Trump a threat to major league baseball?

From one of our unimpeachable insiders of Major League baseball comes word of growing fears that  the 2016 presidential election could produce the greatest catastrophe  for the national pastime since the Black Sox scandal a century ago.  The source said that if Donald Trump is elected, he would first buy the American League outright and deport all of the Latin American players to their original countries.

After all, with Trump, all things are plausible.  Such apocalyptic action,  the source said,  is at  the very top of his agenda to make America great again by  removing "American" from the league's official  name until all of the Latin players are sent  home before some commit more low-life crimes, including rape.

Kasich says he's surging from the pack

As Gov. Kasich takes a deep breath and another gulp of he-man supplements for his 2016 stretch run to the New Hampshire primary,  the reports arriving from the front tell us that he's preparing to wind up  his $11.5 million TV ad campaign in the Granite State with a $5 million blitz from his piggy bank.

Kasich gleefully told ABC's This Week ''I''m surging,  as you know." But like so many of his claims that we didn't know,  it's the exhuberant side of him that leaves us wondering what his political fortune-telling  is all about as the polls tell us otherwise.  Again praising himself for his alleged historic success story in Ohio (to make the state great again?) he credited his ground game with  being the best among  all of the others'  campaigns,  adding that he has provided specific solutions to problems in the state.  "We just don't pontificate and have a bunch of rhetoric," he says of what he has called his Ohio Miracle.

Although money is supposed to solve most campaign challenges, he's counting on the final splurge of $5 million to put him across with the voters.  But there's evidence that a candidate must also have plenty  of curb appeal to give the money any chance to work.

Try these numbers: As history tells us, Rudy Giuliani spent more than $50 million per delegate.  John McCain bought each of his for $57,000.   And who can forget that John Connally, a Democrat who turned Republican, didn't earn more than one for  the $11 million he spent per  delegate in his failed 1980 presidential campaign?

OK, guv.  Splash your cash in a so-called decisive state where there are only 767,400 registered voters, no more than 30 pct. of whom are Republicans.      The only guaranteed investment benefit is that it will feed  the TV ad producers a lot more than the candidate ,  whether you pontificate or not.

That's one way of looking at it

                  Cartoonist: Mike Lynch

Stumping the Trump

When I was a kid in small-town Pennsylvania, I and my pals  would meet  in the field next  to my parents' home to roast potatoes until they were charred by the fire we had created  in a small hole.  Exciting, huh?

To make life more interesting when one of the boys didn't bring along his big-little book with naughty pictures, we entertained ourselves with tongue-twisters.   The one that has survived the ages with me is shown below, with a modern  update that substitutes the word  "skunk"  with "Trump".

A Trump sat on a stump.The Trump thunk the stump stunk and the  stump thunk the Trump stunk.
If the Trump thunk the stump  stunk and the stump thunk the Trump stunk, who stunk?  The Trump or the stump?

That's kind of how it's being going on the stump in the presidential campaign, don't you think?

At UA, classroom history may be something else

In this moment of  good cheer, I don't want to be the grump who mashed a potato or two.  But when I see a front page  headline in my hometown paper describing a bowl  victory by the Akron  Zips as making history in Idaho, the only thing that quickly comes to mind is the school's shrinking  history department.  There, the playing field is considerably  smaller in the new universe of Ohio's Polytechnic University .

I am told by a respectable campus source that the department  faculty is now down to 16 from a level of 24 - a one -third decline.     Deck  the halls!

Can you imagine the shrieks if the football team fielded only nine players instead of 11? That would be historic.  

I know it's blasphemous  for a casual college football fan like me, or anyody else,  to raise such  rhetorical non-academic questions . Maybe that small group of businessmen will   explain it in their next ad.  

Merry Christmas

Season's greetings with considerable help from Nancy's dedication to a bird-adorned 
Christmas tree whose many feathered occupants, unfortunately, you can't see in the photo.   From me, I can only offer thanks to all of you whose support has encouraged me to plow on editor-less,  typos et al ,  since 2008.  Make 2016 your best!     

The full frontal Donald Trump

When Donald Trump berated Hillary Clinton for being a minute late  from a potty break during the recent Democratic debate, he not only described her as "disgusting" but also injected  a word that sent many of us to the dictionary.   He said she was "schlonged" by the Democratic Party in 2008.

I discovered that schlong was as a vulgar Yiddish word, and you can take it from there.  But it should surprise nobody that Trump resorted to barracks talk in his latest assessment of Hillary and her bathroom needs.  His  entire off-the-page presidential spectacle has been a full frontal public schlong.  Folks, we are seeing Donald  Trump as the new abnormal of national  politics.

Season's greetings

Did anyone remember to bring
  the milk bones to the party?

UA gets a boost,sort of, from some business people

Shortly after my Sunday ABJ arrived with a full page tribute  to the University of Akron, I received an email from a reader with the alert that "The Empire Strikes Back". It  was  satirically linked  to the current frenzy over a new episode of Star Wars, which is sort of how I feel about the belated reclamation project  for the school's reputation  by a relative handful of Akron business  people who signed the FirstEnergy-paid ad.

Unfortunately the ad repeated  the chestnuts that have been put out by  the beleaguered UA administration under President Scott Scarborough,  as in "accepting change is difficult" while his playbook is leading  the school into mediocrity  with fumbled cutbacks,  failed recognition by his new team of hometown loyalties to the downtown campus, dysfunctional   and incoherent initiatives (think: E.J.  Thomas hall et al) , and fattened salaries for  Scarborough's imported executives.

Scarborough's preacherly view  of the landscape has come across more as hubris than sensitivity to the climate hereabouts.    It was startling to hear him  explain  at  an Akron Press Club speech  that the reason the UA's  new rebranding title is "Ohio's Polytechnic University" (rather than  Akron's) was to tell people where Akron is.
So much for today's geography lesson.

So now the school's development department is said to have  reached into the  business column  for custodial  help to solve  Team Scarborough's image problem rather than the  school's debt. You would think that with his half-million  salary and perks he could have managed himself.

In  the ad's last breath, the text said:

"We recognize that the benefits of such change and natural evolution are critical to the growth of the University,  our businesses and our entire region.  In a quickly changing world  we either keep up with change  or risk  being left behind."  That's doubtless what was said at Chipotle's  latest board meeting.

Among the 'we' who signed the ad are companies  who do business with UA as well as other interests.

Nowhere does the ad mention Scarborough, nor, for that matter, the trustees - the gatekeepers who should  not have let the damage occur in the first place.

They should paste Yogi Berra's wisdom  on their office walls:  "We made too many wrong mistakes."

Chris Christie's tale from the crypt

I humbly offer this vignette as an example of the infinite incoherence on the stage of the latest Republican debate with Chris Christie showing off his chest-pounding grip on foreign policy . (There were many examples of his rivals' dumber moments, but we sort of like the Christie photo and will stick with the New Jersey governor for this sampling  from a home-state  medium  that knows him best, N.J.Com,  to wit:

"On ISIS let's be clear.  The president needs to be a force that's trusted in the world" Christie said. "This president's not trusted...but I'll tell you this.  When I stand across from  King  Hussein of Jordan, and I say to him, 'You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight,' he'll   change his mind."

As NJ.Com quickly noted:

King Hussein of Jordan died in 1999.