According to the latest report from Fox’s Jay Glazer, Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets.

Consider: From 1968 to 1991, the Packers had a total of five winning seasons. The lack of star talent and terrible facilities kept them in the bottom rung of team earnings. But Ron Wolf and Favre changed that fundamentally - his jersey was a top seller every year, and many people became Packers fans nationally simply because of his style of play (they don’t have a footprint rivaling the Steelers, Cowboys, Redskins, or Patriots, but it’s still huge). This is one of the most public breakups in history, rejecting the runner up in MVP voting from the previous year who threw for 4000+ yards and led his team to an improbable 13-3 record. In the minds of many Packers fans, you just were given an enormous gift - the opportunity to shed an untested, injury-prone young QB (who only your GM ever wanted anyway) in favor of one last run at another championship with a Hall of Famer - and the Packers management was too wedded to the idea of creating their own form of victory to suck up their egoes and welcome him. The only comparison I can think of off the top of my head in terms of having one individual divorce have such a massive effect on an entire state’s attitude toward a team is if the Rangers or Astros had given the public finger to Nolan Ryan when he offered to be team president.

One of the key things that Green Bay has gone through since Favre’s decision in March is a rising shedding of jobs. The ticket market has collapsed. The announcers who had stayed in Green Bay hoping to call one more Super Bowl have retired. I think this could end up having enormous ramifications in terms of lost money for the franchise - and exactly the kind of financial decision you would expect from the only publicly owned franchise in professional sports, with 111,000+ shareholders.

This season ought to be very interesting for Green Bay, particularly after Aaron Rodgers inevitably goes down to injury this season (if we learned anything last season, it’s that the NFL still has karma, people). Get ready for the Brian Brohm show.

One of the interesting dynamics of the slow car accident of the Brett Favre unretirement saga is the unique yet unremarked upon status of General Manager Ted Thompson. As Peter King noted in a surprisingly astute point in his most recent column, Thompson, unlike every other GM and head of player personnel in the NFL, does not work for a sole owner. He and the team’s board of directors instead report to a small sample of the thousands of stakeholders who own the Packers franchise. Because the shareholder meetings aren’t exactly daily activities and not everyone is included, Thompson gets to fend for himself on most decisions without any significant input from an owner - there’s no Jerry Jones, no Robert Kraft, and certainly no Dan Snyder looking over his shoulder. And since Thompson picked the current Packers head coach, Mike McCarthy, for the team (McCarthy, a former coordinator with the lackluster Saints and 49ers offenses, wasn’t getting any serious looks for head coaching gigs from other teams at the time he was hired), he’s not going to get any guff from the HC’s office, either.

So unlike every other GM, when it comes to the personnel moves of the Packers franchise, the buck really does stop at Thompson’s desk and no one else’s. Which is why I think it’s safe to say that, lacking any excuse of owner bias or a powerful coach, Ted Thompson is quite possibly the worst General Manager in pro football.

Yes, I know that’s an extreme statement. But I believe it’s Thompson’s moves - and his mangling of his 34 draft picks, the most of any GM in the NFL over the past three years - that provoked the current status, where the Packers are embarrassing themselves to a ridiculous degree by offering a Hall of Fame Quarterback $20+ million to stay retired.

Consider the following facts, arranged chronologically:

2005

Thompson was hired in 2005 after a rather brief front office run under the tutelage of Mike Holmgren in Seattle, and wasted no time putting his mark on the team. While the Packers were only slightly over the salary cap, and were at that point a veteran team (winners of three straight division championships), built around Brett Favre, with Ahman Green and Javon Walker as their chief playmakers, and one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, Thompson declined to resign or sufficiently replace several key members of the team.

-Thompson outright released safety and defensive leader Darren Sharper, who promptly defected to the Minnesota Vikings (and has had two Pro Bowl seasons, including leading the league in interceptions from his position, since being released).

-Thompson declined to resign either of the Packers Pro Bowl Guards, Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera. As any veteran QB knows, not resigning two of your primary protectors has to be a bad sign for your health. A worse sign? Thompson did not draft a single Offensive Lineman to replace Wahle or Rivera in the first day of the draft, and instead signed low priced guards - and, most considered, career backups - Matt O’Dwyer and Adrian Klemm. At the time, Thompson praised both to high heaven, saying that they had solved the offensive line problems and saved money at the same time.

In what would become a pattern for the players Thompson singles out for praise, O’Dwyer was cut in training camp, and Klemm was eventually benched. Thompson’s other free agent pickups included RB Samkon Gado, TE Donald Lee and WR Rod Gardner. Today, all but one of these free agents Thompson acquired in 2005 are “out of football” - including Gado, O’Dwyer, Klemm, and Gardner. In other words: they couldn’t even cut it in the league for another two seasons.

Instead of drafting O-line help, Thompson chose QB Aaron Rodgers with his first pick overall. Rodgers was a controversial choice: he had been expected to go as high as first overall, but dropped to the bottom of the first round, as many teams viewed him as a product of a college system with a bad reputation in pro football (having also produced Joey Harrington and Kyle Boller, two first round busts at the pro level), and had injury concerns as well. But Thompson’s choice to pass on O-line help to draft Rodgers after so many other teams had passed on him, and the nature of the contract he signed as a first round pick, clearly showed that the GM did not anticipate Brett Favre being the quarterback for the Packers beyond one or two more seasons.

Thompson did attempt to bolster the defense after letting go of Sharper, choosing safety Nick Collins and linebacker Brady Poppinga on the first day. Both Collins, a small school safety considered a huge reach even at the time, and Poppinga are now in danger of losing their starting jobs after two full seasons in the league. Both have also had injury issues.

2006

The 2005 season was an incredibly rough one for the Packers. They lost several key players to injury, including Walker, Green, TE Bubba Franks, and backup RB Najeh Davenport. They finished 4-12, their worst showing since 1991. Usually, in a season this injury plagued and his first with a losing record, a coach with as much success as Packers HC Mike Sherman would get a pass, especially after re-signing a contract at the beginning of the season. Sherman’s offense was extremely successful and consistent prior to the decimation of injuries. Under his leadership, the Packers had won three consecutive division titles for only the fourth time in team history (Lombardi and Holmgren were the only other coaches to do it). Sherman’s Packers teams had been 2-4 in the playoffs, yes - but it was still a surprise to many that Sherman was summarily fired.

It’s interesting to read that linked story considering the current crashing disaster of Favre v. Thompson - in it, Thompson notes the following:

Thompson said Sherman, who signed a two-year contract extension in August, was surprised and disappointed when he learned of the decision early Monday morning…Thompson also spoke to the players Monday morning, calling the meeting “very quiet and somber.” But Thompson said he had not discussed the decision with Favre. The three-time MVP is mulling retirement and has said he might be less willing to return if he had to learn a new offensive system and work with a new coaching staff.

Thompson said he wants Favre back, but he needs a coach who will bring the team long-term success. “Eventually Brett Favre’s going to retire and go back to Mississippi,” Thompson said. “But that didn’t have any sway in this particular decision.”

Thompson brushed off Favre’s concerns about learning a new offense: “He’s a pretty bright guy.”

Thanks to Thompson’s el cheapo decisions from the prior year, the Packers entered the 2006 offseason with more money available under the salary cap than any other team: a full $32 million, a king’s ransom in NFL terms. But to amazement of the entire league, Thompson refused to spend a significant amount of money. He was content to go low-dollar, and again ditched veteran players in favor of amassing young, cheap draft picks.

Thompson passed on re-signing Pro Bowl kicker Ryan Longwell (who’d kicked more clutch field goals in windy Lambeau than anyone since the era of Starr, and followed Sharper to Minnesota) in favor of the erratic Dave Rayner, and also ditched All-Pro center Mike Flanagan and reliable LB Na’il Diggs.

Thompson did re-sign Pro Bowl DE Aaron Kampman and RB Ahman Green (in a move that raised eyebrows coming off an injured season), as well as guard Kevin Barry (another questionable move) and FB William Henderson. He also signed Marquand Manuel away from the Seattle Seahawks, brought over DT Ryan Pickett from the St. Louis Rams, LB Ben Taylor from the Cleveland Browns, and cornerback Charles Woodson from the Oakland Raiders. Of Thompson’s free agent acquisitions from 2006, only Pickett and Woodson have played well - Manuel was an unmitigated disaster, and several others (Barry, Henderson, Taylor, and several other minor players) are today, less than two seasons later, all listed as “out of football.”

In the 2006 draft, Thompson made 12 picks, including LBs A.J. Hawk and Abdul Hodge, WR Greg Jennings, and (perhaps overcorrecting for his mistake the previous year) guards Jason Spitz and Daryn Colledge. Hawk, a much studied pick, has been steady if not a game changer; Jennings has had flashes of brilliance, but also caught the injury bug and has failed to consistently produce for a second round pick; the rest have been fair at best, with Colledge being benched for poor play and Hodge, a third rounder, never getting close to winning a starting job (he has 10 tackles after two seasons).

After opening the season with a 26-0 loss at home to Chicago, the first time in 15 years the Packers had been shut out, Thompson signed troubled WR/KR Koren Robinson, who had been released by the Vikings after his second DUI in two years. He spent most of his time with the Packers bouncing in and out of league suspensions, and was released at the end of the following season.

2007

So what do you do, as Packers GM Ted Thompson, after an 8-8 season under rookie coach McCarthy in 2006, missing out on the tiebreak and the playoffs on the last day of the season? What do you do when you’re in need of those handful of critical free agent moves to put you over the top, with a veteran quarterback who’d thrown for close to 4,000 yards in the prior year, ripped off four straight wins to close the season, saddling up for one more run at a championship?

Well, if you’re Ted Thompson, you take your hands, put them on your chair, and then sit your ass firmly on top of them.

For the second year in a row, the Packers led the league in available money under the salary cap - a full $21 million. With this money, the Packers targeted and obtained exactly one free agent prior to the start of the season: NY Giants DB Frank Walker, a career backup. Walker would finish the year with one (1) pass defensed.

Despite all the available cash, and a plethora of mid round draft picks, Thompson declined to part with a fourth rounder for disgruntled yet immensely talented Oakland WR Randy Moss, who greatly admires Favre. Favre personally lobbied Thompson to make the move, but Thompson told the press that the team had no need of another WR (though he would later draft not one but two WRs). Moss instead went to the New England Patriots for a fourth rounder, setting up a record-setting tandem with Tom Brady that propelled the Pats to an incredible offensive season.

In the 2007 draft, Thompson chose Tennessee DT Justin Harrell with the #16 overall selection. The choice was met with shock and dismay; Harrell was widely viewed as a reach, and not a position of need for the Packers. Thompson was loudly booed by the fans at the Packers Draft Day party, and again when the choice of WR James Jones was made in the third round (though Jones turned out to be a decent selection, but how his 676 yards for a third rounder beat Moss’s 1,493 for a fourth, I don’t know). Harrell was coming off of an injured bicep, and ultimately contributed very little. Nebraska RB Brandon Jackson, Thompson’s second round selection, was intended to be the team’s starter and replacement for Green - but Jackson never seemed capable of owning the position, and ultimately finished the year with only 267 yards rushing. Ultimately, out of the long list of choices, Thompson’s best selection turned out to be kicker Mason Crosby, a solid choice who replaced the skipping-stones style of Rayner.

In September, Thompson made one more move: he traded a 6th round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft for New York Giants’ running back Ryan Grant. Thompson had no idea of Grant’s ability, and in fact chose the player because of his size and special teams experience - he was merely looking for another back to fill in following injuries to other backups. But luckily for the Packers, the Giants didn’t know either: to Thompson’s good fortune, Grant exploded in Green Bay, developing into an incredible player and propelling the Packers to an incredible 13-3 regular season record.

The Packers ultimately made it all the way to the NFC Championship game, losing 23-20 in Overtime to the eventual Super Bowl champion Giants.

So what does this all add up to?

Consider this for a moment: exactly four players out of Thompson’s ridiculously high number of draft selections (more than any other team over the same period) in any of the three years he’s been Packers GM have contributed anything significant to the success of the team. This is: Jennings, Jones, Hawk, and kicker Mason Crosby. An equivalent number of his most high profile picks - first rounder Rodgers, second rounder Collins, second rounder Colledge, and first rounder Harrell - have all proven to be fragile underperformers. Collins, Colledge, and Harrell have all been benched and missed games with injuries in their young careers, and Rodgers is a total question mark - not just because he’s been Favre’s backup to this point, but because of fears that he may be the most injury prone of all of Thompson’s selections.

Even in very limited regular season action, Rodgers has had his left foot broken and torn a hamstring, in both cases missing the remainder of the season. Rodgers gets testy when he’s asked about this, but the point is that the Packers are coming off of a QB who’s been, let’s just say, hard to kill. With Rodgers, the reverse may be true. It seems that the Packers are eager to find out if Rodgers can take them beyond the 13-3 Favre delivered last year - hard to do if Rodgers turns out to be, like so many other QBs, mortal.

With Rodgers at the helm, Thompson’s strategy for the Packers will be complete: he’ll have total ownership of the season to come, whatever happens. The GM decided, in almost every area, to go for the cheap, injury-prone player over the tested, higher-dollar veteran. He chose to adopt a long term strategy in an increasingly short term league. And now, he chose to pass up on the desire of a Hall of Fame QB to play one more season in favor of an untested young QB (but one he’s personally invested in).

Thompson’s up to his old tricks again in other areas, though - despite plenty of room under the cap, Thompson is currently low-balling Ryan Grant, leading to the RB holding out and skipping training camp. For all the sound and fury about Favre, this may turn out to be the decision that seriously impacts the team this year (Note that the Packers have complained regularly that Favre’s decision affected their offseason moves - but an examination of their draft shows that really only one pick, that of QB Brian Brohm in the 2nd round, was changed - and Brohm is still a great developmental prospect who will almost certainly end up the 3rd QB, with 7th Rounder Matt Flynn on the Practice Squad).

I can’t tell you what’s going on in Brett Favre’s head, or how this whole thing is going to end. But I can tell you this: we’re all about to find out if Ted Thompson is as horrible a GM as I suspect. Packers fans should hope I’m wrong.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James Baldwin

President-elect Barack Obama’s busy schedule yesterday of epic-length non-hybrid motorcades (11:00 a.m.: En route TBA. 12:05 p.m.: En route TBA. 1:45 p.m.: En route TBA. 2:55 p.m.: En route TBA. 5:20 p.m.: En route TBA.) was interrupted by what we may, as Jules once did, describe as a “moment of clarity.” For perhaps the first time since the beginning of this campaign, Barack Obama finally realized who he is, and the power of what he represents.

In his closed door meeting with House Democrats this evening, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger. According to a witness, he was waxing lyrical about last week’s trip to Europe, when he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.”“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” he said.

As Dana Milbank refers to it, Obama’s “adoration session” with House Democrats came at the end of a day spent serving the needs of mankind. The Obama, so generous with his time, spent a good portion of the day at a fundraiser at the Mayflower Hotel, where any common man or woman could have a picture taken with him for a mere $10,000. $10,000! Such a bargain for a brief touch of the aura of the lightbringer! Can you imagine the spiritual benefit of being in the incredible presence of this … I am sorry, I was going to write “man,” but I mean: SYMBOL?

Parting with mere money for this opportunity is a no-brainer, my friends. How much would you have paid for a Polaroid with St. Peter? Well, now you can meet the Symbol who gave him the keys in the first place.

Humility makes great men indeed. “It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion,” Calvin Coolidge said. We are glad that Obama has seen fit to heal himself – he knows what he represents now, to America, to the World, to the Hosts of Heaven.

He is beyond us now – it is not enough to say that women want him, and men want to be him. He has become the HopeChange of our Generation, who exceeds all our greatest dreams of what humanity could achieve in this mortal sphere.

Consider: even the facts bend for him now, as the reeds of the Nile from whence he was taken in a basket. One need only examine the scene that played out in the midst of last week’s otherwise fawning coverage of Obama’s long overdue trip to Iraq, in which he was accompanied by all three anchors of the broadcast news as befits the travels of any Symbol (some might say the three mewed and cowered at the heels of the New Yeshua as cerberus in toy poodle form, but they are the non-believers, and deserve only to be shunned).

After meeting with top U.S. military brass, talking with soldiers at a gym rally, and engaging in as limited media opportunities as possible, Obama sat down for a brief interview for Nightline with ABC’s Terry Moran, a skeptic and a doubter, who posed a dangerous and heretical question:

“The surge of U.S. troops, combined with ordinary Iraqis’ rejection of both al Qaeda and Shiite extremists has transformed the country,” said Moran. “Attacks are down more than 80 percent nationwide. U.S. combat casualties have plummeted, with five this month so far, compared with 78 last July. And Baghdad has a pulse again. … If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?”“No, because,” Sen. Obama responded, “keep in mind that, that…”

The incredulous Moran couldn’t help himself, interrupting: “You wouldn’t?”

“Well, no, keep in mind - these kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult,” Sen. Obama said. “You know, hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is that at that time, we had to change the political debate, because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.”

There is no audacity in this statement. The Obama merely suggests that his position opposing this critical and now undeniably successful military strategy was adopted, in opposition to the strongly held opinion of men like Gen. David Petraeus, for the purpose of “chang[ing] the political debate.”

You may think this is a demonstration of callous disregard for the very real consequences of a decision impacting the lives of millions and the future of an entire region. But remember that only a year and a half ago, Obama introduced his Iraq War De-Escalation Act in that soon-to-be discarded institution known as the United States Senate (what need have we for checks and balances when we have this man in the White House?), calling for a phased redeployment that would have commenced no later than May 1, 2007, and removed all American troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008.

There is no subtlety to Obama’s January 2007 plan – no malleable phrases, no wiggle room, no possibility for misinterpretation. The facts are clear: he emphatically opposed the strategy that made possible nearly all of the gains made over the past year and a half, in which brave men and women from our nation and others have laid down their lives to give the Iraqi people hope – not hope for a politician, but for a future Sen. Obama never believed in.

But his otherwise irrational opposition can now be explained, you see. Yes, even the mainstream media now admits the surge policy they once opposed has been an overwhelming success. Yet this is not a man, not just a candidate – he must be a Symbol for us, not a mere politician.

“We had to change,” the Adonis invokes his watchword, his handsome eyes shining with the depth of a galaxy of stars, “the political debate.”

You see, Obama’s policy for withdrawal came at a time when he wanted to clearly focus the minds of Democratic primary voters on his opposition to the unpopular war effort, and create distance between his pure anti-war record and that of former war supporters and total heretics Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. By embracing fully the doctrine of surrender, favoring running from the field in spite of the recommendations of the wisest and most experienced military minds, Obama achieved his purpose, and changed the political debate in the Democratic Primary. This had to be done, you understand, not because it was right, but because it was necessary: for this was a moment the world has been waiting for, foreordained since the foundations of the planet, and even Obama could not argue with the Fates.

Of course Obama considered the results of his politically motivated view, had it prevailed in 2007. Of course he weighed the results for the Iraqi people of a nation lost in chaos - measured the price to the global economy of a Middle East that could spend a generation locked in civil war - and paused to consider how many lives, so many of them the lives of young Americans, would have been lost in vain had his argument won the day. But do you not see: these are the costs we must be prepared to bear for the sake of this moment of achievement, not just for ourselves, but for the whole human race.

So come! Exult! Make a joyful noise! Dance in the streets with garlands of the finest flowers! Sing glorious hymns of praise to the firmament above! Behold – the Son of Man comes, riding upon a golden ass!

The weight of His glory is a heavy burden, indeed – but He will bear it, yes, for you and for me.

crossposted at redstate

Coffee snobbery: we’ve all experienced it. We’ve all been frustrated by encounters with our own personal Ravens. Few of us know how to respond with anything other than withholding a tip. But Jeff Simmermon’s epic “Hold that espresso between your knees” rant on the subject, following an encounter at Arlington’s Murky Coffee, is now the stuff of legend (bonus points for the Five Easy Pieces pull).

The fame of this isn’t because his post or his situation (Murky refused to serve him an iced espresso, and then castigated him when he ordered an espresso and a cup of ice) is unique - it’s because it inspired this vicious reaction from Murky’s owner. Enjoy, and then come back here (oh, and of course, since this is wifi central, the original conversation was overheard and immediately blogged at WeLoveDC).

Coffee snobs are everywhere these days, and Murky’s owner is just being honest about being one of them. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my first job was as a Starbucks barista. I worked the morning shift almost exclusively - getting up before 5 AM, driving through the dark and dodging the backroad wildlife, downing a quad shot, setting up the store in time for the first arrivals, who stumbled in like clockwork. I actually chose mornings, because I liked the customers better: fewer snobs. If you worked in the afternoons, you’d get middle aged parents, kids in tow, who thought they knew everything about coffee. They’d ask for shots pulled to ridiculously specific seconds, and temperatures of milk as hot as the fire of the sun.

I remember one customer in particular, a middle aged woman who talked a great deal about her cat, who insisted on 12-13 second shots, and half-skim, half-2% milk heated to exactly 180 degrees in her latte. The first time I worked an afternoon, she came in when I was on bar. I couldn’t believe she would actually want this drink, but I made it anyway, to her specifications. She walked away, took a sip, and immediately turned around.

“You didn’t make this right,” she said. “The shots are wrong.”

“Okay, how about I make it again?”

“The milk tastes bad. I think you’re using bad milk. Throw out that batch and use something else.”

“I’ll make it again.”

I made it again - this time, I pulled the shots to a more normal 18 seconds (thankfully, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t crane her neck around the bar) to see. I heated the milk to 140. I gave her the drink. She tasted it with a scowl.

“Oh, this is much better!” she said. “Yes, I think it was the milk you used before - be careful to check the date!” Then she smiled at me: “You’re lucky you’re new, and I’m a good customer, or I’d be more mad about that.”

Milk, I knew, scalds at 180 degrees.

She would come back again and again, and next time requested that I make her that special drink, since I did it right. Everybody thinks their drink is unique. But she’d just ordered a very simple, standard latte.

I loved mornings because of the absence of this customer type. Nobody is awake enough to complain about seconds or ten degrees one way or the other. They want to wake up, and they want to wake up fast. You are the avenue to them waking up. And here, try a lemon knot. By the end of the first month, I knew everyone’s drinks from open to about 10 AM - I could run bar without asking for orders, making the same drinks before they even called them out. It was excellent. When I left Starbucks after a little more than a year to head off to college, customers brought me going away gifts - including one sweet woman who brought me a lovely book of stories by Turgenev.

These days, I still go back to that Starbucks on occasion - of all the megachains, I still prefer their unground beans the best - and I use French pressed coffee pretty much exclusively. I use this for espresso. But I’m not above stopping in a diner when I’m on the road - even that’s better than nothing.

But even I have limits. I have to confess, I don’t like Murky Coffee. I’ve been there twice - the Arlington shop has a good location, you’ve probably driven past it a hundred times if you’re local - and both times, I found the coffee to be … subpar. As in, filtered through sweaty handmade socks subpar. I get that some people like this stuff. But that’s the whole damn point: it’s okay for them to like it, and okay for me to not like it. This isn’t a debate about something serious, like faith, politics, or game consoles. It’s just coffee. It’s not wine, it’s not cheese, it’s not even bread. Baristas learn their trade in a week of trial and error, not a sommelier school.

The mistake Murky’s owner makes in his response to the customer is referring to what they create at his coffee shop as “art.” Wake up, people: it isn’t. Good coffee is beautiful because its taste is perfect, well-crafted, and memorable - because it reminds you of a place or a feeling, of a conversation with friends, of a time in your life. That’s not art. That’s just good food.

This is America. As Chef Gusteau would say: anyone can make coffee. And they can make it the way they like it. Even if they really do figure out that they want 180 degree lattes, god bless their scorched tastebuds. There are better things to be a snob about.

I am not supposed to be happy about what Josh Hamilton did the other night. At least, not if I read the sports blogs out there. I’m supposed to put on my shiny pretentiousness hat, given out with every .com purchase on GoDaddy, and approach Hamilton’s story with sarcasm and ridicule for the man’s faith. Maybe dismiss him as old news. Maybe put up an old mugshot from his crack-addicted days and mock him as a jackass. Maybe make some crack about how he’s going to give that worship up since he didn’t win the Home Run Derby, and that he’ll keep switching religions til he does. He just hit 35 homers, yeah, whatever.

But I’ll leave that to the commenters at Deadspin.

This article from 2006 wasn’t the first one I’d read about Josh Hamilton and his tragic tale of personal failure. Neither was this eerily similar one from 2007, or any of the other profiles out there. I can’t remember what it was. But I know it was a long time ago. Way before he never made it past A ball. Way before he ended up as one of the worst draft picks of all time (according to ESPN, number 35).

I remembered seeing a TV interview with Hamilton when he was drafted 1st overall in 1999, watching it in my college dorm and realizing he was my age - and that he looked like just a good, All-American kid - and I remember reading about how it all fell apart. How he made it all fall apart. How he blew all his money, got kicked out, driven down. How he disappeared.

I saw a picture of him in a magazine in 2003. This was the new Josh Hamilton, staring out of sullen, sunken eyes - a picture that said drug addict, bust, failure. He didn’t look like The Natural - he looked like any other Crown Royal-swilling crack addicted piece of white trash - covered in tattoos, garish and ornate, demons and patterns, his skin telling of late nights and drug fueled blackouts and lost memories. As Dave Sheinin wrote: The Devil and the Son of God, waging war.

There’s a plot twist to this one, though. The Devil lost.

It’s funny the way you start paying attention to an athlete - one who’s never played on any of my teams, or even in the same state. But for the past several years, every roto league I’ve been in, I’ve drafted Josh Hamilton. First it was just the last pick of each round - like he was a mascot or something. Then earlier. Then this year, I took him in the sixth round, knowing the eyebrows of others would rise…and at the halfway mark of the season, he’s ranked 4th in points among all Fantasy Baseball players.

He says he made the long road back out of the blackness thanks to his loving family and his Christian faith. He says it’s saved his life. And he’s not shy about it. He wants to tell everybody. He knows where he’s come from, and what a gift this second - or is it third, or fourth - chance is.

I get a lot of abuse in visiting cities, but it only bothers me when people are vulgar around kids. The rest I can handle. Some of it is even funny. In St. Louis, I was standing in rightfield when a fan yelled, “My name is Josh Hamilton, and I’m a drug addict!” I turned around and looked at him with my palms raised to the sky. “Tell me something I don’t know, dude,” I said. The whole section started laughing and cheering, and the heckler turned to them and said, “Did you hear that? He’s my new favorite player.” They cheered me from that point on.

So I’ll leave it to more jaded writers to mock how Hamilton said he’d dreamed of this moment - of stepping to the plate at Yankee Stadium, hitting in the Home Run Derby. How he’d dreamed it two years ago, when the whole thing seemed like just a fantasy, an impossibility for a former drug addict whose best hope was a minor league career and a steady paycheck. How his faith led him back from the brink - faith not in his own ability, but in something greater. They can mock. It’s what they do.

As for me, if I’d been in the park the other night, I would’ve been chanting his name with all the rest, realizing that, whatever Hamilton’s career in the big leagues turns out to be in the years ahead, for this night - in this moment - we were all witnesses to a resurrection.

>> Some people have the tendency to see politics in everything. It’s often there, yes - I’m sure you could dissect the politics of Dora the Explorer if you wanted to, and without Googling, I’m confident someone has - but it really does detract from just experiencing a work of pop art. [Not everything is politics politics politics - I recall hearing about the director of some piece of horror dreck, perhaps it was The Hills Have Eyes 2, arguing in a plea for relevance that his movie was a response to the Iraq War. Yeah, sure it was buddy.] Such is the case with the lovely Wall-E, which - while not the best thing Pixar has ever created (The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and Ratatouille are better films - and Nemo is more beautiful) - is a lovely, excellent piece of cinema, and superior to just about anything else you’ll see this year from any studio.

But it seems like a lot of folks are getting stuck on the lecture underneath Wall-E, as opposed to just viewing it as a piece of film art that is incredibly ambitious and challenging. For my own part, I just recommend reading one review - Lileks’:

Pixar’s gift for deft, precise, economical character delineation might have hit its apogee with Eve. It’s all in the tilt of the head and the shape of the eyes – the latter defined by ten blue lines. At first they have two or three shapes; by the end they’ve adopted the shape of Wall-E’s own eyes, indicating her own progression towards awareness and empathy. She is a hard plastic cipher at the beginning; by the end, she is Princess Charming. Literally. (That’s another Disney throwback reference I haven’t seen anyone else note.)

…

Wall-E’s actions when he sits down, knocks his treads together and pats the seat next to him may, I suspect, have been vetted and discussed and considered at great length. (Or not.) It’s the most overtly human action he makes in the entire film – it’s not emulative of humans, it’s instinctive.

Eve’s vocalizations change here, if I recall correctly – there’s nothing in her previous utterances that reveal any emotion that’s not consistent with top-level programming. “No – no” is the moment that makes us see what Wall-E saw in her – and just to underscore the Pixar gift, the moment is understated. Prior to this she’s been an impatient professional.

Just scroll down in the Videos section, and watch the Space Walk.

Update: I noticed that more than a few online critics have taken the opportunity to rank the Pixar films now that there are enough of them to do so. Here’s my own Top Ten, FWIW - it clearly displays my Brad Bird bias:

10. Lifted (I know it’s a short)
9. A Bug’s Life
8. Cars
7. Toy Story
6. Finding Nemo
5. Wall-E
4. Monsters, Inc.
3. Ratatouille
2. Toy Story 2
1. The Incredibles