crossing over

my other blog has a r.i.p. tag. i didn't want to have to add one to this blog. now i have. let's all hope i need never use it again.

josh hancock was this team's cal eldred, in one respect, having the strength of ego to do the mop-up role but the ability to get the outs when they were most important. josh was a team player and from all accounts an extremely nice guy. i liked him, i liked that we had him in cardinal red.

the question has been raised: was josh hancock drunk? the answer, in my opinion, is meaningless. will his death be less tragic if he was intoxicated? will his friends and family grieve any less?

in the last twenty years or so, a vocal minority has arisen in our country blaming alcohol for any manner of social ills, using drunk driving as an easy target for their spearhead. drunk driving is foolish and unsafe, but that doesn't make drinking evil. if we're playing fair, let's go ahead and condemn driving as well, since it's hard to get a dui on foot. driving is worse for more people (and the environment) than drinking, which primarily affects the drinker.

i've railed about this once too many times this year. go cardinals. resquiat in pace, josh.

on the importance of spring training naps

rabid redbird is going on record to tell tony la russa that he's a naughty, naughty manager... for driving tired.
a 20 plus hour day is hard for most anyone (that's why laws have been changed to keep truckers and medical interns from pulling them), and even harder for a 62 year old man. falling asleep at a stoplight is proof that he shouldn't have been driving. however (steeling myself for the angry screed from some readers), it doesn't prove that he was intoxicated. i am strongly opposed to drunk driving, but i don't believe that lowering the legal limit from .1bac to .08bac had anything to do with stopping drunk driving accidents. it's a money-maker for state governments and the neo-prohibitionist organization mothers* against drunk driving (a group whose founder will no longer have any part of, thinking that they are going too far). given tony's size, .093bac is approximately two to two and a half glasses of red wine (his preferred tipple). a quarter of the people leaving busch stadium have consumed more than that, and the period of time between seventh inning last call and the game's end is rarely long enough for everyone to sober up. am i saying it's ok to drink and drive because lots of people do it after games? no. i myself rarely get a second beer at the park anymore (mostly because i'm cheap), and frankly don't see how some of the people i've seen at the park could really enjoy the game. as a still relatively new baseball obsessed blogger, i need to devote a lot of attention to catch the subtleties of the game.
but i digress.
tony was tired. driving while tired is as bad as driving drunk. so is driving while on the cell phone. it was irresponsible for him to get behind the wheel fatigued, but he might have fallen asleep with or without the alcohol in his system. in our country, one means a night in jail, the other a warning and an offer of a ride home.

*(the current president of madd, glynn birch, is billed as the "first dad to head madd". far be it from me to deny that many members of madd have suffered great tragedies at the hands of drunk drivers [and his is certainly one], but their scope has widened to stop drinking, not just drinking and driving.)