The Public Shaming of the Astros

This is shaping up to be one of the most miserable baseball seasons on record. The Yankees are the odds on favorite to win the pennant. And worse, every conversation about baseball seems to begin and end with the Houston Astros' cheating scandal. This is not a fun topic, and it's not even really about baseball as much it's about injustice and the desire to exact revenge.

This has been a huge story, and I can't deny that it has good reason to be. The Astros have affected almost everyone in baseball: the Dodgers and the Yankees, of course, whom they eliminated from the play-offs, but also every other team and almost every individual player. A little-known pitcher named Mike Bolsinger is suing the Astros on the grounds that his bad outing against them in 2017 did irreparable damage to his career. People are pissed off - even the kinds of people who don't tend to get pissed off. Normally taciturn players like Aaron Judge, Nick Markakis, and even the great Mike Trout have publicly castigated the Astros.

The fans are irate to an extent I've never seen before. In 1994, they were disgusted with the greed from both owners and players, which resulted in a lengthy strike and a canceled World Series. In the mid-2000s, they were outraged to find out about the rampant use of steroids, but it was hard to cast too many stones, because every team had fielded its share of users.

The difference this time is that all of the rage is directed towards one team. Almost everyone - fans and players alike - seems to think the Astros got off too easy. True, their manager and general manager were fired. So were the managers of the Red Sox and Mets, who were, respectively, a coach and a player for the 2017 Astros team, both rumored to be heavily involved in cheating tactics. No current players have received punishment, though, and the commissioner has not stripped the Astros of their 2017 title.

Let me say here that the act of vacating titles is categorically dumb. It's an empty gesture that has always seemed to me more like pandering than like actual justice. The way to move on from any event we don't like is not to pretend that the event didn't happen. Will vacating a title really bring much satisfaction to the Dodgers or their fans? Will it really change the way the Astros and their fans think about the 2017 World Series? If popular perception is that a title is tainted, then the title will be remembered that way, whether or not the championship banners are still allowed to fly.
I am not trying to sugarcoat the Astros' cheating. It was bad for the game, bad for the fans, bad for other teams and for many individual players. But some fans' hysterical response to the scandal is, to me, just as bad and often worse. It reminds me of Jon Ronson's great book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which examines the contemporary phenomenon of massive social media shaming.

"[W]ith social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama," write Ronson, "[E]very day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people.”

In the age of social media, when someone transgresses into "sickening villain" territory, we unleash a torrent of what he calls "ecstatic public condemnation" that build and builds until it is completely out of proportion with the crime that has actually been committed. Again, I am not trying to go easy on the Astros. I just think trial by social media is stupid, boring and unproductive. It has a way of bringing out our basest instincts too. In recent weeks, fans have cheerfully expressed their desire to see players intentionally hit by pitches, and anyone who offers the slightest dissent faces scorn and derision. Calls for both baseball-related and general violence against Astros players have become normalized. For God's sake, Josh Reddick, who may or may not have even participated in the Astros' cheating scheme, has revealed that he has received threats of violence against his family.

A truly appalling paragraph from the ESPN story: "I put a post of my kid rolling over for the first time and I gotta look down there and see 'I hope your kid gets cancer,'" Reddick said. "It makes you really want to see that person in person. Really makes you want to go up to him and see what they would do if you put your face to their face and really get a little bit of retribution for yourself. Pisses you off."

Does anyone really think that sociopathic behavior gets a free pass if it's directed at a cheater? And are you truly a baseball fan if your greatest desire going into this year is to watch living, breathing people being used as target practice dummies? Is this really something you want to see? And yes, they did something wrong. And yes, they deserve punishment. This whole thing has caused real heartbreak, and I don't want to be blase about that.

But there has to be something better than mob justice.

It's baseball season! Spring training games are underway! This year, we get to see what Garrett Cole looks like in pinstripes, and what Mookie Betts looks like in Dodger blue! We get to see whether or not the Nationals can defend their title, and whether or not the Orioles can break the 50-win threshold! We get to see a new stadium in Dallas! We get to watch Albert Pujols cap off a Hall of Fame career!

Look. If you're pissed, then you have every right to be. But if you are looking forward only to watching Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve endure bodily harm, then you're in the wrong place.

If you want to be sad, then be sad. If you want to take a break from baseball then fine, I get it. But if you're just using this scandal to as a receptacle for your own negativity and bloodlust, you can feel free to find a new hobby.

Now can we please talk about something else?

Oscars 2020

My goal in any given year is to view every nominee for Best Picture before the night of the ceremony. With roughly eight hours remaining, it's looking bleak. Of the nine nominated movies, I saw six and a half. (Jojo Rabbit was the half. I watched the first hour illegally and then dozed off. When I returned to the site the next day, it was no longer functional. Truthfully, I enjoyed the first half so little, I felt no burning desire to finish it anyway, beyond the anticipated satisfaction of checking it off my list. More on that in a minute.)

Frankly, I'm pleased with myself for even making it to six movies, which is no easy feat when you're planning your life around your twin toddlers. The rise of Netflix has obviously helped: I watched both The Irishman and Marriage Story in my pajamas. Once again, it also helps to have a wife who lets me shirk my fatherly duties on occasion.

In ranking these movies, I'm using the same ground rules I used last year. I'm listing these movies purely in order of how much I enjoyed them, not by objective quality (which isn't a thing anyway), not by cultural impact, and not even necessarily in order of how much they deserve to win the Oscar.

2020 was, in my opinion, a stronger movie year than 2019, and one of my favorite years in recent memory. I legitimately loved at least three of these movies (not a claim I would have made last year) and I feel much more confident about my number one choice (unlike last year, when I was constantly made to feel that my affection for Green Book made me "un-woke"). Btw, SPOILER ALERTS for all movies.

2019 was the best year for movies in quite a while.

The List

1 - Parasite
2 - 1917
3 - The Irishman
4 - Marriage Story
5 - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
6 - Joker
7 - Jojo Rabbit
Not ranked - Ford vs. Ferrari
Not ranked - Little Women

My Pick for Best Picture: 1917
Movie I think will Win: 1917

And now, some thoughts on each movie.

The synopses for Parasite all seemed sort of vague, but the reviews were uniformly excellent. I went to see it not really knowing if it was a comedy, a thriller, or, as the title seems to suggest, a horror movie. Once I saw it, I realized the reason for the vagueness. The movie is impossible to faithfully describe without massively spoiling it. The first half is engaging enough: it's darkly funny to watch the members of the Kim family infiltrate the Park family, all while pretending to be total strangers to each other. And then, about an hour in, the doorbell rings and we see that frightening, haggard face of the former housekeeper. And then, holy shit, the underground bunker (!). And things just get crazier from there. I watched with my mouth agape, wondering where this crazy movie was taking me. And, having a peach allergy myself, I feel I enjoyed it on an even deeper level.

1917 was one of the most thrilling movies I've ever seen in a theater, and a reminder of the big screen's advantage over the phone screen. In general, war movies tend not to be my favorites. This one worked for me, I think, because of the simplicity of the story and the focus on the visceral experience of combat. I hadn't felt so enthralled by a movie since Gravity - and 1917 was a vastly better movie. The plane crash sequence was particularly harrowing. So was the main character's iconic final run, parallel to the trench, amidst an onslaught of explosions. The definitive WWII movie is Saving Private Ryan. The definitive Vietnam movie is probably Apocalypse Now. Finally, we have our definitive WWI movie, too.

On paper, The Irishman was a dream come true for every fan of crime movies. Scorcese, De Niro, Pesci, Pacino, the true story of Jimmy Hoffa. This seemed like it couldn't miss. The crazy thing is: it pretty much lived up to the sky-high expectations. Look, I can understand the criticisms: it's three and a half hours long. Could it have been trimmed? Sure. Did it get a little bogged down in historical detail at the expense of story? Yes, probably. Was the age-reducing CGI a little silly? Yes, although that didn't detract from my experience. At the end of the day, this was great story-telling on an epic scale. It's tragic, and darkly funny, and historically fascinating. It goes without saying that the acting was brilliant. (Obviously the leads kill it, but the smaller parts are equally well played. Stephen Graham, for example, more than holds his own with the heavyweights.) What surprised me was the restraint and complexity of the acting. None of those big Joe Pesci Do-I-Look-like-a-Clown scenes here, and that's just fine. For my money, de Niro's phone call to Jo is some of the best acting he's ever done, and that's saying quite a lot. "What kind of man makes a phone call like that?"

I love movies like Marriage Story. No bells and whistles, just a sharp script full of keenly observed details about domestic life. And of course an acting masterclass by Driver and Johansson (and Laura Dern and Ray Liotta, too, as the smarmy lawyers). The saddest part of this movie is that there's no bad guy. Both characters are basically sympathetic. The antagonist here is divorce itself.

I liked Inglorious Basterds and disliked Django Unchained, so I had no idea what to expect from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Turns out it was right in the middle. There were some great moments: Leo's character killing it in the western b-movie to earn the admiration of that little girl, and of course, the whole sequence with Brad Pitt on Spahn Ranch. But the pacing was slow and parts of the movie dragged. I'm torn on the ending. On the one hand, these were the warped hippies who would murder Sharon Tate in the worst way possible. And yet... it's one thing to gleefully kill Nazis and slaveholders, but kind of another to kill teenage girls who, murderous intentions aside, haven't actually done anything terrible yet. Call me a snowflake, but the big violent showdown at the end sort of rubbed me the wrong way - especially the visual of a middle-aged Brad Pitt slamming a teenage girl's face onto the mantle in the most graphic possible way. The audience cheered at that part, but I don't know. Seems like a weird thing to cheer for.

Was Joker really a good movie? Or was it just surprisingly poignant for a comic book movie? The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. It was a dark, but engaging character study with some truly iconic moments (everyone talks about him dancing on the stairs, but what about that subway scene?). Everyone has raved about Joaquin Phoenix's performance, which will probably win him an Oscar. And yes, it was great acting, but it was also tough to watch and ultimately, like the movie as a whole, felt a little one-note. As a character, the Joker obviously needs to be psychotic, but he also needs to exude a sort of reptilian charisma. Jack Nicholson's and Heath Ledger's Jokers were nothing if not charismatic. Phoenix's Joker is the opposite: who would want to do anything other than keep a great distance from this guy? Sure, his capacity for charisma is hinted at in the final moments (in the riot scene), but it's hard for me to buy this guy leading an army of clown-faced followers.

Which brings me to Jojo Rabbit, which I'll attempt to weigh in on despite having only watched half of it. It's hard for me to talk about the movie without bringing up Wes Anderson, whose work I've never liked. Like almost all of Wes Anderson's movies, Jojo lost me with its cartoon-ish script and its stylized acting. Like all of his movies, it seemed to think itself awfully cute. Like all of his movies, it must be said, its cinematography was gorgeous. But, like all of his movies, it left me feeling like I was on the outside of a big inside joke. People have talked about the potential offensiveness of Hitler as imaginary friend, but I wasn't offended so much as just confused. Unlike most Anderson movies, its reviews were decidedly mixed: it earned a 58 out of 100 on Metacritic, which is quite low for an Oscar-nominated film. So at least I know I wasn't alone.

Other films of note:

Richard Jewel was a solid movie. Paul Walter Hauser can really act (I love him in I, Tonya, too), and I hope he continues to find work. Also, Clint Eastwood's anti-media, anti-government politics rubbed me the wrong way, but whatever.

I wasn't sure I liked Uncut Gems as I was actually watching it, but the more I reflect on it, the more I appreciate it. One of the most hectic, nerve-wracking movies I've ever seen. Damn, that last hour was great. The auction scene, the Celtics game, the jammed door. I want to see it again.

Two Popes and Dolemite is My Name are about as dissimilar as two films can get, but I lump them together because they are both on Netflix. Both were solid, if uneven. In Two Popes, the scenes between Hopkins and Pryce were riveting, but the film lost momentum during the lengthy flashbacks. The movie-filming sequence in Dolemite was a hoot, but on the whole, the movie felt sort of slight and insignificant.

I saw three of the five films nominated for best documentary, and of those, I'm putting my money on American Factory. This story of an auto-glass factory in Dayton, Ohio reminded me of the many, many Americans whose experience is vastly different from mine, and reminders like that are why I love the movies.

One Last Thought:

I enjoyed Parasite more than any other movie I saw this year. That said, I hope 1917 wins Best Picture. There is a growing perception that Hollywood is a bubble for the snobby elite (which is kind of true), and that the nominated movies have limited appeal for the general public. The divide between popular and critically acclaimed films is greater than ever before. I'd like to see that divide start to shrink, and for that reason, I'm rooting for 1917, an epic, captivating war movie in the grand Hollywood tradition. If it acts as a gateway drug to introduce more people to quality movies, so much the better.

More Stupid Lyrics

Life is a highway

I want to ride it all night long.

If you're going my way

I want to drive it all night long.

I heard this song at the supermarket today, and it occurred to me that it's always bothered me, though I can't say I'd really given it much thought. The song kind of sucks. It's a classic case of a song in which the chorus so overshadows the verse, that most people don't even know how the verse goes. (Other songs on this list include "Dude Looks like a Lady" by Aerosmith and "Big Shot" by Billy Joel.) What really bugs me though is the main lyric. Folks, this is not how a metaphor works.

"Life is a highway."

Comparing life to a highway is pretty banal, but basically fine.

"I want to ride it."

So, "riding the highway" is, in this metaphor, just living life. The declaration "I want to live," is obvious to the point of meaninglessness. Also, riding a highway all night long: it sounds kind of exciting on paper, I guess, and it's no doubt given a boost by the upbeat music of the chorus. But honestly, there is nothing exciting about riding a highway all night long. It's lonely and repetitive and just doesn't evoke a life well lived, as I think is the intent.

Also, why "ride" instead of "drive"? (It changes to "drive" in the last line of the chorus, but why not both times?) It's such a passive word. If you're simply along for the ride on the highway that represents your life, does it mean you aren't making decisions for yourself? Does it mean you have no free will?

"All night long."

My biggest problem with this dumb chorus is that the metaphor totally breaks down here. If life is a highway, and riding that highway is living life, then you should be riding it for an entire lifetime. And you'd hope that would be longer than the span of one night, right? All life long admittedly doesn't have the same ring to it, but it would make more sense.

"If you're going my way, I want to drive it all night long."

This line sounds fine, until you think about what it actually means. And what it actually means is anyone's guess. If the guy is talking to the object of his affection, is he saying that he only wants to continue living his life if she is living with him? That makes sense, I guess. But to suggest that he'll live passively ("ride") if left by himself and more actively ("drive") if he's with her? Well... that doesn't sound healthy.

Whatever, though. You're not supposed to think so hard about a song this catchy. You're just supposed to belt out the words - which I'd be happy to do, if the song didn't suck.

Top 10 Favorite Songs of the 2010's

To be clear, the 2010's were not a decade in which I was super on top of popular music. It was the first decade of my life in which I was older than most of the musicians I paid to see in concert. (I haven't done a formal study, but I'm pretty sure anyway.) Although I find myself increasingly content to listen to the same old songs I know by heart, I still keep one eye out for new stuff that might interest me. And I still go to concerts once in a while. Like two a year, but that's gotta be better than some other fathers of two, right? And these aren't just 90's nostalgia shows either, though I like those too. True, I did pay to see The Verve Pipe in concert this year, though they haven't been relevant in twenty year (if they ever were). But I also saw Cage the Elephant - and loved it.

Anyway, if you're looking for a definitive Top Ten List, then check out Pitchfork or some other pretentious site. If you want to hear a 37-year-old suburban dad talk about his favorite songs of the decade - well, you've come to the right place.

10.) Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - The National (2010)

I hate the name of this song, and I have no idea what it's about. It's beautiful and haunting, though. A perfect final track to High Violet, which is a gorgeous album. Maybe the best reason to like The National: their singer is a baritone, which means I can easily sing along to every track. Unfortunately, this was really the only album of theirs I liked.

9.) Pedestrian at Best - Courtney Barnett (2015)

When I listen to music, I tend to prioritize melody and harmony over lyrics. (Exhibit A: the song above, by The National) Courtney Barnett's lyrics are so freaking clever though: "Give me all your money, and I'll make some origami, honey. / I think you're a joke, but I don't find you very funny." How do you come up with that? Plus, I love her accent. This song is just a banger.

8.) "Beth/Rest" - Bon Iver (2011)

Even if we put the music aside, I have mixed feelings about Bon Iver. He's the absolute embodiment of white hipster culture. He and all of his fans look like they brew their own beer and brine their own pickles. And the music itself can be so pretentious. (All of 22, A Million, for example.) But at its best, his music can be so haunting. Sometimes, the thoughts and memories associated with the music can be as strong as the music itself. I associate his self-titled album with my summer in Asheville (2012), which was a pretty happy one, and this final song, with its Bruce Hornsby piano, is probably my favorite. (Note: Let the record show that my wife hates this song and groans whenever she hears the opening notes.)

7.) "This Life" - Vampire Weekend (2019)

I have a weird relationship with Vampire Weekend. I keep listening to their albums, enjoying them, and then completely disregarding the band until they put out another album. Really, I've never not enjoyed one of their albums, and yet I'd never call them one of my favorite bands. It might be time for to start taking them a little more seriously. "Father of the Bride," which came out earlier this year, is a fantastic album from beginning to end. Probably my album of the summer. It's a long album, full of solid songs, but I'll go with "This Life," by a nose. I've been cheating on cheating on you. / You've been cheating on cheating on me." Maybe the most danceable song about about (I assume) a dysfunctional relationship.

6.) "Ready to Let Go" - Cage the Elephant (2019)

I only just discovered Cage the Elephant this year. (I started listening to them when I found out they were the opener at the Beck concert, which I had tickets for.) They're a loud, old-school garage rock band. I described them as a mix between the Black Keys and Modest Mouse. Friends of mine have said the Pixies and Velvet Underground. On paper, it didn't sound like my thing. And even though I liked their album Melophobia well enough, I wasn't sure they were for me - until I saw their show. Damn if it didn't my whole perception of the band. Matt Shultz is one of the most dynamic performers I've ever seen in person. And this song, about a dissolving relationship, set against the backdrop of Pompeii, just rocks.

5.) "Helicopter" - Deerhunter (2010)

What a beautiful song. Every time I hear it, I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a fountain. If I only I liked this band more. Literally ever other song of theirs gets a big "Nope" from me. What a tease.

4.) "Proceed to Memory" - Pinback (2012)

There's a special pleasure in following an indy band that not a lot of other people follow. I've been listening to Pinback for almost twenty years. Constantly. Their low-fi music is comfort food for me. Needless to say, I was thrilled when they put out a new album in 2012, more than five years after the previous one. (Unfortunately, I've been waiting for another one to drop since then.) The first track on Information Retrieved, driving and earnest, is probably the high point.

3.) "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" - Tame Impala (2015)

Tame Impala easily wins the prize for "Best Band I Didn't Know Prior to This Decade." Pyschadelic Rock didn't sound like my thing, but once I heard InnerSpeaker, in late 2012, I latched onto it in a big way. Lonerism was even better. And Currents was even better than that. Hard to pick a favorite track, but I'll go with that hypnotic final cut, "New Person, Same Old Mistakes." And based on her cover, it seems like Beyonce agrees with me.

2.) "Blue Moon" - Beck (2014)

Sea Change is my favorite Beck album, so when Morning Phase was billed as an unofficial sister album, I was all over it. Turns out I still like Sea Change more, but Morning Phase is lovely. And worthy of that Grammy, despite Kanye's protestations. This is my favorite cut - just sweet old-fashioned folk rock from a chameleon artist who is always reinventing himself. As Kanye said, more or less, you've got to respect the artistry.

1.) "Helplessness Blues" - Fleet Foxes (2011)

Far and away my favorite artist of the decade. If I weren't abiding by a "one song per artist" rule, I could probably fill an entire list with Fleet Foxes songs. The Helplessness Blues album is a masterpiece from beginning to end. (And so is 2017's Crack Up, for that matter.) Could have gone in a bunch of directions here - "The Shrine/An Argument," "Third of May/Odaigahara," "The Plains/Bitter Dancer" - but in the end, I figured anything other than this gorgeous song would just be overthinking it.

Honorable Mentions:

"Yet Again" - Grizzly Bear

"Midnight City" - M83

"White Fire" - Angel Olsen

"Helena Beat" - Foster the People

"Falling Short" - Lapsley

"Strangers" - White Lies

"Teenage Dream" - Katy Perry (Don't @ me.)

#Natitude

This is about a month overdue. My team won the World Series! And instead of writing about it, I’ve mostly been finishing college recommendation letters, and commenting on student papers. I have a lot to say about the Nats, though, and for the past month, I’ve been replaying key moments in my head. Key moments from this past October, and from the last fifteen years or so.

I've always felt a special connection to the Washington Nationals. I moved to DC in 2006, a year after the team relocated from Montreal. I had just turned 24, and in some ways, this year felt like the beginning of my adult life. It felt like a good time to adopt a new team, particularly this team, since both of us were new in town.

Outside Marlins Stadium, with my friend Tony, for a game in 2009. Long before Nationals gear was a common sight in opposing ballparks.

To this point, I had been a Red Sox fan. My Dad is from Boston and he brainwashed me when I was young. Plenty of people change religions when they reach their twenties, once they’re out from under their parents’ roof. I did the same thing with baseball allegiance: I hung on to the Red Sox, but the Nats quickly felt like my own team - the one I had chosen instead of being born into. After all, I had never actually lived in Boston, and in the days before the internet, it had been especially difficult to follow the Sox from New Jersey and then from Ohio. Once I was in D.C., it seemed like a luxury to be able to read about my team in the local paper, or to hear them discussed on sports talk radio.

Hayden and I pose before a 2014 game at beautiful PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Nats got the win that afternoon, behind Doug Fister.

Sadly, the team was so bad in those early days that hardly anyone talked about them on the radio or anywhere else. Chad Cordero, their two-time all-star closer, who was one of the few bright spots in those early days, could have walked the length of Connecticut Avenue without being recognized. During my first five years in DC, the Nats averaged 95.6 losses per season. They were worse than bad: they were utterly irrelevant - basically just fodder for the Braves and the Phillies to feast on. Because the team was so awful, tickets were dirt cheap (especially during the first three years at RFK Stadium), and being single, I had plenty of time of my hands. So as a result, I ended up going to a ton of games – as many as fifteen per year, many of them by myself.

Hayden and I won ten tickets to a luxury box, and invited a bunch of friends to see what turned out to be a pretty crappy game against the Marlins. Still, it was a beautiful day and Maya and I wandered the Mall afterward.

The Nats' reward for a terrible 2008 season was the first overall pick in the draft, which they spent on pitcher Stephen Strasburg, a super-prospect with the reputed ability to alter the fate of a franchise. (I actually went to his introductory press conference, held on the infield at Nationals Park, because what else did I have to do?) His debut in 2010 was the easily the most important date in the history of the franchise since it made its debut in Washington half a decade earlier. After Strasburg dominated a handful of starts at Harrisburg and Syracuse, the team announced that he would make his first major league start on a Tuesday night game against Pittsburgh at Nationals Park. I immediately snatched a pair of cheap tickets.

The game turned out to be one of my most satisfying experiences at the ballpark. Strasburg gave up a home run early, but grew stronger as the game went on. He struck out 14 Pirates and earned an impressive win. The team went nowhere in 2010, but I can't overstate the importance of that game for the franchise. In many ways, the prognosticators were right: his first start was the moment where the Nats became an actual baseball franchise, instead of an off-brand imitation. (Nine years later, he would be named World Series MVP. So indeed, a major turning point in several ways.)

Two years later, in 2012, the Nationals became a truly great team. I remember watching incredulously as they rose in the standings and then stayed there. It was like watching my high school garage band take the stage with Pearl Jam. By then, I was in Baltimore, so I never got to experience D.C. in the full throes of play-off fever. Still, I wasn’t too far away – close enough, in fact, to view all Nats games on local cable – and I still followed attentively.

Having no kids yet, and thus no major expenses, I picked up tickets to Game 5 of the NLDS against the Cardinals. Of course, they had to make it to Game 5 first, which they did courtesy of Jayson Werth’s walk-off home run in Game 4, which until this year was the biggest hit in team history. I remember the sheer joy of a hit that both a) won us the game, and b) guaranteed I would attend another game the following night.

Of course, they lost. And it was heartbreaking. They were up 6-0 after three innings. They had knocked out the Cardinals’ star pitcher, Adam Wainwright. But the bullpen blew it and they lost.

I was in attendance again two years later when they lost in eighteen innings to the Giants. (Everyone would ask why Matt Williams pulled Jordan Zimmermann in the ninth. I was more upset by the team’s inability to score a run over the final fifteen innings of the game.)

Two years after that (2016), I was there for a play-off win against the Dodgers. Less than a week later, the Dodgers would eliminate them, courtesy of Clayton Kershaw.

I didn’t drop money on play-off tickets the following year (2017). A good thing, because I spared myself from watching the Nats lose another heartbreaking Game 5, this time to the Cubs.

I had spent the first half of my life rooting for a snake-bitten franchise. (People forget how painful it was to be a Red Sox fan pre-2004. Especially during the Yankee’s great run in the late 90’s.) The Nats had been in D.C. for less than fifteen years at this point – a far cry from the Red Sox’ 86 years of futility. Still, it seemed I had unwittingly joined the fan base of another cursed team.

In 2019, I felt myself starting to pull away. The team had under-performed in 2018 and the departure of Bryce Harper felt like the end of an era. Plus, fatherhood duties made it tough to get down to D.C. for games, and ultimately compelled us to get rid of cable.

On May 21^st, I went to a ballgame in Detroit with some college friends. I remember glancing up at the out-of-town scoreboard to see that the Nats game had gone final: Mets 6, Nationals 5. The season was over. Two days later, when the Mets had completed the four-game sweep, it was even more over.

Of course, we know now that it wasn’t. After what turned out to be a two-month false start, the Nats played as well as anybody. They were viewed as an underdog once they entered the play-offs. I admit I didn’t have much hope. In each previous play-off appearance, they had been the division winner. What reason did I have to hope for better in a year where they ended the regular season in second place, four games behind the Braves?

I was thrilled when they beat the Brewers in the first game: at last they had won a play-off series (or, “series,” since it was only one game). At least now, the inevitable loss to the Dodgers, owners of the NL’s best record, might feel less disappointing.

And then they beat the Dodgers – with two big home runs off Kershaw, no less. And after that, they buzzed right through the Cardinals. Dominated them, in fact. In an odd twist, I found myself at the St. Louis Airport for the first few innings of Game 3. While I have nothing against Cardinals fans, I can’t say I minded seeing them shake their heads in despair when their team fell behind big in the early going. They’ve won plenty of championships, after all.

I didn’t have $1000 to drop on a standing room only ticket to the World Series. (To be fair, prices did drop to the $700 range in the days leading up to the three games in D.C., but still.) As a consolation, I journeyed to Nationals Park for Game 4, determined to at least be present for what promised to be a huge party. The game turned out to be a bust (Astros 8, Nats 1), but I was glad I went. (I wound up watching from a far a few blocks away from the stadium.) Only twice before had I witnessed such a state of excitement in D.C.: the All-Star Game during the previous summer, and the inauguration of Obama.

Because I no longer live in D.C., and because I have more responsibilities than I did in my twenties, I wasn’t as present for the play-off run as I would have liked. For God’s sake, I fell asleep while watching a number of the games. The low point was undoubtedly Game 2 of the Dodgers series, in which I tapped out before the end of the top of the first inning. (Really though, who decides a play-off game must start at 9:30 PM?)

But no matter. When I started rooting for the Nats, I liked feeling that if the team one day got to be good, I could say I had gotten in on the ground floor. Well, now they’ve gotten good. My Nats: a team so amateurish that they once took the field in jerseys emblazoned with a misspelled version of their name. (The Natinals.) Now I get to say I knew them when.

Really?

What Would You Say?

Who was the most important band of the 90's? Go!

You probably said Nirvana, doubtless one of the best and most influential groups. But can you really say that a

decade's most important band was active for less than half of that decade? Pearl Jam's not a bad answer, but everyone but the diehards will tell you they really only produced two and a half good albums during that span. (Vitology is the half, of course.)

Smashing Pumpkins was big, but clearly occupied a slot below Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Radiohead consistently released innovative rock music, and were surprisingly popular given how odd and edgy they could be, but they always had sort of a niche following, albeit a large niche. Metallica's heyday was the late 80's. Green Day might be a contender, but they went through a period of irrelevancy in the late half of the decade before experiencing a resurgence  in the early aughts.

Here's my hot take: Dave Matthews Band.

Stay with me here. I'm not saying they were my favorite band of the 90's (although I did like both the self-titled album and Crash quite a bit). I'm not saying they were the most musically innovative band of the decade (although they were incredibly talented musicians who weren't afraid to mess around with weird time signatures and unconventional instrumentation). I'm not saying they were the most influential band of the decade either (although they spawned a ton of imitators. String Cheese, O.A.R., Dispatch, etc.). But for several reasons, they were the most important:

1 - Buzz Factor

I think I can say, purely on the basis on anecdotal evidence from when I was in high school, that DMB was the most popular band of the 90's in terms of albums and concert tickets sold. During high school, I was one of very few people I knew who had never been to a DMB concert. It wasn't that I actively avoided going. I wouldn't have minded seeing them, but their shows were always so expensive and there were always others I wanted to see just a little bit more. Fans from the New York area still recall the show they played on June 11, 2001 (the summer after I graduated high school) at Giants Stadium, when the cymbal crash at the beginning of "Two Step" coincided with a huge bolt of lightning. I am not exagerrating when I say that literally everyone in my graduating class at Chatham High School claims to have been at that show - except for me. The point is that their concerts were major social events that everyone at school talked about for weeks leading up, and then weeks following. Billy Joel and Elton John may have sold more concert tickets at around the same time, but neither one was in his musical prime, and for "buzz factor," they didn't touch DMB.

2 - Cultural Influence

For better or worse, DMB launched an entire cultural movement that they almost certainly didn't intend to. I'm not sure what to call this movement - it doeesn't have a catchy name like "hippies," or "goths," or "punks" - but it was even more ubiquitous. If you came of age during the 90s, I'm sure you remember it: preppy clothing (maybe a collared shirt, or cargo pants, or the ever-popular ringed t-shirt), "bar hat" from your college of choice, worn backwards (extra points for wrapping the adjustable band in duct tape), hemp necklace, perhaps a lacrosse stick or a hackey sack as an accessory. If you wore this uniform, you might as well have been wearing sandwich board proclaiming your love for Grateful Dead, Phish, and of course, DMB. To be clear, I'm not saying I embraced this movement. In high school, I generally steered clear of neo-hippies. (Is that what we should call them?) But like it or not, it was a major cultural stylistic trend. And DMB was at its center.

3 - Musical Significance

I have a theory that 90's rock can be divided broadly into three categories.

Category 1: Grunge and All of its Descendants (also known as Alternative). The Mount Rushmore of grunge is Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice and Chains, but the category includes all hard rock bands from later in the decade, even if no one thought of them as grunge. I'll put Weezer here, for example.

Category 2: California Punk/Ska/Funk

Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sublime are at the forefront. I didn't like any of the bands in this category (except maybe No Doubt I guess...), but a lot of people apparently did. Blink-182 and other mainstream punk and ska bands go here, even if they aren't strictly from California.

Category 3: Bonaroo Rock

These are the hippy-ish rock bands in the spirit of the Grateful Dead. These are mostly jam bands, many better known for their live concerts than their studio albums. Among fans of this group, Phish might have actually been the most popular band, but they didn't have anything close to the crossover appeal of DMB.

DMB was the pillar of one of these three big divisions of rock. And by the late 90's, that was the division that all the cool kids were listening to.

4 - Actual Quality

In high school, I was alternative all the way - and yet, I still liked DMB. I owned three CD's by bands who weren't in Category 1: "One Hot Minute" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, which I didn't like and don't actually remember purchasing, and the first three Dave Matthews albums. I don't know if I would have called myself a fan exactly, but I really liked their music. It could be big and heavily orchestrated ("Ants Marching," "Tripping Billies") or surprisingly intimate ("Pay for What You Get," "Cry Freedom"). Occasionally, it could be really strange and haunting. My favorite song by DMB is "Warehouse," which begins with spooky reverberating guitars and moaning vocals, but ends in a party, complete with steel drums, and finally fades away into this ominous sounding coda. It's such an audaciously weird song. My other favorite is "Don't Drink the Water," which just sounds so menacing for a full five minutes, while being so darn catchy at the same time.

The point: If you were strictly into alternative, there was still a decent chance you liked DMB. They made a lot of people change lanes.

And yet, you probably didn't call them to mind as the decade's most important band.

At some point, the culture surrounding DMB became bigger than the band's actual music - a phenomenom that should not be blamed on the band. And since a lot of people (like me) were turned off by the kind of people who wore the bar hats and hemp necklaces, and went to a lot of Dave Matthews shows, people dismissed them. But the thing is, the music was pretty consistently good for about a decade. I kind of stopped paying attention after Everyday (2001), but even if they had retired immediately afterward, that's five solid studio albums, more than every other 90's band I can think of.

There was a time when I thought DMB was massively overrated. Now, it seems like in an effort to overcompensate, popular opinion has swung way too far in the opposite direction.

This is a bar hat. Do kids still wear these?

I'd Bet on Your Future

I'm at a resort with my family. (The Nevele, in the Catskills. Formerly a Jewish oasis. Now defunct.) I'm probably eleven or twelve. I'm obsessed with baseball. There are no smart phones or devices, because they haven't been invented yet. All I've brought to the family week is my Gameboy with Tetris and Mario Brothers, and five books about baseball.

I guess I don't have room in my backpack, because I am carrying the stack of books inside. An old man sees me in the lobby, lagging slightly behind my parents, and he scans my pile up and down.

"Are you planning to read all of those books?" he asks me.

One of the books is the 1994 Baseball Abstract, a massive encyclopedia of statistics and trivia. (Wikipedia is not yet a thing.) So honestly, I'm not sure if I'm going to read all of the books. At least not cover to cover. But it seems easier just to say yes.

"Yes."

He shakes his head in amazement. "That's wonderful," he says, "I'd bet on your future, my young friend."

I'm not really sure what to say. I'm in middle school, which means I never know what to say. So I just thank him and we go our separate ways.

What an epic pronouncement, though: "I'd bet on your future." I still think about that old guy, sometimes, wherever he is. Probably he's no longer with us. And I wonder if he would have made anything off that bet.