"Calif Bill" wrote in message thlink.net...
I give a link, so you can see I did not alter story.
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stori...936780,00.html

Thanks for the link - so why did you feel compelled post the entire
column? We can read at the Herald site as easily as you did.

But I liked it. I wholeheartedly agree with an endorsement of Howard
Dean for the democratic nomination.


Let Billy Beane help pick Democratic nominee
By David M. RUBIN and Thomas Kniesner

THE current traveling exhibition Baseball as America: Seeing Ourselves
Through Our National Game demonstrates that everything in American society
has its parallel in baseball. So why shouldn't press coverage of
presidential politics?

Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's and the subject of
Michael Lewis's recent best-selling book, "Moneyball," spends comparatively
little on players, yet Beane's teams achieve great success on the field.
While conventional baseball wisdom favors studs who can run fast, throw hard
and hit well in tryout camps, Beane knows that the truly valuable players
are ones who have demonstrated they can do important things in actual game
situations such as take pitches, put the ball in play, and get on base.

Most baseball scouts, reporters and analysts are as clueless judging the
worth of players as the GMs they cover.

The same reliance on false indicators plagues national political reporters.
In assessing seven candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination,
they rely on stale measures that have nothing to do with whether the
candidate is likely to become a good president. Their equivalents of hitting
well in batting practice, foot speed and arm strength are the false gods of
money, organization and debating skill (plus coziness with the press, of
course)....

snip

You easily could have stopped right about there and referred us
boaters to the web site to read the whole column.