MLB 2023 - New Rules

A lot of new rules will be instituted for this year's baseball season. They are designed to speed up the game and give it more action. Some of them seem small but they may have bigger impact on the game than would seem. 

It is going to be a learning experience, not just for the players and the fans, but the umpires as well.  In addition to new rules, Major League Baseball has ten rookie umpires being promoted from the minors this year. The new rules have been used in the minor leagues already so this is a good thing. These young umpires already have experience with them. But they are still rookies and will probably make rookie mistakes. They were promoted because ten umpires have retired, including four crew chiefs. So that is 250 years of experience being replaced by zero years. Expects some fuck ups. 

In addition to on-field rules, we have a big change to schedules. The 2023 season introduces the balanced schedule. This means that every team will play every other team in the league, the first time this has happened since the two leagues merged in 1903. Each team will play their four division opponents 14 times instead of 19. They will play six games against teams in their own league, American and National leagues; one series at home and one away. Then play three games at each team in their opposing league, Interleague Play, alternating home and away each year. This means there is almost no difference between the two leagues now that the National League uses the Designated Hitter (DH), instituted last year. It seems the beauty of the World Series is more and more diminished each year. 

Here are the on field rule changes:

Pitch Clock

New Rule: The rule states that a pitcher must begin his motion before the expiration of the 15 second timer or 20 seconds with at least one runner on base. The pitcher can step off the rubber twice per batter, aka a disengagement, which resets the clock. If they go over the time, the batter gets a ball. If they step off the rubber a third time, it is considered a balk. The batter has to be in the batter's box with at least 8 seconds left on the clock. If they don't, they get a strike. They have one time out per at bat.

I'm looking forward to the first time ever, a batter gets struck out when the pitcher has only thrown two pitches. 

One of the conceits of baseball is that it has never had a clock like other sports. That era is over. The sport may be too slow for a younger crowd. This rule is a compressor ... to rid the game of all its down time. The average length of each game in the 2022 regular season was three hours and three minutes. The average Spring Training game this year was two hours and 38 minutes. Over 20 minutes have been shaved off.  

Since the pitchers are allowed two disengagements per batter, there should be more base stealing. A disengagement could be stepping off the pitching rubber or throwing to a base that has a runner on it.  In 2022, Jon Berti of the Marlins had the most stolen bases of the season with 41. This is not a lot. In 1986, Vince Coleman of the Cardinals had 107. I don't know if the new rule will put us back in that range, but it would be nice. Steals are a lot of fun. So far, teams seem to be running more. In two games, the Baltimore Orioles have stolen ten bases. 

Roger Clemens said he was wondering about leg strength. Those pitchers with the strongest legs will be able to recover the quickest. I hadn't thought of the clock causing more fatigue. We'll see. 

Larger Bases

New Rule: The actual size of first, second and third base are increasing from 15 inches to 18.  This decreases the distance between these bases by 4.5 inches. Home plate stays the same size so the distance between home and first/third is only reduced by 3 inches. 

Alex Cora calls them pizza boxes. This rule change was done to decrease the number of injuries from player colliding on the base path, but it should increase the amount of hits and stolen base attempts. A larger target to tag, with a slide or not, should mean more base running therefore more action. This should make the game much more interesting because the only thing that players on this level seem to be bad at is base running.  A lot of interesting scenarios should come from this. 

Stolen bases in Spring Training this year increased to 792. This is 492 more than last year. The larger bases and the clock had a lot to do with this. I love it. 

Defensive Shifts

New Rule: There must be four defensive players on the infield when the pitcher is on the rubber. There must be two players on the left of the second base and two on the right.

In recent years, this has been a real issue. Advanced stats are so good that teams can tell where a batter is going to hit, most of the time. Using this data, they have been able to design their defense around these stats. This has kept the action to a bare minimum making it a game of balls, strikes and homeruns. Batters have been trying to hit the ball out of the park because getting a single is so difficult. This change should increase the amount of singles, doubles and triples and decrease the homeruns. 

It should also make keeping track in your score book at home a lot more easier as well.

Position Players Being Used as Pitchers

New Rule: The position player can pitch but only under one of these three conditions: 1) if you are leading by ten or more runs and it is the ninth inning, 2) if you are losing by eight runs at any time or 3) the game is in extra innings

This shouldn't affect game play much. Teams have been putting position players on the mound too much lately. They do this to save their bullpen for another day that is more competitive. This can cause injuries due to players not being stretched out enough to be a pitcher. No big deal here. I don't think there were any rules about this in the past. 

So far the game play has been great. A few missteps have occurred but nothing worth complaining about. Play ball! 

My By Pass

Dear Blogosphere, 

For those of you who are worried about me because I haven't blogged in a few weeks ... and my last entry was about my heart attack and upcoming by pass ... ta-da ... I survived. Worry no more. 

My surgery was delayed about a week, rescheduled three times, but it eventually happened. The first two delays were because my blood being too thin for surgery. The last time it was delayed, one day more, due to another patient whose needs were more urgent than mine. I was bumped. I was in the hospital for 13 days waiting. It was like being in a hotel, if the staff came into your room several times a day to stab you. That is what it felt like. They drew my blood everyday. I had an IV attached to a pole and I took it with me around the room as well as when I walked laps with around the ward. I had an awful view from my room so I enjoyed walking down the hall to see the outside world. I am grateful for internet connection because the television was pretty bad; why watch a movie if every tenth word is bleeped and ever ten minutes it is interrupted with a commercial? I made best of the situation with Hulu and HBO-Max on my IPad. I even got in a Zoom job interview.

Not being a people-person, I am more inclined to complain about a group of people than not. That being said, I can't really find anything to complain about the nurses. They poked me with their IVs, shots, woke me to give me drugs etc. They did all this while being very professional and quite pleasant. There were a couple of annoying incidences, but nothing worth repeating. I tried to remember all their names but there were so many of them and they all wore masks, so this was difficult.

I was shaved the night before the surgery  ... my chest because it was opened to get to the heart, my legs for the veins they were going to take from them and my beard for the anesthesia. This is the first time I have been without a beard in over 30 years. They had already shaved me once before so there was only a week and a half of growth to deal with. The first time, it took about two hours. I am a hairy guy. I also had to wash my entire body with some some sterile pads and clean my nostrils with a Q-tip to make sure I didn't have the MRSA virus present. This was the 24th of January. I slept well and awoke the next morning to find a bunch of nurses in my room, doing what nurses do. My wife showed up shortly after. I was heading to surgery. 

During a coronary artery bypass surgery, the surgeon removes a piece of blood vessel from the patient's leg, chest, arm, or belly. In my case it was both my legs. They had problems finding a good vessel in one of my legs so they had to take one from my arm. Then the surgeon uses that piece of blood vessel (called a "graft") to reroute blood around the blocked artery. The surgery is called "bypass surgery" because it bypasses the blockage. This surgery has a 1% fatality rate and a 1% chance of causing a stroke in the patient. These numbers scared me, one in a hundred is too high when I could easily be that one. But that 1% is usually someone very old and sickly and I was the second youngest patient in the cardiology ward and still reasonably healthy. So I felt good about it. This didn't stop me thinking about my death and how I'd be leaving my wife and son. There must have been about 20 people in the Operating Room buzzing around me. So much activity prevented me from thinking about it too much. They scooped me onto a metal table and connected me to the machines. I was asleep shortly thereafter.

I awoke at about three the next morning in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I was on a lot of drugs, but still in some pain. I could feel a stinging pain in the incisions in my legs, arm and chest. I had a tube in my chest as well, a catheter and two IVs in my arm. It was pretty awful. I am amazed that by 6AM I was able to stand up (with nursing assistance) and walked a step over to a recliner that was next to the bed. By early afternoon I was out of the ICU and in a regular room. This was amazing because I remember back in the 1980's when my father had his first bypass, he was in very rough shape for a few days. The progress they've made is stunning.  

One of things that changed is that they wake the patient as soon as possible now. They find that the healing is quicker when you are awake. Also, the incisions in the arms and legs are much smaller than they used to be. One of the nurses told me that patients used to complain that most of the post-surgery pain was coming from the arms not the chest. It may be because the surface area is much smaller in the arms and legs than on the chest. Also, the arms and legs are used much more than the chest. So they make very small incisions now in the extremities because the large incisions are just not needed and patients are more comfortable. I have not researched any of this information. This is all from the many conversations I have had with many of the medical professionals that came into my room.

The stay in the hospital, post-surgery, was surprisingly not that long. I spent more time pre-surgery than post. I had surgery on Wednesday and I was home by Sunday. I was walking around the ward again alone just a couple days after surgery. The hospital food was surprisingly pretty good. I learned, after being there for almost three weeks, what to avoid on the menu. When I ordered, the person on the phone would tell me if I was over my carb or sugar limit for the meal. This was good practice for my new life. My post-heart attack life means keeping close track of calories, carbs and sugar. I have an app on my phone that tells me when I am over or approaching my limit.  

We had a long list of things to go over to get out of the hospital. I was not allowed to lift anything over a ten pounds for a month. That is about the weight of a gallon of milk. I am also not allowed to sit in the front seat of the car when I travel. Of course, this means no driving.  These rules are because my chest is not completely healed. I also had a pile of meds that have to take for a variety of reasons. I have to walk  for five minutes several times a day which is very tedious when you can't leave the house. My yard, driveway and road are very icy/snowy and it's 13 degrees today ... hence, I don't leave the house. 

I guess if you have a heart attack in Vermont, January is the best month because there isn't a lot you can do here anyway this time of year. It has been a month since the surgery. I've been outside the house only a few times, mostly for doctor's appointments. I've taken walks to the front yard to meet the boy at the bus stop. I've walked to the compost bin and the wilderness camera on my land. My big trip this past weekend was to our town's annual Winter Fest where I enjoyed some good company and the chili cook off.  I'm hoping by the Spring I will be running again and most of this is behind me. 

My Heart Attack

I have not been blogging a lot lately. It is an awful twist of fate and irony that my motivation for writing is directly proportional to how busy or stressed I am. If I am busy or stressed, I am full of ideas, I want to write. I was laid off from my Software Engineer position (that I held for 14.5 years) last July. You think I'd be spending a lot of time blogging, because I don't have a lot else to do, but this just isn't the case. I have about twenty post started but each time I look at them with intention of working on them, I just can't do it. No motivation. When I look at my blog and I see years when I posted about 40 different entries, these are also the periods in my life when I am the most busy or stressed. Such is life. 

Wednesday 1/11/23 started like any other. I got up with the boy, got his snack box ready and walked with him out to the bus. I returned to the warmth of the house, I made coffees, read email, looked at jobs on LinkedIn and listened to my morning podcasts. I ate an egg sandwich for breakfast, fed the dogs and then did some yoga on the Wii. Nothing out of the ordinary. At around noon, I noticed I had a dull pain along the length of my left arm that went across the top of my chest down to the top of my right shoulder. It was an odd pain. I have a lot of muscle pain, always have, but this felt different, like nothing I had ever felt before. I walked into the living room and laid down. I tried to sleep it off which I had zero success of doing. The pain wasn't that strong and never was, just very uncomfortable. I also had a lot of coffee at this point so I couldn't relax much either. 

I started to worry that this might be a heart attack. I remembered a conversation I had with my doctor when he told me that in addition to the pain, heart attacks usually come with shortness of breath. Since I didn't have that, I waited ... but not very long. I called my doctor to discuss. He said "oh oh."  He suggested I get to the emergency room, not to drive, but have someone bring me. If I didn't have someone to bring me, call 911.  I then called my wife to see how close she was to the house. She was about 35 minutes away in Burlington. I called 911. I texted her and she left to meet me at the hospital.

Fairfax rescue was conferenced into my call almost immediately. This is my first experience with 911. I am impressed. I waited about 15 minutes for the ambulance to show up. I live on a dirt road, a town away. This was quite fast. I tried to occupy my time to manage the freak out. Nothing much worked. I put the dogs outside, I grabbed my phone and Kindle, put them in my jacket and sat at the puzzle table looking down the driveway. Doing the jigsaw puzzle was a Herculean task at this point. I didn't get a single piece. 

When the ambulance arrived, they tried to back down the driveway. It has been unseasonably warm lately so when they went into the mud (aka my lawn), I feared they would get stuck and I'd have to wait for another ambulance or a tow truck. But she, the driver, pulled herself out just fine. Four EMTs got me quickly in the ambulance, attached to IVs and EKG machine.  I looked like a borg and still do. Here is a picture of what I look like:

They asked me a ton of questions about my health history. I didn't realize at the time but I'd be answering these same questions, in different forms, for the next week to about twenty different people. 

Other than the bump we hit, that sent everyone off the ground, the ambulance drive was uneventful and I thank all the drivers that pulled over for us. Also, of course, to the EMT crew as well. I felt so much better once they gave me nitroglycerin tablets and felt in the care of true professionals. 

Since that day, I have been in the hospital, pain free five days now. I have a lovely private room at UVM medical, the staff here is amazing. I had a mild heart attack. They did some diagnostics hoping that they would be able to repair the problem with some stents. Unfortunately, there is too much blockage. Perhaps the mild heart attack saved my life because they never would have noticed the blockage without it. I have been in the hospital and I will be here quite a bit more until my bypass on the 20th. Wish me luck. I feel confident in my full recovery. 

Romania

The world described in I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys reminds me of Orwell's 1984, but unlike that book, it is not a fictional world that she describes but Romania in 1989. I find historical fiction like this particularly fascinating because is not distant history she describes, but an era that I lived through from a safe distance. I remember hearing about Ceaușescu, their communist leader, on the news, but I knew little about them. While I was attending keg parties and cramming for college, Romanians my age were fighting and dying for their  basic human rights. I know I am not alone and many Americans know even less than I do about this part of the world. Few of us know more than that it is where Transylvania is, home of an infamous vampire created by an Irish writer of fiction. Many don't even don't even realize Transylvania is a real place, but think it a fictional land like Oz or Middle Earth. The reality is that Dracula's Romania was probably a better world to live in than communist Romania.

After World War II, Romania became friends with USSR. Due to Soviet influence, communism took hold and they forced their King, Michael, to abdicate and live in exile. Nicolae Ceaușescu took power in 1960 and stayed in power until he was overthrown in 1989, the last among their neighbors to overthrow the yoke of communistic rule. During his rule, Ceaușescu pulled a fast one on the West when he convinced the rulers of the free world that he was a benevolent ruler when the exact opposite was true. Of the leaders behind the iron curtain, he was perhaps the most monstrous, but because he stood up to the Soviet Union, American presidents (Carter, Ford, Nixon) and British royalty held photo opts with him and hosted state dinners in his honor. Many of us got pissed when Trump did so with Kim Jong-un. This is similar, except the world knows of the human rights abuses in North Korea. The world knew nothing of what was going on in Romania at the time of Ceaușescu. The free world knew little about life in the Soviet Union at time, but we knew even less of Romania. 

Romania's economy did well in the post war period which continued into the 1970's but by the 1980's, their debts came due and extreme rationing measures were instituted. Electricity was turned off periodically, similar to what is happening in Lebanon now. Ceaușescu government's had no problem producing power, but they sold it to the Soviet Union to cover their debts rather than supplying it to their citizens. Sepetys's book cites stories of babies dying in hospitals because they lost electricity during the birth. This affected everyday lives as well. Just imagine your dinner being interrupted by the loss of power, you'd be stuck with a half cooked meal or perhaps eating in the dark.  It gets very cold in Romania. They would heat up bricks to keep their feet warm at night. 

Inflation was so bad that no one used the Romanian currency. Cigarettes like Kents and BTs were used as currency. Service workers, like doctors and plumbers, would have stockpiles of cigarettes and other contrabands. They could make deals with the black market for security and actually make a decent living while those around them starved. The state run stores had long lines. You could wait hours, after a long day of work, and get nothing because they were out of stock before your turn came. Most of their life was spent working or in line. She describes people being very tired.

We hear a lot about Nazi Germany's Gestapo and East Germany's Stasi. Romania's Securitate is just as notorious. An estimated one-in-ten Romanian citizens were informers, called "Reporters," for the Securitate. They were a brutal police force that detained thousands and subjected them to torture, starvation and death. In a regime of total control, you could be reported for having contraband like an American dollar or any product that was not sold in Romanian. Ceaușescu was trying to increase the birth rate so he'd use the Securitate to monitor women. Population growth was badly needed to produce more workers. If you were childless, you were taxed. Women were periodically checked for pregnancy at their place of employment.  

When you live in such a world, rumors can make things worse. Perception is reality. Any injustice you can think of  is believable. When you believe that all the phones are bugged and that everyone you know could be an informer, whenever true or not, can be very stressful.  They whispered in their own homes so that they couldn't be heard. 

I recently reminded my son that he hit the lottery just by being born in the free world. No doubt he doesn't get it, just like I didn't. I don't think I ever will completely understand, but this book put it in better perspective. 

Why Pro-Gun People Always Bring Up Chicago

In reading old blog posts of mine, I have come to realize that posts with lots of stats don't read well. So I have been trying to keep them to a bare minimum which is really difficult when it comes to the subject of gun laws. Gun laws work, we know this. Lets keep it simple, this could be shown with two lists. 

Here are the US states with lowest rates of firearm mortality in 2021 according to the CDC: 

CA, CT,  HI, MA, NY, NJ & RI. 

Here the states with the strictest gun laws: 

CA, CT, HI, IL, MA, NY, NJ & MD.

Notice the cross over? Ya, I am saying it ... strict gun laws bring down the incidents of murder.  Duh! This is pretty obvious. But yet, when I talk to gun rights people, they always say the opposite that gun laws don't work. They always use the example of Chicago.  They usually don't mention New York, LA or Boston all of whom have historically low gun crime. 

On the surface, they are correct. Gun laws aren't working in Chicago. Cook County, Illinois and Chicago have some of the country's highest rate of gun death including suicide and homicide. Chicago's has 25 gun murders per 100,000 citizens But it is a lot more complicated than that. Both Chicago and Illinois have very strict gun laws, but look at Chicago on the map, it on the edge of Illinois very close to Wisconsin and Indiana. If you want to buy a gun, legally, you just need to make a short drive to Milwaukee (murder rate of 32), Gary (64) or South Bend (23).

Detroit (45) has the same problem but it is even worse because their state, Michigan, has lax gun laws so Detroiters just need to go to the suburbs to buy their guns. 

In comparison, someone who wants to buy a gun legally in New York City, can't go to the suburbs or the closest states (CT & NJ). They would have to drive to PA or VT which is a significant effort. They will either make a road trip, buy the gun illegally or not buy it at all.  The last option is what we are hoping for a potential mass shooter.  The goal of gun laws is not to stop all murders, which would be impossible, but to stop some of them. They are succeeding   

By the way, Jackson Mississippi has the highest murder rate in the country of cities over 200,000 people of 69 per 100,000 people. It is very easy to buy a gun in MS. Those liberal cities where the politicians are supposedly so soft on crime are very low. The four largest city in Texas have the higher murder rates than New York (3), LA (7) or Boston (7): Houston (15), Dallas (13), San Antonio (9) and Forth Worth (9).

When I was kid, both new New York and Boston were known for their violent crime, but a lot has changed since then.  They are safe cities and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Congratulation to everyone who has worked so hard to make this true.

I apologize for all the stats. I was originally worse, much worse. Through the magic of editing I kept to a bare minimum.

Marvel is Liberal, DC conservative

I recall a fireside chat with some college friends. This guy, a friend by marriage, was telling me that he could never get into Marvel Comics. Sometimes you couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, he said. I am paraphrasing, of course, this is a memory through the fog of three or four decades. He told me that he preferred DC Comics because this line was more well-defined. It was this conversation where I first got the notion that Marvel is for liberals and DC for conservatives.  

This is true about DC Comics, at least most of them. Most of the classic DC Comics came out of the conservative 1940's and 50's. The first Superman comic, Action #1, was published in 1938. You knew where he stood, "truth, justice and the American way," as stated in the 1940's radio shows.  Lets face it, he is Christ-like, sent from the heavens. When he was fighting someone, you knew who the good guy and the bad guy was. In the universe of the comic, the cops  and media always supported him and feared his enemies. He was their savior and they stood by him. A well defined line between good and evil is a very conservative idea. Clear and concise.  It always bothered me that Superman fought crime and then as Clark Kent wrote about himself. This is a bit too fascist for me.  He wears red, white and blue and fights to preserve the status quo. Conservatives love this stuff. It never comes up that he is technically an illegal alien, literally. 

Most of the other major DC comics have similar motifs: Aqua Man, The Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow. They fight evil and it is obvious. One major character that doesn't fit this mold is Batman.He really toggles the good/evil line at times but by all other counts, he is a conservative. He blames government for the death of his parents, he uses his own resources to tackle the crime problem and beats up on the poor and the insane. The insane are almost always portrayed awfully in the DC universe a la Arkham Asylum. When you have a DC "bad" guy, he/she is evil or insane, usually both. 

The only exception of the DC major heroes is Wonder Woman, the only woman in the bunch. She is a feminist icon, working in a man's profession and trying to change the world. Most female DC heroes are simply female counterparts of male heroes: Super Girl, Bat Woman, Hawkwoman, etc. Although, I do admit Marvel has done the same with She-Hulk and Spider Woman. 

Marvel came out of the rebellious liberal 60's. Liberals are wishy washy. They never met a nuance they didn't love. Marvel is full of them. Spiderman is a struggling college student who moonlights as a photographer for the Daily Bugle who portrays him as a menace. The cops want to arrest him. His Aunt May is afraid of him. The Hulk is hunted by the military. Thor is a demigod. In the Marvel universe gods are just very powerful beings from different realms. The X-Men are actively trying to change the world making it safe for mutants (aka the outsider) which is a neat sci-fi way of saying homosexual, black or any other counterculture. Their leader is disabled, Professor X is bound to a wheel chair. 

The differently abled are well presented in the Marvel universe. Professor X's son, Legion, has multiple personality disorder. Daredevil is blind, Moon Knight has schizophrenia, Deadpool is in constant pain, Puck is a little person and Hawkeye, the Avenger, is deaf. The disabled don't fair so well in the DC universe. The first disabled super-hero, Caption Mid-Nite, introduced in 1941 was blinded by a grenade and discovered he could see in the dark.  Even comic geeks like me, have never heard of this guy. It is difficult finding a major DC character with anything close to a disability.  They are idealized beings, like Greek gods. The best example is probably Cyborg, who is an amputee whose parts have been replaced by machines. Not incredibly inspiring. 

Marvel villains are also more complex than DC's. Sometimes they are extreme evil, but often they are just people who have had a raw deal. Magneto grew up in Auschwitz and only survived with the help of his mutant abilities. He grew to hate non-mutants because of the experience in the camp.  

Galactus is a cosmic entity that requires the eating of planets for sustenance. Thanos actually wants to save the universe by reducing our population by half; he's an environmentalist with simply too much power.  The Submariner is also a radical environmentalist, protecting the ocean from humans, after all he is the prince of Atlantis. Can we blame him? Also, can we really blame Red Skull for doing evil, he was chosen as a teenager by Hitler and then groomed by the Fuhrer himself.  

Marvel's Iron Man may seem like an exception. In the early days, Tony Stark is just another millionaire industrialist (weapons manufacturer) using his technological toys to defeat bad guys. But in later issues, he sees how war is destroying the world and how his lifestyle is killing him (alcoholism). He changes Stark Industries to green energy, cleans up his personal life and ends up being a good liberal. 

The one true exception in the Marvel universe is Captain America. Perhaps this is because he predates the 60's. He premiered in 1940 published by Timely Comics. He fought Nazis and communists. He was later reintroduced in Marvel as a superhero fighting bad guys in 1963. He is still a very conservative character. His powers are a result of a righteous government experiment that worked.  He is the idealized blond hair American guy who was even born on the 4th of July. 

Iron Man, Captain America along with The Avengers were not very good comics. This is one the amazing things about the film adaptions because they work so much better in film. 

For a long time, every black super hero had the word "black" in their name: Black Lightning, Black Panther, Black Goliath etc. This is a trope that had to end. As you guessed it, Marvel has more black heroes in more prominent roles. Marvel's Power Man, Hero for Hire or Luke Cage (this comic was renamed many times) was the first American comic, 1972, starring a black character. It was created in the wake of blaxploitation films of that era and it was pretty bad. He had a catchphrase "Sweet Christmas!" He is a street level hero with the stories based in a high crime section of New York City much like Daredevil. Comics are still the realm of the white guy but now there is a lot more diversity than ever. Marvel's latest version of Ms. Marvel is a character named Kamala Khan, introduced in 2013, and she is Muslim. 

I must apologize if I am wrong about DC. Other than Batman and The Watchmen, I have not read a lot of their comics. This is mostly because I don't like them, never have. I love nuance. While writing this, I've had to wonder if I am a liberal because I read Marvel as a kid, or did I read Marvel because I have always been a liberal. I still have no idea. I did not grow up in a political family but I did read my first comic, The Incredible Hulk #2, by looking through my brother's comics. Perhaps if he had a copy of Hawkman lying around, I might be Trumper right now. I doubt it. 

Contact: Book versus Movie

A few decades ago, I read The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I love Dickens and I have been seeing television versions of it since I was a child, probably at least two dozens. Heck, even the Six Million Dollar Man did a version of it. I was curious as to how accurate they were to the book. I discovered that reading it wasn't as enjoyable as I'd expected. Really. It was beautifully written of course, but because I knew the story so well, there were no surprises, same characters, nothing new.  Most of these film and play productions of the Christmas classic, it ends up, are actually quite accurate. I was expecting my reading of Carl Sagan's Contact to be like this because I had seen the movie so many times. It was not, at all.

Contact, the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film, is one of my favorites. Jodie Foster in a thought-provoking hard science fiction (a real sci-fi story, not like Star Wars) with ethical and theological paradoxes ... what could be better? Not much actually. I have seen this film many times. Much is different in the book, which makes it an enjoyable read, but unfortunately, it might be one of those few books where the movie is better than the book. 

**Fair warning: I tell you now, if you have not read the book or seen the movie, there are spoilers coming. You have been warned.  You may want to stop and watch the movie now. You won't regret it.  

The first thing you should realize is that it was originally conceived of as a movie, not a book, in 1977. Sagan and Ann Druyan (whom he later married) wrote the story. It bounced around Hollywood for a few years taking on many different forms, in the meantime, Sagan decided to write the novel which was eventually published by Simon and Schuster in 1985. It reached #7 on the New York Times Best Seller list. It returned to the list in 1997, briefly, when the movie came out. 

In the book, we get a lot more of Ellie Arroway's (Jodie Foster) back story. She was based on Jill Tarter, an astronomer for SETI.  Her name comes from Eleanor Roosevelt and Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire).  We do get the scene of her with her father conversing about the stars and he dies while she is still young, but the book also shows her mom remarrying a very pious man whom Ellie does not get along with and there are some surprises to their relationship as well. In the movie, her mother dies while giving birth to Ellie and is a non-entity in her life. She calls her mother throughout the book. We also read about Ellie going to college with her sexual exploits and the continued sexism she gets exposed to her in her field. Many characters are in the book that don't make it into the movie. Her lover is Presidential Science Adviser Ken der Heer. He isn't even in the movie. The movie has Ellie in a relationship with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) which is only hinted at in the book. She seems to be attracted to him but is more interested in their intellectual sparring than anything physical. 

Some characters from the movie are not in the book at all, like the guys in the lab. They are there, but they aren't named. Remember the blind guy, Kent (portrayed by William Fichtner). Not in the book. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when Kent actually hears the message from space in the static, he hears structure while others cannot. I could imagine this scene was added to create drama to the moment of discovery. This character is based on a real guy, a scientist that worked at SETI, Kent Cullers.  Rob Lowe's Richard Rank is a parody of Ralph Reed and is not in the book. The book does have Billy Jo Rankin but he is less extreme and less cartoonish. I can understand this change since the book came out in the 80's and much had changed with religion in American, a la the Christian Coalition, by the late 90's when the film came out. It needed an upgrade. James Wood owns the character of Kitz. Kitz who is in the book and is still quite obnoxious but Wood pushes him into the realm of belligerence which makes him much more interesting. He is a character you love to hate.  

One big change is that the US President, in the book, has a big role and the president is a woman. The movie only shows the President once and it is Bill Clinton. Zemeckis very creatively uses news footage from 1996 of Clinton talking about a Mars rock, but the clips are so vague it appears that he is talking about the message from Vega. Zemeckis received a complaint letter from the White House because they never granted permission for the footage. The original plan was for Sydney Poitier to play the president but he turned the role down. So the president wasn't a woman in the film but was supposed to be black, both of which were quite progressive for their time. 

There is more science in the book which is a good thing. Carl Sagan is one of the best science educators of the 20th century and it makes sense that even in his only book of fiction, he continues to educate. As I read I learned about the star Vega and Polaris, about the moons of our solar system, about message decoding, radio and television waves, and about the general nature of the universe. A number of compelling conversations/arguments take place between scientists and religious folks throughout the book. These are fascinating, as they are in the movie, but the book has more of them.  

Of course, the movie is filled with stuff  not in the book that must have been added because it works. Another memorable scene is Ellie laying on her Thunderbird's hood with headphones listening to the "cosmic static." Not in the book, but it is a fine scene. Her relationship with Dumlin (Tom Skerritt's character) is strained, but it is a much bigger part of the movie than it is in the book. He was her faculty adviser and was disappointed in her career choice of searching for E.T.

The message is prime numbers (mathematics is the language of science) and is being broadcast from distance aliens with hidden instructions to build a machine. They don't know what the machine is, a Trojan Horse perhaps. It takes about a decade to build in the book, but it doesn't seem that long in the movie. The world builds two in the movie, but three in the book because the USSR had to build one as well. Written in 1985 after all, the Cold War is still raging in Sagan's future. The book's machine has five seats while the movie's only has one for Ellie. In the book, her trip across the galaxy takes place on New Year's Eve 1999; there is no mention of the Y2K bug. The trip takes 20 minutes Earth time while the movie has it taking just a few seconds. 

The oddest thing about the book is the terrorist attack. This is a big moment in the movie. Ellie recognizes a religious fanatic at a testing of the machine and he has a bomb on him. It goes off and destroys it. It is quite a spectacle. While reading this in the book, I was reminded that Sagan is not a novelist, but a scientist. It only took place in one paragraph that ended the chapter. I wasn't even sure it had happened so I reread it. It was there, but very vague. The next chapter started with Drumlin's funeral so it was there. I don't think I would have known what happened if I hadn't seen the movie. 

I am a non-believer. I call myself an Atheist but at times, I found this to be extreme. Atheism seems to be fundamentalist approach to science. If I had to come up with a name for what I am, in regards to the whole God question, I would have to call myself an Agnostic leaning strongly towards Atheism.  I have always wondered what I would need to convince me that there is a God, any god. I've never been able to come with anything. What I love about the end of Contact, is that it answers this question. The movie didn't come near this. When Ellie talks to the alien (in the guise of her father), they talk about the number π (aka pi). They talk about how it goes on and on, never repeating, but somewhere in there, the alien says, is a string of ones and zeroes. In this string of binary digits is a message. The book ends Ellie spending her time looking for this message. A message being discovered in pi would do it for me. It is interesting that a book by a great scientist, helped me figure out what I'd need to believe in God.