Picks of the Year: 2020

The year has been rough, but for me, 2016 was worse for me personally. The pandemic didn't affect me much. I have been telecommuting since 2007, I am an introvert and I live in one of the states that has been handling this crisis very well.  This is more of the same for me. The only big difference is that I have more people at home than usual. 

I saw only one film in the theater this year and attended no concerts. Boredom is this year's hobgoblin. I cannot wait to get to a rock show. We should at least have some outdoor shows this summer, right? 

I made up for it by watching a lot of television, did some reading and bought a lot of new music.

BEST ALBUMS:

I bought 16 albums in 2020 ... that is, all the song in MP3 format on a release by an artist. I am not talking about vinyl. 

There are some surprises. All but five of these artists are fairly new to me. The Eels, Dan Bern, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Bob Dylan are performers I have been listening to for years.

I like them all but if I had to put them in order best to worst, it would be as follows: 

1. Song For Our Daughter - Laura Marling: I never heard of Marling until this year. I heard a few songs on Spotify and I was blown away. She has a Joni Mitchell-ish style of singing with some powerful lyrics. I bought her latest album and I wasn't disappointed. 
2. The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury - Gretchen Peters: This would have been #1 but there is one song that I just don't care for. The entire album is a group of songs by a late song writer that I have never heard of.  I have been listening to Peters for a few years now. I buy a song here and there. This is the first album of hers I've ever bought.  This is great stuff and only one song is "too country" for my taste. 
3. Bonny Light Horsemen - Bonny Light Horsemen: This band is the first folk supergroup that I ever heard of. It consists of Vermont's own Tony winner Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson from The Fruitbats and The Shins and Josh Kaufman from The National and Hiss Golden Messenger. I hope they stay together and continue to make music together because I love their sound. 
4. Sex Education Original Soundtrack - Ezra Furman: One of my favorite shows of the year also a great soundtrack all by the same guy. Do I love the music because I loved the show or did I love the show because of the music? Probably a little bit of both.  
5. LP5 - John Moreland: This is my first Moreland album as well. This is a great bluesy folk singer that can write a great song: "you can't reach salvation from your rocking chair". He's got the Texas sound. 
6. Kingdom in My Mind - The Wood Brothers: Another new one for me. Chris Wood is famous for his other band Medeski Martin & Wood. He teamed with his brother Oliver and this is their eighth album together. It is folk rock, Americana, blues ... I don't know, I call it great. 
7. Rough and Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan: Dylan is my guy. Whenever my wife says to me, "Did you hear?" I dread that it is about Dylan's demise. He's 79 years old and still putting out amazing stuff. This is his 39th album (if I counted correctly). Not all of them are great, but he's been on a roll lately. His past few albums have been great. 
8. Good Souls Better Angels by Lucinda Williams: I guess I went folk rock this year. She's been one of America's best song writer for decades. This is her 15th album and as good as any of them. 
9. Reunions - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: I love this guy. I love his work ethic, his dedication to the music and to his fans. More importantly, I love his tunes. 
10. Earth to Dora by The Eels: I was a little disappointed in this album by one of my favorite bands. Their songs usually grab me immediately. It hasn't happened yet. 
11. Ghosts of West Virgina by Steve Earle: Lots of songs about coal mining. I like it, I don't love it though. 
12. Rivalry by Dan Bern: I discovered this guy a couple of decades ago at Falconridge Folk Festival in Up-State NY. He is not your typical folk musician, he is over six feet tall, wears fatigues and sometimes scares his audience. He is a painter and an ex-ball player and writes songs about Henry Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Monica Seles and going down on Madonna. He put out three CDs during the pandemic. The one I bought was about baseball. Not as witty as usually, but I am such a ball fan, it almost doesn't matter. 
13. What Are We Frightened Of? - Alberta Cross: I always thought this band was from Alberta, Canada. They're from East London. Nothing on this album has really grabbed me yet. This is their sixth album. They started off as a two piece: Petter Ericson Stakee (singer and guitarist) and Terry Wolfers (bass). But this is the second album after Wolfers left the band. It is really just a Stakee solo album. Maybe that is what is missing. I still enjoy the album but it is not as good as their other stuff. Stakee, give Wolfer a call. 
14. Xoxo - Jayhawks: Alt-country at its best, but I've heard better from them. 
15. Holy Smokes Future Jokes - Blitzen Trapper:  I've heard better from them as well. The songwriter just doesn't seem to be there on this album. 
16. Friendly Figures - KULMA: A little bit of rap, a bit of techno, a bit of jazz. I know nothing about them but I still enjoy it. 

BEST SONGS

I bought 310 songs in 2020 totalling 20 hours and 9 minutes. One of these years, I will have an entire day of new music. Please note, this is new stuff that came out this year. I bought plenty of other stuff from prior years (like Deer Tick, Kamasi Washington, Peter Gabriel, ELP and Gov't Mule). This blog post will talk about just the songs that came out in 2020. It has been great year for recorded music. In an era when musicians can stay home and create an album on their laptop, the pandemic is not going stop creatives from creating. 

Below are all the favorites for the year. Some of my favorite musicians are here (Dylan, Ani, Bird, Bern, Earle and Isbell) and some musicians I never heard of (Coriky, David Alvin, Geek Music, David Dondero and Twisted Pine). Some of my favorites this year came from television shows with Ezra Furman's amazing soundtrack to Sex Education and perhaps, my favorite song of the year, "You're Dead" by Geek Music which is the theme song to What We Do In the Shadows. 

I never heard of Shirley Collins. I don't know why. It bothers me. She's right up my alley, a raspy and jaded folk singer. I may be buying a lot of her stuff in the coming hear. 

I bought some great cover songs this year, some of them I don't know the original version. My favorite cover this year is David Alvin's reinvention of "Highway 61 Revisited". It is a talking blues version with a driving steel guitar. It blows me away every time I hear it.  

Keep the Damage to Myself - Alberta Cross 

Hark! - Andrew Bird

Do or Die - Ani DiFranco

Hard Time Come Again No More - Arlo Guthrie

Murder Most Foul - Bob Dylan

The Roving - Bonny Light Horseman

Clean Kill - Coriky

The Legend of Yasiel Puig - Dan Bern

Highway 61 Revisited - Dave Alvin

Easy Chair - David Dondero

Thoughts and Prayers - Drive-By-Truckers

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Ezra Furman

You're Dead - Geek Music

The Sailor and The Night You Wrote that Song - Gretchen Peters

Overseas and St. Peter's Autograph - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Living in a Bubble - Jayhawks

Let Me Be Understood and Harder Dreams- John Moreland

How Lucky - Kurt Vile (with the late John Prine)

Look What They Did and Private Lives - Low Cut Connie

Big Black Train - Lucinda Williams

My Brother, My Keeper - Mandolin Orange

Terminal One - Rymden, Bugge Wessenltoft & Magnus Ostrom

Sweet Greens and Blues - Shirley Collins

Black Lung - Steve Earle

Quarantine Blues - Steve Poltz

Papaya - Twisted Pine

Jitterbug Love, Don't Think About My Death and Little Bit Broken - The Wood Brothers

BEST TELEVISION SHOWS

I used to look to HBO for great television, but this has changed. HBO has because pretentious and in love with themselves while the other networks are putting out some great stuff. Here is all the new shows I watched this year. I tried to put them in order. Please note that this does not include shows that weren't new to me. I'm still loving The Crown, it is just not new to me anymore. 

Sex Education (Netflix) - Love this. The son of a famous sex therapist turns therapist to his fellow classmates. Everything is great about this show, especially the soundtrack. 

Ramy (Hulu) - A friend of my wife turned us onto to this. It is a very funny, poignant and educational. It is about a Muslim single guy trying to find a wife. 

What We Do in the Shadows (FX via Hulu) - Mockumentary about vampires. Hysterical. Need I say more?

Ted Lasso (AppleTV) - This is more heart warming than funny. Ted is an upbeat American football coach who gets hired a soccer coach in the England premiere league. It is a funny Friday Night Lights where they say "Wanker" a lot. 

Normal People (BBC3 via Hulu) - I almost forgot about this one. I published and went back to add it. It was very good and shouldn't be missed. This is about two Irish students growing up together and having an on-again-off-again romance. The writing and acting are top notch. 

Derry Girls (Channel 4 via Netflix) - I have to rewatch this with the subtitles on. The accent is a bit much but it is about teenage girls in Northern Ireland during "the troubles." Another one of those shows that is funny but also informative. 

Pen15 (Hulu) - This is cringe comedy. Two adult comedians, play themselves when they were teenage girl losers. It is sometimes hard to watch because you feel bad for them. 

Devs (FX via Hulu) - This is a sci-fi thriller about quantum computing created by the same guy we created the movies 28 Days Later and Ex Machina. I just loved this. It has surprises around every corner. This is a real sci fi. Not a bull shit action film pretending to be sci-fi. This is a mini-series so I guess I'm done with it but I don't want to be. 

The Flight Attendant (HBO) - This one surprised me. A flight attendant wakes up in bed with a one-night stand stabbed to death. Very well done. I wouldn't have guessed it by the trailer. 

The Boys (Amazon) - This is a super hero show outside the DC and Marvel universes. It is very good and profound at times. I had never heard of this series going into it. 

The Morning Show (AppleTV) - This has so many big stars that I expected it to be crap, but it was quite good with Steve Carell playing the bad guy.

Tehran (Apple TV) - This is another surprise that I just found by clicking away.  It is political intrigue between Iran and Israel with lots of spies. You like the characters but you hate the system they are intertwined in.   

Roadkill (BBC One via PBS) - This is a political intrigue drama starring Hugh Laurie which I really enjoyed but it only has four episodes. Come on BBC. 

Perry Mason (HBO) - This is not your father's Perry Mason (TV show from the 50's) but based on the original source material, the novels by Erle Stanley Gardner. Mason is not yet a defense attorney but an investigator. I almost didn't finish this, it took a while for me to get into it but it ended up being very good in the end. It is very gritty and it came close to being cliche, but it never crossed into it. 

Waco (Netflix) - I don't know how accurate this was about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993, but it is thoroughly entertaining. 

Red Oaks (Amazon) - This is very light but enjoyable. It is about a country club in New Jersey 1980's. Think of it as a less silly Caddyshack. 

Defending Jacob (Apple TV) - A kid is murdered in Newton, MA and the assistant DA's son is the suspect. Did he do it?  Honestly, I can't remember if he did or not. 

The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) - More people with super powers told in a creative way. As usual, this show suffers from the Netflix second series syndrome ... but not quite as bad as other Netflix series. First season, quite good. Second season, not quite so good. Maybe they've learned their lesson because it isn't as pronounced as some of their other shows. 

F is for Family (Netflix) - I still watch this occasionally. I think it is implied that F is for Fucked up Family. Regardless, it reminds me too much of my fucked up childhood. I love Bill Burr's humor, but it can be a bit depressing at times. Get out of my memories Bill Burr!

The Outsider (HBO) - Another Stephen King horror show. It is fun, it is gross. Not a lot else going on. I just expect more from HBO. 

The Undoing (HBO) - I would watch Nicole Kidman read the phonebook. Hugh Grant is her murderous husband. I liked this until the last episode. What a disappointment. 

Star Trek: Picard (CBS: Access) - But this is the year's biggest disappointment. One of my favorite Star Trek characters gets his own show. When disc one arrived in the mail, I reminded my wife to make time to watch it tonight. Mid-way through episode two - "Do you know what's going on?" You shouldn't have to look up a plot on Wikipedia to understand what is happening.  I am well versed in Trek lore. So far, I am not impressed. I also predicted the ending at around episode six. I hope season two is better. 

Queen's Gambit (Netflix) - I loved this show until she grew up and the show turned into sex and drugs and checkmate. I stopped watching. I am reading the book now. Maybe I'll watch the rest of the show later. 

Reckoning (Netflix) - I had to look this up because I couldn't remember what it was about.It was that unmemorable. Oh ya, that serial killer show. That's all you really need to know. That's all I remember. Nothing new here. 

Killing Eve (BBC America via Hulu) - This is another disappointment. It is okay but I stopped after season one. Maybe I'll return to it again, but it is certainly not as great as people claim.

Away (Netflix) - The personal lives of astronauts on a trip to Mars ... *yawn* Stopped watching.

Castle Rock (Hulu) - Another Stephen King series ... yada yada yada. 

Industry (HBO) - Hateful people doing things I don't understand on computer screens. Stopped watching. 

Lovecraft Country (HBO) - Lovecraft was a racist!? Oh ya, I guess he was. There is some interest stuff in this show but mostly it is over-produced and poorly written. Come on HBO, you can do better. Stopped watching. 

Next (Fox via Hulu) - Another AI is taking over the world. I wish an AI would take over the writing of this show. Stopped watching. 

Schitt's Creek (Netflix) - I'm not sure why so many people likes this show. It is basically Green Acres without the laughs and likeable people. They are annoying and pretentious. Worst of all, they aren't funny. I would  have stopped watching this long before I did (like the second episode), but my wife wanted to keep giving it another try. Eventually, she gave up and I was grateful. 

BOOKS:

I've committed to reading at least one classic a year for the rest of my life. This year's was a small one, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, which I enjoyed. This is the third of his novels that I've read and my second favorite. I've read The World of the Worlds and The Time Machine with the latter being my favorite of his.

I only read eight books this year so it should be easy enough to rate them in order of preference:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Girl at War by Sara Novic 

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

The Lake House by Kate Morton

Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern (Vermont writer)  

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro 

Open Season by Archer Mayor (Vermont writer)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The first two books I really loved. Circe is a retelling of Circe's story from Homer's Odyssey. I generally don't like fantasy but this was so well written and since it was based in a story I already knew, it made it more palatable. 

Girl at War is about a war orphan from Yugoslavian civil war and her transition into being an American. 

The Lake House was good, but I've never been a huge mystery fan and everything wrapped up a bit too nicely in the end. 

I have determined that I am not a Neil Gaiman fan. This is the second book by him that I've read and hated. So be it. No big deal. Maybe I'll like his graphic novels. 

2021's classic is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. I'm about a third though now.  Wish me luck. 

Electoral College: History, Pros, Cons and Alternatives

After the American Revolution was over, the revolutionaries had a most difficult task. What now? Many of the 13 colonies did not see the advantage of joining a new nation. James Madison's idea of elections being based on popular vote scared some of the smaller states. Some thought joining an old world nation, like Spain, was more advantageous. To keep the small states happy and within the union, a bicameral legislature (with two houses) was proposed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, much like England's the House of Commons and House of Lords. This came to be known as the Great Compromise of 1787. While the House of Representatives would be based on population giving large states like Virginia and Massachusetts more power, the states would be equally represented in the Senate. Delaware, who had recently became independent of Pennsylvania, jumped at this and signed the Constitution becoming the first state to ratify it. 

Once the big stuff was over, most of the convention attendees returned home. Those who were from far away had a long trip ahead of them. George Washington went fishing. The rest of the constitution, much of the stuff that we complain about was created by the smaller committee called the Committee of Unfinished Parts which only had 11 representatives from different states). 

• Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire 
• Rufus King of Massachusetts
• Roger Sherman of Connecticut
• Jonathan Brearly of New Jersey (Chairman)
• Gouvernuer Morris of Pennsylvania
• John Dickinson of Delaware
• Daniel Carroll of Maryland 
• James Madison, Jr. of Virginia
• Hugh Williamson of North Carolina
• Pierce Butler of South Carolina
• Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.

This is where they came up with the one person executive, the president's term of office, rules for treason and impeachment and of course, the electoral college. The electoral college was considered, at the time, innovative because it was a temporary body that met for only one reason. It was believed to be less corruptible than if the task of selecting the leader of the Executive Branch fell up Congress to do.  

When we vote for President, we are not voting for him/her directly but for electors who then vote for President for us. There are currently 538 electors (since 1964, 535 from the states and 3 from DC.) Each state gets one elector for each of their Senators and one for each of their Representatives. So the larger states get more but not proportionally more. Wyoming gets three while California gets 55. Wyoming is the least populated state with a half million people. For every 193,000 people they get an elector. California is our largest state with about 39.5 million people and one elector roughly every 718,000 people. Whatever candidate that gets a state's popular vote, gets all of that state's electors. Trump could get 10 million votes in California but if 10,000,001 voters chose Biden, all of the electors go to Biden. Winner takes all. You can understand why voters feel disenfranchised and don't show up.

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that are not winner take all. They award only two electors to the state popular vote winner (for the Senators). The rest of the electors are given to the popular vote of each Congressional district. It is messy. Everything that was ever created via compromise is. Originally, most states were more like these two. Virginia was the first state to change to winner take all in 1808, the largest state at the time, in order to get their man, Thomas Jefferson, elected. 

A total of five Presidential candidates won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. The two most recent occurring in the 2016 and 2000. Two other presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888—became president without winning the popular vote. If Grover Cleveland had won in 1888, he would have been president for three terms, but we have no way of knowing if he would have run in 1892, if he had won in 1888. In the 1824 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Jackson won the popular vote but neither won a majority of Electoral votes. Adams secured the presidency only after the election was decided by a vote in the House of Representatives, a procedure provided for in the Constitution. Arguably, none of these presidents were very good. Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump may go down as the two worst presidents we ever had. B. Harrison, Hayes and Q. Adams have never cracked the top ten on anyone's list.  

This is clearly a problem. The most important decision any president makes in their time of office is their selection of judges, specifically the Supreme Court. We currently have nine judges, more than half of whom were appointed by presidents who didn't get the popular vote. Roberts and Alito were appointed by W. Bush. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed by Trump. These judges make very important decisions about our everyday life (regarding our healthcare, our privacy, our bodies, our elections etc.) and yet, most Americans voted against them. This is hardly democratic. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by over 2 million votes and yet Trump ended up with three Supreme Court appointments. That is just gross.  

Doing away with the electoral college altogether would require an amendment. We have come close. The Bayh-Celler amendment passed in the House in 1968 but died in the Senate. It even had support by then president Nixon. Again, the senators from states with smaller populations opposed it. If passed, we would be electing our Presidents via popular vote. This also has some drawbacks. Campaigning in rural areas would be ignored completely and they would be limited to the large metropolitan areas. Why would candidates spend time and money in areas that had few votes? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, more people getting more attention. One of the advantages of the Electoral College is that the minority isn't ignored, but one could say that the minority (in this case, rural voters) gets too much power. 

Some creative ideas have come up. Since 2007, fifteen states and DC have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This an association of states declaring that during a Presidential election, all of their electoral votes will be given to the winner of the National popular vote. It doesn't take effect until it accounts for 270 votes so it wasn't applied in 2016 or 2020. Currently, it accounts for only 196 (MD, CA, VT, RI, CT, DE, CO, IL, NJ, HI, WA, OR, MA, NY, DE, DC) needing 74 more. There are bills in every state to pass this. Once it is passed, it will effectively make the Electoral College defunct. The problem with it, is that it is currently only Democratic leaning states that have signed on. It would have had no effect in 2016 with its current list of states. In 2000 it would have flipped Colorado making Gore the President. We might still have a couple of magnificent towers in Manhattan if this happened. They need some battleground and Republican states to pass it for it to be effective but they will never have enough votes. Republicans won't backed a bill that is clearly against their interest. 

The electoral college doesn't need to be completely trashed. Its original intent was a good one. The rights of the minority is important. We have millions of citizens, like myself, that live in rural areas. Our needs need to be considered in the executive branch. We just need to jiggle some numbers around perhaps. The states are disproportionately larger than each other than at our founding. In the 1790 census, Virginia (the largest state) had 111,000 people while Delaware had 12,000, roughly. This is a little over nine times the size. Currently, California is 79 times the size of Wyoming. California really needs to be split up into four or five different states and split Texas into two or three. While we are at it, we can merge the Wyoming into Idaho and merge the two Dakotas into one. Californians would probably love this. Not so much the Wyomingites.  This is not going to happen. I can't imagine the Republicans agreeing to loosing the Senators in Wyoming and giving the Democrats a few more in California, but it is fun to think about. 

What seems more practical is removing the two electors assigned to the states for their Senators. Very small states getting three electors instead of just one is throwing the math all off. All states would lose two. This would bring CA down to 53 electoral reps and give them a vote per every 745,000 people. Not a big change for them. The big change would be that Wyoming would get only one vote for their entire state of 500,000 people. That is a lot more equal than the 193,00 they currently have. The point here is that change is hard and getting an amendment passed is almost impossible. The last one that passed (the 27th in 1992) took over 200 years to do so. A little change might be easier to pass.

The problem with this one is that Clinton still would have lost in 2016 under this new count. Clinton lost to Trump because he won 30 states and she only won 20. He had 306 electoral votes and she only had 232 even though more than 2 million people voted for her. If you removed the Senate electoral votes from this count, he would lose 60 votes and she 40. She'd still have less votes. 

Even if you went with the Maine/Nebraska model and vote were divvied up via Congressional District, Trump would be victorious. He won 232 districts while she won 203. He just won by smaller margins and in smaller districts. In order for Clinton to have had an electoral college victory in 2016, we'd have to use both methods taking away the Senatorial electors and the Maine/Nebraska model. If you mess with the Electoral College that much, you might as well just go with a popular vote. 

Pro-lifers Are Not Pro-life

The term "pro-life" was first used by education philosopher A.S. Neill in 1960 and it had a different meaning to how we use it now.  It was a progressive term he used to condemn mistreatment of other human beings such as child abuse, homophobia, corporal punishment, war etc. In 1973, when abortion because legal nationally (due to Roe v. Wade), anti-abortion groups began using the term to mean anti-abortion. Those who disagreed with them and supported abortion rights didn't like the moniker of "pro-death" or "anti-life" so they came up with "pro-choice" acknowledging that it was a deeply personal decision that a woman had to undergo. This is the political framing we use today and it hasn't changed much in 50 years.  

The media portrays the difference between these groups as clear cut and black and white, but it is a lot more gray than it appears. If you don't believe me, check out this video from the Holy Post. I don't agree with it 100% but I am impressed with how aligned I am with what they are saying but I consider myself pro-choice and they are clearly not. Often the media lets radical factions define our culture while the rest of us are left scratching our heads. Middle ground does exist. Most, if not all, pro-choicers believe that abortion is a pretty awful thing and something to be avoided. Only the very careless see it as a birth control option. Most, even many people who call themselves pro-life, agree that birth control should be used to avoid pregnancy. 

I don't like the term pro-life because those who call themselves pro-life often only seem to care about the lives of the unborn at the exclusion of other lives. Can you still call yourself pro-life and also be pro-death penalty? Or pro-war? Many people supported Trump because they believe that he would appoint conservative judges and that he did. He was able to change the makeup of the Judiciary to favor the conservative ideology. not just on the Supreme Court level. He appointed 194 judges to Federal benches. In four years, that is more than half of what Obama did in eight years (312) and more than twice Clinton (84). All of Trump's appointments are anti-abortion. But they are anti a lot of other stuff as well like the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and they are actively chipping away at this law that has given about six million Americans health care. This is during a pandemic, kinda sick. If you were actually pro-life wouldn't you be concerned about people getting affordable healthcare. Both his appointees to the Supreme Court are against the ACA. This law could very well be overturned during Biden's term in office. Will they still call themselves "pro-life" when their neighbors can longer afford their insulin or their mood stabilizers? 

In 1988, long before he was president, Trump placed this ad in several NYC newspapers trying to bring back the death penalty in New York State. 

This was in response to the Central Park Five who were five young black men who were wrongly imprisoned for the rape and murder of a white woman. In 2002, they were exonerated and released from prison. As you would expect, Trump never apologized. This man has a long trail of hate like this, yet many so called "pro lifers" support him solely on the basis that he'd appoint "pro-life" judges. Since July this year (2020), Trump has approved the execution of seven Federal prisoners and three more are schedule before he leaves office. Before this spree, we had gone 17 years without a Federal execution. Pro-life? I don't think so.

Yes, Roe v. Wade, the legal decision that effectively legalized abortion in this nation, could be overturned thanks to this President. If that is all you wanted, congratulations. All it would mean is that states would be able to make it illegal again and many states will. This will not stop abortions from happening in this country. People can just drive to a neighboring state to get it done. Even if every state made it illegal, they could drive to Europe, Canada or Mexico etc. It would just inconvenience the rich and prevent the poor from getting a legal and safe medical procedure. An estimated 25% of abortions would be prevented. Any economist will tell you that if a demand exists so will a market. Illegal abortions will happen and many of them will not be safe. Also, there will be self induction. Before legal abortion, this was popular. We don't want people giving themselves abortions. Before the internet, girls would use poison, pills, coat hangers or throw themselves down the stairs to end their pregnancies. In a misinformation age, I can't imagine what awful stuff you would find if you started googling how to do your own abortion. An estimated 200 women a year died seeking illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. But hey, if you want to call yourself "pro-life," go ahead, I just call you a hypocrite. This is why I use the term "anti-choice" to describe pro-lifers. They are not in protecting life at all; they are just into taking away other people's rights.  

If you want to be pro-life, you might want to start by not voting for scum like Trump. Abortion in America has decreased since the Roe decision and this has little to do with Roe. It has to do with the fact that we have increased sex education, increased women's access to healthcare and birth control and made adoption more affordable. All of these still need improvement. Putting an extremist like Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court for a rest of her life is not helping the matter. 

Future of Local Journalism and the Collapse of the Fourth Estate

Disruption (or creative destruction) in an economy can be a great thing and an awful thing simultaneously. When the automobile was introduced, this disrupted the livelihood of thousands of people who sold and serviced horses (horse-breakers and blacksmiths) and wagons (wheelwrights). While they all lost their jobs and businesses, thousands of businesses and jobs were created making cars, paving roads and selling gas. Disruption is inherit in capitalism. Technology is not the only disruptor, but it is the most common. The biggest disruptor in my life has been the introduction of the internet and ecommerce. Almost every industry has been affected: music, education, retail, movies and gyms among others. 

Brick and mortar stores are being killed by Amazon, movie theaters are being killed by Netflix and music stores almost don't exist anymore because you can buy a song instantly on your phone or stream for free. Jobs and careers have really been shuffling for the past decade or two. I have benefited by this as well. I have been able to have a high-tech job and tele-commute to NYC each day while living in my rural home in northern Vermont. This wasn't possible twenty years ago when I moved to VT. 

Of all these disruptions, the one that bothers me the most is what is happening with local newspapers. Local news is expensive. Newspapers have to employ reporters who attend town and city counsel meetings, local events, sporting events, car crashes and fires. This is, of course, in addition to their overhead and the expenses of producing the paper. Traditionally their revenue streams are the selling of advertisement space and classifieds. When I was young, if you were looking for a job or looking for a kitten, you had to pick up the local paper. Now you can go on Craigslist for free. Craigslist devastated the classified revenue for papers, which in turn greatly reduced circulation. When circulation is down, it is harder to sell advertisement. Collapse ensued. 

In 2000, the advertising revenue for newspapers peaked to over $70 billion in the US. In 2018, it had dropped to under $15 billion which is lower than the 1950's. As of 2019, 65 million Americans live in a county with one or zero local news sources. How do citizens stay informed if there is no local news source? How can they vote confidently? How do they find out about businesses that is polluting their water or a politician that is stealing from them? They don't. Meanwhile, your local clueless jackoff has a YouTube channel, he's "telling it like it is" and giving it out for free. People are not just uninformed, they are misinformed. 

Some papers are hanging in there with a digital presence, but digital advertising revenue is still very low. There is also an increase of digital subscription in the past few years. Four in ten people under the age of 35 have at least one digital subscription. Young people are figuring out that paying for media means you get better information. Regardless, the outlook for local news to remain local is not good. When is a local paper not local? 

Since its founding in 1906, Gannett has been going around buying up small newspapers and other media markets. In addition to owning US Today, they currently own 260 daily local newspapers and about 300 national papers. These including The Providence Journal, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, El Paso Times etc.  They own media in 47 states and Guam. This is a lot of power. Gannet is not immune to circulation problems. They are losing circulation even higher than non-Gannett papers. Here in VT, our "local" Gannett paper, The Burlington Free Press, circulation is down more than 36% since 2017. How long can they can survive with numbers like that? 

The Void: In capitalistic societies, the voids left by failing industries and businesses are often filled quickly but not always in desirable ways. The New York Times this week ran an article about how pay-to-play organizations are filling this void. Political and/or corporate PR groups are paying free lance reporters to write articles supporting their agendas. That agenda could be to promote their business or attack their opponents in an election. These articles are then sold to less than credible "news" papers and not labelled as advertisements, which they should be (according to the Federal Trade Commission). Here is a list of them organized by state. You may recognize some of them. Perhaps you get one of them free in the mail or perhaps, you pick one up outside your local market. They look legit because they might have a real article about your local high school soccer team or a local fire, but they are not. In 2010, there were five of these. Now there are over 1200. Something you should always remember, when you get something for free, it is not the commodity, you are. You are being manipulated into voting for someone or buying a product.  It is not journalism that you are reading but an advertisement. 

On a more positive note, David Plotz, one of my favorite podcast journalists, has created a new venture called City Cast. Print may be dead or dying, but podcasting is thriving. He is trying to create a network of local podcasts in cities around the country where the void is at its worst. I listen to podcasts all day at work. When I jump in my car, I put them on. We listen in bed. If there was a local podcast that I liked, about my town or larger local towns, I'd be listening. I feel so clueless about local news and politics. He is trying to get this going, guess what? ... he's hiring.  Contact him if you are interested. I contacted David on Twitter to find what towns they are going to start with and I haven't heard back yet. I assume medium size cities like Portland or Cincinnati. Regardless, I am excited about this. Hopefully it is coming to your town soon. 

Fucked Up Love

    I am not a fan of memes. I find most of them annoying. They are usually over simplifications of very complex situations. But sometimes, they nail it.  This one might be my favorite:

It just makes me say "yep." The best thing I ever did to make myself happy is relocate. I rid my world of assholes and kept those that I had to maintain contact with at a distance, but the rest of them, I cut them out. My life has gotten better and better each time I've done this. I am happier, more successful and basically a different person. Depression comes sometimes, seldom now, but not like before. It is occasional and I know how to handle it. It was once an everyday thing. Medication didn't solve this. Ridding my life of assholes did. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't. 

    Love is an abstraction. Those of us who are lucky enough to grow up in a house full of love, have no problem recognizing it in relationships when we are adults. Those of us who grew up in household without love, fall in love easily because we cannot recognize love when we see it. This love can come in some very strange forms. Not knowing what it is nor what to expect, prevents us from recognizing it. I am unlike both of these examples because I grew up in a household with love, but with a special kinda of love. It was fucked-up love. 

    Fucked-up love is not a technical term. No doubt, there are clinical names for it. I lack the knowledge, education and imagination to come up with a better term. Dysfunctional might be the term, but I rather like fucked-up love, as a term not a thing, because it just fits. They are the best words I can think of to describe what I went through growing up. 

    What I am going to describe is not the only example of fucked-up love that I have experienced in my upbringing, but just one of the many examples. I am not going to use any names and I won't be sharing this on social media. Most of the people I know, only access my blog via social media. So this will post will be our secret, dear stranger, dear anonymous blog reader. Lets keep it that way. 
    My grandmother's house was a farmhouse with about five acres of land in Cumberland, Rhode Island near Sneech Pond. I call it her house, Meme's house (that's right we called her Meme - pronounced Meh-may which is French for grandmother), but I guess it was just as much Pepe’s house as well. It just always seemed to be her house. It had a huge wrap around porch with creaky boards that gave you slivers if you walked in stocking feet. The yard was a big grass field with a beautiful rustic stone well, boarded-up, so that the kids would not fall in. I was third youngest of a slew of grandchildren, something around twenty of us. Holidays were chaos. 

    Behind the field was a huge garden that the family used to grow all their food when my dad was small. They had eleven children, seven boys and four girls and they were young during the depression. My dad was the seventh. They grew vegetables in the warm months and filled the shelves of the basements with canned goods. When my extended family visited during the holidays in the early 1970’s, we’d sneak downstairs and the jars were still there now empty and covered with dust.  Some of the shelving had been removed and replaced by an old pool table that was also covered in dust. I remember once finding a long dead rodent in a corner pocket.

    Beside the field was a picnic table not often used in good weather due to mosquitoes. A hornet’s nest usually appeared during the summer months. For the holidays, it was probably covered in snow. It was here where the children spent our times during holidays running around in the snow. Among the younger cousins was myself, my older and younger sisters. The families of cousins who were local were there every year. One of the younger cousins, around my age, was a heavy young girl. Meme called her “La Gross” which meant the “fat one” in her native French. Three cousins came from Massachusetts, a boy younger than I and two girls older. One family who still lived in Cumberland. Some years, my cousins from New York came but didn’t every year because of the long drive. Even less often, the cousins from Maryland and Connecticut came but I really can’t remember because these cousins are so much older than I.  They wouldn’t be outside throwing snow with the rest of us kids, but inside playing cards with the adults. 

    I am sure the adults were grateful when we played outside. Of my ten aunts and uncles, all but one of them was still alive in the 1970’s. One of my uncles died in the Korean War. Of the remaining ten, all but one had children. My oldest cousin is just a few years younger than my youngest uncle which I guess is not uncommon in large families. My dad passed away five years ago and his last sibling passed away the year after that, so that entire generation of my family is gone. 

    The one sibling that didn’t reproduce was an uncle (lets call him B) who was mentally ill and was institutionalized most of his life. The story, the one that my family told but may-or-may-not-be-true, was that Meme heard his skull crack when he was born. In the 1920’s, most women still gave birth at home. When I was very young I used to go with my father to visit him at an institution in Cranston. For the longest time, the word “Cranston” was synonymous with the mentally ill for me. When I was a teenager and met people from Cranston, I used to laugh to the confusion to anyone around me. I never went inside the hospital but I used to wait in the car reading a book. This was the time before cell phones and electronic handheld games. I used to be terrified, hoping for his quick return. He used to take me out for a milkshake afterwards.

    Due to deinstitutionalization of the US mental health system in the 60’s and 70’s, he saw a lot more of B during the holidays than we used to. He terrified me. He was as much a fear to me as any boogie man or imaginary creature that lived under my bed or in the darkness of our basement. He mumbled and he ate things like cigarettes, anything small that he could find to put in his mouth. The most terrifying thing about this situation was that he always wanted to kiss me. I don’t know if it was all the kids or just me. The only thing I could see in my mind was Uncle B taking a huge rip out of my ear or my cheek like something from The Walking Dead, long before there was ever such a thing. I tried to spend all my time outside when he was at Meme’s.

    Inside was always loud. That is the thing I remember most from that house during the holiday, the noise. This was an old farmhouse with two main rooms downstairs. I can only guess that we had about twenty, maybe thirty, people there each Christmas. We usually didn’t get there until after the holiday meal at home so the kitchen table was used for card games or dominoes. Pepe was always impressed with how young I was when I could play dominoes. It is just matching tiles, not that hard. I played a good game for my age, as well.  This is one of the few things I remember about him because he died before I was about six or seven.

    I sat on a makeshift booster seat, perhaps a pillow, so that I could reach the table. I knew the rules of the games but I doubt if I knew any strategy. Eight or nine adults sat around the table, mostly uncles and my dad. Meme played sometimes but since she cheated, and cheated badly, she wasn’t always welcome. She kept extra cards on her lap that everyone could see. The room was hot because of the crowd and smoky from Pepe’s pipe. It was the same room where the cooking was done so the art of stepping around others was practiced, but not well.

    My need to flee started here. There was love in this room but it is difficult to see it as anything other than self love, lacking empathy or understanding of how one’s actions affects another, particularly a small child.  I remember, one day, playing in the living with the kids and being called into the kitchen where the adults were. “Uncle B wants to say 'Hi”.  These were the words I feared.

    I would pretend I didn’t hear them. They weren’t calling the other kids, only me. Why me? At least that is how I remember it. My mom would yell, she was angry with me, so I had to go. I would go slowly into the room, the card playing had stopped, I went to my dad. I saw B standing near the entrance with his coat on. Thoughts of him ripping my ear off is all that I could think of. The stories of him eating lye or cigarettes just filled my mind. The crowd pushed me away, toward him. “B wants to kiss you.” He clutched a rosary and had snot coming out of his nostrils. I’d kept saying NO. I imagine myself running on ice, being pushed into a hole. My mom was getting angry with her, embarrassed of me. He pulled me and held me in a cold iron-like grasp. He’d cover my head with wet snotty kisses much more like being gummed than kissed. I screamed and eventually pulled myself from his grasp. I ran and hid. Some laughed, my mother certainly wasn't and I remember my aunts being shocked. Not sure for whom. This wasn't the only time they did this, but the most memorable. Of course, all of this is remembered in through the fog of decades and my tainted perception. 

    In a large family, sometimes love can be a monster, all consuming and selfish, unthinking, crude and oblivious. No one consoled me to try to find out why I was terrified. If I mentioned it to anyone, I was shamed, making me feel like an awful person, bad boy, bad Catholic. Poor Uncle B., he just wanted a kiss. 

    This festered and grew within me, my constant companion. It manifested itself in many awful ways in my behavior as an adult. I have it under control now. I can't remember the last time I had a panic attack. Fucked-up love had done this to me. 

    While in elementary school, children in special education were segregated, and I would always fear sitting next to any of them in the cafeteria. A girl with down syndrome would always seem to find me and I’d do my best to run away. As a teenager, I had a friend with a beautiful old red convertible and we went for a ride one afternoon. He said he had to pick up his uncle and I freaked, quietly dying, when I realized that his uncle was an adult with down syndrome. I was so nervous. It helped me calm down when I saw how great he was with his uncle. I felt like an awful person. As an adult while living in Boston riding the subway daily, I’d sit in fear of an insane homeless person sitting on the side of me. I’d move far away or to another car if I had to. The irony is not lost on me, now, that I am married to a special education professional.

    How do you solve fucked-up love. You don't, you run away. I left for Boston in 1990. I experienced poverty, loneliness and lot of other uncomfortable situations. All of it was easier to take than fucked-up love. It was sometime in the mid-90's, while I was living alone in Boston only about an hour away from my old life, that I realize that I didn't have to go home for the holidays. The holidays were depressing as hell, but staying home in my shitty apartment with a good book and a bottle of wine, was better. I stayed home for Thanksgiving. After that, I realized staying home for all the holidays was probably the best. After a few years, I had friends in the area and I didn't have to spend them alone anymore. Now I even enjoy the holidays. My life currently has very little fucked-up love. Thanks to social media, I can maintain these relationships on my terms ... or not.

Hindsight 2020: The Red Mirage

In 2016 support for Trump (polling data) was a 6% higher when the poll was taken on-line than when the poll was taken in person. This is a largest difference for any candidate in the short history of online polling. This suggests people may be a little embarrassed to admit that they support the guy. The privacy of the voting booth is very different than a poll where you have to admit to someone whom you support. This has changed in 2020. Perhaps it is because he has been president for four years or perhaps it was because his opponent was a woman in 2016. Online support is roughly equal to phone support in 2020. 

The Democrats need a slaughter in 2020, nothing but a complete mandate. If the election is close, you have to wonder if he will concede. If he refuses to leave, what do we do then? This fucker may not even concede if he is trounced. As it looks right now, it looks like Biden will win in a landslide, but the election is still a month away.  Yes, I do remember how off polling was off in 2016, but Biden is so far ahead that even if our polling is as bad as they were in 2016, Biden would win all but one battleground state and Trump would win a squeaker in North Carolina. I started writing this before Trump's horrendous debate performance/behavior and before his COVID diagnosis. Biden has jumped even higher in the polls since. Also, Trump is polling lower than any incumbent President in the history of polling. 

Election night will be quite different this year. We won't have all the results in for a while. We are still in the midst of a pandemic so many people, including me, will be voting via mail/absentee ballots. I have the day off so I was planning to vote in person, but after hearing a plea from our town clerk to stay home, I am complying. I will be hand delivering my ballot and hope you do as well.  I trust the post office, but they may be overwhelmed. I am also abstaining from buying anything online until after the election as well. Whatever we can do, we should, to help this election be legit. 

Traditionally, I watch the results roll in on election night and go to bed waiting for history to unfold. In 2000, I remember falling asleep pleased that my candidate, Al Gore, had won Florida and was probably going to be our next President. Two decades and two towers later, I am not so naive.  With so many mail ballots being cast, we may not know even a week later. Let this serve as a reminder, to ignore speculations of pundits and candidate on election night.  Many states have already started counting the ballots, but some can't. Some states can't start counting the ballots until the day of or the day before Election Day.  Since these are dictated by law, they can't simply change this.  This is particularly concerning because some of the larger swing states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are among these states.  This is particularly an issue in Wisconsin, which as of right now, is on lockdown due to a COVID outbreak. I have no doubt, there is going to be a ton of problems. It doesn't help that Trump is recruiting his "Trump army" to intimidate everyone involved. 

We don't know what percentage of America will vote by mail, but do know that 75% of us do have the capability, the highest ever. One third of the American voter-base claim they intend to vote by mail and Biden voters are twice as likely to vote by mail than Trump.  This is probably because Trump keeps claiming how corrupt the process is. Since there is zero evidence of this, this shouldn't bother anyone. He votes by mail himself, so it is obvious this is just typical Trump bullshit. 

Since more Democrats are voting by mail, what we will experience on election night will be skewed toward the Republican especially in these states that don't start count until Election Day. This is what people are calling the Red Mirage. Keep this in mind when you see the result. 

Be patient. Brace yourself, we're in for a wild ride! 

Baseball During the End Times

The battle between the billionaires (owners) and millionaires (players) went on for a while. I thought for sure, we weren't going to have a season this year. I look forward to it all winter. It was upsetting, but compared to all the other problems around us, in perspective, it wasn't that big of a deal. After the dust settled, we did have a brief baseball season. I am glad we did, but it was too short. When it comes to these battles, I tend to side with the players over the owners. Indeed they do make a lot of money, but generally those who do make an outrageous amount of money, they only do so for a short time like a few years. Superstars are only superstars for a short time and most players aren't superstars.  Most players get paid very badly throughout their minor league careers while the team owners are raking it in, perennially. When it comes to a David and Goliath story, I'll usually chose David, even when David is a millionaire athlete.  

The season started the last week of July, instead of the first week in April and was 60 games instead of 162. 

Due to the season being so short a few rule changes were passed. 

• Extra innings would all start with a player on second base. The player who made the last out the prior inning would be the runner.  
• Doubleheader games (two games in one day) would each have seven innings as opposed to the traditional  nine innings.
• The National League would have a Designated Hitter (DH) which it is usually the purview of the American League only.
• Each pitcher has a three batter minimum (unless there is an injury). No more bringing in a pitcher for one batter. 

I thought I was going to hate the extra innings rule, but I ended up liking it. It made extra innings have more of a sudden-death type of feel. The inning starts and the team in the field is already in trouble. I hope they keep this one.  

In addition to these game play rule changes there are a bunch of COVID-19 related changes about general behavior, the biggest being a prohibition on spitting. This might be the most difficult rule to follow. Baseball players are notorious spitters. 

It is by far the weirdest season I've ever experienced. We have had games cancelled for players tested positive for COVID, for entire teams participating in Black Lives Matter protests and for poor air quality due to wildfires. Some doubleheaders have been played in which the home team switched. For example, Boston played Toronto in Boston in a double header last month. Boston was the home team the first game (meaning they batted last) but the second game, Toronto was home. This was the first time that Boston was ever the away team in Fenway Park. 

Oh yeah, no fans are allowed in the stadiums. So why travel? They considered playing in a bubble-like structure, similar to the NBA, but the player's union rejected that. The players didn't want to be away from their families for that long. They kept the travel to minimum by changing the schedule to only regional games. Regional being East Coast, Middle of the Country and West Coast. Travelling safely during a pandemic is difficult so this makes complete sense. 

The scheduling has been weird as well.  They are playing a total of 60 games with 40 of them being within their division and 20 games are regional interleague. So American League East teams, like Boston and Baltimore, don't play American League Central or West teams, like Chicago White Sox or Seattle Mariners, all year. But they do get to play other East teams from the National League, like Miami Marlins and New York Mets. We basically have three leagues now (East, Central and West) instead of two leagues, American and National. But they still plan on giving out awards at the end of the year for two leagues. Even though this year's monikers of National and American leagues are meaningless, we'll have a American League MVP and Cy Young Award winner. This is bonkers. Shouldn't there be three this year?

Due to the short season, the playoffs are going to have more teams in it.  With 30 Major League Baseball teams, only ten teams making it into the postseason makes sense. Especially since, four of them are Wild Cards that have a one-game elimination. This years more than half the teams make it into the playoffs; we'll have 16 teams, all of whom will be playing series, no one-game eliminations. Some of them as short as three games. Also we're going back to our American and National League placements. The first and second place teams from each division made it along with two Wild Card teams from each league. The Wild Cards are the teams with the best records that didn't get first or second in their league. The Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs even though they were in fourth place (out of five) in their division and they are also below .500. We have a losing team in the post season! Bonkers! Also, a team could be playing another in the playoffs that they haven't played in the regulars season. They could then get to the Word Series and play a team they did play in the regular season. 2020 is that year where everything is opposite. 

Houston Astros - If any team benefited from COVID-19, it is Houston. In the offseason, they were found guilty of cheating and lots of jobs were lost. It was going to be the big story of this year's season, but it fizzled.  It still comes up now and then when a pitcher bonks one of their batters, but over-all, it is no longer a big story.  They definitely benefited from not having fans in the stadium because they would have been booed everywhere they played, maybe even at home. 

Toronto Blue Jays- The Blue Jays were approved to play in Toronto by the city government and Provincial government of Ontario, but the Canada government would not allow them in the country. Canada has its act together when it comes to COVID unlike us in Reality-Show-Nation. They didn't want a bunch of potentially infected people getting people sick. This is the first time since 1968 that there have been no MLB games in Canada. This left the team scrambling to find a home. They tried to make a deal with PNC Park in Pittsburgh but that was rejected by the state of Pennsylvania. Their triple A team's (the Bisons) home park, Sahlen Field in Buffalo New York, could be used but the lights needed to be upgraded before MLB would approve it.  Their first home game there was August 11th. This is the first time since 1915 that a major league baseball game was played in Buffalo which was home to the Blues for two years. All "home" games for the Blue Jays before that date would be played in their opponents parks which was very weird. Even though they had to deal with all this confusion, the Blue Jays will be a Wild Card team in the playoffs this year. 

Washington Nationals - Things did not fare well for the defending world champs. Two days before the start of the season, their star Juan Soto tested positive for COVID. I thought this was the beginning of the dominoes falling and the season was going to be cancelled but they caught it quickly. He didn't start playing until August 5th. His .300 plus hitting was not enough to propel them into the post season due to their awful off-season deals. 

Miami Marlins - The Marlins and Blue Jays may be the best stories of the year in baseball. The Marlins started the season with low expectations. At best they were expected to have a .500 season (equal amount of wins as losses). They played their first series in Philadelphia where they were exposed to COVID-19; two coaches and 18 players tested positive. A bunch of players were stuck in Phillie quarantined in two hotels. They had to cancel seven games disrupting the schedules of other teams as well. Those games would have to be made up. The schedule was so tight in an abbreviated schedule, these had to be made up via double header. From September 4th to the 27th, they didn't have a single day off. In that time, they played a game a day plus two games four times. Ouch! You would expect them to be in the cellar, standings-wise, at the end of the season. But here we are, they finished in second place and they are scheduled to play the Cubs on Wednesday. 

Boston Red Sox - As a Red Sox fan, I expected this to be a bad year. Our best pitcher, Chris Sale, took the season off for Tommy John surgery. We lost our best hitter, Mookie Betts,  in the off-season along with most of our rotation. A rebuilding year indeed. But then, on July 7th, our second best pitcher (now our best), Eduardo Rodriguez, was reported as being COVID positive and later had been diagnosed with myocarditis which is an inflammation of the heart muscle, caused by COVID. This is very upsetting. He is one of my favorites. It has been very exciting watching him getting better and better each year. Hopefully, he will be well next year. 

This year our best hitter should have been JD Martinez, but he's been awful. It is said that JD is addicted to the tape room. After each at-bat, he'd go into the tape room to view his swing. This season, players weren't allowed access to the tape room. The league claimed this was because of COVID, but we all know this is because of the Houston Astros using the medium for stealing signs (aka cheating).  My Sox didn't have the worst record in the American League. That prize went to the Texas Rangers. 

Texas Rangers - The Rangers' Globe Life Field, their new $1.1 billion stadium, has yet to see any fans. Almost half the stadium's construction was paid for by tax-payers and they have yet to recoup any of the money. Attendance was already pretty light. Will the new park save baseball in Arlington in 2021? The economic of baseball looks bleak in general. 

        

Seattle Mariners - A three game series between the Mariners and the SF Giants had to moved from Seattle to San Francisco due to air quality issues. Due to the fires on the west coast many young healthy players were gasping for air during a game between Seattle and Oakland, so they moved the next home stand. Another example of a visiting team playing their "home" games in a visitor's park.  

New York Yankees - This might be the first baseball season ever where no players were spit on by Yankees fans during a game. No smoke bombs were dropped into the visiting dugouts or no fishing sinkers were thrown at the opposing teams' outfielders. Must have been downright pleasant for all involved.  Maybe there is an advantage to not having fans. In 2017, NYY acquired Giancarlo Stanton from the Marlins for big money and they have been disappointed since. He has been injured a lot of the time. Even when he played, he did not hit well.  He was amazing in Miami but not so in New York. Some thought it was caused by the intimidation of the NYC crowd. Miami had very few fans in attendance. When this season started, it appeared that this was correct. He batted over .400 for the short month of July with two home runs. But the rest of the year wasn't so good, with only two more homers and he ended the year batting .250.  So much for that theory. His base salary this year is $26 million with the NYY's 30 man roster at $69 million (again the most in MLB).  The Tamba Rays' entire 30 man roster's salary is less than Stanton's salary alone at $25.88 million. The Yankees came in second place to the Rays. I am not sure why anyone roots for this Goliath, but clearly the Rays are the David we all should be rooting for. 

St. Louis Cardinals - Starting in July 31st, the Cards had to suspend the playing baseball for 16 days due to  COVID. This is the longest stoppage of play since the strike year. They had to cram 53 games into 44 days.  Amazing they made the playoffs as well. Four out of the five teams in the National League Central made the playoffs. The lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, with the worst record in baseball, didn't make it. Wouldn't it be interesting if the two teams with the COVID outbreaks (Marlins and Cards) made it into the World Series? Can't happen. They are in the same league.  

                    

Atlanta Braves - Without fans in the stadium, we didn't have to hear this racist chant at the Braves home games. 

This is definitely a big plus to not having fans in the stadium this year. Also, a plus going into the post-season. I usually root against the Braves so I don't have to listen to this crap. Now I will just root against them because I hate their fans. 

Chicago Cubs - The biggest concern of Cubs fans, before the pandemic started, was the age of their starters. They have five great starters, but all of them are in their 30's which is old for a pitcher. In a 162 game season, you know injuries are going to happen. Can these older player remain effective and throw hard for that long? Maybe not, but this being a shortened season, it was no longer a concern. They were awesome. With the Red Sox being so bad, at least I had another decent team to root for this year. Their hitting and bullpen aren't so great, but their great starters got them enough to win their division. Both Kyle Hendricks and Yu Darvish had Cy Young Award caliber seasons. If their hitting comes alive, they will be a dangerous team in the postseason. 

Los Angeles Dodgers - A handful of players opted out for the season. This is understandable but costly. The highest price player, ironically, was David Price who was traded to the Dodgers from the Red Sox in the Mookie Betts trade in the offseason. He has two small children at home and didn't think the protocols that MLB had put in place were enough. This didn't seem to matter to the Dodgers. They ended up with the best record in baseball. They are the favorites, on paper, going into the postseason, but as my high school track coach used to say "if we cared what it said on paper, we'd just mail in our results." The postseason is a new season and anyone of these teams can pull it off. 

My wife is a Cubs' fan so I am all in on the Cubbies. Since the Oakland A's have one of their Single A farm teams in Burlington, I'd love to see them in the World Series as well.  I'd love seeing the guys we saw play here when they were 18 or 19 play in the big game.  So I'll be rooting for a Cubs / A's world series. Hopefully, next year we'll be back to normal.