Tilting at Windmills

Washington Monthly, April, 2001 by Charles Peters

Snow Jobs * Giant Spies * Hungry Consultants Jilted Lobbyists * Broken Bridges * Plus, How to Marry a Millionaire

AT LAST A VICTORY, ALBEIT A small one, in our campaign against cell phones. Amtrak has begun to offer "quiet cars" on some of its trains, a practice that has become customary in England, as one of our readers pointed out in a letter to the editor a few months ago. But so far, only a few Amtrak trains have a quiet car. The number of trains and cars should be expanded immediately so that most cars on all trains are quiet. In fact, why not put all cell-phone users in one car so that the only people they annoy will be each other?

WHAT A BLOW FOR US SENIORS! I'm talking about the revelation by The Wall Street Journal that during the legendary run for the 1951 National League pennant, during which they came from 13 games behind with just 53 days left in the season, the New York Giants were stealing their opponents' signals. A Giant equipped with a small telescope and stationed at a window in the team's center-field clubhouse was spying on the opposition's catcher as he flashed his hand signals to his pitcher.

Why was this news so disturbing? Because the Giants' victory, capped by the legendary three-run homer by Bobby Thomson in the bottom of the ninth inning of the last game, proved that miracles could happen and for those of us who came of age in the 1950s era that was especially important. By and large, we were people who felt we had to accept a life of limited possibility, trading a chance to achieve the improbable for the security of a regular job and a gray-flannel uniform. But for many of us, the 1951 Giants etched in the back of our minds the possibility that we could achieve the improbable. I'm not sure I would have taken the gamble of starting this magazine had it not been for the lesson the Giants taught me. So you can see why we're upset--upset enough to want to argue that it isn't so.

Here's my case that the Giants would have won anyway. Remember that they could only have spied during their home games, but they won 14 of their last 18 away games. Bobby Thomson hit 13 of his last 15 home runs on the road. And the Giants were a better-rounded team than the Dodgers were that year: They had better pitching and the Dodgers had only one left-handed hitter in their regular lineup. This was essentially the same Giants team that won the championship in 1954. Well, you ask, if they were so good, why didn't they win in 1952 and 1953? The answer is that their best player, Willie Mays, was in the army.

The day after I wrote the foregoing, I read an article with a similar thesis in The New York Times of March 4. Written by Stan Jacoby, it contained a striking statistic: During the final 48 games, the Giants scored 4.95 runs as a visiting team; during the same period at home they scored only 4.27 runs. If the spy made a difference, it was to make the Giants worse not better hitters.

The lesson of all this is not that cheating is forgivable, but that miracles can and really did happen.

WILL THE LOBBY STILL LOVE YOU when your party loses power? Not if you're Roy Neel. Until the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore undid Gore's half-million popular-vote victory, Neel had been the $600,000-a-year president of the United States Telephone Association, a job he had been given early in the Clinton-Gore administration. It appears he was asked to resign in 2001 for the same reason he had been hired in 1993. He had been a close associate of Al Gore's for more than 30 years and had served the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff.

THE SUBMARINE USS GREENVILLE went to sea on February 9 only because the Navy did not want to disappoint a group of civilians who had been invited as a public-relations gesture. This shocking fact, revealed by Steven Lee Myers and James Dao of The New York Times, means that it is the Navy itself that is primarily responsible for the disaster that occurred that day. Commander Scott D. Waddle still needs to explain why he chose to demonstrate the rapid surfacing procedure in crowded waters. And, of course, that enlisted man who had been tracking the Ehime Maru needs to explain why he stopped and didn't inform Waddle of his decision to do so. But the essential lesson remains: An operational decision by the armed forces should never be made for the sake of P.R.

I remember more than 40 years ago, my father was among a dozen or so West Virginians who were flown to Norfolk by the Navy and wined and dined with an admiral-escorted tour of a great carrier as the centerpiece of the weekend. One wonders how much money the Navy has spent on such excursions? How is it hidden in the budget? How much of a sailor's duty-time is devoted to public relations? A hint: For just the submarines in the Pacific fleet, far from all the vessels in the entire Navy, AP reports that there were 21 sea tours for a total of 307 guests last year alone.

The three admirals presiding over the hearing into the Maru sinking have all hosted civilians on Navy ships, according to The Washington Post's Rene Sanchez. One described the hosting duty as "part of who we are as a Navy."