Taney wins during final play, 7-6

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

You need a little good news this Monday, right? Here it is: The Taney Dragons pulled it out in the very last second of last night’s game against Pearland, Texas to win, 7-6. And what a cardiac event this game was! From The Good Phight:

It was the bottom of the sixth in Williamsport, in a taut second round matchup between two of the first-round winners, Philadelphia’s own Taney and the team from Pearland, Texas, representing the Southwest.

Pearland led, 6-5, but the magic, multicultural local preteens showed no quit. Taney’s Scott Bandura led off with a bunt single, but a Jahli Hendricks strikeout and a Jared Sprague-Lott fly out to center left the kids one out away from a loss that would have meant a game tomorrow and a complicated pitching lineup that would have kept star pitcher Mo’ne Davis off the mound.

But Zion Spearman followed with a scorching ground ball past the shortstop that rolled all the way to the wall, and with Bandura running on contact, the game tied, and Spearman wound up on third, just beating the throw from the cutoff man.

With Spearman on third, Tai Shanahan followed with a groundball to shortstop that Texas shortstop Aaron Matthews fielded, but threw over the head of his first baseman as Spearman scored, and Taney walked off.

The game was played in perfect conditions in Williamsport, and a bus-trip aided throng of over 30,000 fans crammed every seat, nook, and hillside to watch the game, many of whom chanted “Let’s Go Taney!” throughout the game

If you skipped watching because Mo’Ne wasn’t pitching, you missed two-and-a-half hours of great edge-of-the-seat baseball. Jared Sprague-Lott (who I predict now as the series MVP) pitched a great four innings before giving up a three-run homer. But the pitchers who followed were solid, too.

I can’t imagine what it was like for young kids to play with that much pressure on them, with that many screaming fans. Williamsport is a four-hour trip from Philly, and there were so many Philadelphia fans made the trip, Little League officials decided they had to hand out tickets.
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Me and the southern belle

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

I saw this go past my Twitter stream during the Taney game last night and just had to respond:

She describes herself as “Christian, wife, mom, Aggie, conservative, Aggie Mom. Lover of family, Texas Country Music, good friends, & a good drink.”

I couldn’t help but respond:

She answers:

And by “some,” I guess she means… well, I think we can guess.

I think she meant, “I guess y’all don’t…. bitch.”

I’m so glad I don’t live in Texas.

Why cops lie

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

DSC_0470

I liked this NYT article, not the least because it agrees with what I was saying on my radio appearances last week: You’re not going to solve police brutality without changing the political pressures on their performance.

Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

THE pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”
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Pressure on Israeli anti-war activists

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Human Interest

This is what it was like after 9/11, and that public attitude led to the founding of Drinking Liberally — a place where the small anti-war minority could speak openly. But keeping people out of bomb shelters? That’s criminal:

For Jewish Israelis, and even more so for Palestinians inside Israel, opposing war is a dangerous act. With 86 percent of Israelis opposed to a ceasefire, the overwhelming public attitude leaves anti-war activists in a precarious position. One woman shouting in a pro-war counter-demonstration inadvertently described the tolerance for dissent during times of conflict: “You can protest after the war, but not during it!”

Michael Sappir, 26, a Jewish Israeli member of Da’am, an Arab-Jewish socialist party, told VICE News: “Even though it’s normally scary to publicly voice radical leftist positions in Israeli society, now there is a sense that everyone is united against you.”

Mimi, a Jewish anti-war activist using a pseudonym, echoed Sappir’s sentiments: “People like to say that Israeli society is half right-wing and half left-wing, but this is not true. The center is extremely right-wing.”

For many Jewish Israeli anti-war activists, the night of July 12 was a turning point in being able to safely protest in public. As Israel launched airstrikes and shelled the Gaza Strip, demonstrators gathered in Habima Square in Tel Aviv. A pro-war counter-demonstration appeared and the police maintained a buffer between the two. As a siren rang out, indicating a rocket had been launched from Gaza, police fled the scene. Left unprotected, many of the anti-war demonstrators attempted to make their way into the bomb shelters, but were blocked and attacked by pro-war mobs.

‘When it’s right-wing people doing stuff, we look aside, and when it’s leftist people like you, we will hunt you down.’

“We were left out there [by the police],” said Sappir. “Some of us formed a human chain which actually worked pretty well in keeping the ultra-Zionists from attacking us. Some people fled into a cafe and were attacked there, and someone had a chair broken over their head.”

The activist who was beaten with a chair spent the night in the hospital before returning to the scene the following day to apologize to the owner. He was again attacked in plain daylight and then blamed for events by the cafe’s owner.

This makes me happy

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

This is exactly what I hoped would happen. Inner city baseball has been dropping off for years (mostly because equipment is much more expensive than a basketball), but a story like Mo’Ne’s and the Taney Dragons is getting kids interested again. Hallelujah!

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Taney Dragons baseball team is playing their 2nd game in this year’s Little League World Series at 7pm Sunday against Pearlman, Texas.

The Dragons and their star pitcher Mo’Ne Davis are inspiring a lot of kids from the Delaware Valley to get out and play some baseball.

On most Sunday afternoons 12-year-old McKie Walker is usually at home watching TV or playing video games, but this week he’s with a few of his buddies at Fairmount Park sharpening his baseball skills.

“I’m inspired to play better, so I can try and make it to the Little League World series,” he said.

McKie says his extra jolt of motivation comes from Mo’Ne Davis and those Taney Dragons. “She inspires me to throw better pitches than I can do,” he said. “I’m learning how to throw a better curve ball, because I see she’s getting a lot of strike outs throwing gas, curveballs and changeups.”

But the coach of the team Taney beat for the state championship is filing a complaint that Taney broke the Little League rules. He says Taney has an “unfair advantage” because they can draw from the entire city.

Man. When I think of the resources suburban Little Leaguers have as opposed to the city (here, they have to travel to different crappy playgrounds and no, their parents don’t normally send them to summer clinics with former MLB stars), I just have to laugh. Hell, they didn’t even have real uniforms.

No crying in baseball, fellas!