Zimbabwe Opposition Wins Key Post

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — Jubilant opposition legislators in Zimbabwe ’s Parliament broke into song and dance on Monday after their candidate won the powerful position of speaker of Parliament, defeating a nominee backed by President Robert Mugabe ’s party, ZANU-PF. The victory of the opposition candidate, Lovemore Moyo, by a vote of 110 to 98, underscored the opposition’s newfound control of Parliament. Despite widespread attacks on its members, the opposition holds a majority in Parliament for the first time since Zimbabwe achieved independence from white minority rule in 1980 — and now seems ready to wield that power. The opposition’s rejoicing follows a grim period for the country since elections in March. Human rights groups say more than 100 opposition supporters have been killed and thousands tortured and beaten by Mr. Mugabe’s state-sponsored enforcers. Opposition members of Parliament, who feared until the moment of voting on Monday that Mr. Mugabe would somehow deprive them of their March victory, sang, “ZANU is rotten!” “Parliament will cease to be a rubber-stamping house,” Mr. Moyo said triumphantly in his acceptance speech. “It’ll ensure that progressive laws are passed.” Mr. Mugabe has held power for 28 years, but with his loss of Parliament, he and his party will probably find it difficult to govern the economically ruined nation unless they close a power-sharing deal with the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. Talks to reach such a deal have been deadlocked over how to divide executive authority between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai. Mr. Tsvangirai fared better than Mr. Mugabe in the last credible election, in March, then boycotted the June presidential runoff, protesting the violence against his supporters. Mr. Moyo’s election as speaker cements both Mr. Tsvangirai’s position as leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition and the opposition’s primacy in Parliament. “It means Robert Mugabe has lost effective control over Parliament and cannot dictate his legislative agenda as he has in the past,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator. “It’s a historic event.” The question now is whether the opposition’s majority in Parliament will provide a new impetus to restart the talks, especially since Mr. Tsvangirai will be in a stronger position and Mr. Mugabe faces an adversarial legislature. The vote for speaker appeared to backfire on Mr. Mugabe, who unilaterally summoned members of Parliament to be sworn in on Monday and to convene officially on Tuesday, for the first time since their election almost five months ago. Opposition officials said they feared that Mr. Mugabe’s party was trying to reclaim control of Parliament by luring away opposition legislators or by intimidating them with threats of arrest so that they would not show up. Police officers arrested two members of Parliament from the main opposition party on Monday morning, stirring fears of a broader crackdown. One of the two arrested members, Shuwa Mudiwa, was released a few hours later and rejoined Parliament. But efforts by the governing party to sow division within the often fractious opposition failed, political analysts said. In the secret balloting, members of Parliament from a breakaway opposition faction appeared to have rallied behind Mr. Tsvangirai’s candidate for speaker rather than their own nominee, who was supported by Mr. Mugabe’s party. Political analysts said it was also likely that Mr. Moyo had won a few votes from legislators in the governing party, which is showing increasing signs of internal division about who should succeed the octogenarian Mr. Mugabe. As speaker, Mr. Moyo will play a pivotal role in guiding the passage of laws and running Parliament. Despite the victory on Monday, the opposition’s majority is narrow. If united with its splinter faction, which has 10 seats in Parliament, the opposition controls 110 votes to 99 for Mr. Mugabe’s governing party, ZANU-PF. Under the agreement that formed the basis of power-sharing negotiations, any decision to convene Parliament or form a government was to be made only by consensus of the governing and opposition parties. Opposition officials have said that Mr. Mugabe’s decision to call Parliament into session was a repudiation of that agreement. Also, according to the state news media, Mr. Mugabe on Sunday appointed a number of provincial governors and three senators to the upper house of Parliament. The opposition had expected those jobs to be filled as part of a negotiated settlement. “Mugabe has forged ahead with convening Parliament, and this is very unfortunate because, as a party, we had hoped something might come out of the interparty talks,” Luke Tamborinyoka, the director of information for the opposition party, said Monday before the vote. Mr. Tsvangirai has refused to sign a deal that would leave Mr. Mugabe as the cabinet leader and make Mr. Tsvangirai prime minister and deputy cabinet leader, answerable to Mr. Mugabe, fearing that he and his party would be swallowed up by ZANU-PF, according to opposition and governing party officials. Mr. Mugabe’s spokesmen have accused Mr. Tsvangirai of being a pawn of the United States, Britain and the West. Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the minister of information, was quoted as saying in a state-owned newspaper on Monday, “Selfish and external interests must not be allowed to frustrate President Mugabe’s meticulous nation-building skills as a tried and tested leader.” But the opposition’s control of Parliament changes the calculus of power. “Mugabe will have to come to the negotiating table to strike a deal to save himself politically,” said Sydney Masamvu, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “We are starting to see a genesis of the transition in Zimbabwe. The talks are the only opportunity Mugabe has to prepare for a graceful exit.”

Zimbabwe
Movement for Democratic Change
Mugabe Robert
Tsvangirai Morgan
Politics and Government
Legislatures and Parliaments


John Freeborn, British Fighter Pilot, Dies at 90

Abstract: Seventy years ago, John Freeborn was one of the Royal Air Force’s leading fighter pilots, acclaimed for his exploits off Dunkirk and in the air above English villages during the Battle of Britain. Of the nearly 3,000 Allied fliers who dueled with German aircraft in that battle, thwarting Hitler’s ambition to conquer Britain, none logged more combat hours than Wing Commander Freeborn. He was credited with shooting down at least 12 German planes during World War II, and he was twice decorated with Britain’s Distinguished Flying Cross . But Mr. Freeborn, who died on Aug. 28 at the age of 90, was also a central figure in a long-remembered episode of “friendly fire” — one that brought him anguish throughout his long life. On Sept. 6, 1939 — three days after Britain had gone to war with Germany — Mr. Freeborn, flying a Spitfire fighter , was among a group of pilots sent aloft from their base at Hornchurch to intercept what were reported to be German planes headed toward the Essex coast in southeast England. But it was a case of war jitters. There were no German aircraft. Mr. Freeborn and a pilot flying alongside him each shot down what they presumed to be German fighters. But they had, in fact, downed a pair of British Hurricane fighters , which had also been sent up, from the nearby North Weald airbase. Pilot Officer Montague Hulton-Harrop, the flier shot down by Mr. Freeborn, became the first British fighter pilot killed in the war. The other Hurricane pilot shot down that day survived. Mr. Freeborn, accused by his commanding officer of disregarding a last-minute order to hold his fire, was court-martialed. But he maintained that his commander had lied — that he had, in fact, been told to attack. He was exonerated together with his fellow Spitfire pilot, the affair attributed to miscommunication. In May 1940, Mr. Freeborn took part in covering the British Expeditionary Force’s escape from Dunkirk when German forces were overrunning France. He shot down two German planes, but his Spitfire was later downed. He was rescued, and he returned to England. When the Battle of Britain raged in the summer of 1940, Mr. Freeborn returned to combat with his No.74 Squadron , a unit with a tiger’s face as its emblem and the motto “I Fear No Man.” On Aug. 11, the “tiger” squadron flew into battle four times in a span of eight hours and reported destroying 23 German planes, 3 of them downed by Mr. Freeborn, and damaging 14 others. Mr. Freeborn came to the United States in 1942 to train American fighter pilots, then returned to England to escort bombers on missions off the French and Dutch coasts. He became one of Britain’s youngest wing commanders in 1944, overseeing a fighter unit based in southern Italy. Mr. Freeborn’s death, in Southport, in northwest England, was announced on the 74 Squadron Association’s Web site by his biographer, Bob Cossey, author of “A Tiger’s Tale” (2002). (In 2009, Mr. Freeborn collaborated with Christopher Yeoman on a memoir, “Tiger Cub.”) Mr. Cossey said that Mr. Freeborn was his squadron’s last surviving Battle of Britain pilot. John Connell Freeborn was born on Dec. 1, 1919, in Middleton, England, outside Leeds, the son of a bank manager, and joined the R.A.F. in 1938. He left military service in 1946 and worked as a regional manager for a soft-drink distributorship. He is survived by his daughter, Julia Cruickshank, of Ainsdale, England, from his marriage to his first wife, Rita, who died in 1980. His second wife, Peta, died in 2001. Mr. Freeborn never forgot about the British pilot he shot down in those frenzied first days of World War II. In a 2004 interview with the author Gavin Mortimer, reprinted in the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine on Mr. Freeborn’s death, he recalled how that episode could have become even more tragic if another pilot had not intervened after Pilot Officer Hulton-Harrop was shot down. “I think I would have shot down more if it weren’t for Hawkins,” he said of that fellow flier. “He got in the way, and I was shouting at him to get out of the bloody way, either shoot or let me shoot. But then he said, ‘It’s one of ours.’ ” In September 2003, Mr. Freeborn visited Pilot Officer Hulton-Harrop’s grave in a churchyard near the old North Weald airfield. “I think about him nearly every day,” Mr. Freeborn told the BBC in 2009. “I always have.” “I’ve had a good life,” Mr. Freeborn said, “and he should have had a good life, too.”

Pilots
World War II (1939-45)
Defense and Military Forces
Deaths (Obituaries)


Sent Down, Hefner May Go on the D.L.

Abstract: PHOENIX — The Mets optioned starter Jeremy Hefner to Class AAA Las Vegas on Sunday, but an elbow problem could land him on the disabled list. He will be examined in New York on Monday. The move cleared a roster spot for Jon Niese, who started against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday in his return from a partial rotator cuff tear. “I’m hurting the team now, so I needed to say something,” Hefner said. Hefner has struggled since the All-Star break, posting an 0-2 record and a 9.13 earned run average in five starts. General Manager Sandy Alderson confirmed that the move “more or less coincides with his lesser performance over the last couple weeks.” Hefner has battled the elbow problem much of the season, but it became worse recently, he said. “I think it’s endurance more than anything,” he said, adding: “The first few innings were pretty good, then soured pretty quickly. Once I’d get to the 70-, 80-pitch range, I’m completely out of gas. “There’s a little bit of pain, soreness, inflammation — however you want to call it.” He said he was not certain, but he thought the injury started after he was hit by a line drive from the St. Louis Cardinals’ Carlos Beltran during spring training. The team will go back to a five-man rotation, Alderson said, but Hefner could return later in the season for spot starts. He is 4-8 with a 4.34 E.R.A. in 24 appearances this season.


A Captain Under Fire Leads Australia Into Cricket Quarterfinals

Abstract: Eight years after it was the victim of perhaps the best day in Ricky Ponting’s brilliant career, India has the perfect opportunity to exact revenge on Australia’s captain. It was on March 23, 2003, that Ponting struck a scintillating 140 not out to drive his team to an unassailable total in the World Cup final against India in Johannesburg. On Thursday, eight years and a day after that loss, an India team containing six survivors from Johannesburg could end Ponting’s tenure as Australia’s leader if it wins the World Cup quarterfinal at home in Ahmedabad. Pressure on Ponting moved beyond speculation this week when The Sydney Morning Herald, usually a sober newspaper, quoted an unidentified senior Cricket Australia official as saying, “We need to be looking at the future. It’s time for us to make a change.” By far the best way for Ponting to keep his position would be to lead Australia to a fourth consecutive World Cup victory, which would be third under his captaincy. But if Australia loses to India, the combination of failure in the World Cup and in the past two Ashes series against England, along with poor batting form and disciplinary problems, could take Ponting down after nine years on the job. “We’re waiting for the next thing to blow up,” the official was quoted by The Herald as saying. “We don’t go a game without there being some issues with him.” Ponting’s teammates rallied around their leader this week, citing his experience, authority and record as a player. “He’s a guy we all look up to,” the fast bowler Mitchell Johnson said. “He’s copped a fair bit lately, but he’s got the experience to be able to deal with it.” On Wednesday, Ponting said in Ahmedabad that he had no intention of stepping down as captain and that he “will be playing for a few more years. “There has been stuff about me retiring that is completely false, untrue, never contemplated retiring,” he said. The questions about Ponting only raise the stakes for an occasion that hardly needs it. When India and Australia and India meet for a spot in the final four of the World Cup, it will be No. 2 in one-day internationals against the No. 1; the main host of the tournament taking on the three-time reigning champion; and the sport’s financial powerhouse battling cricket’s traditional power. It is, as Australia’s coach, Tim Nielsen, said this week, “a mini Grand Final in itself.” Grand Finals are Australia’s biggest sports events, to rugby league and Australian rules football what the Super Bowl is to the N.F.L. Neither team has as yet been wholly convincing so far in the World Cup. Australia was rarely tested after it qualified from the much weaker of the tournament’s two groups. It won four matches easily, was rained out against Sri Lanka and lost to Pakistan, ending a staggering run of 34 World Cup matches without a defeat. India, which advanced out of the other group, was tested, and to some extent it was found wanting. It lost to South Africa, tied England and looked below par in the field and with the ball. For India, one player must withstand even greater scrutiny than Ponting. Sachin Tendulkar is the sole contemporary of his who can claim he has achieved even more with the bat. He is poised for yet another scarcely conceivable feat — his next score of 100 or more in international cricket will be his 100th in all formats. Nineteen months older than the 36-year-old Ponting, Tendulkar might also serve as an inspiration for him in the way he has come back to his best form after some comparatively fallow years in this mid-thirties. The key battle could be between Australia’s trio of ultraquick bowlers, whose selection represents a high-risk strategy, and India’s formidable top-order batting. Brett Lee, Australia’s only survivor of 2003 other than Ponting, Mitchell Johnson and Shaun Tait, will certainly want try out theories that Tendulkar’s flamboyant opening partner, Virender Sehwag, the prolific top order man Gautam Gambhir, the classy rookie Virat Kohli and the hard-hitting all-rounder Yuvraj Singh can all be unsettled and dismissed by the short-pitched delivery that rears toward the head or upper body. Batsman Mike Hussey expects his team to try that strategy. “I would believe our bowlers would like be aggressive and rattle the Indian batsmen,” he said Tuesday. “I suppose we could bowl short ones at them and have them on the hop.” Singh, who batted brilliantly in India’s group stage victory over West Indies on Sunday, argued that concerns had been exaggerated, saying, “If you have an issue with the short ball, you won’t be the No. 1 test team and No. 2 one-day team.”While India versus Australia is drawing the most attention of the remaining quarterfinals, the two other matches, on Friday and Saturday, carry their own intrigue. The question around the Friday match at Mirpur in Bangladesh is whether a combination of New Zealand’s traditional capacity for overachievement and South Africa’s propensity to implode will be enough for New Zealand to overcome a huge gap in sheer firepower. New Zealand’s hopes will get a lift if captain Daniel Vettori recovers from injury. On Saturday in Colombo, Sri Lanka entertains England, which performs best against teams it should logically have little chance of beating. On that basis, Sri Lanka has every reason to be very wary, indeed. Pakistan humbles Windies Pakistan thrashed West Indies by 10 wickets on Wednesday to secure the first place in the World Cup semifinals, The Associated Press reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh. West Indies was dismissed for 112. Then Mohammad Hafeez, with an unbeaten 61, and Kamran Akmal (47) combined to guided Pakistan to victory with 175 balls to spare, reaching 113 without loss after 25 runs in the first two overs.


Oregon Panel Recommends Switch to Federal Health Exchange

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With encouragement from the Obama administration, an Oregon panel recommended Thursday that the state scrap the website for its beleaguered health insurance exchange and use the federal marketplace instead. State officials concluded that it would be much less expensive to use the federal site, HealthCare.gov , than to repair the one built specially for the state, Cover Oregon . The first option would cost $4 million to $6 million, while the second would cost $78 million, state officials said. The Oregon exchange — like those in Hawaii, Maryland and Massachusetts — has been plagued with technical problems that have made it difficult for consumers to enroll online. All four states have Democratic governors who strongly support President Obama’s effort to expand coverage under the 2010 health care law. The exchange is a keystone of the health care law: a website where consumers can compare private health plans, enroll and obtain subsidies to help defray the cost. Three dozen states are already using the federal exchange. Greg Van Pelt, an adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon, told Congress this month that “the launch of the Affordable Care Act in Oregon has been bumpy,” and that “the website is only partially functioning.” Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , which runs HealthCare.gov, said Thursday, “We are working with Oregon to ensure that all Oregonians have access to quality, affordable health coverage in 2015.” The board of the Oregon exchange plans to meet Friday and is expected to approve the recommendation by its technology options work group. Governor Kitzhaber said he agreed with the panel’s advice. “I think their recommendation to use the federal website technology is the right call,” he said. “It is the most reliable and least costly way to ensure that we have a working website for the next enrollment period.” For most states, the initial six-month enrollment period ended on March 31. But the Obama administration allowed Oregon to extend the application period through April after Mr. Kitzhaber said that technology problems had “created delays, confusion, and frustration” for people trying to use the state exchange. The next open enrollment season is scheduled to start on Nov. 15 and continue for three months. Oregon has received $305 million in federal grants to build its exchange, according to the Congressional Research Service . Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon, said: “Cover Oregon is the worst financial failure in information technology in state history, and it was completely avoidable. Today’s admission of failure underscores the need to stop the waste and get the truth. How did this happen? Who was in charge?” Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform , was equally critical. “Federal officials should insist that Oregon foot the bill for the state’s transition to the federal exchange,” he said. “Federal taxpayers should not be stuck with the bill twice for this disastrous project.” Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, approved the Oregon exchange on Dec. 7, 2012, saying she was confident that it would be ready to provide coverage to consumers in 2014. But in February, the federal government delivered a devastating critique of the Oregon exchange, saying it had “no integrated project schedule” and no “overarching dedicated project manager” to keep work on track. Moreover, it said, the state did far too little to supervise its main information technology contractor, Oracle. For Mr. Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor who has staked his political career on health care issues, and for Democrats in the Oregon Legislature who backed his enthusiastic embrace of the Affordable Care Act, the political fallout is far from over. He is running this fall for a fourth term and has said he expects the exchange’s failure to be the issue of the campaign. But he has a fund-raising advantage over Republican rivals, and it will be an uphill battle for Republicans to unseat him in a Democratic-leaning state that has not elected a Republican governor since 1982. In any case, health policy debates in Oregon, which once seemed a matter of shared consensus, have become deeply politicized, and the issue is likely to reverberate in state politics between now and Election Day. Oregon is not the only state to shift course. Maryland decided three weeks ago to abandon its dysfunctional website and use software developed for the Connecticut exchange, one of the most successful in the country.

Oregon
Health Insurance
John Kitzhaber
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act


Helping Soldiers Trade Their Swords for Plows

Abstract: VALLEY CENTER, Calif. — On an organic farm here in avocado country, a group of young Marines, veterans and Army reservists listened intently to an old hand from the front lines. “Think of it in military terms,” he told the young recruits, some just back from Iraq or Afghanistan. “It’s a matter of survival, an uphill battle. You have to think everything is against you and hope to stay alive.” The battle in question was not the typical ground assault, but organic farming — how to identify beneficial insects, for instance, or to prevent stray frogs from clogging an irrigation system. It was Day 2 of a novel boot camp for veterans and active-duty military personnel, including Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton, who might be interested in new careers as farmers. “In the military, grunts are the guys who get dirty, do the work and are generally underappreciated,” said Colin Archipley, a decorated Marine Corps infantry sergeant turned organic farmer, who developed the program with his wife, Karen, after his three tours in Iraq. “I think farmers are the same.” At their farm, called Archi’s Acres , the sound of crickets and croaking frogs communes with the drone of choppers. The syllabus, approved by Camp Pendleton’s transition assistance program, includes hands-on planting and irrigating, lectures about “high-value niche markets” and production of a business plan that is assessed by food professionals and business professors. Along with Combat Boots to Cowboy Boots, a new program for veterans at the University of Nebraska’s College of Technical Agriculture, and farming fellowships for wounded soldiers, the six-week course offered here is part of a nascent “veteran-centric” farming movement. Its goal is to bring the energy of young soldiers re-entering civilian life to the aging farm population of rural America. Half of all farmers are likely to retire in the next decade, according to the Agriculture Department. “The military is not for the faint of heart, and farming isn’t either,” said Michael O’Gorman, an organic farmer who founded the nonprofit Farmer-Veteran Coalition, which supports sustainable-agriculture training. “There are eight times as many farmers over age 65 as under. There is a tremendous need for young farmers, and a big wave of young people inspired to go into the service who are coming home.” About 45 percent of the military comes from rural communities, compared with one-sixth of the total population, according to the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. In 2009, the Agriculture Department began offering low-interest loans in its campaign to add 100,000 farmers to the nation’s ranks each year. Among them will probably be Sgt. Matt Holzmann, 33, a Marine at Camp Pendleton who spent seven months in Afghanistan. He did counterinsurgency work and tried to introduce aquaponics, a self-replenishing agricultural system, to rural villages. His zeal for aquaponics led him to the farming class. “It’s a national security issue,” he said the other day outside a garage-turned-classroom filled with boxes of Dr. Earth Kelp Meal. “The more responsibly we use water and energy, the greater it is for our country.” Mr. O’Gorman, a pacifist and a pioneer of the baby-lettuce business, started the coalition after his son joined the Coast Guard. The group recently received a grant from the Bob Woodruff Foundation, co-founded by the ABC News journalist who was wounded in Iraq, to provide farming fellowships for wounded young veterans. “Beginning farming has become the cause du jour among young people with college degrees and trust funds,” Mr. O’Gorman said at the farm, where there were stacks of Mother Earth News magazines in the bathroom and a batch of fresh kale in the sink. “My gut sense is a lot of them won’t be farming five years from now. But these vets will.” Mr. Archipley’s own journey into organic farming was somewhat serendipitous. He joined the Marines in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and married between his second and third tours in Iraq. The couple bought three acres of avocado orchards north of San Diego. Mr. Archipley, whose looks bring to mind a surfer dude, found pleasure tending his grove after leaving the Marines and eventually secured a loan from the Agriculture Department to build a greenhouse. His farm now sells organic produce to Whole Foods Markets in San Diego and Los Angeles. In 2007, the couple started training veterans informally, financing the effort themselves. The new course, administered through MiraCosta College, costs $4,500, with Camp Pendleton offering assistance for active-duty Marines. Farming offers veterans a chance to decompress, Mr. Archipley said, but, more important, provides a sense of purpose. “It allows them to be physically active, be part of a unit,” he said. “It gives them a mission statement — a responsibility to the consumer eating their food.” Even in this idyllic setting, it can be a challenging process. Mike Hanes, now 34, enlisted in the Marines at 18. In 1994, six days into his basic training in South Carolina, his drill instructor committed suicide with an M-16 rifle in front of 59 recruits. “He blew his head off,” Mr. Hanes said. “That was right from the get-go, at age 18.” In Baghdad, Mr. Hanes served as a .50-caliber machine gunner atop a Humvee. “I was the one they were trying to kill,” he said. He returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and a traumatic brain injury . He was homeless for over a year, managing nevertheless to get a degree in environmental social services. “Being outside was my comfort zone — still is,” he said. Two years ago, he stumbled upon the Archipleys’ “Veterans for Sustainable Agriculture” booth at an Earth Day festival in Balboa Park in San Diego. Mr. Hanes still struggles but is gaining ground. “One thing I’ve noticed about agriculture is that you become a creator rather than a destroyer,” he said amid ornamental eucalyptus shrubs. John Maki, Camp Pendleton’s transition assistance program specialist, said the life experiences of young veterans equip them for demanding work. “For a comparable age, you won’t find people who have had as much responsibility,” he said. “They’ve been tasked with making life-and-death decisions.” Weldon Sleight, dean of the University of Nebraska’s College of Technical Agriculture, which has six enrolled veterans, said discipline — a mainstay of the armed forces — was critically important in agriculture. “A lot of these rural vets have this wonderful knowledge base about agriculture,” he added. “But we’ve told them for years there’s no future in it.” In Central Florida, Adam Burke, who left farming to join the military, came full circle, designing a wheelchair-accessible farm in which his signature “red, white and blueberries” grow in containers on elevated beds. Mr. Burke, a Purple Heart recipient who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, recently opened a second farm. “Squeezing a ball in physical therapy gets monotonous,” he said. “And you don’t get the mist from the sprinklers or a cool breeze in a psychologist’s office.” Matthew McCue, 29, formerly Sergeant McCue, runs Shooting Star CSA outside San Francisco with his partner, Lily Schneider, delivering boxes of organic produce directly to consumers. He recalled how orchard farmers in Iraq pridefully shared their pomegranates, tomatoes and melons. “You learn how to face death,” he said of his service in Iraq. But in farming, he learned, “There was life all around.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s President, Is Gravely Ill. No, Wait! He’s Fine.

Abstract: MOSCOW — The mystery surrounding the health of Islam Karimov, the longtime president of Uzbekistan, deepened on Wednesday with his daughter suggesting that he was recovering after a stroke, but an announcer reading Mr. Karimov’s traditional independence day address on television. There have been no detailed official statements on his condition, but amid the murkiness in Uzbekistan, a former republic of the Soviet Union, one thing seemed certain. The lack of information followed an old Soviet tradition of keeping bad news about the health of an autocrat under wraps. There are various examples of similar obfuscation throughout the history of the Soviet Union, beginning with Lenin and continuing through Yuri V. Andropov , who succeeded Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1982. The practice was not a Soviet monopoly, however, having started centuries before. Perhaps the most infamous case involved a Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, whose eunuchs reportedly kept his demise in 210 B.C. secret for two months and obscured the stench from his rotting corpse with heaps of dead fish. The whole tradition stems from fear of unrest when the public knows that an autocrat’s boot is no longer on their necks, experts noted, particularly if the succession could be messy. “This is a true Eastern style of dealing with intrigue,” said Valeriy Solovey, a history professor at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations. “The death of any tyrant is not disclosed to the society because the power is afraid of unrest, afraid that the society will act in the absence of a ruler,” Mr. Solovey said. “You can announce the death of a leader only when you have the next one. You can show people that they did not lose their father, that they have a new one now.” Mr. Karimov, 78, suffered a stroke on Saturday, but the first word of anything amiss came with an government statement on Sunday about his health, announcing only that he had been hospitalized in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. On Monday, his younger daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, wrote on Facebook that the president was in stable condition in an intensive care unit after suffering a stroke. An authoritative opposition website announced later that day that he had actually died. Various reports suggesting that he was still alive popped up in the Russian news media, including some with anonymous sources quoted on Wednesday saying that he had briefly stood up from what was presumably his death bed. Mrs. Karimova-Tillyaeva then posted another note on Facebook, thanking well-wishers for their support, saying, “I am sure that your heartfelt good wishes are helping his recovery.” It is, of course, possible that Mr. Karimov remains alive, will recover and reappear in public some day. Yet, given the dearth of information, these precedents suggest a different formula is equally likely: VLADIMIR LENIN, 53 — For about a year before his death in January 1924, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution was incapacitated by a stroke, unable to speak or write. The leadership, including Stalin, fearing that the truth might serve to undermine the nascent Soviet Union, kept the extent of his infirmities secret. JOSEPH STALIN, 74 – Late on March 1, 1953, Stalin’s bodyguards found him unconscious. Early the next morning, Lavrenti P. Beria, the chief of the secret police, and various others, scolded the bodyguards for disturbing the leader while he was resting — in a puddle of urine. Fearing Stalin and unsure what to do in a terrible crisis, the leaders finally summoned doctors at noon. The state-controlled newspapers announced on March 4 that Stalin was gravely ill, creating a sensation because no such health bulletin had ever been made before. He died March 5, and the press announced it the next day. LEONID I. BREZHNEV, 75 — The Soviet leader died of a heart attack on Nov. 10, 1982, but the public was not told until the following day. There was a hint that something awful had happened on television that night. All light entertainment was whisked off the air, replaced by a documentary about Lenin, and the newscasters reportedly wore somber colors. The historian Maxim Artemyev said that the Politburo spent so long on the question of his succession that they did not get around to drafting the announcement and hence delayed it a day. YURI V. ANDROPOV, 69 — Ailing already when he succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Andropov died on Feb. 9, 1984, from kidney failure and other complications, but the death was not announced until Feb. 11. Again, the Kremlin took so long talking about the succession that it was not ready to go public with the death, Mr. Artemyev said. QIN SHI HUANG — The Chinese emperor died while traveling in 210 B.C., some two months by carriage away from his capital. His top advisers, disliking the line of succession, kept the death quiet, arranging the body in the imperial carriage and trundling it back to the capital. To disguise the stench from the decomposing emperor, they hired carts of rotting fish to rumble along fore and aft. Once home, they used various intrigues, including deaths, to rearrange the succession more to their liking. There are no signs of rotting fish trundling through the streets of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, just yet.

Islam Karimov
Uzbekistan
Soviet Union
News media,journalism
Russia


New Opponent for Muster

Abstract: The former world No. 1 Thomas Muster , 43, returning to the ATP circuit after an 11-year absence, caught a break when his first-round opponent, Ernests Gulbis, pulled out of the Vienna Open. Gulbis, seeded fifth and ranked 24th in the world, was replaced by Muster’s fellow Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer, a lucky loser ranked 157th. They will meet on Tuesday. Organizers said Gulbis withdrew for personal reasons. Muster, the French Open champion in 1995, was given a wild card for the tournament. Ranked 974th, he began his comeback earlier this year in the lower-level Challenger Tour and has managed one win in seven outings. The ATP said he would become the first 40-something player to compete in the main draw of an ATP tournament since Jimmy Connors played in Atlanta in 1996, also at age 43.


Black Leader, a Clinton Ally, Tilts to Obama

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — Representative John Lewis , an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.” Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama. “I’ve been very impressed with the campaign of Senator Obama,” Mr. Lewis said. “He’s getting better and better every single day.” His comments came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some other African-American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he, too, would not go against the will of voters in his district. The developments came on a day in which Mrs. Clinton set out anew to prove that the fight for the Democratic nomination was far from over. Campaigning in Ohio, she pursued a new strategy of biting attack lines against Mr. Obama, while adopting a newly populist tone as she courted blue-collar voters. Mrs. Clinton also intensified her efforts in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday and where she and Mr. Obama now have the first dueling negative television advertisements of the campaign. In the ads, Mrs. Clinton taunted Mr. Obama for refusing to debate her in Wisconsin. And she and former President Bill Clinton prepared for a new fund-raising blitz to try to counter Mr. Obama’s edge of several million dollars in campaign cash. Yet even as the Democratic rivals looked ahead to the primaries in Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas, Mr. Lewis said he and other prominent African-American party leaders had been moved by Mr. Obama’s recent victories and his ability to transcend racial and geographic lines. Though Mr. Lewis had praise for Mrs. Clinton and for her historic candidacy, he said he could decide within days whether to formally endorse Mr. Obama. He also said he and other lawmakers would meet in the coming days to decide how they intended to weigh in on the nominating fight. If neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama receive enough pledged delegates to win the nomination, superdelegates like Mr. Lewis may play the deciding role in who wins. “If I can be used as a mediator, a negotiator or a peacemaker, I’d be happy to step in,” Mr. Lewis said, adding that he intends to speak to both candidates in hopes of ending the race amicably in the next month. “I don’t want to see Mrs. Clinton damaged or Mr. Obama damaged.” Jay Carson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said Thursday: “Congressman Lewis is a true American hero, and we have the utmost respect for him and understand the great pressure he faced. And Senator Clinton enjoys incredibly strong support from superdelegates around the country from all regions and races.” The comments by Mr. Lewis underscored a growing sentiment among some of the party’s black leaders that they should not stand in the way of Mr. Obama’s historic quest for the nomination and should not go against the will of their constituents. As superdelegates, they may have the final say, which is something Mr. Lewis said he feared would weaken Democrats and raise Republicans’ chances of winning the White House. Still, the Democratic nominating fight clearly has many turns ahead. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton unleashed the most ambitious mobilization of her forces in weeks, reflecting the intense pressure she is under from Mr. Obama, the political necessity for her of towering performances in the delegate-rich primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4, and her fresh hope of an upset victory in Wisconsin. Specifically, Mrs. Clinton is hoping to gain political mileage by turning one of Mr. Obama’s attributes, his oratory, against him. She is warning voters about politicians who give great speeches and make big promises but ultimately do not deliver on them. “Speeches don’t put food on the table,” Mrs. Clinton said at a General Motors plant in Warren, Ohio, on Thursday morning. “Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.” “My opponent gives speeches,” she added. “I offer solutions.” Mrs. Clinton has been also criticizing Mr. Obama with populist language, saying she would “take on” insurers and credit card companies and “go after” drug companies. She portrayed Mr. Obama as untested on the battlefield against special interests. If there was a sign of the imbalance in momentum between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama on Thursday, it could be gleaned from Mr. Obama’s travel itinerary. He took a respite from the campaign trail, aides said, so he could spend Valentine’s Day with his family in Chicago before returning to Wisconsin on Friday. Clinton advisers said Thursday that it was unlikely they would broadcast “horrible nasty negative ads,” in the words of one adviser, and that they were wary of going too negative against Mr. Obama, given what the Clintons say is the news media’s tendency to coddle and protect Mr. Obama and portray the Clintons as an attack machine. At the same time, Clinton advisers say that the stakes are so high — in Ohio and Texas in particular — that Mrs. Clinton cannot afford to let Mr. Obama gain momentum. In Wisconsin, for instance, Mrs. Clinton is hoping to stave off a blowout — and perhaps even pull off a surprise — by blasting Mr. Obama for refusing to debate her there. “The last time we debated was in California, and I convincingly won California, which may be why Senator Obama doesn’t want to have a debate in Wisconsin,” Mrs. Clinton said in a telephone conference call with reporters. Mr. Carson, her spokesman, said she would keep the debate issue alive until Tuesday. “A refusal to debate one’s primary opponent is always seen by regular voters as being chicken,” he said. “And voters, especially Democratic voters hungry for a general election win, want a candidate who is tough and ready.” Mr. Obama responded to the attacks with a television spot of his own in Wisconsin. “After 18 debates, with two more coming, Hillary says Barack Obama is ducking debates?” the advertisement says, showing images from their debates over the last year. “It’s the same old politics, of phony charges and false attacks.” As Mrs. Clinton was delivering her criticism of Mr. Obama in Ohio, a similar argument was presented to Wisconsin voters by Mr. Clinton, who referred to Mr. Obama as “the excitement of the now.” “It’s about whether you choose the power of solutions over the power of speeches,” Mr. Clinton told a small gathering of voters in Milwaukee, ticking through a list of his wife’s platforms and accomplishments. In New Mexico, one of the more than 20 states to hold contests on Feb. 5, the votes were finally counted Thursday, giving Mrs. Clinton a victory and providing more evidence that the contest was far from concluded. She continued to hold a lead among superdelegates, even as a New Jersey official, Christine Samuels, changed her support to Mr. Obama and at least two others went back to being uncommitted.

Presidential Election of 2008
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Lewis John
Obama Barack


California: Short Delay Granted for Inmate Cuts

Abstract: Federal judges are giving California an extra month, until late February, to reduce its prison population. The judges said Monday that a court-appointed mediator needed more time to seek agreement on how the state should reduce inmate crowding. Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers want a three-year delay to give proposed rehabilitation programs time to work. Under a new state law, the alternative is to spend $315 million this fiscal year to house thousands of inmates in private prisons and county jails.

California
Prison
Jerry Brown
Legislation


Wisconsin Re-elects Liberal Judge, but Opens Door for Conservative Chief Justice

Abstract: In a result befitting politically polarized Wisconsin, voters on Tuesday re-elected a State Supreme Court justice seen as liberal, but passed a constitutional amendment that will most likely lead to the installation of a conservative chief justice. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley handily defeated Judge James Daley of Rock County and conservatives who wanted to increase their majority on the officially nonpartisan court, The Associated Press reported. The vote on the amendment was closer. Both issues captured significant donor interest and further exposed the state’s bitter political divides , which have spread beyond the governor’s mansion and Legislature and prompted reports of dysfunction and partisan discord on the Supreme Court. “I think today represents the latest step in trying to make this court more accountable to politics and less accountable to law,” said Bert Brandenburg, the executive director of Justice at Stake , a group that tracks spending in judicial races and opposed the Wisconsin amendment. “No matter what party you’re from, as a Supreme Court justice, you’re feeling more pressure, and you have to look over your shoulder more and more.” Conservatives generally lined up in favor of the constitutional amendment, which proposed having members of the court vote for the chief justice, rather than automatically installing the longest-serving judge in that position. The practical effect will most likely be the demotion of Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, 81, who has served on the court since 1976 and is viewed as part of its liberal minority. The court’s composition has garnered more interest in recent years as judges have decided a series of politically charged cases. Justices are now preparing to decide whether an investigation can proceed into the possible coordination in 2011 and 2012 between the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker and outside conservative groups. Justice Bradley, who won re-election on Tuesday, has recused herself from the case. Mr. Walker, a Republican, is flirting with a run for president in 2016. Proponents said having judges vote for the chief justice would be a more democratic approach, and supportive outside groups bought television advertisements promoting that view. But liberals and some government watchdog groups came out against the measure. “People walking into the voting booth might not know what’s behind it, that it’s a vendetta against Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson,” said Matthew Rothschild, the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a group that monitors campaigns in the state and came out against the amendment. In many ways, the question about who will lead the Supreme Court overshadowed the race for who will serve on the court. But even without the high-drama campaigning seen in some recent Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin, Justice Bradley and her opponent, Judge Daley, took turns calling each other partisans beholden to political interests as they both portrayed themselves as reformers. Republican groups in the state donated to the campaign of Judge Daley, a former prosecutor who serves on the Rock County Circuit Court and describes himself as a “conservative jurist.” Judge Daley railed in his campaign against the “liberal” policies of Justice Bradley, who was seeking her third term on the Supreme Court and said she wanted to limit the influence of outside groups on the judiciary. Justice Bradley said she would not accept donations from political parties, but her campaign did take money from labor unions and several prominent Democrats. Though both candidates continued to report donations into the election’s final days, the race did not attract the widespread outside spending seen in some recent Wisconsin Supreme Court races. Those outside donors seemed more focused on the proposed constitutional amendment. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices do not run as members of political parties, but the judges’ ideological leanings are clear. Four members are considered conservative, while three are seen as liberal, including Justice Bradley and Chief Justice Abrahamson.

Wisconsin
State supreme court
Constitutional amendment
Ann Walsh Bradley
James Daley
Shirley Abrahamson
Judicial Elections


Bad Timing for Goodies

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — Larry Fitzgerald and Santonio Holmes are fast, but working on the Super Bowl sideline can require quick feet, too. Late in the fourth quarter, four men walked onto the field carrying a black bag full of Steelers victory caps and T-shirts. But when Fitzgerald raced 64 yards to put the Cardinals ahead, 23-20, with 2 minutes 37 seconds to go, the men sprinted back into the stadium tunnel. Moments later they returned with Cardinals victory gear. Presumably, they got another workout when Holmes scored the winning touchdown with 35 seconds to go. JEFFREY MARCUS


Prime Minister of Croatia Is Ousted by the Party That Backed Him

Abstract: ZADAR, Croatia — It was not “Et tu, Brute”; more like “Et tu, et tu, et tu.” After less than six months in office, Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic of Croatia was ousted on Thursday in a no-confidence vote called by the very party that selected him in the first place. The move brought down the government in Zagreb and ended a brief, tense union between reformers and the Croatian Democratic Union, the country’s nationalist right-wing party, which chose Mr. Oreskovic to lead with the approval of reformers. “Never in the history of Croatia’s democracy has the ruling majority, or a portion of it, moved to recall the prime minister it has chosen,” Mr. Oreskovic said. The no-confidence vote in Parliament passed 125 to 15, with two abstentions. Croatia could face another election if a government has not formed within 30 days. Mr. Oreskovic, 50, a pharmaceutical executive and political novice, emerged after November elections forced the nation’s largest party, the Croatian Democratic Union, to join with MOST, a reformist group riding a wave of voter disaffection. He took office in late January. The convoluted power-sharing plan saw the two party leaders — the Democratic Union’s Tomislav Karamarko and MOST’s Bozo Petrov — sharing deputy prime minister roles. Mr. Oreskovic, an outsider who was raised in Canada, cited his business experience and executive know-how as qualities that would help him guide the economy out of the doldrums. At the same time, the country was also grappling with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants. The small nation of 4.2 million people emerged from a six-year recession last winter and showed promising signs of growth. Mr. Oreskovic proposed a battery of changes. The economy has continued to improve, and the tourism season has begun, but unemployment remains stubbornly high, about 15 percent. During the no-confidence vote on Thursday, the prime minister’s business background and political inexperience, once welcomed, were used against him. “Croatia isn’t a corporation,” said Domagoj Ivan Milosevic, a Croatian Democratic Union member who had been one of Mr. Oreskovic’s supporters. Yet his downfall came about not because of economic or migration policies, but rather through a rupture in the government partnership over a scandal. Mr. Karamarko stepped down as deputy prime minister on Wednesday, after an ethics committee found that he had a conflict of interest over his wife’s business dealings with a lobbyist for a Hungarian energy company that has a controlling stake in Croatia’s national oil company, INA. The Hungarian company, MOL, has been locked in an arbitration suit with the Croatian government over accusations of corruption in INA’s sale. Mr. Karamarko had suggested that Croatia pull out of the arbitration hearings, which was opposed by Mr. Oreskovic. The dispute led to a falling-out between Mr. Karamarko and Mr. Oreskovic, which the latter claimed led to his downfall as members of the Croatian Democratic Union, Mr. Karamarko’s party, turned against Mr. Oreskovic. “I did not expect this. Who would have expected it?” Mr. Oreskovic said after his removal. “I came with global experience in the financial and economic sectors. I had a lot to offer.”

Croatia
Tihomir Oreskovic
Croatian Democratic Union
Appointments and Executive Changes
Legislature


Countdown to 2014 World Cup in Brazil: Day 70

Abstract: The 2014 World Cup begins on June 12, when Brazil plays Croatia in the opening match. Reporters and editors for The Times will count down to the start of the tournament each day with a short capsule of news and interesting tidbits. Christian Benteke, a striker who was expected to play a pivotal role for Belgium in Brazil, will miss the World Cup after rupturing an Achilles’ tendon in a training session with his English club team. He is scheduled to have surgery. Benteke, 23, is Aston Villa’s leading scorer this season with 11 goals, including six in the last 11 games. Villa is in 12th place in the Premier League. The news was first reported Thursday by the Belgian journalist Kristof Terreur and confirmed by the Midlands club. On Twitter , Terreur said: “Christian Benteke has torn his Achilles’ tendon. No World Cup for him.” Villa said it expected Benteke to miss up to six months after sustaining the injury at the team’s Bodymoor Heath training center Thursday in advance of Saturday’s match against visiting Fulham. “It’s a terrible blow both for Christian and for the club,” Aston Villa Manager Paul Lambert told the website Metro.co.uk. “He will miss the rest of the season, obviously, and also the World Cup. But he’ll work hard because that’s what he does and he’ll come back for us stronger than ever next season.” Benteke was born in Zaire, which was formerly called the Belgian Congo and is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was expected to feature prominently in Belgium’s team in Brazil. Belgium, with players like Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Vermaelen, Axel Witsel and Marouane Fellaini, was being tipped as one of the dark-horse teams in the tournament. On Twitter, Kompany , the captain of the national team, said: “Wishing you all the strength you need, and I hope you will recover quickly! We’re all with you together.” Benteke and Lukaku were in a competition to see who would start at striker for Belgium, which was drawn into Group H with Algeria, Russia and South Korea.

2014 World Cup
Christian Benteke
Belgium
Soccer


Mets’ Steven Matz Anticipates Debut, if Not Microphone

Abstract: Since April, Steven Matz has flashed big league potential at Class AAA Las Vegas, putting up overwhelming numbers against minor league batters. Matz is scheduled to make his major league debut on Sunday at Citi Field, but first he had to go through the initiation of an introductory news conference, a milieu in which he was not yet as polished. Before the Mets began playing the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday, Matz was asked what it was like to put on the uniform of the team that during his childhood was his favorite. He leaned forward, looked at the microphone in front of him on the dais and replied, “Um, I talk into this?” A bit jittery, Matz soon recalled that the most vibrant memory of growing up a Mets fan in Stony Brook, N.Y., was the bittersweet wall-scaling catch by Endy Chavez in the seventh game of the 2006 National League Championship Series, which the Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals. Saturday’s game was called after a 53-minute rain delay. The Mets and Cincinnati Reds were tied, 1-1, entering the top of the seventh, and are to resume the game Sunday at 1:10 p.m. A steady rain caused an omnipresent threat, making conditions sloppy on the field, but that did not deter Matt Harvey, who numbed the Reds over six strong innings. “Under those circumstances, he was really good,” Manager Terry Collins said. In what was the final at-bat of the day, the Mets were one pitch away from a victory. Curtis Granderson, who hit a solo homer in the third, batted with the bases loaded and two outs but flied out to left field on a 3-1 pitch. Granderson also unintentionally helped the Reds to their only run off Harvey. In the fifth, Tucker Barnhart hit a high fly ball to right field. Granderson closed in and slid to make the catch, but the ball bounced out of the palm of his glove, and Barnhart wound up on second. Brandon Phillips drove him in with a double. Harvey has three no-decisions this season and has given up only one earned run over 21 innings in those starts. “We’re doing everything we can out there to put up zeros,” Harvey said. “That’s our job, whether we’re scoring no runs or we’re scoring a lot of runs.” On Sunday, it will be Matz’s turn to join a powerful rotation that the Mets hope will bring them back to the postseason for the first time since that star-crossed 2006 run. For the foreseeable future, Matz will join Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Bartolo Colon and Jon Niese in a six-man rotation. Shortly before Matz spoke to members of the news media, Collins reflected on the gravity of Matz’s joining Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler as highly touted Mets prospects who not only worked their way through the farm system, but have lived up to expectations. “This has got a chance to be some kind of dynamic rotation,” Collins said, adding that through his 22 years managing in the minors and the major leagues, he had “never seen anything like it.” Matz, who will wear number 32 for the Mets, eventually settled in during his short news conference, saying that the Las Vegas manager, Wally Backman, and pitching coach, Frank Viola, were crucial in his development, particularly with dozens of family members and friends back on Long Island regularly keeping him abreast of the anticipation of his call-up. “I really just had to keep it out of my mind,” Matz said. “I got Frank there with me, constantly reminding me I gotta focus on each start.” Matz’s concentration did not seem to waver while pitching in a Las Vegas ballpark with a reputation for being torturous to young pitchers. In 15 games, 14 of which were starts, Matz was 7-4 with a 2.19 E.R.A. and 94 strikeouts. “I think he’s got great confidence right now, and he should,” Collins said. “To do what he did in probably the best hitters’ league in all of the minor leagues, he should be able to have success here.” For now, Matz will enjoy the comfort of home as he gets acclimated. After arriving in New York on Friday, he slept at his parents’ house in Stony Brook. Also easing the transition is the presence of several former Las Vegas teammates and deGrom. Both of them underwent Tommy John surgery in 2010, and they became fishing partners while undergoing rehabilitation together in Port St. Lucie, Fla. “It feels great,” said Matz, who will be the 999th player in team history. “It really is a dream come true.” MURPHY NEARS RETURN Daniel Murphy could return to the Mets as early as Tuesday. After Murphy collected four hits in a rehab game for Class A Port St. Lucie on Friday, Collins said he expected him to increase his intensity on Saturday and report back on the condition of his strained left quadriceps. Once Murphy returns, the Mets will probably play him at third base and move Wilmer Flores to second and Ruben Tejada to shortstop. Tejada, who sustained a left elbow contusion after he was struck by a pitch in the fourth inning of Friday’s game, was back in the starting lineup on Saturday.


Channeling the Bigger Games to the Lesser Networks

Abstract: Under old-line television circumstances, the Wisconsin-Ohio State game would never have been carried on the Big Ten Network. But there it is, on the channel’s schedule at noon, Eastern, tomorrow. Normally, given the Badgers’ No. 21 ranking in the B.C.S. standings and the Buckeyes’ top ranking, they would almost certainly meet on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. But until this season, there was no Big Ten Network. Similarly, until two and a half years ago, there was no ESPNU, the Bristol empire’s all-college channel. And with Rutgers playing Connecticut, with its surprising No. 13 B.C.S. ranking, the game tomorrow night might naturally be on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. But it’s on ESPNU, which is available to only 20 million cable and satellite homes. These two cases have caused consternation among fans of the teams whose cable systems don’t carry the games. And for good reason. In Columbus, Ohio, 60 percent of cable subscribers get the Big Ten Network, but throughout that state, only 40 percent receive it. In Wisconsin, the network can be seen in 35 percent of TV homes. The gaps in the distribution are largely because of a lack of deals with Time Warner in both states, and with Charter in Wisconsin. This for a game featuring the nation’s No. 1 team. “When a bigger game like this comes around,” Mark Silverman, the president of the Big Ten Network, said yesterday from Chicago, “the attention is greater on the network and the fact that people don’t have it, and the relevant cable systems come under fire.” Still, the Big Ten Network has the contractual right to carry a significant matchup like Wisconsin-Ohio State, just as it was entitled to televise the Buckeyes’ first two games of this season against lesser foes like Youngstown State and Akron. • The conference’s channel got the right when it renewed its deal with the ABC/ESPN industrial complex. The Big Ten’s network never gets first dibs on selecting a game but is guaranteed one conference game per university. “No matter what, we knew we’d get one, but you don’t know if you’ll get a game at this level,” Silverman said. But ABC took Michigan-Michigan State, ESPN selected Purdue-Penn State, ESPN2 chose Iowa-Northwestern and the Big Ten channel found itself happy in Columbus. If ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 had selected Wisconsin-Ohio State, the Big Ten Network would have gotten Illinois-Ohio State next Saturday (which ABC will carry). ABC and ESPN have already fattened up on the Badgers this season with a combined five games. So Wisconsin-Ohio State slid to the Big Ten Network, with its 30 million cable and satellite subscribers. But adding many more anytime soon is doubtful; Comcast, Time Warner, Charter and Mediacom control 65 percent of the TV homes in the eight Big Ten states, and they’re in no hurry to meet the channel’s terms. “The problem is that some cable companies won’t negotiate,” Silverman said. “They’re sitting it out.” It is a classic but commonplace situation in sports where, with the addition of regional networks like YES and national ones like the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, fans are victimized by battles between networks and cable systems. ESPNU came to life in the spring of 2005 and is still far from having robust distribution, which is reason alone for ire among fans who can’t see what it carries. Burke Magnus, the vice president and general manager of ESPNU, said that while the vast ESPN axis shows more games from the Big East and other conferences than in past years, everyone can’t be fully satisfied. Still, he said, “We’re flashing toward a time when all games for conferences like the Big East will be available, as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago when only the best games were on national TV.” Magnus said he was hoping that Rutgers could make its first appearance on ESPNU this season “because we like to touch every team in the Big East.” • The game was chosen before UConn’s 22-15 upset victory over South Florida on Oct. 27 (shown on ABC) propelled the Huskies higher nationally. “We couldn’t have predicted the UConn upset,” Magnus said, “but we’re in a world where teams like UConn and Boston College, without insulting anybody, are not regular visitors to the B.C.S. top 15. Notre Dame is on the skids and Michigan started 0-2. It’s difficult to predict.” (Boston College is No. 2.) But it’s easy to predict the disenfranchisement of fans when networks still being built, but endowed with coveted products, get into squabbles with cable operators. ESPNU has no deals with Comcast and Cablevision, which each have customers in New Jersey and Connecticut. “Yes, there’s a difference between ESPNU and our other networks,” Magnus said. “But that’s a fact of where we are.” The status report will not cheer those Huskies and Scarlet Knights fans who must find a friend with ESPNU or a sports bar to see the game. Perhaps they can form a support group with Badgers and Buckeyes fans.

Television
ESPN
ESPN2
College Athletics
Cable Television
ABC Inc


Dallas Gunman’s Plans for Bombing Remain a Worry for Police

Abstract: DALLAS — The gunman who fatally shot five police officers in Dallas last week had bomb-making skills and a large cache of material to build bombs, the city’s police chief said on Monday, but investigators still do not know how he learned to make explosives or how he planned to use them. “He knew what he was doing — this was not some novice,” Chief David O. Brown said, based on a search of the killer’s home. Detectives are trying to determine “what’s on his laptop, how he learned that.” The gunman, Micah Johnson, was a carpentry and masonry specialist in the Army Reserve, which would not explain his knowledge of explosives, the chief said, adding, “You can learn all that online, I guess.” During a standoff after the shooting, Mr. Johnson, 25, told the police that he had planted explosives, but they have not found any. The standoff ended when officers killed him. “The concern is we haven’t found something that’s out there,” Chief Brown said. “I don’t know whether or not he planned to escape, and then the bombing would start. We just don’t know how the bombing aspects of his plan were going to play out.” The chief made his comments amid another day of protests, vigils and calls for peace around the country after a week of unsettling violence that began with the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn. The city attorney in St. Paul, the site of demonstrations since Mr. Castile’s death, said on Monday that 46 adult protesters arrested during a blockade of Interstate 94 on Saturday night would be charged with third-degree riot, a gross misdemeanor. Bail was set at $1,500, and the city attorney’s office said protesters could make their initial court appearances as early as Tuesday. No charging decision was announced for one juvenile arrested during the protest. Separately, county prosecutors charged one man with felony second-degree riot and accused of him of throwing rocks and construction debris at officers during the highway shutdown. And in Baton Rouge, law enforcement officials defended themselves from criticism over their response to protests over the weekend when over 180 people were arrested. Amid the protests, a shooting in a Michigan courthouse on Monday underscored the danger faced by law enforcement personnel. Two court bailiffs were fatally shot in St. Joseph, in southwestern Michigan, before the gunman was killed, sheriff officials said. At a wide-ranging news conference, Chief Brown reiterated that the sheer volume of bomb-making material in Mr. Johnson’s home in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb, indicated that he had planned more mayhem . “One of the bomb techs called me at home to describe his concern of how large a stockpile of bomb-making materials he had,” he said. Mr. Johnson, armed with a rifle and a handgun, and clad in body armor, opened fire Thursday night on officers who were monitoring a demonstration in downtown Dallas against shootings by the police in Louisiana and Minnesota . In addition to the five officers who were killed, Chief Brown said, nine officers were wounded — officials had previously said seven — as were two civilians. He said that 11 officers had returned fire, revised from the figure of 12 given earlier in the investigation. The chief has said that during the standoff inside El Centro College, Mr. Johnson, who was black, told police negotiators that he specifically wanted to kill white officers. His Facebook page indicated support for black militant groups that have advocated violence against white people. Chief Brown said that since the shootings, officers nationwide were on edge about angry or unstable people “who could do grave damage to us,” and revealed that he had received a death threat delivered to the department’s Facebook page. Video Police Chief David O. Brown, said "We're asking cops to do too much in this country," and that officers are expected to solve "every societal failure." He also revealed that he and his family have received death threats. Credit Credit Stewart F. House/Getty Images “There is a heightened sense of awareness around threats we’ve received all over the country,” he said. The police investigation in Dallas is enormous in scope, and Chief Brown said that until it was completed, he could not say definitively what law enforcement officials now believe: that Mr. Johnson acted alone. Detectives are poring over 170 hours of video taken by officers’ body cameras, he said, and “countless hours” of video from police dashboard cameras, security cameras at local businesses and more than 300 witness interviews. President Obama, who cut short a trip to Europe after the shooting, plans to visit Dallas on Tuesday and to attend a memorial service for the fallen officers. Chief Brown said he had enlisted surrounding police agencies to provide security for the president’s visit, not wanting to put that added burden on his fatigued officers. On Monday, the president joined a meeting between law enforcement officials and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and he plans to meet at the White House on Wednesday with law enforcement officials, civil rights activists and others to discuss ways to improve relations between minority communities and the police. Funerals for the officers will begin on Wednesday, and Chief Brown said attending them was “going to be the most challenging thing in my life.” On Monday, The Blaze, the news site founded by the conservative pundit Glenn Beck, posted a snippet of an interview with Mr. Johnson’s parents, who expressed surprise and dismay at their son’s actions. “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better; I didn’t see it coming,” said the father, James Johnson. “I loved my son, all my heart. I hate what he did.” The attacker’s mother, Delphine Johnson, said that the military “was not what Micah thought it would be,” and that her son, who served for several months in Afghanistan and had wanted to be a police officer when he was a boy, was “very disappointed” with his experience in the service. In a written summary of the interview, which is to be broadcast this week, The Blaze reported that Micah Johnson, according to his parents, had “displayed a noticeable change in behavior” after his discharge in 2015. Ms. Johnson said that her son had transformed from an extrovert into a “hermit” after serving in the military. After his discharge, Mr. Johnson began studying black history in depth, his father said. But members of his family told the news agency that he had never shown signs of animosity toward whites or other races. At Parkland Hospital, doctors held an emotional news conference on Monday, recounting their experiences treating seven officers on Thursday night, including some who did not survive. “That I was unable to save those cops when they came here that night, it weighs on my mind constantly,” said Dr. Brian E. Williams, a trauma surgeon. His voice breaking, Dr. Williams, who is black, said he was deeply hurt by both the deaths of black people in police custody, and by violence aimed against the police. “Black men dying and being forgotten, people retaliating against the people that are sworn to defend us — we have to come together and end all this,” he said. Officials have said that when it became clear that Mr. Johnson would not surrender peacefully, they killed him with an explosive delivered by a bomb squad robot. Chief Brown defended that move, which has been second-guessed. “This wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me,” he said. “I’d do it again to save lives.”

Dallas
Bombs
Attacks on Police
Dallas shooting
Dallas Police Department
David O Brown
Micah X Johnson


Labour Party in Britain Wins By-Election in Oldham

Abstract: LONDON — The first electoral test for Britain ’s coalition government since it took office eight months ago produced a clear-cut win on Friday for the opposition Labour Party and a collapse in the vote for the Conservatives. But the result in the parliamentary by-election, for a seat in Oldham in the industrial heartland of Britain’s northwest, may have meant less for Labour’s hopes for a resurgence than the vote count suggested — and not only because by-election results have often proved an unreliable measure of the national mood. One interpretation of the result was that the Conservative collapse, down to 13 percent of the votes, half what the Conservatives took in Oldham in the May general election, reflected widespread “tactical voting” among traditional voters for the party. Local politicians said there was evidence that significant numbers of Conservatives had voted for the Liberal Democrats’ candidate as a way of bolstering the Liberal Democrats’ resolve to remain in the governing coalition with the Conservatives despite public discontent with the government’s harsh cost-cutting measures. The Liberal Democrats performed better than expected in the vote. The winner of the seat was Labour’s candidate, Debbie Abrahams, who took the position that had been held by a Labour lawmaker who was ousted after a court ruling in November. The court ruled that the former lawmaker, Phil Woolas, who won in May, had knowingly misled Oldham voters by claiming that his Liberal Democrat opponent, Elwyn Watkins, had “wooed” Islamic extremists in Oldham. The judges found his actions to have amounted to stirring religious tensions. Mr. Woolas was also barred from running for Parliament for three years, forcing the by-election. Mr. Watkins ran for the seat again in the by-election. Many of Britain’s political commentators saw it as a tough test for Labour in the wake of Mr. Woolas’s conviction, the first of its kind in Britain for nearly 100 years. Labour also faced widespread uncertainty over the party’s new leader, Ed Miliband, who won a party ballot in September to pick the successor to Gordon Brown, the former prime minister. Many political commentators have been critical of Mr. Miliband’s start as leader, saying he has been indecisive in drawing up policies to challenge the coalition government. He was particularly criticized for failing to specify how Labour — bitingly critical of the coalition’s tough austerity measures — would make the spending cuts it had acknowledged were necessary. In the end, Labour easily retained the seat, with Ms. Abrahams taking nearly 15,000 votes, 42 percent of the total. Mr. Watkins of the Liberal Democrats took 32 percent, and the Conservative candidate was a distant third. Turnout in the voting, at 48 percent, was sharply off from May’s totals. The Liberal Democrats had feared that they might suffer because of widespread disaffection among Liberal Democrats nationally over the role the party had played as junior coalition partner to the Conservatives, particularly in the coalition’s decision to force an across-the-board 20 percent cut over four years in the budgets of most government departments, and in the decision to impose sharp increases in college tuition fees. Grass-roots supporters of the party and a powerful bloc among its 57 members of Parliament have condemned these and other coalition measures as a repudiation of promises the party made in the May election.

Elections
Great Britain
Labour Party (Great Britain)
Conservative Party (Great Britain)
Liberal Democrats (Great Britain)
Politics and Government
Legislatures and Parliaments


The Cubs Confront the Curse: Is This the Year?

Abstract: CHICAGO — “There is no curse; that’s crazy talk,” the chairman of the Chicago Cubs, Tom Ricketts, said the other day in his office. The Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908, nor have they qualified for one since 1945. In Chicago and beyond, by the legions, people think the explanation must come from the supernatural. There is talk of a certain billy goat. You might have to live here to understand. Once again, the Cubs are in the playoffs. They had the best regular-season record in the major leagues, which has made them the talk of the baseball world as well as the favorites to win this year’s World Series. This might make other teams and their fans ecstatic. Yet in Chicago, there is a thinly veiled, repressed gloom that comes with having had your heart broken so often. People cope with the postseason tension in different ways. Carol Haddon, a lifelong fan, offered perspective. “My basement has flooded way too often — that’s sad,” she said. “The Cubs failing to win the World Series when I sense an honest effort? No, I’m not going be overly dejected about that.” Jon Lester, a Cubs pitcher, has sought to own the curse, insisting his teammates confront it and talk about it. “There is nothing for us to run from,” he said. A beer vendor at Chicago’s Wrigley Field looks around and notices some old-timers no longer occupying their seats. “It’s heartbreaking,” the vendor, Rocco Caputo, said. “They passed away, and I know they never got to see a World Series win.” Will this be the year? A sampling of the people caught up in the exhilaration and strain of the 2016 season: Image Longtime season-ticket holder Carol Haddon in her seat behind the dugout. Credit Sally Ryan for The New York Times The Fan Carol Haddon, a Cubs season-ticket holder for 45 years, has a transistor radio affixed to the wall of the home dugout in front of her first-row seat. She keeps score of every game and lauds Cubs fans for weathering more than a century of postseason futility. “We are not loser fans,” she said. “We are optimistic fans. I choose not to carry the losses on my back. I choose to look at the bright side of things. That’s an attribute.” Haddon first bought her season tickets when they cost $3.50 a game, or roughly $285 for the season. That was in 1971, when the Cubs drew only about 10,000 fans to most games. (This year, they have averaged nearly 40,000 a game.) Haddon remembers the ballpark was sometimes so quiet that a fan could hear the infielders chatting in the middle of an inning. And fans would routinely join in on those conversations. Haddon, a former schoolteacher who said she is in her early 70s, has attended at least 2,000 games at Wrigley Field and become so close to Cubs players that they have been houseguests and accompanied her to high school softball games to root for her daughter. “It was all so informal then — that was before the WGN effect,” Haddon said. WGN, a division of the Tribune Company, which owned the Cubs at the time, was one of cable television’s first superstations, making its debut in 1978 on fledgling cable systems nationwide. Cubs games — including 81 played in the daytime at Wrigley, which did not have lights until 1988 — were beamed across the country, making the Cubs a kind of second home team for some. In places without major league teams, the Cubs were adopted as the home team. Nearly 40 years later, the Cubs can genuinely say they have a nation of fans. And hundreds of thousands of them make frequent pilgrimages to Wrigley Field, where tickets are in high demand. Haddon, who last week wore Cubs earrings, a Cubs pullover and white shoes decorated with the kind of red stitching used on a baseball, never puts her two tickets for sale on secondary ticket markets like StubHub. Her two children and various friends come to games with her. Saturday night games are always date nights with her husband, Jimmy. There has been plenty to despair, but the one time Haddon struggled to keep her sunny disposition was during the 1984 National League Championship Series, when the Cubs were one victory from making it to the World Series, then were eliminated with three consecutive defeats in San Diego. An error by the star Cubs first baseman Leon Durham — the ball trickled under his glove and through his legs — led to San Diego’s surprising comeback in the final game. As usual for a Cubs postseason defeat, there were shadowy circumstances that led to the last, crushing loss. Before the game, Durham’s first baseman’s mitt was accidentally doused with Gatorade, making it sticky and gluey. Flustered, he considered using another glove but decided against it, a decision Cubs fans have lamented ever since. Durham’s mitt may have, in essence, been stuck shut as he was trying to snare a crucial ground ball. Haddon was at the game in San Diego. “That’s the only time the Cubs really, really made me cry,” she said last week. “When I got off the plane coming home and saw my husband, I started crying.” But Haddon has been confident approaching this year’s playoffs. Even if she feels the fear around her, especially because the Cubs have the best record in the majors. “Everyone is a little afraid to be so excited,” she said, sitting in her princely seats with her feet propped on the Cubs’ dugout during a sun-splashed weekend day game. “We’re all afraid. Well, I’m not afraid, because I believe we will win. We should win. We’re the best team in baseball.” Image Cubs pitcher Jon Lester, formerly with the Red Sox, cannot help but see the similarities between Chicago’s title drought and Boston’s, which was eradicated by titles in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Credit Sally Ryan for The New York Times The Player Pitcher Jon Lester spent nine seasons with the Boston Red Sox, watching as a city and a region burdened by decades of dispiriting postseason losses had its championship renaissance. In his second season as a Cub, Lester cannot help seeing the similarities between Chicago and Boston. “In Boston, no matter how good the Patriots, Celtics or Bruins are, it’s sort of a Red Sox town,” he said. “I feel the same thing is true in Chicago. No matter how good any other team is, it always comes back to the Cubs.” Lester has also assessed the two fan bases and sees considerable differences. “East Coast versus the Midwest,” he said. “It’s not the full, up-in-your-face, fast-paced type of city and fan as you get in Boston. Here, everybody is a little slower, a little more laid-back. But the passion is still there. Both ballparks are packed every night, and everybody is yelling.” While much of the Cubs’ roster was built with shrewd acquisitions of young talent, Lester was perhaps the final pivotal piece added when he spurned multiple other suitors, most notably the Red Sox, to sign a free-agent contract before the 2015 season worth $155 million. He was rejoining the architects of Boston’s multiple championships: the Cubs’ president for baseball operations, Theo Epstein, and General Manager Jed Hoyer. Lester brought with him the gravitas of a 3-0 World Series pitching record and a 0.43 earned run average in those games. There were other bonds to his Boston days. Lester is one of two cancer survivors in the Cubs’ clubhouse. In 2006, he was told he had a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but returned to win the game that clinched the World Series for the Red Sox in 2007. Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo was told he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2008, when he was an 18-year-old Red Sox minor leaguer. Lester and Rizzo first met in the Boston clubhouse shortly after Rizzo received the diagnosis, with Lester offering his counsel on how to approach the chemotherapy and the mental challenges of confronting the disease. Eight years later, they have been reunited as Cubs and have developed a big-brother-little-brother bond. Lester had a 19-5 record this season, the best winning percentage for a National League pitcher. Rizzo is a leading candidate for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award after slugging 31 home runs and driving in 101 runs. All around the Cubs’ clubhouse, Lester has become a seasoned, valued voice, perhaps because of his Boston experiences or maybe because Lester had to overcome so much more off the field. But he is not reluctant to discuss the subject that never goes away in Chicago: the Cubs’ curse. “I’ve told the guys we have to talk about it, because you can’t stick it in the back corner of a dark room and never acknowledge it,” Lester said, standing at his locker. “That’s how bad things creep in. This city has waited a long, long time. For whatever reason — a goat or a black cat — things haven’t worked out. “But we’ve talked about wanting to be the team that wins the World Series — a Cubs World Series.” Lester looked across the team’s clubhouse, toward the long, serpentine footpath that leads to the home dugout and the cozy grounds of Wrigley Field, built six years after the Cubs’ last World Series victory. “There is a reality that we are facing,” Lester said. “It is the team’s history. But history gets updated all the time.” Image Joe Maddon took on the job of shouldering the weight of history that comes with managing the Cubs. Credit John Minchillo/Associated Press The Manager A mime once came to lead the Cubs’ pregame stretching drills. A player rode his bike from his home to the ballpark like a Little Leaguer, in complete uniform. Another day, the team stepped onto the field to find live bear cubs frolicking in the grass. All the shenanigans came from the fertile, experimental mind of Cubs Manager Joe Maddon, a grizzled and usually half-shaven former scout, minor league hitting coach and manager and first-base coach who waited 31 years to be put at the helm of a big-league club. Before the 2015 season, when he was 60 years old, Maddon agreed to become the Cubs’ manager and shoulder the weight of history that came with the job. The new sheriff in town gave his team a set of nonmarching orders. As he described them last week: “I don’t have any rules or regulations other than I want you to run hard to first base and I want the pitchers to work on their defense. There are no dress codes; I think they’re nonsensical. The concept of being late is overblown. You can’t really be late for anything.” In less than two years, Maddon’s freethinking philosophy has elevated him to cult-figure status in Chicago, where his Zen-like preachings are emblazoned on T-shirts sold all over the city. John Baranowski, a 45-year-old longtime Cubs fan, was wearing one of Maddon’s signature T-shirts that read “Do Simple Better” as he prepared to enter Wrigley Field last week. Baranowski likened Maddon to a baseball swami delivered to Wrigley by divine intervention to reverse the Cubs’ curse. “Is there anyone better to fix an insanely pressure-filled, against-the-odds situation than a guy who lives to defy what people say is supposed to happen?” Baranowski said. “This is the perfect guy. He doesn’t care about the stupid curse.” Maddon, whose regular-season record with the Cubs is 200-123, may have saved his most important, if atypical, managerial ploy when it comes to the famed curse. He refuses to shy from it. At Wrigley Field, he had a wall leading from the team’s clubhouse to the dugout inscribed with this Maddon maxim: “Don’t let the pressure exceed the pleasure.” Maddon is not going to allow more than a century of postseason despair to ruin his good time. “For me, the word ‘pressure’ should be an absolute positive and not a negative, because if people are throwing that pressure out at you, that means there’s really something good attached to whatever you’re trying to accomplish,” he said. “Pressure lives in the future, not the present tense. If you can live in the moment, then you can enjoy the pleasure of it.” Sitting at his office desk beneath the Wrigley Field grandstand, Maddon shook his head. “Listen, I’ve wanted to do this since I was 6 years old, and now I’m going to get here and be miserable?” he said. “No, man, I don’t get that way of thinking at all.” Image The beer vendor Rocco Caputo served the crowd behind home plate at Wrigley Field. Credit Sally Ryan for The New York Times The Beer Vendor Rocco Caputo has tramped up and down the stairs at Cubs games for 33 years, a smiling, wisecracking fixture at Wrigley Field, a place called “the friendly confines” for its cheery atmosphere. But there is a hidden melancholy, like a family secret never discussed. It reveals itself when the Cubs are in the postseason. “There’s a lot of crying that nobody likes to talk about,” Caputo said as he stood in a narrow aisle in Wrigley’s lower deck last week. “It’s there in the stands.” Caputo was selling beer behind home plate in 2003 during what was probably the most tormenting bad break in a Cubs playoff run. In the eighth inning of Game 6 during that year’s National League Championship Series, the Cubs had a three-run lead and were five outs from a victory that would send them to the World Series when Steve Bartman, a longtime fan of the team sitting along the railing of the left-field stands, interfered with a foul fly ball that might have been caught by a Cubs outfielder. The incident set in motion a series of ill-timed misplays and quirky bounces that could only happen to the Cubs, who lost that game and Game 7 the next day. Caputo looked into the eyes of his customers that night. “I saw the hurt,” he said. With the Cubs eliminated, Caputo finished counting his beer sales cash and dashed from Wrigley Field to begin the 10-minute walk home. Instead, he walked for miles in the opposite direction. “I didn’t want to go home,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was going. I felt like jumping in Lake Michigan. I just walked for like an hour.” Unlike some Cubs fans, he does not blame Bartman, but unlike some Cubs fans, he is willing to admit to some kind of Cubs hex. “We’ve got a curse and we’ve got to get rid of it,” Caputo said. “A lot of people have been coming here for years, and it’s getting hard. “Most of us have been waiting our whole lives. I’m 49. I’m helping all I can. I cheer my heart out. I sell the beer.” Image Tom Ricketts, the chairman and an owner of the franchise, celebrated after the Cubs won their National League division series last season. Credit David Banks/Getty Images The Owner In 2009, when the Ricketts family was getting ready to buy the Cubs, occasionally someone would ask Tom Ricketts: Aren’t you worried about aligning yourself with a franchise best known for not winning the World Series? Ricketts had a much bigger fear. He was nervous that the Cubs, who had decent teams back then, might win the World Series before he could buy the team. Ricketts, who was making the bid for the Cubs along with his two brothers, sister and parents, wondered if his family would want to own the Cubs without the World Series drought. “It’s much better to be part of the quest for a championship than to be coming in after the goal has been accomplished,” Ricketts said last week. “Our question was: If they win the World Series, do we care anymore?” The Ricketts family, whose fortune derives from TD Ameritrade, the brokerage founded by the patriarch Joseph Ricketts, need not have worried that the Cubs would shatter its hopes. As soon as the Rickettses took charge, the Cubs fell apart, losing an average of about 93 games during the next five seasons. Ricketts, the ownership’s public face, was nearly an everyday presence at Wrigley Field during those seasons, as he is now, making himself available to fans as he walks through the concourses at almost every home game. He often rides a commuter train to his downtown Chicago office, where he also runs an investment banking company he created in 1999. Raised in Nebraska and a Cubs fan since he went to college in Chicago — he and his brother once lived across the street from Wrigley Field — he is one of the most accessible team owners in American sports. “When we were losing 101 games one season, everyone assumes I walked through Wrigley and had everyone yelling at me,” he said. “That wasn’t the case at all. Every once in a while, there would be somebody who didn’t understand our plan, but we could buy them a beer and try to explain.” The plan was to turn all the baseball decisions over to Epstein, the president for baseball operations, who gutted the Cubs, several times trading away most of the team’s older starting pitchers for young, undeveloped talent, to build a sustainable core for the future. With the Cubs now the favorites to win World Series, Ricketts hears fans saying they wished the Cubs were backing into the playoffs instead — there is less pressure that way. Ricketts snickered and said, “There are a lot of people here who have a lot of time to overthink all those angles.” Never mind that no team has ever been so vexed by so many curious setbacks and omens, many with such rich, colorful names and narratives. A fan, Billy Sianis, and his pet goat were ejected from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series. Sianis vowed that the Cubs would never again win baseball’s championship because of the insult. The Cubs lost in seven games and have yet to return to the World Series. Hence, the celebrated curse of the billy goat. There was also a prancing black cat preceding a 1969 late-season collapse. Ricketts would not hear any of it. He shook his head side to side when the Cubs’ many bizarre postseason outcomes were recounted to him. “We had a lot of bad teams, and when we had good teams, we had a lot of bad luck,” he said. “And we just have to accept that. That’s the truth. But there is no curse.”