Oh, Thank GAWD!

Okay, okay, okay - I started this the other day and set it aside and got busy and... here it is, old news (by today's standards). But that's okay because I am STILL delighted with the way things worked out last Sunday.

What has me so happy you ask? Of course you do. After all this is my blog and in this little interweb page, my happiness is everything. (Insert Grinning Emoticon Here). Now, here's what I started and set aside:

YAY! The New England Patriots lost to the Denver Broncos in their NFL playoff game. I'm sure that not everyone who's reading this cares, except football fans like me who detest the New England Patriots.

I despise Bill Belichick, the Patriot's head coach. I think he's an arrogant ass, although he has got to be a pretty strict disciplinarian. You never hear news of any of his players getting into trouble with the law. With the League, yes. But not with the law.

What I dislike the most is that cheating runs like life-blood through the organization although they've only been caught and publicly outed twice. That indicates cunning and it's top-down culture.

Sports Illustrated wrote another article about Patriot team cheating, and it's pretty damning.

http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/09/08/patriots-cheating-suspicions-bill-belichick-tom-brady

If a team plays great ball and wins because of superior talent, that's admirable. If a team stoops to cheating to win, that's disgusting.

Sean Peyton, the head coach of the New Orleans Saints, is another unscrupulous asshole who's desire to win supersedes basic sportsmanship and player safety.

In his case, he was suspended from the League for an entire year because he told, not just encouraged but told his players to target players on the other team - and the hell with the penalties. The fact that that targeting could have crippled or otherwise ended that other player's career made zero difference to that piece of dung.

Football is an ugly dirty sport and not all coaches and players are decent human beings. However, Peyton Manning, the quarterback of Denver, is a class act, and so is Gary Kubiak, the head coach. John Elway, the General Manager of the team is another class act. The entire team has an ethic that other teams should admire because you don't hear about players getting stupid and getting into trouble, and you don't hear about scandals and cheating.

Which makes the Bronco's win over a dirty cheating team even better.

On the other side, the Panthers wiped the floor with the Cardinals - it was a hard day for Arizona's QB Carson Palmer.

Either of these teams would be a worthy opponent for Denver, although I would rather see Carolina than Arizona (since they're in the Eastern Conference while Arizona and Denver are both in the Western Conference). I'm just delighted it is one of these teams and Denver. Now I won't have to find something else to do on Superbowl Sunday. Like weed the yard or something.

Beyond being able to watch the game, and I don't know which team I'll be rooting for, I won't have to suffer through seeing Belichick with his usual dyspeptic grimace on the sideline. I swear, the man always looks like he's got a case of really bad indigestion (or he's trying hard not to fart).

So I am thrilled we won't have to look at him on the sideline again until next season.

And I'll spend the next week and a few days in the lead-up to the Superbowl trying to decided whether I want Peyton Manning and the Broncos to win, or whether I want Cam Newton and the Panthers to do it. Both are class acts so it's hard to decide.

Have fun and I hope your team wins - in whatever sport they play!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Separating You From Your Money

Nope, it's not me, it's those guys - the infamous 'they' in the basement.

Since putting up my post about the bond funds being gated the other day, I've continued to read and if I had any investments at all I would be worried.

You know those "safe" money market funds I mentioned? Those least-return-on-investment-but-safest-bet-if-the-bank-has-your-money funds that are allegedly the most stable of the stable in a 401k.

Well, I've got bad news for you. Governments, banks and fund managers are casting a longing eye over your nest egg. If they have their way, you might just get gated there, too.

Back on November 24, 2015 the Financial Times had this article:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3ff3dcce-928e-11e5-bd82-c1fb87bef7af.html#axzz3uMDzeC9z

Bond Market Seeks Repo Clearing Solution

The short course here, Econ 101:

A "repo" is a repurchase. A repurchase is when a bank wants something but it doesn't have the money it needs for that something. It looks in the sofa. It digs around in the cushions - the accounts of the bank's depositors. Without asking your permission it uses your money as collateral to fund the loan that it needs for the something it wants. After all, your money is just numbers in a computer, not piles of bills in a lock-box. So if you show up at the teller's cage but your money isn't at home, the teller takes money from someone else's account to fulfill your request. At some point the bank is supposed to put that money back.

This process keeps the liquidity of the bank liquid - they don't have to wait until some future date when their earnings and profits meet up with their want or need - they can have it now.

However, since the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 there have been a plethora of regulations and restrictions put in place to help stabilize the too-big-to-fails. The intent was to prevent a future crisis like that one. One regulation is Stress Testing - a form of "means testing" - if a crisis hit, would the bank be able to survive on its own? This means that banks can't use most of the funds available to invest in things. They have to keep enough money on hand that if there is a crisis, they'll be in a position to weather it.

That's irritating, almost galling, to the banks. They don't want to be restricted. They're like a spoiled three-year old who hasn't the first foggiest clue what the word "no" means. All that three-year old knows is that he's not getting what he wants, so he tries to figure out how to get it. In this case, the three-year olds are eyeing your savings - the nest egg in a money market account.

This is the key excerpt from the Financial Times article I linked above:

"At an annual private meeting between industry participants and the US Treasury Department last week, discussion focused on a proposed solution of placing repo trades between banks and investors, such as money market funds, into a clearing house."

Now the only thing I added there is the bold text. The words are not mine - they're from the Financial Times article - but what's highlighted is key.

There has been a meeting between the bankers, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury in which they discussed putting your money into a clearing house. A single basket from which the bankers can borrow for their somethings.

That might not seem like a bad idea, until you think about the potential of gating.

What if that fund gets dipped into so often that it's depleted when investors need or want their money? What if there's another massive rumble through the financial markets and people want to get their money out to make sure they know where it is when they need it? What if, and this is the big one, it comes down to a tug-of-war between you and the bank - who do you think will win that battle? What if you have $100,000 of your $300,000 savings in that money market account that's in that single clearing-house basket and what if that basket is suddenly, without warning, 'gated'? Well, golly, sorry but you just lost 1/3 of your savings. 33.3333...% of your money is gone, just like that and you have no recourse.

In the years since 2007-2008 there have been a lot of changes in the financial markets and financial regulations. Unfortunately, these new regulations have had zero effect on the morals, ethics, characters and downright greed of the people who run our financial institutions. It's power and control and greed in its worst possible form.

Someone a whole lot smarter than me once said: "Power Tends to Corrupt, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" (he was John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Duke of Acton, and a pretty smart guy).

When the banks have as much power as they have, in collusion with the World-wide Central Banking system aiding and abetting their every unsavory move, and the Treasury Department standing by to do their bidding (printprintprintprintprint), there is little hope for the individual investor.

Personally, I have minimal exposure to cash in any form. I own no stocks, no bonds, no investment vehicles. When I started at my new job last January and was offered a 401k I immediately, and with zero regret or hesitation, opted out.

I prefer it this way. I have what I need and I know where it is. Do you?

I hope so. In the meantime, have a lovely financially secure day. There is more coming: the Baltic Dry Index and a potential bail-out for these junk bond funds. Tomorrow, though, tomorrow because I think I've given you enough food for thought for today.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Do Umpires Cheat?

I love baseball. When I was a kid, I loved playing it. A tennis ball, crushed cans, gateposts, manhole covers, mailboxes, we figured out how to get a game on. If we were lucky we had gloves (I didn’t). If we were lucky we had a real bat (I didn’t). But we would gather in the street and start the game, yelling ‘car’ to warn the others whenever a vehicle impinged on our playing field.

For years after growing up I stopped watching baseball. My husband wasn’t excited by it so we stopped watching because it was too slow, too boring, etc.

Then, on a whim, we turned on a Giants game in 2013.  It just happened to be Matt Cain’s perfect game and we were hooked.

When the league instituted instant replay in 2014, we were excited. We had seen a number of calls since May 2013 that were obviously wrong, but the teams against which those calls went had no recourse.

Football has had instant replay as a regular part of the game for several years, and that was our sport. We liked watching pro football and college. We paid close attention to the replays and rooted for ‘our’ teams. When bad calls were made, they were usually fixed and the game continued.

In baseball not all plays are reviewable. It’s meant for on-the-field determination of close plays, not balls and strikes at the plate. The point is not to slow the game to a crawl - it's to fix a mistake.

Each manager has one chance to request a replay before the seventh inning. If he burns it – asks for a replay and the call isn’t upheld or overturned, depending on what he’s asking for, too bad. He’s out of luck. In the seventh and innings beyond, the manager can ask for a review but it’s not necessarily granted. It’s up to the officiating staff.

Before 2014 it was unusual for umpires to review calls and there was an increasing cacophony from players, fans, managers and owners to ‘get it right’. Some calls, bad calls, affected the outcome of games – winners and losers were ‘picked’ by umpires. Some umpires gained reputation as being good and fair, others not so much. Two, in particular, seem to take their personal feelings about teams, players or managers with them onto the field. Instant replay was supposed to help deal with that too.

Last year it was everyone’s joyous deliverance. Managers liked it, players liked it, it resolved a lot of questions and controversy before it got outside the park because, historically, a large part of baseball has always been human error. People make mistakes. It’s the cost of being a person and having a brain that allows us to make choices. But some mistakes are so bad one just has to shake one’s head.

It is why the league instituted instant replay in 2014. It was a chance to give officials the ability to get it right after a bad call but bad calls still happen. In fact, a lot of managers and players who were relieved last year to have the lines between fair and foul, safe and out more clearly defined through the replay system are starting to stir again.

Not all calls can be replayed or challenged. Balls and strikes is one group that is not reviewable because it’s too fast and, for the league to stop play every time a batter wants to argue would be ridiculous.

But there was a game played on Sunday that was still a head-shaker on Monday evening.

I don’t normally listen to radio chat about sports. I don’t care that much. I do like the games so, last night I tuned into the local sports station KNBR to find out what time that night's game would start. They were still taking about Sunday afternoon’s game between the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Capitals.

Phil Cuzzi was the plate umpire during the game and, according to the pre-game analysis I heard on Sunday, he tends to be ‘inconsistent’ in his calls. That's an understatement, but it's a gentlemanly understatement. It's polite.

Okay, he's 'inconsistent'. That’s the human factor. He makes mistakes and isn’t perfect. However, one analyst on yesterday’s radio show declared that Cuzzi is the second worst umpire in all of baseball. In any case, Cuzzi seemed to have two entirely different strike zones on Sunday.

The Giants were playing the Capitals and when the Giants were pitching, the strike zone seemed to be narrower across the plate and a bit (noticeably) shorter between the knees and letters. The constraints of the strike window gave a decided advantage to the Capital players. In order for Vogelsong, the Giants’ pitcher, to get a call strike, he could not finesse the ball at the corners or edge of the plate. He had to throw it straight down the pipe – into the hitter’s wheelhouse.

On the other hand, when the Giants were at bat and the Capitals were pitching, the strike zone was every inch and then some that it should have been. A ball at the corner of the plate, it was a strike. Sneaking down the edge of the plate, it was a strike. Low, at or below the hitter’s knees? Strike. At the letters or just above? Strike.

Watching that game and Cuzzi’s opposite approaches to the two teams leads to my fundamental question: 

Can game officials, for personal reasons – dislike of the manager, a player, the team or because, perhaps, they’ve a bet on – affect the outcome of a game?

I think it’s definitely possible.

Cuzzi seems, based on my own observations, to have it ‘in’ for either Bruce Bochy, the Giants manager, or the team organization. We’ve seen him before and every time he is officiating a game in which the Giants are playing there is a noticeable difference in how he makes calls for the two teams.

On Sunday it was so egregious that even the ESPN analysts – who don’t usually pay more than passing attention to what’s going on down on the field – spent nearly an entire inning commenting on it.

First, there was a conflicting call at the plate. The Capitals had the field, the Giants were at bat. Brandon Belt was up. He checked his swing – which means he started to swing his bat in a hitting motion. If the batter starts to swing and stops before the head of the bat arcs past the batter’s front knee, it’s called a check swing. If the ball is high or low or outside of the strike zone, it is then a ball.

On appeal about the swing from the Capital’s catcher, the third base umpire who is responsible for deciding whether it was a check swing or a swing for a strike, waved it off. It was not a swing. Behind home plate, Cuzzi overrode him. Even though it had been waved off by the third base ump, and the ball was clearly down around the hitter’s ankles, Cuzzi called it a strike and, because it was the third strike, the batter was out.

Another, even more questionable call, decidedly raised a lot of eyebrows. It was the bottom of the fifth inning. The pitch was clearly outside – off the edge of the plate enough that the catcher had to reach to his left to get it. Given its location, it should have been called a ball. Instead, Cuzzi called it a strike, even though the catcher had to move the glove outside the strike zone.

By this time Bruce Bochy, the Giants’ manager, was about to come unglued. He’d been seeing bad calls, terrible calls, all day and that was it for him. Bochy came out of the dugout and spoke to Cuzzi about it. That is the manager’s prerogative, so long as he does not get aggressive or ‘show the umpire up’ in front of players and fans.

Watching it on Sunday and seeing the replay of their ‘conversation’ after, Bochy did nothing but exercise his right. He asked ‘what the hell was that’ and Cuzzi threw Bochy out of the game.

Ryan Vogelsong, the Giant’s starting pitcher was on the mound. He knew it should have been a strike, also questioned it. From his position on the mound, he has, along with the catcher, the hitter and the umpire, the clearest view of the pitch. He has never before been thrown out of a game – until Sunday, because he was exercised enough to confront the umpire over it.

Pitching is not an exact science. The goal is to develop a variety of throwing methods – cutters, curveballs, sliders, fastballs, splitters – and work on them until you’re capable of using them in a game. Once in the game, there’s the strike zone which is the area above home plate, between the batter’s knees and shoulders, and extends the width of the plate. Pitching well at 80+ mph is an art form.

The catcher’s job is to make sure the balls pitched don’t get past him or the runners can advance. If a pitch does get by him, and if it’s an error by the pitcher, a ball badly thrown that is uncatchable, it’s called a wild pitch. If it is deemed catchable, but the catcher misses it, it’s deemed a pass ball.

In Sunday’s game, according to the ESPN pitch tracker, the Giants were disproportionally called out on strikes that were outside of the strike zone. It was so egregious that even the national ESPN announcers commented at length on the obviously bad calls.

And those guys never notice anything but themselves! Seriously, they sit in the booth and shoot the breeze. It's like sitting at the bar at Hooters and listening to a group of guys talk about themselves. No calls, no discussion of what’s going on down on the field. Yet Sunday, they paid enough attention to comment, at length, on Cuzzi’s screw ups.

 

So what is up with that?

Does this umpire have something personal against the Giants, or against Bruce Bochy? Is he taking his personal attitude to the plate, using his position to ‘cheat’? Or is he simply incompetent?

He hasn’t blown calls only for the Giants. He’s known for making a bad call during an ALCS playoff game that cost the Detroit Tigers a double that could have put them in position to win the game.

He’s so bad he’s featured widely on “MLB bad call” videos.

As far as his dislike of the Giant’s and deliberately making bad calls against them? It looks like it to me and to the radio announcers for the Giants, based on what they said and, apparently, to the announcers for ESPN. Are all of us wrong and the umpire is right?

If the umpire is cheating, if he is deliberately making unfair calls against the Giants or any other team, what recourse do the teams have?

Sure, they can complain to the league, but at what price? Word will spread, other umpires might back the umpire who is cheating, and then where will those teams be?

It’s so obviously wrong, so utterly unfair. Enough so that the announcers on both the radio and the national broadcast are questioning it – which is not something I’ve heard before in all the games I’ve watched and/or listened to.

The league needs to step in. Independently, they need to take a look at this game, at this umpire’s history and his calls. If it’s obvious that he’s incompetent, they need to relieve and retrain him. If it’s obvious, upon examination, that he’s consistently favored one team or certain teams over others, they need to relieve him and ban him from the league for life.

That’s the only thing that would be right and fair. It won’t change the outcome of any of the games he has cost teams but maybe, if the game officials know that the league is paying attention, and is willing to do the right thing, it might make it a more level playing field for all teams.

Whatever. It's just a game, right? No, not really if the umpire, the representative of Major League Baseball is using his position to cheat a team or a manager out of a win.

Players put too much energy and effort into their health, their skills and their life for it to be 'just a game'.

Teams and fans get together and spend time in the fresh air and sunshine. It's a community and it's a place where families can safely go and spend time together.

It's an important part of the American psyche - too important to be mildewed by cheating.

I hope he's not. I do hope he's simply blind and incompetent.

No matter what the case, though, I do hope MLB steps up to the plate, takes a look and decides to do the right thing. Either retrain him or eject him from the game.

Best~

Philippa

Follow me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Stuff, and more Stuff.

Meandering through my brain this morning there's 'stuff'.  All sorts of 'stuff'.

We watched game seven of the series between the New York Rangers and the Washington (DC) Capitals - if you have never seen professional hockey, you have never seen one heck of an exciting sport! It flashes by so fast, and the scrums in front of the Rangers's net last night (they were in overtime) were furious and intense - and seemed to last forever because I was rooting for the Rangers.

Mike Emerick - the game caller last night - WHEW!!  How he does it, I don't know, but he keeps up and calls the plays like an old time radio announcer. He gets so into the game, so invested, that I can just see him hunched over the microphone, his eyes following every move, every flash of a stick as he tells us who just did what. He's almost as exciting to listen to as the game is to watch - and he is one impressive caller!

And I use the term 'caller' with precision because that is what he does - he calls it, play by play - and it makes what we're watching that much more exciting because it adds so much to the visual. Sadly, great game callers are few and far between.

Emerick is one. Lon Simmons of the Giants who recently passed was another. Bill King is a third. You can count great game callers of the past on two hands. The rest, and there are a lot of them, sit back and jabber on about anything and nothing. We get frustrated by the A's announcers because it's like sitting in a room with two idiot blowhards.

They know everything but don't talk about what's happening on the field. They talk about everything but what's happening right in front of them. It drives us nuts because there will be a play - perhaps we missed it or what happened wasn't clear - but they won't describe it. There are at least two or three important plays - runs, hits, errors, great fielding - in each and every game we watch and they talk right past them. Sometimes, but only sometimes, they'll go back and mention it in a casual 'oh yeah, and...' kind of way. Grr! Infuriating.

So, back to last night. Lunqvist, the Rangers' goalie, was amazingly good! Through it all, he blocked every attempted goal - surrounded by bodies all flailing away with their sticks.

Credit to Holtby, the Capitals goalie, because he was just as good - but the Rangers got a shot off almost immediately after a faceoff because of a Capitals icing call.

Part of it might be attributable to the fact that the Capitals captain, Ovechkin, declared they were going to win last night. I'm sure the Rangers weren't happy with that attempt at a 'psych', so went in determined to prove him wrong. Whatever. Fans got a rockin' good time!

They've advanced to the second round of the playoffs, and game one for them is on Saturday against Tampa Bay (Florida). On Sunday, the Blackhawks (Chicago) will play the Anaheim (California) Ducks - and both of those are going to be really good series, too.

On the baseball side of things, both the Giants and the A's lost. I didn't see the A's game, but I heard it was 'ugly'. The Giants got a tough break. Apparently, the Houston Astros are 'hackers' - they swing at anything and everything, just as hard as they can. Normally, that's not a good idea because you get a lot of outs that way but, because of the power of their guys, they also get a lot of home runs. Last night there were three - which accounted for three of the four runs that won them the game. 'nuf said on that.


The weather people are saying we're going to get rain today. They said that about yesterday, too. I'll believe it when I see it. No rain that I saw yesterday and while there are clouds out my window this morning, they're not rainclouds. They're high and ... not rain clouds. Maybe that will change, later, but we'll see. At this point, if it's not actually raining, I don't believe it will because the promises sound almost desperate.

Watching television will get a little easier once hockey is over. The season is expected to end in early June - June 3rd I think, which is when Game 7 of the Stanley Cup will be played, if needed. In the meantime, hockey is a filler when the A's and Giant's are off or have early games, but when they're playing at the same time it's click...click...click... all night long until one or another of the games end. Which is fine - because if something exciting is happening in one, we'll stick to it - like last night's hockey game.

Next fall and winter we'll still watch 'nancy' football, but it will be primarily college ball. The pros have gotten too stupid.

'Inflategate' with Tom Brady knowing that the staff of the Patriots was tampering with the balls before one of the playoff games. Hello, Tom - that's called 'cheating'. Cheating is not good sportsmanship. Idiot.

If you can't win by talent and guts, and you have to cheat to win, what is the point of playing?

That's something hockey and baseball both have going for them. There's no really good way of cheating in either sport. You can't deflate a puck and you can't deflate a baseball. In theory a baseball team could 'throw' a game (sorry, couldn't help it) by bad pitching or taking swings at pitches that are obviously out of the strike zone - but it's not like football where there's so much scope for cheating.

Unfortunately, with the salaries the players make, the old saw, 'cheaters never prosper' is just not on any longer. Oh, yeah. They profit plenty. Bonuses for winning playoff games, wildly inflated salaries, signing bonuses, etc. They prosper plenty and the consequences for cheating are non-existent. Oh yeah. A fine - to the team. And a four game suspension to Brady. That'll be effective.

How about he's suspended for a full season? How about he's fined $1M and the team is fined $10M? That might make a bit more of an impression.

The one sport I really wish we could watch here is Aussie Rules Football. Every once in a great while ESPN will deign to show a match and it is so fun, so fast. It makes soccer look like a nancy sport (sorry, guys) and I can't see much scope for cheating there, either. Oh, yeah, a forward could take a dive, but it would be hard and with both teams using the same balls during the game any tampering would be seen immediately.

Anyway. It's getting late, I gotta run - have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories