system miss a firearm hidden in belly rolls?

And what about the Chicago Police Department? Interim superintendent Waller said in a Monday press conference, “At one point in time it was requested as a precaution” to cancel the game. But the game played on. Who made that call to continue? The White Sox? The police? Mayor Brandon Johnson? The women who were shot are said to be teachers. Johnson is a product of the Chicago Teachers Union, for whom he was a longtime organizer, and Johnson is a former CPS teacher. Johnson’s political career is a creation of the CTU.

Without a doubt, I’ll have at least one more update.

Update August 29, 2023, 9:15pm EDT:

Second City Cop is hinting about the “graze wound” woman, that the injury may have been a power burn, is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.

UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?

UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?

John Ruberry, a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan, blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Bud Light, CMT boycotts betray a New York problem

Posted: July 23, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Another company, this time the CMT Network, finds itself in trouble by angering its base by going woke. Now both are facing boycotts. The Bud Light one has been devastating for what until recently was America’s best-selling beer.

Last week, CMT, whose core audience comprises of country music listeners, pulled the video for Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” The song, which was released in May with no controversy, decries the pro-criminal sentiments celebrated in big cities, like New York City, where CMT is headquartered, and it shows BLM and Antifa riot news clips as Aldean croons.

That was too much for CMT. 

Country music fans lean right. I am one of them, although I favor the Americana genre over mainstream country. Country listeners are likely to be the men and women who repair your car, service your air conditioner, or build your home. They may not have Ivy League degrees like Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, the on-leave Alissa Heinerscheid, but these “deplorables” are not dopes. And they aren’t Manhattan-style know-it-alls. 

I imagine, until the Heinerschied-led marketing debacle with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, many country music fans drank Bud Light. 

As of this writing on the evening of July 23, Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is the number one song on iTunes and it has been viewed 15 million times on YouTube. 

For Friday’s CMT Music 12 Pack Countdown, Aldean’s massive hit was not among the dozens of songs nominated for the final cut. 

Clearly, CMT is as out of touch with its consumers as much as Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light are.

CMT has Nashville offices but as I mentioned earlier, it is based in New York. Anheuser-Busch has its headquarters where it was founded 171 years ago, in St. Louis, although it is now owned by Belgian firm InBev. 

But Anheueser-Busch’s marketing offices are in Manhattan, where Heinersheid lives.

Would things be different now for Anheuser-Busch if Heinerscheid and her marketing geniuses were instead based in St. Louis? And while no one is coming forward from CMT claiming credit for pushing the “kill” button on Aldean’s video, my guess is that the decision came from someone at their New York headquarters. 

The anger that brought forth the Bud Light and CMT boycotts are byproducts of elites who are isolated from the consumers they are supposed to be experts on. 

Can these brilliant minds do their jobs from places like St. Louis? Nashville? Of course, they can. As they can in Cincinnati, Billings, and Oklahoma City. You know, medium-sized cities. To be sure, they’re not Aldean-favored small towns, but these other cities are filled with less sophisticated types than the “betters” that you find in New York City.

Oh, there are telephones, computer lines in those smaller cities. And there is this thing called Zoom.

However, Bud Light did farm out the Mulvaney campaign to an advertising agency thousands of miles from Manhattan.

It was to a firm based in suburban San Francisco.

John Ruberry, who regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit, was a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He’s pictured here at Penn Station (correction Grand Central Station) in New York.

The Big Apple

Posted: June 20, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

For the first time in about a decade, I visited New York City. It’s a mess!

Although the city still has many sterling attractions, including museums, music, and sporting events, the Big Apple has hit hard times.

It reminds me of the 1990s when crime soared, racial tensions affected daily life, and the subways became a haven for crime and chaos.

Just before I arrived in town last weekend, a 34-year-old man was murdered on a subway near Union Square. That’s where I used to teach in the 1990s. Just after I left, a man slashed the legs of people on an East Side subway. I had difficulty sleeping because of the constant peel of police sirens, even in a relatively quiet neighborhood.

I spent about a dozen years in New York living and working on the West Side, which is generally considered a bit hipper and younger than the stolid East Side, where I stayed this past week to meet an old friend near the United Nations.

What surprised me on the East Side, which is generally considered older and wealthier, is how many restaurants had died from COVID. Many eateries closed, including McNally’s, a hangout for fans of the Mets and Buffalo Bills. Ironically, the locale is being turned into a healthcare facility.

Homeless people slept in the middle of the day on sidewalks across from the United Nations. I don’t remember the homeless situation being that bad when I lived in the city. However, a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that homelessness had soared in recent months because of massive increases in rent throughout the country during COVID.

What really surprised me was the amount of dog poop on the sidewalks. Back in the day, I remember loud arguments if people left poop behind.

New York was never particularly friendly, but it seems even less friendly now than I recall. Almost no one makes eye contact or offers a hello or good morning. In a diner where my friend and I had breakfast, the waiter wore a face mask and seemed more interested in our finishing our food to seat another party than serving us.

When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he faced many of the same problems that exist today in the city. He focused much of his time on the “broken window” theory of fighting crime. This theory states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods target minor offenses such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking, jaywalking, and subway fare evasion help to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness. Giuliani’s adoption of the strategy made New York a better and safer place to live.

It may be too late for such an approach.

I realize many New Yorkers will find this post offensive, but I now understand why thousands of people have left the city to find kinder and quieter climates.

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