Dog days of summer bite snakes

When the Arizona Diamondbacks went on a tear through the National League in the first two months of the season, the question in the back of everyone's mind was, "Are they contenders or pretenders?" When they kept winning through the middle of June, the Diamondbacks seemed to have completely shed the losing skin of 1998. They looked like they were for real. Just like that, though, the questions have resurfaced. The Diamondbacks have gone from a four-game lead in the National League West to three games behind the division-leading San Francisco Giants since mid-June. To win the division or a wild-card seat in the postseason, the Diamondbacks have to buck nearly 40 years of expansion-era baseball history. The Los Angeles Angels, baseball's first expansion team, is the only one (so far) to have a winning record in its second year. (The Angels also set a 70-win record for a debut season.) The general rule has been that expansion teams need to suffer years of losing before breaking through. That rule has been broken in the '90s, though. The Colorado Rockies made it to the postseason in their third year, and the Florida Marlins won the World Series in their fifth season. Despite a spending spree on free agents, last year's Diamondbacks came nowhere close to challenging the Angels' debut-year record. The off-season spending on free agents for 1999, including pitcher Randy Johnson, argues that the team is determined not to let last year's poor performance get in the way of their determination to go to the postseason this year. Energized by the resurgent offense of Matt Williams and Jay Bell and a career year by Luis Gonzalez (all of whom are All Stars this year), the Diamondbacks, after a 0-4 start, became the hottest team in the National League through the middle of June. Then, the Braves, superhot Reds and Cardinals came to Bank One Ballpark, and the team started losing. Sports Illustrated predicted that the homestand would be a reality check for the snakes, and it was. A phantom offense? The blame for the sudden downturn was laid on the bullpen. Blown saves, after all, had been the main reason for the team's bad start. When the team was winning, the offense overcame a number of blown saves. The team clearly needed a better bullpen to reach the postseason. However, if the problem was just in the bullpen, pitcher Randy Johnson, the team's other All Star, would not have been shut out while pitching four strong games in a row. The Diamondbacks have racked up only seven hits in those Johnson starts. Aside from a few nights when they scored in double-digits, the offense has been in a terrible slump since the Braves series, a fact that doesn't help the bullpen or starting pitching. To state the obvious, even though pitchers get the credit for wins and losses, the best they can do is give their teams the chance to win. To win, the offense has to score. The Diamondbacks look as prepared as anyone else in the National League West (except for the amazingly resilient San Francisco Giants) to make it to the postseason, at least on paper. They've got the toughest pitcher in the league in Johnson, one of the leading base stealers in leadoff man Tony Womack, and one of the most potent offenses. They've also made moves to shore up the bullpen -- including a deal that brought steely-eyed closer Matt Mantei over from the Florida Marlins. However, one of those factors -- the potent offense -- was not expected to be there as the season began. Could it be a phantom? The math is against the aging Williams. Even though he was unlikely to have as bad a year as last year, Williams can only expect his numbers to go down from his peak years. Bell, on the other hand, seems to be benefiting from batting No. 2 behind the fleet-footed Womack. Seeing more fastballs from pitchers interested in trying to keep Womack off second base, Bell has set a career record in home runs by the halfway point of this season. Can he keep up that pace, or has he returned to his considerably more mortal of previous years? The evidence so far points more toward the "contender" side of the equation, but that's not a foregone conclusion. The second half should be interesting. Fans certainly have to hope that it's a coincidence that the team started losing just as the hot weather started. Summer lasts a long time in Phoenix. Copyright © 1999, Salvatore Caputo

All houses unholy in Lewinsky affair

A plague on all their houses: Clinton's, the Republicans' and the media's. Now that the verdict's in, I don't feel like I'm trying to be a pundit if I speak my mind. President Clinton deserves all the criticism he gets for his weaseling answers to straightforward questions. "I didn't inhale." Sure, fine. You didn't inhale, but you experimented with marijuana, you held a joint in your hand, which would be illegal in the United States. So you engaged in an illegal activity way back when. Much of your generation of Americans experimented, Mr. President, and they wouldn't bat an eye if you'd said you'd done it. Instead, they squirm because you tried to weasel out of it with a lame excuse. Your dog ate the homework, too, I suppose. If you had been in the United States and the police had caught you holding the spliff, you could have protested that you didn't inhale until you turned blue, but they would have hauled you downtown. "I never had sexual relations with that woman." Sure, fine. Being fellated by a young intern is no more sexual relations than masturbation is, but the whole semantic issue is a misdirection. Fellatio is known more commonly as oral sex. So, whether relations were involved or not, most of us acknowledge that fellatio is a form of sex. President Clinton wouldn't, though. Contrast these denials with candidate Jimmy Carter's avowal that he had lusted in his heart after women. Although lust isn't illegal, admitting to it could have damaged his appeal to his core constituency. Yet, he admitted to his flaws. Given all this, it's understandable that Clinton's political opponents would seize on the president's disingenuous behavior and turn the petty denials of a man who will say anything, however ridiculous, to stay out of trouble into something more sinister. They may be right, but those facts certainly aren't in evidence or the verdict would have gone against Clinton. That the Starr investigation couldn't hang the president except on the idea that Clinton "perjured" himself in the Paula Jones case is either proof that the White House is the most tight-lipped conspiracy on Earth (with the strong implication that Bill Clinton is the smarmiest man on the globe) or that there's plenty of sizzle but no meat. There are probably many healthy American men about Clinton's age who would fantasize about a sexual encounter in the Oval Office. Power is an aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger supposedly said. We could only hope that most of them would choose to have the encounter with their wives or, if unmarried, with their longtime girlfriends. Clinton chose to do it with a subordinate, who could have turned on him and charged sexual harassment. It was poor judgment for him to have anything to do with an employee, especially on my dime! Any middle manager with a lick of sense knows enough not to do that, but not the leader of the Free World. Get thee to a one-star motel! The Republicans sin, too The theories fly about why the Republicans wanted to do Clinton in on the measliest of charges. One idea is that this was revenge for Nixon's near-impeachment. The similarities are eerie. If Nixon's sense of decorum wouldn't have been bruised by the idea, he could easily have said "but I didn't inhale." He did, however, say something about not being a crook. When people dismiss the Watergate break-in as a third-rate burglary, they miss its intent. It was part of an effort to, if not rig the 1972 election, to win it at any cost, without regard to the law. Breaking and entering in the defense of your candidate is considerably more like high crimes and misdemeanors than trying to cover up a third-rate affair is. Comedians joked that the Republicans were jealous of all the sex Clinton was getting, but I don't think Monica, Paula or Jennifer would be the belles of any GOP ball. There's also the "Republicans hate Hillary" theory. Hillary Rodham was one of their own long ago, and she converted to the other side. They are personally offended by that and by Clinton's deference to her. When Clinton said that if we elected him, we'd get Hillary for free, he didn't endear himself to the opposition party. Of course, this is the party that gave us Nancy Reagan -- who, like Hillary, was smarter than her husband. The difference, of course, was that Nancy Reagan was publicly deferential to her husband, even if she wielded tremendous influence on him behind the scenes and made him the politician he was. My own theory is that the Republicans are humanity's sorest winners. They lose a few seats in Congress in the mid-term elections and go ballistic. This despite the incontestable fact that they still are the majority party of both houses of Congress, which thanks to our Founding Fathers' checks and balances, means the Republicans wield power that's equal to that of the Democrat sitting in the White House doing all those nasty things. Yet, the party apparently decided they'd been whupped so hard that Newt Gingrich had to go. In addition, they can't stand to look in the mirror. In all things but the way he keeps his zipper up, the president is a moderate Republican, with a tendency to lean right on law and order and economic issues, but just slightly left on social issues such as entitlement. Of course, that last part means he exhibits a considerably less shriveled heart than most Republicans on the campaign trail. It's not that they don't do charitable things, but for the most part they are like the biblical Pharisees, who put on a big show of piety. So, let's tally it up. He cops their rhetoric. He gets more girls than they do. And, worst of all, a large chunk of the populace think he's doing a good job. The general public didn't want him impeached on the House Republicans' superheated claims that Clinton subverted the Constitution by lying under pressure, which many men would have done in similar circumstances. Clinton seemed to have inherited Ronald Reagan's Teflon suit to make him impervious to criticism. For Clinton to have anything in common with the Great Communicator, who was also known to tell a fib or two, must stick in Republican craws. It's the perjury, stupid! Let's take a look at the House managers' perjury argument. Although perjury is a serious offense, I wonder why. The House managers argued that the integrity of the judicial system rests on the belief that you must not lie under oath, and that if the president lies under oath, he must be punished just as any other person in America would be. Sure. This is all true as far as it goes, but they added that perjury by a president would undermine people's faith in the entire judicial system. Pardon me while I laugh. That argument takes as a given that faith in the system exists, that most people actually believe that no one is above the law. Tell that to a gang banger on the streets of Compton. He'll agree wholeheartedly, I'm sure, and he'll add that police never pick on blacks or Latinos. Everyone believes that the rich and the powerful get the same justice as you or I, right? I thought so. (Let me underscore that this is sarcasm, folks.) After Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was uncovered, the general public understood why Clinton lied in this matter and sympathized with his vain effort to protect his family from scandal. The public sympathized even though it was Clinton's actions that brought on the scandal in the first place. They could see themselves in the same position. They figured he was a good president and a flawed human being, but that he was not a criminal. Their desire was that justice, the rule of law, be tempered with mercy. They knew that the House managers were trying to swat a flea with a howitzer. Mercy for Clinton was never in the cards these bitter Republicans held, even though they knew that Richard Nixon had been pardoned after a far more serious case was made against him. Maybe that's why Clinton, unlike Nixon, did not step down as president. Here are some questions I have about lying under oath: If no one is supposed to lie under oath, when defense attorneys know a client is guilty, what do they advise that client to say in court? Do lawyers advise them to tell the whole truth, or do they advise them to put the best spin on the truth? How many arguments would go to court if both sides were telling the truth? In court, the truth is always in question. Why aren't there more findings of perjury, especially in civil matters? Media salivated all along The media held its nose all through this, saying, "Isn't this a terrible story? But it's our job to inform you of every detail," and they dived in to report all the sleaze with gusto. I boycotted TV and newspaper reports about the scandal, and found that even 10 second sound bites on radio still told me more than I needed to know. The president's sexual activity during down time at the Oval Office is not my business. It's clearer now than it has ever been that the news business, despite its stated lofty ideals, is entertainment rather than an instrument of public discourse on issues that matter. The news from Minnesota is not what Jesse Ventura says, but the fact that he is a former pro wrestler turned governor. The news from Washington reduces complex governmental issues into bumper sticker sentiments. That which titillates has precedence over that which enlightens. Copyright © 1999, Salvatore Caputo