Category: Articles

Articles about some subject I felt like going on at length about.

On the Designated Hitter

Matthew ELeave a comment

As you may or may not know, I’m a baseball fan; specifically, a Toronto Blue Jays fan. In baseball fandom, one of the debates that won’t go away is the argument about should there or should there not be a DH in baseball.*

Here’s what I think about it. The DH doesn’t bother me a bit. I like baseball with the DH and baseball without the DH. It’s fine either way. I don’t mind watching pitchers go up to hit in the National League, and I don’t believe that American League baseball has “less strategy” than National League baseball.

If I ever attain the position of Grand Emperor of Baseball, I will have lots of things that I think need changing much more urgently than the DH rule does. I’d probably leave it the way it is.

…but.

If I, as GEoB, ever did get through my to-do list to the point where I could spend a moment on the DH rule, I would eliminate the DH. Not because it’s bad. Just because it’s asymmetrical. Infielders, outfielders, and catchers play defense and also go up to bat. Pitchers are also ballplayers and therefore should also play defense and go up to bat. It’s as simple as that.

I know there are objections to this, but they don’t bother me.

– “But pitchers can’t hit!” I know they can’t hit. So what? Same for both teams.
– “What about how the DH lets older hitters extend their careers?” The older hitters can fend for themselves.
– “What about the increased risk of pitchers getting hurt?” Injury is always a risk in baseball, and the risk in going up to bat is a lot less than the risk of being a pitcher in the first place.
– “But pitchers have importance on defense far beyond that of any position player; they shouldn’t have to hit in addition to that!” Why not? It’s not like they have to do both at the same time.
– “What about how attendance would go down with the decrease in offense?” I’d be surprised if there was any such effect, and even if there was, I could live with it.
– “The players’ union would never go for it, because it’s basically eliminating a regular position in the starting lineup from every team in the American League.” What part of “Grand Emperor” don’t you understand?

I repeat: I don’t hate the DH rule at all and I am not campaigning for its removal. This isn’t a big deal to me and I’m perfectly content with the rules the way they stand. I just think that getting rid of the rule would make baseball more orderly, a little, and if it was easy and all other things were equal, I’d do it. If not, not.

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* If you don’t know what the DH is, it’s a guy who goes up to bat on behalf of the pitcher of his team, because pitchers are notorious for being bad hitters. The American League allows teams to use a DH because they figured in the 1970s that more fans would come out if there was more offense in the game. The National League does not allow the DH.

On Conservatism

Matthew ELeave a comment

These days I seem to identify with the political left almost all the time. This is unusual for me. I don’t consider myself either a liberal or a conservative; what I am is a lapsed Ayn Rand guy who takes his positions without regard to labels. If you were to call me an independent I wouldn’t argue too hard with you.

As such you’d think it’d be pretty easy for the right to get me on side, but in fact the opposite has been the case; they’ve pushed me away. Conservatism as currently constituted strikes me as mean and stupid, and I can’t sign on with mean and stupid.

And it leads me to wonder. What is conservatism, exactly? I can think of two things it might be, but it’s impossible for anyone to authoritatively say which one is true because anyone who does is only revealing something about himself or herself.

A) Conservatism might be a political position that says that the status quo, whatever its problems, is worthy enough that it should only be changed slightly and carefully, because it’s a lot easier to make something worse by changing it than to make it better.

B) Conservatism might be a political position that says that society exists to concentrate all wealth and power in the hands of as few really rich people as possible, that any means necessary to accomplish this goal are acceptable, including all manner of outlandish lies and fantasies, and the more cruelties and indignities that can be piled on everyone else, the better.

Obviously if A is the truth, then it’s a perfectly normal kind of thing to think, and there will be plenty of cases when one might want to adopt a conservative viewpoint. Not all the time, of course. But sometimes.

And obviously if B is the truth, then we need to fight conservatism all the time in as many ways as we can, because it’s basically pure evil. And I don’t think B is the truth. I hope it isn’t. But look around.

On Osama bin Laden

Matthew ELeave a comment

It’s not that I’m going to miss Osama bin Laden or think that the world isn’t better off without him. But he was never the real problem.

The real problem is the people who taught him to think like that, and continue to teach people to think like that. And their counterparts in other cultures. Anybody have any ideas for what to do about them?

On Arrogance

Matthew ELeave a comment

Most of what I read about writing tells me that you have to pay your dues. You have to keep at it for a long time before you can expect to have any success. Even if you’re lucky enough to get something published early on, that doesn’t mean that anything you do will actually be worth reading for ten years or so.

I’ve had a couple of things published, but I certainly can’t say that I’ve put in a long apprenticeship. I’ve written all kinds of things, but it’s mostly been unsupervised online writing that didn’t put any pressure on me to get better or more polished. So where do I get off thinking I can write?

And yet I’m writing Ded & Sac, and I’m gonna publish it independently, and expect people to buy it. That’s pretty arrogant of me. Right?

Well, maybe it is. I’ve been called arrogant before. I’m arrogant enough to know that I’ve got a good idea*. I’m arrogant enough to know that I can, at least, write engagingly over short distances. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I don’t need editing. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can afford to slack off on any aspect of this story. I’m going to do this because I want to do it and I don’t want to be dependent on the judgments or procedures of the publishing industry. And if Ded & Sac isn’t good, it’s going to be in spite of everything I can think of to make it good.

So, okay, I’m arrogant. But at least I know it. And I’ve been reliably informed that knowing is half the battle.

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*I know I haven’t said what the idea is yet. I’m saving that for when I’m closer to being finished.

Characters: the Hellboy family

Matthew ELeave a comment

I’ve been reading a lot of Hellboy comics recently; the library has the first ten trades and I’ve been working my way through them. I like the character of Hellboy himself, and it struck me that there are a few guys kinda like him in comics: big, strong and tough; stoic and lonely; inhuman enough to be physically unattractive; stable and down-to-earth in personality; street-slangy in speech. Here’s the list as I thought of it:

Hellboy
Robotman (Cliff Steele)
The Thing
Kilowog

Any others?

I don’t mean to accuse anybody of unoriginality in making this list. I just think it’s a powerful kind of character and no wonder it’s been made to work so often.

First Post. Welcome.

Matthew E3 Comments

Welcome to my new website.

I’m going to use it for anything I think might be of interest, but mostly to keep everyone up to date about what I’m writing. My intention is that there will be at least a little bit of new content every day.

I’ve had other websites in the past, and nothing’s changing with them.

If I set this thing up right, anything I post on here should go up simultaneously on Facebook and Twitter; if that doesn’t work now, or doesn’t work properly now, I’ll get it working as soon as I can. Please feel free to follow along via either of those methods, or by the RSS feed; whatever you like. Discussions in the comments are welcome.