Friendships were the best part of it, and I certainly do miss them

Today is the day that for about 15 years was one of the happiest days of the year for me.

From 1993 through 2008, I spent the last Saturday in March -- with a couple of exceptions -- getting together with nine other baseball fans to do a Rotisserie Baseball draft. Our league was called the Golden State League, and several of the members had founded it in 1984.

GSL, 2006

They grew up together, and those of us who came along later became part of the family. In the early years, they made a weekend of it -- golf, bowling, whiffle ball in addition to the draft itself.

Owners came and owners went, and after a spring of controversy in 1995, I became the commissioner. For the next 14 years, it was one of the happiest non-family parts of my life.

In 1999, we began going to Las Vegas for our draft weekend. For the next eight years, we did our draft at different Las Vegas sites. For the last four years of that time, we drafted at the home of one of our newer members who lived in a Del Webb retirement community just outside the city.

As the league grew older, some of the tensions between owners began getting worse and worse. Some owners held grudges toward others and one of the more successful owners seemed to be suffering more and more from mental illness.

It all came to a head in 2008, when we didn't even bother going to Las Vegas. We did the draft at one owner's home in the San Fernando Valley, and there wasn't much in the way of small talk or friendly conversation.

After that season -- the league's 25th year -- everything sort of fell apart and couldn't be put back together. Two of the best owners -- great guys, but not successful -- had decided to quit, and the owner who was sort of slipping into darkness had alienated so many people that there was no way to go forward.

As much as I tried to mediate things, my own efforts were so inept that I hurt someone who had become a very good friend and in fact, lost one of the most significant friendships in my life.

I never found another league like the GSL, and in recent years I have mostly just played in Internet leagues where no one knows anyone else. I won two leagues in 2012 and one last year. It isn't the same, though. The three times I won the Golden State League, I felt like I had really accomplished something.

I miss Bryce, Mike, John, Chad, Burt, Matt and Wayne. I'm still in a league with Joel, and I don't miss Jerome at all.

I sure do miss those weekends, though, and I probably always will.

More rights for corporations are changing the meaning of human

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's."
-- MATTHEW 22:21

Over the centuries, this verse has been interpreted as Christ telling the Pharisees that they should pay taxes and obey secular law.

In fact, when Pilate asked him about the nature of his kingdom, Jesus responds by saying, "My kingdom is not of this world."

And until the late 1970s, most religious people in this country accepted the difference between secular life and religious life. But with television evangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell preaching a far more conservative Christian theology, their followers cared less about separation of church and state than they did about building a more moral society.

Moral -- with their morals.

Many of the biggest battles of the last 35 years have been fought over how moral our society should be, and who gets to decide what those moral standards are. And while it is true that a vast majority of Americans self-identify as "Christian," that ranges from the most conservative fundamentalists and evangelicals all the way to liberal denominations that are pro-women's rights, pro-same sex marriage and pro-choice on abortion.

Things became much more complex when the conservative Supreme Court issued its Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission in 2010, ruling that corporations should have the same rights as individuals. While the first ripple from the stone came with corporations throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions, it's the second ripple that may matter even more.

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act and its employer mandates, some companies have protested that providing certain kinds of coverage -- birth control, for example -- would be against their religious beliefs.

Hobby Lobby is a national crafts-store chain owned and operated by people who call themselves Christians. They are closed on Sundays and they market mostly to Christians. Indeed, they make a point of saying that during the holiday season, they make Christmas decorations but nothing for Hanukkah and other holidays.

So here's the question, thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizen's United:

Can a corporation be religious?

If the court upholds Hobby Lobby's lawsuit, they will have basically lifted corporations to a status above two-legged people.

Think about it.

Corporations will have the same rights as individuals when it comes to donating money to political campaigns.

They will also have the right to avoid mandates by saying their religious beliefs are being violated.

But if a corporation declares bankruptcy, the personal wealth of the individuals who make up that corporate entity will be protected from the lawsuit.

Damn, those corporations sure are slick.

Conservatives hate the ACA's liberating effect on working people

We're in a very strange place as a society right now.

We've got people on one side of the debate who are extremely worried that if the government does anything to help lower-income or even middle-class people, it will somehow destroy their initiative and keep them from working hard.

Ever since the Affordable Care Act took effect, there have been people who have left jobs they hated and had stayed with only because they needed insurance. Once they were able to get insurance at a reasonable price apart from their job, they realized they no longer had to keep working at jobs they hated.

In The Week magazine, there was a story of Polly Lower, a 56-year-old Indiana woman, who had been working primarily for insurance. Without warning, her boss changed her job description and gave her duties she despised.

When she realized that under the ACA, she could get insurance that covered both her and her husband, she quit her job and became a full-time baby sitter for her granddaughter.

Opponents of the ACA call it a job killer and see it as a bad thing that people like Lower won't be working anymore.

You see, anything that gives working people an edge with their employer is a bad thing. For the first 10 years of my career as a journalist, I worked at seven different papers in seven different states. Some of the moves I made were for the purpose of advancement, while others were to escape bad situations.

But when I remarried at age 42, it limited my choices. Since I made only about 40 percent of what my brilliant wife made, it was her career that paid the bills and provided the insurance. When my situation became worse and worse -- new bosses, severe budget cuts -- all I could do was my best.

But when they finally took my job away, I at least had insurance and we had enough money that I didn't have to sell my blood or work the fryer at McDonald's.

Republicans don't like that. They want everyone desperate to get a job and to hang onto it, and anything that shifts the power in the employer-employee equation to the employee is a very bad thing for America.

It goes back to the old question.

Do we work to live or do we live to work?

If you're a pitcher, you're always vulnerable to batted balls

The two worst nights I had in 16 years as a sportswriter came covering minor league baseball.

I was reminded of one of them the other day when I saw that Cincinnati relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman had been hit in the face with a batted ball.


It's the scariest sight in baseball, and on a summer night in 1983, I saw it happen right in front of me. I was covering the Gastonia Expos of the South Atlantic League. The team would go on to win the league championship that summer, and their best pitcher was a 19-year-old from Illinois named John Glidewell.

Two starts before, he had pitched a no-hitter, and he would finish the season with a 14-7 record.

But on this night, he grooved a fastball and the hitter connected solidly with a line drive back up the middle that hit Glidewell directly in the face. He dropped as if he had been shot. For nearly 10 minutes, he lay there, face down, without moving at all.

We didn't think he was dead -- believe me, you don't think that -- but the thought of how his face would look was on everyone's mind. Imagine our relief when he finally started moving and there was nothing wrong with his face -- no broken bones, no eye damage. Just a headache that would last about a week.

Ironically, Glidewell eventually developed arm trouble. He missed the entire 1984 season and he pitched ineffectively in 1985 before leaving baseball at age 21. He never won another game after 1983.

LaChappa 10 years later.

What happened 13 years later was almost worse. Some friends of mine and I were at a Rancho Cucamonga Quakes California League game in the first week of the 1996 season. I had brought my 11-year-old son and his closest friend.

Late in the game, a Quakes relief pitcher named Matt LaChappa was warming up in the bullpen when all of a sudden he collapsed. There was no apparent reason for it, although we later learned he had suffered a massive heart attack. Even though I wasn't working that night, I spent the next couple of hours playing reporter as we tried to get updates from the hospital.

At one point we were told he had died, but they managed to resuscitate him. He survived,although he was permanently disabled and never played baseball again. The Quakes were a San Diego farm team at the time and the Padres did a wonderful thing. They kept him on the payroll permanently, which enabled him to keep his insurance and made sure he got all the treatment he needed.

He's still considered part of the Padres family.

Neither Glidewell nor LaChappa was ever going to be a star on the level of Aroldis Chapman, whose 105-mile per hour fastball has made him one of the best relief pitchers in baseball.

But they played ball.

And they survived it with some good memories.

That, at least, is a happy ending.

On those rare days I can putt, I actually play pretty good golf

I used to play a lot of golf.

When we first moved here in November 2010, I took every opportunity to get out on our golf course. I had always thought if I played regularly, I could improve my game and maybe someday break 80.

The ninth green.

I played a lot the first year -- 22 times in May alone -- and my game improved a great deal.

I broke 80, which was wonderful, and in my best round ever, I shot one over par for nine holes.

But starting some months back, things kept coming up and I stopped playing as much.

The last time I had played here was the first week in November, and I played very badly. I pretty much took the winter off. For the last two weeks or so, I had been trying to talk myself into getting out and playing again. The weather has been mixed up, and it seemed like every time I decided to play the next day, it rained.

Finally today, I decided to give it a try. I didn't expect much. It had been months since I had even swung a club, and the course was in terrible shape from rain earlier in the week. I was hoping I could break 90, but not counting on it. I decided to play from the senior tees.

But a strange thing happened.

I was hitting good shots. Not extremely long off the tee, but 180-200 yards and usually in the middle of the fairway. Decent approach shots, too. And best of all, I was making putts. I never make putts. It has been the weakest part of my game for several years. I've had rounds where I haven't made a putt longer than two or three feet.

But on the front nine, I made par putts from 6, 8 and 10 feet and finished with a 41.

It looked as if it would catch up with me on the back nine. The 10th hole is the toughest on the course, and after three shots I was on the green downhill and 30 feet away. This is often a three-putt for me, which would mean a double bogey.

Surprise of surprises, though, I made the putt for another par. And on the par three 11th hole, I hit my tee shot onto the green and made a 15-foot putt for birdie. I played reasonably well the rest of the way, and when I chipped to within two feet of the 18th hole and made my putt, I was astonished to see I had shot 79.

Everything good that could happen had happened.

If I go out again tomorrow, I may shoot 88 or even worse.

But for one day, at least, I was reminded of exactly why I love to play golf.

Only a Harry Truman could give us what we need these days

"America needs you, Harry Truman ..."

It was hardly one of Chicago's best songs, but it was one that really hit home with Americans in 1975 in the wake of Richard Nixon, with Gerald Ford in the White House and Jimmy Carter yet to come.

It was a horrible decade in many ways, a decade that destroyed the faith of many people in the government, a loss of faith that Ronald Reagan rode all the way to the White House in 1980.

It was a decade that destroyed the civic consensus that had existed in the U.S. since the end of World War II. Both political parties were in agreement that the government had a role to play in our lives, with only those on the far right believing the government should butt out of things.

But after Nixon's mendacity, Ford's goofiness and Carter's inability to adapt to Washington politics, Americans turned to a man who said that government itself was the villain much of the time.

The '70s changed everything, little of it for the better. When Reagan took office in 1981, his top two priorities were a massive tax cut for the rich and a huge military buildup to challenge the Soviet Union. Two results of that were wildly increasing federal deficits and the beginning of a shift of wealth to the top 1 percent that is continuing today.

The consensus that existed for 35 years was disappearing. Republicans began working to destroy programs like Social Security and Medicare, and Truman's statement about charity only stood true on one side of the spectrum.

In that sense, the '70s ruined our country.

We certainly never got over them, and regardless of what conservatives may say about Democrats these days, there really is no meaningful left in this country anymore.

Bill Clinton himself said it a few years ago.

"We are all Eisenhower Republicans now."

Yes, America needs you, Harry Truman. We need a president who will stand for what's right, who won't compromise just for the sake of getting along and who isn't afraid to call a spade a spade.

More than ever.

Important things in our lives slip away if we aren't very careful

It's funny how things that become integral parts of our lives eventually disappear and are all but forgotten.

During the 1980s, a decade in which I lived as a single man for all but the first three weeks, I used to talk on the phone a great deal.

As I moved from state to state -- I lived in six different ones in the '80s -- I kept in touch with my friends mostly by telephone. We were sort of past writing letters by then and it would be another decade before we had e-mail.

The friend I spent more time talking with than anyone else was Bill Madden, who became my friend in 1973 when we were both taking drama classes at Northern Virginia Community College. In fact, we were in a play together, the only play I ever did in which I had the lead.

It was a fun play, a long one-act show called "Black Comedy," and Bill had a small part at the end. We had actually gotten to know each other earlier in the quarter, when I had to direct one act of Woody Allen's "Play it Again Sam" for another class. Bill played Bogart.

We hung out a lot together for the next few years, and when I got engaged in 1974 and married in '75, the three of us went a lot of places together.

When we started moving to different places around the country for our respective careers, we kept in touch on the phone. We generally talked once a week, and we would alternate initiating the calls. When we talked it was usually for an hour or two, and they were some of the best conversations I ever had with friends.

Bill on the radio

We even had our traditions. Both of us were raised on television and both of us were pop culture aficionados. Each year when TV Guide came out with its issue previewing the new season, Bill and I would go through it night by night and make our predictions for which shows would succeed and which would fail.

He was much better at it than I was. He was also a better writer than I was, particularly when it came to comedy. Bill had a real talent for seeing the humor in situations and being able to express it.

The phone conversations lasted through the '80s and into the '90s, although with him on the East Coast and me in California, it wasn't always easy to schedule them.

In more recent years, Bill was the producer and sidekick on a radio talk show, originally called "Street Smart" and later just "The Jim Metcalf Show."  Metcalf is a little too conservative for my taste, but I still enjoy listening occasionally just to hear my friend.

It has been some years since I actually saw Bill face to face, but he is and always will be one of the two best friends I ever had. It amazes me when I think our friendship started 41 years ago and has lasted through the decades.

I miss the phone calls, but both of us have significant others in our lives.

The funniest thing of all is that for the last three and a half years, we have lived less than 300 miles apart on Interstate 75, and we haven't gotten together.

I hope we can change that soon.

Hard to get too excited by a quake measuring four point four

Four point four?

You're kidding, right? An earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter Scale with an epicenter near Encino and people are going nuts tweeting and instagramming and whatever else it is they do these days.

People got so worked up you'd think Bieber had done something.

Seriously, I suppose this is what happens when there hasn't been a real earthquake for a while. It has been 20 years since the Northridge quake, which was 6.7 with extremely high ground acceleration.

That one did damage. Apartment buildings collapsed, freeway bridges buckled, people died. Fifty-seven, by official count with another 8,700 injured.

This one couldn't compare, although it was noteworthy in that it was the first quake recorded with an epicenter in the Santa Monica Mountains.

No damage was reported anywhere.

Like I said ...

Four point four?

Virginia comes through with first ACC title in 38 years

Two weeks ago, I wrote about being a long-time fan of Virginia basketball.

It isn't quite as bad as being a Cubs fan, but there are certainly similarities. For much of the last 40 years, the Cavaliers have been a middle-of-the-pack team in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but rarely if ever on top of the heap.

The only time in their 60 years as an ACC member that they won the league championship in basketball was 1976, when they upset North Carolina State, Maryland and North Carolina in consecutive games to win the title at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md.

You see, the ACC is one of the few leagues that crowns the champion of the postseason tournament as the league winner. Virginia won in 1976 -- and never won again.

Until today.

Akili Mitchell and Justin Anderson celebrate Virginia's victory.

With everything on the line in Greensboro, playing against one of the truly storied programs, Virginia beat Duke, 72-63, and cut down the nets.

It's a very strange feeling. If you're a fan of Virginia basketball, you're always waiting for the bubble to burst. The 1980-81 team, probably the most talented ever, breezed through the ACC schedule 13-1 but was blown out by Maryland in the semifinals of the tournament.

With NCAA player of the year Ralph Sampson at center and second-team All-American Jeff Lamp at guard, the Wahoos went all the way to the Final Four, only to lose in the national semifinals to a North Carolina team they had already beaten twice.

In Sampson's next two seasons, they neither won the tournament or reached the Final Four. In fact, they won 88 games and lost only 14 in those three years and had no championships to show for it.

That's why no matter how good they are, fans are always holding their breath and waiting for the Cavs to stumble. This year's team was ranked in the top 25 in preseason and was expected to be top four in the conference. But just like nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, nobody could have expected the season they had.

They didn't play that well in November and December, finishing the pre-ACC part of their schedule 9-5 with a humiliating 35-point loss at Tennessee.

But then they started winning, home and away. They beat everyone who came to Charlottesville and they won all their road games except Duke and a meaningless last game at Maryland.

They beat a Syracuse team that had been No. 1 in the country for much of the season and had a road victory against a tough Pittsburgh team. They beat North Carolina by 15 points and handled everyone else in the league pretty easily.

The victory over Duke today left them 28-6 heading into the NCAA tournament. They should have a 1 or 2 seed in whatever regional they're sent to, and if all goes well, they should be playing for at least two more weekends.

It certainly would be wonderful to see them in the Final Four, but the real miracle has already happened.

ACC champs.

Wow!

Remembering the things we did back then and can't do at all anymore

There are many strange things about aging, but one of the strangest is the skills you lose.

I'm sure you've heard this humorous saying:

"It takes me all night to do what I used to do all night."

True, but that's not really what I'm talking about here. I'm talking more about the games young men play, the games that seem to matter so much at the time. Until I was 21 or 22, I played three sports recreationally, and if I didn't exactly have mad skillz, there were things in each of those games that I could do very well.

Now not only can't I do them, I can barely picture in my mind how I was ever able to do them.

16 and in great shape.

Take basketball for example. At 5-foot-11 with slow feet, I was never going to play for my high school, let alone earn a college scholarship or play in the NBA. Put it this way: I wasn't even good enough to dream.

But from about 18 to 21, I was good in pickup games and a fairly decent intramural player. I could do three things pretty well -- handle the ball, pass the ball and shoot from outside.It might be a slight exaggeration to call my shots "jump shots," since the number of inches in my vertical leap could easily be counted on one hand.

But they were accurate, especially when I would get into a groove. It wasn't at all unusual for me to be able to make five or six 20-footers in a row in those instances, and it felt wonderful.

I don't think I've played basketball in more than 30 years, but last year I went to a sporting goods store and purchased a decent ball. We have an outdoor court here -- a half court actually -- and I thought it might be fun to see if I could still shoot.

I can't.

It wasn't just missing more shots. I missed every shot I took from the outside and I missed them badly. From 20 feet or so, maybe a quarter of my shots didn't even get to the rim. When I moved in close and shot layups, I made a few. But from the outside, my trajectory was flat, my depth perception horrible.

So much for basketball.

Football isn't something I'm ever going to play again. I don't think I've played football since 1971 or '72, but one decent skill I had in my teens was being able to throw long, accurate passes. When my game was on, I could throw the ball 50 yards or so and put it on target to a receiver. My lack of foot speed on the basketball court wasn't as obvious in football and I could roll out and throw on the run.

It isn't just that I couldn't do it now. I have a hard time picturing in my mind how I ever was able to do it.

Baseball was never my best sport, even though my love of the game is far beyond any other sport. I was an OK player, but I never devoted the time and practice that would have been required to be good at it. I did coach youth baseball for four years in the 1990s, but the main purpose of that was to spend time with my son.

Virgile loved baseball, and became disgusted and fell away from the game during the steroid era. The last I ever played was a coaches' softball game at the end of the season in 1997. I was overweight and out of shape, but I had great fun, including laying down a beautiful bunt and beating it out for a hit.

Of course, by the time the game was over, I was limping on TWO pulled hamstrings.

No baseball for me since then.

It isn't that there aren't things I do better now than I did when I was younger. I can break 90 consistently on the golf course and occasionally even break 80. The last time I bowled, I rolled a 200 game (although it was in 1987).

But I sure would love to be able to shoot jump shots again, to glide to a spot on the floor, take a pass and throw up a shot that draws nothing but net.

I would love to be able to do some of the other things I did when I was the young guy in that picture clearing the horse. That was the last year I took physical education, and I was in such good shape. I could do a dozen pull-ups, 50 push ups and more than a hundred sit-ups. After running the 600 in 2:52 in the eighth grade, I managed a time right around 1:40 three years later.

I hadn't hit my last growth spurt yet. I was 5-7 and about 135 pounds.

I wouldn't want to be 16 again. Not really, but I would dearly love to be able to run and jump like that.

Maybe next time.

It's really not possible to unilaterally reduce the role of government

I have two friends on Facebook -- one also a friend in real life -- who don't have much use for the federal government.

They're both down the road to Libertarianism, one more than the other, and both would like to see the government stay out of the economy. That's obviously the opposite side of the spectrum from where I stand. They think so-called handouts to the poor is destroying people's initiative to work hard and better themselves. I tend to agree with Harry Hopkins, FDR's right-hand man, who when asked if providing welfare for those hurt by the Depression would hurt them in the long run.

Hopkins' answer was succinct.

"People don't eat in the long run. They eat every day."

We go through cycles in this world, periods of liberalism and generosity and periods of conservatism and self-centeredness.

You didn't say "greed."

Almost. The thing I have trouble understanding about why so many people who aren't wealthy would want to reduce the role of government and increase the power of people who are basically plutocrats.

Many of the richest people in America had almost nothing to do with earning their fortunes. The descendants of Sam Walton inherited the Walmart empire, and Charles and David Koch got billions from their father when he died. Even Donald Trump got big money from father Fred.

All these people pay ridiculously small amounts in taxes, and they and other big corporations that are very profitable are getting all sorts of tax breaks.

I assume that my two Libertarian friends would like to see the government out of all this, but if there were no government role, we simply revert to laws of the economic jungle. And billionaires have much bigger claws and much sharper teeth than average working people.

Once was a time we believed the government had no role in helping the poor or feeding the hungry. In those days, churches and charities filled that role as best they could.

But too many people are suffering now, people who aren't reached by churches or charities, and there aren't enough jobs to help all those who need help.

I've got no problem with gradually reducing the role of government, but if it's going to happen, we need to reduce the ridiculous power plutocrats have over the poor and working class.

If we're going to be a good society again, we have to start by being a fair one.

Hey, wanna buy an extra helicopter or maybe some robot dogs?

I was reading something on the Internet this afternoon when I came across something else.

"Fifteen celebrities who declared bankruptcy."

It isn't as if I'm obsessed with celebrities, but at one point about 10 years ago, three of my four closest friends in the world had declared bankruptcy and I had only slipped through by the grace of God once or twice myself.

I had also read that 50 percent of state lottery jackpot winners declare bankruptcy within five years. That never surprised me, because I figured that old statement about a fool and his money hadn't become a cliche because it wasn't true.

Larry King caresses Trump's toupee.

So I read the article, which wasn't really an article at all but one of those photo galleries with captions. Much of it was hardly surprising. This celebrity declared bankruptcy and had to work retail before she made it. That one had some bad investments. My buddy Trumpers the Comic Insult Human, aka Donald Trump, had three business bankruptcies. No big deal.

There were a few interesting ones, though. Actor Wesley Snipes actually went to jail because he didn't file tax returns for six years, a period when he owed $12 million in taxes.

Actress Kim Basinger, who was apparently doing even better than I would have thought, got into trouble in 1989 when she spent $20 million to buy the town of Braselton, Ga. I wonder what the purchase entailed. I'm pretty sure she couldn't have purchased the 7,511 people of Braselton as part of the deal.

Anyway, it didn't work out. She sold at a big loss.

Hammer copters

Rapper MC Hammer, who was famous for a day or two in the early 1990s, made good money but pretty much pissed it all away. One of his more inexplicable purchases was matching helicopters.

See, that's the real tragedy of all the suck-ups and sycophants who hang around when the money is rolling in.

Nobody with the nerve to say, "Hey, Stan? What about buying just one helicopter?"

The best one in the gallery was someone who didn't actually declare bankruptcy, although he had well-documented financial problems. And anyway, who could do a story about wacky celebrities without including Jacko?

Before he was Jacko

Most of you have heard about many of the goofy things Michael Jackson spent his money on, including trying to buy the bones of the Elephant Man. The man invited Elizabeth Taylor over for dinner and put two chimps -- yes, real chimps -- at the dinner table with her.

Actually, the purchase mentioned in the gallery tops Hammer and maybe even Basinger.

Jacko reportedly at one point purchased 10 robot dogs with artificial intelligence. It's only a rumor, but I heard one condition of the sale was that the dogs had to be more intelligent than Tito and Jermaine.

We used to read, and we used to understand what was happening

"It's too much for me. I just can't understand it anymore. I just try not to think about it."
-- Allen Drury, PRESERVE AND PROTECT, 1968

If you have ever read Drury's six-book series that started with the Pulitzer Prize winning "Advise and Consent" in the late '50s and ended with nuclear war in the mid '70s, you probably will remember that by the second half of the series, the media had become a favorite target of the author.

The above quote, from the fourth book in the series, says almost all that needs to be said about why the media have become so powerful. Average people just don't have the time, the energy of for the most part the education to keep up.

It doesn't say why the media have become so bad.

That's a much sadder and stranger story.

There are villains, but no heroes, and the story says a great deal about why so many things in our society are declining, not least of them the understanding of average Americans of how life works in the 21st century.

I need to state my prejudice in this up front. I love newspapers and have subscribed to at least one daily newspaper for almost my entire adult life. I have always believed that if you want to know what's happening and why, and if you don't have the time to investigate for yourself, the only real way to be knowledgeable is to read newspapers.

Let's start with some numbers, courtesy of Bob Greene's "Late Edition: A Love Story."

The first number explains something called "penetration," a number that describes what percentage of American households read newspapers. In 1950, that number was 123 percent.

"Huh? How could it be 123 percent?"

In 1950, not only did most households have a newspaper delivered, a large number of people subscribed to more than one paper. Maybe one was a big city paper and another a small local one, or maybe one came in the morning and another in the evening. People had choices, in 1950, most decent-sized cities had two or more papers. Big cities had many more. Cities with large immigrant populations often had more than one German-language paper, or Italian paper. You get the picture.

Enter the first villain.

The year 1950 was when television started sweeping the country. All of a sudden, when you came home from work to read your evening paper, there was competition from that little box. Reading began to decline, and not just newspapers. Why read a book when you can watch Uncle Miltie, Sid and Imogene or that crazy redhead instead?

By 1964, nearly every home in America had a television set. Even so, 80.8 percent of adults still read a newspaper. A lot of this was people just living the way they had always lived.

But their kids weren't picking up the habit. By 2007, the number had dropped to 48.4 percent, and much of that number came from adults 55 and older. Only a third of adults under 34 had the habit.

The penetration numbers were falling fast too. By 2004, only 49 percent of households were still getting a newspaper.

By then the second villain had come of age. The Gannett newspaper chain changed the business forever with the launch of USA TODAY in 1982. All of a sudden, stories were much shorter, pictures much larger and layouts much gaudier.

Stories that had been 500 words long were 150 in this new incarnation. It didn't even look like a newspaper, and of course all the real newspapers jumped to imitate it.

All through the '80s and '90s, more and more papers were failing. Most cities found themselves with only one paper and no competition.

Then the third and final villain showed up. There are certainly good things to be said about the Internet, but you won't be ready them today in this space. When people started reading newspapers online for free, all of a sudden it became far more difficult to sell advertising. And without advertising, budgets went all to hell.

Newspapers started cutting back everywhere they could and in some cases they lost their souls. One of the first things to vanish was hard-core investigative journalism. It just cost too much. In fact, some papers gave in completely and started allowing sources to cover themselves.

Sound horrible? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which used to be a pretty good paper, eliminated its print edition and went Internet only. The P-I cut its staff of reporters, editors and photographers from 166 to about 30. City departments it was no longer profitable to cover were invited to send in press releases the paper could use.

It didn't help that more than 90 percent of all U.S. media was owned by a handful of corporations who saw no real point in competing when there was plenty of money to be made by sitting back and relaxing.

It didn't help that putting stories on laptops, tablets, smart phones made it much less likely that people would read long stories. Nicholas Carr's book, "The Shallows," points out that the more people use the Internet, the less likely they are to be able to absorb long stories or complex information.

We truly are becoming shallower.

And as it becomes more and more difficult to think, we become more like the character in Drury's book who says simply, "It's too much for me. I just can't understand it anymore. I just try not to think about it."

And that means that the people who do understand it, who make a point of understanding it and try to think about it as much as they can, they'll do just fine.

Especially with a media that cares a lot more about Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus than it does fracking or outsourcing jobs.

Say good night, America.

Sweet dreams.

If you're looking for truth, don't overlook the obvious answer

Editor's note: Several years ago, on an earlier Website, I wrote this. I think it still holds true today.

***

"… and the lonely voice of youth cries, 'What is truth?'"
– JOHNNY CASH, 1968

If there’s one answer I could give to that question, it would be that truth is something almost everyone thinks they know, but very few of us actually do.

There are certainly plenty of folks on both sides of the political divide who will tell you they know the truth and they’ll be happy to share it with you, but truth through one side or the other of the political spectrum is usually lacking.

Truth isn’t really about politics, anyway.

Regardless of what folks on the left or the right will tell you, they don’t have all the answers. That doesn’t mean they don’t have any answers, though, and taking a "plague on both your houses" approach rarely accomplishes very much.

Truth? I know a few things that might qualify as basic truths, and one of them is that love is at the heart of everything. It’s why Jesus boiled the 10 commandments of the Old Testament down to what he called the two great commandments — love God and love your neighbor.

That’s a basic truth. If you strive to love God and love your neighbor, and put those two goals ahead of everything else, you’ll probably be a fairly happy person.

It’s why if I fall anywhere on the political spectrum, it’s to the left of center because I believe we have a responsibility to help the less fortunate among us. It’s why I believe in a progressive income tax, and in an estate tax that limits the vast wealth that can be passed down from parents who earned it to children who didn’t do anything except belong to the Lucky Sperm Club.

I’d rather see a government that represents me helping children from poor families — it isn’t their fault their parents are poor — than giving more and more tax incentives to the wealthy to send jobs overseas.

Overly simplistic? Sure, but there are very few of us who don’t oversimplify things. One of the great heroes of the right wing in the ’80s was Margaret Thatcher, who said that there were really no such things as communities, that there were really only individuals and families.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it. If we assume that everyone will act in their own interest, we are at least able to predict what they will do. But to view the world that way, we have to ignore the possibility that we contain any spark of the divine, any basic goodness.

I don’t know how Thatcher would explain the Gandhis, the Mother Teresas; maybe her theory only covers the world of politics.

So what is truth?

To me, anyway, the most basic truth there is involves love. Love, whether it’s for God, friends, family or neighbors, ennobles us in a way nothing else can.

GOP anger over Benghazi shows just how hypocritical they are

For nearly a year and a half, conservatives have been trying to stir up anger over what happened at Benghazi, Libya. No matter what they tell you, they have just one purpose -- to damage the Obama administration.

What happened at Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, was tragic. Four American diplomats died when Muslims attacked the consulate, and Republicans immediately began using the issue to try and change the momentum of the presidential campaign.

It didn't work, of course, because no matter what Republicans think, they haven't managed to dumb voters down enough to believe them,

Four dead in Libya was tragic, but there had been 60 people killed in eight attacks during the previous administration and not one Republican had even said a word about it.

No one lost their job, no one stood trial and there were no Congressional investigations either. My two adult children both serve in the Foreign Service, and while they accept the dangers of their chosen profession, neither one of them were especially disturbed by what happened in Libya.

Despite the lack of anger from the professionals, Republicans still decided to have the proverbial cow. The way they overreached and hyperbolized on the subject would have been humorous except that they were so sincere about it.

Some of it may have been racism, but my guess is that most of it is that they simply cannot understand why Americans would elect a Democrat president.

Of course, Democrats have won four of the last six presidential elections, and they have actually won the popular vote in five of the last six.

In a way, it's almost as if reality has driven them crazy. They say Democrats are buying votes with entitlement programs and they have turned the whole divide into a ridiculous "makers vs. takers" thing in which the only real Americans are on their side.

The problem with that track is that when you start looking at it that way, the next steps get worse and worse.

First is taking away their votes, which we're already hearing from people like the billionaire who said that if someone pays a million dollars in taxes, he should get a million votes.

Once they've lost their votes you start taking away their rights and eventually their freedom. Of course that doesn't always happen, but once you start demonizing your opposition as the "other," it becomes all too easy to dehumanize them.

And that is definitely not the American way.

In his twilight years, Carolina's Smith still showing tremendous class

At some point in our lives, we come to a time when life takes more away from us than it gives us.

Older family members pass on, entertainers we enjoyed die, in some instances even the paradigm changes.

I spent the decade of my thirties between marriages, working as a sportswriter and traveling around the country covering games. Much of my travel was for college basketball. I traveled around the Big Eight covering Missouri basketball and around the Big Sky covering Nevada.

I covered NCAA regionals in Providence, Charlotte, Atlanta, Kansas City, Ogden, Salt Lake City and Oakland. I covered Final Fours in Lexington and Dallas.

In all that time, I don't think I ever met a better coach -- or a better man -- than Dean Smith of North Carolina.

Michael Jordan & Smith

He started coaching at Carolina in 1961, and it was his second season when my family moved from Ohio to Virginia and I became a fan of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball. Since I wasn't a Tar Heel fan, I wasn't fond of their coach. But no one was better and no one was more successful. Carolina was always a title contender.

I saw amazing games once I started working. In 1983 at Carmichael Coliseum  in Chapel Hill, No. 1 Virginia played the No. 2 Heels. The Cavaliers were playing great, and with about eight minutes left they had a 62-47 lead.

Michael Jordan led Carolina's comeback to a 63-62 victory. It might have been the best game I ever saw.

The last time I saw Coach Smith was 1989, when the Nevada team I was covering came all the way across the country to play UNC at the brand new Dean E. Smith Center.

He coached through the 1997 season, retiring with 879 victories and two national championships. Four years ago, his family announced he was suffering from a "progressive neurocognitive disorder," although they did not identify it as Alzheimer's.

There is one thing about Smith that a lot of people don't realize, and that is that he is an exceptionally fine man. He worked for desegregation in the '60s, opposed the Vietnam War and the death penalty and supported a nuclear freeze.

Celebrating

The excellence he created at Carolina has endured. The Tar Heels won national titles in 2005 and 2009 under Roy Williams, and only the amazing success of Duke under Mike Krzyzewski has kept them from the No. 1 position.

There is a wonderful story on ESPN.com today by veteran writer Tommy Tomlinson, that I would urge everyone to read. "Precious Memories" tells Smith's story from present to past.

I have my own Smith story, though, one I will never forget.

It was March 1986, and the Missouri team I was covering was one of eight teams playing in an NCAA subregional in Ogden, Utah. The Tigers lost to Alabama-Birmingham 66-64 in the first round. I was staying for the rest of the weekend, and the day between rounds was a press conference for the four winners from the first round.

The big story that year was that North Carolina's seniors were the first senior class under Smith who had never been to a Final Four. I was the reporter who asked the question.

"Are you guys feeling the pressure from all the talk about Final Fours?"

Surprisingly, Smith interrupted. He said it wasn't a fair question. "How many other teams here have been to the Final Four the last four years?"

Louisville had, but I let it pass. My question didn't get answered.

The next day Carolina crushed Alabama-Birmingham 77-59. After the press conference, Dean Smith came looking for me.

"I owe you an apology," he said.

I was stunned. "Coach, you don't owe me anything."

He shook his head. "Your question the other day was a good question, a fair one. I interrupted because I'm really trying to keep the pressure off my seniors."

All I could say was "Thank you very much."

That was the day I realized Dean Smith wasn't just a great coach, he was a great man as well.

Read Tomlinson's story.

It may just break your heart.

Out of nowhere, a chance to be part of the goofiness that is Springfield

I always liked "The Simpsons," even though I was never a faithful watcher.

I don't do "appointment television" anymore. Any show I find worth watching is worth waiting until it's on DVD, so that I can watch it at my own pace and without having to sit through commercials. The last show I remember watching when it was actually on was one of the final seasons of "24."

The Simpsons

I have certainly watched episodes, but I can't remember ever thinking it was 8 o'clock on Sunday and I ought to watch it.

Part of the problem is that it just has been on too long. I remember about 12 years ago someone interviewed Matt Groening, the show's creator, about how much longer he thought the show would last.

He said he thought they had enough good ideas for two or three years, and then "we'll probably be able to milk another couple of years out of it."

Well, 25 years is a helluva run, and I don't think this is the last season for Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. But the show is still fun, and they have done a great job of merchandizing.

Before

Then there is the stuff way out on the periphery. I was goofing around on the Internet the other night and I found an artist -- from Pakistan, I believe -- who for $5 would turn me into a "Simpsons" character. Well, not me actually. A photo of me.

So I paid the money and sent my photo.

I didn't know what to expect, and when the drawing came, my first reaction was that I don't look like that. But when I started comparing the photo I had sent with the artwork done from it, I realized that feature by feature it was pretty good.

Figuring a little leeway for the transition from photograph to cartoon, I knew I had gotten my money's worth.

After

The one big discrepancy -- one that was certainly fine with me -- is that in the photo, taken in November 2010, you see a 60-year-old man. The cartoon character taken from that photo looks to me like someone who has yet to celebrate his 30th birthday.

Of course, I have no idea where he would fit into the "Simpsons" cast. Too old to hang out with Bart, too young to sit and drink with Homer.

No big deal.

It is definitely fun to be from Springfield.

George Takei has turned out to be the real hero of 'Star Trek'

When I first started watching "Star Trek" -- reruns in the 1970s -- the last thing I would ever have imagined was that the most significant person on the show would turn out to be the guy who played Lieutenant Sulu.

George Takei couldn't have had higher than fifth or sixth billing, and he didn't even play a significant role in every show. But he has had an amazing career as an actor, and more important, he has become a wonderful spokesman for civil rights.

Takei was born in 1937 in Los Angeles. After Pearl Harbor, he and his family were interned at Rohwer War Relocation Center in southeastern Arkansas, just across the state line from Mississippi.  Since his parents refused to take a loyalty vow, they were relocated and spent the rest of the war at Tule Lake on the edge of the Mojave Desert in California.

George Takei as Sulu

Some people age badly, but Takei has matured into a strong battler for the underdog. He was one of the first Californians to be married after the state's ban on gay marriage was overturned in 2008., and he spoke out last week when the fate of an Arizona bill allowing discrimination against gay people hung in the balance.

Even more important, he has become a spokesman against bullying of both gay and straight kids.

One wonderful moment occurred in November 2010, when he responded to an anti-gay school board member in Arkansas who said he hoped more gay teenagers would kill themselves or give each other AIDS.

While he recorded a statement to bigot Clint McCance that lasted several minutes, it came down to four words:

"You are a douchebag."



It's nice to see someone who isn't afraid to speak out.

It's wonderful to see Virginia basketball meaningful again

In the 16 years I spent as a sportswriter, one of the most fascinating moments came in March 1984 about 40 miles from where I live now.

It was at The Omni, an arena that no longer exists in Atlanta, and it was the East Region semifinals of the NCAA basketball tournament. Virginia was seventh-seeded in the region, and had slipped through the first two rounds with a 58-57 win over Iona and a 53-51 upset of second-seeded Arkansas.

For the previous four seasons, the Cavaliers had been a powerhouse with 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson. Except for a victory in the National Invitation Tournament in 1980, the other three seasons had ended disappointingly. Virginia had made it to the Final Four only once, and there had been no NCAA titles.

In 1984, not much was expected. The other three teams in the regional were unbeaten and top-ranked North Carolina, third-seeded Syracuse and fourth-seeded Indiana. In the first of the two semifinals, Virginia had kept it going, beating Syracuse 63-55 to reach the final.

In the postgame press conference, a reporter asked Virginia Coach Terry Holland if his team's unexpected accomplishment was something of a vindication for the last three years.

Terry Holland, second from right

Holland smiled. "You know, I wasn't as bad a coach as you guys said I was the last three years, and I'm not as good a coach as you'll say I am now."

The best quote I ever heard from a coach.

Their run wasn't over. After the Hoosiers upset the Michael Jordan-led Tar Heels, Virginia beat Indiana 50-48 in the finals to earn a spot in the Final Four in Seattle.

The Cavaliers were a heavy underdog against a Houston team led by Akeem Olajuwon, but they gave Houston all it could handle before losing 49-47 in overtime.

They have never made it back to the Final Four, although they came within one victory in 1989 and 1995 and won another NIT title in 1992. They have had eight seasons since 1984 in which they were no better than .500, and they have been to the NCAA tournament only four times since 1995.

They're just not a team people think about when they think of college powerhouses, although Coach Tony Bennett has been working to change that since coming to Charlottesville five years ago.

Virginia was ranked near the bottom of the top 25 in preseason polls and was picked to finish in the top four in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They started slowly, though, and after a humiliating 87-52 loss at Tennessee in late December, the Cavs were just 9-4.

Virginia-Syracuse

But everything changed when the ACC season started. They won their next three games -- two on the road -- by an average of 22 points. They nearly upset Duke in Durham, and didn't lose again. They didn't just win, they dominated, and on Saturday, 12th-ranked Virginia played host to No. 4 Syracuse with the conference title on the line.

The Orangemen had been top-ranked nationally for much of the season, and they managed to lead 28-27 at halftime. But just as they have done all season, the Cavaliers dominated after halftime and went on to a stunning 75-56 victory.

So Virginia  is 25-5 and 16-1 in the ACC and almost certainly will be ranked in the top 10 nationally in the next poll. Regardless of what happens in the conference tournament in two weeks, a high seeding in the NCAA tournament should be theirs.

Bennett has them playing defense as well as anyone in the country. They lead the nation in scoring defense, and they have a surprisingly varied and effective offense.

I have been a fan of Virginia basketball for nearly 50 years. They're really just about the only sports team I care about no matter how good or bad they are. I didn't graduate from there, but it was the first college in my 14-year odyssey. I was excited when George Mason made its run to the Final Four in 2006, but the bad season they're having this year doesn't really bother me.

But all the years, all the memories of Barry Parkhill, Wally Walker, Jeff Lamp, Lee Raker, Sampson, Othell Wilson, Sean Singletary, Rick Carlisle, Jeff Jones, Bryant Stith and the others will stay with me forever.

Can the Cavaliers make a run deep into the tournament this year? Maybe so, although 50 years of hopes and dreams have made me a pessimist. But it is wonderful to see them good again, and Bennett at least provides hope that he can do for Virginia basketball what George Welsh did in his 19 seasons as football coach.

Welsh took a seriously downtrodden program and had a record of 134-86-3, with 12 bowl games and 14 consecutive seasons winning at least seven games. Wonder of wonders, Virginia was even ranked No. 1 nationally for four weeks in 1990.

We'll see what happens.