Nice Gun You've Got There, Sir

War requires no motivation, but appears to be ingrained in human nature and is even valued as something noble.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795)

To declare war “normal” does not eliminate the pathologies of behavior, the enormities of devastation, the unbearable pain suffered in bodies and souls. Nor does the idea that war is normal justify it. . . . Though “war is normal” shocks our morality and wounds our idealism, it stands solidly as a statement of fact.

James Hillman (1926- )
A Terrible Love of War (2004)

Late in the afternoon on Saturday, May 21, I watched the Preakness Stakes on TV. As you know, the Preakness is the second of three horse races comprising the Triple Crown. It follows the Kentucky Derby by two weeks and precedes the Belmont Stakes by three. It takes place at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. This year marked the 136th running of the Preakness, and it paid the winner a million dollars.

In it’s inimitable manner, each year the television networks turn the Preakness (and the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes) into a super-spectacle, the coverage beginning two or three hours before the start of the race. Every conceivable aspect of preparation is the subject of some kind of reporting, from the last workout and final bath of the favored horses to locker room interviews of the leading jockeys as they’re dressing for the race. The coverage goes on and on and on.

Everyone in the crowd of over a hundred thousand seems to enjoy the color, the exuberant atmosphere, and the sheer excitement of this esteemed race — not to mention the drinks, single malt scotch for the well-to-do, bottomless mugs of beer for the blue-collared infielders. On this warm spring afternoon, most of the folks in the wealthy seats are dressed to the hilt: the men in blue blazers or cream-colored suits and yellow ties and many of the women showing cleavage and sporting large colorful, cumbersome hats. The thoroughbred horses are some of the most beautiful animals on the face of the earth. The Preakness is a big deal for horse lovers and sports fans of all stripes, even those like me who don’t know a thing about horses or horse racing, but who nevertheless like to watch the horses and the jockeys and every year try to take in each of the three Triple Crown races.

About 30 minutes before the start of the race, Bob Costas, NBC’s premier sportscaster, stands on a dais where the winning owner will soon receive the coveted Woodlawn Vase (pronounced correctly, "Vase" rhymes with “blahs”) and where the winning horse will be draped with the traditional blanket of Black-Eyed Susans, Maryland’s state flower. Costas says something important about the race, but I’ve forgotten what it was. Later, when the time would come for presenting the Vase and the flowers, the dais would be crowded with owners, family members, the jockey, sportswriters, the Governor of Maryland, and Bob Costas. At this point, however, Bob Costas stands there by himself.

Or almost by himself. For behind him at the rear of the dais, the only other person present, is a soldier standing at rigid attention, his presence ignored by Costas. The solder’s resplendent dark blue uniform is adorned with medals and multi-colored ribbons that cover most of the left side of his chest. He also wears white gloves and a military hat with a polished black visor. I think I spotted a paratroopers’ badge pinned somewhere among his medals, but I can’t be sure. He is a handsome, African-American man. He remains stolidly expressionless and never moves a muscle. He never looks anywhere but straight ahead. In his right gloved hand, he is holding the top part of a gun, a rifle of some kind, the base of which rests on the floor of the dais. Mounted on the gun, directly in front of his chest, is a long silver-colored, shiny, bayonet. It gleams in the bright Maryland sunshine.

Taking this in, I paused and, forgetting Bob Costas, said to myself: “O.K. What’s wrong with this picture? What the hell is a guy with a gun and a bayonet doing smack in the middle of a frigging horse race?”

Well, I thought, you can bet he isn’t there to protect anyone, certainly not Bob Costas. And he isn’t there to protect any particular thing, not even the Woodlawn Vase. They have security people to do things like that, guys in plain dark suits and sunglasses, guys that aren’t exactly known for walking around carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. He is there, I concluded, as a symbol, as a slick and subtle reminder that we Americans are warriors, that we’re a nation of warriors.

Oh, my. A warrior nation? Yep, that's right. Think about it. We Americans have a non-stop torrid love affair with war. We can hardly do without it; we are the military-industrial complex par excellence. It's become so commonplace that we don't realize it, but the fact is that we’ve been at war continuously for the past 70 years and we don’t show signs of stopping. As the Indian writer Arundhati Roy noted soon after we invaded Iraq: “Since the Second World War, the United States has been at war with or has attacked, among other countries, Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.” [Arundhati Roy, War Talk (Cambridge 2003)].

I mean, really. A gun and a bayonet at a horse race?

"Alternatives to Waterboarding"

On Thursday, May 12, the Traverse City Record-Eagle ran a political cartoon on its editorial page as it does most every day. The cartoon, entitled “Alternatives to Waterboarding,” depicts a hooded person bound to a chair being interrogated by two military-type men, apparently American soldiers. The two interrogators are positioned on either side of the prisoner, one sitting and one standing. A single light bulb, hanging from a cord above the prisoner, illuminates the prisoner and one of the interrogators; the other stands in the shadows. The standing interrogator holds a hand puppet in the shape of a small rabbit or bunny with long ears and a funny face.

The sitting interrogator says this to the prisoner: “OK Muhammad — If you don’t tell us about the next terrorist plot I’ll instruct Mr. Bunny to zubber your tummy.” The cartoon was created by Brian Fairrington and apparently syndicated by Dayrl Cagle’s Political Cartoon Index. It may be viewed at: http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons-/PCcartoons-/fairrington.asp.

After thinking about the cartoon and discussing it with some friends, I wrote Mr. Fairrington the following email message on Monday, May 16:

Mr. Fairrington -

Your cartoon, "Alternatives to Waterboarding" appeared in the Traverse City Record-Eagle on Thursday, May 12. Perhaps there's an irony we missed, but my friends and I were appalled at the message you appeared to communicate. For one thing, the cartoon is racially and religiously offensive, and for another it exalts torture.

Did we miss something? If not, your cartoon conveys about as stupid a message as we can imagine.

Steve Morse

Later that day, I received the following reply from Mr. Fairrington:

OK, so you disagree with the premise of the cartoon. However, I fail to see how the cartoon is "racially and religiously offensive.." Can you explain this?

Soon after that, I replied to Mr. Fairrington as follows:

It's racially and religiously offensive because it uses a captive named "Muhammad" as a stereotypical terrorist. Muhammad is the founder of the religion of Islam and is considered by Muslims to be a messenger and prophet of God, on the one hand, and the name "Muhammad" is very common in the Islamic and Arab Middle East and throughout the world, on the other.

Yes, I do disagree with your premise that torture is just fine. — "I'll tell Mr. Bunny to zubber your tummy?" Whew.

I heard nothing further from Mr. Fairrington.

Had Mr. Fairrington inquired regarding the cartoon’s potential for irony, I would have replied that had it been so intended, the irony would have been in the depiction of the two interrogators as complete idiots (fat, big noses, shaved heads, etc.). They could easily be said to fit “Abu Gharib”-types — dopey, domineering, and morally depraved. The message, then, would have been that anyone who considers waterboarding anything other than a form of torture and talks of “zubber[ing] your tummy” as a legitimate alternative interrogation technique is indeed stupid.

But there was no irony. As Mr. Fairrington revealed, there was nothing ironical about his depiction of the interrogators. It was intended to say just what it appeared to say. It was straightforward and, well, according to him, accurate. Apparently he intended to portray American interrogators as torturers (and stupid ones at that), to compare waterboarding to playing with bathtub toys, and to depict persons with names like "Muhammad" as stereotypical terrorists.

All of which, of course, is nonsense. As for stereotypes, they're just that, nothing more; and often as not, they're wrong. The writer-comedian Lance Crouther once said: "There's a stereotype that black people are lazy. I don't know if that's true, but I know that a lot of white people went all the way to Africa to get out of doing work."

So Much for the News Today, April 29, 2011

The Business Section of the Record-Eagle today carried three main stories. First, Exxon’s profits in the first quarter of 2011 are up 69 percent, by nearly $11 billion. The nation’s second largest oil company, Chevron Corporation, is expected to announce a 25 percent increase in profits to $5.69 billion for the same period. The article also noted that the price of a gallon of gas is now above $4 in eight states and the District of Columbia. Second, Chrysler is set to repay $7.5 billion in bailout money received from the U.S. and Canadian governments. The payments will be made from a refinancing arrangement involving new bank loans and a bond sale that will take place later this year. Finally, Dow Chemical has reported a first quarter increase of 34 percent in net income over last year on revenue that increased 10 percent to $14.73 billion during the first three months of the year.

In Michigan news, after “an hour of spirited debate,” the Michigan House of Representatives voted to slash business taxes by $1.7 billion over the next two years “while shifting the burden to seniors, children and the poor.” “Instead of paying about $2 billion annually into the state’s general fund,” the article continued, “businesses would pay about $300 million. Only about a third of businesses would pay the corporate income tax. Businesses would continue to pay property taxes.” The vote was 56-53 along party lines, although six Republicans voted against it. (All three Republican representatives from our general area voted for it.) The bill, pushed by Governor Snyder, now goes to the GOP-led Senate.

Meanwhile, on the front page, the Record-Eagle reported that the Grand Traverse Board of Commissioners changed their minds and voted to reverse an earlier decision to yank 22 parking meters from in front of the Government Center. A week before the meters had been ordered removed on the motion of Commissioner Dick Thomas after he had been ticketed for a parking violation.

Our legislators at work for us. Right?

Not.

High School Drug Sweeps: Legal? A Good Idea?

On November 18 at the Library in Traverse City, the ACLU of Northwest Michigan presented a lecture on the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The speaker was Mark Fancher, a staff attorney and director of the ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Work Group which in 2009 issued a report entitled, “Reclaiming Michigan’s Throwaway Kids: Students Trapped in the School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

After the lecture, I was approached by a parent of a student at Traverse City Central High School on a related subject. I was asked if I had heard about the “drug sweep” that had taken place at the school the day before. I had not. The man said that though his daughter had not been “busted,” he wondered whether such a sweep, conducted with drug-sniffing dogs, was legal.

Reading about it in the paper the following morning, I guessed that this parent’s question might be one on the mind of many other parents, students, and interested members of the community. Here is the answer.

Searches of students by school officials on school property are governed, like all searches, by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That Amendment does not prohibit all searches, only those that are “unreasonable.” An illegal search occurs “when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.” The starting point, of course, is that there must be what the courts consider to be an actual “search.”

The current state of the law is that a dog sniff of an inanimate object is not a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. For example, the Supreme Court has held that the use of a trained canine to sniff unattended luggage is not a search. It is different, however, when dogs are used to sniff a person’s body, mainly because the level of intrusiveness is greater (as everyone knows, dogs often sniff parts of the body that cause personal embarrassment, and some persons have an irrational fear of dogs). Moreover, people naturally consider their own bodies to be private — private to them — and they feel that expectation of privacy should be respected by others, most certainly by government authorities (including police and school officials).

Many “drug sweeps” conducted in school buildings are thus permissible under the Constitution because they are conducted by drug-sniffing dogs of school lockers, previously detached backpacks, and cars parked in school parking lots, and not of a student’s person. With respect to student lockers, courts have generally held that they belong to the school and therefore students do not have a legitimate expectation of privacy for items stored in them. And with respect to backpacks, students cannot be ordered to remove them from their person in order that the dogs can sniff them; that would violate their Fourth Amendment rights.

That’s a general statement of the law: the drug sweep at Central High School was probably legal. But was it a good idea?

As Mark Fancher made clear in his talk last week, the “school-to-prison pipeline” is a disorder in our educational system, currently of epidemic proportions, that is the result of a number of factors, one of which is the criminalization of students. Many persons my age and younger went through their entire 12 years of public education without ever experiencing the presence of police officers in the school building; today, that experience is commonplace and, as the ACLU report indicates, the police are often called in to handle what were once considered routine disciplinary matters. As Traverse City police Captain Steve Morgan told the Record-Eagle, “Usually the schools will request [a drug sweep] once or twice a year. We never go unless the school officials request us. We’ve probably been to all the area secondary schools at one time or another.”

But what exactly is the effect on the students, whether or not they are busted? Does it encourage trust and respect between students and teachers, between students and administrators, between young people and the police? What does it feel like when you’re 16 years old to be treated much like a criminal — which is to say, to be ordered around by police officers and to have your locker, your backpack, or your vehicle randomly searched without your permission?

Apart from the anger and resentment it likely caused, was the drug sweep cost effective? At Central High last week there were police officers and police dogs from three counties effecting a lock down, disrupting classes and interfering with other activities — for what? The paper reported that the sweep netted one arrest: one student was charged with possessing about two grams of marijuana. Though the belongings of every student may not have been searched, it still amounted to one arrest in a student body of 1,500. One out of 1,500 (an arrest percentage of 0.067%) is not a particularly good effectiveness indicator, is it? Now I’m not so naive to assume that none of the students at Central High ever uses marijuana, but it’s also clear that the school does not have a widespread, over-the-top drug problem on its hands either. Simply put, it was not a good use of taxpayer money.

Nelson Mandela said: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Think about it, administrators, teachers, and parents at Central High School. You can bet the students are.



[Note: The 74-page report of the Racial Justice Work Group of the ACLU of Michigan is available for downloading at www.aclumich.org.]

Department of Hilarious Moments:Maintaining a Sense of Humor in Difficult Times

The well-known and well-respected war correspondent, Dexter Filkins, writing in the New York Times on Tuesday of this past week, reported on the secret talks that have been going on for the last three months between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war in Afghanistan. The talks seemed to be showing promise, Filkins wrote, “if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Askhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.”

Mr. Mansour was considered so critical to the success of the talks that NATO and Afghan officials held three meetings with him, he was flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and taken to the presidential palace for an official audience with President Hamid Karzai and, to top it off, he was given “a sizeable sum of money to take part in the talks — and to help persuade him to return.” (The amount is estimated to have been in the low six figures.) Even General Petraeus was on board, commenting favorably on the progress the talks were making with his participation, and Mr. Filkens himself was cautioned not to reveal the presence of Mr. Mansour at the negotiations for security reasons.

Then something strange and unexpected happened. At a recent meeting in Kandahar a man who knew Mr. Mansour personally was brought into the negotiating room and given a seat at the table. What followed probably went something like this:

The NATO official said to the man, “Please present yourself to Mr. Mansour.”

“Fine,” he replied, “but where’s Mr. Mansour?”

“He’s right there. He’s seated across from you.”

“Er, no, sir, he’s not. That’s not Mr. Mansour. I’ve never seen that man before. I don’t know who he is.”

[The reaction of the NATO official has not been released and is considered classified.]

There you have it. As it turned out, Mullalh Askhtar Muhammad Mansour was not really Mullah Askhtar Muhammad Mansour after all.

Dexter Filkins was thus compelled to conclude: “In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.”

Well, okay, you say, but what happened to the imposter after his cover was blown? The answer: to complete this military version of the keystone cops, somehow the guy was left unattended and he simply walked back over the border into Pakistan into the mountains from whence he came. Nobody (on our side) knows where he is — or, for that matter, who he is.

After the fact, an unnamed Western diplomat said, “It’s funny but not funny because the consequences are so staggering.”

To the contrary, I know full well that these negotiations were at least thought to have been important stuff, but come on, you all, we have to admit it — this episode in the war in Afghanistan is totally, flat-out hilarious.

Sources: Dexter Filkins, “Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor: Setback in NATO Effort: Man Purporting to Be Insurgents’ No. 2 Got Western Money,” New York Times A1 (November 23, 2010); Maureen Dowd, “The Great Game Imposter,” New York Times A23 (November 24, 2010).

Elect This Man!

I welcomed the news that a man by the name of Jason Gillman is running for the Grand Traverse County Commission. Jason, it appears, is a Republican and “a Tea Party activist.” Recently, he turned his attention to what is known as the state’s “Bridge Card” program which provides food assistance to the poor.

Jason doesn’t like the program. “The shame is the overall mismanagement of the environment that Michigan’s in,” he said. “A little too much government involvement has caused what we’re in.” More specifically, Jason says that “I don’t think folks should be buying soda.”

For the moment, forget that 6,117 residents of Grand Traverse County, Jason’s constituency, depend on the program. Forget that over the past year those enrolled in our five-county area increased by 33%, and that the number enrolled in Leelanau County alone, where I live, increased by 47%. Forget that unemployment rates soared this year in the region (the rate in Grand Traverse County jumped from 11.6% in 2009 to 12.4% this year, and reached 14.9% in Benzie County this summer). Forget that nationally the ranks of the long-term unemployed exploded by over 400% - from 1.3 million in December 2007, when the recession began, to 6.8 million last June. Forget that in 2008-09 median household incomes plummeted in Michigan a whopping 6.9%, which was more than twice the national average of minus 2.9% and greater than any other state. Forget that the co-chairman of Food Rescue of Northwest Michigan said recently that "there doesn't seem to be a limit to the need." Forget that a Kingsley woman told the Record-Eagle that, without the Bridge Card program, “We wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t be able to feed my kids.” Just forget all that.

Jason’s political and economic ideology provides that the poor should be reduced to and assisted only at a subsistence level, if at all. They shouldn’t have old televisions, worn-out electrical appliances, beat-up cars, decent clothing, or adequate health care. Or, for that matter, enough to eat.

But Jason’s over-the-top really brilliant idea was captured in the following report in Sunday’s Record-Eagle: “Gillman would rather see more people go to work and fewer rely on state assistance.”

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that by now someone else would have thought of that! I mean, really. Like most Tea Partiers, hey, this guy Jason is a frigging genius!

So don’t waste a moment, Grand Traverse County! Get him on board the County Commission! Vote for Jason Gillman!

Out at Home, Out for the Season: The Play that Cost the Tigers the 2010 Division Title

Everyone knows that Jim Leyland is a great baseball manager. He’s managed in over 2,800 games in the major leagues for the Pirates (eleven years), the Marlins (two years), the Rockies (one year), and the Tigers (four-and-a-half years and counting). He’s only the seventh manager in history to win pennants in both the National and American Leagues and a three-time Manager of the Year Award winner. He’s also a very good guy, respected, admired, and well liked by players, owners, and members of the press.

But, you know, even Jim Leyland makes mistakes. He made a fairly big one during a night game with the Toronto Blue Jays on July 24. And Leyland’s veteran third base coach, Gene Lamont, made an even bigger one.

Here’s what happened: Magglio Ordonez, the Tiger’s popular veteran right fielder and the team’s second best hitter, was suffering the effects of a sprained ankle and was unable to play the outfield. But he could still swing the bat and Leyland wanted him in there. At this point in the season, considering the status of the American League Central Division (the Tigers, Twins and the White Sox were in a three-way fight for the lead), every game was important. For several games Magglio had been in the line-up as the designated hitter, and Leyland decided to play him again in that role. This meant, of course, that Magglio would play offense and hit, but he would not play defense where, in his position in right field, he’d have to do a lot of running.

In the third inning, rookie centerfielder Austin Jackson singled. Magglio walked. At this point, Magglio was no longer a hitter; he’d become a runner. But he was not supposed to run. It wasn’t that he couldn’t run at all, it’s just that he’d have to run on his bum right ankle. The issue before Leyland thus became whether or not to remove Magglio for a pinch-runner. Doing that, of course, would remove him — and his bat — from the lineup for the remainder of the game. Leyland made the decision to leave Magglio in the game.

Next up was the clean-up hitter, Miguel Cabrera, who many regard as the best offensive player in baseball right now and who is a candidate for the coveted Triple Crown (first in batting average, runs batted in, and home runs over an entire season). At the time, Miguel was hitting around .349, had about 24 home runs, about 85 rbi’s and, in addition, led the Major Leagues in doubles with about 32. All of this meant that there was a very good likelihood that Cabrera would put the ball into play and turn Magglio into a baserunner, big time. Nobody seemed to be thinking about it, but Magglio was put in a very vulnerable situation.

And that’s just what happened. Miguel Cabrera lined a double into the gap off the wall in right-center, and Magglio began circling the bases, running as fast as he possibly could. Depending on how far and where the ball is hit, how quickly it is recovered by an outfielder and how quickly and accurately it is relayed by an infielder to the catcher, runners on first often score on a double. But not always; it depends on all those factors. It also depends on the speed of the baserunner. Which depends, in large part, on the condition of his wheels.

Jackson, starting from second base, scored easily. However, it was evident — or should have been — that an attempt by Magglio to score from first on Cabrera’s double would, at the very least, wind up in a close play at home. Nonetheless, as he approached third base, Gene Lamont, coaching at third base, waived Magglio home. As the play continued to develop and the ball was being relayed home, there was no doubt — to the experienced Lamont or anyone else watching — that Magglio would have to slide in order to avoid being tagged out. Lamont’s decision to push Magglio to score on Cabrera’s double — the second coaching decision affecting the play — put Magglio at risk even more than the earlier decision to allow him to run the bases. And if the first decision was questionable, this one was disastrous.

Why was Magglio placed at risk by these decisions? The answer to that is pretty obvious. Magglio was put at risk when he was made a baserunner because he had a sprained ankle, an injury that occurs when the ligaments in the ankle are forced beyond their normal range of motion and are torn. Ligaments are tough, elastic bands of fibrous tissue that connect one bone to another and help stabilize joints, preventing excessive movement. Magglio was at risk because he was put into a position where he would be required to run, and possibly run hard, and where the stability of his ankle would very likely be tested to the max.

Well, we now know how it turned out. Magglio was laboring as he rounded third and headed for home. He did have to slide, which he did, and he was tagged out, about ten feet from home plate — it wasn’t even close. (He shouldn’t have been sent home even had he been in the best of health.) Far more important, however, was that in the process of sliding the cleats on Magglio’s right foot dug slightly into the dirt around home plate resulting in his ankle being again twisted. His ankle ligaments not being sufficient to withstand the trauma and maintain stability of the joint, Magglio suffered a fracture to his already injured right ankle. He will be out of action for six to eight weeks, and will probably not return until after September 1.

After the game, Johnny Damon (who, because of a bad back, also hasn’t been playing recently) told reporters: “I saw his right foot go another direction and I was hoping it was just a sprain, but unfortunately it was more severe. Anytime you lose a guy like that, it’s huge. He’s the No. 3 hitter. He’s that bridge from me to Cabrera, so it’s tough. And the length of time we’re going to lose him — it’s six to eight weeks. So we know that could very well be the [end of his] season.”

And, most likely, it was also the end of the Tigers’ season, the end of their hopes to win a division title this year and to get into post-season play. Leyland couldn’t have known it at the time he let Magglio run the bases, but three innings later Carlos Guillen, the Tiger’s star second baseman, would suffer a right calf strain that would place him on the 15-day disabled list. On the other hand, it was known at the time that Brandon Inge, the able and likeable Tigers’ third baseman, in a game with the Texas Rangers six days earlier had suffered a broken hand after being struck by a pitch. Inge was not expected to return for four-to-six weeks.

Thus, in the course of a week, three of the Tiger’s first seven hitters wound up out of commission for extended periods of time. Moreover, with the trading deadline approaching on July 31, there was no way the damage could be repaired simply by engaging in one or more “rent-a-player”-type trades that have recently become part of the baseball scene. (These trades involve a contending team sending secondary players and/or minor league prospects, often good ones, to other teams for established players who will become free agents at the end of the season. The star players in the trades may only play for the contender until their contracts expire at the end of the season; thus the term “rent-a-player.”)

In a post-game interview, Jim Leyland told reporters that “We’ve got to revamp this whole thing now. I haven’t even talked to [general manager Dave Dombrowski] yet. I have no idea who’s coming up [from the minors to replace Ordonez and Guillen]. I have no idea what we’re doing.”

The Tigers were suddenly in a terrible position, particularly because they’ve relied so heavily this season on rookies — Austin Jackson, Brennan Boesch, Scott Sizemore, Danny Worth, Alex Avila and Robbie Weinhardt. Later on, Dombrowski said that he had no intention of trading away these guys or every other good prospect in the Tiger’s organization for end-of-the-season starters in an effort that would be problematic, at best. Arguably, the Tigers needed another good bat in the lineup to make it to the play-offs even before the injuries occurred, and while you can sometimes fill a spot, or even a couple of spots with prospects-for-veteran type trades, there’s only a slim possibility of repairing the wide-spread damage the Tigers have suffered that way.

On July 30, in the first game of a series in Boston with the Red Sox, Jhonny Peralta, just obtained from Cleveland in a trade, homered twice that night in his first appearance as a Tiger. While the Tigers held on to win, staving off a grand slam home run by David Ortiz in the 9th inning, I noticed that the last three batters for the Tigers were hitting .187, .201, and .210, respectively. This at a time when 31% of the Tigers’ run production was coming from one man, Miguel Cabrera, and when the Tigers had won only 4 of their last 18 games since the All-Star break when they were in first place in the division. (They’re now in a free-fall, 7.0 games behind the White Sox and 6.5 behind the Twins.) With an offensive weakness that profound, the only reason that the Tigers are hanging on to third place is that Kansas City and Cleveland (the other two teams in the Central Division) are playing so poorly. But now it’s virtually impossible that the Tigers will be able win the division this year.

Admittedly, this analysis has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Nonetheless, though Leyland’s decision to let Ordonez run ahead of Cabrera was not terrible, it was, I think, a mistake. But hindsight or not, Lamont’s decision to waive him home was surely a mistake and was indeed terrible.

So it was. The decisions regarding how to play Magglio Ordonez on July 24 in the game against the Blue Jays were deadly for the Tigers’ hopes for the post-season this year. Once a contender, they now have a very little chance of passing the Twins and the White Sox, and because of their mediocre record (they’re only playing around .500 for the season) they’re already out of the wild card race.

And those decisions didn’t do Magglio Ordonez much good either. Not only was he enjoying another very good year, but at the time of his injury he was 175 plate appearances of 54 games shy of the vesting option in his contract that would guarantee him $15 million in 2011. As one reporter pointed out, the odds of that happening at this point are somewhere between slim and none.

It’s likely that very few fans realized just how important those decisions were on July 24th — both occurring in a game played two-and-a-half months before the end of the season. But they probably meant the end of a successful season in 2010 for both the Tigers and for Magglio Ordonez.