Page 2/The Battalionn"uesday, April 16,1985
""""
; >• OPINION
HELLO. TD LIKE
TO SPEAK TO
PRIME NUNISTER
NAKASONE ON
telecommunication
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A SIGN OF
BAD FAITH,
nakasoniL
/
Baseball is upon us and life
is worth living once again
BALTIMORE
— You know the
feeling you get
watching the stea
mier Greek trage
dies, when dynas-J
ties are falling and
sons are marrying
their mothers and,
everyone is behav
ing badly and you
are thinking:
If Ueberroth’s baseball bolshevism is
the bad news, the good news is that our
can-do country has gone and done it. It
has produced a baseball book that al
most contains all the information citi
zens ought to be required to master be
fore being allowed to vote. The book is
“The 1985 Elias Baseball Analyst.”
George
Will
Really, things cannot go on like this.
T hat is how March makes proper Amer
icans feel. Life is vain, the world is a
moral void, the universe is an empty
shell. Then proper Americans look to
ward April, the horizon where the sun
will rise. The sun is baseball.
Baltimore is the best place to watch
the sunrise. I will explain why, after
dealing with this disagreeable business:
Peter Ueberroth must go. His reign as
baseball commissioner is already six
months old and the wicked Designated
Hitter rule has not been repealed.
Worse — infinitely so — he is talking
about taking an opinion poll on the sub
ject. The mind reels. The thought oc
curs: Death, where is thy sting?
Do you have a Gibbonesque fascina
tion with declines and falls? The book
reveals that the 1984 White Sox were
only the eighth team in 50 years to suf
fer a decline of 150 percentage points in
their won-lost record compared with the
immediate preceding season. In 1984
Cleveland extended to 24 its record for
the most consecutive seasons (excluding
the 1981 strike season) Finishing more
than 14 games behind the league or di
vision leader. Before the 1984 Milwau
kee Brewers did it, the last team to go in
just two years from the best record in
the league to the worst was during the
Johnson administration. The time be
fore that, Woodrow Wilson was in his
first term.
Who needs polls to discover if Miche
langelo is superior to Andy Warhol?
Some judgements should be beyond the
reach of majorities. Democracy has, I
suppose, its place, but in baseball? Per
haps public opinion must influence gov
ernment, but baseball should not be a
plaything of that turbulent, hydra-
jieaded monster: the mob. Do we sub
mit theories of astro physics to refer
enda? Surely even in an open society
there are closed questions, and this is
one: Should baseball be desecrated by
the DH rule, which allows degenerate,
football-esque specialization?
AccDecSyn (Accelerated Decline Syn
drome) exists when three criteria are
satisfied: a team wins 10 fewer games in
season X than in season X minus 1; it
had a losing record in X minus 1; it had
a winning record in X minus 2. The
1984 Giants suffered AccDecSyn.
But enough about incompetence.
Let’s go to Baltimore, where last Mon
day the Orioles, who will beat the Cubs
in a six-game World Series, began what
will be their 18th consecutive season
over the .500 mark. Only the 1926-64
Yankees have done better, and no team
has a better winning percentage (.565)
over the last 29 seasons. Why are they so
good? Hey, as Ring Gardner, born 100
years ago this spring used to say, you
could look it up.
George Will is a columnist for the
Washington Post.
\lyAt- if- THEY
Fought &ack..
OK Tf?OOPS,
U^ri^WETOOT-
liberal’ does not [Ho
mean communist on
I have been
called a liberal, a
fool, a race traitor,
a left-winger, a
rabblerouser, and
a multitude of
other things,
many of which are
unprintable. Seve
ral “good conser
vatives” have told
that
resist or oppose any changes in these.
This definition differs from the “close-
minded, self-centered, Bible-toting,
conformist” stereotype.
Basically, both groups, as far as Texas
A&M is concerned, advocate democratic
government and freedom for the indi
vidual, but the liberal favors change and
the conservative does not.
AS!
Loren
Steffy
The Elias book says Cal Ripken, the
O’s shortstop, has baseball’s best on-base
average (.452) when leading off an in
ning. With the opening game tied in the
eighth inning on Monday, Ripken led
off and got on base. Next came Eddie
Murray. The book says that last year he
batted .459, with a .838 slugging aver
age, in late-inning pressure situations
with runners on base. On Monday he
drove in Ripken with a home run.
me t n a t even
though I may agree with them on cer
tain issues, I’m “still a liberal,” as if liber
alism is akin to leprosy.
Liberalism at Texas A&M is about as
popular as Patsy Cline’s hit single
“Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo.”
Those of us who have fallen victim to
the liberal brand are shunned by the
conservative majority as if we’re radio
active waste. However, people generally
slap these labels around without ever
knowing what they mean.
So I decided to take a quick flip
through Webster’s New World Diction
ary in search of the true meaning of lib
eralism. “A political philosophy advocat
ing personal freedom for the individual,
democratic forms of government, grad
ual reform in political and social institu
tions, etc.,” I read. Hmmm. Somewhat
different from the popular definition of
“long-haired commie freak-o pig.”
Conservative, on the other hand, is
defined as: “tending to preserve estab
lished traditions or institutions and to
If our society is a building, conserva
tism gives the building the rigid
strength necessary to withstand the el
ements. But, just as a skyscraper must
be able to bend in a strong wind,society,
too, must be flexible when facing poten
dally hazardous conditions, and that's
where liberalism comes in.
Without both viewpoints society
would fall apart, so a balance must exist
between the right and left wings. Our
founding fathers were liberals because
they favored democratic reform, but
without conservatives to follow them,
the United States of America would
have been just another revolutionary
government which failed.
So, in the definative sense, 1 am abb-
eral, because I favor change, but only
when change is necessary to maintain
the democratic ideals this country
stands for. The liberal label does notin-
elude the words “communist," “anar
chist,” or “race traitor.”
■ AUSTIN -
(use to ban
three months
I lar to Nazi li
I stop the killii
physician test
But a D;
ainst the al
png about pn
lar to worn
eed corn.”
Rockdale I
Jbortion bill
est crowd of t
The Kubia
[ons in the
regnancy (i
endangerei
portions, ret
fetus in somt
rental consei
to get an aboi
“This pro!
ignored by tl
I'.IVS,” when
the U.S. Sup
ilizing abor
[rinarian.
He said th
towed states t
ibortion. Foi
Hattons.
“With aln
Ser
Loren Steffy is a sophomore joum „ I
I ism major and a weekly columnist for vT [
The Battalion.
U.S. out of line in
Central America
As Murray began his regal, relaxed
lope around the bases (Prince Charles
cquld take lessons from Murray about
the business of kingly bearing), base
ball’s magical mix of science and seren
dipity was on display.
Sen. Phil
Gramm warned
last week that the
United States
A 162-game season is, like life, in
study in cumulations. Things tend to
even out, and talent tells. Ripken and
Murray are gods, but there are lots of
lesser but useful talents, and in a town
like Baltimore, where they make good
steel and sausage and baseball, they
know how to make use of scraps. Who
led the American League last year in the
percentage of runners driven in from
third with fewer than two outs? Elias
knows: Jim Dwyer, Baltimore.
must continue its
“program of assis
tance” to Central
America to pre
vent the spread of
communism, and
to prevent the re
sulting swarm of
nism. It’s hard for people to worry
about being good democrats when they
are hungry and miserable.
| AUST1P
fimerats stay
tentatively
1 allow Tex
: Tuesday”
[, March 198
ft The voi
i: Sen. John
faction by t
| in protest <
I A final
i needed to >
Instead of supplying covert military
aid, the U.S. might try supplying more
financial and medical aid to Central
American nations.
I A motio
2|4-7, with
Maybe bread and butter will
more benefits than guns.
Michelle Powe
“frantic refugees (who) will begin surg
ing north through Mexico and then into
the United States.”
Michelle Powe is a junior journalism
major and the editorial page editor (or
The Battalion.
Gramm told San Antonio’s Down
town Rotary Club the Soviets have sup
plied more to Nicaragua in tanks, planes
and other equipment than the United
States has provided to all of Central
America in medical care and equipment.
Past performances give rise to aver
ages, on which managers calculate prob
abilities about future performance. The
more you study, the less surprised you
are. But no matter how hard you study,
you still are suprised agreeably often,
and the surprises that come to the stu
dious are especially delicious. This is
true in baseball and in the lesser stuff
that is the rest of life.
“I’m tired of all this ‘covert aid’ busi
ness,” Gramm said. “There’s nothing
covert about it. I want a straight up-and-
down vote on providing a small amount
of money so these people can preserve
their freedom.”
The argument put forward by the
Reagan administration and supporters
is that Nicaragua’s communist govern
ment presents a threat to other Central
American nations, such as El Salvador
and Honduras. If Nicaragua overthrew
these governments it would be knocking
at Mexico’s back door, and before we
knew it the communists would be
threatening the security of the United
States. But the likelihood of an unstable
Nicaragua pulling off such a task is not
great.
The fact is that the United States’ in
terests are not directly threatened by Ni-
caraguajand the U.S. has| no right to in
terfere in the internal affairs of
Nicaragua — or any other sovereign na
tion. We certainly have no right to crit
icize the Soviet Union for meddling in
other nation’s internal affairs, when we
are thrusting ourselves into Nicaragua.
The U.S. has long worried about the
infiltration of communism into its hemi
sphere through Latin America. But in
its efforts to fight communism south of
its border, the U.S. has often alienated
Latin Americans even further.
If the U.S. wants to befriend these na
tions, it should try being a friend instead
of an interfering, domineering uncle,
whose presence its neighbors resent. It
must not sten in to “help” any nation,
unless that nation asks for help.
The U.S. might w’n more friends if it
put an end to its constant support of
right-wing dictators in Central and
South America. By supporting any anti
communist government regardless of its
nature, the U.S. has helped put into
power, and keep in power, ruthless ty
rants who cared not for their people.
Poverty and disarray breed commu-
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Brigid Brockman, Editor
Shelley Hoekstra, Managing Editor
Kellie Dworaczyk, News Editor
Michelle Powe, Editorial Page Editor
Rhonda Snider, City Editor
Travis Tingle, Sports Editor
The Battalion Staff
Assistant City Editors
Dainah Bullard, Kari Fluegel,
Assistant News Editors
Cami Brown, John Hallett, KayMallett
Assistant Sports Editor
Charean Williams
Entertainment E.ditors
Shawn Behlen, Leigh-Ellen Clark
Staff Writers * Rebecca Adair,
Cathie Anderson, Marcy Basile,
Tamara Bell, Brandon Berry,
Jeff Brady, Ann Cervenka,
Michael Crawford, Mary Cox,
Kirsten Dietz, CindyGay,
Pete Herndon, Trent LeoDold,
Sarah Oates, Jerry(Jslin,
June Pang, Tricia Parker,
Cathy Riely, Marybeth Rohsner,
Walter Smith
Copy Editors Jan Perry, Kelley Smith
Make-up Editors Karen Bloch,
Karla Martin
Columnists Ed Cassavoy, Kevin Inda,
Loren Steffy
Editorial Cartoonist Mike Lane
Sports Cartoonist Dale Smith
Copy Writer Cathy Bennett
Photo Editor Katherine Hurt
Photographers Anthony Casper,
Wayne Grabein, Bill Hughes, Frank Irwin,
John Makely, Peter Rocha, Dean Saito
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