USA Today - 01.11.2019

NEWS USA TODAY z FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019 z 7A

Vice President/Local News and Audience Development: Amalie Nash

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Chief Operating Officer

BARBARA WALL

USA TODAY Publisher

President, USA TODAY NETWORK

MARIBEL PEREZ WADSWORTH

Executive Editor/News: Jeff Taylor

Executive Editor/Audience: Patty Michalski

Editorial Page Editor: Bill Sternberg

USA TODAY

Editor in Chief

NICOLE CARROLL

“USA TODAY hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation.” – Allen H. Neuharth, Founder, Sept. 15, 1982

OPINION

MIKE THOMPSON/USA TODAY NETWORK

One of the highlights of my child-

hood came in 1969 when the New York

Mets miraculously overcame their his-

toric awfulness and defeated the heavi-

ly favored Baltimore Orioles in the

World Series.

Now, a half-century later, baseball

bliss has arrived once again with the

Washington Nationals’ improbable

World Series victory over the heavily

favored Houston Astros.

Let’s start this tale of infrequent

gratification in the first inning of my

life, so to speak.

As a boy growing up in upstate New

York in the 1960s, you were either a fan

of the Mets or the Yankees. My friends

were all backers of the Yankees, the jug-

gernaut of Mantle and Maris. I cast my

lot with the woeful expansion team for-

mally known as the Metropolitans.

Rooting for the underdog

Why I did this is hard to remember.

Maybe I just wanted to be contrary.

Maybe I liked rooting for the underdog.

Or maybe because my parents, who

hailed from Brooklyn, saw the Mets as

filling the bitter void left when the

Dodgers decamped to Los Angeles.

In any event, as my friends celebrat-

ed pennant after pennant, I suffered.

The early Mets weren’t just terrible;

they were historically terrible. In their

first season, they lost three games for

every game they won. “Can’t anyone

here play this game?” manager Casey

Stengel famously moaned.

By the late 1960s, however, the Mets

were approaching respectability,

thanks to players such as pitchers Tom

Seaver and Jerry Koosman and out-

fielders Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee.

In the summer of 1969, the summer

of the moon landing and Woodstock,

the Amazin’s began their pennant run.

Back then, children, it was difficult to

follow the race on TV, at least where I

lived. There was a “game of the week,”

which might or might not include your

favorite team. So I tracked the Mets on

a device known as a transistor radio.

After so much disappointment, the

Mets’ unexpected championship was

all the sweeter — even as some of my

Yankee-loving friends annoyingly be-

came fair-weather Mets fans.

The following year, I made the Little

League 13-year-old all star team, and I

figured my career path was set. I’d sign

a big contract with the Mets and play

before adoring crowds at Shea Stadi-

um. This delusion was shattered a few

years later, however, when I was uncer-

emoniously cut from the high school

varsity team. Plan B — journalism —

quickly became Plan A.

In 1980, after moving from New York

to Washington, D.C., to pursue oppor-

tunities in the news business, I

promptly joined the local Mets fan club.

A few years later, when my wife, Ellen,

was pregnant with our first child, I

semi-seriously lobbied for the name

Cleon. By the 1990s, however, my ardor

for the Mets — and baseball in general

— began to wane. The games were too

long. The players were juiced. The 1994

strike was a particular low point. As it

dragged on, I tried to explain the salary-

cap dispute to my 8-year-old son, Scott

(not Cleon). He pondered this for a mo-

ment and replied, “Dad, you mean they

get paidto play baseball?”

Then, in 2005, Washington got its

first major league team since 1971. I

joined a group to share season tickets.

And I got hooked all over again.

To everyone’s amazement, the old

Montreal Expos, repackaged as the

Washington Nationals, finished the

season’s first half in first place before

fading. ThatSept. 1, we saw a promising

rookie get his first major league hit. His

name was Ryan Zimmerman.

Another team of destiny

In the ensuing years, however, there

was little to cheer for. The Nats went

through a few seasons when they were

almost unwatchably bad, like the old

Mets. The only consolation was Fa-

ther’s Day outings to the new Nats Park

where three generations bonded (and

listened to the grandparents complain

about the concession-stand prices).

The fallow years led to top draft

choices, which led to winning teams,

which led to a series of crushing disap-

pointments in the first round of the

playoffs. Last year, the Nats didn’t even

make the playoffs, and this season,

thanks to injuries and a toxic bullpen,

they started 19-31.

Then, astoundingly, everything

turned around. Clubhouse chemistry

improved, as did the bullpen. The won-

derfully diverse players danced in the

dugout after home runs. The fans

clapped to infectious “Baby Shark”

singalongs. Suddenly, these Nats

seemed to be a team of destiny.

Through the team’s post-season

run, I wore my lucky Nationals shirt ev-

ery game because, well, they played

better when I did. Astonishing come-

back followed astonishing comeback.

And now Ryan Zimmerman & Co. are

World Champions, a unifying force in

an otherwise polarized capital. The

“Let’s go Nats!” chants echoed the

“Let’s go Mets!” chants of my youth.

1969. 
      
      
      
      2019. I can hardly wait until
      
      
      
      


1970. 
      

Bill Sternberg is editor of the editori-

al page.

Baseball bliss,

every 50 years

Let’s go Mets! (1969)

Let’s go Nats! (2019)

Bill Sternberg

USA TODAY

Pitcher Max Scherzer hoists the trophy

on Wednesday. ERIK WILLIAMS/USA TODAY

YOUR SAY

I am writing in response to the
Oct. 28 article “Hospital safety fix tar-
gets maternal mortality rate for post-
partum hemorrhage, preeclampsia.”
I’ve been a lawyer for 16 years cov-
ering medical malpractice and birth in-
jury. The article includes truthful and
timely insight. While it may seem un-
fathomable that this is still an issue in
2019, hospitals in the United States

must be held accountable in meeting

safety standards. Patients must ask

questions, no matter how basic or tri-

vial. The reality is women still die, or

suffer great injury, in childbirth due to

preventable circumstances. It’s time

for hospitals and medical facilities to

not only meet, but exceed, mandates.

We commend USA TODAY for pub-

lishing this article and initiating a con-

versation, and ultimately action.

Daniel Harwin

North Miami, Fla.

Hospitals must be held accountable

LETTERS

[email protected]

T

he process of impeachment
has begun. The House has or-
dered “committees to continue
their ongoing investigations as
part of the existing House of Repre-
sentatives inquiry into whether suffi-
cient grounds exist for the House of
Representatives to exercise its consti-
tutional power to impeach Donald John
Trump, president of the United States
of America.”
Impeachment is now virtually inev-
itable. Speaker of the House Nancy Pe-
losi previewed the major charge that
will be laid against the president —
abuse of power — when she made re-
peated reference to Trump’s belief that
Article II of the Constitution allows him
to do whatever he wants.
Thursday’s vote was anticlimactic.
But it is historic in three respects:
zObviously, it is leading us toward
only the third attempted removal of a
sitting president in the modern era.
While impeachment articles did not
reach a floor vote in the case of Richard
Nixon, Trump is, to put it mildly, un-
likely to resign, so we will have the sec-
ond Senate trial of a president in two
decades.
zWe have never put a president on
trial for endangering national security,
but this will be an undercurrent in the
abuse of power accusation against
Trump. Andrew Johnson was im-
peached for defying the law and for be-
ing areprehensible human being. (Fer-
vent Trump critics probably would like
to impose that latter condition, but
overall odiousness is not the standard
for removing a president.) Nixon was
forced from office for abuse of power,
among other charges. Bill Clinton was
in the dock for lying and obstruction.
zTrump will be charged with all of
those things, and rightly so. But it
should shock us, if we are still capable
of shock, that he engaged in these im-
peachable acts as a way of placing his
own interests above the national inter-
est. Johnson, Nixon and Clinton were
at war with their domestic opponents.
Trump weakened Ukraine, a friend at
war with Russia, our worst foreign ene-
my. Trump did so purely because he
wanted the new president of a country
under siege to perform a personal ser-
vice for Trump in exchange for help and
military aid that was already autho-
rized by the elected representatives of
the United States of America.

Saving their skins

Other presidents have engaged in
offenses against the Constitution to
save their skins when caught in various
kinds of wrongdoing. Trump has at-
tacked the Constitution for his own
gain while endangering national secu-
rity. This astonishing, almost surreal
fact will itself make this impeachment
like no other confrontation between
the branches of U.S. government.
This is not only the beginning of im-
peachment. It could be the beginning of
the end of the Republican Party.
This is not because Trump will be re-
moved. To the contrary, the Republican
base — which will embrace the argu-

ments of congressional Republicans

about fairness and “Soviet-style” hear-

ings — may decide to vote for Trump

again in 2020 against all evidence and

reason, as many of them did in 2016.

Rather, this is the end of the Repub-

lican Party as the representative of any

kind of coherent political movement.

The end of the GOP as anything but a

cult of personality has been in the cards

for some time now, as Trump has

crashed through one constitutional

barrier after another while some Re-

publicans defended him and others

dithered, hoping to avoid the wrath of

their most vocal primary voters.

Smashed standards

Trump has destroyed so many

norms of American life we once took for

granted that there is no space to list

them all, from the denigration of veter-

ans to the adoration of dictators, from

abandoning the basic dignity we ex-

pect from a chief executive to inuring

us to lies so numerous that fact-check-

ers have been nearly defeated in their

efforts to keep up.

Trashing the foundations of our po-

litical life, however, is not an impeach-

able offense. Republicans, of course,

are arguing that this is nothing more

than an attempt by Trump’s opponents

to overturn the 2016 election, and if the

only basis for impeachment were that

Trump is a sociopath, the GOP would

be right to insist that this is a matter for

the voters and the Electoral College.

Instead, Republicans have now cho-

sen to double down against impeach-

ment in violation of every principle the

GOP once claimed to cherish.

Limited government? Trump has ar-

gued that impeachment does not apply

to him, and that he is beyond even be-

ing investigated for wrongdoing. Re-

publicans agree. The party of national

security? Trump cheers on the Repub-

licans trying to subvert closed hear-

ings, the kind they defended when in-

vestigating the Benghazi disaster — as

they barge into classified facilities with

unsecured electronic devices. The

guardians of patriotism? Trump en-

ablers derided a decorated combat vet-

eran for even daring to speak the truth

about Trump’s misconduct.

The House Republicans have clearly

decided to throw themselves on the

pyre of Donald Trump’s burning presi-

dency. The last act of this tragedy —

and impeachment, no matter how it

turns out, is a national tragedy — will

be when Senate Republicans meekly

acquit Trump, like terrified jurors under

the glaring eye of a Mafia boss who

knows their names.

There isn’t much more ground to

cover between the historic Halloween

vote and the final immolation of the Re-

publican Party. The GOP will fail this

test of character. What is more impor-

tant is whether the American nation

passes it and demands the impeach-

ment and removal of the greatest threat

to the United States Constitution ever

to come from the Oval Office.

Tom Nichols, a member of USA TO-

DAY’s Board of Contributors is the au-

thor of “The Death of Expertise.”

Republicans failed

test of character

Halloween vote presages GOP demise

Tom Nichols