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baseball

Short Notes: Whereupon We Speak Our Truths and the Issue of Torii Hunter

by Jose on March 14, 2010 · 0 comments

in life

Angels' Torii Hunter Screams at Umpire

A few notes:

  • A great example of what happens when we try to control every little part of a staff’s speech in order to make them sound like they’re “normal.” [Vocalo]
  • Google buys into Pi Day. [Mashable]
  • An ed-techy’s case for pedagogy … in tech. [Box of Tricks]
  • You ever wonder what Twitter would be like if someone drew out everything some random celebrity said, spelling mistakes and all? Wonder no longer. [TweetMuseum]

There’s something funny that emerges whenever you put several opinionated, proud, and disconcerted members into a confined place and make them play nice. This doesn’t always happen. While in some places, there are no bosses manipulating the intricacies of these relationships, Major League Baseball is certainly not one of them.

In one of the more “controversial” stories of the off-season, Torii Hunter of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim said Black Latino players are “impostors,” later stating that they’re not Black players but Latin American players. The outrage behind the comments spread amongst many Latinos, especially those concerned with the racial disparities across Latin America and its implications here in the United States. That notwithstanding, I think the definition of “Black” to Torii Hunter falls in line with many African-American in the States, and that’s the part we lose in the sensationalization of this topic.

This is nothing new. People like Gary Sheffield have been discussing the lack of black players and the “replacement” of African-American players with Black Latino players or Latino players as a whole, and in a sense, I agree. African-American baseball players have been encouraged to go to other sports like basketball and football. I’m not a fan of baseball’s quiet underground market for Latino players either. I see there are tons of factors playing into Torri’s comment, much of which I understand.

Yet, the one thing that seems to perpetuate this divide is simply these misgivings about nomenclature and shared ancestry / struggle / heritages. This also unfortunately showed up at the SXSW conference, highlighting social media and technology use around the world, the biggest such conference. In the Blacks in Tech meeting, Kety Esquivel discussed an incident with a particular provocateur who questioned why she and an Asian panelist were included in this panel. Kety gracefull answered the question, and upon further reflection, posted this:

There is always not just one truth.  My father’s lessons from childhood when he taught me Aesop’s fable about the elephant are as true now as ever.  We are all blind men and women standing around the elephant and all of the pieces that we hold are true and yet none of them are true on its own individually.  The elephant has a tail that resembles a rope.  The elephant has an ear that resembles a fan.  The elephant has legs which resemble tree trunks.  And in the end it is in truth an elephant.

The elephant here is the truth, and while everyone has their truth, we become less blind when we work together towards finding the elephant, not by sticking to our assertions about what the trunk might feel like. That’s where we’re missing the point.

It’s also the opportunity where we get to talk about elephants as the larger beings they are.

Jose, who’s working with transformations this week in math …

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Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez: Even The Maligned Get Realigned

by Jose on November 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in life

Alex Rodriguez, 2009 Champion

Alex Rodriguez, 2009 Champion

Much of the last 5-6 years of my New York Yankee fandom has been spent on defending the Yankees’ decision for trading for, and eventually resigning Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez. I’ve had so many heated battled with Red Sox fans and fellow Yankee fans about the merits of getting one of the greatest players of this generation (and possibly of all time) for arguably the greatest sports franchise in the world. The vaingloriousness of New York demands such a matchup. Plus, until Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series vs. the Comeback Red Sox, there was no question about how great an acquisition this became.

Of course, no one talks about Mariano Rivera’s 2 blown saves because it had to be the new guy’s fault. Everyone on that team was a “true blue Yankee” with pinstripes in their veins, whether they were acquisitions or from the farm system … unless their name was Alex, and these definitions often made Yankee fans the laughing stock of baseball, even with the gaudy 26 championships at that point. While it’s hard to pity a man who’s making 400 times more money than I am, I couldn’t help but think about how this Dominican overachiever resembles and reflects so many people within our society.

Our society has countless stories of people who succeeded tremendously on an individual level, but never got the respect they deserved simply because the factors and societies around them couldn’t legitimize their work and put it in its proper perspective. So you can only imagine my excitement when Alex Rodriguez won his first championship, fingers to his eyes, in the embrace of Mr. Perfect, Derek Jeter. After all the hard work, the sports psychoanalysis, the drama, the steroids, the surgery, the criticism from all angles, he not only became a champion, but he contributed in a major way to ensuring that his team won, in a league where his secret name was “The Freezer” … for making his teams worse for playing on them. (An unfair comparison if you ask me.)

Finally, a chance for people to see him for what he is, blemishes and all. Oh right, and a championship ring to go along with that.

Jose, who hates to say he told you so, but … I don’t hate to tell you.

p.s. – 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 were his best years … A-Rod is odd.

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The MVP Matters Less When The Team Goes To The World Series

by Jose on October 27, 2009 · 0 comments

in life

Alex Rodriguez Screaming With Mariano Rivera, Celebrates ALCS Win

Alex Rodriguez Screaming With Mariano Rivera, Celebrates ALCS Win

Quick: name the last 5 (MLB) World Series MVPs (Cole Hamels, Mike Lowell, David Eckstein, Jermaine Dye, Manny Ramirez). Those of you searching on Wikipedia right now hopefully kept reading. Otherwise, you’re probably at a loss. Now, name the last five teams quickly, and that’s probably an easier task (Phillies, Red Sox, Cardinals, White Sox, Red Sox). This is one of the many reasons why I love baseball: the idea that the more people are involved in a game, the more we get to concentrate on the team as a symbiotic entity, joining as one for a common purpose (aside from extracting as much cash as possible from religiously devoted fans of the game like you and me).

Growing up, I liked basketball, because David Stern’s marketing ploy concentrated heavily on the flashy individual or the larger-than-life characters, and society reflects this interest. Whenever we consider “great” series to watch in the NBA, they’re never the team that flows in indiscernible unison like the Spurs of late or the Pistons of 2004. The focus has primarily been on the Lakers with Shaq and / or Kobe, the Heat with Dwayne Wade, the Cavs with LeBron, or Boston with their big 3 superstars. While the models have all proved sustainable for the NBA marketing-wise, the championship teams always found a way to quietly pull their star player back from doing too much and distributing the wealth of stats.

In baseball, making the team feel like a team feels like a much easier task to do. Almost everyone’s on the field for the whole game, and the designated hitter along with the rest of the field position players get 4-5 at-bats a piece. While certain players excel highly at their specific task, baseball demands that those who do well and those that don’t have to put in their share of the work so the whole team can do better. No one can do their at-bat over, nor can anyone come up again in a different spot in the lineup. Therefore, everyone’s gotta do their part to win that game. The teams who strive for the championship can have an abundance of excellent singular players, but the cohesion is so much more important.

I say this because, in my line of duty, there’s a dearth of understanding about how every person’s role in the “assembly line” eventually helps the entire team out. Today, I spoke to a fellow teacher about some of the students in our classes, and how we as teachers are quick to dismiss them as lazy. While I agreed to a certain degree, I also think much of the discipline has to come very early on. We can’t just hope that they’ll “catch on” later on. Every step from classroom 1 to 14 matters in that child’s life, and thus, every teacher that child has should find a means of doing their job as well as possible.

If the 1st and 2nd players up to bat get on base, it’s imperative for the people in the 3rd and 4th spots to do their best to knock those runners in to score. Come to think of it, during any period, a team has at least 3 chances to drive in those runners no matter where the lineup starts from. We as teachers reasonably have around the same chances to ensure that our children all get equitable education. While we may not get paid the same amount of money these professionals do, it’s easily the same mentality and approach we should adopt to our teaching. This isn’t strictly about just the academic skills, but also ingraining study habits and classroom conversation. While too many urban teachers believe the parents are to blame for everything, they’ve yet to look in the mirror and maybe call foul on their own mentalities.

Thinking about my own experiences as a student, almost every teacher I had from pre-k to middle school felt different as teachers. Some were fun; others were strict. Some could come in and create a wonderful learning experience and others only went by the book. Yet, the good teachers far outweighed the faulty teachers, and when one didn’t give me certain material to know, the next year, I picked it right up with a better teacher. Fortunately for me, I never had even 2 consecutive bad teachers in any subject I learned. That may not be the case for too many of our students, and maybe that should make anyone involved in the system of schools think about bridging those gaps and ensuring all runners can come home.

The great teachers couldn’t do it by themselves. They only have a year or two with me at most, much like baseball players may only get that at-bat to make an impact on a player in scoring position. It has to be a line of reliable teachers to keep the line moving. When thought leaders don’t take that holistic approach to child transformation, they end up losing on the back end. Homerun hitters (or in education’s terms, the really effective teacher who made max growth for a student during a year) are cute, but homeruns are truly unreliable. Ask the ‘97 Mariners, who scored the most homeruns in the history of the game, but have yet to win a championship in franchise history. Ask the ‘04 Yankees who were a collage of some of the greatest individuals players you could find, but lost in ugly fashion to a Red Sox team that also had its share of stars, but became this cohesive unit of indestructibility … like the Yankee teams from ‘96 – ‘00 they used to hate. That solidarity is rare, but wonderful for any child to have.

Thus, the Yankees had to reform into a model that included the inexperienced but enthusiastic and the veteran and ever-hungry. That’s why they’re back in a big way. Plus, their pitchers make it easier to bridge between innings. Hmm.

To wit, the teams in this World Series have adopted their team mentalities even as they’re filled with perennial All-Stars. Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte have each won 4 championships together on teams that embraced the team concept, but, as living legends, never won a championship after 2001 because the organization focused too much on individual power. Alex Rodriguez has phenomenal stats and MVPs and already ranks as one of the greatest to ever play the game, but has never played in a World Series. Brad Lidge has become a great pitcher all over again after becoming the scapegoat for the Houston Astros a few years back. Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley seemed like good teammates, but only when each of those players take a backseat to their team as a whole did they win it all.

Like Cole Hamels taking the World Series MVP last year amongst those three. Or even CC Sabathia getting the ALCS MVP after pitching 2 great games in spite of great offensive games from Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. When you ask those two if they’re happy for CC, they’ll probably say the same thing every other great MVP in baseball has said:

“CC played great, but I don’t care who gets the MVP. We’re just all happy to get to where we are. We all have one goal in mind.”

Are we as teachers just hoping for playoff contention or are we World Champion caliber?

Jose, who’ll be at Game 1 of the World Series tomorrow …

p.s. – This guest post by Jon Becker regarding SABERmetrics illustrates the baseball / education analogy further …

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In Search of A-Rod’s Soul

by Jose on August 7, 2008 · 3 comments

in life

Make no bones about it; I got love for Alex Rodriguez, the 3rd baseman for the New York Yankees.

His swift and graceful swing, his trot, and that swagger he shows when he comes up to bat. The ease in which he picks up balls coming down the left field line and gets them to whoever’s platooning at 1st base. Even the way he wears the uniform makes you want to don the uniform too. Not to mention how well he’s made so many young Latinos proud to be Dominican, even when he’s had conflicts with that identity, his unwavering work ethic, and the astronomical numbers he puts up every season.

And it’s with these reasons that I, like many Yankee fans, have this internal struggle as to whether we should believe the man’s hype. He’s not only got the talent and the numbers to prove it, but he’s got the makings of someone with the perfect life: blonde streaks, good build, beautiful (ex?)-wife, and enough millions to buy out his own baseball team. He also has a hint of arrogance that’s subtle enough for the general populace not to notice, but enough to annoy others. Until the last couple of years, he still showed signs of vulnerability. Now, he’s reached a level of stardom that’s hard to come down from, embroiled in messy affairs and also coming across as a bit dispassionate.

Oh yeah, and he’s not that good when batters are in scoring position (.245 this year), and it’s even worse since we expect him to have a good 1.000 when there’s that situation. He’s a monster of a player, but a monster to himself. After watching Rodriguez’ Yankeeography on the YES Network, you get a sense that as truly phenomenal a player as he is, the pressure of his contract, the media, the fans, the owners and general managers, and his own teammates gets to him, even if it’s just a little bit. In particular, if anyone’s watched him in the last few games, he gets up there, same swag, same gallop, same batting stance, but if there are runners in scoring position, he anxiously and genuinely wants to hit a homerun that’ll further cement his place amongst the pantheon of great Yankees before him, like DiMaggio, Ruth, Mantle, and Jackson.

Alex Rodriguez SwingUnfortunately, it’s that desire to be the greatest that prevents him from doing so. Everyone’s entitled to their own definition of greatness, and it’s with that definition of greatness that A-Rod willingly and unapologetically lives with, even with the justified scrutiny he lives with. It’s amazing how through the 1996-2000 years of Yankee legacy, only the Yankees themselves went into the season with really high expectations, and everyone else just hoped and imagined. Now, due to these star players and steep contracts (along with the steep prices to go to these games), we’ve expected a championship, and that’s where we might have fallen wayside with A-Rod particularly.

Is the onus on us Yankee fans, whose hubris is internationally-renown and well-documented? Is the onus on the players and agents who help to drive up expectations by setting a dollar figure on the expectations we have for our roster of 10 on the field? Or is it really on the owners for charging us so much and pointing the blame directly at the people who they pay extraordinary money for? Can we who actually have an affinity for all things Yankee-related believe in such things as rookie development and rebuilding years, something we haven’t seen in New York City since the early 90s?

A-Rod has become symbolic of all that’s right and wrong with the league. The steriod allegations (none of which have been proven), the peculiar sense of family values, the conflict of identity for Latino players representing both homeland and citizenship to the United States, the vice grip of agents, publicists, and handlers, and the dogged scrutiny of the media for the next big story made from nothing more than a footnote, and of course, he’s in the most prestigious offensive position on the most successful team in US sports history.

But for anyone watching the way I watch second-most favorite player (interestingly, Derek Jeter’s my first), it’s also a testament to the struggles of human fallacy. There aren’t enough extrinsic influences in the world that can bring this man peace so long as he doesn’t win a championship. He’s the emblem for those who’ve always had unfathomably high expectations set for them and could never quite reach them. Every strikeout, missed play, and every year we spend waiting for #27 only serves to further scathe A-Rod’s legacy.

Alex Rodriguez is currently hitting .295 in the last 30 days, but he’s hitting .143 in the last 7 days, which means he’s spent more time getting pelted by the ball than pelting the ball itself recently. These slumps constantly remind him of how much harder he has to work, on the field, in the clubhouse, in his home, and in his mind. If they can somehow dodge the unlucky fate of these numerous and untimely injuries, he’ll also have to search for the A-Rod that beat up on the Minnesota Twins in ‘04, or the regular season A-Rod of ‘03, ‘05, and ‘07.

Will you go the way of Patrick Ewing, Jim Kelly, and Don Mattingly or Joe Namath, Wade Boggs, and yes, Willis Reed? Your story’s far from over, but rarely has the fate of a 25-man baseball team rested on the performance of one man the way it does with you. Rarely does a whole team’s legion of fans both loathe and heavily anticipate one man’s at-bat with men on base in a pressure situation. And rarely does that man have as much potential and talent as you do, A-Rod.

The question remains: Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, where is your soul?

“90 feet from home …”

jose, who’s a Yankee fan through and through …

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Not Your Average Joe

by Jose on October 18, 2007 · 3 comments

in Uncategorized

Joe TorreI became a baseball fan when I was around 9 years old, when the Yankees were getting their butts beat in the division by the Orioles and the Red Sox. Bernie Williams was still getting booed and everyone except Don Mattingly knew they weren’t going to make it to the championships. Buck Showalter did break us into first place in 1994, but in that year and 1995, we won a playoff bid … and that was about it.

Joe Torre came in at a time when there was lots of promise, but more uncertainty. He had a bunch of stints with the Mets, Cardinals, and the Braves. That wasn’t very productive other than a NL Division Series with the Braves. In other words, a whole lot of nothing. Before the Yanks, he was hoping people remembered his more prolific player stats. Since he came though, it’s been nothing short of magic. Some say he just rode Buck Showalter’s coat tails, but that’s far from the truth.

The truth lies in that stoic face that lies in the dugout under the fresh brimmed hat and the saggy jacket. It lies in the little drag-trot to the mound when he relieves a pitcher, or even in his post-game interviews when he turns the tide on a rather hostile New York sports media. It’s his decision-making that was really critical to Yankees’ success. He took the core group of Andy Pettite, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter, and molded them into the exalted men that we know today. Outside of Gary Sheffield and Kenny Lofton (who are both so popular, they’ve been through almost the entire league between them), he helped transform the images of plenty of men. Everyone from Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden to David Wells and Bernie Williams benefited from having Joe Torre there as an example of good behavior.

4 World Series, 12 consecutive appearances, but also a man who exemplified the strength of New York during 9/11 and with his own personal battles with domestic violence (upon him during his youth) and prostate cancer. He was usually the voice of reason and the bed of emotion when we needed it. Even when he faltered during the 2006 playoffs (worst move: moving A-Rod to 8th, which I’ll discuss if / when there’s a Yankee decision about him), he still found a way to make the team gel.

None of this excuses his 3 straight early exits from the playoffs to teams we were heavily favored against. After all, we know he’s coaching a 200$ million club, and they have the greatest of expectations. He’s the 8th winningest coach, and the one of the greatest coaches in the modern era in any sport, and he had the highest salary of any coach, making at least 2 times more than the next highest paid coach.

And to this, I say, “So?” This year has been the 2nd most trying year of his career professionally (last year was the most). His team was 21-29 and 14.5 games back of the rival Boston Red Sox. The New York Mets were primed to be the #1 team and were in this city for much of the year. Every pitcher except for Andy Pettite had some sort of injury, and we had 13 different starting pitchers in lieu of that. Even with their backs against the wall, they never lost their composure. He kept the team’s demeanor very professional, and he’s also the only manager who could probably handle the situation of a group of $200 million egos with everything from public infidelity and endorsements to whiners and steroids. He covered Brian Cashman’s ass even when he didn’t intend to, blunting the deathly sword of imports like Hideki Irabu, Carl Pavano, and Kei Igawa (still a pending situation).  And most of all, he’s had the longest tenure of any Yankee manager under the Steinbrenner era; that’s coming from an owner who publicly tried to dig up dirt on his own players and managers just to get rid of them.

He had his faults, and that’s something we all forgave, like abusing his relievers (Tanyon Sturtze and Scott Proctor) and not letting pitchers always go full innings, which led to the former problems. Yet, he was a man who beat and surpassed the odds. He just made everything feel like it was going to be alright, and that comforts us. Things are so unstable in life, and his consistency always reassured us. Before him, we had 17 Yankee managerial changes with 9 managers, so I’m sure we’ll never have that kind of manager for the next decade or so.

Personally, Joe’s someone who exemplifies that leadership so many of us wish we could be, and in times of tumult, he came through. He left on his own terms, and that’s the best we could have asked for as an organization. The contract wasn’t good, and a very condescending and merit-based contract. His leaving truly signals the end of an era for the Yankees, and with George Steinbrenner looking like he’s on the outs, too, it’s only right that Yankees Stadium’s occupation will soon be over.

You can’t replace a man like Torre; you can only hope to be close to average.

jose, who’s humming “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra …

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After Notes from the AfroLatino Immigration Discussion

by Jose on October 14, 2007 · 18 comments

in life

Arturo Alfonso ShomburgYesterday afternoon, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Black, Latino, Both” sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (of which I am now a card carrying member) and el Museo del Barrio, and it took place at Harlem’s Schomburg Center. The panel featured Howard Jordan, Clarence Lusane, Yvette Modestin, Angela Perez, and Silvio Torres-Saillant, who I know from my Syracuse days. While I’m not inclined to discuss exactly who said what, I do have some notes I’d like to share on a rather excellent panel meeting. I’ll definitely have to go over some of these topics again during the week, but for now, these are only some of the great sub-discussions we had at the panel. (I’m trying to take a 2-hour discussion about a topic spanning 500 years into a few paragraphs. Fun.)

- Anyone who’s read my blog for a while or even took a look at my name can pretty much gather what my identity is. Yet, that’s a challenge if you’re simply taking me at face value. Honestly, people don’t know how to act when I reveal my ethnic make-up, and that works two ways: I have an identity I’ve self-developed and people have their own perceptions of what I am. Those are not mutually exclusive of each other. To the contrary, that’s the essence of understanding the race logic: race isn’t about what you see, it’s about what you think you see. And I’ll never be “Black” or “Latino” enough until people really understand what those terms truly mean.

- Arturo Schomburg. Carlos Cooks. Felipe Luciano. Men who most people would associate with either Black or Latino, but in actuality, were Black Latinos like myself. I only knew of Felipe back in freshman year of college when I first got to meet him, and the rest of them I didn’t find out until yesterday. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when both communities fail to address AfroLatinos. The names of so many other AfroLatinos who fought for their communities were obscured by their own people, and that’s unfortunate. I know a Black Latino college student-activist back in the day who could have used those role models for community activism.

- People within a certain race are not a monolith. Definitions of what it means to be part of a race change vastly depending on place and time. For instance, Jews and Italians weren’t even considered to be White until decades after coming into this country. In the same way, Blacks and Latinos don’t just have one ideology, one perspective, or one religion. There are certain trends and connections amongst many of these groups, but we don’t all have the same interests at heart, either.

Felipe Luciano- A crucial point of discussion was the evolution of the ethnic make-up of baseball players. For the last decade or two, baseball has become an increasingly Latino sport, though it’s still marketed America’s favorite pastime. Gary Sheffield once said that, despite Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby’s efforts, there are more Latin players than Black players in baseball now because Latin players are easier to control. He elaborated by saying Latino players will get sent back to their countries if they don’t comply, so they have much more to lose. Of course, I agreed with the premise of the argument, as did many of his Latino teammates (those of whom already have their citizenships and paid the Republican Party some dues).

- In connection to that point, there was also a mention of Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez, men who in this country, most would identify as Black men, but when asked, they identify as Dominicans … strictly. While some people may take issue with their identification, I completely understand what these players are talking about. If you’re coming from a completely different racial paradigm than the country you’re visiting, then of course you’re going to strictly identify with your nation. As someone mentioned on the panel, it’s really easy for someone who identifies as a certain group to tell someone else what their race is, without even knowing where that person’s coming from. And that’s not always a good thing.

- Then there’s the issue of immigration, and how it relates to the American workforce. Vicente Fox once sad that Mexicans will take the jobs that Blacks don’t in this country. This is with the premise that either Blacks are lazy, incompetent, or acting too good for a broom and mop. The point disturbed me for a multitude of reasons. The government instills policies for migrant workers that makes them into nothing but rotating slaves. Corporations never have to worry about minimum wage, health benefits, pensions, or anything of that nature for workers who don’t have any rights in this country. Plus, the very people bringing those migrant workers here have agents working to tell working class communities here that immigrants from all around the world are here to take their jobs, so of course on the surface, it’s easy to diminish migrant workers as sub-human.

- Lastly, the one solution for many of our social ills is not through developing some sort of hegemony. Rather, change will come from a multicultural group of concerned citizens. I try to build those coalitions wherever I go, and the results have usually been nothing but positive.

jose, who loves to hear everyone’s opinions on these topics, not just my black or latino brethren …

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Let It Be

by Jose on October 9, 2007 · 3 comments

in Uncategorized

2007 Yankees Let It BeWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be …

While everyone’s been hitting up my blog for the #1 search term for this website / $252 million dollar scapegoat of the New York Yankees, I had but one thought: let it be. I’ve had the song in my head since I envisioned my Beatle-themed post over the last week or so. It was like a message to me about the Yanks. There will be Canadian locusts in game 2 of this year’s playoffs, opposing teams playing like mirror images of the Yankees dynasty teams (2003 Marlins, 2006 Tigers, and 2007 Indians), New Yankee Stadium curses , and #13’s clutch moment that wasn’t back in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. Yet, it really all comes down to just letting it be.

I haven’t responded to the last posts’ comments because I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea of idealism, especially as it concerns my favorite team and my profession. It’s a trait I’ve come to love / hate. It works well with other idealists, but doesn’t work as smoothly with pragmatic points of view. For instance, during my training for this position, I was told (notice I didn’t mention names) that my idealism wouldn’t make me a good teacher, and I wouldn’t make it through my term.

Since then, I’ve managed to inspire a hundred plus kids, and have enjoyed my job thoroughly, even to the point where I might want to do this for life. Teaching math is in many ways satisfying. Outside of the politics, it’s become a platform for growth, and I love discussing my experiences with friends and family. While it doesn’t have the social stature it does in other countries, I’m certainly shown a lot of respect and admiration by my people all around me, and that’s rewarding in and of itself.

Yet, I look around in the edu-sphere and try to understand how some of my fellow teacher bloggers and co-workers got to the point that they did. Very few of the teachers have maintained that idealism; is it because of age or does the environment matter? Does idealism have an inverse relationship with age and wisdom or do the actions and policies of the greater administration takes these idealistic and young men and women and remake them into bitter and angry veterans?

I see the value in fighting for one’s rights in a time when the higher-ups constantly want to put a dent into the civil rights and personal freedoms many of us enjoy. We need speakers and protesters for the voiceless and weary. On the same end, we don’t hear enough stories about what’s happening in those classrooms, and getting a chance to represent our profession to its fullest extent. Some bloggers do an excellent job of detailing their triumphs and troubles, but in general, even when I read some of my angrier posts, I ask why we’re even in the profession to begin with.

Of course I love being a teacher, and this profession has led me to a wonderful group of people far and near. It’s also given me a world view of my profession, and how on World Teachers’ Day, we still preferred apathy and misery over optimism and idealism.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Let it be, let it be, …

jose, who’s back to watching the Boondocks episode he missed last night …

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Simpsellent and A-Roids

by Jose on July 28, 2007 · 4 comments

in life

img_0527-vi2-copy.jpgI just got back from a really good rendering of the TV-to-silver screen movie The Simpsons Movie, and it was awesome. It fulfilled its enormous expectations, and I’m really happy. This could have been an absolute bomb like so many TV-to-movie movies are, but no. I’d rather not give any spoilers here, though I’m sure they aren’t hard to find at all.

Once I logged in, I checked my Slimstats and noticed I’m the #1 search for “Alex Rodriguez steroids.” Apparently, Jose Canseco made some interesting allegations against Alex, stating that he had something “in store” for everyone in his next book. In response to the linked blog, I responded

“Great. Now Boston fans’ll start wearing T-shirts that say ‘Jeter Injects A-Rod.’ Because that’s exactly what we need right now. Wasn’t it enough for Jose to ride the bench for the 2000 Yankee championship or to be part of one of the greatest Simpsons episodes of all time?”

In short, I believe:

arod0401.jpgALEX RODRIGUEZ DID NOT DO STEROIDS!

Really, as right as Canseco’s been about everyone, the list of guys he named before were people the common sports fan could point out. But A-Rod? Really? I call BS on it for three very simple facts:

1) When’s the last time A-Rod’s missed an exorbitant amount of time for injuries?

2) A-Rod’s head’s actually grown smaller since the Texas days, which says a lot. (If you’re under the NY media scrutiny, that’s easy.)

3) Alex is practically the same size he was since he started in Seattle.

Maybe it’s also because I consider myself a big fan of his and really rooted for his reemergence since last year’s abysmal playoffs. Maybe it’s because I’m also biased towards the Yankees, my favorite (winning) team in the world. I can’t see the shock of this wearing off anytime in the near future. Baseball also might be in shock because he’s the clearest hope for a steroid-free player to clear out Barry Bonds’ soon-to-be home run record.

However, that’s mainly because I wholeheartedly believe he didn’t do steroids. He got a little bigger only during last season, and that slowed him some, but he still put up some awesome numbers nonetheless. This year, he’s having a phenomenal year, and for Canseco to bring out this information now is consistent with wanting to make sure his book does well. If he really did do anything out of the ordinary, we would have seen Alex amongst the 20 or so players subpoenaed by the government, or at least in the Game of Shadows book when so much of the steroids research was done or even his first book, Juiced.

More importantly, though, I want to see this ugliness over. Most baseball fans can agree with that. Once the last of the prominent steroid figures leaves, the rest of us can get back to actually enjoying baseball as the sports it is and not in this Cansecoism (think McCarthyism) we’re constantly under.

G_d, Canseco, you’re ruining my first name. Be gone, please.

jose

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Jose on Barry (Not Literally)

by Jose on July 26, 2007 · 3 comments

in Uncategorized

bonds30806.jpgYesterday, ESPN’s Sportscenter had an exclusive “town hall” meeting in San Francisco, CA, to discuss Barry Bonds and his pursuit of the homerun record. It’s amazing how many fans really cheered him on, and still do. What’s worse is that, I’m cheering him on, too.

I’d love to tell you how morally upstanding Barry is and what a wonderful human being he is, but by too many accounts, he’s not. I’d also love to tell you that I’m enamored with the idea of him breaking that record over someone who actually earned that record through blood, sweat, skin color, and tears (Hank Aaron). I’d love to stand alongside many of my colored brethren in support of Barry, because he’s public enemy #1 and we as a people understand the implications of being guilty until proven innocent but I’m not.

Dude did it. That’s something we need to stop playing ourselves with. OJ was an awesome football player at the college and professional level, but he most likely murdered Nicole. Michael Jackson was the king of the 80s and even the early 90s, in music and pop culture, but he definitely bleached his skin, uprooted his naps, and touched kids inappropriately in those camps. Unfortunately, the evidence against Barry is overwhelming, and everyday something new is coming out about Barry. Barry’s gotten a free ride as far as I’m concerned, and has the money to show for it.

Yet, I’m happy Barry has the potential to break that record; after all, baseball as a community allowed for this to happen. With all the Mark McGwires, Jason Giambis, Jose Cansecos, and Gary Sheffields, we just allowed these juiced players to break records all while Bud Selig rolled in the dough these men were making for him. Sports fans, managers, owners, and the mass media all had a role in allowing steroid users to do as they pleased. It’s like we asked them to do that for us in our orgasmic need for the long ball.

Will he make it into the Hall of Fame? Most likely, and that has everything to do with the moral burdens placed upon the voters (sports writers from all across the country). Why are we holding these guys accountable for what MLB should have fixed in its own sphere? It’s akin to having a kid who’s been behaving badly for the last 7-8 years and then sending him over to his grandfather’s house to get punished; it makes one wonder how great a parent this kid had to begin with. And unlike the aforementioned kid, I wonder whether these baseball players can come back reformed.

He’ll still make it in; Barry Bonds was once a fantastic baseball player everyone could at least trust. He had a stank attitude, but we knew the guy could rank up there with the great baseball players of all time if he continued on that path before 1998-9. He was a 40-40 threat every season, and played defense like his life depended on it. An MVP candidate even before this madness. He had 3 of them before the steroids. Yet, something about him said, “If Mark and Sammy can get all this love for breaking Roger Maris’ single-season record, imagine what I can do if I took the stuff.” What made OK players into awesome players turned awesome players into icons for an entire era.

Maybe this will all go away if / when Alex Rodriguez surpasses Barry’s record (estimate: 768), but if it doesn’t, we’ll still have to smell the residue of a sullied record and the final stain left by the Steroid Era of MLB.

peace,

jose

p.s. – The New York Yankees are hot, and A-Rod is doing as well as I hoped he would. I’ll not jinx them anymore.

AlexRodriguez2.jpg

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Love, Reign O’er Me

by Jose on April 7, 2007 · 3 comments

in life

alex-rodriguez.jpgAlex Rodriguez comes up to bat against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, bottom of the 8th with the bases loaded, and I’m yelling at the screen like, “PLEASE! Oh my G_D no! They’re gonna boo him, and he’s going to blow it.” I shut my eyes for a bit and went back to my writing as A-Rod struck out in fashion.

Of course, the boos came with a thunder only NYY fans can produce, and it hurt a little bit because I’ve pulled for him since 2004, when we wouldn’t have even had these A-Rod conversations if it wasn’t for our choke at the hands of the Red Sox that year. I’ve also denounced what it means to be a true Yankee other than years as a Yankee, only because some of the Yankees we consider to be “true” were paid mercenaries, and before free agency, the best players came to the Yankees with no restrictions.

Yet, we lay all these ridiculous expectations on A-Rod because the Yankees are paying him 16 mil a year (the Rangers took 9 mil off Steinbrenner’s hands), which makes sense on paper, but ridiculous in real life. Often, what matters in a person’s image is the ratio between people’s expectations of you and how you as a person react and enact those expectations.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about myself in that respect. People who love(d) me have always had high expectations for me, and have looked to me because I wear many hats. I’ve succeeded in many aspects of my life, and often carry an omniscient demeanor. I play the role of brother, son, teacher, student, friend, listener, lover, … the list goes longer than I could have imagined and I play these roles as well as I could.

As of late, though, I’ve felt these roles become far too heavy for my person. I began to take out my frustrations on the easiest parts of my life, such as my loved ones. At first, it showed up as a little acid in my stomach, but by today, it grew to a full-blown cancer. My childhood ailments began to resurface in a cloud of insecurity. For the first time in a few years, I feared not having the fortitude to play these roles for the ones I loved.

After some counseling over coffee from a loved one, shopping and a wicked double feature also known as Grindhouse, the stars realigned in my favor. I look at my own life now and realize that only I can live my life and this never ending quest for excellence will come with pain and suffering; if not, then I’d have nothing to sell in my soon-to-be best-selling biography (Even in pain, I have to have my wits about me).

arodyells.jpgDown 7-6 with the bases loaded, A-Rod came up to bat again. Down 2 strikes, A-Rod saw the ball coming at him and turned it back around in glorious fashion. The Yankees win 10-7, and A-Rod comes out for the curtain call. It’s still April, and when October comes, he’ll now look back to this moment and become the A-Rod we hoped to acquire way back in that infamous winter.jose, who’s the first teacher ever to get a multi-million dollar signing bonus from the NYC Board of Ed, so don’t hate

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