Ticket still in hand - but the train is delayed...

On July 23 2026, my wife Beverly was two years out from Whipple surgery for pancreatic cancer. And today, as I write this, she is still NED — No Evidence of Disease. Those three letters have become extraordinarily important to us.

Two years.

There were plenty of moments along the way when it was difficult to imagine getting here. There were moments when it was difficult to imagine getting through the next week, much less the next two years.

Pancreatic cancer still casts a long shadow over our lives. I don't know that the shadow ever completely goes away. Every six months there are scans, blood tests and the inevitable "scanxiety" that comes with them. Pancreatic cancer has a nasty habit of returning, often in the liver or lungs, and we're very aware of the statistics.

But we also know this: Beverly is here. She walks more than three miles almost every day. She's happy. We're living our lives again. Our lives are mostly normal. And after everything that happened, "normal" feels pretty damn wonderful.

February 15, 2024

There is a terrible symmetry to the date Beverly was diagnosed. Her father, Paul, died of colon cancer in our home on February 15, 2023. Exactly one year later, on February 15, 2024, Beverly received the phone call telling her that she had pancreatic adenocarcinoma. To the day.

By then, we knew something was very wrong. Beverly had been experiencing abdominal pain since the previous October. During Super Bowl weekend in February, the pain suddenly became much worse and began radiating upward. She became concerned that she might be having a heart attack, so we went to the emergency room.

The attending physician was an older fellow who initially told us something to the effect of, "You basically have to be bleeding out for us to admit you." Then her blood work came back. He admitted her immediately.

Bev's mom Jan and step-dad Jim came from Vegas right away.

The next day became a blur of tests — an ultrasound, CT scan and eventually an endoscopic biopsy. Before we had the biopsy result, we had already seen the words that terrified us: A lesion on the pancreas suspicious for adenocarcinoma.

"Suspicious for" leaves you a tiny crack through which hope can squeeze. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's something else. Maybe there's some benign explanation. But both of us feared the worst.

Beverly was discharged,  and on the 15th the gastroenterologist called. It was pancreatic cancer. One year to the day after her father's death.

Welcome to the Whirlwind

Once you hear "pancreatic cancer," life changes immediately. Suddenly you're navigating oncologists, surgeons, hospitals, insurance companies, scans, pathology reports, treatment protocols and statistics you never wanted to know. Fortunately, we had help.

My brother, David Merrill, is a doctor at St. John's in Santa Monica, and he helped us get in front of a world-class surgical oncologist, Dr. Bilchik, within about a week of Beverly's diagnosis. Dr. Bilchik reviewed Beverly's scans and numbers. The tumor appeared to be approximately four centimeters and was adjacent to the portal vein. His assessment was that it was borderline resectable.

That phrase became extremely important. Surgery offers the best chance of long-term survival with pancreatic cancer, but the pancreas sits in an extraordinarily complicated neighborhood of the body. A tumor's relationship to the major blood vessels can determine whether a surgeon believes it can safely be removed.

Meanwhile, something remarkable happened with my employer. He wanted to help us get the best possible medical care, but our existing insurance wasn't ideal for what we suddenly needed. So he essentially "fired" me from one of his companies and hired me through another company he owned in Virginia. That employment change created a qualifying event outside the normal enrollment period and allowed us to obtain a Platinum PPO.

It was brilliant. More importantly, it gave us access.

That allowed us to consult my boss's physician, the renowned oncologist Dr. Lawrence Piro at Cedars-Sinai. By then we had also met with a local oncologist, Dr. Yu at the Institute of Hope in Burbank, who had recommended a treatment plan. Dr. Piro reviewed everything and told us essentially: This is exactly what I would do.

That was enormously reassuring. Beverly didn't want to spend her life driving across Los Angeles for every infusion if she didn't have to. With Dr. Piro confirming that Dr. Yu was recommending the same treatment he would recommend, Beverly chose to receive her chemotherapy locally in Burbank/Glendale.

For surgery, however, we wanted another opinion. My sister-in-law, also a physician, found Dr. Aaron Lewis at City of Hope. That meeting changed the trajectory of everything.

Dr. Lewis looked at the same scans and had a more confident assessment: The tumor was resectable. Dr. Lewis is a Whipple specialist who performs roughly two of these extraordinarily complex operations every week, using robotic surgery and some of the most advanced equipment available. We had found our surgeon.

Dr. Lewis and Dr. Yu would work together. First, however, Beverly had to make it through chemotherapy.

FOLFIRINOX

The plan was the standard aggressive treatment for someone in Beverly's situation: FOLFIRINOX every two weeks. FOLFIRINOX is not one drug. It is a combination of powerful chemotherapy drugs, and Beverly's treatments included an infusion at the oncology center followed by a pump she took home with her that continued delivering chemotherapy.

From late February through June, this became the rhythm of our lives. And it was brutal.

The very first infusion caused Beverly to projectile vomit for something like twelve hours. We eventually had to take her back to the oncology office to be rehydrated. After that, Dr. Yu developed a much more aggressive anti-nausea regimen for her, which helped enormously.

But "helped" doesn't mean chemotherapy suddenly became easy. There was still nausea. Exhaustion. Weakness. Food problems. Emotional strain. And side effects that seemed to accumulate rather than diminish because chemotherapy is cumulative — every round piles on top of what came before.

Then her hair started falling out. After her second or third infusion, it began coming out in clumps. Beverly asked me to shave her head. So I did.

Then she got into the shower. While she was in there, I turned the clippers on myself and shaved my own head. When Beverly came out and saw me, I'll never forget the look in her eyes. She cried. I cried. We held each other.

It was one of many times during this experience when there really wasn't anything useful to say. You just hold onto the person you love.

The First Good News

After approximately four rounds — about a month and a half into treatment — we got new scans and blood work. The chemotherapy was working like gangbusters. The tumor had shrunk by more than half. And, critically, there was still no evidence that the cancer had metastasized.

That was huge. We were winning. The problem was that winning felt terrible.

Life in Lockdown

One of the things people don't necessarily understand about chemotherapy is how much it affects everyone around the patient. Beverly's immune system was compromised. That meant we essentially went back into COVID-style lockdown.

I worked from home. Our daughter Natalie was home from college, but she couldn't live with us because her summer job involved working with grade-school children at the YMCA. Anyone who has children knows that kids are adorable little Petri dishes. A routine cold for somebody else could potentially become dangerous for Beverly.

So during the time when Beverly needed her daughter most, we had to keep Natalie at a distance to protect her. That hurt.

Another problem was neuropathy. Beverly began experiencing numbness and nerve problems in her hands and feet. We were warned that chemotherapy-induced neuropathy can sometimes become permanent. That possibility scared us tremendously.

There were also smaller, stranger adjustments. One thing that genuinely helped Beverly were marijuana "knockout" pills. They helped with her discomfort and, especially, helped her sleep.

I have been a lifelong sober person — I don't drink and had never been a recreational drug user — so even walking into a marijuana dispensary felt strange to me. But when somebody you love has pancreatic cancer, your perspective on a lot of things changes.

I went to Swish in North Hollywood expecting God knows what and instead found what looked like an upscale boutique with a kind, knowledgeable young woman behind the counter who couldn't have been more helpful. On my first visit to buy Beverly's pills, she threw in some THC gummies.

And here is my confession: I ate some. They were indica gummies, and they helped me sleep.

For somebody who had spent his entire life avoiding alcohol and drugs, it was bizarre. But during one of the most stressful periods of my life, I was grateful for the mild oblivion and the sleep they gave me.

Because cancer doesn't only happen to the patient. I want to be very careful saying that because nothing I experienced compares to what Beverly physically endured. But caregiving is hard. Watching the person you love suffer is hard. Being the person who has to remain optimistic when you're terrified yourself is hard. Trying to make decisions when the consequences can literally involve life and death is hard.

This entire experience was traumatic for Beverly. It also sucked for me. Both things can be true.

July 25, 2024

Eventually we had done enough chemotherapy. It was time for surgery.

            

Beverly was admitted to City of Hope in Duarte on July 23. Her sister Renee', who had already been staying with us for weeks at a time — probably a month and a half altogether — came with us for this part of the journey.

On July 23, Dr. Lewis performed Beverly's Whipple procedure.

There are major surgeries, and then there is the Whipple. The formal name is a pancreaticoduodenectomy. In a typical Whipple, the surgeon removes the head of the pancreas, the duodenum — the first section of the small intestine — the gallbladder, part of the bile duct and sometimes a portion of the stomach. Then the digestive system has to be reconstructed, reconnecting the remaining pancreas, bile duct and stomach or intestine so that food, bile and pancreatic enzymes can once again travel through the digestive tract.

It is intricate surgery performed in one of the most anatomically complicated parts of the body. Beverly's operation lasted almost six hours.

I will never forget those hours. We knew we had one of the best surgeons in the world for this operation. We knew Dr. Lewis did Whipples routinely. We knew Beverly had responded spectacularly to chemotherapy. None of that makes it easy to sit there while your wife is undergoing a six-hour operation.

Eventually, Dr. Lewis called and asked me to meet him in the lobby. I remember studying his face. Doctors become very good at controlling their expressions, so I was looking for anything.

He was calm. Composed. But I couldn't help noticing something else. He seemed upbeat.

Everything had gone well. And then he told me something extraordinary. He could feel scar tissue where the tumor had been. But he couldn't actually find the tumor. It appeared to be gone.

The Miracle in the Pathology Report

Beverly sailed through the immediate recovery room period and eventually got into her own room. Renee' and I were there as she woke up, and we stayed with her over the next several days.

They had Beverly walking the hospital corridors remarkably quickly — I remember us getting her up and moving around the ward the very next day and continuing every day afterward. At one point they removed a drain, which was extremely painful for her.

Eventually, we went home.

Two long weeks passed before our follow up appointment with Dr. Lewis. Just before we saw him we finally got the pathology report on the app.  We stared at it. Did this mean what I think it did?

Our visit to Dr. Lewis confirmed it.

No adenocarcinoma in the lymph nodes. No adenocarcinoma in the surrounding tissue. No viable tumor.

Complete pathologic response.

Zero percent residual adenocarcinoma.

This was not something we had expected. It is a rare outcome with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The chemotherapy had apparently destroyed every detectable cancer cell in the tissue they removed.

Dr. Lewis also pointed something out that stuck with us: The result was so consequential that two pathologists had to sign off on the final pathology report.

It was real. Beverly had pancreatic cancer. And now, as far as medicine could determine, she didn't.

I was ecstatic. Beverly was miserable. And that became another lesson.

"But You're Cancer-Free"

I wish I could say that after surgery everything steadily got better. It didn't. In many ways, recovery from the Whipple was the hardest part of the entire experience.

Beverly didn't have a major surgical complication. The operation had been an extraordinary success. But she hurt. A lot. Oxycodone was about the only thing that could really dull the pain.

She was weak. She had digestive problems. Nausea. Dumping. Her body had been completely rearranged internally. She had endured months of chemotherapy and then one of the biggest abdominal operations a human being can undergo.

She had lost an enormous amount of weight — 77 pounds! She looked good, but she looked different. And she was sad.

That was difficult for me. In my mind, we had gotten the miracle. The cancer was gone! I wanted us to move immediately into the "we're getting better now!" part of the story.

But Beverly wasn't living in my mind. She was living in a body that hurt every minute of the day.

It was particularly difficult after Renee' had to return to her husband and family in San Jose. Renee' and I had been able to boost one another. When one of us was tired or discouraged, the other could keep the pressure on — keep Beverly moving, keep her eating, keep her looking forward.

Now it was mostly me.

Beverly and I tried to walk every day. Some days she could only make it half a block before she had to turn around. I'd find myself thinking: You're free of a cancer with terrible survival statistics. Why can't you be happier?

That wasn't fair. I knew it wasn't fair even while I was feeling it.

Cancer recovery isn't a movie. The music doesn't swell when the pathology report arrives and then everybody walks happily into the sunset. She was alive. She was cancer-free. And she was still suffering.

I had to learn to hold all three truths at the same time.

Getting Knocked Down Again

Little by little, Beverly improved. There were setbacks.

At one point she began vomiting and we ended up back at City of Hope's emergency department. We feared something had gone terribly wrong. It turned out to be residual fluid from the surgery — frightening, unpleasant, but essentially part of the recovery rather than evidence of some catastrophic complication.

Then came another challenge. Chemotherapy wasn't finished.

Beverly had completed seven rounds of FOLFIRINOX before surgery. The goal was twelve total. So after everything her body had just been through, treatment resumed.

Renee' flew back down at one point to help us again. She was invaluable, especially on the walks. She helped keep Beverly's spirits up. She helped keep mine up too.

Jan visited as well...

Bev's first trip out of the house (besides the walks) - Costco!

But when chemotherapy returned, so did the neuropathy. And this time Dr. Yu became seriously concerned.

Oxaliplatin — the "OX" in FOLFIRINOX — is an important component of the regimen, but it is also notorious for causing peripheral neuropathy. For round 8 Dr. Yu reduced the OX by 70%.  After bad bloodwork after that round, for rounds nine and ten, Dr. Yu eliminated the oxaliplatin altogether.

That was another frightening tradeoff. We didn't want Beverly to receive less of a drug that might help keep pancreatic cancer away. But we also didn't want to cure the cancer only to leave her permanently disabled.

After round ten, Beverly had had enough. Dr. Lewis would have preferred that she complete all twelve rounds. But Beverly had reached her limit.

She chose quality over quantity. She wasn't willing to risk permanent, debilitating neuropathy — potentially spending the rest of her life severely disabled — for two additional rounds of chemotherapy whose incremental benefit nobody could quantify.

And Dr. Lewis ultimately acknowledged another important reality: We didn't actually know whether those additional rounds were doing anything. The tumor was already gone. Her pathology was clear. Her blood work was clear. Her scans were clear.

Eventually treatment ended. She had made it through ten rounds. That was enough.

Life Comes Back

Recovery wasn't fast. It happened by inches. Then feet. Then blocks.

The digestive problems gradually improved. The pain subsided. The nausea diminished. The dumping episodes became less of an issue. By early 2025, Beverly was dramatically better.

And she just kept getting better.

Today she routinely walks more than three miles. Think about that for a moment. This is the same woman who, after surgery, sometimes couldn't make it half a block.

She laughs again. She plans for the future. She lives her life. Our lives are mostly back to normal.

Her body will probably never be exactly the body she had before pancreatic cancer. She has to be careful with certain foods, particularly fried foods. She has had a couple episodes of pancreatitis, including one that required hospitalization, which was frightening. Thankfully, at least so far, there is no indication that she has developed chronic pancreatitis.

Her gallbladder is gone. Part of her pancreas is gone. Her digestive anatomy has been permanently altered.

But she's here.

Surprising her Aunt and Cousin on a trip to visit family in Omaha!

And so far, every surveillance scan has remained clear. Her CA 19-9 tumor marker has remained very low. At different points we've watched it move from 3 to 5 to 8 back to 6, numbers that would mean nothing to most people but that pancreatic cancer survivors and their families can stare at like stock-market traders watching a ticker.

Every six months we go through it again. Blood work. CT. Waiting. Trying not to interpret every ache. Trying not to read too much into every number. Trying not to let fear steal days from us before we have any reason to be afraid.

The People Who Carried Us

Cancer reveals something else: Nobody gets through something like this alone.

Beverly had an extraordinary team of doctors, nurses and medical professionals. But she also had a team outside the hospital.

Her sister Renee' was incredible. She left her own home and family in San Jose for long stretches to help take care of her sister. She was there during chemotherapy, during surgery, during recovery and again when chemotherapy resumed.

There were times when Renee' wasn't merely helping Beverly. She was helping me help Beverly.

Her best friend Grace came from Georgia to visit and support her. Her cousin Pam became — and remains — one of Beverly's lifelines. To this day, Bev and Pam talk almost every day. Her mom, Jan, was there for her on a regular basis.

And then there is Natalie. Our daughter. Twenty-two years old now and, without question, the best thing that has ever happened to both Beverly and me.

There was a terrible irony in having Natalie home from college during treatment but being unable to have her live with us because her work with children made the infection risk too great. But she was part of this journey too.

Cancer doesn't happen to one person. It happens to a family. And our family showed up.

PurpleStride

In 2025, we participated in our first PanCAN PurpleStride. We did it again in 2026. I suspect we'll do it for the rest of our lives.

With real life superhero Dr. Lewis

Beverly on the far right on the survivors stage.

PurpleStride is the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's nationwide walk and fundraising event for people affected by pancreatic cancer — survivors, patients, caregivers, families, friends and those walking in memory of someone they lost. Purple is the color associated with pancreatic cancer awareness.

For us, PurpleStride is more than a charity walk. It's a way of standing among people who understand. Some are survivors. Some are still fighting. Some are caregivers. Some are walking for someone who isn't there to walk beside them.

We know how fortunate we are. And after pancreatic cancer enters your life, I don't think you ever completely leave that community.

Two Years

Which brings me back to today. Two years post-Whipple. NED.

When Beverly was diagnosed, we learned all the horrifying statistics about pancreatic cancer. The overall five-year survival rate is still only in the low teens. Recurrence is frighteningly common, even after successful surgery. We know that. We can't unknow it.

We also know that Beverly's particular story contains some extraordinary reasons for hope. Her cancer was caught before there was evidence of distant metastasis. She responded spectacularly to FOLFIRINOX. Her tumor shrank by more than half after only four rounds. She was able to undergo a successful Whipple performed by an elite specialist. Her lymph nodes were negative. Her margins and surrounding tissue were negative. And most remarkably, the final pathology found no viable adenocarcinoma at all.

A complete pathologic response.

Now we've stacked over two more years on top of that. Two years of clean scans. Two years of negative blood work. Two years of distance from July 23, 2024.

I understand that none of this comes with guarantees. We still get scared. When Beverly has an unexplained pain, there's always a little voice somewhere in the back of my head. When scan time approaches, the volume gets turned up.

I imagine it does for her too. Probably more.

Pancreatic cancer changed us. It changed Beverly physically. It changed our family. It changed the way I think about time. And it changed our marriage.

I learned things about caregiving I never wanted to learn. I learned that sometimes being strong means keeping everybody optimistic. Sometimes it means sitting beside somebody who is miserable and accepting that you cannot make her feel better. Sometimes it means shaving your wife's head. Sometimes it means shaving your own afterward.

Sometimes it means taking a walk around the block. Sometimes half a block. Sometimes it means being terrified and acting like you aren't quite as terrified as you actually are. Sometimes it means allowing other people to carry you because you can't carry everything yourself. And sometimes it means admitting that the caregiver is suffering too.

I am grateful that I was strong enough to stay beside Beverly through all of it. But I'm even more grateful that she was strong enough to endure it.

Once again, she made me a better man.

We Carry On

There is a temptation after something like this to divide your life into "before cancer" and "after cancer." I understand why.

But I don't want pancreatic cancer to own that much territory. It doesn't get to define Beverly. It doesn't get to define our marriage. It doesn't get to define the rest of our lives.

It is something that happened to us. Something enormous. Something terrifying. Something that left scars, visible and invisible. And something we survived.

So far.

I don't say "so far" pessimistically. I say it because I've learned that none of us are promised anything. Not pancreatic cancer patients. Not caregivers. Not anybody.

All we actually get is today. As Bruno Mars says - "Nobody's promised tomorrow..."

And today, Beverly is NED. Today she can walk three miles. Today we have our daughter. We have Renee', Grace, Pam and Jan. We have our family. My brother David and his wife and kids.  My mom and her husband.  We have our friends. We have doctors who gave Beverly a chance to be here.

We have another PurpleStride ahead of us. We have plans. We have ordinary days. We have arguments and laughs and errands and television and dinners and all of the mundane things that once seemed mundane and now sometimes feel like gifts.

And most importantly, we still have each other.

Pancreatic cancer will probably always cast a shadow somewhere in the background.

Fine. Let it.

We're not going to live in the shadow. We refuse to be cowed by it. We'll keep getting the scans. We'll keep doing the blood work. We'll keep getting nervous every six months. We'll keep walking PurpleStride. We'll keep moving forward.

Whatever comes, we'll face it the same way we faced everything else: Together.

Today, two years after Beverly's Whipple, I am incredibly grateful. Grateful for the doctors. Grateful for our family. Grateful for everyone who showed up. Grateful for western medicine. Grateful for luck. Grateful for Beverly's strength. Grateful for our lives. And profoundly grateful for our love.

Two years.

No evidence of disease.

And we carry on.

Baseball and Umpires have Changed

I've been reading a lot lately about former Major League umpire Ed Hickox. I'm not entirely sure why I fell down that particular rabbit hole, but umpiring has fascinated me for most of my life, and Hickox has one of the more interesting career trajectories I can remember.

Hickox was already an established American League umpire when, in 1999, he became one of the umpires caught up in what has to rank among the most disastrous labor strategies in sports history. Under the leadership of their union chief, Richie Phillips, a large group of Major League umpires submitted resignations in an attempt to force baseball's hand. The theory was that MLB couldn't possibly afford to lose that many experienced umpires at once.

MLB called their bluff.

Hickox was one of the umpires whose resignation was accepted, and suddenly a man who had been a Major League umpire for nearly a decade wasn't a Major League umpire anymore.

What fascinates me about Hickox is what happened afterward. He eventually went back to the minor leagues and started climbing the ladder again. Think about the humility that must have required. He had already made it. He had worked in Major League stadiums, umpired Major League players and established himself at the highest level of his profession. Then he found himself back in the minors, trying to prove that he belonged all over again.

And he did.

Hickox eventually earned his way back to the Major Leagues and stayed there until 2022. Ironically, the latter part of his career coincided with the development of increasingly sophisticated ways of measuring an umpire's performance behind the plate, and the numbers aren't particularly kind to him. His ball-and-strike accuracy was, at times, among the worst in baseball.

That doesn't diminish the comeback for me. If anything, it makes his story more interesting. Calling balls and strikes is obviously an enormous part of being a Major League umpire, but it isn't the only part. MLB evaluates positioning, rules knowledge, mechanics, game management, handling players and managers, working with a crew and a dozen other things that don't show up on an Umpire Scorecard. Whatever his deficiencies behind the plate, Hickox convinced professional baseball that he belonged in the Major Leagues twice.

The other umpire whose story fascinates me is Bob Davidson.
Davidson's comeback may be even more remarkable because he was considerably older than Hickox. He had been a National League umpire since 1982 and was already 47 years old when the 1999 resignation disaster cost him his job. He had worked a World Series. He had been a Major League umpire for the better part of two decades. By any reasonable standard, he could have concluded that his umpiring career was over.

Instead, in his 50s, Bob Davidson went back to the minor leagues.

There is something about that which I find incredibly admirable. Imagine having worked at the absolute pinnacle of your profession and then finding yourself riding buses and working minor-league games alongside young umpires who could practically be your children. Davidson swallowed his pride and did it. Eventually, he made it all the way back to the Major Leagues and remained there until 2016.

The third member of this unusual little club is Tom Hallion, who also lost his Major League job in the 1999 mess, returned to the minors and eventually made his way back. Hallion lasted until 2022 and became a crew chief. I always liked the cut of Hallion's jib. There was something about the way he carried himself that reminded me very much of the professional umpires I encountered when I was young.

And that brings me to why I probably find all of this considerably more interesting than the average baseball fan does.

In 1991, when I was barely 20 years old, I attended the Brinkman-Froemming Umpire School in Florida. At the time, I was seriously considering the possibility of becoming a professional umpire. I was young enough to think it sounded like a perfectly reasonable way to spend my life, and I loved baseball and umpiring enough to give it a legitimate shot.

It remains one of the great experiences of my young life.

My lead instructor was Gary Davis. Baseball fans of a certain age will immediately recognize the name. Gary was still relatively early in his Major League career at the time and had a tremendous career ahead of him. He would eventually become a crew chief, work multiple World Series and umpire thousands of Major League games.

Gary was awesome.

I remember him as being kind to me, although "kind" is probably a relative term when describing professional umpire instructors of that era. These guys weren't running summer camp. They were trying to identify people who might actually survive professional baseball, and their teaching style reflected that. There was a certain amount of intentional intimidation involved. They wanted to see what happened when you were tired, confused, challenged or confronted.

Still, I always felt that Gary treated me well, and I admired him enormously.

I also had the opportunity to meet and learn from some extraordinary people. Bruce Froemming and Joe Brinkman themselves were there, obviously. Tim Tschida was among the Major League instructors. As was Steve Rippley, the head field instructor, affectionately known as "Sgt. Rippley." Jeff Nelson and Fieldin Culbreth were minor-league umpires at the time, years before either would become established Major League umpires and eventually crew chiefs.

We also had some remarkable guest speakers. Steve Palermo spoke to us only months before the terrible incident in Dallas in which he was shot while intervening in a robbery, an act of courage that ultimately ended his umpiring career. Richie Garcia spoke to us as well, eight years before he would become the involved in the mass-resignation catastrophe that would cost him, Hickox, Davidson, Hallion and so many others their jobs.

At the time, of course, none of us had any idea what was coming.

I did pretty well at Brinkman-Froemming. In fact, I finished in roughly the top 10 percent of my class, which earned me an invitation to the Major League Baseball development program, essentially the finishing school for the top students selected from the Brinkman-Froemming, Harry Wendelstedt and Jim Evans schools — programs of the era.

Suddenly I wasn't competing against everybody who thought they might like to become an umpire. I was competing against the people those schools had already identified as their better prospects.

That's where things got considerably tougher for me.

I was a good umpire mechanically. I was solid calling balls and strikes. I was good on safes and outs. I knew the rules well. The actual baseball part of umpiring came pretty naturally to me.
What I wasn't particularly good at, at age 20, was dealing with angry grown men.

That was a much bigger part of umpiring in those days than younger baseball fans might realize. The instructors would play the roles of managers and coaches, deliberately arguing with us, challenging us and trying to knock us off balance. They weren't merely interested in whether you had made the correct call. They wanted to know whether you could maintain control after making it.

One particular exercise has remained vivid in my memory for 35 years.

Dick Nelson, who was the head instructor at the development program, played the role of a coach arguing with me over a complicated line-drive/infield-fly situation. I knew the rule. That wasn't really the problem. The problem was that Nelson was much, much better at arguing than 20-year-old me was at being argued with.

He started challenging me. I started explaining. He challenged the explanation. I explained some more. He moved. I followed him. Before long, he had literally led me around in circles while continuing the argument.

I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing.

The lesson, which I understand much better at 55 than I did at 20, was that at some point an umpire has to stop explaining. You make the call. You give the manager a reasonable opportunity to ask what you saw. You explain it. And then the conversation is over.

Dick Nelson controlled that entire encounter. I didn't.

I ended up finishing near the bottom of that development class, and that was effectively the end of my professional umpiring aspirations. I went back to college, which I had promised my mother I would do, finished my degree and ultimately went in an entirely different professional direction.

I've never regretted it.

More importantly, I've never looked back on the experience as a failure. I was barely 20 years old. I went to one of the premier professional umpire schools in the country, finished in the top 10 percent and advanced to the next level. When I got there, I discovered that I was good at some aspects of the profession and not yet particularly good at another very important one. I could have gone back, worked amateur baseball, matured a little and tried again. I simply didn't feel compelled to do it.

I had gotten enough of a taste to know what the profession required, and I went on with my life.

What I did take with me was a lifelong admiration for professional umpires.

That doesn't mean I think they're always right. Obviously they're not. I don't even think they're all equally good. Modern pitch-tracking data has conclusively demonstrated that some Major League umpires are substantially better at calling balls and strikes than others.

But I do think my experience gave me a different perspective than the average fan who sees a missed strike call on television and concludes that the umpire is an idiot.

I've stood behind the plate and tried to track a pitch. I've worked the bases and tried to get into exactly the right position. I've studied the rules. More importantly, I've experienced, albeit at a vastly lower level, what it's like to make a decision and immediately have somebody get in your face and tell you that you're wrong.

And the world in which I learned to umpire was fundamentally different from the one today's young professional umpires inhabit.

In 1991, the umpire was the final word.

If I called a runner out and the runner was safe, he was out.

If I called a pitch a strike and television replay showed that it was six inches outside, it was still a strike.

If an umpire missed a call in the ninth inning of a pennant-race game and that call changed the outcome, everybody watching television could see that he'd blown it. The broadcasters could replay it from five different angles. The newspapers could write about it the next morning. The manager could scream himself hoarse.

The call still stood.

There was something almost frightening about that authority, because it came with enormous responsibility. You couldn't tell the manager to challenge it. You couldn't put on a headset and let somebody in New York clean up the mess. There was no automated system waiting to tell everyone whether the pitch actually clipped the strike zone.

You made the call and you lived with it.

That reality also created far more confrontation. If a manager believed an umpire had just cost his team a game, his only recourse was the umpire himself. So he came out of the dugout and argued.

Sometimes spectacularly.

That was why our instructors spent so much time teaching us how to handle those situations. A Major League umpire needed more than excellent eyesight and a thorough understanding of the rulebook. He needed presence. He needed confidence. He needed to know when to listen, when to explain, when to stop explaining and, occasionally, when to eject somebody.

The umpire had to control the game because there wasn't anybody else coming to rescue him.

That is one reason I always enjoyed Tom Hallion. He had that old-school professional-umpire quality. He looked comfortable when somebody was angry with him. He could listen, respond and give a little back when necessary. Most importantly, there was usually a point at which his body language made it abundantly clear that the conversation was finished.

That's a skill.

Today's umpires operate in a radically different environment.

First came increasingly sophisticated television replay. Then pitch-tracking technology allowed us to evaluate strike zones in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I attended umpire school. Then came expanded replay review.

Now baseball is moving further into the ABS era, where technology can directly participate in determining whether a pitch is a ball or a strike.

There are benefits to all of this. I'm not some nostalgic crank who believes baseball was better because an obviously incorrect call couldn't be fixed. If a runner is clearly safe and the umpire calls him out, I would rather get the call right.

But something undeniably changes when the umpire is no longer the absolute final authority.

Today's umpire can make a close call and know that replay may correct it. A manager can disagree without necessarily needing to turn the disagreement into a five-minute confrontation. On balls and strikes, the umpire is increasingly working alongside technology rather than standing as the sole arbiter of an invisible strike zone.

I find this new generation of umpires fascinating for precisely that reason. They're learning a different profession than the one I briefly trained to enter.

They still need judgment, positioning, mechanics, rules knowledge and game-management skills. They still have to stand behind a catcher while 95-mph pitches are moving all over the place. They still have to make split-second decisions with tens of thousands of people watching.

But they also have technological backstops that Bruce Froemming, Joe Brinkman, Steve Palermo and the other umpires of my era could never have imagined.

In some respects that makes their job easier. In others, I think it makes it harder.

Every plate umpire today can have his performance quantified. We can know exactly how many pitches he missed, where he missed them and how his accuracy compares with every other umpire in baseball. A mistake that once disappeared into the flow of a nine-inning game can now become a red box on an Umpire Scorecard circulating on social media before the umpire has even left the stadium.

Ed Hickox experienced both worlds.

He began umpiring in the Major Leagues in 1990, essentially the world I was introduced to at umpire school a year later. The umpire's judgment was final. By the end of Hickox's career in 2022, fans could pull up data documenting precisely how good—or, in his case, sometimes how bad—his strike zone had been.
That's an incredible transformation within one man's career.

Maybe that's why I've found myself reading so much about Hickox, Davidson and Hallion lately. They represent a bridge between two completely different eras of umpiring, and I have a small personal connection to the world they came from.

I never became a professional umpire. Instead, I got an experience at 20 years old that I've appreciated more and more as I've gotten older. I learned from men I admired. I discovered that I was pretty good at something extremely difficult. I also discovered a weakness in myself that, at that age, I wasn't particularly equipped to overcome.

And somewhere along the way, Dick Nelson walked me around in a circle while arguing about an infield fly.

Thirty-five years later, I can laugh about that.

I can also appreciate what he was trying to teach me.

The rulebook can tell you what the correct call is. Technology can now tell you whether you got it right.

But neither one can teach a 20-year-old kid how to stand his ground while an experienced baseball man is doing everything he can to make him doubt himself.

That part of umpiring hasn't completely disappeared.

And I hope it never does.

I want to be Magnanimous

November 5th, 2024 - Americans delivered a mandate, they are absolutely sick of wokeism, radical gender ideology, open borders and anti-American/Western sentiment.

Turns out, saying your country is shitty and that everyone who's white is racist and everyone who's black is a victim - is a terrible and losing message.  Well over a decade on into this mentality, you'd think the Democratic Party might be catching on to this truth.

Not to mention the infantilization of men - especially minorities.  Offering interest free loans upwards of 20K, that ultimately don't even have to be paid back - ONLY for black men (also don't forget legalizing weed) - is the most offensive and ineffective policy making I can remember.

So now, a day after the day after, my Facebook wall is replete with grief and grievances, not about how terrible a candidate Kamala was and how awful her policies were, or even how it might be time to step back and reflect on what went wrong; no, the anger and sadness is STILL, even now, directed at the racist/sexist/homophobic Hitlerian Republicans.

Okay.  Good luck with that.

I would love if the left could zoom out and get some perspective and understand a few things -

• Our country was founded in 1776, not 1619, and it was rooted in freedom, not racism.
• Equality of outcome is NOT the American way or an American value - equal opportunity is.
• Racism is real - but it is not the cause of all disparities or injustice.
• Western Values do not equate to white supremacy.  
• Being color blind in regards to race is a virtue and something to strive for. It's how my generation was raised, and will NEVER change.
• A secure border is of paramount importance, especially for legal immigrants who have come into our country the right way and are the first to lose out when illegals cut the line in front of them.
• Cops are the good guys, almost always.  
• Putting more criminals in jail and keeping them there makes the streets safer.
• Women must be protected from men in sports and locker rooms.
• Children with gender dysphoria must be protected from chemical castration and surgical butchery.
• Climate Change is real, but our move towards a clean energy economy must be smart and efficient and must include fossil fuels along the way to ensure prosperity and energy independence.
• Free market capitalism is the ONLY system in history to actually lift people out of poverty and increase prosperity.
• Price controls are Communist and don't work.
• Minimum wage mandates put people out of work.  My Lowe's in Burbank is now quite literally cashier free - automated kiosks only in the main store outside of the garden and lumber departments.
• Tiny houses, eating bugs and other draconian ideas from leftists are anti-American and anti-prosperity.  Americans in general don't hate rich people, because Americans intuitively understand that they can be rich too if they work hard enough.

Until the Democratic Party gets a handle on these fundamental truths - and still insists on disparaging the middle class as perpetual villains, they quite literally will never win a Presidential election ever again.

The GOP, for all of it's flaws and imperfections, is now decidedly the party of the working class and legal immigrants.  Trump moved the numbers tremendously on just about every demographic from this very large group.

He got votes from -

• 25% of all Black men.
• 42% of all Latinos.
• 38% of all Asian
• 53% of all other minorities

That last stat is especially astounding when we see that in 2020 Biden carried the non-Black/Latino/Asian minority vote by 55% and this year Harris dropped to 45%.  That is stunning, but given the ridiculously radical positions of the Democrat Party over the last decade - not surprising at all.

The stat that I heard that did actually surprise me, Kamala actually did worse with women than Biden did, she lost women voters to her opponent.  Guess "Joy" and "Brat" weren't really a thing after all.

And now legacy media pundits are saying that in 2028 it's very likely that both New Jersey and New York will be swing states - seeing as Trump only lost both of them by around 5 points this time around.  Consider this - New York City went 42% for Donald Trump.  Holy shit.

----

Look, I really WANT to Magnanimous and Gracious and Conciliatory to my dear liberal friends who are in pain over their candidates defeat and Trump's very large mandate victory.  I really do want to.

But as long as I'm getting messages like this - (a real post from a real person who also makes his living as an entertainer) - it's tough to play nice.

This should come to no surprise to anybody, but I'm a non-white, non-straight person. I'm all for love and peace and working through our differences, but some differences are irreconcilable.  

If you voted for what's-his-name, do us both a favor and unfollow this account because you voted against my rights and, to a degree, my existence. I appreciate that you enjoy my performances enough to follow me, but you may not appreciate what I have to say as I come to terms with the ultimate ramifications of this election.

Alrighty then.  Request granted. Good luck with that.

As long as lovely people like this guy insist on demonizing the next POTUS (duly elected by nearly a 5 million vote majority) which in turn clearly demonizes the 71 million Americans who voted for him - there's going to be not only a lot of tension for a long time, but there also 100% will NEVER be a Democratic Party candidate in the White House ever again.

Take a deep breath, step back - understand that it is not acceptable to call Trump LITERALLY HITLER, because if you do - you are implying that I and 71 million others just voted for Hitler.   

I don't know about you, but if I truly believed that the President was LITERALLY HITLER, I would do something about it besides post a black square for my profile picture on Facebook or post quotes by Maya Angelou.   Yeah, LITERAL HITLER in the White House?  Time to arm up and take direct action, no doubt.

I have often said, you can say whatever you want about a political candidate - but I'm modifying my position.   

You can say whatever you want about a political candidate, but don't forget that if you go beyond calling their policies terrible or beyond calling their personality distasteful (ie you say that securing the border is RACIST and Trump is LITERALLY HITLER) - then we have a problem.

You've reached a point where you are not just impugning the candidate, you are getting to the point where your demonization is so great that it automatically paints all of his supporters as demons themselves.   

You can't say that "Trump is LITERALLY HITLER but you're a good guy."  That doesn't really work.  There is a degree of anger you are allowed with a politician, but it really can't go beyond pointing out terrible policies and your distaste for an unpleasant human being.

When you do say that Trump is LITERALLY HITLER or even when you say he's a "racist, rapist, misogynist piece of filth" - you've backed yourself into a corner where everything else you add (which may be important and legit) will be ignored by all the people you just disparaged by declaring their candidate of choice sub-human.

That dog isn't going to hunt.   This game of demonizing our president, that I tolerated from 2016-2020 isn't really going to be a thing with me any more.  

I truly WANT to be Magnanimous.  But if you insist on not only demonizing Trump but ignoring your own parties mistakes and flaws - then I'm going to politely ignore you.  If you are my friend I will still care for you. If I don't know you then I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you may still be a good person - but either way, I'm not going to let you know that your attitude is what brought Trump into the White House and is what will guarantee that JD Vance is the 48th POTUS.

Sorry, not sorry.

  

Disposable Friendship

 I wasn't going to write about this, I had told myself very early on after it happened that I shouldn't waste any thoughts or energy on a dude who was crazy and who had decided to blow up a 15 year friendship over politics.

But really, I need to write it down here, because I know I'm going to forget most of the details of what happened.

There was no actual face to face confrontation - this all happened on Facebook.

For months, my long time acquaintance (who I genuinely thought was my friend) Jeff Sherid had been taken to the woodshed by yours truly over politics, specifically the presidential race and my refusal to indulge Sherid's fever dreams over the character of Donald Trump.

I would not engage about Trump or his character - simply put, it didn't interest me as there have been these discussions and pontifications from both sides for going on almost a decade at this point.  I get it, Trump is LITERALLY HITLER.  I don't really care.  Arguing about this doesn't interest me.

In general I don't argue over dead horses, I've learned this - being the token conservative in a group of 8 great friends from Berkeley California - it is pointless to dwell on points that are at an impasse.

So Sherid, his frustration building at my refusal to engage or accept his premises about DJT, all while during this I was calmly dismantling him on other issues, in my usual brusque and efficient manner - decided one day out of the blue that he'd had enough.

He posted a long and rambling manifesto about DJT and then explicitly tied all of Trump's worst traits, mostly his worst trait (according to Sherid) of being a racist - to me.

This in and of itself is kind of whatever, it's happened to me before, albeit from people who knew me much less than Sherid, but when it comes to people coming after me because of my politics - I wouldn't say I'm used to it, but I would say that I could take it or leave it.  I'm never happy to hear nasty insults, but I am a grown ass man who is 54 years old.  It really doesn't phase me that much.

However, the big fuck up on Sherid's part was that he posted this in public on Facebook and tagged me (so that every one of my FB friends would see it - including coworkers, professional contacts, and my extended family members) and then tagged everyone we both were friends with, so this went deep into the roster of my poker game and beyond.

The final straw for me was how upset my wife was at reading Sherid's garbled craziness.  As readers of this blog know, she's been through a lot lately - and that Sherid felt justified in making the love of my life cry (or even worse was unaware that his vicious words would have this effect) got me pretty well pissed off.

I was at a rather low point about an hour into this mess, with my wife in tears and a couple of fellow poker players, who clearly had decided to not be my friend, obliviously chiming in the comments about politics - completely seemingly unconcerned or unphazed at the unhinged nastiness of Sherid's insults to me personally - when a beam of light appeared in the comments in the form of my dear friend and neighbor who also plays poker with me.  She also, incidentally, believes that Trump is LITERALLY HITLER, but she didn't bring that up.  Instead she defended me, my honor, my character, and made it plain that she strongly disagreed with Sherid's assessment of me and his attacks.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me - I was not alone, and someone who actually mattered to me was putting on armor and fighting for me.  

A few minutes later another dear friend, came to my defense.

And after that, it was like an avalanche - friend after friend after friend, heaping praise on me and sometimes calling out Sherid for being an asshole.  It was rather glorious, and my faith came back.  My faith in my poker game, my faith in my friends, my faith in decency.

And almost all of my defenders likely still think Trump is LITERALLY HITLER.  And it doesn't matter.

The mob is scary, and no one wants to be outed as someone who would defend a Hitler lover; but probably upwards of two dozen of my liberal poker buddies took that chance.  A handful of closeted DJT supporters also weighed in, but honestly, they were more reluctant - as no doubt they have gone through what I was going through and knew all too well what the mob was capable of.

In the end, these was my parting texts to Sherid.  Shockingly, he did not respond at all.

---

I just can't believe that you would do that Jeff, I don't really care what you think about me, your feelings are your feelings and that's fine. 

But what really makes me angry is that you have tagged a bunch of people that I love so that they can read your garbled manifesto about what a racist piece of shit I am.

It really breaks my heart. You may find it hard to believe, but I valued our friendship, and I valued our differences, and our ability to remain civil when talking about them.

And you've thrown it all away, which is your right, of course, but to try to drag others into this grievance of yours, it's just unconscionable.

I really do wish you well, that you can somehow find your way out of the anger that you have built around you, but I'm not going to waste any time or energy on you going forward.

---

And after a bunch of my friends had chimed in -

---

And this will be my last text to you, but I hope you are now seeing the slowly growing wall of liberals who are also my dear friends, who are defending me and calling you out for being wrong here.

You fucked up.  You alienated one friend in me, and then quite a few others it seems.

Enjoy Las Vegas by yourself.

---

And so that was it - well, that and this post I put in the comments of his post and tagged him with -

---

Hi Jeff - I've removed my tag from this post so people who come to my page will no longer see it.  I would ask you to untag all the people here who care about me and who have come to my defense, but I know that will likely never happen.

You have decided to torch a 15+ year friendship over politics, apparently because you don't like losing a political argument over and over and your views don't hold up to scrutiny.  I'm sad for you in your anger and loneliness.

But I'm also angry that you thought you could drag our friends into this fray, instead of calling me or even texting me like a man, you went out like a little bitch.  And now you've found out that almost none of them agree with you - and with what you've done, you've lost them as well as me.

I will indeed be blocking you permanently on Facebook.  I never want to think of this whole mess you decided to create EVER AGAIN.

I don't want to waste any more of my energy on you at all - I've already spent too much time upset at your pathetic attempt to shame me in front of my friends.

You also made my wife cry late last night when she finally read your craziness, so that really is the final straw.  I can forgive what you've done to me, but what you did to my wife - and you know what she's gone through - just makes me furious.  You can sincerely GO FUCK YOURSELF for that.

I will be archiving all the great comments of my friends sticking up for me here and keeping them in the private Pepper Street Poker group where you are now and forever more banned.  I will never again read your garbled mess of a manifesto, it can wither and die here on your page, a monument to your anger and desperation.

---

Felt pretty good after posting that.  Not gonna lie.

But after all was said and done, I will admit, that was a saddening experience - and it made me reflect on all the other friends and family in my life who have cut me off in various ways over politics.

True, none of them were done as psychotically as this, but I have had more than one cousin and more than one long time friend, not just unfollow but permanently block me on social media and then actively avoid me IRL.  

****

And now, it's the morning after - the day after election day in America in 2024, and we all know who won and it wasn't even close, and I told you this was going to happen a week ago.

Donald J. Trump was the 45th POTUS and now he will be the 47th as of January 6 next year, when Kamala Harris herself will have to certify the election results.

Am I happy?  Sure.  And I'm not surprised at all.  I follow politics very closely and anyone paying half attention and not only watching MSNBC would know that this was by far the most likely outcome.

My team won.  Go Dodgers.  Yay.

That's about the extent of my happiness on DJT's win.

What I am struggling with, is to not be happy at the "suffering" of my dear liberal friends (misguided on politics as they may be) who are "gutted" and "stunned" (actual posts on FB this morning) at these results.

I'm trying to not be happy over their anguish, and I'm also trying - and failing - to not be thinking "What the fuck did you expect?"

Seriously, what the fuck did you expect?

I have written here and posted elsewhere, for months, that the unprecedented lawfare was just handing Trump the presidency.  Americans hate a rigged system, they hate things that are unfair.  They don't want a fixed game in any way shape or form.

Biden's DOJ directly targeting 45, and directly influencing local prosecutors in other cases to go after him as well - was the ultimate example of a stacked deck and the absolute height of stupidity in terms of strategy against a political opponent.

You want your enemy to win?  Try to demonize him and arrest him.  You did this to yourself.

---

I'm also shaking my head at California, and the cognitive dissonance of it's voters.

Overwhelmingly, we approved Prop 36, a great piece of bipartisan legislation that summarily overturns the awful Prop 47 that saw thousands of criminals unleashed on our streets and crime exploding across the state.  Prop 36 makes a second shoplifting offense a felony, and reinstates most of the harsher sentencing guidelines.

In LA County we also kicked our horrific District Attorney to the curb.  George Gascon had made it his mission to coddle and release criminals at an unprecedented rate.  He was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Angelinos, not to mention the destruction of their families.  He is now gone and a "moderate" prosecutor will be taking over.  Hochman is his name and he has ruffled feathers by making the crazy promise to put criminals in jail.

And then, with sanity seemingly returning, these same voters turn around and vote more than 2 to 1 for Kamala Harris.  

Literally she was responsible in large part for Prop 47.  

She also advocated for organizations who raised funds to bail out rioters.

And on and on and on - radical policy after radical policy she helped put into place.

Of course when she ran for president in 2024 she wouldn't even address all the terrible policies she advocated for in 2019 in the primary that she briefly ran in.  She wouldn't even comment, when asked point blank, if she voted for Prop 36!   A proposition that won by over 70% in California!  How desperately sad and out of touch do you have to be?

Terrible candidate, terrible policies and terrible ideas.  $20,000 loans that didn't need to be paid back and weed for black people.  Communist style price controls. Raising corporate taxes to the highest level in the developed world. And these are the ideas she was promoting - never mind all the terrible ideas from her past that she wanted to implement.

Ban fracking.  Decriminalize illegal border crossings. Mandatory gun by backs.  Just awful.

---

And so today, my facebook wall is replete with blacked out profile pictures, anguished pleas and cries, proclamations of our country's racism and misogyny. 

Sigh.

Many don't get it and never will.  But clearly, the majority of the country does.  That's right - MORE than 47%, which was the ceiling many said Trump would never breach. That ceiling has been shattered and the message is clear.

This is a popular vote victory, a mandate from the masses.  And I can't help be inspired and excited by OUR DEMOCRACY in action.

LITERLLY HITLER is our president, and it's morning in America.

Digging Deep into Déjà Vu

 To my dear liberal friends, as of writing this - it's less than a week until election day, and yet 55 million people have already voted.

While the outcome is certainly not certain, my instinct right now mirrors my instinct in 2016 - I truly believe Trump has this one locked up. It’s going to be a shellacking. I predict a sweep for Trump in all battleground states as well as a victory in the popular vote - perhaps by several million votes.

****

Assuming my instinct is correct, as it was 8 years ago (I was much less certain in 2020, though I did believe DJT would hold on) - my left of center friends and family will have to reconcile that DJT has pulled a Grover Cleveland.  

Defeated in his bid for reelection after serving his first term, Cleveland departed the presidency in 1889 (his 21 year old first lady famously saying "Don't change the furniture, we'll be back in 4 years" - paraphrasing obviously) only to indeed return in 1894 and do his thing for a second term.

Until this Tuesday, Mr. Cleveland was the only POTUS to pull this off.  I do believe 45 will become 47 this election day, and when that happens I'll be praying for a bunch of things.

First and foremost - I pray for our country to remain peaceful, for the civil unrest to be minor.  Sadly, I fear this will absolutely not come to past.

Second - I pray that I can restrain myself from laughing and pointing in people's faces.  Truly, all jokes aside, I am going to be so happy that I truly do hope I am able to restrain myself from gloating, too much.

On the flip side of that - if somehow all the numbers are wrong and Kamala ends up as the president, I will indeed be disappointed, but I pray that I will be able to quickly get over it and get on with the day to day that is my life.  I do not want to be screaming to the sky, devastated and distraught as so many on the left were in 2016 when their candidate lost.  I never want to be like that, I never want to have politics matter so much that I'm thinking about election day for more than a few days at most.

I see it akin to rooting for the Dodgers in the World Series.  I'm a big fan - and thankfully they won last night, I was super happy and today it's business as usual.  I'm working, I'm taking care of the wife, I'm looking forward to seeing kids trick-or-treating tonight and a quiet birthday tomorrow.  Oh yeah, and that was a great game last night.  It's nice to reflect on it, but a little sad that baseball is over until next year.

If the Dodgers had lost, that would've sucked.  But guess what, my day today, and tomorrow and this weekend, would be absolutely indistinguishable whether the Dodgers had won or lost.  True if they had lost the game, that means I would be watching another game on Friday and maybe Saturday too - but that wouldn't really change anything.  

It wouldn't change my mood, my outlook, my disposition or my entire approach to the next week or the rest of my year or the next several years.

Win or lose, the Dodgers don't live in my head at all - even though I love them as a big fan.

Trump is the same.  Although I don't love him, I'm a fan alright.  And Kamala, same thing - she's like the Yankees.  Yucky but who cares.   Win or lose, my life won't change.

And the reason I can be so certain about this - is that this has all happened before, and not just with DJT.  

Mitt Romney was a woman beating bully who tied his dog to the roof of his car.  He was absolutely a threat to democracy.

George W. Bush was literally Hitler - they burned him in effigy, tiny mustache and all.

His dad was the devil.  Ronald Reagan was straight up evil.

I've heard it all and seen it all before.  Victory and defeat, it all blurs together.  I remember when the Oakland A's won the World Series in 89 after the earthquake.  I remember the following year when they got swept by the Cincinnati Reds.  The former was happy, the latter was sad - neither changed a damn thing about how I went about my day.

So all this anguish, all this hand wringing - all of this NEVER BEFORE SEEN THREAT TO DEMOCRACY nonsense - it can all simply fuck right off.  Don't care about any of it.

Yes, it's going to be sweet for an evening and through the next day when democrats have to shut the fuck up and suck it when Trump wins, but really - after that, it's just going to be more of the same.  Yankees suck.  Kamala sucks.  LOL.

Back to Politics - this time with permission granted.

 Wow what an incredible week or so in politics.

An attempted assassination of a former (and likely future) President, followed by the most unifying Republican National Convention of my lifetime, capped off by the long expected but still stunning withdrawal from the 2024 campaign by Joe Biden.

All of these events were remarkable and worthy of discussion, but I want to talk about something more elusive, something that you may or may have not noticed in the past few months.   

We have been granted permission to vote for the orange devil.

From the suits in silicon valley, to Hulk Hogan, to Mark Zuckerberg to of course the mighty Elon Musk, it is now no longer anywhere near an anathema to actually say the truth out loud in polite company that not only are you not voting for Joe (er, Kamala or someone) but you actively are voting for the Trump.

Why is this?

What happened to the shaming, the threat of exile, the broad statements of condemnation that would inevitably bubble to the surface if you even hinted at supporting the Donald?  

I think it's a culmination of a lot of things - but the biggest factor I see is that Donald Trump is now a known quantity.  Not one single thing he says or does is going to be a surprise to us at this point.  We've all been shocked and surprised for the past 8 years - there really is nothing left now that should catch us off guard.

This only thing that remains a little bit surprising is the softer and more moderate side of him, which has emerged gradually during this last campaign.  No one bats an eye when he talks about the "stolen election" but the other day when he called his own hair "a combover" - now that was surprising.  So too were his concessions on abortion, he is for all purposes pro-choice with his statements that it is up to the states and also that if there is a federal restriction it will be more akin to Europe which almost universally restricts abortion after 12-15 weeks.  He has no interest in a nationwide ban, so he has diffused that matter - the strongest issue the dems have going for themselves in this cycle.

For the past six months, nothing Trump has said has been beyond the pale of what he has done before, whereas Joe Biden's increasingly erratic and distressingly decrepit words and actions have been jarring to say the least.   This whole campaign has not been a referendum on Trump, but rather a referendum on Biden, and his ability to remain upright, let alone lead the country.

And to Trump's credit, he has not gone after Joe at his most vulnerable - other than sticking to the terrible policies (runaway inflation, skyrocketing crime and open borders) that we've endured under democrat rule.  By taking a more humane approach to his opponent, and also by moderating his views on the GOP's weakest issue (abortion) Trump has successfully shifted all attention onto Joe.  The debate was just a final nail in the coffin, no pun intended or wanted.

And so now we have to endure the insincere lionization of Joe Biden, who no doubt will be hailed a hero for putting the country first - obviously something that Trump would never do (insert eye roll here).

Never mind that Biden is a selfish, bitter, conniving and cruel career politician who is as corrupt as Trump is rude.  We must pay homage to the great man he is and all bow to the coronation of Kamala, who the less is said about the better.

But this "new direction" from the democrats, which has been in the works for several months at this point, still doesn't really do much to put Trump in the light that he was in in 2016 and 2020.  He is still an entirely known quantity, except for his occasional unexpected softening in temperament.

This election is and will remain a referendum on the democrat candidate and the terrible policies that have seen the great diminishment of our nation.

Donald Trump, after all the strum und drang dredged up by breathless progressives over the past near decade, is actually fairly moderate and even boring by comparison to the increasingly unhinged democrats.

And that's why I have no problem saying publicly at this point - yes, I'm voting for Donald Trump.

No, he's not my favorite guy, but I am old enough to remember the four years we had under him and the nearly four years we had under the guy who replaced him.

Perhaps the biggest aspect that makes Trump a known quantity, is that we had him as president for four years, and most of it was great.  The worst thing that happened during his tenure was that we endured a worldwide pandemic that he had little to do with.

Yes, he did botch his handling of it a bit - but I can't imagine how much worse it would've been with a president who bought into 100% of the governmental overreach, especially at the beginning of the pandemic.

Trump did the best he could, and did near the end push back on the restrictions and allowed governors to take the reins.  

When he lost to Biden, he kicked and screamed a bit - but he did leave, on time and without any shenanigans beyond a few frantic phone calls and a bit of bad posturing at the behest of some shitty attorneys.  Nothing worse than Hilary Clinton, who never has publicly conceded meaningfully or been in any way gracious about it - calling Trump an "illegitimate president" over and over. 

And to tell the truth, we've been down this road so many times - it's the one point that Bill Maher (who is otherwise a committed truth teller) just can't seem to get over - it hardly seems worth it and above all, it's a known quantity.   We KNOW, Trump refused and refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election.  Frankly, this is a known quantity, and Trump still left on the day he was supposed to leave and no one who supports him cares at this point.

It's all in the past, and it's all entirely known.  We can argue back and forth til we're blue in the face about Jan 6 and criminal charges against Trump for various things - no one cares.  We know Trump, we know what we are going to get, and it ain't the end of democracy (lol) or a tyrant who won't leave, or any one of many lefty fever dreams.

But it's fair to say - from me to you, my deal liberal friends - go ahead and keep hating Trump all you want.  It's your God given right and what makes our country great - for you to be free to say what you want.

But I do ask you, while you're hating Trump and all that, if you could please consider not lumping the rest of us, that is roughly half of the country who supports Trump, into your olympic sized swimming pool of bile.

We are supporting Trump because we know what we are getting, and we will take a convicted felon who occasionally tweets mean things WAY over an incompetent geriatric or a cackling dummy any day.

You can say Trump is a piece of shit - that's fine.  But you have to concede at this point that the rest of us are allowed to say we're voting for that piece of shit openly and without shame.  You cannot continue with your proclamations of us being in a "cult."  Besides it not being true, it's also very hostile to the point of damaging our country.

You're never going to convince me that Trump isn't the right choice, and I know I won't convince you that Kamala Harris is deeply unqualified and not very smart.  You can call Trump the devil, and I can call Kamala a jackass.  But I'm not going to call you a cultist, or stupid, or sheep or any number of things that you've been very comfortable calling the MAGA crowd.  First of all because the majority of my family and friends are left of center and I love them, but secondly because I understand that it is futile and will only serve to divide our country even further.

We are not a cult, we are your family and your friends, your co-workers, your service workers and your first responders.  We are people you interact with every day with a smile on our faces.  Happy, largely working class people who have studied the issues and made up our minds.  We are increasingly able to answer the question directly when you ask - who are you voting for?  Donald Trump.  That's it.  That's all.

No amount of nasty name calling about the EXTREME MAGA CROWD can diminish this.