Ex-Cub Mark Grace’s career merits Hall of Fame nod

 

Bill Knight column for 6-28, 29 or 30, 2021

Six-foot, 2-inch left-handed first baseman Mark Grace led Major League Baseball with hits in the 1990s (1,754), but he’s been overlooked in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Grace, born 57 years ago this week in North Carolina, not only wasn’t accepted in his first year of eligibility (2009), sportswriters didn’t even give him enough votes to remain on future ballots.

It was a slap in the face and against a stellar career of a true character in the National Pastime, a fan favorite who players respected, and the game adored as much as he loved it.

In the ’90s, Grace said, “I play the game because I love it and I will continue to love it when I’m done playing.”

Grace’s love took a circuitous but steady route. His dad Gene worked at the Union Pacific Railroad, requiring the family to move 13 times in Grace’s youth. Finally settling in Southern California, Gracie played for Tustin (Calif.) High School, attended Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, and transferred to San Diego State, where his teammates included future Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn.

Grace was drafted by the Twins in 1984 but decided to stay in college. The Cubs drafted him a year later, and in 1985 the 21-year-old Grace arrived in Peoria, where he hit .342 for the Class-A Chiefs. The next year, he was promoted to AA Pittsfield (Mass.) and led the Eastern League in RBIs and was an All-Star and Most Valuable Player.

In 1988, he moved to AAA Des Moines for 21 games before getting called up to Chicago, finishing his first year hitting .296 and earning the Sporting News’ Rookie of the Year and a place on Baseball Digest’s rookie all-star team.

Gracie led the Cubs in RBIs in 1989, when the Cubs won the National League Eastern Division. In five playoff games against the Giants, Grace batted a stunning .647.

The 1990s saw Grace finishing each season in the top 10 in hits, singles, double and other stats, but in 2000, the Cubs front office declined to even make him an offer, so Grace signed with Arizona, helping the Diamondbacks win the 2001 World Series.

He retired at the end of 2003 with impressive career statistics: a .303 batting average, 173 home runs, more than 2,400 hits, and 1,146 RBIs, and he became a baseball commentator and hitting coach.

Off the field, Grace was named to participate in the Cubs’ new Marquee Sport Network’s roster of former Cubbies who provide color to broadcasts, along with former Cubs Rick Sutcliffe, Doug Glanville and Ryan Dempster, but last year he referred to one of his ex-wives as “dingbat” on the air (three times), and apologized for the stupid comment.

Also, he was arrested for Driving Under the Influence twice, in 2011 and 2012, and served a few months in jail for the offense in 2013.

That shouldn’t affect his place in baseball history.

Everyone makes serious mistakes, even in professional baseball: DUI defendants Tony LaRussa, (Twins coach) Neil Allen and Miguel Cabrera; domestic-violence culprits Jose Reyes, Addison Russell and Aroldis Chapman (the latter two from the Cubs 2016 championship team); other one-time Cubs who ran afoul of the law, including Mel Hall and Benito Santiago; terrific players such as Dwight Gooden, Denny McClain, Gary Sheffield and Darryl Strawberry. And don’t forget Fergie Jenkins, the Cubs great busted for drugs in 1980 and still inducted into the Hall in 1991, and Orlando Cepeda, arrested for drugs in 2007 and voted into Cooperstown in 1999.

The Hall of Fame should recognize talent on the diamond more than misbehavior in life.

Other ballplayers who, like Grace, recorded the most hits in a decade include Honus Wagner in the 1900s, Ty Cobb in the 1910s, Rogers Hornsby in the 1920s, Paul Waner in the 1930s, Lou Boudreau in the 1940s, and Richie Ashburn in the 1950s – each one in the Hall of Fame. (In fact, Grace and Pete Rose are the ONLY Major Leaguers to lead a decade in hits not elected to Cooperstown.)

Ballplayers need 75% of votes for induction and 5% to stay on future ballots, and in Grace’s only time of consideration, he got only 4.1%, so he was dropped for further eligibility.

Grace was a four-time Gold Glove winner (1992, ’93, ’95 and ’96), but at this point it seems baseball got the gold and Grace got the shaft.

The baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame should somehow correct this glaring oversight.

The rich escape tax obligations most of us fulfill

 

Bill Knight column for 6-24, 25 or 26, 2021

 Since the 1700s, the saying “It’s impossible to be sure of anything but death and taxes” has resonated.

Today, the rich are KILLING it when it comes to taxes.

The public furor about taxes the wealthy infrequently pay has died down some, but it’s less a resignation of inevitable injustice than realizing that unfairness exists, and wondering what to do about it.

Multibillionaires Bezos, Bloomberg, Buffett, Gates, Icahn, Murdoch, Musk, Soros, Zuckerberg, et. al.  pay little or no taxes, according to the first of a series of stories from ProPublica, the nonprofit journalism outfit that this month released the results of a months-long investigation of Internal Revenue Service documents from the 25 richest Americans. “The Secret IRA Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax” exposes the myth that all Americans pay a fair share.

By 2018, those 25 together were worth $1.1 trillion and their 2018 federal tax payments totaled $1.9 billion, which seems like a lot but actually is just 0.17%. (The top federal income tax rate is 37%.)

“There are two separate tax systems,” John Cassidy wrote in The New Yorker magazine. “One is for ordinary people, who make most of their money in wages and salaries. The other is for members of the gilded class, who make most of their money through the ownership of publicly traded assets, private businesses, and other forms of capital” – accumulated wealth, not earned wages.

ProPublica reporters Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel explained, “Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

“The ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.”

The ways the elite escape citizens’ obligation to support a nation that benefits them are legal; mostly from the rich’s reported income technically having no salaries (they instead enjoy proceeds from those other sources).

Or, as Jeff Bezos did when he paid zero in federal income taxes in 2007 (when his fortune increased $3.8 billion), he reported $46 million in income, which he offset with deductions such as “other expenses.”

“Our tax system is rigged for billionaires who don’t make their fortune through income, like working families do,” said U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “The evidence is abundantly clear: it is time for a wealth tax in America to make the ultra-rich finally pay their fair share.”

She’s proposed “a 2% tax on the net value of stocks, bonds and anything else of value exceeding a total of $260 million.”

About two-thirds of Americans think the very rich should pay more, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

President Biden proposes higher income taxes on the rich – “if you make more than $400,000 a year,” says former U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), “raising the top individual tax rate to 39.6% (where it was when George W. Bush took office.”

The lack of fairness is troubling, but also the results: less money to fund public investments.

“No one loves giving their hard-earned money to the government,” ProPublica concedes. “But the system works only as long as it’s perceived to be fair.

“The consequences of allowing the most prosperous to game the tax system have been profound,” they continue. “Federal budgets, apart from military spending, have been constrained for decades. Roads and bridges have crumbled, social services have withered, and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare is perpetually in question.”

The problem isn’t just dozens of plutocrats. Besides individual tax filings, the rich avoid sharing the costs through other advantages:

* Inheritance taxes: A married couple can leave $23.4 million to their beneficiaries without a penny due in income or capital-gains taxes, according to Mother Jones magazine.

* Corporations: 55 U.S. corporations paid no federal income tax last year, according to Public Citizen, which said, “The corporations keep winning while the American public loses.” (The top 1% own 51.8% of all stocks, the Federal Reserve says.)

* Private-equity firms: The $4.5 trillion industry – which borrows to buy companies where they make cuts and re-sell them burdened by big debts) – has avoided paying about $75 billion in taxes annually by creative ways to report managers’ income, the New York Times reports.

 

ProPublica is publishing its findings because “it is only by seeing specifics that the public can understand the realities of the country’s tax system.”

Streaming shows on music & race, offer delights & anger

 Bill Knight column for 6-21, 22 or 23, 2021

 

TV viewers who appreciate music from the 1960s and ’70s will enjoy the songs and senses in a couple of new shows streaming in the next few weeks, and people of all ages should appreciate two mini-series that depict the heritage – and horror – in our country’s past.

First, two documentaries – “Summer of Soul” (on Hulu) and “1971” (on Apple TV+) – feature the likes of Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, B.B. King, Gil Scott-Heron and more. Streaming offers more opportunity, more variety and MORE, period, so documentaries are flourishing, and three of four recommended productions are documentaries, and the fourth dramatizes facts from an historical novel.

All four spark a range of emotions: Joy and rage, tears and pride, doubt and confirmation.

* “Summer of Soul: Or … When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised,” the first directing effort by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is a film featuring never-released footage from 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, recalled as “the Black Woodstock,” having happened the same summer. Held over six weeks, the festival series celebrated history and culture, and Questlove’s film has performances by Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the 5th Dimension, Herbie Mann, Mahalia Jackson, the Chambers Brothers and more, with security by the Black Panther Party, plus recent observations by Chris Rock, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jesse Jackson and others. It won the August Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

* “1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything,” co-directed by Asif Kapadia, Danielle Peck and James Rogan, in eight episodes features a mix of music and comments by Marvin Gaye, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, War, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Joni Mitchell, Bill Withers, Bob Marley, Elton John, Graham Nash, Carole King, Jim Morrison, Tina Turner …) and archival remarks from John Lennon and behind-the-scenes moments of Bob Dylan rehearsing with George Harrison), all to focus on that fractured time.

 “There was a huge divide in America because of Viet Nam,” says Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde, who was a student at Kent State when soldiers shot student protestors, killing four. “Shocked! Yeah!”

* “Exterminate All the Brutes” (HBO Max), directed by Raoul Peck (who did the acclaimed “I Am Not Your Negro,” based on James Baldwin’s works), will stir different reflections, letting audiences bear witness to six centuries of hate and brutality based on colonialism and White supremacy, from the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition through the genocide of Native Americans after Columbus and the enslavement of Africans to the Holocaust and anti-immigrant sentiments still alive through neo-Nazis and other Right-wingers.

Stemming in part from Europe’s legacy of racism against the Irish, Slavs, Jews and Roma (sometimes known by the derogatory term Gypsies), the four-part series, which has villainous dramatizations by actor Josh Hartnett, can be overwhelming, but it should leave an indelible impression.

 “You already know enough,” said the late historian Sven Lindquist. “What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”

* Finally, “The Underground Railroad” (Amazon Prime), directed by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), is a stirring narrative following people portrayed by Aaron Pierre and Thuso Mbedu escaping bondage from Georgia through South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. It’s emotional and difficult to watch, even as the actors seem to peer directly at us, as if to say, “See?”

Throughout, it’s hoped that glimpses of evil may help generate empathy and understanding.

Seeing and hearing such productions makes one wonder whether there are occasional exceptions to FCC chair Newton Minow’s 1961 description of television as a “vast wasteland.”