World War II Closure in the Bronx

At Yankee Stadium last night, a young man born in Japan decades after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought joy to, among others, a generation of Americans who fought his ancestors in World War II.

As the Most Valuable Player in this year's World Series, Hideki Matsui joined the pantheon of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other hyphenated Americans of the last century in Yankee lore.

After six years in Yankee uniform, Matsui still needed a translator to express himself about the award but, for older onlookers, there was a feeling of closure at the sight of a new hero of our national pastime who, if he had been here in the 1940s, would not have been playing baseball but would have been sent to an internment camp along with his family.

Back then, the American Melting Pot had sprung a leak as even Joe DiMaggio's parents were among the thousands of immigrants classified as "enemy aliens" after Pearl Harbor who had to carry photo IDs and were not allowed to travel five miles from their home. Jolting Joe's father was barred from the San Francisco Bay, where he had fished for decades, and his boat was seized.

But what used to be the Great American Pastime is global now and perhaps in the future, a young man of Middle East descent will be standing in Yankee Stadium holding up that trophy.

A Home Run for Health Care?

Under the oddest byline ever, an unlikely trio tells New York Times OpEd readers today how to fix American health care--by applying the expertise of baseball's number crunchers to medical treatment.

A skeptical reader starts with a bit of resistance based on the track record of the authors: Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's, who finished third out of four teams in their division this year; Newt Gingrich, author of "Contract With America," the failure of which led to an exit from Congress in disgrace; and John Kerry, who couldn't counter the swiftboating that resulted in George W. Bush's reelection in 2004.

How these losers got together, the OpEd editors explaineth not, but the essence of their argument is that computer analysis of treatment will revolutionize the American health care system, which now "behaves like a hidebound, tradition-based ball club that chases after aging sluggers and plays by the old rules: we pay too much and get too little in return.

"To deliver better health care, we should learn from the successful teams that have adopted baseball’s new evidence-based methods. The best way to start improving quality and lowering costs is to study the stats."

Nobody would begrudge more information in any field, including medical treatment, but we may be forgiven for skepticism about the formulations of Gingrich and Beane, two self-promoting reformers without results, and for wondering how staid old John Kerry fell in with this crew.

Meanwhile, health insurers have done enough damage in hampering doctors from using their best judgment and experience by nagging them with cost-benefit analysis, where outcomes are more serious than winning or losing ball games.

Congressional Circus Back in Town

They still don't know who destroyed the CIA interrogation tapes or ordered the firing of US attorneys, but Capitol Hill bloodhounds will stop at nothing to find out if Roger Clemens used steroids.

On January 15th, the House Oversight Committee starts two days of hearings to pursue this pressing national issue, a month after the well-publicized Mitchell Report was issued and ten days after Clemens appears on 60 Minutes.

"It could be a circus with players, true," the Committee's minority staff director, David Marin, admits. "But if you tailor it right and invite people who clearly have pertinent information about the substance of the report, then it's anything but a circus. It's substantive."

The lawmakers will be following in the footsteps of Mike Wallace, whose grilling of Clemens to be shown tomorrow night elicits testimony that he only took legal injections of Lidocaine and B-12, not steroids.

"Swear?" Wallace asks Clemens. "Swear," Clemens answers. Would the Rocket lie to CBS' 89-year-old icon? Congress will put him under oath to find out.

In 2005, the same panel questioned other baseball stars and got blanket denials, but this time with 400 pages of documents and rumors compiled by a former Senate Majority Leader and paid for by anxious team owners, the results may very well be different.

One of the eagerly anticipated witnesses will be former New York Yankees All-Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who intrigued observers of the national pastime some years back by suddenly losing the ability to make an accurate throw to first base without the aid of a Seeing Eye dog. Could steroids have had anything to do with that?

Giuliani Stays Ahead of the Game

America’s Mayor prepared for tonight’s Republican debate by going to a ball park last night. It couldn’t have been relaxing since he saw his beloved New York Yankees eliminated from the American League playoffs and. at the same time, had to face the fact that front runners and favorites can be beaten.

But if he loses, the scoreboard shows it’s unlikely to be to the former Governor of the hated Boston Red Sox’s state, Mitt Romney.

A new Gallup Poll today shows Rudy 12 percentage points ahead of Fred Thompson, 16 over John McCain and in another ballpark from Romney, whose free-spending still leaves him at 9 percent, barely ahead of practically penniless Mike Huckabee at 7.

Giuliani will be saddened by the Yankees’ loss not only by empathy for the ball club he loves but a blow to his New Hampshire campaign where he has been connecting with Red Sox fans with good-natured bantering about their respective teams.

Now, as they say in the national pastime, the fat lady has sung for his favorite team, but there hasn’t been a peep out of her for his Presidential campaign.

American Dream Tableau

In Little Leagues or Bigs, baseball fields are places to celebrate our national ideals--individual skills as part of a team effort where everyone knows the boundaries and plays hard to win but respects the rules.

This weekend, when we needed it more than ever, there was a tableau in Kansas City to bring tears to the most hardened observer of American life. A 22-year-old named Joba Chamberlain stepped out on the mound and began throwing 100-mile-an-hour pitches for the New York Yankees.

But the real drama was in the grandstands where his father, Harlan, in a wheelchair, surrounded by neighbors from Lincoln, Neb. was seeing his son in the Major Leagues for the first time.

The elder Chamberlain, afflicted by polio when he was nine months old, was born on a reservation of the Winnebago American Indian tribe and left with little use of his left arm, a severe limp and deafness in his left ear.

Nonetheless, as a single father supporting his family, he played catch with his son while sitting in the wheelchair until his hand stung so much he couldn’t stand it. "If it wasn't blowing or a million degrees below zero, we were out there," Harlan Chamberlain recalls.

Joba, born Justin, is now a sensation in the American League after pitching in eleven games without giving up a run. But his father was not watching with statistics in mind.

“I just want to reach out to my son and touch him,” he said. "I just want to hold him for a few minutes."